Trust can be a rare commodity in startup societies. We meet in passing under the same hotel roof without taking the time to learn the truth about each other. We meet during meals three times a day and get a new taste of each other's personalities. We have to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make living together tolerable while avoiding unnecessary conflict. We see each other or avoid eye contact at hotel lobbies and social lounges both day and night. Trust is what makes society sustainable. Trust exists when another person’s choices can have a direct effect on you, when you have confidence in how they will use that freedom, and when trust is a choice rather than forced by circumstance. Without those conditions in place, what people often call trust is closer to projection. Bad actors like love-bombers or gaslighters will often weaponize this to manipulate others.

Those who have my trust are those who have the ability to affect me. I also choose to trust them because I have reason to believe they will act well. At Network School, that means my roommates, the founders of this startup society, some of its core team members, the friends I have made, and hotel employees. In a startup society, what sort of person is best suited to earn trust by many people who have diverse, unpredictable objectives? The honest man is a good candidate. Yet not just any honest man will do. He must seem useful to all those people in society. 'Useful' in this context is what engages interest in people such as being intelligent, fit, funny, elegant, easily remembered, morally right and so on. Trust can often be misplaced by indoctrination, and that is usually what triggers my existential crisis during my time spent in Forest City.

People once behaved under the shadow of God because they trusted an almighty force to punish wrongdoing even when no human eye could see it. In the 1800s it was “In God We Trust.” Over time, as faith in that force declined and God was declared dead, trust migrated toward the State. Political power was expected to hold society together. Now, with faith in the State declining too, Network School's wager is that the Network (internet, social platforms, cryptography, online communities) becomes the next power that people trust to coordinate behaviour.

The founder of Network School, Balaji Srinivasan, earned social trust from people through his online presence, not because he proved to be an honest man, but is someone with high agency. After all, his influence in the start-up ecosystem is what attracted the initial cohort to Network School. Balaji did not arrive at Network School as an unknown quack asking strangers to "trust me bro." He had already spent years making himself useful on the internet by teaching Stanford’s Startup Engineering course to a large online audience, backing Bitcoin early, co-founding the company that became Earn.com, joining Andreessen Horowitz, helping launch Coin Center, serving as CTO of Coinbase, and later launching USDC. By the time he published The Network State, he was not just a theorist of new societies but someone whose reputation had been built through repeated proof of work across startups, crypto, and online institutions. That track record is what made an initial cohort willing to follow him into something as speculative as Network School.

Network School is a culture. For Network School to become Network State, it must have diplomatic recognition. Right now, they are just "Guests of Malaysia." The tensions of being a strong presence in Forest City, paired with local sentiment, may not paint Network School in the best light as they work to become sovereign. They must gain trust with the Malaysian Government, and for that to happen, Network School must prove to be useful to Malaysia. While my letters may come off as cynical, I am optimistic about Network School, especially in its mission to become a nation. I am very much a part of the NS culture. I trust the shared ideas that cause its members to behave alike. Like long-term stayers or short-term arrivals, I attend to learn concepts, earn capital, and burn calories. I wouldn't choose to live in Forest City if I did not trust that Network School is a good community to live in, even if I get an existential crisis living here time to time.

pura vida,
-rushil