Are traditional governments becoming obsolete? Tech giants forming "digital nations" while no one's paying attention

Tech bros discovering government concepts is my favorite genre of internet post 😂 "what if we had, like, a system where people pooled resources to solve common problems, with representatives they choose??" Congrats, you've invented municipal government, just with blockchain and worse accountability

Watching China shows the opposite trend - strong central government completely reining in tech companies whenever they step out of line. Xi deleted $700B in tech market value with a few regulations. Only in America's anemic regulatory environment does this corporate takeover seem plausible

This academic discussion ignores practical reality. States control borders, citizenship, and physical force. Your digital "citizenship" means nothing when facing actual immigration officers or police. Physical world supremacy will remain unchanged regardless of digital developments

There's something weirdly colonial about Silicon Valley's governance ambitions... taking resources from physical territories through extraction (data, attention), using them to build private empires, while leaving actual infrastructure maintenance to "outdated" local governments

The most revealing thing is how tech companies respond to actual regulation attempts - lobbying armies, threats to leave jurisdictions, cries of "innovation being stifled." Healthy companies in functioning markets don't behave this way. They're acting like sovereign entities being invaded, not businesses being regulated

Reminder that Philip Morris had larger GDP than New Zealand and Toyota was bigger than Pakistan's economy in the 1990s. Corporate power isn't new. What's new is techno-utopianism giving corporate overreach moral righteousness. "It's not domination, it's progress™️"

This isn't about technology - it's about taxation. Nations struggling to tax digital value creation are losing control over transnational corporations. The moment governments solve borderless taxation, this power imbalance corrects itself. Everything hinges on who can extract tribute from whom

Two words: physical infrastructure. The internet has pipes. Servers exist in buildings. Satellites launch from somewhere. All tech companies ultimately vulnerable to physical world jurisdiction. Virtual realms exist at pleasure of territorial authorities, full stop

Strip away terminology and we're witnessing modern resurrection of corporate sovereignism, the historical concept where chartered companies exercised governmental powers. Dutch East India Company and Hudson's Bay Company were prototypes for today's tech giants - operating with quasi-governmental authority in spaces beyond effective state control

you talk about these companies like they're monoliths but they're actually just as vulnerable and unstable as nations. Facebook almost disappeared overnight when young users fled. WeWork collapsed from $47B to bankruptcy in weeks. Twitter imploded after acquisition. their apparent stability is illusion

Everyone ignores how many core government functions tech companies desperately AVOID taking on: welfare systems, infrastructure maintenance, defense, dispute resolution between users. They cherry-pick profitable governance functions while leaving costly ones to traditional states. Parasitic relationship, not replacement

Actual coder for major platform here. Hilarious seeing these philosophical debates when reality inside these companies is chaos. We can barely keep services running, let alone build governance systems. Executives may have god complexes but operational reality nowhere near replacing governments. We mostly duct-tape failing systems together between outages

States created the internet. States maintain physical security for servers, cables, offices. States educate workforces these companies employ. States subsidize their research. States protect their intellectual property. The idea tech exists outside or beyond government is propaganda these companies promote to avoid regulation and taxation