Nation-States Are Destined To Be Commercialized
But Is It Good Or Bad For You?
I just read about an up-and-coming messaging app, ToTok. It turns out the popular app that has been downloaded by millions is reportedly a secret United Arab Emirates (UAE) spying tool. The UAE, which blocks western VOIP and messaging apps like WhatsApp, has been spying on its citizens, or users more like it, by disguising itself as a digital corporation. “Although many governments routinely hack citizens’ phones, not many set up an ostensibly legitimate app and simply ask for access to their data,” The Verge reports.
ToTok is just one example of how the misbehaviors of corporations of the past are gradually blurring into the modern-day through technology. William Dalrymple’s Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company explores how the firm, with its military wing, “executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history,” and in doing so points to the dangers of unchecked control of a state or organization by large interest groups. In doing so, the East India Company helped to build a British Empire. Dalrymple thought he was writing a history book, but it seems he has written a pamphlet of the future, stating in an interview with Time Magazine:
“It is about the potential power of corporations. Today, a modern corporation like Google or Facebook doesn’t need to have armies and military regiments like the East India Company did. They are listening to every word we say. And that’s more dangerous than any military.
The Company is a moving target. It starts off in the 17th century as a libertarian dream of pure, unbridled capitalism. But by the end, it has become a sort of public-private partnership that is eventually nationalized and then goes on to become an imperial power. So it is different things at different times, morphing into new forms and shapes.”
The East India Company is one of history’s most significant warnings about the power of corporatism and the ability of corporations to change forms to avoid legislation. Today politicians have publicly voiced concerns, most notably questioning Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook on election interference and voter suppression. Dalrymple recounts, “These are issues which are hugely relevant today and have their origin in the first corporation that engaged in politics, that toppled states, that was engaged in regime change abroad, in corporate bribery and lobbying.”
History has a unique way of repeating itself, especially when nation-states have more reach with less distinct borders due to the rising power of corporations. Technology has always led to increasing centralization, but for the first time, the people have the power to reverse it. The UAE’s ToTok is a clear demonstration that we, citizens, are already transitioning to being a “customer” of the nation-state. Instead of citizens serving the nation-state, nation-states will be serving the customer. And when the government becomes a service, customers can exercise voice or exit to a competitor. It can be as simple as switching between the many video streaming services that are courting your attention and money. There’s a multitude of machines and corporations that we, as customers, interact with on a daily basis that could probably serve us better than our own government.
James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg popularized many of these suggestions as to a possible course of action in The Sovereign Individual. In The Sovereign Individual, published in 1999, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries — the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed “the fourth stage of human society,” will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government. A Sovereign Individual is a person who believes in rights and power for the individual, doesn’t trust the government, and wants more power in the hands of the individual. Davidson and Rees-Mogg, state:
“We believe that the age of the individual economic sovereignty is coming. Just as steel mills, telephone companies, mines, and railways that were once “nationalized” have been rapidly privatized throughout the world, you will soon see the ultimate form of privatization — the sweeping denationalization of the individual. The Sovereign Individual of the new millennium will no longer be an asset of the state, a de facto item on the treasury’s balance sheet. After the transition of the year 2000, denationalized citizens will no longer be citizens as we know them, but customers.”
Davidson and Rees-Mogg continue:
The Information Revolution will destroy the monopoly of power of the nation-state as surely as the Gunpowder Revolution destroyed the church’s monopoly — Like the late-medieval church, the nation-state at the end of the twentieth century is a deeply indebted institution that can no longer pay its way. Its operations are ever more irrelevant and even counterproductive to the prosperity of those who not long ago might have been its staunchest supporters.
Additionally, much of the sovereignty-enabling technology of the Information Age makes it possible to create assets that are outside the reach of many forms of coercion. Davidson and Rees-Mogg describing “cybermoney” or as we might refer to today as cryptocurrency, almost prophetically, state:
“Unique, anonymous, and verifiable, this money will accommodate the largest transactions. It will also be divisible into the tiniest fraction of value. It will be tradable at a keystroke in a multi-trillion-dollar wholesale market without borders.”
In the Information Age, communities will not be territorially bound, and identity will be more closely tied to shared interests than the tyranny of state. Decentralization empowers the Sovereign Individual. Many implications of the shift to the information economy and the commercialization of the nation-state are playing out in real-time. Technologies like bitcoin — a global, non-sovereign, and immutable store of value — will empower small communities that produce more protection for their customers, offer better terms and reward wealth creation.
The upside is evident for the Sovereign Individual, but customers must be sure to keep the corporate powers in check. Some corporations are positioning themselves to potentially form a digital nation and it can have dangerous consequences. Governments are working more with the corporations in a way to move us to this privatized, open border world but at what cost? Surveillance capitalism in China and Iran is widespread. Facebook and other corporations, viewed by some as digital gangsters, are plundering personal information for profit.
India’s subjugation started not with the British government but with a for-profit corporation. Today, citizens are regularly targeted with messaging to reinforce our identity tied to the nation-state, but what happens when citizenship is demystified, and government is commercialized? Well, then all we have to do is look back into history at the rise of the East India Company.
