Review of 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.”

As we move into a new era of health, wealth and education, isn’t it time that we also looked and thought more deeply about our sovereignty and where we belong?

While creating your own country may not have been an option you have considered, this article on 1729 by Balaji S. Srinivasan looks at the different ways that countries are currently created and discusses why we should be discussing cloud countries.

As the unrest with traditional systems grows, so does the interest in what other options that may be available and this article looks at 7 different ways to start a country.

The first three: election, revolution and war have been in use now for many years and are all redundant in their efficiency.

As these have been the normal ways of establishing countries throughout history, 

The next three are more unconventional and interesting options: Micronations, Seasteading, (think Kevin Costner and Water World) and Space, which Elon Musk is working on. 

These three options are certainly much more appealing than the previous three, however, none of these unconventional options has as yet played out and been successful.

The seventh option, cloud countries, is most certainly the most interesting and futuristic of them all and it could be argued, is already developing. 

This is already in full swing as communities all over the internet are being formed and bringing like-minded people together. 

While the forming of online communities is the first step, the next step is bringing the people together in a physical space. 

This too is already happening with different groups of people from Digital Nomads to Silicon Valley workers, who have clear geographical spaces where they can join each other and work.

 Examples of digital nations, that may remain completely digital,  that are already being developed are Bit Country and Axie Infinity where people, who connect through shared values, are joining together in huge numbers, Axie Infinity has approximately  25,000 daily users and a total volume of money passing through their platform in the last 30 days was $8,866,115.19. Check out their marketplace here to see the most recent action.

While these game sites or LARP (live action role-playing) are not for everyone, living in a supportive community is very appealing for most people, it is just a matter of finding our own weird tribe and with the internet, it has never been easier.

Crowd funding sites, online group communities and digital currencies show us that the technologies and systems are already in place, it is now how these are coordinated together to make a nation.

While I am excited by the idea of being able to create a new country, with like-minded people, I cannot help but wonder about the darker side of society and of people who have no moral code, who will also be able to gather together and create stronger communities. 

Could this feed super criminal elements and just magnify the gapping chasm between the haves and the have nots?

Unless a certain level of civility returns to society, where anti-social behaviour is not tolerated, and that even with extreme differences, we can respect each other and live in peace, and people realise that it is certain forces that keep feeding us information to be angry at one another then Cloud Countries will just remain a distant dream in the sky.