Paulina Borsook’s seminal tech critique ‘Cyberselfish’ has returned to print this week, prompting widespread frustration among Bay Area venture capitalists who argue the book’s accusations of extreme libertarian greed are now insultingly quaint.
The original 2000 text, which chronicled the tech industry’s obsession with Ayn Rand and its fierce aversion to taxation, has been criticized across Silicon Valley for focusing on trivial financial grievances. Modern founders argue the book fundamentally misrepresents an industry that has long since moved past hoarding stock options, having scaled its ambitions to bypassing federal law entirely via private offshore infrastructure and independent orbital jurisdictions.
We aren't just trying to avoid capital gains taxes anymore; that is a frankly insulting, 12-year-old view of our roadmap.
Vocal critics in a prominent Hacker News thread pointed out that Borsook’s focus on the "selfishness" of 1990s cypherpunks ignores the sheer amount of capital currently being deployed to render the nation-state obsolete from first principles. Several prominent seed funders noted that the critique feels "small-minded," as it entirely omits their active investments in proprietary security forces, seasteading communities, and autonomous AI legal zones.
In a lengthy thread on X, one prominent angel investor demanded Borsook issue a heavily revised edition, arguing that reducing the Valley's ideological mission to mere "greed" erases the hard work of thousands of founders currently striving to permanently secede from the social contract.
At press time, a syndicate of Web3 developers had flagged the digital edition of the book for failing to acknowledge their upcoming initial coin offering designed to privatize the Pacific Ocean.