布羅利奇（Broligarchs）試圖走自己的路

就職典禮那天，許多人對美國機構進行批發翻新的前景感到真正的欣喜。而且，正如我經常認為的那樣，我們的憲法民主確實需要翻新 - 各種精英與人民脫節，官僚機構困擾著每個人，我們中的許多人發現不可能使當選的官員負責。但是我擔心我們將要進行的翻新將使我們朝著錯誤的方向發展。

Many people felt a sense of euphoria on Inauguration Day at the prospect of a wholesale renovation of America’s institutions. And, as I’ve argued often, our constitutional democracy does need renovation—the various elites are disconnected from the people, bureaucracy afflicts everyone, and many of us find it impossible to hold our elected officials accountable. Yet I fear that the renovations we’re about to get will take us in the wrong direction.

在就職典禮的那天，在美國機構進行批發翻新時，許多人感到欣喜若狂。而且，正如我經常認為的那樣，我們的憲法民主確實需要翻新 - 各種精英與人民脫節，官僚機構困擾著每個人，我們中的許多人發現不可能使當選的官員負責。但是我擔心我們將要進行的翻新將使我們朝著錯誤的方向發展。

Americans have been yielding sovereignty to tech magnates and their money for years. The milestones are sometimes startling, even if one has long been aware of where things are heading. I was astonished and alarmed when I learned, in the summer of 2023, that Elon Musk had, within a span of five years, built an orbital network comprising more than half of the world’s active satellites. His share has now risen to more than 60 percent. Already in 2023, he controlled battlefield communications infrastructure used in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Musk is currently the head of Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, which is taking over the U.S. Digital Service. At the same time, he may be making a bid for TikTok’s American platform. Ownership of TikTok brings immense power. In December, the Romanian elections were canceled in the middle of voting because of fears that propaganda from Russia, by means of TikTok, was driving the election results.

多年來，美國人一直在為技術巨頭和他們的資金產生主權。即使人們長期以來已經意識到事情的發展方向，這些里程碑有時會令人震驚。當我在2023年夏天得知埃隆·馬斯克（Elon Musk）在五年內建立了一個軌道網絡，其中包括世界上一半以上活躍的衛星，我感到驚訝和震驚。他的份額現在已上升到60％以上。他已經在2023年控制了烏克蘭和俄羅斯之間戰爭中使用的戰場通信基礎設施。馬斯克目前是唐納德·特朗普（Donald Trump）新的政府效率部門（Doge）的負責人，該部門正在接管美國數字服務。同時，他可能正在競標Tiktok的美國平台。 Tiktok的所有權帶來了巨大的力量。去年12月，由於擔心俄羅斯的宣傳，通過蒂克托克（Tiktok）的宣傳，羅馬尼亞選舉在投票中被取消。

Musk is well on his way to controlling the world’s communications infrastructure. This is not by accident. He swims in an intellectual universe, alongside his PayPal associates Peter Thiel (who funded J. D. Vance’s Senate campaign) and David Sacks (now Trump’s AI and crypto czar), whose writers advocate for replacing democratic leadership with a CEO-monarch, and argue that higher-IQ “sovereign individuals” should rule over people with lower IQs. Musk, Sacks, and Thiel all spent formative boyhood years in South Africa. As the historian Jill Lepore noted in The New Yorker, Musk’s grandfather took the family to South Africa for the sake of apartheid, having left Canada after being jailed for his leadership activities in the Technocracy movement, “whose proponents believed that scientists and engineers, rather than the people, should rule.” Thiel has made “freedom” his life’s pursuit. Since 2009, he has argued that freedom is incompatible with democracy, and that “the fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.”

馬斯克正在控制世界通信基礎設施的途中。這不是偶然的。他與他的貝寶（Paypal）同事彼得·蒂爾（Peter Thiel）（資助JD Vance的參議院競選活動）和David Sacks（現為特朗普的AI和Crypto Czar）一起游泳，他們的作家倡導以首席執行官的身份代替民主黨領導人，並認為這是一個更高的人，並認為這是他的作家。 -iq“主權個人”應統治智商較低的人。麝香，麻袋和蒂爾都在南非度過了成長的童年。正如歷史學家吉爾·勒波（Jill Lepore）在《紐約客》中指出的那樣，馬斯克的祖父將家人帶到南非為了種族隔離，因其在技術官僚運動中被判入獄後離開了加拿大，他的支持者相信科學家和工程師，更願意科學家和工程師比人民應該統治。”泰爾（Thiel）使他的人生追求“自由”。自2009年以來，他認為自由與民主不相容，“我們世界的命運可能取決於一個人的努力，該人的努力是建立或傳播使世界安全的自由機制，這使世界對資本主義安全。 ”

Two original MAGA leaders, Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, have railed against this “techno-feudalism.” That is what they see Musk and his allies trying to bring about, whether in collaboration with Trump or by using him as their puppet. For the first time ever, I find myself agreeing with Bannon and Loomer.

兩位原始的雜誌領導人史蒂夫·班農（Steve Bannon）和勞拉·魯默爾（Laura Loomer）對這種“技術狂主義”的影響。這就是他們看到馬斯克及其盟友試圖帶來的東西，無論是與特朗普合作還是將他用作木偶。我第一次發現自己同意班農和織布勒。

The whole situation went from concerning to surreal when, two days before his inauguration, Trump issued a meme crypto coin, known as $TRUMP. A memecoin is a form of cryptocurrency that has no value-creating function in the crypto ecosystem. Instead, it references some popular phenomenon and gains its value only because of people’s interest in that popular phenomenon. Typically, memecoins also lack the security that could render them a stable part of the crypto financial infrastructure.

整個局勢從有關超現實的情況轉變為超現實，當時他在就職典禮前兩天發出了一個被稱為特朗普的Meme Crypto硬幣。 Memecoin是一種加密貨幣的一種形式，在加密生態系統中沒有增值功能。取而代之的是，它引用了一些流行現象，並獲得了其價值，僅僅是因為人們對這種流行現象的興趣。通常，Memecoins也缺乏使他們成為加密金融基礎設施中穩定部分的安全性。

The fully diluted value (or market cap when the full supply is circulating) of $TRUMP, 80 percent of which is owned by entities that the Trump family controls, shot up within 24 hours of its release to more than $70 billion. It is now bouncing around between $20 billion and $30 billion—meaning the president now holds something like 75 to 80 percent of his wealth in crypto. That goes well beyond monetizing the Trump brand through T-shirts, gold sneakers, and steaks. This time, Trump has auctioned himself. Leaving aside the technical substrate, there is arguably little difference between $TRUMP and the president posting a deposit-only Swiss-bank-account number online, into which people can deposit funds and privately show him the receipts for their deposits. His personal wealth now depends on these depositors. He has turned himself—and therefore his office—into a for-profit joint-share stock corporation. People with $TRUMP in their crypto wallets are the shareholders.

特朗普的全部稀釋價值（或全部供應流通時的市值），其中80％由特朗普家族控制的實體擁有，在釋放後24小時內攻擊，超過700億美元。現在，它的反彈在200億至300億美元之間 - 總統現在持有他在加密貨幣中的75％至80％的財富。這遠遠超出了通過T卹，黃金運動鞋和牛排通過Trump品牌獲利的。這次，特朗普拍賣了自己。除了技術基材之外，特朗普與總統在網上發布僅存款的瑞士銀行賬戶號碼之間幾乎沒有什麼區別，人們可以在其中存入資金並私下向他展示其存款收據。他的個人財富現在取決於這些儲戶。他轉過身來，以及他的辦公室 - 一家營利性聯合共享股票公司。股東是特朗普$特朗普的人。

Who knows if the president intended this outcome, but leaders in the crypto space have long hoped for the replacement of nation-states with “network states” encompassing communities that come together on the blockchain. They are celebrating $TRUMP as the first crypto community to have gained control of a nation-state’s powers by capturing the president’s attention through control of his digital wallet. If what Trump has done is upheld as legal or becomes a norm, other global leaders have every incentive to do what he did, turning

誰知道總統是否打算這一結果，但是加密貨幣領域的領導人長期以來一直希望用“網絡國家”替換民族國家，涵蓋區塊鏈上的社區。他們慶祝特朗普是第一個通過控制他的數字錢包來吸引總統注意力的加密社區，從而獲得了民族國家權力。如果特朗普所做的事情是合法的或成為規範的，那麼其他全球領導人都有所有動力去做他所做的事情，轉向