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I think starting fresh makes sense. I've been thinking about how to start a country for a short while now. Here is how I'd do it: 1) Buy or find an island arou

I think starting fresh makes sense. I've been thinking about how to start a country for a short while now. Here is how I'd do it: 1) Buy or find an island around the size of Manhattan. This shouldn't be too hard. Avoid areas too hot or too cold. Low or no population a plus. 2) Buy an insurance contract with a group like BlackWater. Publicly declare the terms: they help invade whatever country violates your new sovereignty. This should make starting a country less dangerous initially. 3) Flagrantly violate useless laws in other countries to attract business and freedom-minded people. Patent laws and IP limits would be ideal targets. This would be a pirate nation. 4) Establish a fiat currency with predictable supply growth indexed on a percentage of the previous year's growth in GDP. Make it available online and with an open trading system. 5) Fund any government expenditures through the increase in the money supply, described in #4. This is an unavoidable implicit tax, at a low rate. To stress the point: there would be no other taxes. Initial conditions and trust would be hard to start with. It might require lots of money in the founder(s) to work well. But I think this could be a very nice environment.

rms 19y ago
Starting fresh makes much more sense if you're doing this out of idealism. As an investment, taking Equatorial Guinea is better (because of the oil). Either way, don't forget the underwater fiber optic connection to an internet backbone.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  Good point about the fiber. I wonder if you could make dark fiber to embassies throughout the world to prevent local ISPs from blocking your country. That, and other things about this, take lots of money. There are better ways to invest that money than starting a country, which is why it wouldn't make sense to go for oil.
rms 19y ago
6) Build a nuclear power plant yourself. This gives you an enormous amount of leverage in international politics.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  Why would you want leverage is a useless system like international politics? To avoid another country invading yours, simply declare that a tactical nuke has been placed in its capital. You don't even need a weapons program to make this seem legitimate ... just say you bought it from an underpaid Russian general.
  - deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
  - rms 19y ago
    You're underestimating just how weak a rogue country is. If you tell the US that you have a nuke in DC, they won't believe you and they will crush you, overnight, with the real Special Forces. If you responsibility build your own nuclear power infrastructure, it will be assumed that you can build a bomb overnight and that's just as good as having the real thing. Japan is an example of a country with nuclear power on this level. It doesn't work to be an enemy to the first world. They will crush you. You've gotta be a friend. That means if your country has a lot of oil, you give it to the corporations just like the powers that be want. They reward the leaders generously for going along with them and they kill you if you assert your independence and don't give them the oil. Threatening the death of civilians with nukes is just a really bad idea.
    - ivankirigin 19y ago
      You would only counter any threats with the threat of a tactical nuke. There is no reason to declare you have them before there is a threat from another nation. I see little reason why another country would be bothered with the enterprise before it gained momentum and wealth. A reason to avoid nuclear power is to avoid getting attention. Avoiding oil deposits is another way to avoid attention.
asdflkj 19y ago
>1) Buy or find an island around the size of Manhattan. This shouldn't be too hard. That's impossible. Unlike wealth, power is a zero-sum game, and a new country (of the kind that matters) is against the interests of everyone who has power. Even if you somehow manage to buy land on terms that will allow you to become de jure sovereign (again, absolutely impossible), as soon as something happens to it (like Blackwater deciding to turn it into their private base), everyone will just cheer.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  Why would blackwater violate a contract with a paying customer? Power is not zero-sum. Trade is positive sum. That is very, very basic economics.
  - asdflkj 19y ago
    >Why would blackwater violate a contract with a paying customer? Because their other paying customers, who pay them much more than you do, will compell them to? >Power is not zero-sum. Trade is positive sum. That is very, very basic economics. Power is zero-sum when we think of it as a percentage of "total power". It's irrational to think of wealth that way, because people care more about what a dollar can do for them than what percentage of world's wealth that dollar represents. With power, there is no such distinction. What your power can do for you is directly proportional to what percentage of "total power" you have. If there is a new actor and his power increases, everyone else's power (averaged out) decreases proportionally.

rms 19y ago

Starting fresh makes much more sense if you're doing this out of idealism. As an investment, taking Equatorial Guinea is better (because of the oil). Either way, don't forget the underwater fiber optic connection to an internet backbone.

ivankirigin 19y ago
Good point about the fiber. I wonder if you could make dark fiber to embassies throughout the world to prevent local ISPs from blocking your country. That, and other things about this, take lots of money. There are better ways to invest that money than starting a country, which is why it wouldn't make sense to go for oil.

rms 19y ago

6) Build a nuclear power plant yourself. This gives you an enormous amount of leverage in international politics.

ivankirigin 19y ago
Why would you want leverage is a useless system like international politics? To avoid another country invading yours, simply declare that a tactical nuke has been placed in its capital. You don't even need a weapons program to make this seem legitimate ... just say you bought it from an underpaid Russian general.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- rms 19y ago
  You're underestimating just how weak a rogue country is. If you tell the US that you have a nuke in DC, they won't believe you and they will crush you, overnight, with the real Special Forces. If you responsibility build your own nuclear power infrastructure, it will be assumed that you can build a bomb overnight and that's just as good as having the real thing. Japan is an example of a country with nuclear power on this level. It doesn't work to be an enemy to the first world. They will crush you. You've gotta be a friend. That means if your country has a lot of oil, you give it to the corporations just like the powers that be want. They reward the leaders generously for going along with them and they kill you if you assert your independence and don't give them the oil. Threatening the death of civilians with nukes is just a really bad idea.
  - ivankirigin 19y ago
    You would only counter any threats with the threat of a tactical nuke. There is no reason to declare you have them before there is a threat from another nation. I see little reason why another country would be bothered with the enterprise before it gained momentum and wealth. A reason to avoid nuclear power is to avoid getting attention. Avoiding oil deposits is another way to avoid attention.

asdflkj 19y ago

>1) Buy or find an island around the size of Manhattan. This shouldn't be too hard. That's impossible. Unlike wealth, power is a zero-sum game, and a new country (of the kind that matters) is against the interests of everyone who has power. Even if you somehow manage to buy land on terms that will allow you to become de jure sovereign (again, absolutely impossible), as soon as something happens to it (like Blackwater deciding to turn it into their private base), everyone will just cheer.

ivankirigin 19y ago
Why would blackwater violate a contract with a paying customer? Power is not zero-sum. Trade is positive sum. That is very, very basic economics.
- asdflkj 19y ago
  >Why would blackwater violate a contract with a paying customer? Because their other paying customers, who pay them much more than you do, will compell them to? >Power is not zero-sum. Trade is positive sum. That is very, very basic economics. Power is zero-sum when we think of it as a percentage of "total power". It's irrational to think of wealth that way, because people care more about what a dollar can do for them than what percentage of world's wealth that dollar represents. With power, there is no such distinction. What your power can do for you is directly proportional to what percentage of "total power" you have. If there is a new actor and his power increases, everyone else's power (averaged out) decreases proportionally.