Network states (countries that are cloud-first, land last) could see genuine traction in the next 5-10 years. A combination of remote work, crowdfunding, offgrid tech and more make it so that communities could find each other online and then purchase enough land to form a new country. Do you buy it?

Submitted by istegerjf t3_11foe5k in Futurology

The most well-known work of nonfiction on this is a book by former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan called "The Network State."

It defines a Network State as follows:

A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.

Since the book's publishing last July, there have been about two dozen efforts to start building one (full disclosure, I'm part of one for creators called cabin.city). There are all kinds of other interesting attempts. There's a network state for the African diaspora (Afropolitan) and one for van lifers (Kift life). The list goes on and on, I've written about them a few times/interviewed some leaders on my podcast.

Generally, they have a very solarpunk ethos, attract techie folks, and tend to be male-dominated (we're trying to fix that, obviously). Wondering what others feel about if we even need new countries or if this is tech bros being too Utopian?

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carlos_6m t1_jake9l7 wrote

This just looks to me like crypto bros trying to make a comune... It doesnt sound realistic, feasible or desirable, but im sure someone will try to force it for clout... To be a real thing, it would definitely need more than 10 years...

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jimberley t1_jakjh5p wrote

There would be far too many dudes thinking that they should be in charge in that group. It would devolve quickly.

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94746382926 t1_jaroce6 wrote

Yeah and hardly any women. Who wants to live in a place like that? Well other than gay dudes maybe lol.

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NotShey t1_jalkbtz wrote

Absolutely not. First off you can't just buy land and form a country... that's not how it works. Ownership of land doesn't grant sovereignty.

Even if you did somehow accumulate enough power and resources to somehow start a new state... why on earth would you? It's much cheaper and easier to simply coopt an existing government than try and form a new one out of whole cloth.

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carlos_6m t1_jalo1z5 wrote

They wont own the land, they will own a tradeable picture of that land

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beders t1_jal4ela wrote

These are cults. Plain and simple.

At the end of the day, someone needs to haul your trash someplace i.e. you don't exist in a vacuum. You are embedded in a society that doesn't care about your smart contracts.

I hope you can get out before the indoctrination has absorbed you completely.

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kushal1509 t1_jam8kuj wrote

Countries won't be formed but i can definitely see global inequality among different countries reducing due to renewables, cell based agriculture etc. If global inequality reduces, globalisation will increase and many more countries will become visa free for work and tourism.

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bk15dcx t1_jaki9tx wrote

Are entire populations going to upload their consciousness to the cloud? Because until that's possible, wherever their feet are firmly planted on the ground is where their State is, regardless of what online networks they decide to be active with.

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banksy_h8r t1_jalb8k2 wrote

It sounds like cryptocurrency grifters dusted off the old Libertarian wet dream of seasteading so they could repackage it into a new scam. This time aimed at left-leaning marks, rather than the right-leaning ones last time.

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Skreame t1_jalbzw0 wrote

Instead of discounting it for what barriers may exist, what incentives is there to do so?

The richest percent is a phrase used all the time to refer to those with the majority of the world’s money, yet they have no desire to create their own country, and I doubt they or anyone able to form a country are impeded by what borders exist for regular people.

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frequenttimetraveler t1_jamt1lj wrote

May take more than ten years however. They need guns, lots of distributed guns

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istegerjf OP t1_jakc0h4 wrote

Submission Statement: What barriers are there for network states growing? What are some ideals that network states might even be organized around? Is this a realistic way that humans might coordinate as a people in our future?

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phine-phurniture t1_jal8wwo wrote

One barrier is the idea of one founder a network state is a community a single person could lead to ego based issues.

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