Startup Country

Deciding everything in advance like that (e.g. banning cash, which could turn out to break everything) is actually the big co way of doing things, not the startup way.<p>A real startup country would start out with few rules and a bunch of early adopter inhabitants, and they'd figure out what they should do incrementally in response to the inhabitants' needs. A lot like the early US in other words.

One difficulty here, if the idea is to identify policies that should be adopted country-wide, is confounding factors. Say you ban cash, and also introduce a 1984-style police state, and lastly pay for education and health care for all citizens. Crime drops versus the rest of the country. Is it because you're living in a police state, or is it because people are well educated and healthy? This difficulty seems especially problematic when some top level entity is a priori choosing what the new policies will be, versus choosing them as reality indicates.<p>A better system might be to have a number of startup countries, let the people in them choose what laws they will or will not have, and also allow people to move easily between countries, so if the policies enacted in one turn out to suck, people can vote with their feet. And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them.

An article in the Atlantic that was posted here "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty" actually talks about this idea from the lens of international development. It dwells on the analogy with Hong Kong, and some city states in Mediaval Europe quite extensively. It's a thought provoking read, you should check it out here:<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politi...</a><p>HN discussion here:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429</a>

This seems to be similar to the article from last month's Atlantic Monthly about Paul Romer's plan to have developed countries run microstates similar to Hong Kong or Singapore in developing nations.<p>It was discussed at <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429</a>

The "perfect and flawless"-model for running states has been <i>widely</i> discredited. These models invariably makes sweeping assumptions about peoples priorities, which is very hard to do, given how surprisingly different people are. The resulting flood of compromises either leads to inefficient systems like the ones we have today, or totalitarian regimes (force people to share the assumed priorities).<p>The model of deciding on a few general core values and defending them rigourously (free speech, equality to the law, right of self determination etc.) leads to inefficient, yet stable and reasonably prosperous societies.

See Patri Friedman's seasteading concept: a multitude of startup countries where political systems compete and innovate.<p><a href="http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro" rel="nofollow">http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro</a>

<i>"Campaign contributions would be eliminated because all campaigns would happen on the Internet so that running for office would cost next to nothing."</i><p>I doubt it. Competition between better and worse campaigns would ensure that everyone running for office would still want the best campaign managers, and they would still pay through the nose for that. Just because media purchasing is thrown out the window doesn't mean there isn't room left for further (expensive) optimization.<p>In fact, any system with rules is going to have inefficiencies to be exploited. In this case, it seems like the biggest one is privacy. The most well off startup citizens are going to realize they want some privacy back, and will pay dearly for it (just as the wealthiest currently value their privacy so highly). This will create a market for elite "privacy engineers" (think ghost in the shell style), who will be the citizens most in demand.

Ah yes, the second system syndrome. <i>This</i> time we'll get it right.

Want to know the only difference between complicated and simple? Between a startup and Big Co? EDGE CASES -- Your startup (country) will be fine and perfect as long as you support the basic cases. It's when you start addressing the nuances, you'll get right back on the path of the parent country.

You don't really need legislative government when you can vote laws directly (through the internet).<p>Interesting article.<p>However, there is a risk of bugs as in any code rewrite, don't you think?

Personally, I think this is the most horrific idea Scott has proposed in a long time. Police-state surveillance in my bedroom and bathroom?[1] No cash, meaning no possibility of discreet purchases? Only one option for banking?<p>This world of his would be lovely right up until humans started occupying it. But even the slightest bit of corruption would render it a nightmare.<p>[1] Actually, full surveillance everywhere EXCEPT in the home would be fine with me...as long as the data feeds are completely public.

&#62;The entire banking system would be automated. There would be no cash in the start-up country. You wouldn't need to "apply" for a loan because the virtual bank would always have a current notion of your credit-worthiness.<p>Am I the only one who is even slightly troubled by the fact that individuals could essentially be tracked in real time as a result of this technology? I mean the Stasi would have loved to have this level of information about their citizens' activities.

i figured out a while back that the 2 main enablers of political corruption are (1) the allowing of privacy for politicians, and (2) allowing untracked economic transactions (cash handed over, etc.). If you could eliminate those two things it would be much harder for politicians to be corrupt. But it's easier contemplated than implemented, in part because we have inertia and power in the hands of people who would not allow it. Also, there is effectively no "unclaimed" land/sea in the world anymore upon which to start a new country. And in the US, at least, it is considered a high crime for anyone to band together and split off forming a new country (consider Lincoln and the US Civil War). You could still try to start a new country somewhere, but you'd probably need a lot of military power to defend it from existing countries, their puppet forces, and pirates.<p>To this day I still think it's amusing that we supposedly live in The Land of the Free (TM) but we can't "fork" a piece of the US off, even a tiny piece of it that we personally inhabit, and make a new country.

To me this illustrates one of the biggest weaknesses America has to BRIC. All of those countries have some form of an extraordinarily underregulated place within their borders as well as places with the money and efficiency of the US, and while these places allow for human rights violations, they also allow for extraordinary growth and innovation. They are able to get the best of both worlds.<p>The prime example is Rio, with it's slums right next door to giant skyscrapers. The slums act like incubators, and when innovation happens the cities eat it up. While the vast majority of the people trying to create businesses within the slums fail, the effects of the failures are absorbed back into the slums, while the cities scale the successes. This may keep the slums poor, but this juxtaposition (among many other factors) seems to be doing wonders for Brazil's economy.

Startup countries are a great idea. Old governments are patched and repatched to meet each new wave of lobbyists.<p>Th key is not starting over but establishing mechanisms that require governments to compete and that enable customers to walk away if they aren't happy.<p>The US started out with 50 competitive states whose overall security was protected by a tiny federal government that did little more than manage the border and the currency. The states did everything else.<p>If you dislike your state, you just move to another one. WE need MORE of that. We need SMALLER states with more intense competition.<p>The naysayers will tell you its a crazy patchwork quilt. They want one set of rules, presumably for all human beings ultimately with no innovation or competition. The dream of all statists. They trumpet diversity in biology, but scorn it in human life.

Might as well designate existing metropolitan areas as Startup Countries - less dislocation. There also would be a ready supply of lawyers eager to startup a new legal system as well.<p>Or perhaps do this around Western Nebraska where are some of the poorest counties in the USA.

This sounds like a place that would not be fun to live or work in. Part of the vibrancy of cities and countries is that there is history and, yes, inefficiency.

Similar in spirit to <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html</a>

Here's a nice book about, among other things, a similar country: <a href="http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm</a>