CZM Rewind: Abundance, Or How To Sell Tech Fascism To Liberals

Summary

CZM Rewind: Abundance, Or How To Sell Tech Fascism To Liberals

It Could Happen Here — December 23, 2025
Host: Mia Wong (Cool Zone Media)

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Overview

In this episode, host Mia Wong unpacks the ideology and funding behind the “Abundance” movement—a techno-optimistic, pro-growth ideology gaining traction on the liberal left. Ostensibly about tackling crises like housing and infrastructure by "building more," Mia reveals how the movement is bankrolled and directed by right-wing billionaires, tech oligarchs, and libertarian think tanks. She contends that Abundance, far from being a grassroots left project, is a vehicle for “tech fascism” masquerading as progressive reform, designed to capture and redirect liberal energy for corporate and authoritarian ends.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Rise of the "Abundance" Ideology (02:35—06:00)

• Abundance comes to prominence via Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s 2025 book Abundance, pushing a vision of technological and economic pro-growth solutions.
  • Prominent proponents: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, Matthew Yglesias, Matt Bruenig (occasionally), and others.
  • “They argue that growth is good. They argue we should make more things. They argue we should have bold visions of the future.” — Mia Wong (03:25)
• Abundance is boosted by media properties, especially the Argument Substack, aimed at “bringing these new ideas to the left.”
• The movement positions itself as a solution to government inefficiency, housing shortages, and faltering infrastructure.

2. Hidden Right-Wing and Corporate Backers (06:00—09:00)

• Despite being championed by liberals, funding and idea development originate from:
  • Emergent Ventures (Koch/Mercatus, Peter Thiel)
  • Stand Together (Koch network)
  • American Enterprise Institute
  • Andreessen Horowitz—a16z (Marc Andreessen)
• "Could abundance really be funded by all these right wing billionaires and tech fascists? Oh, no." — Mia Wong (06:51)
• Abundance events (2024/2025) feature speakers from hard-right institutions like the Manhattan Institute, AEI, and figures tied to Project 2025.

3. The Ideological Sleight of Hand: Reaganism Repackaged (09:00—12:14)

• Abundance ideology is essentially “progressive supply-side economics”—a fresh coat of paint on classic Reaganomics.
  • “Now if this sounds suspiciously Reaganite to you, that's because in a sense, it is.” — Mia Wong (09:47)
• Argues for deregulation as the key to more housing, faster transit, and cheaper goods—but oversimplifies how markets function.
• Mia draws a parallel with Chinese economic debates: “growing the pie” vs. “splitting the pie.”

4. The Reality of Market Power: Rent, Algorithms, and Price Fixing (14:59—21:04)

• Use of RealPage pricing software as a case study: landlords collude using algorithms to keep rents high, even as vacancies rise—debunking simplistic supply/demand models.
  • Justice Department’s lawsuit language quoted:
    • “driving every possible opportunity to increase price, avoiding the race to the bottom in down markets and a rising tide raises all ships.” (15:43)
    • “The actual number of people in these apartments is decreasing. The number of apartments ... empty is increasing, but the price is not going down.” (17:02)
• Draws comparison to OPEC's power over oil prices: “Absolute rent does not obey the law of supply and demand. It is the product of social power, of the power of land ownership itself.” (18:50)
• Concludes abundance does not address the root issue: “As long as the social power is held by rent extractors, they can simply set their own price. None of this is addressed in abundance.“ (19:45)

5. Deep Dive into Funding and Organizational Webs (21:04—28:15)

• Cites Prospect and Kate Willett’s reporting on organizational ties:
  • Institute for Progress, Foundation for American Innovation, Chamber of Progress (Google alum-founded, funded by Google, A16Z, and others).
  • "Chamber of Progress... is a trade group started with Google seed money... leading an effort to cross a United Farm Workers picket line." (22:23)
  • Tech VCs (Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel) and Koch network unite to shape the Abundance policy ecosystem.
• Notes that many backers have histories tied to eugenics ideologies, warning that “if I actually went through and did this, this episode would be like 12 hours long.” (24:44)

6. The Endgame: Network States and Tech-Run Utopias (28:15—33:41)

• Abundance’s most radical vision is the “network state”: corporate-run city-states mostly freed from democratic oversight or state regulation.
  • “A common feature...is their support for the network state, both as a concept and in terms of building them.” (28:35)
  • Example: Prospera, a city in Honduras run by a corporation, not a mayor.
• U.S. attempts:
  • Venture capitalists (including Marc Andreessen) are buying large tracts of land (e.g., Solano County, CA) to prototype "California Forever," a for-profit city aiming for regulatory and political autonomy via secretive methods.
  • Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) and Open Philanthropy are major donors.
• “The goal of the Network State movement is to accelerate the destruction of the United States and create these corporate network states in their wake.” (31:34)
• The movement wants to transform liberal energy and values into fuel for “Trumpian tech fascism”—liberals are seen as necessary recruits for legitimacy.

7. Call to Action and Vision for Resistance (33:30—33:41)

• Mia urges listeners not to cede ground:
  • "There is still time for us to build a future built by us and for us, by and for each other. Based on mutual aid and the benefit of all. A world without death squads and ICE. A world ruled not by corporations, but by us. The fight for that world begins here and now. It could happen." (33:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What is abundance? ...desalinated ocean water flowing from the taps, skyscraper farms growing our food indoors, and star pills manufactured in space, clean air and superfast planes. Think big, think fast. Solve problems by building more.” — Mia Wong paraphrasing Malcolm Harris (03:30)
• “Could abundance really be funded by all these right-wing billionaires and tech fascists? Oh, no.” — Mia Wong (06:51)
• “Ezra Klein describes this as 'progressive supply side economics.' ...Now, supply side economics, famously is Reagan's thing.” — Mia Wong (09:45)
• “In the real world, markets are defined by power.” — Mia Wong (11:20)
• “Rent extracted by virtue of the social power of the landowner. As I wrote... absolute rent does not obey the law of supply and demand. It is the product of social power...” — Mia Wong (18:40)
• “Thiel and Andreessen are fascists who believe the state should be a corporation run by the tech elite. They do not believe in democracy, and particularly Thiel has said that democracy is the enemy of freedom.” — Mia Wong (28:20)
• “The fight for that world begins here and now. It could happen.” — Mia Wong (33:41)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:35 — Introduction to the Abundance movement’s rhetoric and figureheads
• 06:00 — Unpacking of right-wing funders and their ideological intentions
• 09:45 — Analysis: “Progressive supply-side economics” as recycled Reaganism
• 14:59 — Exposé on rental price-fixing and the myth of neutral markets
• 21:04 — Financial and institutional web of the Abundance movement
• 28:15 — Network states: Real-world examples and future ambitions
• 33:30 — Closing statement and call to action

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Tone and Delivery

Mia Wong’s tone is urgent, sharp, and often incredulous, deploying sarcasm and pointed analogies. The analysis is jargon-free, accessible, and punctuated with real-world examples that anchor abstract concepts in current events. She frequently repeats the rhetorical device of “wait, what?” to highlight shocking ideological bait-and-switches and hidden interests.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode offers a densely argued, energetic critique of the Abundance movement as a Trojan horse for libertarian tech-capitalist authoritarianism. It unmasks how dazzling futuristic rhetoric, mainstream liberal personalities, and a pro-building agenda disguise a deeper power play to sideline democracy and entrench plutocratic control—urging listeners to think critically, look past branding, and choose truly collective, democratic solutions instead.

Transcript

[Mia Wong]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Mia Wong]

Call.

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Zone Media.

[Mia Wong]

Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about a world on fire and how to Put it out. I'm your host, Mia Wong. The world is. It's the one thing everyone agrees on. In the vacuum of a defeated Democratic party, in a hideously unpopular fascist takeover that is nevertheless on the march, ideologies vie for the mantle of resistance to the fascist purge. Zoran Mamdani's victory in New York represents a resurgence social democracy in the streets. Everyone from liberals to communists to anarchists are fighting against ICE and the National Guard occupations. To get our bearings in this swirling vortex of ideology, let us check in slightly further to the right, but still firmly in the grounds of liberalism, on a new movement called Abundance. What is abundance? Thrust into prominence by a book in March 2025 simply called Abundance by liberal stalwart Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who is slightly less well known. It features people like Matthew Iglesias. They argue that growth is good. They argue we should make more things. They argue we should have bold visions of the future with, to quote Malcolm Harris's description in the Baffler, desalinated ocean water flowing from the taps, skyscraper farms growing our food indoors, and star pills manufactured in space, clean air and super fast planes. Think big, think fast. Solve problems by building more. They even have a new magazine run off of substack called the Argument, which is supposed to be about bringing these new ideas to the left. It includes social democratic stalwart Matt Bruneck. Isn't that nice? Semaphore, in their reporting on the launch of the argument, wrote, quote, many of the arguments writers have supported or in Thompson's case, authored the Ideas of Abundance, a recent book advocating for reforms to improve government efficiency, lower the cost of housing and and improve public transportation, among other initiatives. And those sound like good things, don't they? Let's take a look at who's funding the argument. It's funded in part by Emergent Ventures, which was created by the Koch brothers Mercantis center with seed money from Peter Thiel. Wait, what? They have a conference every year? They had one in 2024. The 2025 conference was last week. Who was speaking? The Opponents Conference 2025. Speakers include Charles Lehman from the right wing Manhattan Institute, an organization founded by Ronald Reagan's director of the CIA. Well, let's hear him out. Let's see what he thinks. Lehman advocates what he calls deportation abundance, which is his plan to make a more efficient deportation machine that could actually deport every undocumented person in the U.S. wait, what? This conference is also sponsored by the Koch family's organization Stand Together. It includes speakers from the American Enterprise Institute, one of the co sponsors of the event, did another conference with special guest Kevin Roberts, the guy who wrote Project 2025. Isn't this supposed to be a liberal movement? Oh, no. What's going on here? Could abundance really be funded by all these right wing billionaires and tech fascists? Oh, no. As you may have guessed from the title, most of today's episode is going to be about what the people behind abundance actually want. And it's not what you or I want. It is what Peter Thiel wants, what Marc Andreessen wants, what J.D. vance wants. In a sense, it is what Donald Trump wants. Because abundance as an ideology is an attempt by the tech oligarchs to take over the left the same way they took over the right. And that makes the ideology extremely dangerous. As we are going to unveil, this project is directly tied to many of the worst people in this country right now. It is tied to Peter Thiel. It is funded by Peter Thiel. It is funded by Marc Andreessen, who is another, effectively Thielite who believes in most of the same, if not all of the same things that Thiel does. These ideas are normally unacceptable on the liberal left. But because abundance is wrapped in the ideology of liberalism, because it wears the faces of liberal stalwarts like Ezra Klein, it can be smuggled in in a way that leaves the left and liberalism as a whole susceptible to broad ideological capture by the very same tech fascists we are all trying to oppose. Before we fully get into what the funders of abundance actually want, let's talk a little bit about what the ideology of abundance is. The very, very basic ideology of abundance is that we need more things, we need to build more, and that government regulations are standing in the way of building things. Now, if this sounds suspiciously Reaganite to you, that's because in a sense, it is. Ezra Klein describes this as progressive supply side economics. Now, supply side economics, famously is Reagan's thing. You will note that basically everyone across the entire political spectrum, at least sort of when pressed, will agree that supply side economics simply does not work. But let's hear them out. I think another way to understand what abundance is and why it works the way that it does, is to look at it in the context not of American political ideology and debates, but of Chinese political debates. Now, Chinese political debates have, for much of the last decade, really a decade and a half, taken the form of arguments about either increasing the size of the pie or splitting the pie more evenly. On the left, you have a case for redistribution Right. For higher taxation, for higher welfare benefits, for giving people things from the state and redistributing it from rich people to the poor. On the right, you have growing the pie, which argues that instead of redistributing wealth, we should simply grow more wealth and that wealth will trickle down to everyone else. Wait, this is just Reaganism again. It's, it's all, it's all Reaganism. This is, this is the very frustrating thing about abundance is that when you actually go past the language they're using and you look at what they think will happen, it's, it's just trickle down economics. Again, it's just trickle down economics. And abundance is on the right wing side of it now. You know, there are definitely arguments for places where we do in fact need to build more things, right? And this argument has become particularly prominent with the rise of yimbyism. And like, yeah, I don't know, building more houses is good. I mean, it was, it was, it was literally a demand of the Hungarian revolution, right? Like, yeah, we need more of it. But comma, we need to be very, very careful here because the way that abundance structures its arguments in the ways that, for example, a really, really vulgar version of yimbyism has been deployed by these people in order to just sort of wholesale opposed government regulations. And we're not just talking about things here like eliminating zoning requirements, right? We are talking about as, as we'll get into later. The, the people behind this movement want to create their own city states and special economic zones where no government regulations apply. But the fundamental argument here is that lifting government restrictions on production will, you know, increase the size of the markets. And because price is just supply and demand, prices will fall because there's more. None of this is how markets actually work. One of the crucial insights of anthropology is that markets are not simply neutral objective forces that function according to precise mathematical laws. They are socially constructed. Even in neoclassical economics, by their own logic, price is not just supply and demand. That's something that's only true in perfectly competitive markets. And perfectly competitive markets do not exist. They probably cannot exist, but they do not exist in the real world. And they do not represent something like the housing market. In the real world, markets are defined by power. Neoclassical economists attempt to explain the role of power in markets through monopoly. Right? You know, you can look at monopoly and monopsony. There are a bunch of very different things that they think are sort of deviations of this perfect competitive market where people band together to build power and thus are able to distort what the perfect free market should be doing. And this is a feature of basically every market that actually exists, right? There aren't perfectly competitive markets. They all have power in them and they all have degrees of monopoly, to use a sort of Marxian term, in them as well. Now do you know what else has a degree of monopoly? That's right, it is the products and services that support this podcast.

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[Mia Wong]

So what does this actually have to do with abundance? Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I explained rent on this show and this is specifically here. Rent in the context of what you pay to your landlords. I promise this will circle back to this will circle back to sort of abundance yimbyism in a second. I attempted to explain rent by drawing on the work of the legendary Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronel to argue that the rent that we pay to our landlords functions similarly to oil rent, where price is not set by supply and demand, but instead by the social power of oil producers. Now, people got very, very mad at me for this, but the longer of history has vindicated me in the real world, it turns out I was right. The most powerful example of this in the housing market is the case of RealPage, a service that allowed landlords to get recommendations on their pricing based on information from all the landlords who submitted their data, thus creating an algorithmic machine for price fixing. This got bad enough that even the Biden Justice Department got involved. Here's from the Department of Justice's lawsuit against RealPage. RealPage acknowledged that its software is aimed at maximizing prices for landlords, referring to its products as quote, driving every possible opportunity to increase price, avoiding the race to the bottom in down markets and a rising tide raises all ships. A RealPage executive observed that its products help landlords avoid competing on the merits, noting, quote, there is a greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps entire industry down. A RealPage executive explains to a landlord that using competitor data can help identify situations where a landlord may have a $50 increase instead of $10 increase for the day. Another landlord commented about RealPage's product, I always like this product because your algorithms use proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and terms. That's classical price fixing. Now I was derided for arguing that landlords would band together using Their social power to prevent rents from falling even with units sitting empty. And it turns out I was right the whole time they were doing exactly that. It turns out in the actual real world of the market, all of these companies and all of these landlords had found a way to band together in order to use their social power and use the information in their possession to fix the price of rent. Here is from Reuters, drawing from yet another lawsuit, this time from the attorney general of D.C. a monthly report from W.C. smith in 2022 showed the company had increased revenues per unit by 4.6 to 4.7% despite decreased occupancy levels, according to the lawsuit. So what is that saying? That is saying that the actual number of people in these apartments is decreasing. The number of apartments staying open that have no one in them is increasing, but the price is not going down. Even though there's more supply, the price is still going up. Why is the price still going up? Well, well, well. The Justice Department calls this price fixing large scale collusion to disrupt the functioning of the perfectly normal competitive market. The anthropologist Fernando Coronel, as I argued before, calls it absolute rent. Rent extracted by virtue of the social power of the landowner. As I wrote in that, absolute rent does not obey the law of supply and demand. It is the product of social power, of the power of land ownership itself and the organization of the landowning class and their backing by the state and its militaries and police. And this causes economists attempting to use supply and demand to explain rent to get very, very important events very wrong. Morris Edelman, the famous soil economist, predicted in 1972 that the price of oil was going to collapse based on oversupply and competition. Instead, it increased 400% between 1973 and 1974 because oil producers banded together to exercise their power and their organization, known as opec, became a genuine world power, as Coronel put it. The sharp increase of 1973 and 1974 in oil prices did not result from a world shortage of oil. It was rather the outcome of a long historical process by which OPEC nations, acting as landowners, developed a means to extract a rent on the basis of their ownership of the oil fields, an absolute rent in addition to the differential rents they had collected in the past. In 1973, a set of converging political and economic conditions helped establish their collective ability to restrict the world's supply of oil. With this power, OPEC felt entitled to set the market price of oil, thus freeing the level of rent from the previous constraints of market price. Now, rent itself, absolute and differential would determine the market price of oil. What does that sound like? Oh, it sounds like RealPage's price fixing algorithm. Why does it sound like RealPage's price fixing algorithm? It's because in the real world, markets are not neutral institutions that operate according to neutral laws. They're institutions created and enforced by the state. Landlords can jack up your rent because they wield collective power together and have the ability to use the state to drag you out of your home at gunpoint. Abundance is, to a large extent an attempt to harness widespread discontent over the price of goods, the price of rent, the price of food, and argue that you can simply produce more and this will make all of the prices go down. But as we've seen here, as long as the social power is held by the rent extractors, they can simply set their own price. None of this is addressed in abundance. And there's a simple reason for that. The people funding the abundance agenda are the very same people profiting from their social power. So let's talk about the money. I'm going to be quoting here from a report from Prospect, which is very good. The Institute for Progress, which co hosted Abundance 2024 and is listed as a key institutional partner by the Inclusive Abundance Initiative, has a bevy of corporate ties. In 2022, IFP received $110,000 from FAI and has FAI s executive director on its board. Now FAI is the foundation for American Innovation. I'm going to read this is also an Abundance co host, which is very funny. I am going to read a quote from Kate Willett, who has also done some excellent reporting on this. And she describes how the FAI hosted another conference in 2024 called Reboot. Quote, the quote, surprise guest of the conference was Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage foundation and Chief Architect of 2025. Now back to the Institute for Progress. Part of what's going on here, right, is that this is, this is an incre, you know, and what, what I'm trying to emphasize by how confusing this whole thing is, is that Abundance is composed of a series of think tanks and weird institutes that are all tied into a bunch of tech money, right? Keeping the acronym straight is very difficult. You do not need to hold all of them in your head. The other thing that you need to understand about this, right, is if you look at who is co hosting these conferences and who is behind these books and who is behind these media outlets, a very, very clear picture starts to emerge. I'm going, I'm going to go back to Quoting from Prospect. One of the funders of the Institute for Progress was Emergent Ventures, which is a product of the Kochbak Mercantis Institute at George Mason University. Emergent itself was launched by a grant from Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel is a right wing billionaire with a vast influence network at the intersection of techno futurism and anti democratic thought who has called technology an alternative to democratic politics. Small D democratic. By the way, he means the concept of democracy to quote, unilaterally change the world. Vice President Elect JD Vance is a known scion of Peter Thiel. Let's look at the Chamber of Progress, another one of the groups that is heavily involved in abundance. Chamber of Progress, which self identifies its work as part of a growing abundance policy movement, is a trade group started with Google seed money by Google alum Adam Kovakovich. Kovakovich proudly touts his college activism leading an effort to cross a United Farm Workers picket line. The Chamber of Progress's partners, reed funders, include A16Z, Circle, Coinbase, Google, Kraken, Ripple, Waymo, Andreessen Horowitz or A16Z is a venture capital firm heavily invested in AI and crypto. Co founder Mark Andreessen believes the technology is the solution to every problem. He's also on Meta's board. He is also a theolite tech fascist. This is it in some sense, a very, very interesting collusion of forces. Right? We have the Koch brothers who are, you know, sort of the ancient libertarian right side of Republican dark money. They are, you know, the people who have traditionally funded right wing movements in the past. They are the Tea Party people. They are, you know, they are sort of the boogeyman under the bed for anyone who has wanted to make the world a better place for a very, very long time. And they and their organizations are working with the emergent tech fascist rights. You know, people like, people like Marc Andreessen, people with Peter Thiel and these are the organizations that have gotten in bed together in order to do this. Now these people have a bunch of absolutely hideous beliefs. We're not even going to get in to the eugenics here. But like these, the people funding this thing are huge eugenicists. We literally do not have time to do the, all of the eugenic shit associated with this. Because if, if, if I were to actually do the eugenic, I mean we talked about some of like Matti and glaciers bullshit on this podcast earlier. But like if I actually went through and did this, this episode would be like 12 hours long. I am going to cover this sort of Network State Pure Theolite Eugenics Circle at some point later. That is a forthcoming episode. But yeah, for now. Here are these ads which hopefully are not Eugenics Woo.

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This is where mindset comes in.

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Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures your ticket.

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[Mia Wong]

So let's get back to who I think are really the two primary villains of this story, and that is Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, who are two of the most dangerous people in the entire world. Thiel and Andreessen are fascists who believe the state should be a corporation run by the tech elite. They do not believe in democracy, and particularly Thiel has said that democracy is the enemy of freedom. Right? When these people talk about running the state like a business, they mean that there should be an unaccountable fucking philosopher CEO King, and that there shouldn't be democracy. A common feature of this, and you know, the, the physical manifestation of this thing is an idea called the network state. And a very common theme of the founders of Abundance is their support for the network state, both as a concept and in terms of building them. So what is the network state? The network state is to a large extent the thing I've just been describing, right? The version of it that they pitch is that these are like opportunity zones, right? They're these like tech cities, you know, that will eventually become like real states that are, that are based off of special economic zones where, you know, special economic zones where like the normal regulations of the state do not apply. So you can, you know, do whatever you want, right? You can, you can, we can build prosperity by, by having no government regulations and run everything through corporations. These network states would be again, actual straight up corporations that own and control territory and run it as the state. These states are already coming into existence. Maybe the most important is Prospera, a corporate city for profit in Honduras that is run by a corporation. Again in a special economic zone where the state does not apply, it does not have a mayor, it has someone appointed by the corporation who runs the city. This is happening all over the world, particularly in developing countries, where it is being pushed by all of these just absolutely demonic tech ghouls. And they're also being started and attempts are being started to run them in the United States. I'm going to quote here from Shane Lee's Venture Capital blog, Venture Capital Status, which is a very, very good resource on the network state, which we'll be covering more fully later because we don't have time to do much more than a brief introduction to their ideas. Here in Solero County, California, a cartel of venture capitalists associated with Andreessen Horowitz, which is again Mark Andreessen's firm bought up over 65,000 acres of rich, fertile farmland. And using secretive and threatening methodologies, including suing local farmers, they plan to build a city with weapons developments and manufacturing, aerospace and robotics companies, shipbuilding homes and schools. This network state is called California Forever. Also in California, there has been a discussion by Network State operatives of taking over Presidio in San Francisco. And there is a network state planned in Samona County. Its founder is a former Pomona venture capitalist. These are the same people funding abundance. Here's from Kate Willett, again one of the California Forever billionaires. California Forever is again the name of the network state they want to set up by buying a bunch of land in Solano County. One of the California Forever billionaires, Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, looms large in abundance worlds. Along with open philanthropy, he donated to fund a $120 million abundance grant tied to Ezra Klein's book release. Colson is a key backer and inspiration for the Institute for Progress, a think tank which works closely with others in the Abundance Network, including the Abundance 2024 conference. The goal of the Network State movement is to accelerate the destruction of the United States and create these corporate network states in their wake. They want the world to be composed of these networks of venture capital tech corporations run and ruled by them, by the tech elite for profit. These are the people that are funding all of these fucking movements. These are the people funding the argument. These are the people funding the Abundance Conference. These are the people that people like Ezra Klein have been brought in to run cover for. These are Trump people. They are the forces behind J.D. vance. They want to inflict their vision of tech fascism on the world. But they are hideously popular in power. In order to achieve their agenda, they cannot simply rely on their incredible hegemony on the right. They need you. They need your buy in. They need the support of good and kind hearted liberals who they can radicalize into Trumpian tech fascists. This is their opening gambit and they've played it well. But there is still time for them to fail. There is still time for us to build a future built by us and for us, by and for each other. Based on mutual aid and the benefit of all. A world without death squads and ice. A world ruled not by corporations, but by us. The fight for that world begins here and now. It could happen.

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Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

[Mia Wong]

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media.

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Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us.

[Mia Wong]

Out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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You can now find sources for it.

[Mia Wong]

Could happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.

[Mia Wong]

This is where mindset comes in.

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Someone will be eliminated.

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Pressure is coming down.

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[Mia Wong]

Right.

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[Mia Wong]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.