I've spent the last 6 years living abroad and I noticed there's a lot of great policies in some countries and then not so great ones in others.
If you could take all the good parts of most countries and try to combine them to create a new country, you could have a winner. This is what happened with the United States hundreds of years ago.
Or you could have an amalgamation of different policies that are dependent on conflicting cultural values.
> Is anyone seriously working on starting a new country?
Hm, I don't know if you consider them serious but there's the ongoing Syrian civil war, Boko Haram insurgency, Mali war, etc...
If you haven’t noticed, all territory on the earth is already claimed by a country or agreed to be off-limits by the major powers.
To start a country you would need to engage in war, or get a country to cede it’s territory.
I wonder... Has there ever been an army funded by venture capital?
Defining what "good" means in the context is a vast problem that political philosophy and economics have been trying to understand and state for centuries.
You may be interested in reading about charter cities : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city
United States started with a bloody revolution in order to secede from Britain.
To get some territory for your country, you'd either need a revolution in an existing country or perhaps create an artificial island somewhere in international waters (or a base in space). I don't see any other options.
At this point, it seems only cyberspace might offer some opportunity for political organization beyond the established order, but that itself is doomed , since the physical infrastructure is owned.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland
Every time people try to start a new country from scratch - whether by colonizing some land or a revolution - the results end up completely different to what they hoped or expected, often for the worse. Real lasting change is effected by the long, hard, often unhappy slog. Ask the people who fought for civil rights, or gay rights, or environmentalists - or for that matter, the various conservative groups.
Honestly if you want a new country, start with the one where you live, become an active citizen and do the hard work of showing up and participating. If that's not possible then move to a country where you can make a difference, but still you have to put in the work.
All you need now is a large habitable continent without established countries on it.
Even when countries gain independence, they usually clone a large part of their constitution from the colonizing country. The US of A seems to be a rare exception. But also you see things functioning very different in the US - free speech laws, gun laws, and so on, with their pros and cons.
Edit - I.e. have the citizens of the “guest country” be employees of the guest country.
Some properties:
-It would probably be constrained to the currency of the host country.
-It’s income could be “tax” like a monthly subscription to its “citizens.”
-It would possibly work best if it did have some real assets to back its finances.
-The “warrior class” of the guest country could very well be well-versed lawyers within the host country.
From a more frontier-y first principles approach, I'm not sure you really would be onto a winner. If the USA's own history has taught anyone anything, it's that the cost of settling and forging a new country in this way often comes with distasteful things like ethnic cleaning.
Danny Wallace the British comedian did a whole TV series about this idea
They were popular a while back, but I lost interest when they started becoming officious with silly rules like limiting ages of holders of elected positions. If a majority of people elect an older person or a younger person, then the majority have decided that the person is capable of doing the job, no matter the elected's age.
and
It may be that in our lifetimes we'll see the failure of all or most of the global polities brokering the peace, and then there would be virtually unlimited opportunities for new governance.But I hope not.
Now if you get the USA on your side, you might be able to establish a trading hub somewhere. You'll be getting the protection and also maybe trade deals if you are good enough in foreign diplomacy. This makes you no different than these small islands like Barbados.
The only business, at this point, with no people you can do is either trade, tourism or help tax evasion. You have no infrastructure, no people and building an industry for export is hard with the established players. No one who is established in London (say as a professional surgeon) will move to this deserted island.
Trade will depend on your geographical location. But as you have already guessed, these locations will be highly disputed and sought after by big powers. So you probably won't. Tourism will depend on how nice the place look, but it doesn't create a real economy. Helping foreign companies evade taxes will bring trouble with said countries, so you are going to play international diplomacy while trying to stay behind the US for protection.
tl;dr: Nah.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/05/fugitive-india...