21 KiB
[D] [MK] What can you do with a square meter country?
-
Author: u/None *
-
URL:
-
Score: 35
-
Created: 2017-01-24T04:46:04
Post:
[removed]
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+27] (an hour later)
Data haven. Set up a server in your country. It is outside of the enclosing nation and therefore not subject to their laws. Host information that people from the enclosing nation don't want to have in a server their own country can legally get at.
Host services on your data haven that are not legal in the enclosing nation. Prostitution solicitation is the first one that springs to mind.
Open up an extranational (online-only) bank for people to hide their money in. Think Cayman Islands.
Incorporate companies under laws more generous than those of the enclosing nation.
u/LeifCarrotson [+25] (6 hours later)
Good luck convincing the surrounding country to maintain your Internet and power connections.
u/ricree [+5] (10 hours later)
Satellite internet exists, although latency isn't great and I'm not sure the dish can fit in a square meter.
Good luck running all that off of solar, though. (Really tall column covered in panels and stuffed with batteries, with the dish on top?)
u/LeifCarrotson [+6] (11 hours later)
The foundation, structure, and elevator for this tall column is going to be tricky. Can you climb a ladder on the outside? Or is that violating the host country's airspace? Where are you going to put the dirt?
A 20x20m space would be doable. But 1m is not human-scale.
u/None [+2] (11 hours later)
I mean, you can buy electricity from the enclosing country.
u/ricree [+6] (11 hours later)
The constraint here is that the surrounding country might cut access, but won't violate sovereignty. So the goal here is to have a setup that is as self sufficient as possible, and that means being as off grid as possible.
(Of course, they can always just set up a big curtain, so it's still a pretty thin protection)
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Buy land around your country. It would be hard to cut access between your property and your country.
u/Draconomial [+3] Sunshine Regiment (2 days later)
No, it really wouldn't. There are people who live outside Russia who suddenly find their homes inside Russia all the time. Land ownership doesn't stop border creep or national border enforcement.
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (12 hours later)
(Really tall column covered in panels and stuffed with batteries, with the dish on top?)
And you get the components to build it using perfectly accurate air drops, hopefully, since the surrounding country can easily block your imports.
u/ricree [+6] (12 hours later)
I'm assuming that you have unrestricted access at some point early on, but have to plan on potentially being cut off at any moment.
It's more than a bit contrived, but so is the entire scenario. Some silliness is to be expected.
u/Roxolan [+18] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (8 hours later)
Host information that people from the enclosing nation don't want to have in a server their own country can legally get at.
This, but for other countries, not for the enclosing one. That's the one country you absolutely cannot afford to piss off, because they have a thousand ways to shut you down without even trying.
u/vakusdrake [+2] (19 hours later)
If it's not illegal for the country surrounding you then what exactly is the point of putting the servers in the country?
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (20 hours later)
You'd have to find something that the host country leadership either wants to do or doesn't care about.
If it's the former, you essentially become a puppet state of the host country, since it has so much leverage over you.
As for the later, I don't know enough about international politics to give an example I'm confident about. Maybe there are countries that don't give a crap about e.g. piracy but are forced to give a crap by international treaties?
u/vakusdrake [+3] (20 hours later)
Yeah I can see your point, this strategies effectiveness is limited by the host government. So you would want to ideally be in a country that will accept bribes to not cut your power or whatever for breaking laws they don't care too much about and also isn't too politically aggressive so they don't try too hard to leverage you.
Also you probably want a country that isn't too unstable so you don't have to worry about regime changes messing up your plans, and is safe enough not to have to worry so much about non-state actors in invading you.
u/JackStargazer [+3] Primordial Apologist (3 days later)
Put your 1 square meter on an oceanic coast.
If you can, instead of making it an actual square meter, make it a 10 centimetres thick and 100 meters wide. Still 1 square meter.
Thanks to how the law of the sea works, your coastline projects a set of national waters out into the ocean to a range of 12 miles at a minimum.
You also own all the natural resources on the seabed on that area, and your laws apply to that area. Other boats can cross it on the way through, but must obey your laws.
Choose an area near a transatlantic data cable, with good tidal / solar/ wind power options.
Now fill in some of that area to make an artificial island or two. Put your data center there.
While you're at it, build one of those fancy artificial lily pad style green islands.
There, I just hacked the system to up your land area by a factor of several thousand.
u/HelperBot_ [+2] (3 days later)
Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_sea
^HelperBot ^v1.1 ^/r/HelperBot_ ^I ^am ^a ^bot. ^Please ^message ^/u/swim1929 ^with ^any ^feedback ^and/or ^hate. ^Counter: ^23689
u/IvorTheEngine [+22] (4 hours later)
You could set up as a corporate tax haven. Companies can be officially based in your country, where they only have to pay you a tiny amount of tax on their profits. They save millions, and even a tiny percentage of millions is enough to make you rich.
And you could sell T-shirts to the anti-globalization protesters who want to camp in your country to protest your behavior.
u/Afforess [+16] Hermione Did Nothing Wrong (11 hours later)
Short term: Begin requesting embassies with all world governments. Embassies are granted land that are in effect, owned by their sponsor government, so this is a quick way to increase your land holdings. An embassy even on a measly 0.5 acre plot of land is ~2000 sq meters, so every successful embassy request represents approximately a > 2000% increase of your original land holdings.
Medium Term: Act as a asylum/defender of innocents/charity cause and receive non-profit donation status in other countries. Use your embassies as a way to shelter wrongly convicted/suspected foreigners from their host nation.
Long Term: Use charity proceeds and whatever funds can be acquired to create a lunar/mars/space colony. Earth is a long-term dead end, military conquest of land being non-viable due to WMD's and your lack of them. Space represents the only possible frontier to expand into.
u/SpeakKindly [+4] (12 hours later)
Are embassy requests generally mutual? You might have a hard time granting other governments an embassy inside your own country.
u/Afforess [+5] Hermione Did Nothing Wrong (12 hours later)
No they don't have to be. If Bilateral embassies are desired, embassies for the other nation could be rented from commercial property in their own nation. Embassies need not be granted extraterritorial land, and so this could be used to avoid losing any land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission#Extraterritoriality
u/Evan_Th [+11] Sunshine Regiment (3 hours later)
Congratulations; you now have sovereign immunity and cannot be prosecuted by anyone ^(except the International Court of Justice) for anything. You can, however, be expelled from any nation ^(except your own square meter) at the discretion of the executive.
Also, you can give diplomatic immunity to just about anyone. If you want, you can sell it for large
bribesgifts. Of course, do it to the wrong people, and they just might end up living on your square meter.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+26] (2 minutes later)
Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a map corresponding to nothing in the territory.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+16] Godric Gryffindor (13 hours later)
You could say the same thing about a truck full of twenty-dollar bills. Artifacts of the grand consensual hallucination that is social reality can be incredibly valuable.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+5] (14 hours later)
I'm saying this in reference to "micronations", whose claims of sovereignty are dubious at best. Typically, they cling to the idea that their home country acknowledges their independence by choosing to tolerate them. In truth, they are simply so tiny and unimportant that they are beneath their home country's notice. If they attempted to leverage their "nation" to do anything important, they would be quickly and easily crushed.
u/Evan_Th [+11] Sunshine Regiment (14 hours later)
which is internationally recognized as its own country.
You have non-member observer status in the UN
Sounds a whole lot different than micronations.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+3] (15 hours later)
Since the scenario was otherwise entirely grounded in reality, I ignored these details and assumed that they were overestimates of the micronation's likely influence, as micronations tend to overestimate their influence.
u/TBestIG [+7] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (18 hours later)
I actually added those in BECAUSE of micronations. None that I'm aware of have amounted to anything substantial, so I wanted to give people at least something to work with.
u/Evan_Th [+6] Sunshine Regiment (15 hours later)
Ah, I guess I can see where you're coming from. I'm curious, though - among their other pretensions, have any micronations actually claimed UN observer status?
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+6] (15 hours later)
One has announced an intention to join, but I haven't found any under the delusion that they're already recognized by the UN. Seems within the realm of possibility, though - it's only one step removed from the nigh-universal delusion that they're recognized by their home country.
u/Evan_Th [+8] Sunshine Regiment (15 hours later)
"We have UN observer status!"
(Reality: The guy running the micronation showed up at the General Assembly visitors' gallery once. To observe, right?)
u/Iconochasm [+5] (a day later)
It seemed to me that the spirit of the question was more along the lines of "How would you munchkin just the technical benefits of being a country, with no space, resources, population". In which case the answer is to build a 1mx1mx1000m server and start churning out legally-sketchy financial and legal products.
u/TBestIG [+3] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (12 minutes later)
You could sell blank pieces of paper as maps
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+10] Godric Gryffindor (13 hours later)
This is worth trillions in smart hands if other countries treat you as a country. Sane business laws and a computer running a bank, followed eventually by cruise ships.
u/Geminii27 [+7] (7 hours later)
Assuming that the international community not only recognizes you but will continue to act as if you are a fully operational country and not just completely ignorable, you could use your international immunity as a diplomatic shield and declaration that other countries' laws did not apply to you, both for yourself and to any other legal entity you may choose to grant whatever rights to.
This means you can shelter internationally wanted persons (presumably in embassies rather than in a stand-on-each-others'-shoulders tower in your actual homeland). You could incorporate an unlimited number of companies and other legal and taxation structures. You could launder money, set up data havens, issue your own merch (stamps, flags, history books), have legal structures which allow external legal entities to funnel money and resources through you without trace (at least in theory).
You could send international observers and journalists to anywhere at any time. If you had the resources, you could interfere in wars, spy on other countries and people, technically wage war. Claim islands in the middle of nowhere (and their surrounding waters) as your territory. Probably participate in the Olympics.
In the end, it's not about how much land you own, it's about how much power you wield, either overtly or covertly. Land is just a convenient placeholder to mark your legal jurisdiction as recognized by other national-scale entities.
u/Frommerman [+3] (13 hours later)
Given that The City of London is a real place that exists, this is both totally doable and exactly what you should do.
u/HelperBot_ [+4] (13 hours later)
Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London
^HelperBot ^v1.1 ^/r/HelperBot_ ^I ^am ^a ^bot. ^Please ^message ^/u/swim1929 ^with ^any ^feedback ^and/or ^hate. ^Counter: ^22260
u/Frommerman [+1] (13 hours later)
Thanks, Helper Bot! :)
u/AE-lith [+7] (8 hours later)
If you are internationally recognized as a country, you should be able to become full member of the UN. Since that's not the case, either apply for membership or petition to enter with a Security Council ally to support your claim. (How to get allies will become evident in a moment).
Sell your vote at the General Assembly to the best offering coalition.
u/Iydak [+6] (18 minutes later)
what are the rules regarding immigration from this country into the surrounding country? Would citizens of your country (possibly including you) have to get a work permit to work in the surrounding country? Could you dodge taxes by living in a tent in this square meter? what about just declaring that you live there? If things worked out, you could allow people to "immigrate" to your country, thus allowing them to avoid taxes, and then put in place your own (lower) tax. ...Though that might result getting on the surrounding country's bad side.
u/TBestIG [+3] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (21 minutes later)
The surrounding country doesn't restrict visitation. To immigrate would require the ability to live in the square meter of land for an extended period of time, so that's not an issue for the moment. Tax evasion would be the same way. If by some miracle you manage to expand your territory these start becoming available options. The country you're within looks on you favorably but if you start doing shady things relations will get a little more frosty.
u/None [+6] (6 hours later)
[deleted]
u/TBestIG [+1] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (7 hours later)
Oh, I didn't know that.
u/vshvsh [+4] (9 hours later)
You don't have much chance to leverage your physical territory, but you've got a lot of legal pull. You can make yourself tax heaven, trade passports to shady people. You can sell tickets to UN sessions. If position of your country is inconvenient in some ways to surrounding polity, you can probably trade it for a bigger patch of land in more convenient area and leverage the physical territory. Also depending on surrounding country laws you can establish a small casino. Most of it would be situated in surrounding country and will be just a fancy hotel/restaurant and you will install a single gambling contraption per floor over your territory.
u/Jiro_T [+4] (11 hours later)
the country you are in does not care that you've taken some of their land, unless you get on their bad side.
You need to be more specific about what "get on their bad side" means. For reasonable definitions of "get on their bad side" it may mean that you basically don't have your own country after all (for instance, if not paying taxes to the country you are in counts as getting on their bad side).
Also, most of the exploits described would require hiring an international relations lawyer and/or a diplomat, since you probably aren't educated in the fine points of diplomatic immunity, border control, trade agreements, treaties, arguing at the UN, etc.
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (12 hours later)
It does seem like if you want to do anything at all (beyond selling t-shirts and novelty passports), you have to basically become a puppet of the host country, to be used for their legal schemes. Well-paid sinecure, probably, but you can forget about your libertarian dreams.
u/MonstrousBird [+4] (13 hours later)
Sell top level domain names, and since you get to pick your country name you could chose something that will sell, though maybe not as well as .tv
Declare your own home to be the embassy of your country (or sell domain names and passports first and buy a better one)
I don't think secure data storage could be very secure if you can't defend your server from random thieves. How do you make an impregnable 1m fortress? Thick walls would eat your real estate real fast and even then a determined thief with a digger could probably knock it down unless you have cooperation from someone in the host country. In fact you might be better off to build your embassy AROUND your country :-)
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (7 hours later)
Take notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River
u/Evan_Th [+3] Sunshine Regiment (14 hours later)
After a little more thought, here're some more ways to monetize being the king of your own country:
Contract with some mint somewhere; establish your own fiat currency. I don't see how any investor would be interested, but you can at least sell coins to collectors.
Contract with some printer; sell stamps to collectors. Maybe look into concluding some treaty so they can actually be used to mail letters.
Establish a system of nobility, and sell titles. They don't even need to mean anything, but if you want, you can also establish a House of Lords that gets some input into what designs go on the stamps and coins.
Also, since you have sovereign immunity, you don't need to pay any parking tickets ever.
It wouldn't be a consistent income, and it'd obviously depend on how you price the titles of nobility, but I think you could at least earn several thousand dollars a year doing this.
u/None [+2] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
u/TBestIG [+5] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (7 hours later)
Flat
u/zhanyin [+2] (a day later)
Tax and legal haven. Cybercriminals headquarter in Russia because unless they have Russian victims it isn't a crime there. Corporations are incorporated in Hong Kong because they don't tax transactions where neither party is in Hong Kong. You could exist solely on paper and end up being the most powerful country outside the G8 by simply acting as a collective bargaining unit for businesses.
You won't need to gather tons in tax, nor maintain law and order. So you'd be essentially impossible to beat in this race to the bottom.
[I'd like to clarify the question is what can you do, not what would or should you do.]
u/TBestIG [+1] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (a day later)
At this point you might start getting sanctions from the country around you.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (an hour later)
Set up a server for something computer-related (I can't think of a use, but I'm sure there is one)? Grow and smoke marijuana, or possibly distill alcohol and sell it to minors?
u/monkyyy0 [+1] (a day later)
Partner with a seastead, create an-cap utopia.
u/tomintheconer [+1] (19 hours later)
there are those competitions in which people tap the ground to simulate rain and see how many worms they can charm out. you could set up your country as the centre of this world sport.