11 ms·

Will Digital Technologies Kill the Nation State?

72 points by DocFeind 5y ago

erikig 5y ago
The article is interesting but what stood out for me was the Pairagraph format. I’m a big fan of that format - the idea of two experts having a well-considered back and forth on a complex topic. Pairagraph reminds me of the evolved child of twitter and medium.
- it_was_cool 5y ago
  I like the format as well, but I'm having trouble understanding what Mr. Pueyo is an expert in.
thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
>> 2. As problems become international, supra-national organizations grow to solve them: from the UN or the EU after WWII, to the WHO, WTO, IMF, WB, and all the other global coordination bodies absorbing national sovereignty. Many nations (e.g. UK, US, China, Russia, etc.) would not accept the UN or EU as a sovereign body that would supercede national sovereignty. The governments of such nations would have to fail before the UN or EU could establish a government described here. In fact, the Catholic church (as described earlier in the argument) came into power because the Roman empire (or at least some parts of it) failed.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  You can be "as sovereign" as you want and other countries are free to keep you insulated as much as they want. There is no fundamental sovereignty once you have to trade with anyone. Just ask any country that sells to the US for example. Or Iran. Not surprising the average person is completely ignorant of how much of what even they eat is imported or relies on imports.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    You can bully smaller countries through trade, but when US, Russia and China violate international law, they escape scott free.
    - Zigurd 5y ago
      Russia has a smaller GDP than Japan or Germany, and a 1/10th of that of the EU. If Russia further invades Ukraine, there will be a return to containment, and not much that Russia can do about it. China is in a whole other category.
      - blibble 5y ago
        due to years of poor decisions (and corrupt politicians [1]): the EU is now completely reliant on Russian gas it will be able to do absolutely nothing of consequence when Russia further invades Ukraine [1]: Gerhard Schröder (former German chancellor) ended up employed by the Russian pipeline company Nord Stream's board immediately after leaving office (when in office he approved it), and this week it was reported former French Prime Minister Fillion is now employed by two Russian gas firms I suspect Merkel will end up in a similar position after pushing though Russian gas pipeline #2 (NS2)
      - foobiekr 5y ago
        Russia has completely neutralitzed the EU through energy dependence. They have more power over the EU in that sense than OPEC ever had over the US and we were completely cowed in that era.
deleted 5y ago
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throwaway2331 5y ago
Not particularly thought-provoking or insightful. Though it would be nice if IR/geopolitical thinkers finally incorporated (pun intended) corporations into their lenses. The nation state fell into decline around the time the corporate trading companies came into being. Digital technologies have simply side-stepped states "getting their fill" via tariffs, taxes, and such. Supra-national organizations/NGOs "solve" international problems only in name. They're mostly there for the power-hungry to fill the power-vacuum in a new domain. My disjointed thoughts.
- jdthedisciple 5y ago
  "The nation state fell into decline around the time the corporate trading companies came into being." Mind elaborating a bit? Not quite sure what you mean.
- andylynch 5y ago
  Not sure I agree - no company has surpassed the scale or power of the early modern ones like VOC. The FAANGs might be getting closer by some measures, but thankfully still lacking in military strength.
- rwmj 5y ago
  > Supra-national organizations/NGOs "solve" international problems only in name. The EU for its many faults has solved a lot of international problems - taking a fairly hard line on the environment, workers' rights, privacy and monopolies.
  - hardlianotion 5y ago
    That remains to be seen, particularly on the environment.
- tomrod 5y ago
  I tend to think of the following as "states-in-waiting" -- centrally organized groups that can fill political vacuums. - Several large religions (Catholics, Mormons, certain Baptist conventions) - Mexican drug cartels - Several multinational corporations (though internal bureaucracies of many in F500 are stagnate and wouldn't respond quickly to a power vacuum) - Certain sub-divisions of governments (in the US: states, large municipalities, military bases, land managers) - Certain volunteer organizations, like Civilian Air Patrol, Girl/Boy Scouts These organizations have strong hierarchy, clear incentive constructs to align to their mission, and can typically respond quickly to external opportunities. Books like Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling walk through sort of an uber-case of this kind of scenario from a scifi/fantasy perspective. And that another organization fills a void is not crazy -- we've seen it in history (Catholic -> Roman empire, post-American revolution, KKK and fraternal orders like Masons/Elks post-US civil war, several places in the Philippines, France, and others in response and following WWII occupation, and so forth). Power is slippery. There is no divine right to it. People do well when it is held stably and respected for what it is. People do poorly when it is mismanaged, and will tend to support the strongest claim when there is a vacuum.
diego_moita 5y ago
Both yes and no. These technologies undermine authority but strengthen authoritarianism. It will bring trouble to authorities and consensus that are not very authoritarian (e.g:EU vs Brexit, the polarization of politics leading to populism, gridlock and inaction in some democratic countries, the increase in brain drain from less developed countries, etc). But, OTOH, very authoritarian regimes are clearly very capable of taming the internet (e.g: Russia, China) and harnessing it for their own propaganda and control.
- pg_1234 5y ago
  For an example of undermining (and de-funding) central authority, if DeFi (crypto etc.) goes mainstream it will have a devastating effect on nations ability to track and tax commerce. Mobile to mobile DeFi payments will basically enable a black-market economy where the 'cash' is issued by a foreign power and is much easier to hide.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > if DeFi (crypto etc.) goes mainstream it will have a devastating effect on nations ability to track and tax commerce This gels with the parent comment. States which heavily restrict devices and connectivity will have no problem tracking and taxing. Those which rely on a progressive tax system, or feature privacy rights, will. Keep in mind that, for most of human history, commerce was not traced by rulers. The simplest tax is a headcount tax. You pay the tax or bad things happen to you. That some people literally cannot pay is unfortunate but unavoidable.
  - Silhouette 5y ago
    But it doesn't take a genius to predict how governments would react to a technology that effectively prevented them from collecting taxes, even in relatively liberal and democratic places.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      And how should governments react to people dodging taxes, really? Should they just stop collecting them and cease to exist?
gjsman-1000 5y ago
I do not believe that any nation's constitution or government was designed to handle modern communication, polarization, encryption, privacy, and other technological issues. And that, judging by the increased polarization in the United States and elsewhere, I expect further division to occur. Some blame social media for this, but I think that blaming social media alone is a very narrow view of recent events. I expect that this division will start manifesting itself with defiance in the political sphere than actual violence. An example of this on the left was with sanctuary cities in defiance of ICE and the Police stand-down over CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle. An example of this on the right would be the creatively-designed abortion ban in Texas and Texas's announcement that they are building a border wall themselves, or the announcement they will not enforce and will actively try to prevent enforcement of OSHA vaccine/testing requirements. In both cases, you have states increasingly acting in defiance or in a passive-aggressive noncompliance with the Federal government, and I expect this trend to continue.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Polarization was very much a thing before modern tech. Religious wars were very ideologically polarized. So was the U.S. about the question of slavery. Early Medieval Byzantium had massive violent riots of polarized citizen factions that stemmed from ... chariot race fanclubs. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots Modern tech can polarize us again precisely because we (collectively) have the mental "receptors" for polarizing ideas.
  - groundhogday3 5y ago
- AreYouSirius 5y ago
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    >> Most european states prohibit abortions around 10 weeks of pregnancy 12 weeks is most common, 24 weeks is the longest (Netherlands) unless you count the UK as Europe, in which case 28 weeks. >> It is quite disgusting that people actually promote abortions instead of birth control. Who does that? Citation needed.
AreYouSirius 5y ago
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
So-called “free market” business relations already destroyed the western nation-state.
littlestymaar 5y ago
Only tangentially related, HN's favorite historian wrote about the concept of nation state a few month ago: https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-nation/ https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...
citizenpaul 5y ago
No. Why? Men with guns.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  That's not a particularly persuasive answer. Men with guns have killed nation states before, and digital technologies have influenced men with guns.
  - Zigurd 5y ago
    Right answer. Wrong reason. Conventional armed might grows much more slowly than does economic productivity and trade. The relationship and relative power have shifted. "Men with guns" and "killing a nation state" that has a modern economy is a fantasy. This is not to say there is no reason why the fantasy persists: Men with poor social and economic prospects will harbor that fantasy. But they are powerless, and guns will not change that. It just makes their fantasy uglier when they try to make it real.
    - voakbasda 5y ago
      Guerrilla warfare stands a real chance to disrupt any nation state. Do not discount a bunch of men with guns.
  - citizenpaul 5y ago
    That is not really very true and in most cases those men had support of another government. The idea of a guerilla revolution is mostly a fantasy since the invention of semi automatic weapons.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Men with guns are an important factor, but the question remains: where to send them, and with what orders. Thus information is a critical factor. Doubly so because information generates the money used to pay the men and buy the guns.
  - 5y ago
BlueTemplar 5y ago
> Decentralization, led by blockchain’s technology and ethos Richard Stallmann, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (and Jimmy Wales ?) would probably like to have a word with this guy...
atmosx 5y ago
I believe Trump's administration ended the "globalisation project" by promoting China as the No1 US adversary. While Russia was the ideal "bad actor", China manufactures everything for everyone, so there's a catch-22[^1]. Similarly, the 10+ years EU German-driven austerity essentially killed social-democratic parties in Europe. The left did not come up strong (Podemos and Corbinstas did not manage to gain real power and Syriza capitulated), so all the gains went to alt-right (see Poland, Italy, Hungary, Greece, etc.). These alt-right parties are not pro-EU, by any stretch. Tech is really good at categorising, quantifying, etc. If anything, the "nation state" can become over-reaching using these new technologies. I don't see how tech is weakening the nation state nor I see how the Catholic Church is a good analogy to the nation state. Maybe megacorps (directly or indirectly driving wars to take over resources scarce natural resources like, oil, lithium, cobalt, etc.) would be a better analogy. [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18 - Australia's Defence Policy Explained (satirical)
hardlianotion 5y ago
Some things that alternatives to nation states are going to have to work out. - They are going to have to figure out how to cater for nation states monopoly on violence and all the coercive power this gives them. I think this is a bigger thing than some people realise. - One way of demonstrating this might be to demonstrate they can deliver outcomes that are better for people than the efforts of nation states can provide. I don't think we have seen this so far and I am skeptical that this will ever be the case. Diffusion of power amongst international corporations? I think we are experiencing the high tide of powerful corporations that can play one jurisdiction over another. I think nation states will increasingly and successfully to defend themselves, in groups if need be, against these players. For similar reasons, I don't think we will see change coming from the crypto currency movement, or for other decentralising technologies to make this happen. I think the only alternative in the short to medium term for competent national governance is a failed society and regression in measurable human outcomes. Supranational bodies? The authority of UN bodies seems to be draining away, they are hollowed out and their purpose become obscure.
- xg15 5y ago
  Also citizens participation and democracy. Neither private corporations nor supranational orgs have something like a parliament, checks and balances or elections. Global connectivity is alright, but I'd rather not have my ability to take part in democracy replaced with the ability to make memes and like random stuff on twitter. And if this guy believes we won't need any method for organising and distributing power in the future, because it'll all be distributed ancap magic on the blockchain, I'll have some bridge NFTs to sell to him.
  - mLuby 5y ago
    A public company's board of directors don't look too dissimilar to a body of elected representatives, if you squint really hard. Memes in the larger sense of contagious ideas are as political as it gets and have been driving social action for millennia. If Martin Luther's time used TikTok, his 95 Theses might've been set to a catchy dance routine.
quinndupont 5y ago
This short article offers wild opinions with no understanding of history or any meaningful analysis. The authors also clearly have an ideological axe to grind (I mean, come on… the CATO Institute?) If there were any facts presented I’d say they lie, but since they’re just talking about a made up fairy tale, it’s only a silly piece of fiction. I feel stupid leaving a comment warning others.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Indeed, to write an article with "rise of transnational corporations" without a mention of East India company takes the cake for historically illiterate corporate propaganda.
- deleted 5y ago
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- Animats 5y ago
  Yes. It's also very US-centric. China has four times the population of the US, a comparable GDP, and isn't finished industrializing yet. If anything, digital technologies have strengthened the nation-state in China. China used to be too big for detailed central government control. "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." Today, high speed rail and networks cut through the mountains, and Beijing definitely is monitoring what's going on in the outer provinces. Fifty years out, the US may be a comfortable but lagging backwater like the UK, living on memories of empire.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
The analysis is very questionable - Latin was not used to disseminate information as widely as possible, it was used to exclude common man from even being able to read the bible, and to keep the church in power and let them make up rules as they go. This is why Protestantism has emerged, and wars have been fought over the issue. As powerful as a catholic church was, it was never comparable to a nation state - it never had a standing army, the pope was regularly in conflict with various kings and didn't always come out on top. Nothing on the list is new: East India Company was the original transnational corporation that had won wars against countries, supernational organizations like the League of Nations have existed for hundreds of years, and private currencies existed before bitcoin and blockchain. Corporations will never supersede governments because they benefit from them. Governments bail out corporations every time they fuck up - and I am not talking about 2008, the British Empire bailed out East India Company in 1857 when they pissed off everyone in India and could not deal with a rebellion, US bailed out the coal companies in 1921 when they executed several miners for unionizing and miners started shooting back. Most folks clamoring decline of a nation state seem to know nothing about past experiments in private policing, private currencies, private armies and others. Inevitably someone starts fighting back, or a natural disaster strikes, and then companies run for protection of a nation state. To put a line under it all, nation states have armies and people willing to die for them, I have never met anyone willing to die for Wallmart, and I don't think I will.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  It's not just once-in-a-decade bailouts, nation-states have all the responsibilities no one wants. "Superseding them" is jumping in front of a bullet
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  The analysis is also questionable - Latin was used to disseminate information as widely as possible because Rome was based on Latin. It was used because of the expense of paper/time and the fact it required a lifetime to copy slowly by hand. After the Roman Empire, the Church worked to translate it into the working language of the common man so they could all have access in the local church where it was stored. Education levels at the time were low so few could read…
dragonwriter 5y ago
The nation-state (in the sense of “Westphalian sovereigns”) will survive as long as (1) global capitalism survives, and (2) nation-states are convenient tools for the capitalist class to exercise power through while distracting from their own role. So far, digital technology seems to be reinforcing both rather than undermining them, so the nation-state seems secure.
- diego_moita 5y ago
  > nation-states are convenient tools for the capitalist class I hate this kind of Marxist lazy explanations. For Marxists everything happens because of "the capitalist class". It sounds as lazy, ideological and ignorant as Christians explaining that all evil things happen because Adam and Eve ate an apple. Truth is that the Westphalian sovereignty is actually a precious concept. It implies in itself the right to self determination for the peoples of some place. Yes, I know how much European Imperialism mocked that. But the idea is still there and it was powerful when dismantling the European empires on the 2nd half of the 20th century. Regardless of how much the Marxist arrogance despises them, many classical liberal concepts such as Westphalian sovereignty, rule of the law and open societies are really precious achievements.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > For Marxists everything happens because of "the capitalist class". No, for Marxists in the period of developing capitalism the main driving force was conflict between the capitalist class and the pre-capitalist aristocracy, and after that through the present the main driving force of change is the conflict between the capitalist class and the laboring class. > Truth is that the Westphalian sovereignty is actually a precious concept. “Precious” is subjective; it means nothing without qualifying to whom. > It implies in itself the right to self determination for the peoples of some place. It justifies itself that way, and yet is, in practice, the most formidable barrier to self-determination that exists in the modern world. > Regardless of how much the Marxist arrogance despises them, many classical liberal concepts such as Westphalian sovereignty, rule of the law and open societies are really precious achievements. Marxist theory doesn't despise them so much as despises the quasi-religious end-of-history view of them; classical Marxism views them as important steps of progress that nevertheless aren't the end of progress and must be transcended.
6510 5y ago
I wonder if a political party or movement could be constructed as a for profit e-gov tech corporation. There are so many API's that still need to be written. We can do specs and have governments implement them but it would be much much easier if a single company created the API's for all countries. Currently the qualification for e-gov is if a citizen obtained information from a government website. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20200307-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/... Not everything needs to be born out of need, we can do ambition too! Moldova did some fun stuff out of need. Corona created a lot of need. We don't really want to be reading laws (specs) we much prefer good goal oriented documentation or a tutorial. It would be even more practical if we could feed the applicable laws into the application and have automatic constraints, updates and a warning in advance if new constraints are coming. All legal jurisdictions implemented the same way. The instance can be configured for- and hosted by each customer government and the for profit corp can simply aggregate the API's and validate(!) If the government service returns different results loud alarms should go off. A list could be made of possible modules (or saas products) governments could offer, they could pick the ones that seem useful to them and buy a quote that reflects the complexity of the laws involved in that jurisdiction. If the budget is there a for profit could easily venture far outside politics and organize supply chains, payments, investments, training etc etc Besides funds and products it some how needs to get the citizens involved in a legally binding way. The automation would inevitably end up choosing directions that may or may not fit our personal ideology. (There is a blurred line between what should quite obviously be automated and what should not.) Politics would be a highly limiting factor which seems to suggest there should be a market in delivering the limits to the politician and the voter. The politician is also trying to construct something. While offering a similar api for the construction of laws seems a tad over ambitious it would be very helpful to provide them (and the voter) with existing implementations in other countries. There is also an infinite amount of work to be done in gathering real time data and making useful visualizations. Anyway, some practical ideas are needed and some hands on action rather than everyone observing the situation while pretending they cant do anything. Its our nation state and it will die only when we want it to.
jackcosgrove 5y ago
I agree with others that hard power - the monopoly on violence possessed by states - is a big stumbling block to visions of declining state power. I think however that hard power is more brittle than we appreciate. The US military runs on technology. It seems as if the defense sector is struggling compared to the past to release new hardware, to say nothing of software. I think that's in part related to the salaries offered by defense contractors, which have not kept pace with industry. Defense contractors used to pay very well; now they are second tier at best. Why build weapons for less when you can build apps for more? Less moral compromise and better pay. I doubt a privatized defense sector would be allowed. But by siphoning talent from the defense industry with better pay the technology industry could come to an arrangement with the state that constrained the state's ability to use hard power against tech.
- analognoise 5y ago
  Defense is already private - the government doesn't own Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc. (Only speaking for the US - I don't know about defense in other countries). I know Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, etc have current projects working directly with the state (Not sure if Google has one, haven't kept up with that saga). There's no "tech/hard power" duality - they all have projects for, and exist in the framework of, the State's monopoly on violence. The "tech" the state doesn't have a lock down on appears to be weak tech - the stuff that doesn't even really qualify as tech. If it can be used to make weapons, radios, high powered lasers, etc., the state has a direct line to the largest commercial operators, and has its own labs as well (AFRL, FFRDCs, etc). There is no "division" between "hard tech" and the state. The only people who seem to think so...probably build web apps and call it "tech".
  - jackcosgrove 5y ago
    My use of the term privatized means a defense sector that can sell its weapons to anyone who can pay for them. I think that's far-fetched. Rather I'm arguing that the person capable of building hard tech might be lured to build dumb tech if the pay is better. Some people do it for patriotism, some for the challenge, but some just do it for the money.
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dredmorbius 5y ago
This analysis is shallow and relies far to much on history repeating rather than rhyming. The Catholic Church's role in pre-Gutenberg Europe is not strictly analagous to a modern nation state, either in its power, or in the strengths, function, and interaction of the Church. The Church itself had, as others note in this thread, few overt tools of force. Its principle weapons were ... no, not the Montey Python sketch litany, but faith, and control over education, banking, commerce, and political legitimacy. Above all, pre-Gutenberg Europe was a profoundly information-poor time. There was very little of it, what there was moved slowly with poor fidelity, and was subjected to only the very most limited of processing and analysis. (In writing that paragraph, I'm realising of course that a future civilisation might look on my words and laugh at my inability to contemplate the possibility that information's future role won't be primarily for human consumption or comperhension but for that of machines, and yes, that's a possiblity that's worth keeping in mind. Let's stick to the human-scale for now.) A human in Europe circa 1400 was most probably illiterate (even a fair number of nobility and merchants), had access only to village gossip, a town crier (the modern incarnation is the television presenter, or TikTok influencer), and weekly church service, which functioned as the key central information dissemination mechanism, among its other ritualistic roles. In business and politics, the presumption was that one sent an emissary, merchant, or general on a mission and they were incommunicado for weeks, months, or even years during which one had to rely on them to act in the interests of their monarch, investors, or empire. Looking over the florid and obseqious language of the time, I've come to feel that these expressions of loyalty and faith served principally as attestations of trust. (See James Beniger's Control Revolution (1986) for the evolution of communications in business and government over this period. https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000unse/page/n5...) (I'm not saying the system worked well. I'm saying it was the best that could be had.) Today, at the human scale we are operating at near-total information saturation. Alvin Toffler's five-decade-old Future Shock is prescient and worth revisiting (I read it last year, for the first time), and makes many observations I think are on point. Modern nation-states operate principally through a vastly expanded trade, a small set of military giants (the US, and the less-formidable but still daunting Russia, China, India, and Pakistan, amongst others) capable of force projection to any metre of the globe, and the ability to monitor activities, individuals, and organisations to an utterly unprecedented degree. Where trust exists, it's not in the autonomous behaviour of long-isolated agents, but of the couriers, curators, and guardians of information stores --- that they faithfully transmit, equitably allow access, and dont abuse positions of privilege in their own accumulation of and ability to divine insights from data, as well as to act in the common weal on such resources. Another book also titled The Control Revolution, this one by Andrew L. Shapiro in 1999, addresses many of the risks of this world. Power devolves to points of control, and the ones Shapiro sees (and I tend largely to agree) are in commerce, finance, media and communications, and data storage. The one recent development Shapiro doesn't anticipate is the rise of machine-learning artificial intelligence, and the algorithmic processing of vast troves of data which this presents. I see these as shifts in the landscape of nation-states, but not an overturning of those states. The biggest challenge though may be to premises and foundations of liberal democracy, several of which are rather terrifying to contemplate. Shapiro on the Net and politics: https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000shap/page/150/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000shap/page/15...
k__ 5y ago
Somehow DAOs remind me of hives in "Terra Ignota". But in the books, they still had Europe as one nation state left. The rest was consolidated into a handful hives, virtual nations with specific agendas.
voakbasda 5y ago
I can only hope so. This is a problem that has been on my mind for well over two decades. I want to create a technology that will directly assist in the overthrow of every existing nation state. I would see each replaced with a smaller coalitions of independent states. Repeat until we get down to relatively local government. Any larger state should exist only as an emergent property of said local governments. Ideally, this transition would be orderly and peaceful, but that’s not strictly necessary at this point. I would gladly suffer a period of violent anarchy than continue to suffer the global tyranny that currently defines human existence. Unfortunately, I expect this comment does not reflect the majority view and will summarily be downvoted here. The governments of the world continue to provide either enough “bread and circuses” to placate those populations capable of such an uprising, or they already have implemented sufficiently overbearing authoritarian polices (e.g. gun confiscation, restrictions on speech) that it will never be an issue.
- scotty79 5y ago
  A lot of harm in US is caused by some states having abysmal standard of law in some domains. A lot of people would benefit if there were federal standards introduced in those domains. Power must be smart. Making it more distribute doesn't make it smart. It makes it smarter in some places and dumber in others. And since people don't choose smarter people for their leaders, just louder ... Smart leaders are rare. It's better to draw people to become leaders from larger pool of people and let them govern more people.

72 points by DocFeind 5y ago

The article is interesting but what stood out for me was the Pairagraph format. I’m a big fan of that format - the idea of two experts having a well-considered back and forth on a complex topic. Pairagraph reminds me of the evolved child of twitter and medium.

it_was_cool 5y ago
I like the format as well, but I'm having trouble understanding what Mr. Pueyo is an expert in.

thesuperbigfrog 5y ago

>> 2. As problems become international, supra-national organizations grow to solve them: from the UN or the EU after WWII, to the WHO, WTO, IMF, WB, and all the other global coordination bodies absorbing national sovereignty. Many nations (e.g. UK, US, China, Russia, etc.) would not accept the UN or EU as a sovereign body that would supercede national sovereignty. The governments of such nations would have to fail before the UN or EU could establish a government described here. In fact, the Catholic church (as described earlier in the argument) came into power because the Roman empire (or at least some parts of it) failed.

raverbashing 5y ago
You can be "as sovereign" as you want and other countries are free to keep you insulated as much as they want. There is no fundamental sovereignty once you have to trade with anyone. Just ask any country that sells to the US for example. Or Iran. Not surprising the average person is completely ignorant of how much of what even they eat is imported or relies on imports.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  You can bully smaller countries through trade, but when US, Russia and China violate international law, they escape scott free.
  - Zigurd 5y ago
    Russia has a smaller GDP than Japan or Germany, and a 1/10th of that of the EU. If Russia further invades Ukraine, there will be a return to containment, and not much that Russia can do about it. China is in a whole other category.
    - blibble 5y ago
      due to years of poor decisions (and corrupt politicians [1]): the EU is now completely reliant on Russian gas it will be able to do absolutely nothing of consequence when Russia further invades Ukraine [1]: Gerhard Schröder (former German chancellor) ended up employed by the Russian pipeline company Nord Stream's board immediately after leaving office (when in office he approved it), and this week it was reported former French Prime Minister Fillion is now employed by two Russian gas firms I suspect Merkel will end up in a similar position after pushing though Russian gas pipeline #2 (NS2)
    - foobiekr 5y ago
      Russia has completely neutralitzed the EU through energy dependence. They have more power over the EU in that sense than OPEC ever had over the US and we were completely cowed in that era.

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throwaway2331 5y ago

Not particularly thought-provoking or insightful. Though it would be nice if IR/geopolitical thinkers finally incorporated (pun intended) corporations into their lenses. The nation state fell into decline around the time the corporate trading companies came into being. Digital technologies have simply side-stepped states "getting their fill" via tariffs, taxes, and such. Supra-national organizations/NGOs "solve" international problems only in name. They're mostly there for the power-hungry to fill the power-vacuum in a new domain. My disjointed thoughts.

jdthedisciple 5y ago
"The nation state fell into decline around the time the corporate trading companies came into being." Mind elaborating a bit? Not quite sure what you mean.
andylynch 5y ago
Not sure I agree - no company has surpassed the scale or power of the early modern ones like VOC. The FAANGs might be getting closer by some measures, but thankfully still lacking in military strength.
rwmj 5y ago
> Supra-national organizations/NGOs "solve" international problems only in name. The EU for its many faults has solved a lot of international problems - taking a fairly hard line on the environment, workers' rights, privacy and monopolies.
- hardlianotion 5y ago
  That remains to be seen, particularly on the environment.
tomrod 5y ago
I tend to think of the following as "states-in-waiting" -- centrally organized groups that can fill political vacuums. - Several large religions (Catholics, Mormons, certain Baptist conventions) - Mexican drug cartels - Several multinational corporations (though internal bureaucracies of many in F500 are stagnate and wouldn't respond quickly to a power vacuum) - Certain sub-divisions of governments (in the US: states, large municipalities, military bases, land managers) - Certain volunteer organizations, like Civilian Air Patrol, Girl/Boy Scouts These organizations have strong hierarchy, clear incentive constructs to align to their mission, and can typically respond quickly to external opportunities. Books like Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling walk through sort of an uber-case of this kind of scenario from a scifi/fantasy perspective. And that another organization fills a void is not crazy -- we've seen it in history (Catholic -> Roman empire, post-American revolution, KKK and fraternal orders like Masons/Elks post-US civil war, several places in the Philippines, France, and others in response and following WWII occupation, and so forth). Power is slippery. There is no divine right to it. People do well when it is held stably and respected for what it is. People do poorly when it is mismanaged, and will tend to support the strongest claim when there is a vacuum.

diego_moita 5y ago

Both yes and no. These technologies undermine authority but strengthen authoritarianism. It will bring trouble to authorities and consensus that are not very authoritarian (e.g:EU vs Brexit, the polarization of politics leading to populism, gridlock and inaction in some democratic countries, the increase in brain drain from less developed countries, etc). But, OTOH, very authoritarian regimes are clearly very capable of taming the internet (e.g: Russia, China) and harnessing it for their own propaganda and control.

pg_1234 5y ago
For an example of undermining (and de-funding) central authority, if DeFi (crypto etc.) goes mainstream it will have a devastating effect on nations ability to track and tax commerce. Mobile to mobile DeFi payments will basically enable a black-market economy where the 'cash' is issued by a foreign power and is much easier to hide.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > if DeFi (crypto etc.) goes mainstream it will have a devastating effect on nations ability to track and tax commerce This gels with the parent comment. States which heavily restrict devices and connectivity will have no problem tracking and taxing. Those which rely on a progressive tax system, or feature privacy rights, will. Keep in mind that, for most of human history, commerce was not traced by rulers. The simplest tax is a headcount tax. You pay the tax or bad things happen to you. That some people literally cannot pay is unfortunate but unavoidable.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  But it doesn't take a genius to predict how governments would react to a technology that effectively prevented them from collecting taxes, even in relatively liberal and democratic places.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    And how should governments react to people dodging taxes, really? Should they just stop collecting them and cease to exist?

gjsman-1000 5y ago

I do not believe that any nation's constitution or government was designed to handle modern communication, polarization, encryption, privacy, and other technological issues. And that, judging by the increased polarization in the United States and elsewhere, I expect further division to occur. Some blame social media for this, but I think that blaming social media alone is a very narrow view of recent events. I expect that this division will start manifesting itself with defiance in the political sphere than actual violence. An example of this on the left was with sanctuary cities in defiance of ICE and the Police stand-down over CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle. An example of this on the right would be the creatively-designed abortion ban in Texas and Texas's announcement that they are building a border wall themselves, or the announcement they will not enforce and will actively try to prevent enforcement of OSHA vaccine/testing requirements. In both cases, you have states increasingly acting in defiance or in a passive-aggressive noncompliance with the Federal government, and I expect this trend to continue.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Polarization was very much a thing before modern tech. Religious wars were very ideologically polarized. So was the U.S. about the question of slavery. Early Medieval Byzantium had massive violent riots of polarized citizen factions that stemmed from ... chariot race fanclubs. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots Modern tech can polarize us again precisely because we (collectively) have the mental "receptors" for polarizing ideas.
- groundhogday3 5y ago
AreYouSirius 5y ago
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  >> Most european states prohibit abortions around 10 weeks of pregnancy 12 weeks is most common, 24 weeks is the longest (Netherlands) unless you count the UK as Europe, in which case 28 weeks. >> It is quite disgusting that people actually promote abortions instead of birth control. Who does that? Citation needed.

AreYouSirius 5y ago

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

So-called “free market” business relations already destroyed the western nation-state.

littlestymaar 5y ago

Only tangentially related, HN's favorite historian wrote about the concept of nation state a few month ago: https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-nation/ https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...

citizenpaul 5y ago

No. Why? Men with guns.

dane-pgp 5y ago
That's not a particularly persuasive answer. Men with guns have killed nation states before, and digital technologies have influenced men with guns.
- Zigurd 5y ago
  Right answer. Wrong reason. Conventional armed might grows much more slowly than does economic productivity and trade. The relationship and relative power have shifted. "Men with guns" and "killing a nation state" that has a modern economy is a fantasy. This is not to say there is no reason why the fantasy persists: Men with poor social and economic prospects will harbor that fantasy. But they are powerless, and guns will not change that. It just makes their fantasy uglier when they try to make it real.
  - voakbasda 5y ago
    Guerrilla warfare stands a real chance to disrupt any nation state. Do not discount a bunch of men with guns.
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  That is not really very true and in most cases those men had support of another government. The idea of a guerilla revolution is mostly a fantasy since the invention of semi automatic weapons.
FredPret 5y ago
Men with guns are an important factor, but the question remains: where to send them, and with what orders. Thus information is a critical factor. Doubly so because information generates the money used to pay the men and buy the guns.
- 5y ago

BlueTemplar 5y ago

> Decentralization, led by blockchain’s technology and ethos Richard Stallmann, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (and Jimmy Wales ?) would probably like to have a word with this guy...

atmosx 5y ago

I believe Trump's administration ended the "globalisation project" by promoting China as the No1 US adversary. While Russia was the ideal "bad actor", China manufactures everything for everyone, so there's a catch-22[^1]. Similarly, the 10+ years EU German-driven austerity essentially killed social-democratic parties in Europe. The left did not come up strong (Podemos and Corbinstas did not manage to gain real power and Syriza capitulated), so all the gains went to alt-right (see Poland, Italy, Hungary, Greece, etc.). These alt-right parties are not pro-EU, by any stretch. Tech is really good at categorising, quantifying, etc. If anything, the "nation state" can become over-reaching using these new technologies. I don't see how tech is weakening the nation state nor I see how the Catholic Church is a good analogy to the nation state. Maybe megacorps (directly or indirectly driving wars to take over resources scarce natural resources like, oil, lithium, cobalt, etc.) would be a better analogy. [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18 - Australia's Defence Policy Explained (satirical)

hardlianotion 5y ago

Some things that alternatives to nation states are going to have to work out. - They are going to have to figure out how to cater for nation states monopoly on violence and all the coercive power this gives them. I think this is a bigger thing than some people realise. - One way of demonstrating this might be to demonstrate they can deliver outcomes that are better for people than the efforts of nation states can provide. I don't think we have seen this so far and I am skeptical that this will ever be the case. Diffusion of power amongst international corporations? I think we are experiencing the high tide of powerful corporations that can play one jurisdiction over another. I think nation states will increasingly and successfully to defend themselves, in groups if need be, against these players. For similar reasons, I don't think we will see change coming from the crypto currency movement, or for other decentralising technologies to make this happen. I think the only alternative in the short to medium term for competent national governance is a failed society and regression in measurable human outcomes. Supranational bodies? The authority of UN bodies seems to be draining away, they are hollowed out and their purpose become obscure.

xg15 5y ago
Also citizens participation and democracy. Neither private corporations nor supranational orgs have something like a parliament, checks and balances or elections. Global connectivity is alright, but I'd rather not have my ability to take part in democracy replaced with the ability to make memes and like random stuff on twitter. And if this guy believes we won't need any method for organising and distributing power in the future, because it'll all be distributed ancap magic on the blockchain, I'll have some bridge NFTs to sell to him.
- mLuby 5y ago
  A public company's board of directors don't look too dissimilar to a body of elected representatives, if you squint really hard. Memes in the larger sense of contagious ideas are as political as it gets and have been driving social action for millennia. If Martin Luther's time used TikTok, his 95 Theses might've been set to a catchy dance routine.

quinndupont 5y ago

This short article offers wild opinions with no understanding of history or any meaningful analysis. The authors also clearly have an ideological axe to grind (I mean, come on… the CATO Institute?) If there were any facts presented I’d say they lie, but since they’re just talking about a made up fairy tale, it’s only a silly piece of fiction. I feel stupid leaving a comment warning others.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Indeed, to write an article with "rise of transnational corporations" without a mention of East India company takes the cake for historically illiterate corporate propaganda.
deleted 5y ago
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Animats 5y ago
Yes. It's also very US-centric. China has four times the population of the US, a comparable GDP, and isn't finished industrializing yet. If anything, digital technologies have strengthened the nation-state in China. China used to be too big for detailed central government control. "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." Today, high speed rail and networks cut through the mountains, and Beijing definitely is monitoring what's going on in the outer provinces. Fifty years out, the US may be a comfortable but lagging backwater like the UK, living on memories of empire.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

The analysis is very questionable - Latin was not used to disseminate information as widely as possible, it was used to exclude common man from even being able to read the bible, and to keep the church in power and let them make up rules as they go. This is why Protestantism has emerged, and wars have been fought over the issue. As powerful as a catholic church was, it was never comparable to a nation state - it never had a standing army, the pope was regularly in conflict with various kings and didn't always come out on top. Nothing on the list is new: East India Company was the original transnational corporation that had won wars against countries, supernational organizations like the League of Nations have existed for hundreds of years, and private currencies existed before bitcoin and blockchain. Corporations will never supersede governments because they benefit from them. Governments bail out corporations every time they fuck up - and I am not talking about 2008, the British Empire bailed out East India Company in 1857 when they pissed off everyone in India and could not deal with a rebellion, US bailed out the coal companies in 1921 when they executed several miners for unionizing and miners started shooting back. Most folks clamoring decline of a nation state seem to know nothing about past experiments in private policing, private currencies, private armies and others. Inevitably someone starts fighting back, or a natural disaster strikes, and then companies run for protection of a nation state. To put a line under it all, nation states have armies and people willing to die for them, I have never met anyone willing to die for Wallmart, and I don't think I will.

neutronicus 5y ago
It's not just once-in-a-decade bailouts, nation-states have all the responsibilities no one wants. "Superseding them" is jumping in front of a bullet
mensetmanusman 5y ago
The analysis is also questionable - Latin was used to disseminate information as widely as possible because Rome was based on Latin. It was used because of the expense of paper/time and the fact it required a lifetime to copy slowly by hand. After the Roman Empire, the Church worked to translate it into the working language of the common man so they could all have access in the local church where it was stored. Education levels at the time were low so few could read…

dragonwriter 5y ago

The nation-state (in the sense of “Westphalian sovereigns”) will survive as long as (1) global capitalism survives, and (2) nation-states are convenient tools for the capitalist class to exercise power through while distracting from their own role. So far, digital technology seems to be reinforcing both rather than undermining them, so the nation-state seems secure.

diego_moita 5y ago
> nation-states are convenient tools for the capitalist class I hate this kind of Marxist lazy explanations. For Marxists everything happens because of "the capitalist class". It sounds as lazy, ideological and ignorant as Christians explaining that all evil things happen because Adam and Eve ate an apple. Truth is that the Westphalian sovereignty is actually a precious concept. It implies in itself the right to self determination for the peoples of some place. Yes, I know how much European Imperialism mocked that. But the idea is still there and it was powerful when dismantling the European empires on the 2nd half of the 20th century. Regardless of how much the Marxist arrogance despises them, many classical liberal concepts such as Westphalian sovereignty, rule of the law and open societies are really precious achievements.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > For Marxists everything happens because of "the capitalist class". No, for Marxists in the period of developing capitalism the main driving force was conflict between the capitalist class and the pre-capitalist aristocracy, and after that through the present the main driving force of change is the conflict between the capitalist class and the laboring class. > Truth is that the Westphalian sovereignty is actually a precious concept. “Precious” is subjective; it means nothing without qualifying to whom. > It implies in itself the right to self determination for the peoples of some place. It justifies itself that way, and yet is, in practice, the most formidable barrier to self-determination that exists in the modern world. > Regardless of how much the Marxist arrogance despises them, many classical liberal concepts such as Westphalian sovereignty, rule of the law and open societies are really precious achievements. Marxist theory doesn't despise them so much as despises the quasi-religious end-of-history view of them; classical Marxism views them as important steps of progress that nevertheless aren't the end of progress and must be transcended.

6510 5y ago

I wonder if a political party or movement could be constructed as a for profit e-gov tech corporation. There are so many API's that still need to be written. We can do specs and have governments implement them but it would be much much easier if a single company created the API's for all countries. Currently the qualification for e-gov is if a citizen obtained information from a government website. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20200307-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/... Not everything needs to be born out of need, we can do ambition too! Moldova did some fun stuff out of need. Corona created a lot of need. We don't really want to be reading laws (specs) we much prefer good goal oriented documentation or a tutorial. It would be even more practical if we could feed the applicable laws into the application and have automatic constraints, updates and a warning in advance if new constraints are coming. All legal jurisdictions implemented the same way. The instance can be configured for- and hosted by each customer government and the for profit corp can simply aggregate the API's and validate(!) If the government service returns different results loud alarms should go off. A list could be made of possible modules (or saas products) governments could offer, they could pick the ones that seem useful to them and buy a quote that reflects the complexity of the laws involved in that jurisdiction. If the budget is there a for profit could easily venture far outside politics and organize supply chains, payments, investments, training etc etc Besides funds and products it some how needs to get the citizens involved in a legally binding way. The automation would inevitably end up choosing directions that may or may not fit our personal ideology. (There is a blurred line between what should quite obviously be automated and what should not.) Politics would be a highly limiting factor which seems to suggest there should be a market in delivering the limits to the politician and the voter. The politician is also trying to construct something. While offering a similar api for the construction of laws seems a tad over ambitious it would be very helpful to provide them (and the voter) with existing implementations in other countries. There is also an infinite amount of work to be done in gathering real time data and making useful visualizations. Anyway, some practical ideas are needed and some hands on action rather than everyone observing the situation while pretending they cant do anything. Its our nation state and it will die only when we want it to.

jackcosgrove 5y ago

I agree with others that hard power - the monopoly on violence possessed by states - is a big stumbling block to visions of declining state power. I think however that hard power is more brittle than we appreciate. The US military runs on technology. It seems as if the defense sector is struggling compared to the past to release new hardware, to say nothing of software. I think that's in part related to the salaries offered by defense contractors, which have not kept pace with industry. Defense contractors used to pay very well; now they are second tier at best. Why build weapons for less when you can build apps for more? Less moral compromise and better pay. I doubt a privatized defense sector would be allowed. But by siphoning talent from the defense industry with better pay the technology industry could come to an arrangement with the state that constrained the state's ability to use hard power against tech.

analognoise 5y ago
Defense is already private - the government doesn't own Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc. (Only speaking for the US - I don't know about defense in other countries). I know Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, etc have current projects working directly with the state (Not sure if Google has one, haven't kept up with that saga). There's no "tech/hard power" duality - they all have projects for, and exist in the framework of, the State's monopoly on violence. The "tech" the state doesn't have a lock down on appears to be weak tech - the stuff that doesn't even really qualify as tech. If it can be used to make weapons, radios, high powered lasers, etc., the state has a direct line to the largest commercial operators, and has its own labs as well (AFRL, FFRDCs, etc). There is no "division" between "hard tech" and the state. The only people who seem to think so...probably build web apps and call it "tech".
- jackcosgrove 5y ago
  My use of the term privatized means a defense sector that can sell its weapons to anyone who can pay for them. I think that's far-fetched. Rather I'm arguing that the person capable of building hard tech might be lured to build dumb tech if the pay is better. Some people do it for patriotism, some for the challenge, but some just do it for the money.

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dredmorbius 5y ago

This analysis is shallow and relies far to much on history repeating rather than rhyming. The Catholic Church's role in pre-Gutenberg Europe is not strictly analagous to a modern nation state, either in its power, or in the strengths, function, and interaction of the Church. The Church itself had, as others note in this thread, few overt tools of force. Its principle weapons were ... no, not the Montey Python sketch litany, but faith, and control over education, banking, commerce, and political legitimacy. Above all, pre-Gutenberg Europe was a profoundly information-poor time. There was very little of it, what there was moved slowly with poor fidelity, and was subjected to only the very most limited of processing and analysis. (In writing that paragraph, I'm realising of course that a future civilisation might look on my words and laugh at my inability to contemplate the possibility that information's future role won't be primarily for human consumption or comperhension but for that of machines, and yes, that's a possiblity that's worth keeping in mind. Let's stick to the human-scale for now.) A human in Europe circa 1400 was most probably illiterate (even a fair number of nobility and merchants), had access only to village gossip, a town crier (the modern incarnation is the television presenter, or TikTok influencer), and weekly church service, which functioned as the key central information dissemination mechanism, among its other ritualistic roles. In business and politics, the presumption was that one sent an emissary, merchant, or general on a mission and they were incommunicado for weeks, months, or even years during which one had to rely on them to act in the interests of their monarch, investors, or empire. Looking over the florid and obseqious language of the time, I've come to feel that these expressions of loyalty and faith served principally as attestations of trust. (See James Beniger's Control Revolution (1986) for the evolution of communications in business and government over this period. https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000unse/page/n5...) (I'm not saying the system worked well. I'm saying it was the best that could be had.) Today, at the human scale we are operating at near-total information saturation. Alvin Toffler's five-decade-old Future Shock is prescient and worth revisiting (I read it last year, for the first time), and makes many observations I think are on point. Modern nation-states operate principally through a vastly expanded trade, a small set of military giants (the US, and the less-formidable but still daunting Russia, China, India, and Pakistan, amongst others) capable of force projection to any metre of the globe, and the ability to monitor activities, individuals, and organisations to an utterly unprecedented degree. Where trust exists, it's not in the autonomous behaviour of long-isolated agents, but of the couriers, curators, and guardians of information stores --- that they faithfully transmit, equitably allow access, and dont abuse positions of privilege in their own accumulation of and ability to divine insights from data, as well as to act in the common weal on such resources. Another book also titled The Control Revolution, this one by Andrew L. Shapiro in 1999, addresses many of the risks of this world. Power devolves to points of control, and the ones Shapiro sees (and I tend largely to agree) are in commerce, finance, media and communications, and data storage. The one recent development Shapiro doesn't anticipate is the rise of machine-learning artificial intelligence, and the algorithmic processing of vast troves of data which this presents. I see these as shifts in the landscape of nation-states, but not an overturning of those states. The biggest challenge though may be to premises and foundations of liberal democracy, several of which are rather terrifying to contemplate. Shapiro on the Net and politics: https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000shap/page/150/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/controlrevolutio0000shap/page/15...

k__ 5y ago

Somehow DAOs remind me of hives in "Terra Ignota". But in the books, they still had Europe as one nation state left. The rest was consolidated into a handful hives, virtual nations with specific agendas.

voakbasda 5y ago

I can only hope so. This is a problem that has been on my mind for well over two decades. I want to create a technology that will directly assist in the overthrow of every existing nation state. I would see each replaced with a smaller coalitions of independent states. Repeat until we get down to relatively local government. Any larger state should exist only as an emergent property of said local governments. Ideally, this transition would be orderly and peaceful, but that’s not strictly necessary at this point. I would gladly suffer a period of violent anarchy than continue to suffer the global tyranny that currently defines human existence. Unfortunately, I expect this comment does not reflect the majority view and will summarily be downvoted here. The governments of the world continue to provide either enough “bread and circuses” to placate those populations capable of such an uprising, or they already have implemented sufficiently overbearing authoritarian polices (e.g. gun confiscation, restrictions on speech) that it will never be an issue.

scotty79 5y ago
A lot of harm in US is caused by some states having abysmal standard of law in some domains. A lot of people would benefit if there were federal standards introduced in those domains. Power must be smart. Making it more distribute doesn't make it smart. It makes it smarter in some places and dumber in others. And since people don't choose smarter people for their leaders, just louder ... Smart leaders are rare. It's better to draw people to become leaders from larger pool of people and let them govern more people.