Historically, states were needed, among other things, for more effective conduct of wars. The larger the group, the easier it was for them to defeat smaller aggressors, the easier it was to capture adjacent territories. In order to conduct war more effectively, technologies, science, education, culture, medicine, and much more were needed. However, all of this could be done without the establishment of states and the imposition of strict borders between them. Countries, flags, anthems, borders, and national interests are needed where there is war. And there is war everywhere and always.
However, the world is changing and technologies are evolving. Primarily communication and labor automation technologies. Thanks to the Internet and robots, an increasing number of professions find physical presence at the place of creating value-added products less important. Programmers, of course, primarily. Twenty years ago, it was very important for them to be close to the product they were creating because the product was on expensive servers, and mere phone or email communication was not enough for effective work. Now servers have moved to the “cloud,” and communication has become no less, and often more effective through video conferences or online chats.
Architects, designers, engineers, musicians, bloggers, writers, journalists, artists, managers, marketers, copywriters, producers, investors, analysts, and many other professions that are not tied to the land and do not require manual labor, are now often free to choose their place of residence and even the state. Why live where you were born if you can live where it’s warmer? Why pay high income tax in France if you can pay low or zero in Dubai? Why rent an apartment in San Francisco for $5,000 when you can write the same articles for a California weekly, renting a bungalow in Bali for $500?
One can ask the question even broader, as Pavel Cherkashin did in his recent article “The homeland-as-a-service model: How blockchain will disrupt the world order”: why not turn the state into a service, and its citizens into clients? Everyone will be free to decide in which state they want to live, choosing from all the available offers on the market.
Let’s say Belgium offers quality healthcare but charges high taxes. In Brazil, taxes are lower, but the crime situation is tense. In the USA, taxes are acceptable, and the crime rate is not so high, but public transport and roads are of low quality. And so on. Each state will have something to offer its clients. Something like office rentals or trendy coworking spaces - each with its own conditions, price, pros, and cons.
Pavel Cherkashin predicts in his article that very soon “states will have to compete for the most qualified citizens, providing the best services and advantages such as a strong economy, low taxes, a fair legal system, and reliable social security programs.”
Sounds beautiful! Is this not a utopia?
Supporters of such ideas about free migration, carried away, forget why states are needed in the first place. As mentioned above, they are needed for conducting predatory and liberating wars among people. Despite the fact that a small percentage of the inhabitants of this planet enjoy studying new technologies and writing reasonable articles about them (including myself), the overwhelming majority struggle for survival in a semi-war or war regime.
According to the information from the World Bank, half of the world’s population lives below the poverty line. The dynamics of social inequality, according to a recent report from the World Inequality Lab, is dismal. The gap between the poor and the rich is widening: “the share of national income going to the top 10% of earners is 37% in Europe, 41% in China, 46% in Russia, 47% in the US and Canada, and around 55% in sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, and India, and 61% in the Middle East.”
Will all these people living on a few dollars a month be offered a choice of where to live? They have already chosen. The USA. And now, specifically for them, Donald Trump is building a wall, so that they cannot realize their choice.
The USA, like most Western European countries, is in a state of escalating semi-war conflict with countries where there is less money, but the desire to live well is no less. The flow of emigration from the Middle East to Europe is rapidly increasing. It’s not yet a world war, but it’s not the time to talk about abolishing visas, passports, opening borders, and abolishing immigration control.
States are still needed and still for military purposes.
Wars have only changed their form, but have not disappeared anywhere.
Perhaps we can talk about the “state as a service,” but with one important caveat: it will be a very expensive service, and only for a very select few. But such a service already exists in the market, without any Blockchains. Want to live and work in the USA — the EB-5 visa for $1,000,000 is always available. Want to live in Zurich, 300,000 francs a year, and welcome. And so on. The borders have long been open. But only for the wealthy.
Will they ever be open to everyone? I doubt it. Will a child born in the slums of Bombay ever reach the age of 18 and decide that it’s better to be a citizen of the USA, live in Miami, work as a programmer there, and pay taxes there — press a few buttons and get an American passport? No, that will never happen or almost never.
Unfortunately or fortunately, it’s hard to say.
Translated by ChatGPT gpt-3.5-turbo/42 on 2024-04-20 at 17:45
