This makes a huge presumption of rock solid stability of political/economic system, that America is not going the direction of a banana republic, in terms of graft, corruption and patronage, which it certainly seems to be these days.
What it is more going the way of a major power resenting a weakened position in the world falling into authoritarian and/or kleptocratic nationalist dictatorship leaning on the propaganda of restoring national greatness, somewhere between Hitler’s Germany and Putin’s Russia, which is a very different situation than a banana republic.
Banana republic isn’t specific to US control and it’s actually not that unreasonable to call Russia a banana republic
> dependent on exporting a single product or commodity, often controlled by foreign-owned entities [0]
Such countries/regions long existed before the US, although the term was coined by a US writer (William Sydney Porter), and the Banana industry (specifically) has a lot to answer for (in the US specifically). A region making money from.. foreign-owned chips, oil, IT-consultants or Sardines has the same status. The term has a terrible history (surprising the Gap hasn't rebranded).
But I think it's also unfair and mean spirited to say that a country like Nauru (barely a country, IMHO, population of 12500 people) is "prostituting" itself by allowing 3rd party registrars to sell domains for a profit, since they have basically no other resource with the bird guano originated phosphate mines now being stripped clean. Would I use a Nauru domain? No. Do I go out of my way to insult them on the internet? Also no.
Better examples: Tuvalu (.TV), Anguilla (.AI)
Both of these countries (anguilla is not independent though) only get a cut of the money from the domains; all the technical management is done by GoDaddy for .TV and Identity Digital for .AI. In my opinion, very sad.
.AI was run by a local guy in Anguilla (Vince Cate) utilizing the https://cocca.org.nz/ domain SaaS, but Identity Digital took over in late 2024.
Yeah, can't imagine anyone buying any of these domains. I mean yes, it's literally the exact word for "naked" in French, but nobody speaks French so there's definitely no chance they make any money
NU is the country code for Niue.
Not Nauru. Nauru is NR.
NU is an interesting story, the control of the domain was granted in exchange for providing internet services to the island, and its operation was later transferred to the Swedish Internet Foundation. The islanders want the domain back