
Startup Country - jeff18
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/startup_country/
======
pg
Deciding everything in advance like that (e.g. banning cash, which could turn
out to break everything) is actually the big co way of doing things, not the
startup way.

A real startup country would start out with few rules and a bunch of early
adopter inhabitants, and they'd figure out what they should do incrementally
in response to the inhabitants' needs. A lot like the early US in other words.

~~~
morbidkk
a lot like what they did in "Atlas Shrugged"

~~~
yummyfajitas
Unfortunately, that only worked because Galt personally selected a small and
virtuous population (recall that Dagny actively tried not to become the
beneficiary of govt subsidies early in the book). In the real world, I don't
think it would be possible to keep rent seekers out.

~~~
roc
In the real world, virtuous vs rent-seeking is most often a matter of timing:
circumstances change, people change with them.

Any society based on constant philosophical adherence across the range of
human circumstances can only work in fiction.

------
randombit
One difficulty here, if the idea is to identify policies that should be
adopted country-wide, is confounding factors. Say you ban cash, and also
introduce a 1984-style police state, and lastly pay for education and health
care for all citizens. Crime drops versus the rest of the country. Is it
because you're living in a police state, or is it because people are well
educated and healthy? This difficulty seems especially problematic when some
top level entity is a priori choosing what the new policies will be, versus
choosing them as reality indicates.

A better system might be to have a number of startup countries, let the people
in them choose what laws they will or will not have, and also allow people to
move easily between countries, so if the policies enacted in one turn out to
suck, people can vote with their feet. And with a large number of countries to
choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the
long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them.

~~~
abstractbill
_And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best
policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have
fifty of them._

I don't get the feeling people _really_ move from state to state for the
politics though. I would guess things like natural resources, weather, and
historical accident play a bigger role.

I'm in California, apparently because Fredrick Terman encouraged a couple of
his students to start a company here [1], and because the place has nice
weather.

[1]: [http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history-
museum-112...](http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history-
museum-112008-presentation)

~~~
rdl
People absolutely do move between states for politics.

People who move directly for political reasons (taxes, regulations, etc.) are
relatively small, but for instance I left California due to California
firearms laws and taxes.

A lot of people move for second-order effects of politics -- there is more new
business activity in Texas than in Louisiana, New Hampshire vs. Vermont, and
in South Dakota than Minnesota, etc. due to government actions, and people
move for those jobs.

------
mustpax
An article in the Atlantic that was posted here "The Politically Incorrect
Guide to Ending Poverty" actually talks about this idea from the lens of
international development. It dwells on the analogy with Hong Kong, and some
city states in Mediaval Europe quite extensively. It's a thought provoking
read, you should check it out here:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-
politi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politically-
incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/)

HN discussion here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429>

------
martey
This seems to be similar to the article from last month's Atlantic Monthly
about Paul Romer's plan to have developed countries run microstates similar to
Hong Kong or Singapore in developing nations.

It was discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429>

~~~
michael_scheibe
Also see <http://www.chartercities.org/> and
<http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html>

------
mseebach
The "perfect and flawless"-model for running states has been _widely_
discredited. These models invariably makes sweeping assumptions about peoples
priorities, which is very hard to do, given how surprisingly different people
are. The resulting flood of compromises either leads to inefficient systems
like the ones we have today, or totalitarian regimes (force people to share
the assumed priorities).

The model of deciding on a few general core values and defending them
rigourously (free speech, equality to the law, right of self determination
etc.) leads to inefficient, yet stable and reasonably prosperous societies.

------
jeremyw
See Patri Friedman's seasteading concept: a multitude of startup countries
where political systems compete and innovate.

<http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro>

------
leif
_"Campaign contributions would be eliminated because all campaigns would
happen on the Internet so that running for office would cost next to
nothing."_

I doubt it. Competition between better and worse campaigns would ensure that
everyone running for office would still want the best campaign managers, and
they would still pay through the nose for that. Just because media purchasing
is thrown out the window doesn't mean there isn't room left for further
(expensive) optimization.

In fact, any system with rules is going to have inefficiencies to be
exploited. In this case, it seems like the biggest one is privacy. The most
well off startup citizens are going to realize they want some privacy back,
and will pay dearly for it (just as the wealthiest currently value their
privacy so highly). This will create a market for elite "privacy engineers"
(think ghost in the shell style), who will be the citizens most in demand.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Heh, that line stood out. Imagine: "Venture capital will be eliminated because
more companies will be started on the Internet, where costs are next to
nothing."

------
smithbits
Ah yes, the second system syndrome. _This_ time we'll get it right.

~~~
arethuza
Going by history the third version doesn't work out too well either.

------
Tawheed
Want to know the only difference between complicated and simple? Between a
startup and Big Co? EDGE CASES -- Your startup (country) will be fine and
perfect as long as you support the basic cases. It's when you start addressing
the nuances, you'll get right back on the path of the parent country.

------
joss82
You don't really need legislative government when you can vote laws directly
(through the internet).

Interesting article.

However, there is a risk of bugs as in any code rewrite, don't you think?

~~~
mseebach
I don't think removing the last shred of accountability from lawmakers while
introducing even more populism is the right way to go.

~~~
notahacker
Exactly - the great think about populism in the form of internet petitions is
that the laws proposed don't actually have to work as intended and the
proponents don't have the responsibility of dealing with the consequences

------
dstorrs
Personally, I think this is the most horrific idea Scott has proposed in a
long time. Police-state surveillance in my bedroom and bathroom?[1] No cash,
meaning no possibility of discreet purchases? Only one option for banking?

This world of his would be lovely right up until humans started occupying it.
But even the slightest bit of corruption would render it a nightmare.

[1] Actually, full surveillance everywhere EXCEPT in the home would be fine
with me...as long as the data feeds are completely public.

------
quanticle
>The entire banking system would be automated. There would be no cash in the
start-up country. You wouldn't need to "apply" for a loan because the virtual
bank would always have a current notion of your credit-worthiness.

Am I the only one who is even slightly troubled by the fact that individuals
could essentially be tracked in real time as a result of this technology? I
mean the Stasi would have loved to have this level of information about their
citizens' activities.

~~~
lincolnq
I know very little about cryptography, but it seems like it would be possible
to construct a system where you authorize the bank to learn only those details
of your credit history which are relevant to its decision.

------
mkramlich
i figured out a while back that the 2 main enablers of political corruption
are (1) the allowing of privacy for politicians, and (2) allowing untracked
economic transactions (cash handed over, etc.). If you could eliminate those
two things it would be much harder for politicians to be corrupt. But it's
easier contemplated than implemented, in part because we have inertia and
power in the hands of people who would not allow it. Also, there is
effectively no "unclaimed" land/sea in the world anymore upon which to start a
new country. And in the US, at least, it is considered a high crime for anyone
to band together and split off forming a new country (consider Lincoln and the
US Civil War). You could still try to start a new country somewhere, but you'd
probably need a lot of military power to defend it from existing countries,
their puppet forces, and pirates.

To this day I still think it's amusing that we supposedly live in The Land of
the Free (TM) but we can't "fork" a piece of the US off, even a tiny piece of
it that we personally inhabit, and make a new country.

~~~
narrator
I think the main enabler of political corruption is politicians aren't paid
enough. In the U.S, they oversee trillion dollar budgets yet are paid less
than $100,000. It's a recipe for corruption. Politicians in Singapore pay
themselves a few million dollars annually and Transparency international rates
Singapore as the 3rd least corrupt country in the world.

~~~
_delirium
While the U.S. salaries aren't millions of dollars, they're definitely over
$100,000 these days, at least for federal office. Senators and Congressmen get
$174,000/yr, Supreme Court Justices get $200,000, the Vice President gets
$227,000, and the President gets $400,000. They all get very generous
benefits, pension packages, and expense reimbursements as well.

------
wdewind
To me this illustrates one of the biggest weaknesses America has to BRIC. All
of those countries have some form of an extraordinarily underregulated place
within their borders as well as places with the money and efficiency of the
US, and while these places allow for human rights violations, they also allow
for extraordinary growth and innovation. They are able to get the best of both
worlds.

The prime example is Rio, with it's slums right next door to giant
skyscrapers. The slums act like incubators, and when innovation happens the
cities eat it up. While the vast majority of the people trying to create
businesses within the slums fail, the effects of the failures are absorbed
back into the slums, while the cities scale the successes. This may keep the
slums poor, but this juxtaposition (among many other factors) seems to be
doing wonders for Brazil's economy.

~~~
redrobot5050
>The slums act like incubators

Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that. 1 in 3 people in Rio live in those
slums. Even Rio's socialists want god "to step in and clean up this mess",
because they view the slum inhabitants as less than human and deserving of
their fate. The poverty there is so bad people break into houses of
vacationing families and steal everything: copper pipe, kitchen sink,
floorboard -- the freaking floorboards -- because they're useful in improving
life in the slums.

My friend spent 4 months there, and had to travel through the slums almost
daily. He's concluded that poverty -- real poverty like what he's witnessed
with his own eyes -- doesn't exist in the U.S.

Here's a tip: Brazil's economy is doing well because it is not oil-dependent,
it exports oil, it has no social safety net, and its doing whatever it can to
attract foreign investment. The slums have nothing to do with, except as a
refuge for those who are left behind by the economy.

~~~
michaelkeenan
The needless snarkiness ("Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that...Here's a
tip") detracts from this comment. It would be more persuasive without it,
because when you include status-lowering attacks with your factual counter-
arguments, your opponent can't agree with you without lowering zir status.

~~~
jbooth
Sometimes people who are utterly, utterly clueless about how the other half
lives need a wakeup call.

~~~
michaelkeenan
If a wakeup call drives a clueless person further into their clueless
position, it's the last thing they need. What they need is a persuasive
argument with an escape route where they can concede while losing minimal
status.

It's difficult to see it from the other side. When we see a status attack
favoring a position we agree with, it feels like a righteous smiting of the
enemy. But it doesn't have the effect we intuitively think it does.

~~~
jbooth
Sometimes, offensive comments need to be called out as offensive. Had the
person been talking about, say, post-Katrina New Orleans as an "incubator for
innovation" they'd be downmodded to oblivion.

~~~
michaelkeenan
I suppose I am assuming that the purpose of a discussion on HN is truth-
seeking. If we are also enforcing social norms, then it makes sense to attack
the status of those who propose offensive things.

Enforcing social norms must come at the expense of truth-seeking though, and I
think truth-seeking is more important. Anyone can easily think of examples
from history where offensive opinions turned out to be correct, and there are
sure to be views today which are regarded as offensive and are also correct.

Paul Graham wrote about this in What You Can't Say:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

Edit: We have drifted from the original topic somewhat. The snarkiness I
objected to wasn't calling out his opponent as offensive. It was just
snarkiness.

------
stretchwithme
Startup countries are a great idea. Old governments are patched and repatched
to meet each new wave of lobbyists.

Th key is not starting over but establishing mechanisms that require
governments to compete and that enable customers to walk away if they aren't
happy.

The US started out with 50 competitive states whose overall security was
protected by a tiny federal government that did little more than manage the
border and the currency. The states did everything else.

If you dislike your state, you just move to another one. WE need MORE of that.
We need SMALLER states with more intense competition.

The naysayers will tell you its a crazy patchwork quilt. They want one set of
rules, presumably for all human beings ultimately with no innovation or
competition. The dream of all statists. They trumpet diversity in biology, but
scorn it in human life.

~~~
ido
Actually, didn't it start with 13 states?

~~~
ovi256
Don't break his rosy dreams.

------
rfreytag
Might as well designate existing metropolitan areas as Startup Countries -
less dislocation. There also would be a ready supply of lawyers eager to
startup a new legal system as well.

Or perhaps do this around Western Nebraska where are some of the poorest
counties in the USA.

------
justinph
This sounds like a place that would not be fun to live or work in. Part of the
vibrancy of cities and countries is that there is history and, yes,
inefficiency.

------
jacoblyles
Similar in spirit to <http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html>

------
gdee
Here's a nice book about, among other things, a similar country:
<http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

