Interesting news tidbit: Estonia Offers E-Residency.
This could be the toe-in-the-water, a tentative exploration of what is possible today and might become increasingly useful in the future.
Think of it as facilitating access to the day-to-day needs of living and doing business, as opposed to the purely government-related matters. After all, 99% of what we do – online and offline – has nothing to do with being citizens of a country and more with being residents of a country.
When the Roman Empire collapsed, there was a political power vacuum which was eventually filled by various nation-states, kings and near-kings, etc. but Rome was about much more than just political & military power. Rome also standarized trade, law, culture – and it was the Church which provided the only organized structure for continuing that heritage of Rome, just as Rome had subsumed and continued the heritage of Classical Greece. Similarly, this initiative or an expanded version could provide a structure to help people through problems in the ‘official’ structure as governments fall, economies crater, disasters strike.
Back in the ’50s, I recall a movement to promote ‘international citizenship’, something very similar to the current EU situation whereby one can travel, work and live in any of the Schengen countries. It never got off the ground worldwide – countries were too protectionist in their attitudes at the time. Yet today, we have the EU.
There are those who feel the best way to handle any coming collapse is simply to build ourselves a life outside the conventional corporate/government sphere, a world that does not need anything corporations and governments provide.
As national governments become more and more dysfunctional, the everyday processes of living which they theoretically control, provide and oversee will be affected. A completely independent structure, functioning in parallel to the ‘official’ world might be a very handy thing to have in place.