CATASTROPHE BLINK
BY MCCALISTER FORBES
In 2019, hedge fund managers Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan raised $4.2 million in seed funding for their Bluebook Cities company. Among the initial investors in the then unknown duo’s project was PayPal co-founder and libertarian ideologue Peter Thiel. Thiel’s venture capital firm, Pronomos Capital, invests in “a new model of urban development where the city is the product.” These cities, also known as future cities, freedom cities, network states, or sovereign cities, are sovereign territories founded on the basis of private capital. Patti Friedman, the daughter of economist Milton Friedman—who famously had a hand in both Reagan and Thatcher economic policy as well as a crucial role in Salvador Allende’s assassination—also participated in the opening round of investments.
Elsewhere in Pronomos’ portfolio is Próspera, the world’s only active future city. Próspera operates as a “Zone of Economic Development,” or a ZEDE, in Honduras. The city, established in 2017, has its own private police force, healthcare, and school system. Residents of Próspera do not pay taxes to Honduras, but rather pay very minimal taxes to the ZEDE itself. In March 2025, facing an attempt by the Honduran Government to strike down the law that former US backed puppet president Juan Orlando Hernandez (now serving 45 years in US prison on drug trafficking charges) put into place that allows ZEDEs in their country, Próspera sued Honduras for 31% of its National GDP. If Próspera is not under the jurisdiction of Honduras, but situated inside its borders, then it is under no jurisdiction but its own.
Praxis, Brown and Callinan’s prospective future city, advertises itself as a “Network State” founded on the pillars of Artificial Intelligence, Crypto, Energy, and Biotech. The city’s stated mission is to “restore Western Civilization and pursue our ultimate destiny among the stars.” In 2024, Praxis raised $525 million dollars in additional funding. You can apply for citizenship on the Praxis website or you can simply join the discord and sign the Praxis pledge.
In Kobo Abe’s 1959 novel Inter Ice Age 4, Professor Katsumi, a leading engineer for Tokyo’s Institute of Computer Technique (ICT) is tasked with developing a “prediction machine” set to rival the Soviet Union’s Moscow I, a computer that is able to process data inputs and predict likely outcomes to prompts asked by the user. Moscow I is wildly successful in its early stages of development, going as far as forecasting crop yields and economic outcomes of not only Soviet markets but foreign ones as well. When Moscow I makes a bold prediction that communism would be the prevailing global economic system by 2050, the ICT authorizes Katsumi to create his own machine to refute the claims of Soviet device. Initially, Katsumi’s machine is a success, but when it confirms Moscow I’s verdict that communism will dominate the future world market, the ICT demands Katsumi shut the project down. Desperate to continue his work, Katsumi and his assistant Tanomogi decide to change their approach: instead of projecting broadly on global issues, they would use the prediction machine on an individual.
The duo decides an “ordinary” man would be the best subject for individualizing the machine. Katsumi, believing that there are very few types of people, wants to find a subject that is representative of the largest swath of the masses for his initial experiment. The man they select is a professional type in a suit sitting alone at a cafe in the evening staring listlessly at the wall as a bowl of ice cream melts in the dish in front of him. After a long day of white collar labor, the “ordinary” man purchases a treat he does not want and turns off.
The man is part of the modern masses which Baudrillard calls “immune to representation,”—so turned off that they can only be represented by data, statistics, and studies. This is what makes this man the perfect candidate for the prediction machine: his actions and impulses are quantifiable because they stem from a media elasticity, a rubber mind not actively absorbing content, instead letting it ricochet. Over and over and over again. In the technocratic new world order, the average man no longer harbors labor value or creates anything. Instead he provides his time—staring at a bright computer or sitting in a drab office, dulling his senses in exchange for financial compensation. An accountant balancing books for a corporation (as the ordinary man turns out to be), likely has no connection with the products of the company he relates to via credits, debits, pay stubs and invoices. 40-hour weeks alienated not just from the product, but from oneself, the “ordinary” white-collar employee has little energy for anything but numb consumption. As a car that has been parked in the cold, it is difficult to turn the brain on without priming it first.
Abe’s “ordinary” man today is a man who is employed in creating anti-value. Anti-value, according to David Harvey, is how the capitalist machine sustains itself as it pummels forward to its uncertain future. With exponentially growing technological advances in production, the blue-collar laborer becomes increasingly automated or inessential. The bosses are able to pocket the money that was once spent on labor. But here is where the contradiction lies: Capitalists cannot profit from the goods they produce unless someone is willing to buy them. Higher unemployment creates stagnant capital that clogs the system and creates crisis. To sustain itself, capital must be in constant circulation. In order to stimulate the flow of capital new useless jobs are invented to perpetuate the cycle. Advertising, bureaucrats, accountants, and most of all bankers and financiers are responsible for propelling capital in order to maintain the system’s spiral. The astronomical technological advances in recent decades have created whole new fields of white-collar labor in order to promote consumption.
A man sits next to me at the bar on a Tuesday night, it is mildly crowded, there is a Spotify-curated classic rock playlist on the speakers, there are a few barstools open but most customers are sitting next to each other. Some of them are here with friends, others are alone. At the bar as the condensation from his beer drips on the wood, the man stares at his phone. I watch as the man scrolls through his Instagram explore page, switches to the reels tabs, there are cooking videos, skin care routines, monkeys, young women dancing, strange generated images, he gets bored and closes the app, only to open it moments later to repeat the cycle. He does not make conversation with me or the bartender, he doesn’t appear to think at all, he is off, he lets the images and products flash at his eyes. He will not buy the skincare products, he is not masturbating to the softcore pornography, he is not laughing at a poorly acted comedy skit, he is nearly drooling, staring not at the wood panelling, but at the wall of images on the screen in his hand. Whereas Abe’s prediction machine requires manual input of data from an outside source, now everyone wields a prediction machine in their pocket that absorbs their tendencies and reacts according to their dull desires. Now each click produces anti-value facilitating the flow of stagnant capital.
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