Minimum Viable State: Building a Nomad Internet Country

In the event of a sudden invasion, Estonia's elected leaders might scatter as necessary. Then, from cars leaving the capital, from hotel rooms, from seat 3A at thirty thousand feet, they will open their laptops, login, and—with digital signatures to execute orders and a suite of tamper-resistant services linking global citizens to their government—... See more

An internet country is like a software platform – the Uber or Airbnb of citizenship. It doesn’t provide on-the-ground services like hospitals, schools, and public transport. These are provided by the local layer, like city and regional governments. The global layer doesn’t replace them, but provides a seamless way to interact with them.

The nomad community is uniquely placed to understand what people need from the global layer. New global products, services, institutions, governance, and more. This is what SafetyWing – the initiators of the Plumia project – does: It builds a global layer on top of the health insurance systems that already exist.

At first, we should think about an internet country in the same way, as a means for nomads to interface with nation-state systems.

If we design a nomad internet country with intention, we can do two things: Avoid the nomad movement producing colonialism 2.0, wherein a wealthy elite who were lucky enough to be born in the right place move freely while many others are stuck in one location. Create new pathways for refugees, displaced and stateless people to exit their country of... See more

Nomads are hackers. They love finding loopholes and exploiting them. The internet allows us to route around political roadblocks in interesting ways. Nomads are primarily knowledge workers, and that generally makes us desirable visitors for most countries. So, the real bounty here isn't to convince border officials to let nomads in by providing an ... See more