A conversation with Suji Yan & Katt Gu: We are Still Working for J.P.Morgan’s Ghost from Two Hundred Years Ago
The Anti-996 License Drafter Couple will bridge you the relationship among Open Source Movement, Blockchain, and Capitalism/Communism — yes, it may break a hole in your head, because it did so to me.
Suji Yan: Cross-dress developer, Chief Executive Officer of Dimension.io, Founder of Maskbook.io, Contributor to Anti-996 License, Husband of Katt Gu. Twitter: @suji_yan
Katt Gu: J.D. from UIUC, Chief Compliance Officer of Dimension.io, Drafter of Anti-996 License, Wife of Suji Yan. Twitter: @orphan_block
Mable Jiang: Contributor to Blockchain Economic Studio . The interviewer and editor of this article. Twitter: @Mable_Jiang
The first time I met Suji in person was at a Dapp meet up at the year end of 2018. Before that, we’ve been talking to each other for a long time but only via instant messenger.
“I dropped out of College, founded a start-up, and am working on another one. Simply can’t take a break.”
Later, I introduced Suji to our portfolio Gun Database, and the core developers/founders Mark Nadal and Martti Malmi. For a long time, Mark didn’t reply the intro email, but Suji and team grabbed him on GitHub. After a trip to Redwood City, Suji found out that Mark’s team had the same vision to topple the traditional internet world. For the next few months, they spent days and nights together on GitHub, using encrypted programming language. Until Tim Draper’s public endorsement of Mark’s product (party.lol) most recently, Suji and Mark kept everything a secret. (p.s. Suji’s product is called Maskbook.io & tessercube.com)
As early as in 2016, Suji raised the question that whether there could be a way to reward the creators other than paying for the copyrights to the large companies that own them. Back in the days, Suji didn’t know how “the other potential way” could be facilitated. Yet, Suji already realized that the protection of intellectual property was not exactly protecting the intellectual producer.
“Software …was born with the genes of scale production. It soon got rid of the retail store model and turned into an agent-based one — gallery makes the major chunk but (most of) the artists barely make much.”
Nevertheless, Suji believes that he has now thought through the essential meaning of the open source movement, and even some potential direction towards which humankind might develop. As a result, as soon as the “996.icu” movement started a month ago, Suji suggested his wife to draft the “Anti-996 License”. He said, “I sensed that the initiative could be a tipping point for a re-balance of the current system.”
In our conversation, Suji mentioned a lot of interesting but not well agreed opinions (some people, after seeing the script of this interview, commented that “he’s crazy”). Yet Suji doesn’t care; he simply wants to pass along his threads of thoughts through our texts. From our view, we think enough light has been shed on this couple’s “Anti-996 License”, so we would more like to bring to our readers the couple’s understanding of open source movement, and their hope to this beautiful world.
Mable: The Anti-996 Movement that you guys have been working on, to some extents is the continuation of the Open Source Movement. Could you please briefly explain the relationship between the two?
Suji: Open Source Movement, in its early days, started with the open source licenses in the academia. The MIT License that our Anti-996 License referenced to was one of them.
Later on, people found that the corporates would use these open source code in their for-profit software. As a fightback, Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation and created GPL, the contagious open source license. There were two times that they significantly threatened Microsoft: one was the Linus and GNU operating system, and the other was the Netscape and Mozilla browser. For the latter, Microsoft was scared of the competition from Netscape, so it ‘stole’ the open source code from UIUC (because Mark Andreesson started the early version, Mosaic, at UIUC/NCSA). Technically, the code was open sourced under UIUC/NCSA License and could be used freely. But if the initial open source code of Mosaic was a contagious one (such as GPL, or what they did later, Mozilla License), should Microsoft use it, the whole Windows system would become open sourced per agreement of the License and thus Microsoft could not take the free ride.
In this cloud-based era, this is no longer that useful and obviously there were lots more invisible ways to do evils: not biding the rules of data usage, not following the labor laws, etc., There we welcomed a movement of turning free software into “Ethical Software”.
Katt: The idea of Ethical Software has been discussed since long time ago in the U.S. Participants of the discussions believe that software should not be used for things that do not align with the Universal Values, such as labors’ right, anti-terrorism.
Mable: To this point, the Anti-996 Movement is way beyond protecting labors’ rights; it’s a movement against the reign of the large corporations. Right?
Suji: From what I can see, there are only two types of future:
One kind is Technocracy, meaning large companies accumulate their capital and subsequently power, and then become the exact same thing as a strong government. Large companies buying media (i.e. Amazon acquired Washington Post) is a kind of manipulation and dystopia. This kind of dystopia is described from Brave New World.
The other type of dystopia is 1984, but by devices powered by fancier technologies, and more advanced than Telscreen. You don’t even bother invent Newspeak — for example, in the same WeChat group, people with one area code cannot see what people with another area code were saying. Furthermore, when AI becomes advanced enough, it could edit your words based on the context and who you are talking to. Texts are the first step, and could be easily followed by audio and video.
At the beginning it’s what people read and watch being manipulated (Interviewer’s note: for example, the revoke of the Fairness Doctrine of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was honest, equitable, and balanced); the next step is what people think being manipulated; then we have the Brain-Machine Interface, you know, Elon Musk has been working on that as well.
Mable: Sounds like these two dystopias are not mutually exclusive but rather reinforcing each other. You need to acquire advanced technological weapons in order to attain the absolute control and manipulation. What do you think is the pain point of the current society? What are the solutions?
Suji: Under the current social system, neither of these two dystopias could be compromised into a middle way, regardless whether it’s in a liberal capitalist society or an authoritarian socialist society. Myself, a Cyberpunk, can’t do nothing but using my Idea. We can only avoid dystopia with Ideas.
What’s the idea? We need a solution that is born with an encrypted nature. Only if privacy and personal rights are enforced, the society could be rebalanced. Only when secret societies are allowed and protected will the new interest groups grow. Otherwise the world will soon slide and fall.
Slavoj Zizek, the “Rockstar philosopher” commented on “Taking Over Wallstreet” in 2008: “This is the end…the marriage of democracy and capitalism is over.” While not many took his words seriously, I believe Satoshi did. After all, he put those sarcastic words in his genesis block.
What’s the meaning of blockchain? It’s a rebalance of the society. From my view, the core includes the following:
- Bitcoin is freed money
- Smart Contract is freed execution, freed contract, and freed law
- Digital governance / on-chain governance is a proxy of digital government
- Whoever is caught by the government and forced for the private key, the government can do nothing (maybe to kill this person) if the person insists not giving in
Mable: So you think blockchain is the way to empower individuals to battle with the tech hegemony, because everyone’s vote counts on blockchain, and if there are enough people not liking an idea they could fork. The core of the solution, from what I heard, starts from the enforced privacy that leads to the entry of a more balanced society. On the other hand, your participation in the Anti-996 Movement does not seem to be a long thought decision. Then, how did you think of drafting the Anti-996 License immediately when you saw the movement?
Suji: In the long term, I agree with Karl Marx. He did not propose any methodology in his Capital, but he definitely shed his light towards the answer:
- Transiting an object from A to B. After the invention of machines, the transition costs are lowered. Can we imagine that, in the longer term, the transition costs could be negligible to almost none?
- Reproduction. In the past you need 5 days to carve something out, and now you only need 5 minutes with 3D printing. Can we imagine that the reproduction could be done in no time in the future?
As a result, I am very much affirmed that everyone will become a capitalist — it only takes time. These developers / coders need the open source movement to help them own their intellectual property; they don’t need their company to own the IPs and extract profits on their behalf. In the midst of unknown, I simply had a calling that Anti-996 would be the start, a start of labor movement.
Mable: Marx could not provide a methodology because the technology was not advanced enough to provide him a solution. But like you said, he left the undead ideas to us. He thought through the infrastructure, and then it’s up to the contemporary human beings to execute in their ways.
Suji: Yes. He did not point out that digitalization and virtualization is the key, but he defined a lot of directional concept, such as value exchange, labor production, etc.,
When would there be no attrition in the production and transition process? That’s when they all become virtual and digital. If Marx said that the labors and workers could be united into a government ruled by all the working class, then I think capitalists and bourgeoisie could be united into a special digital government. The normal sovereign government could still exist, but you could be a citizen of the United States while being an Ethereum citizen at the same time.
Now this all rolls back to the open source movement. After two/three hundred years, people may realize that all the back-and-forth fights are nearly meaningless, because essentially those fights are contention over concepts. At one point, people decided to give up the property rights and their private ownership of these concepts, and to embrace the beautiful world of open source. By then, all the premium values provided by luxury goods and the social media trendy restaurants would have lost their meaning of existence.
Mable: Wouldn’t this make the experience in the human society become similar from one to another?
Suji: I don’t think so. Whoever would like to think and explore deeper would totally be self-driven to change the world and create beauty. The motivation for these people is truth — creating beauty and discovering truth. You will find that all the seemingly difficult science problems are solved by then. When the whole human wisdom is trying to solve one single problem, e.g. how to operate faster than light, it’s truly a small problem.
I’ve been thinking when will be the time that our society enters the late stage of capitalist society and then the communist society. Now I think it’s probably happening when the majority of capital in a society is digitalized.
By the time when most of the capital become virtual, humans are likely to get on Mars. Maybe that’s when everyone realized that what these large corporation have been doing for their intellectual property is really meaningless. You know, Oracle sue Google that they illegally used Java for $9BN — they may not have even realized that these $9BN could save how many people in Africa. Starting from that moment, everyone could copy each other and monetize from each other’s work freely, and the society become a need-based one. Of course, all these are contingent upon one condition: everyone owns more or less some capital. For instance, as I contributed a software, I will own a share of the contribution permanently, and be benefited from it. Therefore, communism is not about equal pay; it’s a society that all the producers and users share all the equity/tokens together, and the growth of individual’s wealth is always relevant to that of the humankind.
Take a step back — even if capitalism still exist on Mars, by the time you leave the Solar system, you would believe that you are a free floating spirit in the universe. Why would you, an elf, fight for those silly nonsense? There will be protein machines on the street — whenever you are hungry you can take some. If you don’t like the flavor just adjust the switch behind your neck — it becomes tasty immediately! So, what’s the difference between a Michelin 3 star and a corner café? Essentially, the difference lies at the imaginary value add — it’s subjective. When we think through this, we realize that most of the contention and pursuit is meaningless.
Mable: What you’re saying is that when the human society becomes highly digitalized and there’s little attrition in product transition, the society will enter into a communist one / people will become less materialistic. If that’s the case, why would all the super-affluent, who already own all the best resources in the world today, allow the diminishing of class difference to happen to begin with? Just like Peter Thiel, he wants to use everything and try out all the longevity method, why would he want to provide funding to these experiments that seek for social balance?
Suji: Because he’s young enough. For instance, if you go watch J.P.Morgan’s interview in his early days, he basically said that everyone could issue his/her own money. His Morgan group used to play a role like the Fed — the Fed back then was controlled by private bankers. Similar case was for Glen Weyl, Principal Researcher at Microsoft and the author of Radical Markets. The book doesn’t really have a completely novel view — many opinions are from progressive left wing + free market + Adam Smith — but he dares to talk all out loud. The titles of the chapters in his book are fierce and strong. Many people, when they get to a certain age, they dare not to say much, as there are more and more boundaries in their personal lives and careers (family, Nobel Prize, etc.,)
Looking back to the history, Morgan group spent two hundred years to get to where they are now. AT&T spent 40 years; Microsoft 20. Facebook only took 10 to 15 years, and they are already influencing the global economy. At the end you will find out that somebody dropped out of college at his/her Sophomore year, participated in a political movement in the Junior year, and got prisoned next year. When this person got released, he became a billionaire in one year, and president afterwards. Very radical, unbelievable right? But because this person is young, he wouldn’t forget where he comes from.
Katt: On the other hand, as soon as someone becomes rich and powerful, regardless this person is old or young, he/she will want longevity.
Mable: So, you think Peter Thiel may have thought of some liberal ideas. Therefore，when he is successful today (also when he’s still a young man, relatively), he’s willing to fund others to experiment their thoughts. Still, he is a human-being, so it’s natural that he would want to deploy capital to make himself strong. Yet he, or anyone who’s alike, is not going to stop the society from progressing. Is that what you’re saying?
Suji: Yes, unfortunately, I am a human-being, too. I also want to make a lot of money.
I’m really hoping that I could live longer, think more, and put thoughts down in my 60s or 70s. If I have money, I can do this easily. I even don’t care whether it’s myself who initiates this — I just think there needs to be someone older, having seen and thought enough, to carry this idea on. Marx cannot start a grassroot movement from Paris Commune on his own, but he needs to be alive and live long enough. From his work I think he has thought through certain things; he just didn’t live long enough to finish The Capital.
Mable: What’s your purpose then? What are you living for?
Katt: I’ve told him many times that I just want to eat, wait, and die (Interviewer: maybe I should translate this as “Eat, Pray, Love” to be exact). I used to want to work for Facebook or Google, so that I can finish my work easily and do a lot of my own things at my spare time, with the a few hundred K pay. I can learn Japanese, take the CFA and FRM exam, and so on. This is my ideal type of eat, wait, and die.
Suji: Yet this is a very grandiose goal. It’s difficult to realize eat, wait, and die in real life. You have to be at a country/region that has a stable economy and political environment. My purpose is about the same. I hope the place I live in peaceful and happy; this is really the precondition of “Eat, Wait, and Die”.
Mable: Seems like a destined dilemma though. In order to provide others a life of “Eat, Wait, and Die”, you are almost destined not to be able to do so.
Katt: Yes and no. We used to watch a documentary together, Terms and Conditions May Apply. It’s about Facebook stealing other’s privacy. At the end, the journalist went to Zuckerberg’s house and shoot video in front it him. Zuckerberg simply had no privacy left at that moment. Zuckerberg then asked him to turn the camera off — he told Zuckerberg that he did but he actually didn’t. When the journalist told Zuckerberg that he had turned off the camera, it’s more than visible that Zuckerberg’s face turned much relaxed. What does this say? It says that when Facebook is using others’ privacy, the individual founder, as a human-being, still cares a lot about privacy. Sarcastic, isn’t it?
How you treat others will eventually turn into how others treat you. It’s Karma.
Suji: This world is a world of exploit. Not just the programmers, their boss who pay them salary are also being exploited by their investors, and the investors by their LPs. At the end, who are all of us working for? We are working for the dead people, the heritage left by J.P.Morgan. It continues to cycle in the world in the form of the spirit of capital.
Mable: Exploit is a very capital-oriented idea. Do you consider yourself as a communist?
Suji: The so-called ‘Communism’ is a dead word. There’s probably no room for communist in the world now, but Communism will come back. It’s a ghost. The problem is, Marx did not tell us how to get the ghost back. Some people simply ask for anarchy — I think that is also deviating.
Katt: Nevertheless, I think this is more like that any human-being have two sides — good and evil. When it’s the right time, the communist side of human-beings will come out. Many says themselves communist at the beginning, but then switched to capitalism life. Just like the famous Russian joke in the Soviet time: belief in communism, but life of capitalism.
Mable: I actually think more as a tag that the descendants put on them. Many at the beginning didn’t even define themselves as anything — they just want to fight for capital, and when they do, they stop thinking about getting capital for others. Human nature.
I can understand that, you have some scattered thoughts, but you’ve been waiting. During the process you encountered blockchain, the Anti-996 Movement, and others. You continuously turned the things that you encountered into a leverage you could utilize. Beforehand you didn’t know what the leverage would be; you simply counted on the chances. With all these, do you think your investors understand? Why did they invest in you?
Suji: Not just Anti-996 or blockchain. I dropped out and started my own company, really for the sake of the purpose I mentioned above. I think I now have a clearer thought than I used to have — but I still need to think about the missing steps. These steps may take tens of years. I need to live long enough.
My investors…they don’t really understand. They invested in my startup probably because they think I’m a magical person, intriguing — “investing in the person”. But with such rationale, they can invest a few hundred K or maybe at most a few hundred million. Probably I need to think about raising money in the future, and traditionally you need some numbers. Nonetheless, at some point, you will have people like Peter Thiel, like Vitalik Buterin, who will support your crazy experiment.
Still, I think the systematic breakthrough will happen in China. It should not be happening anywhere else first. China is the second largest economy, fast growing. Such change will need a leader that has essential understanding of capital and can embrace the Greek respect for truth and freedom from the liberal arts education.
Interestingly, when I talked to those so-called “well-educated elites” in China, they could not understand what I was saying. Those who grew up and had been living in the third/fourth/fifth tier cities, on the other hand, immediately got that the Anti-996 Movement is Cyber-communism. They really understood all these from the alcohol. You know, the Dionysian culture in non-metropolitan China, is great. The current situation is that, if you don’t own more than 10 real estate properties (i.e. own a lot of capital) in China, nor you drink a lot and hang around, you probably would not be able to understand the whole thing.
That’s why I think if I don’t tell you all these, my thoughts would not be preserved at all.
Mable: This conversation is truly inspiring and touching — so is the dynamics between you. At the end, I would like to ask, how’s your relationship in this marriage — how do you reinforce each other’s idea?
Katt (silent for a while):…I really can’t really say much cheesy things. I used to be a hardcore feminist. My dad raised me like a boy, so I think I need to fight for everything on my own. But now I just want to help him grow the business and empower him. I used to want to get my own PhD, but now I think managing the company for my husband is more than good enough.
Suji (laughed): Wasn’t there a Chinese idiom says that “If you get either Wolong or Fengchu (two greatest brain men in the Three Kingdoms) you can save the country.” With her, I can, too.
