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Technology Regulation Team
Diagnosis: Every sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic heroin.
Team mandate: Make use of all tools—legal, social, financial, and architectural—to enable rapid, city-wide bans on addictive and transhuman technologies. Morphine as a surgical aid has meaningfully benefited the human race; morphine as a recreational drug is antisocial. Develop a framework for making granular distinctions. Create a democratic process for making decisions to ban, un-ban, and regulate these technologies. Begin with a full ban—for all children and adults—on smartphones, smartwatches, smart glasses, and non-medical implants.
You are reading version 1.0 published September 23 2025. Next version expected Q1 2026.
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Every sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic heroin.
Software Families are eating the world.
Three steps back, a dozen steps forward.
And this is before we get to screen addiction.
New Athens is pioneering a new, openly hostile approach to hostile technology.
We’re going to regulate tech like tech CEOs do for their own families.
our goal is to help people be better people—not pray on them or replace them with robots
in 2025, smartphones have replaced syringes as the primary delivery system for addictive products.
Like a syringe of fentanal, used in hospitals to reduce the pain of childbirth, phones aren’t inherently evil. but most syringes of fentanal
anti-addiction: no gambling, drugs, games, social media. and
It was common knowledge in tech that many leaders did not let their kids use phones, and many still don’t. they knew the risks and were not interested in experimenting on their own children. that’s why montisorri and waldorf schools so popular in san francisco.
tech people lost the plot. we’re here to restore the human economy and lead a renissance that puts family, health, and american values first—ideals forgotten, if not abandoned, by so many tech leaders.
technology
broadly, hostile to technology that turns people into products
fans of tech that people use as a tool to get things done
can’t say tech is just…bad. or that modernity is inherently evil, or capitalism, or white/black/jewish people. we live in 2025 and getting rid of big pieces is a recipe for economic collapse, genoicide, or both.
on the other hand, can’t be too technical. can’t limit the number of parameters a LLM can use, or rate limite API calls, or bandwidth allowances on different levels of network infastructure. it’s all invisible. technocratic tweaks and nudges are mosquitoes. maddening and bloodsucking—and you can’t see them so makes you paranoid so smacking yourself every time you feel an arm hair move.
instead, solution needs to be something that
- everyone understands exactly what it is
- everyone can tell if someone is breaking the rules (aka: the ban is enforcable)
we keep two lists
blacklist - tech we ban
watchlist - tech we’re formally observing and assessing for a future ban
point is not to go back in time, but to benefit from stability, observe the impact of new tech, and choose deliberately and democratically before adopting.
goals:
- your family safe
- insulated from whiplash of emerging tech that, while potentially useful, is rolled out recklessly
Every election cycle we add or subtract from the list
blah
We aim to be the first great American city for families—safe, stable, good jobs, good schools—by banning smartphones and other hostile technology.
everyone signs a :
Technology Usage Agreement
How our economy will thrive
Smartphones kill productivity. AI is a slow bleed: it increases productivity at first, but makes all but the most emotionally disciplined workers, including executives, stupid and unproductive over time.
On the bright side, monstrous AI products only eat the brains of people who use them. We encourage you to take a deep breath, stop using AI (for at least a few years), and move to New Athens instead.
Out: Porn, video games, gambling, doomscrollin
, which is increasingly hated for its efforts to build an AI god that’ll make it easier for tech people to rule over normal people. (Fate loves irnony. Can’t make this stuff up.)
In most cities you may not possess a mountain lion, drive a tank, or walk down the sidewalk with a samuri sowrd—all of which you may do in various rural jurisductions in America.
We have no interest in censoring anything (though porn, the Fou You tab in every social app, sports gambling apps, and most video games are terrible for your health and you should stop looking at any of that crap).
No. You can pry our air conditioning units from our cold, dead hands. Because that what AC is—tech. Lightbulbs and dishwashers, too.