Decentralized States and how they adjust Democracy for the Internet
Countries, at least in this context, can be best defined as a group of individuals coming together to live and abide by a set of ideas. These ideas can be written down in the form of a constitution at the conception of the nation, like in the case of the United States of America or can evolve over time with the culture of the society, as in the case of civilizational states like India and China. The Indian constitution, which was drafted shortly after India’s Independence from Britain, also acknowledges this continuum as it begins with “India, that is Bhārata” where Bhārata is the ancient name of India.
Founding Ideology is the Umbrella for different Political Ideologies
Despite having a founding ideology, people of countries, especially democratic ones, still have ideological and political differences as to what the future of their country should look like and how it should be run. These differences do mostly fall under the umbrella of the founding ideology. For example, what might be called social conservatism in USA might be called social centrism in India or any other conservative society. There is a left-right dichotomy in politics of all countries but they who can be called centrists in each society is very different.
People who don’t share political beliefs with the ruling party are often left unhappy. And that’s the tradeoff one makes for having a democratic system, some people will be left disappointed in exchange for peace and anti-totalitarian safeguards that democracy offers.
Living on the Internet and Growing Physical Disconnect
We’re currently transitioning into the age of the internet and technology. This enables people from different countries living under different ideological umbrellas to interact with each other. As a lot of people, especially young ones spend a lot of time on the internet, they get disconnected with their country’s founding ideology and more supportive of the ideology that is in line with the content they consume and the people they hang out with. For example, you can find large communities of transhumanists online but not a single major politician in any country explicitly supports transhumanist politics or policies.
These people have zero to no chance of being fairly represented in a democratic election. Until the current century, they didn’t have the option of founding their own country. But with decentralization they will!
The Dawn of the Decentralized Age
As Balaji proposes, Decentralized Network States will be built with by the community rather as opposed to land and as their founding base. This wasn’t possible in the past due to communication being bound to geography, but with the internet, the world has been reduced to the size of a village.
Just like people with similar ideologies hang out on the internet, they’ll be able to hang out in their own countries with network states. This will solve a major flaw of democracy, tyranny of the majority. People will no longer having to live in a country where they are ideological minorities and will have the option of starting their own.
With this system, people with similar ideological leanings will be with their own kind and if one chooses to leave that camp and move into another, they can easily do so!
Summary/tl;dr
Countries till today were formed by a bunch of people living in a territory deciding to abide by a shared set of beliefs, which in some way or the other was developed by them living together in that shared territory.
With the advent of the internet, communication is no longer bound by your physical body, this has brought with itself a problem. The problem of people communicating, innovating and ideating across geographical lines whilst being bound with the old system of nations.
Decentralized states solve that problem!
This article is a submission to 1729.com task of critiquing the essay by Balaji Srinivasan titled “How to Start a New Country”
