Would it be possible now to create an online "ghost" country, and if so, how would it work?
Imagine a new kind of country, a country with a temporary map that is constantly changing as it’s members go about their day accross the world.
A country with laws, taxes and everything else, yet it only exists online. There are real world benefits for membership, all members get dual nationality, and immigration is never a problem.
Would it be possible to get it to a point where the country has free hospitals and schools around the world, would it be possible defend the country from invasion, and could we make a good life for our members?
The country would need everything a normal country has. If you lose your job you get welfare wired to you, otherwise we cant call it possible.
What kind of problems would the country come across?
Would other countries try to stop it?
Do we have the technology to make it so?
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15 Answers
The only problems I can think of that are easy to do are hacking into accounts perhaps, and false identities in joining. Very interesting concept indeed, very original question.
@dabbler I had imagined the “site” as a regular html site, however, I had imagined a SecondLife kind of area so to speak.
However, when I think about it more, it would need to be designed in a way that is unlike anything we have yet. It would need to be very efficient, and not interrupt real life too much. Perhaps a thing you run in the background from your PC or iPhone or something.
I second SecondLife. It already meets the criteria here. Plus it goes a lot further. Go ahead. Buy yourself and island.
Great idea, but you’d have to walk around with a passport all the time because you’d always be physically in a different country and subject to their laws.
@wundayatta I will have to give this second life a look, I find it hard to believe it alone could cope with the task.
I could create a stock market? a wellfare system? a parlament that is comprised of all its own members, every member considered a individual “state” so to speak? Im not sure… maybe with some tweeks to the same technology.
@zenvelo Yes indeed, I think you would totally need one of the main laws to be that members are to respect the laws of the country they inhabbit.
However, big problem… what would that say about the countries official stance on things like torture and genocide. A lot of bad things happen in some countries, would that be a form of approval?
Very interesting idea. You’re right though, it would be tricky when the standards of the free-range nation conflicted with nations of residents. But, I could see this nation-system working as a overarching system to which qualifying countries could join. An independent nation’s inclusion in it could be akin to a committing to a set of social, economic and humanitarian principles. I’d like to think this free-range nation is organized around a particularly developed and desirable system whose membership would appeal to both individuals and nations and thus potentially expand and improve human welfare throughout the world.
SecondLife is effectively a state in anarchy. There is no effective government there.
Actually this reminds me of the Jewish nation, which was a nation without a country of it’s own until 1948. If the internet had been around then, I’m sure there would have been an online state of Israel.
How do you enforce your laws, send the guy a virus? How do you pay for all this stuff? I think it needs some work.
Ha Ha… They were too busy playing video games and didn’t want to be bothered…ROFLMAO!
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