How to Start a New Country

The network state is built cloud first, land last. Rather than starting with the physical territory, we begin with a digital community.


Balaji S. Srinivasan
9 Apr 2021 • 9 min read
@jackbutcher: From Nations to Nodes.


Why Start a New Country?
How to Start a New Country?
1. Election
2. Revolution
3. War
4. Micronations
5. Seasteading
6. Space
7. Cloud Countries
Minimum Necessary Innovation
What Counts as a New Country?

Why Start a New Country?

We want to be able to peacefully start a new country for the same reason we want a bare plot of earth, a blank sheet of paper, an empty text buffer, a fresh startup, or a clean slate. Because we want to build something new without historical constraint.

The financial demand for a clean slate is clear. People buy millions of acres of vacant land and incorporate hundreds of thousands of new companies each year, spending billions just to get that fresh start. And now that it is possible to start not just new companies but new communities and even new currencies, we see people flocking to create those as well.

The societal value of a clean slate is also clear. In the technology sector alone, the ability to form new companies has created literally trillions of dollars in wealth over the past few decades. Indeed, if we imagine a world where you couldn't just obtain a blank sheet of paper but had to erase an older one, where you couldn't just acquire bare land but had to knock down a standing building, where you couldn't just create a new company but had to reform an existing firm, we imagine endless conflict over scarce resources.

Perhaps we don't have to think too hard to imagine this world. It resembles our own. In the distant past people could only write on clay tablets, in the recent past they were executed for contemplating entrepreneurship, and in the immediate present they are arguing over replacing an ancient gas station. In these times and places, making a fresh start was technologically infeasible, politically impossible, or judicially punishable.

And that's where we are today with countries, with cities, with nations, with governments, and with much of the physical world. Because the brand new is unthinkable, we fight over the old. But perhaps we can change that.

How to Start a New Country?

There are at least six ways to start new countries that have been publicly discussed. Three are conventional and three are unconventional. We will introduce them only to deprioritize them all in favor of a seventh.

1. Election

The most conventional way to start a new country involves winning sufficient power in an election to either (a) rewrite the laws of an existing state or (b) carve out a new one from scratch with the consent of the international community. This is the most widely discussed path, and by far the most crowded. Many people care about this avenue, perhaps too many.

2. Revolution

The second obvious way is to carry off a political revolution. We don't advise attempting this. Particularly momentous elections are sometimes referred to as revolutions, though a revolution frequently involves bloodshed. Revolutions are infrequent, but everyone knows that they mean a new government.

3. War

The third conventional way is to win a war. We don't advise attempting this either! A war is of course not independent from the other two. Indeed, both elections and revolutions can lead to wars that end up carving out new polities. Like a revolution, a war is infrequent and undesirable, but again is widely known as a means by which national borders may be rewritten.

4. Micronations

Now we get to the unconventional. The most obvious of the unconventional approaches – and the one most people think of when they hear the concept of "starting a new country" – occurs when an eccentric plants a flag on an offshore platform or disputed patch of dirt and declares themselves king of nothing. If the issue with elections is that too many people care about them, the issue with these so-called micronations is that too few people care. Because a state (like a currency) is an inherently social affair, a few people in the middle of nowhere won't be able to organize a military, enforce laws, or be recognized by other nations. Moreover, while an existing state may be content to let people harmlessly LARP a fake country in their backyard, an actual threat to sovereignty typically produces a response with real guns, whether that be the Falklands or Sakhalin.

5. Seasteading

Here we start to get interesting. Conceived by Patri Friedman and backed by Peter Thiel, seasteading essentially starts with the observation that cruise ships exist, and asks whether we could move from a few weeks on the water at a time to semi-permanent habitation on international waters (with frequent docking, of course). As the cost of cruise ships has fallen recently, this approach is becoming more feasible. But we haven't yet seen a working example.

6. Space

Perhaps the most prestigious of the start-a-new-country paths is the idea of colonizing other planets. Unlike seasteading or micronations, space exploration started at the government level and has been glamorized in many movies and TV shows, so it enjoys a higher degree of social acceptability. People mainly think of it as currently technically infeasible rather than outright crazy. Elon Musk's SpaceX is one entity seriously contemplating the logistics of starting a new state on Mars.

7. Cloud Countries

And finally we arrive at our preferred method: the cloud country. Our idea is to proceed cloud first, land last. Rather than starting with the physical territory, we start with the digital community. We recruit online for a group of people interested in founding a new virtual social network, a new city, and eventually a new country. We build the embryonic state as an open source project, we organize our internal economy around remote work, we cultivate in-person levels of civility, we simulate architecture in VR, and we create art and literature that reflects our values.

Over time we eventually crowdfund territory in the real world, but not necessarily contiguous territory. Because an under-appreciated fact is that the internet allows us to network enclaves. Put another way, a cloud community need not acquire all its territory in one place at one time. It can connect a thousand apartments, a hundred houses, and a dozen cul-de-sacs in different cities into a new kind of fractal polity with its capital in the cloud. Over time, community members migrate between these enclaves and crowdfund territory nearby, with every individual dwelling and group house presenting an independent opportunity for expansion.

What we've described thus far is much like the concept of ethnic diasporas, which are internationally dispersed but connected by communication channels with each other and the motherland. The twist is that our version is a reverse diaspora: a community that forms first on the internet, builds a culture online, and only then comes together in person to build dwellings and structures. In a sense you can think of each physical outpost of this digital community as a cloud embassy, similar to the grassroots Bitcoin embassies that have arisen around the world. New recruits can come to either the virtual or physical environment, beta test, and decide to leave or stay.

Now, with all this talk of embassies and countries one might well contend that cloud countries, like the aforementioned micronations, are also just a LARP. Unlike micronations, however, they are set up to be a scaled LARP, a feat of imagination practiced by large numbers of people at the same time. And the experience of cryptocurrencies over the last decade shows us just how powerful such a shared LARP can be.

Minimum Necessary Innovation

Let's pause and summarize for a second. The main difference between the seventh method (cloud countries) and the previous six (election, revolution, war, micronations, seasteading, and space) is that it straddles the boundary of practicality and impracticality. No one can claim that it's infeasible to build million person online communities or billion dollar digital currencies, or that it's physically impossible to architect buildings in VR and then crowdfund them. The cloud country concept "just" requires stacking together many existing technologies, rather than inventing new ones like Mars-capable rockets or permanent-habitation seasteads. Yet at the same time it avoids the obvious pathways of election, revolution, and war – all of which are ugly and none of which provide much venue for individual initiative.

In other words, 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.

What Counts as a New Country?

Having outlined these seven methods, the careful reader will notice that we played a bit fast and loose with the definition of what a "new country" is.

First, what do we mean by a new country? One definition is that starting a new country means settling a wholly new territory, like colonizing Mars. Another definition is that simply changing the form of government actually changes the country, like going from the Second French Republic to the Second French Empire. Rather than using either this strict or loose definition, we will use both numerical and societal definitions of a new country.

The numerical definition begins with visualizing a nationrealestatepop.com site similar to coinmarketcap.com, where the number of cloud country members, the acreage of real estate owned by those members, and the on-chain GDP are tracked in realtime. Eventually a cloud country of 5M people worldwide with thousands of square miles of (discontiguous) community-owned land and billions in annual income demands recognition.

This in turn leads us to the societal definition: a new country is a new member of the United Nations, one that is internationally recognized by other countries as a legitimate polity capable of self-determination.

This combination of absolute and relative metrics matches the emergence of cryptocurrency. Initially ignored, then mocked as an obvious failure, within five years after its invention Bitcoin attained a billion dollar market capitalization (a numerical success) and was subsequently listed on CNBC and Bloomberg alongside blue chip stocks (a form of societal recognition). At each step Bitcoin could keep ascending numerically on its own, with greater societal recognition following in its wake; by 2020 it had changed the trajectory of the People's Bank of China, the IMF, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and the World Bank.

Cryptocurrency was able to achieve these heights because money has both technical and political aspects. The numbers could be piled up before the societal accolades followed. Once Bitcoin had proven that it couldn't be easily counterfeited or hacked, the shared belief of the tens of millions of cryptocurrency holders worldwide was enough to get BTC from a market cap of $0 to a market cap of $1T+, and from there to a listing on every Bloomberg Terminal.

Could a sufficiently robust cloud country with, say, 1-10M committed digital citizens, provable cryptocurrency reserves, and physical holdings all over the earth similarly achieve societal recognition from the United Nations? A cloud country with a population of this size would actually fit right in the middle of the pack globally, as out of the 193 UN-recognized sovereign states approximately 20% of existing countries have a population of less than 1M and ~55% have a population of less than 10M. This includes many countries people typically think of as "real", like Luxembourg (615k), Cyprus (1.18M), Estonia (1.3M), New Zealand (4.7M), Ireland (4.8M), Singapore (5.8M), and so on.

These "user counts" are surprisingly small numbers by tech standards. Of course, mere quantity isn't everything. The strength of affiliation to our hypothetical cloud country matters, as does the time spent on the property, the percentage of net worth stored in the currency, and the fraction of contacts found in the community.

Still, once we remember that Facebook has 3B users, Twitter has 300M, and many individual influencers have more than 1M followers, it starts to be not too crazy to imagine we can build a 1-10M person social network with a genuine sense of national consciousness, an integrated cryptocurrency, and a plan to crowdfund many pieces of territory around the world. With the internet, we can digitally sew these disjoint enclaves together into a new kind of polity, a network state.

The next step is to describe exactly how we might go about this.

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73 Comments

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PilotSean 3 weeks ago

Oh boy. I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to have my own domain so I can write a review of this post.

I came here after listening to the Tim Ferris interview. Balaji was a fantastic guest and I'm excited about his ideas.

I work as professional pilot flying private jets for high net worth individuals so I'm a little worried how my skill would translate to the CryptoCountry envisioned here. At least until the citizens of such a country want to move around outside of cyberspace. However learning new skills is one of the reasons I'm here.

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Christian 3 weeks ago

Sean - you could set up a free and easy blog with blogger.com or wordpress.com. They will come with a unique address on the internet which is all you need to tackle this challenge. Regarding pilots in cyberspace, what is the core of what you do? Perhaps it is being a guide to new places? How might that translate to digital spaces?

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Dr. Quest 2 weeks ago

Yes, this is exactly how I landed upto this page. The Tim Ferris podcast was phenomenal. We're on the verge of a new age and Balaji is leading the way. I wish I had the knowledge of stuff such as domains and coding. I come from the medical science background and I would love to be a citizen of this new Cloud country !

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Rolox 1 week ago

You're a pilot, you got skills man, what's there to worry about?

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Sean 3 weeks ago

Someone has to fly enclave to enclave !

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Marshwah 3 weeks ago

I love how this is flowing, and am excited to see how this project evolves.

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Shelly Bennecke 3 weeks ago

For me, this goes toward taking away the white noise of the way things are today and helps people participate & develop into what will be, in a better union...could there be a global CPU for much of life "important" things like; health? More to come...

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Clayton 3 weeks ago

I love the sentiment expressed in this article. However I have a few questions. What value do members of a Network State derive other than a feeling of community? From what I understand, you'd still be governed by the laws of the country that you physically reside in and be dependent on them for important things such as military protection and other social services.

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Clayton 3 weeks ago

In the first 6 examples, a territory with a new set of rules and laws can be established which it's citizens are solely governed by. With a network state it seems like citizens would be opting into an additional set of rules and laws on top of those that they already answer to.

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RatMan2 3 weeks ago

Interesting concept. Contemplating to start my own country. Where gdp is calculated by forest maintained. ie value is created by creating/maintaining natural eco-systems. And new coins for the economy are minted by sq m of forest maintained that year in the country. And the cash goes to people who own/maintain the sq m. of untouched forest. Extra coins if you turn polluted land into forest.

But that doesn't exclude our land containing houses and roads and other assets ofcourse.

I would like to include squatted land/property as well. To work together with the ZADes maybe create a ZAD country

What do you think of my proposal Balaji? You can use a pseudonym ofcourse ;)

And anybody want to join?

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Javier 3 weeks ago

Hi, I would like to get involved in this

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Sourcerer 2 weeks ago

I love this idea. I had a similar idea to change the way we back the value of our money. The idea came to me as I’m reading the book sacred economics by Charles Eisenstein where he suggests the money system should be backed by things that actually provide value to humans (like trees). I was thinking about creating a dao that would reward projects that have something to do with solving climate change. There’d be certain criteria to apply and select the projects. If selected, the project would get awarded tokens to fund their project. As they hit certain milestones they get more funding. The idea is the value of the token is based on the value of the projects that get accepted. People can just buy the token too which would support the projects too by increasing the value of the token. When someone completes a project they earn a spot in the dao and decide which projects get accepted the next round.

I like this concept and would be interested in getting involved. I’ll email you.

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RatMan2 3 weeks ago

Another idea would be to buy land that crosses borders and set up embassies on those border posts to ensure a tunnel for a safe passage to all cloud people. No gene therapy pass needed

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RatMan2 3 weeks ago

Heck no passport needed at all

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GurSikh 3 weeks ago

There are freedom cells (freedomcells.org) where you can organize with local people to "opt-out" of government by providing a resilient community that can take care of themselves

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Sumit Grrg (@sumitgrrg) 3 weeks ago

Would love to be a part of a network state.

  1. The idea of a clean state is fundamental.

  2. Initially we need to raise a lot of funding.

  3. We build this like a startup.

  4. The next thing we know, our network state has a market cap bigger than anything.

  5. Once we have the means, most people will be surprised by the amount of stuff you can actually achieve online with a network state.

  6. Physical real-estate can easily be the last thing we require. It's not too hard to imagine. You simply outsource everything that requires physical land. Meanwhile, the citizens don't mind being digital nomads.

This is so much fun to imagine.

About me: I'm trying to be a full-time reader. Let me know if reading and communication (writing/tweeting) can come handy as we build this, and I'll be more than happy to help.

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Camellia Yang 3 weeks ago

Mission accepted! I'm going to write a review this weekend!

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Jared 3 weeks ago

This is happening with governance tokens, but it's all entirely related to the development of different defi platforms. At least in my experience. If instead, ownership of a governance token allowed voting on laws that regulated a decentralized group of people, well it's an exciting thought. This is democracy sans representatives. These tasks are working well, look I'm starting a blog.

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Carli 3 weeks ago

I am from Spain and here most of us do not have a deep-rooted feeling of patriotism, we do not see many Spanish flags, nor do we sing our anthem, really the only thing that awakens this feeling is sport, when Rafa Nadal wins a tournament or the soccer team wins the World Cup. I have been openly saying for a long time that I don't feel Spanish, but to get to that point I had to realize that there were things that aroused more interest in me than watching a soccer game, the other part that defines a country is its culture, all those ways of acting that characterize a group of citizens, and I haven't been proud of what I see around for a long time either. At this point, where even my way of acting (meal times, sleeping patterns, time spent on television and topics to talk about) are totally different from what 99% of the people around me have, I have had to seek relationships through group courses like the ones given at Acumen academy, or sites like this one. I am sure that I am not the only one, and we can find a base on which to build a country of people with this same feeling. On the other hand, I embraced the idea of ​​globalization, I thought it was going to bring a world of possibilities to all of us, until the big companies took over the concept and turned it into their business, so to give a turn to this concept of globalization from this perspective, creating a global country can be an opportunity that I personally would love. I came to the crypto space on the investment side but I really fell into the rabbit hole because of the seed of revolution that blockchain and the proposal of a decentralized power have.

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Anand George 3 weeks ago

That's a nice banner image. Working on the task. Plan to cover the two ways in which nation states have evolved and how that translates into the evolution of network states. Also covering what the state needs to provide for either by qualifying it as a requirement or providing for it (should have access to or made available). Rights, duties and laws will be covered in a subsequent post.

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Ajay Kumar 3 weeks ago

Being from a digital space myself. Too much hierarchy if we depend on government, it takes decades just to build one bridge. Blockchain was always there, quick adaptability is the concern now. We already have more than a million world's in the digital space. Under stress these societies will follow the obvious way, maybe it's the failure loop and we are stuck again. In the end, that's how we learn. This time I am optimistic.

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Kiran 3 weeks ago

The companies that own the devices people use will still control many aspects of such a new cloud country. This dream is realistically possible if you also create an entirely new computing platform with a new AGI like operating system. So whoever buys the device after a background check becomes automatically part of this new country. We have our own social network, our own search engine all on this new device. You can read my conception of such a new device at https://think.university/trillions

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Carli 3 weeks ago

https://medium.com/concoda/cryptocurrencies-are-about-to-tear-our-society-apart-e0325415be4f "blockchain is truly decentralized, governments, for the first time, have failed to stop the crypto movement from spreading like wildfire. Now there’s a technology that allows people to bypass the legacy system, anything is possible.""It will bring about the mainstream adoption of decentralized areas, with the pioneer model being "private cities"."

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m0r4h3u5 3 weeks ago

Hey fellow Humans. I think we all need to join forces under what I have termed a Human ReEvolution and detailed on my website at https://ReEvolution.earth 100% anonymously

By ReLearning what makes us human, as part of a larger #HumanReEvolution movement of individual 'awakenings' & collective small acts WE can start to effect systemic change! YOU can help rediscover OUR collective consciousnesses & create a better future using the Virtual Collective Consciousness WE have already created via the internet

See the above site and social media accounts for more and 'I' will check back here as and when 'I' can.

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Juan David Mejía 3 weeks ago

I feel totally aligned with Balaji's cloud nation concept. It all should start with a constitution focused on the wellbeing of all constituents and derived from consciousness.

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siraj 2 weeks ago

yes yes yes

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Bob Smith 2 weeks ago

Wonderful concepts, and I will be very interested in the implementation proposals. I hope in them they don't forget the fact that there are two halves to society's bell curve(s). Those following this blog and contemplating network nations are, I'm guessing, on the right half of curves of intelligence, ambition, and education.

Don't forget that there is a left half of those curves. Not to mention various disabilities. What becomes of those people in these scenarios? Left out of those nations? Members of those nations are taxed somehow to "take care" of those folks? If they are left out, what happens when, eventually, they become envious and the pitchforks come out? A military?

I don't have an answer, but I hope any attempt at an implementation plan doesn't forget this population.

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genesis.re 2 weeks ago

Check this out: https://genesis.re/

Network State Genesis

Massively inspired by the principles highlighted in this blog post.

It's almost there, finishing touches to the smart contract, once it is deployed it is on the blockchain forever... Check the website, tell us what you think

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genesis.re 5 days ago

It's live. Deployed to the mainnet 4/20

Get yourself the passport!

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davidzshi 2 weeks ago

Check out urbit.org. Some of the necessary primitives are already in place, namely, a kind of national identity, a way to communicate, and virtual real estate.

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Akshay Seth 2 weeks ago

A similar concept exists in the physical form, Balaji I’m sure you have heard of this, It’s called Auroville (https://auroville.org/), which again is very strategically located in the Union Territory of Puduchery in India.

I see a lot of similarities in the "Cloud County" and Auroville. I feel a tie-up or work-together kind of a partnership would really kick start this concept of "Cloud Country".

Auroville is missing the digital side of things and this concept is missing the physical side of things, to me, it looks like a perfect match.

I'll be more than happy to play a role in this match-making if you so see it fit!

I like both these concepts and would love to see them come to shape.

I’m a real-estate developer from Chennai, India and would love to a part to build this new concept.

Humanity now needs this REVOLUTION !

Good Luck

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It doesn't matter! 2 weeks ago

This's the only website/platform that I find it relevant to interact within in the whole entire internet. Please keep it up Bala!

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Marc 2 weeks ago

Here are my top 3 questions to consider:

  1. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, has the following guidelines (four qualifications) for what constitutes a country: a permanent population; a defined territory; government; and the capacity to enter relations with other states. Therefore the first question is, how strictly does our new country want to adhere to these four? We know that it is not all countries are universally accepted, with the examples of Israel jumping to mind. But it would certainly help our cause if our network state did fulfill these criteria for its longer term stability.

  2. Should it be started from scratch, or can it be an outgrowth of an existing social network. As the article mentions, there are already many successful sites such as FB, Twitter and others who have millions of users. Unfortunately most of those have too many disparate users/interests to be feasible. Interestingly, influencers with large followings might be a logical place to start as they have a large user base and presumably those that chose to follow said person have similar interests which would help achieve most (all?) of the requirements to successfully transition to a new country. If this is the path, the next question would be, who to choose?

  3. Interestingly, the belief in Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies (and to a lesser extent the blockchain in general) does check many of the boxes that would qualify it as a religion. This would inherently aide the cause of a network state. That being said, should other elements of national pride/cohesion be incorporated into this project. One person commented that they are Spanish but don't really feel that patriotic about it aside from instances of moments of sporting success such as Nadal winning a Major tournament or their football team succeeding on the world stage. I am not certain a decentralized network state could necessarily achieve a similar effect, but looking for ways to achieve this would assist in making it a stronger entity.

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x️️️ 2 weeks ago

️e excellent to each other :)

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pdfarrell 2 weeks ago

This is radical. Not in a bad way, but also not in a risk free or even violet free way.

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pdfarrell 2 weeks ago

Correction: violets good; violence bad.

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Burli 2 weeks ago

I love the idea. The article misses the whys though. i.e. why do people emigrate & vote with their feet if they can? The following reasons come to mind: tax, regulation, rule of law(corruption, sentiment of citizens, ect. ), travel restrictions (bad passport!), lack of chances & earnings potential, bad infrastructure, education ect. And these are only satisfied with the right physical location (the right location IS a multiplier). Unfortunately there are only few good physical role models in existence (i.e. Estonia, Uae, Carribean, Costa Rica, Singapore, Monaco, Malta, Cyprus come to mind) I personally believe the online part is the easy part(an online community basically) but to be a country and be recognized as one you also need the location with international recognition. And you have to consider all the nasty stuff like military, law, law enforcement ect.

As a country we need to decide on an official (or several?) language: I dare to declare bad english as the official language. And then we need a voting system, to move decisions forward...

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Grant 2 weeks ago

I'm an American expat living in Saigon.

My gf (Vietnamese) and I were talking the other day about culture and how (1) we both rejected our home cultures when we were younger but (2) now we want to raise kids in and contribute to one, but honestly (3) they are all so seriously flawed.

This is a good answer to that discussion.

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D Siu 2 weeks ago

I would like to translate this into Chinese. This is an alternative we in HK desperately need to consider and contribute to. I want to share this with folks here in Traditional Chinese. Please advise.

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Digital_Voice 2 weeks ago

A Cloud Country does not possess few important characteristics of a country, such as borders and military, so in it's infancy it would have to rely on the law of the land. However, such organization can put an emphasis on developing protocols for managing patents, copyright laws, as well as establishing fair and open payment channels. By adding the governance layer to such protocols we would be able to swiftly adjust to ever-increasing pace of life, which is not something a modern government can say. Said country should also be active in representing legal interests of DAOs as they would be the logical continuation of a LLC and are necessary for the Cloud Country to expand.

From the technical point, it might be a good idea to follow the governance experiments on Polkadot ecosystem, as well as utilize tools like Kleros for resolving disputes in the beginning. I do think, however, that in the end Cloud Country should establish it's own justice protocol based on non-aggression principles.

This concept can drastically change the way we see the State. It has some limitations though - mainly, inability to defend your property from a physical expropriation. But if the Cloud Country to be built, we have to start from areas we have an advantage in.

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Martha V. 2 weeks ago

Considering than most of us are partially living a virtual life this would be an extension of a future reality...if we add neurolink to this we can virtually bridge the gap by living in this cloud country not with the use of our mouse but of our brain....I will like to add that if possible religious freedom will be important to me.

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yamantaka 2 weeks ago

So much to think about. I guess that's why it's a great idea! Much if the what, where, how, when of forming a country is covered in Balaji's post. But the most important part is the why. Why would people decide to migrate to this country or another. What do the citizens of country x gain from citizenship?

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FTG 2 weeks ago

Choice

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Interempty 3 days ago

Om Yamantaka hum phat Why: innovation, alignment, karma and dharma

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D Siu 2 weeks ago

Article translated into Traditional Chinese: https://wootwoot.hk/2021/04/11/new-country-traditional-chinese/

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Camellia Yang 2 weeks ago

Great job! I sometimes translate his works into simplified Chinese.

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Luca Dellamore 2 weeks ago

It could be easier just to organize online and then move to Luxembourg (you can if you are European), You just probably need 200-300 thousand people to move there and win the election. You are basically taking over an existing state, so you do not have to start from scratch.

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Luca Dellamore 2 weeks ago

Ooops, no, silly me. I forgot that probably moving there does not give you voting rights and first you need to ask for citizenship that may take way longer

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ColinR 2 weeks ago

The fastest way a cloud community could achieve potency as a political/cultural fact would be if the members were all from the same country, and this state was democratic, meaning that the powers of that state would not restrict movement and constellations of its citizens within it's borders. I find it easy to be seduced by a community of like minded individuals, but my reservation with this (and all tribes) is they tend to be a mono culture. What I like about society as it is organized now is that I am presented with things I haven't chosen - and don't necessarily agree with. This forces me to both tolerant, imaginative and action based in my response. If everything is in perfect alignment then complacency and a predictable sense of entitlement start...

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Aaronn 2 weeks ago

It seems most commenters here are not familiar with Balaji's views. It would be funny to see their faces when they read other Balaji's thoughts.

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Steven 2 weeks ago

Heard about "Start a new country" from Robert Gruler, "watching the watchers". For me it’s not about getting away from "taxes" or even moving towards more "freedom". It’s not about WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME. It’s about joining "likeminded" people in the difficult communal work of "government" My ideal of "likeminded" characteristics: Open-mindedness, Guided by (john rawls) "the veil of ignorance"

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Harry 2 weeks ago

What a great initiative 1729.com is. And as always Balaji tackling the big ideas. I will be writing a review at thehappyorchardblog.com this week. Come by, check it out and let me know what you think :).

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Tim Malibu 2 weeks ago

Balaji, can you go deeper into the relationship between a person’s geographic nation state our Network State? I’m specifically interested in your vision for how nation state taxes will evolve, if at all. Thank you in advance!

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Joshua 2 weeks ago

I'm in! What can I do to help?

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Camellia Yang 2 weeks ago

I like your review the most among all other comments here. I also mentioned the ideology problem in my blog. I use China as an example to argue what we can abolish ideology but learn from the essence of the best example without bias. https://www.camelliayang.com/blog/review-how-to-start-a-new-country

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Matt CaucusRoom 2 weeks ago

I greatly appreciate that Balaji honors a social network as a community, rather than a 'platform,' which is a word oriented around carpentry or physical construction. The parlance of a 'community' is actually better suited than 'construction' to social network software engineering-- Code, language, functions, etc... Governments have all of these things. Whether a social network progresses towards a physical manifestation, like Ayn Rand's "Galt's Gulch," it would benefit us all to establish and participate in online communities in which the governance is similar to the best 'real world' systems of government. There would need to be an accepted process to create laws, to adjudicate transgressions, to define 'citizenship', etc. etc. My team and I recently built an online community for conservatives that is governed by an elected council of its members (two members per time zone plus one at large- US only). Learn more at https://about.caucusroom.com. I will post this review at https://about.caucusroom.com/blog

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Harry 2 weeks ago

I have just posted my review. Come along and let me know what you think here at thehappyorchardblog. https://thehappyorchardblog.com/how-to-start-a-new-country-a-review/

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Camellia Yang 2 weeks ago

Here is my review: Theme: what can we learn from centralized China to build a decentralized digital country? https://www.camelliayang.com/blog/review-how-to-start-a-new-country

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Edward Carpenter 2 weeks ago

So, I came to 1729 through Balaji's discussion with Tim Ferriss, and I have to say, ALL of this resonated with me... If you'd like to check out my review of this concept, here's a link to my paper - a 5-minute read on Medium. https://edward-carpenter.medium.com/the-future-state-is-networked-adb50ee75180 - thanks for checking it out, and for being part of this conversation!

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Ramit Sharma 2 weeks ago

If this is where we are headed, I am and have been fully invested. A Mutually altruistic world with transparency and security which doesnt comes at the cost of your income or profits would be fantastic and much needed. This might seem too utopian but when you deep dive rather than merely glancing, it's gonna happen. Happy to be here and be a part.

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Alex Franz 2 weeks ago

Happy to have stumbled upon this!

Feel free to read my review here: https://alexfranz.com/posts/how-to-start-a-country/

I have also created a publicly editable Google Sheet to list all cloud country projects, feel free to add anything you think fits there! There is also a reading list sheet where you can paste your articles.

@ Balaji, any chance you publish all submitted articles?

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Dave 1 week ago

I question if it's necessary to start a new country. The old countries are doing such a great job of nullifying themselves.

Consider what the United States is doing right now. The socialists have commandeered the voter registration system and are encouraging unrestrained immigration so that anyone who can make it past the border is given voter franchise with their driver registration. Soon this will overwhelm the lawful citizenry. The nation's Capitol is under military control, and one party is using their slim majority to push executive orders completing the takeover.

We have only one way to fight back, and that is to allow them to spend themselves into oblivion. The citizenry of the U.S. and the World now has a currency that like the internet, "routes around" damage. We can simply refuse to support the corrupted currencies that are being used to enslave us.

Bitcoin is not an "investment!" Bitcoin is not a way to "make money." Bitcoin IS MONEY and should be used as such. It is a legitimate world currency in its own right. With each Bitcoin transaction, corporate control evaporates, leaving our legitimate governments to default back to their lawful functions.

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Ishwant Singh 1 week ago

Hey, just finished my review. https://blog.ishwant.com/a-country-in-the-clouds/ . Take a look, and provide feedback if you can please. Criticism is welcome.

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The Oregontuckian 1 week ago

I regret not having been able yet to read the other reviews that were shared in this comment thread. I intended to spend much more time on my own when I first read Baliji's article, but this Tuesday I woke up to find the work truck and all the specialty tools I use to operate my business were stolen, effectively subordinating this task to more immediately pressing matters. I will get around to both reading the reviews from everyone who has posted a link here and continuing to update my own, which currently remains as an introductory paragraph. The obvious lateral leap my mind made in response to Baliji's task was how the prompt Baliji puts forth might compliment to Daniel Schmactenberger's suggestions for a way civilization might transition to an alternative operating system, one that might avert impending global crises probable to occur along the trajectory our globalized civilization currently moves. I intend to elaborate on the logistics of pairing these two strains of thoughts and possibly drawing from the work of Joe Edelman. Here is what I have for now: https://oregontuckian.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-review-of-baliji-srinavasans-how-to.html

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Lourens 1 week ago

Just a few of my thoughts. Enjoying the other reviews! Some thoughts

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Harry 1 week ago

Some awesome reviews here. Well done to the winners.

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Stanislav 1 week ago

TIL so much more. The links are very interesting. Westarctica has their own YouTube channel with just 356 subscribers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtHpUdmHZDs

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bartb 6 days ago

Fascinating article! Lots to think about and ponder. I will admit that while reading the article all I kept thinking about was Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong Franchise in the novel Snowcrash!

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ShantanuW 3 days ago

Got introduced to Balaji yesterday and was amazed with the concept. Can anyone suggest some good books to read to understand the underlying fundamentals for a smooth entry for a novice like me. Thank you.

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