decentralising the nation state

 

documenting citizenship can be difficult during interesting times, and generally, historically, at any given time, somewhere on earth, people are living through just that challenge.

in speculative fiction, (e.g. snow crash) we've seen the idea of decentralized nations show up quite often.

some states have also taken extreme measures to decentralize their digital citizen data (estonia) and even replicate/distribute it over servers in other nations for safe keeping (backup, in case of invasion).

however, why don't we take this a step further into the future and the past. everyone is the result of a diaspora. at some point, humans emerged from the savannah in east africa and dispersed over the planet in multiple waves, sometimes displacing earlier waves. everyone is part of some group of displaced people from the past. How about we build on this to recognize these groups as they happen, and take the hint that nation states are not places forever (or ever)but just the collective illusion by the current occupants of some approximate locus. we could pre-empt id problems by pre-fetching copies of digital citiezenship (for example) - or "sending ahead" to care-of early "settlers" - we could have safe keeping of our personhood by people that we trust, and trust us.

many asylum seekers (e.g. in the UK, 70% of arrivals) chose to go to a particular place (not randomly) and are successful because they not only have a reason to leave some source (danger of death) but also have an affinity for the destination (family, place to live, work etc). So we should formalise this - I am sure there are informal protocols that people with the resources have (when worried about possible rogue state/pograms etc, people sew their jewelry and money into their kids clothers and send them ahead. people open bank accounts in safe places and send money there and copies of essential documentation, and so on). 

Why not build a decentralised system that "just does this" - perhaps this could be based in the tech that mastodon and matrix have built (or indeed, their earlier precursor, aptly named Diaspora )...

It seems that there could be some legal barriers, and also clearly, many people would need to be told about possible rights to such a system & associated values.....that of course would be where most of the challenges would lie, not in the technology, which we already pretty much know how to build, due to the examples above..