This post is a review of the article How to Start a New Country by Balaji Srinivasan and 1729.com. Check out their website if you haven’t already heard about their project, and then write your own review of Balaji’s article for a chance to win $100 worth of BTC.

Overview

How to Start a New Country is a thought-provoking article suggesting how we might start with a clean slate. Most ideas are old and heavily filtered through tradition; to make significant change we need to start afresh without the constrains of the past. It’s easy to start a new company or build a house on vacant land, why shouldn’t it be easy to start a new country?

After mentioning a few high-level ideas why starting a new country would be a good idea, Balaji suggests 7 ways in which this can be done.

The first 3 are conventional ways that have been used in the past:

  • Election
  • Revolution
  • War

These are dismissed given difficulty, pace, and potential bloodshed.

The next 3 options are less conventional:

  • Micronations – declaring a small patch of land a sovereign country (e.g. oil platforms, backyards)
  • Seasteading – imagine a cruise ship as a floating country
  • Space – moving to other planets

All of these options are relatively infeasible at the moment - either technologically, or because of a lack of demand (people don’t want to live in a micronation in the middle of nowhere).

The solution

Balaji’s preferred solution is the seventh option - cloud countries.

“Rather than starting with the physical territory, we start with the digital community”

The idea is that you build up a virtual community that has its own culture and is financially self-sustaining - powered by remote work underpinned by cryptocurrencies. ‘Citizens’ can then crowdfund to buy chunks of land across the world and these diasporic communities would be connected virtually.

He acknowledges he’s been using the word ‘country’ loosely, and that there are two potential definitions – one is a country sanctioned by the UN, and the other one that’s based on population - e.g. many online communities have a higher user count than many countries.

Builds to the article

Why?

I would have wanted the author to go into more detail on the ‘why’ – he gives reasons such as wanting a fresh start and not having to worry about the bureaucracy. They make sense when you read them, but there’s no depth.

I’d be interested in hearing about the vision for such a country and how it would differ from existing nation states. What identity would citizens share? Most attempts to form a country stem from identity conflicts that have a long history.

Intentional communities

People who have shared values often decide to buy property close to each other - diasporas are an example. Given an increased level of social isolation and individualism, people are actively looking for community and, like everything else, they’re finding this on the internet. In this way, Balaji’s idea isn’t radically different from these intentional communities.

What’s next?

Balaji doesn’t go as far in the article to suggest at some point these physically dispersed (but virtually connected) communities come together to form a contiguous land mass. It’s implied in the title but isn’t actually explicitly stated.

I think it needs to be explicitly stated - this new country has to be independent. Without this last step of having a sovereign piece of land, the ‘country’ will remain a virtual community of people governed by the laws of their respective countries. Any community that doesn’t control its own resources is at the behest of other countries’ regulation and legislation. For example, what would happen if one of the host countries banned cryptocurrencies? Turkey banned payment in cryptocurrencies just today.

So to gain control over its own resources and defend them, this country will have to be a contiguous land mass. You’d have to revert to one the first 6 options he outlined above.

However the country establishes a piece of territory, it will likely face external threats. Threats are good - that means the existing states view this new country as something to contend with, rather than just a benign community. Responses from the existing powers might include military, cyber, or political attacks.

Who will be allowed in?

Perhaps this will be covered in Balaji’s next post on the ‘how’, but I can see a system dividing a crypto-owning elite and others within the country - through unequal voting rights. I’m looking forward to Balaji’s next post on the ‘how’ such a community will be set up.

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