Imagine this super sweet product:
A subscription service that makes it safer and easier than ever for you and your family to travel and reside around the world.
Includes clubhouses in most major cities. Check in any time for a safe, convenient place to meet other members.
Includes educational services— both online and in person. Your child can receive a high quality k-12 education from anywhere in the world.
Includes expedited visa services for 20+ countries.
Includes repatriation in the case of emergency.
OK you caught me, this isn't a product, it's the services provided by the US Government to citizens abroad.
However, it DOES look a lot like a tech product right?
In fact, I consulted for a company in Nairobi that is developing a product very much like this.
If you were to become a member, it would be similar to having dual citizenship.
The key missing feature, of course, is a military. However, if this company were based within an existing country with a sizable military, it would be able to access many of the same benefits as having its own.
Estonia has an e-residency available for purchase today. You never need to have lived in Estonia, but you can purchase the e-residency and launch a virtual business within EU borders. It DOES not, however, give any benefits beyond that. That being said, you could imagine that if that if Estonia, which has about 1/8th the population of NYC, created a true e-citizenship, it would be quite a hit. They could probably make a lot of money. They could still use the same checks they currently use when awarding citizenship. Perhaps they require an annual tax regardless of residency and, in fact, might not even grant automatic residency in Estonia. But people would still line up to pay them big bucks to get the consular services it would include.
Then at that point, why not just have a private company do all that? No need to build roads if nobody is ever gonna live in your country. No need to enforce laws— you can rely on existing countries for that. I guess it would be international travel as a service. You could have competing companies in the "consular services" space. Would we have the same nationalistic pride regarding these quasi-countries as we do towards our existing nations?
Anyway, I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons for why there aren't countries that do the job of the state department. But also, we do have private companies that do the job of NASA now, so who knows, maybe one day.
Ep 57: Digital Nationalism