Both within and across nations, cities, and city people, often have far more in common with each other than with the rest of their nation. Let us dream a little bigger.īalaji Srinivasan–CEO of Counsyl and 21, partner at Andreessen Horowitz–is doing just that, per this fascinating tweetstorm from February, sampled below and fully available here:Ĭonsider that finest of human inventions: the city. But the EU, the African Union, Mercosur, etc., are still just umbrella organizations of nation-states, still limited by mere geography. This increasing transnationalism seems like an inevitable side effect of the switched networks of IP packets and shipping containers drawing the four corners of our world ever closer together. It is following the lead of South America, which in 2009 adopted Mercosur’s Residence Agreement.
OURWORLD GEM HACKS 2016 FREE
Africa is moving ever closer to free movement among its 54 nations. Its victory was mildly disheartening, in that it exemplified the petty, jealous form of xenophobia incentivized by nation-states.īut it was also a mere blip in the face of the overwhelming larger trend. The nations of Europe joined together long ago into a European Union Brexit is essentially a reactionary backlash against the decline of Westphalia. In fact the Westphalian consensus has been withering away for many years. This in turn is just evidence of how deeply Westphalia has infected the zeitgeist people assume that the only alternative is, basically, no government at all. People tend to assume that those who believe in the end of the nation-state must be hardcore anti-government libertarians. Le Guin was actually talking about capitalism: let’s detour to discuss that for a moment. Their power seems inescapable–but so did the divine right of kings.”
It may be hard to imagine a post-Westphalian world, given how much of our assumptions are built on the deep foundation of that structure but to paraphrase the great Ursula K. That, more than anything else except perhaps your health, is what most describes, and circumscribes, your life.ĭoes this not all seem a little odd and antediluvian to you, in today’s modern, ultra-networked, densely intertwined, post-geographic world? If you were going to redesign the social architecture of our world from scratch, would you begin with the nation-state as your basic building block? Really? Think about it. Oh, you have a green card? A work permit? An entry visa? Those are just other, lesser but still privileged, forms of nation-state membership. If you don’t think that’s true, try being Haitian or Zimbabwean, and see how different that is from your (presumably) rich Western citizenship. They also, in passing, laid the basis for the world as we know it today: one in which almost every scrap of land has been allocated to a “nation-state,” groups of humans defined by geography of all things, membership in which is the fundamental defining factor in human identities around the globe. In 1648, European nobility and aristocrats got together in Westphalia, northwestern Germany, and signed treaties which ended both the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War. But the whole concept of a “country” is a 400-year-old weird hack, riddled with crippling bugs, plagued by contradictions that sharpen each year. That may sound crazy, if you take it as granted that our world must be divided into nations. Why are people who cite videos always wrong?Īs technology advances, a world partitioned into nation-states makes less and less sense.Living and working in a worsening world.
0 kommentar(er)
