In his latest post, How to Start a New Country, Balaji Srinivasan continues his thought leadership on crypto and on the possibilities of decentralized networks in general. For anyone who’s read the Foundation series, it’s a great example of how the power of the [First] Foundation and the Second Foundation must work together, the first focusing on hard science and technology, while the second has a deep understanding of the psychology and organization of people.
There’s a lot to unpack in the title. Starting a new country couldn’t be as easy as starting anything else new, right? People start exercise habits and Netflix binges all the time. Sometimes, they start careers or hobbies. Relatively few people start companies or social movements. The number of people who have started successful countries is quite few indeed.
Perhaps the most salient criticism, which Balaji addresses, is that nations typically have discrete borders and a set of infrastructure to allow for the basic needs of the populace. A series of roads, power generation, food production, a system of laws to govern land use and to provide for safety and peace within its borders. This is not what he is focused on. Instead, he proposes a geographically decentralized group of like-minded individuals who are able to act as a unified group. There would be no independent road built from one citizen’s house in Los Angeles to another’s in San Francisco. Similarly, the idea of a standing army to defend the highly fragmented borders representing the citizens’ land would be impractical. Rather, Balaji’s idea more similarly resembles a Bloc - a group of people sharing a common purpose. But I get why he didn’t go for that word: it’s boring (it even sounds boring), it has negative connotations and it’s inherently limited to the confines of a larger recognized body. In contrast, one of the defining features of a country is to be recognized as an independent power. A bloc is dependent on the structure within which it resides. For lack of a better term, we end up with cloud country as a first step. With a name like that, I’m interested. (Lando only had a cloud city, after all.)
It would be anachronistic to challenge the idea of cloud country with fighting a war to defend its borders. The 20th century and earlier model of nation states and diplomacy has led us to the place we are today; in other words, it mostly worked, with a ton of imperfections and with a few close calls to humanity along the way.
Instead, let’s challenge the idea of a cloud country with the things that nations don’t necessarily do well today. For example, how could a cloud country solve (for its citizens) or contribute productively (on the world stage) to:
Health Care
Climate Change
Poverty and the levers out of it, such as Education
Human Rights
Inequality
Corruption, Inefficiency and Waste
I can imagine some basic approaches which could expand over time. A cloud country could begin to construct its own health care system by having its citizen-entrepreneurs start a pharmacy and by focusing on virtual medicine by the country’s own citizen-providers. Climate change could be tackled by favoring green products and publishing an impact assessment for the companies of competing products to see. Corruption within the cloud country’s own administration would be exposed by open, secure, and transparent records on the chain that anyone could audit. I may be betraying my own values, but that’s precisely the point. You join the country whose values match your own.
While I don’t claim to solve the world’s problems with six bullets and one hastily written brainstormed paragraph, I do think Balaji is onto something and I’d love to see it tested against the pressing issues of our times. If it’s cloud countries against traditional nation states, I know what my money’s on.
