An atom-free nation
Balaji S. Srinivasan recently published an interesting post How to start a country. Also challenged and offered some reward for the best reviews, so here is my attempt.
Disclaimer: I will be deliberately imprecise and vague in this text.
Why start a new country and how to do it?
Why? Why not? It is more than enough for me, and, if you can take the concept a little further, even better.
Countries are extremely interesting to the cartophile and vexillophile (guilty to the charge), but I wonder if in these terms are valid to think in the inception of any country , there is a chick and egg theme with these symbols.
Make focus on this symbols are pretty related with the physical world, which sometimes hides from us a strong immaterial part that also makes us a country.
How to start?
Balaji, tells us 6 very interesting and concrete ways (see in his article) to start, but the number 7 -Cloud Countries-, it is even more interesting. Also, I like to call these Atom-Free Nations.
Internationally recognized by other countries
Here comes the point where, I divert a little with Balaji in this point, my mind went strongly to other way. I do not think that will be meaning be recognized.
Numbers
We usually think in number of inhabitants, surface, GDP, fiat money emitted, and a cumulus of countable things to measure countries, we can study the footprint they have left (if they do not exist anymore) a so on, they are interesting numbers, our cloud country could have some of these.
But I thing that can be much more interesting that out cloud country will be chosen, a kind of NPS for countries
Why will be chosen?
I’m going with another nothing-scientific definition:
A country is a group of people who by imposition (law enforcement) and / or by social pressure, maintain a set of coincidents behaviors¹
Many of these behaviors are what I would call here socio-economic culture.
And that’s enough for me, I hate the millions of words that sociologists use to explain what culture is, I’m not going to do it here and now. It is enough for me, I am pretty sure that the first thing that the proto-Cloud-Country should have, is a socio-economic culture, and the habitats will chose over others for this.
Now, you will ask: what kind of socio-economic culture?
I don’t have an answer, just a couple of intuitions.
First intuition (functional, necessary condition)
The socio-economic culture must be functional, if a country is more or less sustainable in some time (not self-destruct its lands or its inhabitants), could be an interesting feature.
The cloud country should try to avoid -with technology- the situations where economy has been compromised and social contracts broke and any other dysfunctional situation.
These dysfunctional situations are pretty real in atom-made countries too, Venezuela is suffering emigration of millions of Venezuelans, Argentina, my own country, seems to flirt dangerously with these behaviors. And is really weird see (outside revolution or war -methods 2 and 3-) a legislature invaded for an horde.
Second intuition (the hopeful one)
I seriously think that a mature cryto environment can be enable a kind of minimal self regulated state, -with minimal bureaucratic human interventions-, I like to visualize a kind of Moniac computer re-invented and powered via smart contracts.
Culture, a very slippery thing
Wisely, Balaji, included the section Minimum Necessary Innovation- “the cloud country concept takes the most robust existing tech stack we have — namely the suite of technologies built around the internet — to route around political roadblocks, without waiting for future physical innovation” , totally agree, but..
But, for this to be worth it, I think it is necessary a step beyond, if the technology is the fundamental enabler of the cloud country, the socio-economic culture of the cloud country should be strongly technological right?, How?, i do not have any clear idea yet, the possibilities are so abundant, and, Culture is a very slippery thing that cannot be designed as technology.
We (the engineers) can create technology and let it free in the world, but the users, can take it, or not, or use it in very unplanned ways, William Gibson can not never better quoted that here:
… the street finds its own uses for things …
Thanks to reach this point.
Paul
1- the habitats also may simultaneously have another series of different behaviors, but let’s focus in what coincides for the moment.
