
Estonia wants to become a 'country as a service' - sdabdoub
http://www.businessinsider.com/interview-with-estonia-cio-taavi-kotka-2016-4
======
legitster
Estonia is such an interesting country. Story is that after the fall of
communism they built, their entire economic model off of Milton Friedman's
"Free to Choose" book, having relatively little knowledge of any economics.
This lead to some very interesting successes as a post-communist nation,
especially considering Free to Choose was likely a banned book just a few
years before. It sounds like they are going even further to the right and
experimenting with some of the ideas from Anarcho-capitalism.

Bully for them. It's been working for them in the past, and it's nice to see a
government that (at least seems) to have their act together trying out some
weird and out there stuff.

------
mattmanser
Seems like it'll be a non-starter for most sane businesses given the insane
reporting requirements.

 _we started to ask companies to give us more data. The reason is we wanted to
get rid of fraud. Currently, all the companies in Estonia are declaring their
B2B deals. If I’m a company and you’re a company and I buy something off you
and it’s more than €1,000, we both have to declare it_

~~~
reustle
How is this insane? It's just about keeping very clear logs of the
transactions, right? I's not like in the US they don't know where my money
transfers are coming from.

~~~
mattmanser
What business is it of a government what I spend money on?

~~~
wodenokoto
It's their tax business.

~~~
tyingq
It's unusual for a government to ask for recordings of individual
transactions. Tax forms tend to ask for aggregate numbers on quarterly or
yearly boundaries.

~~~
superuser2
Yes, but you are required to retain much more detailed records and produce
them upon request.

~~~
tyingq
In unusual circumstances, like an audit perhaps. Many small businesses go
their entire existence without sharing detail level transactions with the
government.

So, when it's proposed, it's unusual, and is worthy of concern.

------
natchiketa
From
[https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/](https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/)

 _e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence or right
of entry to Estonia or to the European Union. The e-Resident smart ID card is
not a physical identification or a travel document, and does not display a
photo._

~~~
wmf
It's like they chose the second most misleading name they could think of (#1
being "e-citizen").

------
tzaman
Imagine this becoming a thing. Where anyone could eventually become Estonia's
resident with all the rights (and of course responsibilities) equal to the
people actually living there. Once other nations would follow, then the
borders would truly start to disappear because it wouldn't really matter where
you are located. No more us and them, just people of the earth.

I know it's way too optimistic and this solution probably introduces just as
many problems as it solves, but still, one is allowed to dream, right?

~~~
qaq
Well tax laws apply to you based on your tax residence and your citizenship so
this has very limited benefits if you are already living in a western country.
Plus due to all the anti money laundering rules you will have tough time
opening a bank account remotely.

~~~
nordify
Actually, Estonia just passed a law which will allow remote bank account
opening for all e-residents.

~~~
qaq
Passing a law and being able to implement it are 2 different things. If US
decides to put pressure on banks they will comply.

------
brianbreslin
Did businessinsider just run an article about what was an april fools joke?

[http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a-
servi...](http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a-service-due-
soon-but-not-on-april-1/)

[https://countryos.com/](https://countryos.com/)

~~~
neopallium
The article is about [https://www.leapin.eu/](https://www.leapin.eu/) and
[https://e-estonia.com/](https://e-estonia.com/)

Those two sites don't seem like an april fools jokes.

------
SyneRyder
Estonia's E-Residency program has gotten a few mentions on HN before, at one
point they actually replied to some of the comments here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604)

And Kaspar Korjus, director of the E-Residency program, gave an AMA over on
the Digital Nomad forum a few months ago:

[https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s-
e-r...](https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s-e-residency-
program-ama/4769)

------
kfk
Interesting, though physical residency must come in at some point, otherwise
who pays taxes for the country you actually live in? But hey, if they start
making good laws, I'd move there, as European it's very easy. But good laws
means also lower taxes and a decent healthcare at decent prices.

~~~
GordonS
> But good laws means ... decent healthcare at decent prices

I'd say it means decent healthcare, universally free of charge.

~~~
kfk
For cancer yes, but for a back pain? It's very hard to make universal
healthcare because universal healthcare is a very subjective term. The only
way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance plans and
then make sure that what's not covered is priced honestly.

~~~
GordonS
> For cancer yes, but for a back pain

Yes. Someone shouldn't have to suffer in pain because they work a low paid
job, or are unemployed.

> The only way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance
> plans

It's not the only way. The other way is for our taxes to foot the bill, as we
do in the UK with the NHS.

The NHS is _far_ from perfect, with long waiting lists and varying levels of
care depending on your location - but it works, and provides universal
healthcare to the whole of the UK.

~~~
kfk
Well, I have never seen a healthcare system that works well for non-deadly
issues like back pain and I have lived in Italy, Denmark and Germany. Also, at
the end of the day somebody has to pay the bill, so either you pay with taxes
or someone else has to pay yours with his taxes. Considering population is
getting older, people that can pay your healthcare bills are going to be
scarcer and scarcer. From a practical standpoint, what you want is
unattainable. If we focus on the right stuff, instead, we can make sure that
we are all better off, while right now public healthcare is a joke and people
end up paying the same thing 2 times (first public healthcare insurance,
second the private doctor).

~~~
Retric
IMO, the real goal should not simply be triage. 'Saving lives' is a huge part
of why healthcare costs keep increasing. If you focus on quality of life
things like late stage Cancer become lower priority's.

PS: If we spent 5% as much on back pain research as we have on Cancer there
would likely be a range of viable treatments for most issues.

------
Bartweiss
Given the long history of flags of convenience and purchasable citizenship in
tax havens, something like this seems bound to be attempted eventually. If it
takes off, it'll be curious to see how hard the pushback is.

~~~
gamblor956
Their doesn't need to be pushback. Every country that has an income tax taxes
its residents, whether or not they are citizens.

------
gesman
Not too many in silicon valley can claim that:

... He adds: "I have been like a kid in a candy store. I have lots of
investment money and full political support."

