{"id":680,"date":"2022-09-08T10:15:49","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T10:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/?p=680"},"modified":"2022-09-10T15:50:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T15:50:10","slug":"digital-nomads-have-rejected-the-office-and-now-want-to-replace-the-nation-state-but-there-is-a-darker-side-to-this-quest-for-global-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/index.php\/digital-nomads-have-rejected-the-office-and-now-want-to-replace-the-nation-state-but-there-is-a-darker-side-to-this-quest-for-global-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital nomads have rejected the office and now want to replace the nation state. But there is a darker side to this quest for global\u00a0freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Cook<\/a>, UCL<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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A \u2018network state\u2019 is ideologically aligned but geographically decentralised. The people are spread around the world in clusters of varying size, but their hearts are in one place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In June 2022 Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, published an ebook entitled The Network State: How To Start a New Country<\/a>. It is the latest in a flurry of utopian visions by self-styled digital visionaries, crypto believers and web 3.0 evangelists who are lining up to declare the death of the traditional concept of countries and nationhood. <\/p>\n

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In one case, a new \u201cvirtual\u201d country is already in development. \u201cThe nation state is outdated \u2013 it\u2019s based on 19th-century thinking, and we aim to upend all of that,\u201d Lauren Razavi tells me over Zoom from a bustling co-working space.<\/p>\n

Razavi is the executive director of Plumia<\/a>, a self-proclaimed \u201cmoonshot mission\u201d to build an internet country for digital nomads. Born in Britain to an Iranian immigrant, Razavi sees herself as untethered and borderless, and likens national citizenship and tax to a \u201csubscription\u201d that is very hard to cancel. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all enrolled into this automatic subscription based on the coincidence of our birthplace or our heritage, and that really doesn\u2019t work in the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Lauren Razavi, executive director of Plumia.<\/span>
\n Photograph: Barbara Jovanovic<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
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Freedom for everyone?<\/h2>\n

As an anthropologist<\/a>, I have been chronicling the digital nomad lifestyle \u2013 and their tangled relationship with state institution<\/a>s \u2013 for the past seven years. Pre-pandemic, the popular stereotype<\/a> was of a carefree millennial who had escaped the daily grind to travel the world without hindrance, working on a laptop in some far-flung beach cafe with their only limitation being the quality of the wifi. <\/p>\n

As long ago as 2015, I was hearing recurring complaints from these nomads about the ideological and practical frictions that nation states pose \u2013 it just hadn\u2019t organised itself into a movement yet.<\/p>\n

For a while, COVID-19 appeared to put the brakes on the nomadic dream, as most were forced to head home to western countries and the safety net of healthcare systems. Yet now, the remote working revolution<\/a> triggered by the pandemic has given this borderless lifestyle \u201cproject\u201d a new impetus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This story is part of Conversation Insights<\/em><\/strong>
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The Insights team generates long-form journalism<\/a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Before COVID struck, 12% of workers in the US<\/a> worked remotely full time, and 5% in the UK<\/a>. But the pandemic quickly proved remote work was possible for many more people. Workplace norms toppled like dominos: the office, in-person meetings and the daily commute fell first. Countries such as Barbados, Estonia and Portugal started issuing remote work visas<\/a> to encourage geographically flexible employees to relocate to their territories. \u201cZoom towns<\/a>\u201d are another trend, with towns such as Augusta, Maine in the US offering financial sweeteners to attract remote workers.<\/p>\n

Having consigned the office to the trash, it makes sense that the nation state is the next institution that digital nomads want to recycle. To Razavi, membership of a nation state \u201coffers incredibly poor value \u2026 The aspects that are really stuck in the past include citizenship, passports and tax. Our vision is to upload the nation state to the cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n

The concept of creating an internet country<\/a> was dreamt up during a company hackathon. Plumia is owned and staffed by Safety Wing<\/a>, an HQ-less insurance company which sells travel and health cover to digital nomads and remote working teams (tagline: \u201cInsurance for nomads by nomads\u201d). Safety Wing, according to its homepage, is \u201chere to remove the role of geographical borders as a barrier to equal opportunities and freedom for everyone\u201d. <\/p>\n

But the realities of life as a digital nomad, and the dream of shedding your nationality for a borderless, paperless version, are full of day-to-day complications, as I have discovered \u2013 particularly if you do not belong to the young, white and western stereotype that the media tends to perpetuate.<\/p>\n

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