Ask HN: What stands in the way of a landless, 100% digital government/state?

One of the interesting things about this is figuring out what services this government would actually provide, and where. And whether or not people would just be dual-citizens in perpetuity.

Thinking about my day-to-day interactions with the various levels of government here (Canada), the vast majority of it requires a physical presence: policing, firefighting, road maintenance, building inspection, etc. None of those things are very well served by a distributed/digital government. Taxation could be done digitally, of course.

If the primary goal is to affect public policy on a global scale, there's nothing preventing a "crowd-sourced lobbying organization" from being established.

Call it a government if you want, but for a lot of people the main things that government does for them is maintain infrastructure and protect public safety. It's a neat idea, no doubt, but there's a lot of things that citizenship (i.e. the right to live in Canada forever) gives me that couldn't really be replaced digitally.

Government maybe isn't the best way to think of this. I'm thinking more like an international digital "society". This was all more thought up for the need for more rights and freedoms (I'm really against C-51 for example), and the need for inexpensive services.

So think of all the government things without the physical part, that's what I meant by landless. Education, healthcare, international representation, voting, identification, census/population metrics, maybe business services, and have this social network/connection tool built around it.

So yeah, like a "crowd-sourced lobbying organization" but with more perks. Maybe like a global union or something like that.

Education and healthcare are interesting things. I live far enough from major centres that government-run health care is pretty much the only option without having to travel. Education... could be provided digitally, but there's still (IMO) a lot of value to sticking a bunch of kids in a room together and letting them learn about social interactions.

I'm not sure how something like this would have any impact on C-51. Despite being a member of the digital society, we'd still physically reside in places controlled by other governments, which means that our telecom cables would still run along places where they could be tapped and monitored.

The voting and representation is really interesting. Going back to the C-51 issue... If we had direct representation, is there any hope in hell that this would have passed?

An interesting question is how big of a critical mass would such a system need to start to have actual influence? I don't know the answer, but it's fascinating to think about.

Education isn't only for children, I was thinking more of adults/teens anyways since I don't think kids would get the whole MOOC system. Maybe they would though. And again this wouldn't be a complete replacement for established government, at least not at first, more like a form of protest with benefits.

With enough people voting within this digital society against things like telecoms spying and secret police powers, it would create a sort of citizen lobby group that may have an actual effect on politicians. With enough "critical mass" they would have no choice but to listen and respond.

I'm pretty sure all of the recent polls since before it was passed were mostly against C-51. I'm sure if there was a type of referendum it would've been squashed (like it should've been).

I'm also very interested in your last point's idea.

The land-dependent stuff might be possible for some of the aboriginal peoples. Land title claims have been validated by the supreme court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_title#Canada

> Ask HN: What stands in the way of a landless, 100% digital government/state?

Definitions. A government or state is an entity that exercises a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over some territory. If it doesn't have territory, its not a government/state.

> Consider a world government that doesn't have any real large land area, just offices/embassies. Everything from citizenship applications to paying taxes to providing social services would all be provided through digital/online means. Anyone living anywhere would be eligible to apply and receive services and representation.

While governments might (if there was enough motivation for them to do so) choose to treat such an entity like a foreign government/state for administrative purposes, essentially what that is a multinational corporation or NGO providing a defined set of services.

> What would be in the way of this from a social/legal standpoint?

Being treated like a government is a matter of legal recognition by the governments you want to recognize you as one. This is often difficult for entities that have some claim to actually be governments, its going to be harder for something that manifestly is not.

Especially given that you see it as serving as a counterbalance to existing governments -- that's actually a reason existing governments would be disinclined to recognize it.

> What could established local/global governments actually do to fight this?

At the most basic, refuse to recognize it as anything like a government. To the extent that people associated with it tried to do things of substance that actual governments didn't like, they could outlaw its activities (to the extent that they aren't already illegal), and prosecute and punish (or just extrajudicially punish) its members, associates, and collaborators.

Thanks for your response, this was exactly what I wanted.

With the discussion/debate here I've refined the idea a bit more, and instead of saying a "government" I'm more pushing towards something like a non-state actor or an NGO combined with a citizen run lobbyist group.

I believe that if governments tried to "prosecute and punish...its members, associates, and collaborators" that would have the opposite effect of strengthening the group and getting more support. From my perspective that's exactly what the Arab Spring was all about.

I'm not sure how the regulation part would go, since AFAIK there isn't anything like this already that has forced the creation of rules. Laws usually only come up as a reactive measure, which is something I would actually hope for and want to help shape.

Most countries don't allow foreign organizations to lobby, and don't allow domestic lobbying groups to receive foreign money. There are many existing decentralized political action campaigns which sound similar to what you want to do, but they sometimes have trouble moving money across borders.

It sounds like you want a member-controlled organization working with an INGO. Do you want a group whose members are the people who RECEIVE the services, or a group whose members PROVIDE the services, or a group whose members are mostly activists?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_non-governmental... -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights-based_approach_to_devel... -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Poverty_History -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARE_(relief_agency)#Programmi... -- https://www.fidh.org/International-Federation-for-Human-Righ...

Bootstrapping such a government alongside the existing governments would be troublesome. The only kind of tax you could collect would be a "subscription fee" that you couldn't even easily means-test, and the only kind of "laws" you could "enforce" would pertain to who gets what out of the public fund. Not totally useless, but extremely difficult to put together a compelling value proposition. What sort of "policies" did you have in mind?

I agree about the existing governments point. That's pretty much the major antagonist issue to all of this. I've considered that the only way to beat that would be to simply be better. With enough "citizens"/supporters I'm wondering what the established governments could do other than using armed force, which would look very bad and may even have the opposite effect from what they want. This of course still needs more brainstorming which is the point of this post.

"Tax"-wise would be almost the same as other governments but more streamlined I suppose. Thinking of this as just a collection of digital/online services/resources would be the best way of looking at it. You pay your monthly/annual fees/"taxes" and get access to the services.

- Schooling/education would be done through a MOOC (ex. Coursera, Stanford Online) that would be then be open and "free" for users. - https://e-estonia.com/component/e-school/

- Healthcare would have 1-on-1 conferencing with doctors/medial professionals when needed, and maybe have some sort of partnership with existing clinics/hospitals. Prescriptions could all be done online as well - https://e-estonia.com/component/e-prescription/

For all laws and policies they would be directly voted on by the community, but with a base set (constitution) set in stone, basic freedoms etc. This would be a very progressive/modern society with all the freedoms and protections that comes with, but if something like 90% of the citizenry decided to vote against one of those, then the leading committee would review it.

When you talk about services offered for a fee, okay, but how would you offer "protections"? What if one of your citizens is physically located in Europe, for example, and the local warlord tries to interfere with his right to free speech, or his right to bear arms? Will you draft an army and bust him out of prison?

What if he missed his "subscription" payment the previous month? Does he lose his fundamental human rights until he's paid up?

I was thinking more of just international lobbying, even though that sorta sucks and doesn't work (ex. Syria). We would hopefully be able to use the ICC and international law to help our rightful citizens.

I can't think of a better solution to that yet, and there may not be one.

And no, you would still be a citizen without paying taxes, but you would lose access/be restricted from all services.

You ought to know that it's pretty radical to think of "government" as an entity that spends your money for you. Before the 1900s it was hardly imagined, and I think the jury is still out on whether it's an effective model.

What has always been understood is what's written in the Declaration of Independence: that the purpose of government is to protect the fundamental rights of the citizens. You're proposing to discard that old purpose entirely, and just focus on providing services for money. I don't think I'd call it "government", myself. Not to discourage you, just want to point out that you've got a lot of work to do to convince people that the thing you're describing is actually capable of being what you think it is.

I'm not American, so I actually don't know the DoI very well.

I still think people need to be protected, but the world is a lot different from what it was back then. International law needs to be changed, government needs to be more digitally connected with it's citizens, and the idea of governments and nations need to be revised for the modern world.

For the record, I didn't really think of this as a complete replacement for physical governments, but more of an overarching one that would protect your rights and freedoms using an international legal system while also providing services that some established governments might not be able to.

This would probably be more like a global NGO with a membership I guess.

Or it could be like a citizen-based lobbying group. If enough people are a part of it, voting for the rights and laws they want it could make more politicians take notice.

Sure, but you obviously can't "protect your rights and freedoms" without armed forces, police, and prisons. A "legal system" with no power to enforce its laws and judgments is useless.

All you are left with is an organization that collects money from its citizens and then spends it for them.

Say if I'm a Canadian citizen and I go to visit somewhere like Russia or North Korea, and get jailed for something that they just didn't like (not for a valid reason), then my country would use international legal means to get me free. They would not just go and start a war. This is what I mean by the world being different now where most regular citizens aren't scared of being jailed in a foreign country.

Say you get married in a state that allows LGBT couples, and then move to one that doesn't, AFAIK your marriage is still valid and recognized. Maybe in some countries it isn't (ex. various Middle-eastern ones) but generally it is. If there was an international body that could allow you those rights and freedoms then could help use legal means to protect them.

Protection doesn't only mean physical force, especially not in this age. I'm not saying I don't agree with you in some way though. There would be very little/nothing an ephemeral government could do against physical aggression, which is what I meant by my earlier statement, "I can't think of a better solution to that yet, and there may not be one."

> Say if I'm a Canadian citizen and I go to visit somewhere like Russia or North Korea, and get jailed for something that they just didn't like (not for a valid reason), then my country would use international legal means to get me free.

"International legal means" -- especially in those scenarios -- is just a thin layer of formalities wrapped around the threat that your country, perhaps with assistance from its allies, will impose consequences like trade sanctions, and, if necessary, ultimately wage war if their requests are not adhered to.

Sure, they could ultimately do nation-vs-nation legal action in the ICJ, but even if your nation wins, its not like the ICJ has marshals it can send in to enforce its orders. Enforcement is basically self-service.

> They would not just go and start a war.

No, but they would be threatening one, if only implicitly.

> This is what I mean by the world being different now where most regular citizens aren't scared of being jailed in a foreign country.

Lots of them, I would bet, are, they just choose not to travel to the countries they are afraid of being jailed in.

But there are no "international legal means" without the ability to threaten consequences. "International legal means" more or less just means your ambassador asks the foreign country nicely to release you. That's why every version of a "world court" is a joke; nations voluntarily decide if they want to pay attention to its judgments. If your nation has no ability to threaten consequences, I guess the only thing you could do is offer bribes. You might be able to bribe some corrupt banana republics to give your members immunity to their laws, but are you really going to bribe the UK to allow your members to bear arms, or bribe Canada to allow your members the freedom of speech?

I really don't see where bribes come into this.

I've said before in other comments that this wouldn't just take over from your geographical citizenship, but would be a sort-of competition to it. Competition benefits the consumers, because both sides try to create a better value proposition. Right now there is no competition to your governance other than potentially voting for someone else or moving. If we created a global body that isn't just some black-box bureaucratic system, but a 100% open, transparent, run by the citizens system, that could help put some real pressure on international politics.

Here's just a few Wikipedia links that connect to everything I've written in my comments so far. There's more than these, but I'm still working through them:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizenship

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_mundialization

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_globalization

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizens_movement

But how would you apply "pressure"? It keeps coming back to this. If it's not by using force, and not by throwing money around, then I can't see what it would be.

Maybe you could illustrate this idea with a few fictional scenarios. For example, let's say Citizens A and B are a law-abiding family in Germany, and the government there has just seized their children because they're Christian and they homeschool. Clear violation of the UN declaration of human rights. What does your online government do to help these citizens?

You're still not reading my comments, try reading the other ones in this post as well. If something like your example happened what would a regular government do? I've said before this isn't a replacement for your geographical/local government (at least not for a while).

I've revised the term to not mean "government", that's just what term I first used. Think more of like a world citizenship, or NGO, or union fighting for collective rights.

In real life, the "regular government" is Germany itself, so, there's no conflict. The victim has no recourse except to try to get his family out of the country and seek asylum. (This is really happening to Christians in Germany, by the way, I didn't make it up.) I'm just asking for what sort of thing you envision a digital citizenship/NGO/union would do. Hold a protest? Threaten a strike? And how do you enforce solidarity among the ranks if a lot of your German members share the government's attitude about Christians, for example?

>The only kind of tax you could collect would be a "subscription fee"

Los Zetas, and the Mafia see things differently...

>People would vote on the laws and policies (online/mobile of course)

Just to play the Devil's advocate here. I don't think that people should be able to "make their own laws". Most people (think the general population) are woefully uninformed about a lot stuff. Like pensions for example. A LOT of Americans DON'T have pensions/retirement savings. This is really bad and a real cause of worry.

In MY opinion, a government should care for it's people and make sure that they have mandatory participation in the pension system (first pillar/second pillar). However, there also should be the option to contribute more (third pillar) if you can/want to.

In some fields, people don't know what to choose and some people who have studied that field, should make the choices for them. Imho.

Ultimately, it comes down to people with guns.

Here's country X oppressing people. Are they going to stop because you ask politely (or even sternly tell them to)? No. Why not? Because they want to keep going, and they have guns. The only thing you can stop them with is bigger guns.

(Yes, an appeal to their conscience can sometimes work. It worked for Gandhi against the British. It wouldn't have worked against Hitler or Stalin, though.)

So until you have the biggest guns, you're not going to be able to form a world government that has any real impact.

How would you try to get there? You'd have to persuade enough people in democratic countries to put enough pressure on their governments that they'd cooperate with you. You'd have to do that in enough countries that it carries weight even with those who don't want to listen.

There have been a lot of major protests in the past however many years. Looking at things like the Arab Spring, Occupy, the LGBT movements, Bill C-51, I think people aren't generally happy with their governments.

I think we need something that is actually run by the people, for the people. As I've come to think of this more, it wouldn't be a complete replacement for established government, but more like a global union.

I can't seem to be able to edit the main post, but I forgot to mention the Estonia E-citizenship.

- https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/

- https://e-estonia.com/components/

A lot of what I mentioned are things that they already provide and can do, which is why I think the technical side of things would be the easy part.

Now just apply this to a global state.

EDIT: Also look at what WeChat is like in China. You can pretty much do anything from your phone

- http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/

An inability to scale tied to the problem of concentrating resources.

The minute you start having non-trivial manifestations of your power in meat-space you become subject to a whole range of logistical concerns. Say you've got 1,000 people in your initial group but they're spread out all over the world, what can you actually do?

You want to provide services and representation, but - even if those people each paid 20% of their income to you - you exist largely in the web and your ability to manifest goods and services that are going to be useful to your members is almost non-existent.

Governments gain an advantage when they can provide goods or services in common. Thus making it cheaper than each person providing that resource for themselves.

Workarounds, and penises. Per http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm..., a 100% digital gov't becomes a 99% digital gov't in the presence of militias, mafia, terrorist, etc. That 99% digital gov't doesn't have "balls" in the Bill Maher sense, and gets quickly overwhelmed. By workarounds. Stupid. But some people feel "vindicated". Especially teenagers (which brings in the question of voting age).

Where are the citizens of this digital government going to physically reside?

- landless

- online

- global

- international

We'll all live in The Cloud. Land isn't important anymore. Just ask anyone who pays rent in San Francisco.

Both your comments have been about land, so I think you're being too literal and thinking more of established countries.

What I'm proposing is a nation that could exist independent of borders/land area. You could live anywhere and still be a part of it. There are clubs/groups that exist for members across the world, but what's stopping a new nation from re-creating that same architecture?

The point of the nation is some kind of laws as well as ability to enforce those laws. If you belong to this digital nation, you still will have your body in some type of earthly nation like US or Russia or Italy, etc. Therefore your body will be subject to local laws. For example if in digital nation you have the right to drink at 20, then US might still arrest you if you try to buy a drink (or whatever they do - deny?), and they will not buy into your claim that your nation allows you to drink. However if your body is in Russia, they might laugh at you if you turn yourself in for drinking at 20, as they (I believe) have a lower drinking age. None of physical nations are going to enforce or abide by the laws of the digital nation.

Nations must have not only laws, but a way to enforce them, and a way to protect their citizens from foreign nations.

There are many online communities, such as ycombinator and reddit and WoW, and people feel like they are a part of them, but they are not nations. You can certainly create a community where you pool money and educate your digi-zens (digital citizens), you can provide disaster services by perhaps sending food/drinks to them in case of disaster, but they will still have to follow local laws - you wouldn't be able to request countries to extradite them to you for example.

Yes, I understand that local laws would still apply. I've mentioned in other comments that this wouldn't be a replacement of those.

Everything is that way already? Just layers and layers of inherited money and power have been laid upon it and always will be, and the "common man" has to fight through the cruft to establish his existence? Tear down those layers, and it's just a temporarity. We live in a Darwinian circus.

The Vatican is practically that now. The extent of Vatican City is miniscule, but they have a huge governing hierarchy physically distributed across the world. About all they'd need to do is let the other shoe drop.

The Vatican is also an absolute monarchy and very much not in line with the society I'm imagining.

I'm not familiar with how their citizenship process works as well, or how they provide services to expats.

Mentioning the Vatican was my way of pointing out an (almost) existence proof. If the Vatican can be that close to a defacto distributed government, I don't see why one can't explicitly form itself.

I was thinking of Estonia and their e-citizenship system and services.

I guess the Vatican would be an example of small area, but you could also look at something like Sealand, or other small island nations.

Even though this is a terrible example and comparison, you could also look at Scientology and their offices. They may not be a established state but they work in the way I'm imagining. Global offices, schooling, protection, etc.

> The extent of Vatican City is miniscule, but they have a huge governing hierarchy physically distributed across the world.

I think you are confusing the governing hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church with the governing hierarchy of the State of Vatican City. While those hierarchies have the same head, the latter is strict (and small) subset of the former.

Land

Government will become the thing which puts work to tender and decides who gets the contract.

Every service will become privatised.

Government will converge on what it does best, core business, collaborative decision making between representatives from diverse groups.

Contrary to popular belief it is not government inertia which slows this transition, it is public expectation. Society is not yet ready.

Services, as others say, require physical presence. Core Gov can become 100% digital and will, since gov is the nervous ( and circulatory ) system, which causes to function the diverse systems required for society's function.

Watch Zuckerberg make a play for government through FB. Gov is the network. It is already information. All that's missing is the social technology to trust that gov works like this to make it happen.

Northern Europe / Korea will go first.