Paul Graham's near-death experience
valleywag.com
valleywag.com
Basically, Thatcher just didn't spend enough money. A billion in private defense contractors (mercenaries) would be plenty to take Equatorial Guinea with overwhelming force. The defenders might not even fire a shot.
1) Buy or find an island around the size of Manhattan. This shouldn't be too hard. Avoid areas too hot or too cold. Low or no population a plus.
2) Buy an insurance contract with a group like BlackWater. Publicly declare the terms: they help invade whatever country violates your new sovereignty. This should make starting a country less dangerous initially.
3) Flagrantly violate useless laws in other countries to attract business and freedom-minded people. Patent laws and IP limits would be ideal targets. This would be a pirate nation.
4) Establish a fiat currency with predictable supply growth indexed on a percentage of the previous year's growth in GDP. Make it available online and with an open trading system.
5) Fund any government expenditures through the increase in the money supply, described in #4. This is an unavoidable implicit tax, at a low rate. To stress the point: there would be no other taxes.
Initial conditions and trust would be hard to start with. It might require lots of money in the founder(s) to work well. But I think this could be a very nice environment.
Either way, don't forget the underwater fiber optic connection to an internet backbone.
That, and other things about this, take lots of money. There are better ways to invest that money than starting a country, which is why it wouldn't make sense to go for oil.
That's impossible. Unlike wealth, power is a zero-sum game, and a new country (of the kind that matters) is against the interests of everyone who has power. Even if you somehow manage to buy land on terms that will allow you to become de jure sovereign (again, absolutely impossible), as soon as something happens to it (like Blackwater deciding to turn it into their private base), everyone will just cheer.
Power is not zero-sum. Trade is positive sum. That is very, very basic economics.
Because their other paying customers, who pay them much more than you do, will compell them to?
>Power is not zero-sum. Trade is positive sum. That is very, very basic economics.
Power is zero-sum when we think of it as a percentage of "total power". It's irrational to think of wealth that way, because people care more about what a dollar can do for them than what percentage of world's wealth that dollar represents. With power, there is no such distinction. What your power can do for you is directly proportional to what percentage of "total power" you have. If there is a new actor and his power increases, everyone else's power (averaged out) decreases proportionally.
To avoid another country invading yours, simply declare that a tactical nuke has been placed in its capital. You don't even need a weapons program to make this seem legitimate ... just say you bought it from an underpaid Russian general.
It doesn't work to be an enemy to the first world. They will crush you. You've gotta be a friend. That means if your country has a lot of oil, you give it to the corporations just like the powers that be want. They reward the leaders generously for going along with them and they kill you if you assert your independence and don't give them the oil. Threatening the death of civilians with nukes is just a really bad idea.
I see little reason why another country would be bothered with the enterprise before it gained momentum and wealth.
A reason to avoid nuclear power is to avoid getting attention. Avoiding oil deposits is another way to avoid attention.
What's that even mean? Who is "we"? This post is sensationalist to the max.
Out of all the great stuff in Paul's last essay to comment on, this is the best they could do?