The demise of the nation state

theguardian.com

12 points·tomkwok··7 comments

It’s an easy conundrum to solve: nations need to start deficit spending once more, better the living conditions of minorities and invest heavily in energy efficiency schemes.

Like the author however, they seem to have bought into the idea that government is merely redistributive and the forces of globalization cannot be reversed.

Probably the most important article currently active on HN and it is racing down the list of new entries.. about to fall off unnoticed. Sign of the times?

If one of us who've read it had time to speculate on how the tech sector intersects with the issue of power moving up to transnational entities, down to localities, and sideways to cross-national communities, I think we could get a really interesting discussion going.

The tech sector is actually mentioned in the article.. big corp (Apple) transcending size of nation states in wealth:

> Today’s great engines of wealth creation are distributed in such a way as to elude national taxation systems (94% of Apple’s cash reserves are held offshore; this $250bn is greater than the combined foreign reserves of the British government and the Bank of England), which is diminishing all nation states, materially and symbolically.

Its also big tech that has the highest growth potential in the future, making the problem worse.

And the way our current social platforms can be used to sow disinformation, plant fake news, and misguide huge amounts of people doesn't help either.

Technology (and so also the technology sector) is mentioned countless times... Technology playing a key role in the titular demise...

The demise of click-bait headlines.

I wouldn't call it clickbait.. rather accurate summary of a thorough analysis of our current societal forces at play.

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