I'm a Citizen of the Internet, Where's My Passport?
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
While a global citizen passport would be nice, simply making it easier for productive members of society to move around would make a great deal of difference. Imagine if all you had to do to move was to trade your American citizenship with a British person who wanted to move to the States. Wanna move back in 10 years? Trade your UK Passport to an American looking to move to Britain etc...
US/UK switch? Probably basically free for both, if both are seen as equally desirable. But citizens from "less desirable" countries would pay ($30K/yr?) to have to the right to work in the US/UK. And, for example, US/UK doctors would receive money ($30K/yr?) to work in third-world countries. The rates would vary depending on each pair of countries and relative demand.
It seems abhorrent at first to ask already-poorer third-world citizens to pay money, but the $30K/yr would presumably come out of salaries paid from the first world -- so people from third-world countries would only be able to work in the US if they were making excellent money, and therefore contributing greatly to the economy. No money is actually being "taken" from the third-world. And the $30K/yr payment to doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. living abroad would provide a fantastic transfer of skills from the first world to the third world, helping to counteract "brain drain".
I'm not sure any governments would want to sign up for something like this, and it may feel rather questionable morally, but it could solve a lot of problems.
Of course, if citizenship were an option after n years of residing and working in a country (which is the case in many places), then one would expect the market prices to change considerably...
And if the poor of one country can be incentivized to switch with the rich of another country, wouldn't that just further stratify wealth?
It's certainly debatable, but it would be my hope that it would lead to increases in opportunity for all parties.
But these are exactly the kinds of moral concerns I alluded to...
Anyone who is poor in nation A, will trade places with an up and comer in nation B.
So for the same job one would receive a different salary based on his/her country of origins ? More specifically: people coming from poor countries would receive less money for the same job compared to "natives" of the welcoming country while people from richer countries would receive more money than "natives" of poorer countries they are working in ?
It looks like a tax based on origins and (I am not american) seems to remember it is one of the founding myth of the american independance, am I wrong ?
It isn't hard to do
It's hardly a new position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_citizen
If you really want this world join ATTACK or a similar organization and try to bring down WTO for starters.
Note: Not arguing one over the other - just stating the obvious
* Minimum cost to renew a UK passport in 1997: GBP 18 ($28).
* Minimum cost to renew a UK passport in 2011/2012: GBP 77.50 ($121).
That's 431% in 14 years or 11% per year! This does not include Post Office handling charges.
This is more than twice the highest single data point inflation (even including housing) and almost four times the annual average over that period.
Oh, and if you were tempted to fast track it for the 1-day service renewal, that's GBP 129 ($202).
(* not valid in vicinity of cheetah)
The world has changed a lot over the last 14 years.
Although I do agree, it's a joke—but still, if you want to travel abroad you need it.
But not always. The US govt taxes overseas earnings of its citizens and resident aliens. (There's an exemption for the first $95k (plus some deductions) - see http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,... )
There's more such arguments, like suggestions that you need a nation to subsidize your health care or protect you from every day crime, but all of those are reasonably privatize-able as well.
Really, we pay taxes, and taxes cover things like the aforementioned ambassadorial services. It is arguably doable that we could pay some other organization to do the same thing.
If you mean they aren't bound as in, forced to be in just one country, then citizens aren't either: I myself am a citizen of two countries.
Think about it... certain demographics around the world all recognize the Facebook logo. Certain demographics will recognize the utility of a Facebook profile. Certain demographics will accept your Facebook login to exchange for access.
Month by month that legitimacy will only grow.
Your "hood passes" are different.
Who's the custodian of how long you've been on Reddit? How much karma you've gotten on Hacker News? How much influence you have on Twitter? How many followers you have on Tumblr?
Some roll their own with their own domain name while most others end up using About.me.
oAuth has a lot of your data too, maybe it's a matter of timing before someone takes that, make it into a legit passport service and sell it Google. Or Microsoft.
Wait, what? oAuth is just a protocol.
make it into a legit passport service and sell it [to] (..) Microsoft.
Interestingly, it's Microsoft itself who tried to give people online passports: https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/10-11passp...
The joke I was making is that Microsoft started, kept changing, and ironically may one day just end up buying a startup to make their passport scheme finally useful.
Even the notion of an 'internet citizen' is not an entirely universal citizenship. How much interaction do people on HN really have with the Chinese internet populace or the Russian internet populace or the Arabic-speaking internet populace? There are entire internet subcultures which do not or hardly intersect.
I'm sure at some point in human history being a 'world citizen' will be possible, but we're not even remotely close to that at this point.
Reading comments to any submission I sometimes play "spot the Russian" and more often than not I find one.
HN perhaps have less interaction with Yahoo populace than they have with Russian populace. In internet, you have another axis orthogonal to citizenship - the services you're on.
The reason it's so hard to move between countries is standard exploitation. People would exploit the resources(be them natural or otherwise) and move on to the next place if there was nothing stopping them. Maybe you wouldn't. Or maybe you wouldn't notice yourself doing it. But people would. Tourism is really only good for local economies if you leave after a few weeks. Otherwise you're putting to large a burden on the place you're visiting and the payoff of having you come and leave money is no longer there.
People should be able to move to other countries if they want but it should be a serious and large decision. And realistically, you should care about your local government. It's not like democracy doesn't need you just because you have cute ideas about global citizenship.