What is a nation and can Google be one?
August 01, 2014
Internet companies are already giants. Although, head-quartered in a particular country, they operate globally as multinational organisations. What is the next step in their evolution. Will we see one of these giants declare themselves to be sovereign and a nation in their own right?
We are all too familiar with the concept of nation-states. Although the whole world is now divided into nation-states or countries, historically, they are relatively new concepts.
Re-examining the definition
Typically, we think of a country as a group of people living in a particular piece of land. Lets try to re-phrase at what makes an entity a Country in the terms familiar to app developers. Let's say a country is a subscription service with a territory. Citizens are subscribers, who pay tax and get various services like physical security in the form of army & police, infrastructure like roads, rule of law and courts etc. New membership is obtained either by birth or by immigration. However, a lot of it is just a quirk of history and can be easily tweaked if needed.
Land
Land was one of the prime source of wealth. As real estate, used as place to live, work and move around. Also, for extracting natural resources like forestry, mining and farming. Hence, holding land was important for being a country. What if, that assumption is taken away. If land is no longer the most valuable asset, will we see new "land-less" countries crop up?
New nations
Can a behemoth company like Walmart, Amazon or Google declare themselves to be a country? They can set up all usual services for their citizens while importing food, land-originating resources from another country or a colony? How much successful will they be? Will other traditional nations accept it? Will people flock to become citizens of this new country?
Re-examining the definition
Typically, we think of a country as a group of people living in a particular piece of land. Lets try to re-phrase at what makes an entity a Country in the terms familiar to app developers. Let's say a country is a subscription service with a territory. Citizens are subscribers, who pay tax and get various services like physical security in the form of army & police, infrastructure like roads, rule of law and courts etc. New membership is obtained either by birth or by immigration. However, a lot of it is just a quirk of history and can be easily tweaked if needed.
Land
Land was one of the prime source of wealth. As real estate, used as place to live, work and move around. Also, for extracting natural resources like forestry, mining and farming. Hence, holding land was important for being a country. What if, that assumption is taken away. If land is no longer the most valuable asset, will we see new "land-less" countries crop up?
New nations
Can a behemoth company like Walmart, Amazon or Google declare themselves to be a country? They can set up all usual services for their citizens while importing food, land-originating resources from another country or a colony? How much successful will they be? Will other traditional nations accept it? Will people flock to become citizens of this new country?