Seasteading supporter Balaji S. Srinivasan is the poster child of a modern-day pioneer. Seeing the limits of old ways of doing things, he founded Counsyl, a prenatal genetic testing company, to extend the technological frontier in medicine. Balaji recently spoke at Y Combinator’s startup school and boldly proposed pushing the frontier a step further, suggesting a framework for thinking about “Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit” (click to see slides). The reference should sound familiar to seasteaders, given our emphasis on the “opt-in/opt-out” mechanism as the lever for change, to complement and empower the people’s voice in society.
In a masterful analogy, Balaji asks if the USA has become the “Microsoft” of international politics. Chief among the similarities is that no one in has a choice but to “buy” the USA as the world’s dominant “operating system.” Just as Google displaced Microsoft’s hegemony over basic computing, a new crop of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and companies are eclipsing the government, along with old co-dependent industries in Hollywood (entertainment), New York City (media), and Boston (academia).
![](https://www.seasteading.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/usa-microsoft.jpg)
But the “ultimate exit,” he said, will come with the advent of complete societies run by technology and governed on an entirely opt-in/opt-out basis. Influential Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Larry Page, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have in various ways staked their reputation on such a development, signaling that new ways of running society might be very near indeed.
Balaji’s final image suggests we may be in agreement on the most practical jumping-off point for the world’s first society-wide startup experiment:
![](https://www.seasteading.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/seastead.jpg)