The nation-state's days as the apex of power in the world are almost over!
If you're paying attention to the US-EU spat over online censorship jurisdiction, you'll see that we're in the final days of geography-based governments, democratically-elected or otherwise, being the strongest power unit in the world.
Now, tech and business empires are starting to take over, and we're seeing the old systems fighting for control against the new.
Here's some things to consider:
👨💻Tech lords are more powerful than some countries
If you compare company revenue, the empires of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos exceed the GDP of many smaller countries like Slovakia or Greece, or even Chile and Finland in the case of Amazon.
They have intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, thousands of satellites, fleets of armored vehicles, massive communications and propaganda infrastructure, and more.
Pavel Durov's personally-owned Telegram empire boasts a billion users. It has provided valuable infrastructure for revolutions, and countries like Russia have been powerless to shut it down.
Nation-states obviously have a lot more "hard power" in terms of military and police, and revenue streams obtained by coercion rather than voluntarily, but things are shifting fast.
🌎Commerce is digital and global
Before, you had to find work wherever you lived, and had to be subjected to the laws and constraints of that geography.
Now, anyone can work for a company anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world, meaning that as long as you can travel and have an internet connection, you have no geographic limitations.
We're seeing the digital nomad movement continue to grow globally, and some countries, such as Portugal and Dubai, have made explicit overtures to digital nomads in the form of low-tax environments.
🕴️♂️Even politicians are moguls now
As we see from Trump, a business and media giant circumvented the typical political process to run the most powerful nation-state in the world, despite the political systems trying everything they could to stop him.
He has made many notable departures from traditional political practice such as operating more from his personal residence than the White House, involving his family empire, blurring the lines between his own business and that of the US government.
Trump is a transitional figure: he's one of the first business moguls to arise to nation-state levels of global influence, but he still got that way by joining the government in the end.
His rise enabled the rise of the next generation of leaders like Musk, who hold no direct political power, but whose influence could rival, or even eclipse, that of Trump, who has the most powerful nation-state in the world behind him.
💰Companies are better than governments... for now
This shift from being primarily a US citizen to an Amazon Prime member is mostly a massive improvement... for the moment.
Governments are awful: they lock you in at birth, take your money by force, throw you in prison if you disobey, and try to extort you if you ever decide to leave. They have no incentive to make anyone actually happy outside of the popularity contest called an "election" every few years.
The EU's slide into totalitarianism and anti-business practices is a great example of this. No one wanted this. No one's happier or better off. But because the right people managed to create and maneuver through a bureaucratic system, they can use guns to shut up anyone who disagrees.
In stark contrast, business empires are funded voluntarily, by making billions of customers satisfied enough to voluntarily pay them. Their funding sources are much more fragile and sensitive to the needs of the people, because they can't compel anyone to pay them by force. Such an upgrade!
However, the risk still lies in what was the government's specialty: force.
Business empires flourished because they couldn't use force. But what happens when they decide they can? What if they start doing the same things governments did, only without a mass of technicalities such as rule of law or due process before bringing out the guns?
🌐Decentralization is the way forward
The only way to truly secure our future is to decentralize.
Build as much as we can on decentralized, censorship-resistant, permissionless neutral architecture.
Letting the tech lords of today rule the world seems fine for now, but it gives very few individuals massive power to become the evil that they sought to replace.
Decentralized tech is how we benefit from this market-based customer-first approach to new structures of influence without risking ending up in the same situation we're in right now.