Thread by @tomaspueyo

The end of nation-states is coming.
Internet and Blockchain will bankrupt them, by distributing its power to individuals, corporations, supra-national entities, and distributed organizations.

Just at the moment when they need more $ than ever
Thread 🧵

Picture this:

Why?
1. Individuals have + power.
They can access all the info in the world, and reach everybody in the world. The only thing they need is good, catchy ideas.

A single person, Satoshi Nakamoto changed the world with a pseudonym with their Bitcoin paper.

QAnon did the same

Even a random guy like me can come out of nowhere, read scientific papers in his spare time, and write articles in sweatpants that end up read by tens of millions of people and influence the policies of dozens of countries.

Impossible just 20 years ago.

Up till then, it was broadcasters who had the power to dictate thought, and the agenda of broadcasters was heavily influenced by the government.

2. Multinational Companies
As big tech companies grow, they replace lots of local businesses and concentrate their wealth in a few ppl

Well exemplified by the travel industry

You can see the shift in the tone companies use.

And the tech they build is going to keep undermining their power.

3. Blockchain eliminates gatekeepers through decentralization

How did it work until now? The gov was always the ultimate gatekeeper

But Blockchain—the tech, and more importantly, its culture—kill this. You don't need a central gatekeeper when the community can achieve a better outcome with less red tape and corruption.

4. Supranational entities
The history of the world shows that political scope grows to manage the size of the problems.

We now have global problems. And so we will have global orgs to solve them,

US, EU, WHO, WTO, IMF, WB... all are supranational organizations that emerged to solve pbms they couldn't solve alone.

The failure of the WHO during the pandemic only was news because of how sorely needed the organism was.

1. Individuals
2. Corporations
3. Blockchain
4. Supranational Entities

All will take away power away from the nation-state

As they do, a new class emerges. This is the way we should understand the Somewheres vs. Anywheres.

The Somewheres are bound to the nation-state. The anywheres aren't.

This will be accelerated by the emergence of the Lingua Franca that will remain at the top forever: English (unless we invent quickly a reliable universal auto-translator)
unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/should-every…

This loss of sovereignty happens just at the time when the Nation-State goes broke because its income goes down due to corporate taxation, individual taxation, and money printing limitation:

1. Corporate taxation is much harder when companies are fully remote.
It's easy to tax a mine.
It's harder to tax a pharma company that can move its revenue around the world. At least they have a headquarters.

What if you eliminate the headquarters? remote work does this

This is how we should be reading Biden's attempt to fix a global minimum tax to all governments. But so far only 130/195 have agreed. And look who disagrees:

Ireland is the 2nd richest country in the EU per capita. That comes mostly from their corporate tax strategy. Do you think Ireland is eager to lose their competitive advantage?

Oh, the EU needs unanimity on this vote.
We'll see what happens in October.

2. Individual taxation
Becomes much harder when there's remote work and ppl can shop around to the most compelling tax system.

Countries have noticed this and are competing for their taxes.

Obviously, taxing is even harder when ppl start using cryptocurrencies.

Crypto has another impact on govs' financing: they can't print money as much

3. Money Printing Reduced
Govs have been pretty happy printing money to finance themselves

Which has made lots of people rich from the stock market... by making poor those who held cash through inflation

As a result BTC is growing

The more cryptocurrencies ppl hold, the less countries can print money and hope it doesn't lead to inflation

And costs are increasing due to the demographic ticking bomb.

1. We don't have children

2. But we live much longer

3. As a result, every retiree is supported by fewer and fewer workers

4. So the govt debt increases

Which means more interest payments... while costs of old age benefits grow. Today, 20% of gov spending is dedicated to that. What will happen when it doubles?

So:
A. Less power for nation-states
B. At a time when their income dwindles
C. But also, when their costs increase
--> Nation-states will go bankrupt. Something else will replace them.

We shouldn't be surprised. This is what happened to the Church in 1500 when the printing press appeared. Or to chiefdoms when writing appeared.

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/internet-blo…

Does it make sense to you? Tell me what you think!
Many more details in today's article
unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-end-of-n…

What will replace nation-states? I'll go deep into that in a future article. Follow here and subscribe to the newsletter to read it

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