IDEA 20090103 New Country

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/45/173856262_c54f27ce6f.jpg

Sealand cc by Rusty

Yesterday had the idea of forming a New City. Why not take this concept a step further and create a new country altogether? You might be laughing right now considering Sealand and the develop of other micronations. Or, you might be considering the Pirate Bay's failed attempts at raising enough money to buy Sealand or an island in Micronesia as summarized by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation.

Similar to building a new city, creating a new country has very little in my opinion to do with originality. Rather, it is a challenge to complete this task and an interesting process. As my friend Rick pointed out, this is also related to Seasteading which is a movement to create floating structures in international waters.

Leading proponent of Seasteading, Peter Thiele stated that: "Government is an industry with a really high barrier to entry," he said. "You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a new one. That's a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it's got enormous customer lock-in. People complain about their cellphone plans that are like two years, but think of the effort that it takes to change your citizenship." http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/05/seasteading

I'm not advocating for a riot or a destruction of one's current citizenship. I am advocating for the examination of global citizenship and all the barriers to this higher goal. I'm American, Chinese, European and a citizen of all the other places I want to live. It is the governments which charge the ticket price like a country is a theme park.

However, upon examing the seasteading concept and political bent, I'm not as extreme as the authors. I'm more interested in the concept and the process of creating a new country, which happens not so often. One nice facet of having own nation is: "A seastead in the middle of the ocean is not bound by any copyright laws."