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Ask HN: Anyone seriously working on starting a new country?

36 points by kilroy123 6y ago

Is anyone seriously working on starting a new country? I've spent the last 6 years living abroad and I noticed there's a lot of great policies in some countries and then not so great ones in others. If you could take all the good parts of most countries and try to combine them to create a new country, you could have a winner. This is what happened with the United States hundreds of years ago.

varbhat 6y ago
How will one obtain the land to start new country ?
terse_malvolio 6y ago
Make it open source
ogogmad 6y ago
Maybe this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading
st1x7 6y ago
> This is what happened with the United States hundreds of years ago. All you need now is a large habitable continent without established countries on it.
danjac 6y ago
No country is perfect, and the reason why there are good and not so good policies are due to compromises that need to be made. Low taxation for example is great, but not if it means slashing your education budget or having the streets full of homeless people. Every time people try to start a new country from scratch - whether by colonizing some land or a revolution - the results end up completely different to what they hoped or expected, often for the worse. Real lasting change is effected by the long, hard, often unhappy slog. Ask the people who fought for civil rights, or gay rights, or environmentalists - or for that matter, the various conservative groups. Honestly if you want a new country, start with the one where you live, become an active citizen and do the hard work of showing up and participating. If that's not possible then move to a country where you can make a difference, but still you have to put in the work.
- JabavuAdams 6y ago
  I mostly agree with your observations but would like to see more experimentation. Specifically, existing countries have to work with/for the people they've got. Over time it may be that the citizens are no longer really "like minded" to a minimum level where they can cooperate effectively. We should be able to try experiments with "re-booting" populations without secession, civil war, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. I would be interested in re-seeding a secular society that although it doesn't ban religion also doesn't privilege religion. I.e. believe and do what you want but any time your religious beliefs run into conflict with secular values, secular values win. The problem is that religious beliefs are (at least pragmatically) protected because they are so deeply and dearly held. It seems unfair and ultimately futile to just ask true believers to turn it off in school / on the job / in the voting booth. From what I understand of US law, non-profits are not able to discriminate based on religion, but religious organizations are. So e.g. you can't say "You can't join the Secular Space Nation Project because you're religiously devout or your particular religious beliefs will make you hard to integrate," but you can say "You can't join the Church of the New Space Country" because you don't practice the "New Space Country" religion.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
    > We should be able to try experiments with "re-booting" populations without secession, civil war, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. How would that work? You need to have some kind of coherent territory for a state to work I would say. If you do a reboot and someone is not happy with the new values but does not want to move, what do you do?
    - JabavuAdams 6y ago
      Exactly. I guess "re-boot" was the wrong choice of word. I meant to create a new country on new territory, but with sufficiently like-minded people. EDIT> I mentioned anti-discrimination rules because even if you wanted to create a new polity, you can't actually legally deny membership even to people who would be hostile to that polity. Unless you start a religion ... weird.
Memosyne 6y ago
> If you could take all the good parts of most countries and try to combine them to create a new country, you could have a winner. Or you could have an amalgamation of different policies that are dependent on conflicting cultural values. > Is anyone seriously working on starting a new country? Hm, I don't know if you consider them serious but there's the ongoing Syrian civil war, Boko Haram insurgency, Mali war, etc...
- mxmilkb 6y ago
  In northern Syria there is Rojava and democratic confederalism; https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-ideas-helped-the-kurds-create-a-new-democracy https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-idea... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Rojava https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Rojava
rzzzwilson 6y ago
Then there's Asgardia, a "country" without territory: https://asgardia.space/en/ https://asgardia.space/en/ They were popular a while back, but I lost interest when they started becoming officious with silly rules like limiting ages of holders of elected positions. If a majority of people elect an older person or a younger person, then the majority have decided that the person is capable of doing the job, no matter the elected's age.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Even seasteading does not seem to be moving forward. Established countries are going to disrupt everything that they deem a threat to sovereignity. Unfortunately thast's the international consensus, with UN conventions giving established states control up to 200miles in the high sea, and also lay rules about the colonization of moon and the planets. I m not aware of their rules about colonies beyond the solar system. At this point, it seems only cyberspace might offer some opportunity for political organization beyond the established order, but that itself is doomed , since the physical infrastructure is owned.
csomar 6y ago
You can't exist in a vacuum. In reality, there are lots of external forces that you can't escape because they are much stronger than you. Even if you picked an isolated island, the USA is still interested in you and maybe also China. Why do you think most of the world countries did accept FATCA? Now if you get the USA on your side, you might be able to establish a trading hub somewhere. You'll be getting the protection and also maybe trade deals if you are good enough in foreign diplomacy. This makes you no different than these small islands like Barbados. The only business, at this point, with no people you can do is either trade, tourism or help tax evasion. You have no infrastructure, no people and building an industry for export is hard with the established players. No one who is established in London (say as a professional surgeon) will move to this deserted island. Trade will depend on your geographical location. But as you have already guessed, these locations will be highly disputed and sought after by big powers. So you probably won't. Tourism will depend on how nice the place look, but it doesn't create a real economy. Helping foreign companies evade taxes will bring trouble with said countries, so you are going to play international diplomacy while trying to stay behind the US for protection. tl;dr: Nah.
dinkleberg 6y ago
Essentially all land is owned. If you want to start a new country you’ll need to either buy up a territory or take it by conquest (frowned upon these days).
- rozab 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil Although I'm pretty sure both countries agree that it isn't owned by Jeff from Slough.
  - JabavuAdams 6y ago
    Bir Tawil is the traditional land of the Ababda tribe. They've used it for centuries and now do gold-mining there. It annoys me that in 2020 we have people exercising a colonial script where just because there's no piece of paper saying this land is claimed we don't recognize the traditional and de-facto claim of the people who actually are there. That said ... I'm tempted ...
soulchild37 6y ago
Are you serious?! Oh wait its HN
muzani 6y ago
It reminds me of this: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... Even when countries gain independence, they usually clone a large part of their constitution from the colonizing country. The US of A seems to be a rare exception. But also you see things functioning very different in the US - free speech laws, gun laws, and so on, with their pros and cons.
- giantg2 6y ago
  A lot of the laws were the same, especially those from common law. The big change was the representation paradigm. But this type of paradigm change was not that uncommon when going from a monarchy to a representative type system as many other countries did. Although the details of the representative systems did vary and some monarchies were allowed to stand in addition to the representative, but with little actual power. The differences we see today are largely cultural shifts that happened since then.
perilunar 6y ago
Yes: SpaceX. The Starlink ToS includes "the parties recognise Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities”
- angrais 6y ago
  I highly doubt a commercial company can argue for authority and sovereignty of a whole planet. Let's be real, if there was easier ways to get to mars and if it had resources useful to earth, then we'd already be mining there or such.
  - __s 6y ago
    Original explorers from Europe were commercial companies It won't be the company that gains sovereignty, so much as the people who colonize
  - dnhbt 6y ago
    >I highly doubt a commercial company can argue for authority and sovereignty of a whole planet. It doesn't seem like SpaceX is claiming Mars, just establishing that Mars isn't governed by an Earth country, which was already established by the Outer Space Treaty.
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  Despite reiterating what the Outer Space Treaty says, this is just as useful as laying claim to it. "Whoever is sitting on it can claim it" is the more probable result, should it come to that.
  - saargrin 6y ago
    whoever can haul cheap cargo there reliably ,including military hardware ,then praise Elon and set blasters to stun!
    - JabavuAdams 6y ago
      Space launch and space vehicles are very vulnerable. This means that any space launch company can be strong-armed by any nation state or even reasonably armed non-state actor unless they're defended by a nation-state.
dslkjfgsdgvjv 6y ago
> If you could take all the good parts of most countries Defining what "good" means in the context is a vast problem that political philosophy and economics have been trying to understand and state for centuries. You may be interested in reading about charter cities : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city
cyberdrunk 6y ago
> This is what happened with the United States hundreds of years ago. United States started with a bloody revolution in order to secede from Britain. To get some territory for your country, you'd either need a revolution in an existing country or perhaps create an artificial island somewhere in international waters (or a base in space). I don't see any other options.
- stOneskull 6y ago
  "An attempt to create a sovereign state on an offshore platform in international waters near the Italian city of Rimini. It was completed, but shortly afterward seized by the Italian government and destroyed with explosives." :/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Rose_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Rose_Island
rolivercoffee 6y ago
There's a short (mostly unsuccessful) history of Micronations [1] The most recent I remember being Liberland [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland
- stOneskull 6y ago
  great rabbit hole. thanks :-)
alexmingoia 6y ago
Yes, but it’s technically not a country: https://www.freeprivatecities.com https://www.freeprivatecities.com If you haven’t noticed, all territory on the earth is already claimed by a country or agreed to be off-limits by the major powers. To start a country you would need to engage in war, or get a country to cede it’s territory. I wonder... Has there ever been an army funded by venture capital?
- jamesboehmer 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi
  - kangnkodos 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_armies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_armies
- deleted 6y ago
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- easytiger 6y ago
  Does Sealand count? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
antb123 6y ago
there were many a few years ago when bitcoin was 20k https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/18/floating-island-is-planned-with-government-cryptocurrency-and-houses.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/18/floating-island-is-planned-w... and https://www.seasteading.org/ https://www.seasteading.org/
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ianai 6y ago
I’ve long wondered whether a legal system could be concocted around a corporation to make it possible to make a “virtual country” within another country like how we host OSes as virtual guest machines within a host machine - and whether this would be meaningful. Thinking about it again, now, I think this may just be what cities/towns are basically. It’d be interesting if that could be decoupled from territory somehow. Edit - I.e. have the citizens of the “guest country” be employees of the guest country. Some properties: -It would probably be constrained to the currency of the host country. -It’s income could be “tax” like a monthly subscription to its “citizens.” -It would possibly work best if it did have some real assets to back its finances. -The “warrior class” of the guest country could very well be well-versed lawyers within the host country.
- easytiger 6y ago
  > make a “virtual country” within another country like how we host OSes Like a federal state system?
m0llusk 6y ago
Even with a clean slate and shared intention actual government policy tends to go astray over time. The book Jennifer Government explores this and there used to be a simulator online which allowed people to see how their political intentions might pan out given various circumstances. An extremely short summary is that people are constantly being challenged in various ways and government almost inevitably end up trying to help and getting stretched and incoherent.
rraghur 6y ago
well there's this effort to the contrary - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/05/fugitive-indian-guru-establishes-island-nation-off-ecuador https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/05/fugitive-india...
physicsguy 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHHOFIKlnu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHHOFIKlnu4 Danny Wallace the British comedian did a whole TV series about this idea
loandigger 6y ago
read "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. In the near future, Home Owners Associations in the US (assisted by AI managers and horrifically powerful robotic armed guards) form their own "countries", with their own legal code, citizenship rights and mutual defense treaties. Top 100 SF book of all time.
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tbihl 6y ago
The world isn't fertile ground for this right now, but on the other hand there are good opportunities for technological innovation and other things that depend upon widespread safety. It may be that in our lifetimes we'll see the failure of all or most of the global polities brokering the peace, and then there would be virtually unlimited opportunities for new governance.But I hope not.
ploika 6y ago
A lot of people in Somaliland, Kurdistan, Catalonia, Taiwan, Kosovo have worked on getting new countries recognised over the past few years, to highly varying degrees of success. South Sudan is generally considered to be the newest country in the world. From a more frontier-y first principles approach, I'm not sure you really would be onto a winner. If the USA's own history has taught anyone anything, it's that the cost of settling and forging a new country in this way often comes with distasteful things like ethnic cleaning.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Say I'm Catholic, and I oppose abortion because that's church doctrine. OK, that's religious. But say I'm an atheist, and I think that a fetus is genetically human and also genetically a different individual from the mother, and I think that that implies that it has human rights and can't just be killed for someone else's convenience. That's the same position, but now it's not religious. That is, I think that every conviction that a person can have for religious reasons (at least, every one that affects politics or society), people can have the same convictions for non-religious reasons. I see no valid reason for saying that the non-religious ones are "less valid" than secular ones, or that secular ones should win by default. Now let's say that here's a Catholic university. I'm an atheist, and I want to be the president of that university. They're going to say "no way", and I don't get to claim discrimination, because they're religious. But let's say there's a Haskell Foundation, and I want to be president of that, even though I'm a hard-core C++ bigot. They are also going to say "no way", but they're going to say "incompatible with our goals as a foundation" or something. But it seems to me to still be quite similar. People who don't believe in the identity of your organization are a bad fit for positions of authority in your organization.

JabavuAdams 6y ago
The problem is that for the vast majority of people religious beliefs are instilled while they are children, within a cultural context, and are empirically harder to change than things like programming language preference. For many, they're not even open to discussion. That's in fact why there are religious protections. It's simply unrealistic to expect people to give up their upbringing just to get a certain job. You identify the problem in your paragraph re: Haskell. Suppose I want to set up some organization working to start a new polity. Let's say that as a baseline, I want to recruit people who think it is wrong to resort to violence over say cartoons that are offensive to their religious beliefs. Or maybe I want to recruit people who have no desire to bar people of different sexual orientations from fully participating in love and social life. I can't do that in the current legal system because religious beliefs are a protected class. I understand why we got here, historically, but now that we're not burning people at the stake, I don't see why their religious beliefs should supersede the larger societal norms (of a new society). It's a matter of how strongly those beliefs are held and the futility of trying to convince people to abandon such deeply-held and meaningful beliefs. Better to tilt the scales by not inviting them to the party, regardless of which way things evolve later. EDIT> For any given religion I recognize that there are many possible doctrinal and individual interpretations. But how to measure the individual's preferences as a filter on admission? It's easy to fake answers to a questionnaire. How to establish an org without inviting the griefers, and without running afoul of protected classes? I mean you could do it the old-fashioned nudge-nudge-wink-wink way, but that's a huge legal vulnerability.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Well, if you're establishing your own country, a "huge legal vulnerability" is not an issue, because you're creating a new legal system. But I take issue with: > Better to tilt the scales by not inviting them to the party, regardless of which way things evolve later. Just assume, for purposes of argument, that in 100 or 200 years people view abortion the way we now view eugenics - as a horror committed in the name of "progress". And assume that abortion was one of the issues that you "tilted the scales by not inviting" the pro-life people to your new country. Doing so put you behind, rather than ahead (in this thought experiment). The value of excluding the people who think differently is highly dependent on how sure you are that your direction is in fact correct.
  - JabavuAdams 6y ago
    Well, the point is that non-religious beliefs even if strongly held and the norm are more easily changeable than religious ones. If I argue with you over your non-religious beliefs I may be annoying, but I'm not attacking your whole way of being. If I argue your religious beliefs than there's a lower threshold for me being an asshole, and a lower expectation of being able to sway you. Rather than religious / non-religious the fundamental distinction is how open to debate and effectively changeable those beliefs are. It's just that, empirically, religious beliefs are harder to sway. They also have greater protection under the law than non-religious beliefs.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Fair point.