# Plausible Utopias

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [823]. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: document (PDF), 2012 (from the career record), https://files.howtolivewiki.com/Vinay%20Gupta%20meaning%20slides%20FINAL.pdf. Text: document text
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Futurist look at what mass cheap housing does to finance, the economic shock of Harappa-scale building.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - Plausible Utopias (2012): Talk deck for the Meaning conference: abundance breaks the financial system, because housing is...
  - The New Economy: out of money, out of time, but not out of ideas (2010): One-page paper: the richest fifth are eating the planet, so the next economy has to be at peace with other... (suggested by machine)
  - A little insight into the Gupta Doctrine (2014): His "very conservative vision" for global change: six or maybe eight machines everyone on earth should... (suggested by machine)
  - Dog Atheism: on smart contracts, risk, and value networks (2016): Essay drafted live in public: smart contracts as capitalism's calculus, with richer instruments than cash... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy.
  - rich data capitalism: Cheap information changes what a market can carry: price signals hold only a few bits (2013), blockchains cut...
  - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Ideas whose earliest source in this archive is this one: Plausible utopias
- Topics: contracts / companies / value (33%); Tweets & captured social feeds (33%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Leashless (2 here; 23 sources in all, earliest dated 2009, 1 undated); cheap solar (1 here; 17 sources in all, earliest dated 2011, 1 undated); The Future We Deserve (1 here; 19 sources in all, earliest dated 2009, 2 undated); Ireland (1 here; 36 sources in all, earliest dated 2006)
- Importance: core-text score 0.74 (1.00 is the top), number 24 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [725] [Vinay Gupta l Plausible utopias | Meaning 2012 (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/725.md): same career work: Plausible Utopias
  - [79] [Meaning: Plausible Utopias | The Bucky-Gandhi Design... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/79.md): same career work: Plausible Utopias
- On the same works, just before: [356] [Winter Wonderland, Trouble, Seven Sisters - Andrew C... (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/356.md); [357] [Mexico - Bleak Blues - Makerhood Christmas Party (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/357.md); [77] I went to the same school as Julian Assange, but we... (2011)
- On the same works, just after: [354] [The Future We Deserve - 2 (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/354.md); [240] [The Future We Deserve — Introduction (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/240.md); [210] [The Future We Deserve (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/210.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: Plausible Utopias, document, 2012, https://files.howtolivewiki.com/Vinay%20Gupta%20meaning%20slides%20FINAL.pdf; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [823], https://guptaoption.com/texts/823.md.

## Passages
[passage 1](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/Vinay%20Gupta%20meaning%20slides%20FINAL.pdf) P l a u s i b l e U t o p i a s V i n aY G u p ta H e x ay u r t P r o j e c t T h e f u t u r e w e d e s e r v e . c o m 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 $ $2 $4 $6 $8 $10 $12 $14 $16 $18 $20 C o m p u t e r P o w e r 2020 Million-fold increase 1990 F all Of USSR 1990 F all Of USSR 30 YEARS 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 $ $2 $4 $6 $8 $10 $12 $14 $16 $18 $20 S o l a r Pa n e l C o s t s 2020 Cheaper than coal 1990 F all Of USSR 30 YEARS $10 $1 E x p o n e n t i a l s F o r T h e Y o u n g ● If you're under 30, you've never seen change – Exponentials are always flat on the left – Then everything goes nuts ● My First Computer Was A ZX81 – 1k RAM / 3Mhz processor ● X220 6GB / 2.4 Ghz * 4 cores * 32 bit proc. – 6 million times more ram – At least a million times faster The First Hexa yurt (2003) 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 H e x ay u r t s at B u r n i n g M a n T h e F i n a n c i a l C r i s i s i n 4 Pa r t s Q u a n t i t y Price T h e F i n a n c i a l C r i s i s i n 4 Pa r t s Q u a n t i t y Price You are here T h e U s e f u l n e s s o f H o u s i n g Accommoda tion (utility) Store of weal th (banking) Specula tion (investment) See @dougald social functions of money“ ” B u i l d m i l l i o n s o f n e w h o m e s Q

[passage 2](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/Vinay%20Gupta%20meaning%20slides%20FINAL.pdf) s e f u l n e s s o f H o u s i n g Accommoda tion (utility) Store of weal th (banking) Specula tion (investment) See @dougald social functions of money“ ” B u i l d m i l l i o n s o f n e w h o m e s Q u a n t i t y Price You are here T h e U s e f u l n e s s o f H o u s i n g ( i i ) A c c o m m o d at i o n ( u t i l i t y ) Store of weal th (banking) Specula tion (investment) B u i l d B I L L I O N S o f n e w h o m e s Q u a n t i t y Price You are here H o w m a n y e x t r a h o u s e s ? UK: Not so many (Green Bel ts, Building Codes) Sp ain: 1.5m units (1.5m young unemployed) Ireland: 200,000 empty units (4.5m popula tion) China: 60m empty ap artments? Build cost $60k, expected price $300k Quarter trillion $ per million homes A B U N D A N C E B R E A KS T H E F I N A N C I A L SYS T E M N e w E c o n o m i s t s C o a s e N a s h B e n k l e r C o a s e ● Nobel prize 1940 – The nature of the firm ● A company is an efficient pocket of command- and-control inside the chaos of the market economy ● They are “efficient” because information gathering and decision-making have costs ● If that cost changes, companies get smaller N a s h ● Nobel prize 1994 (for work in the 1950s) – Nash Equilibrium – A beautiful mind ● Situations involving many parties can get stuck in minima where no single party can improve the situation for themselves or others ● Coordinated change is necessary to improve the over-all function of the system B e n k l e r ● No Nobel Prize – Wealth of Networks ● Commons-based peer production – Sharing substitutes for equity – Cheap decisions beat command-and-control ● New kinds of value creation exist in an abundant information, cheap communication world. ● They can work better than capitalism I s i t p r a c t i c a b l e ? VA LV E : $ 3 0 0 , 0 0 0 + p e r e m p l o y e e ● Gabe Newell, ex-Microsoft, wanted change ● A company without hierarchy – Projects are built around individual initiative – Projects recruit talent internally (compete) –

[passage 3](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/Vinay%20Gupta%20meaning%20slides%20FINAL.pdf) r a c t i c a b l e ? VA LV E : $ 3 0 0 , 0 0 0 + p e r e m p l o y e e ● Gabe Newell, ex-Microsoft, wanted change ● A company without hierarchy – Projects are built around individual initiative – Projects recruit talent internally (compete) – Pay & review are exclusively by peers ● Games are late, beautiful, artisan works ● Gabe, notoriously, can't get his own games made T h e n e w fa c e o f p o w e r ? s ta f f w o n ' t m a k e h i s g a m e i d e a s H e x ay u r t q u a d d o m e 4 5 m / $ 3 k C o m m o n s - b a s e d P r o d u c t i o n @leashless invented– @gelada designed– @jumplogic rendered– @theja ymo - counted @lucasgonzalez graphed– Morgan Engel buil t– There isn't even a bank account O p e r at i n g Sys t e m P o l i t i c s windows: corpora tism apple: benign dict a tor (RIP) Linux: anarchy who'd bet against anarchy? (given OS X = BSD = Anarchy) I ' v e s e e n t h e f u t u r e b a by a n d i t ' s m u r d e r Three Futures CheaP Energy, cheap info Resource scarcity & w ar Decentralism (Naxalites) A r e w e g o i n g t o m a k e i t ? Ra tional hope Superpower conflict is down Clean, conflict-free energy 5bn people coming online End of the colonial era This could all just work Unhedged risk: nano/bio F u t u r e G at e s Ul tra-cheap solar power: Sooner/La ter? Internet + poverty: constructive/ destructive? Organiza tions: cope/f ail? O n e P l a n e t , N o A p o c a l y p s e T e c h For there to be a future, you ha ve to believe... One planet consumption No apocal ypse technology It ain't st ar trek. Wha t is it? B e t w e e n M a c r o a n d M i c r o The Future We Deserve.com Wikibook (@pediapress) 100 authors Organized on Twitter Written on a Wiki 10 a cop y, quantity of one£ A r e w e g o i n g t o m a k e i t ? Thefuturewedeserve.com T h e f u t u r e w e d e s e r v e . c o m @leashless

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End of [823] Plausible Utopias. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [354](https://guptaoption.com/texts/354.md) The Future We Deserve - 2 (2012); the most closely related, [725](https://guptaoption.com/texts/725.md) Vinay Gupta l Plausible utopias | Meaning 2012 (2012); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.