Bitcoin Forum

Stateless folks ("Staatenlose" etc.) might consider bitcoin a reserve currency.

More and more people give up their nationality to no longer be subjected to state terrorism, esp. in the west.

I dont believe there is anyone in the world who is "stateless" every inch of the planet is claimed by somebody

Eh no. There are quite a few people that are considered stateless. Just one example from my part of the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranded_Pakistanis

I don't think they choose to be stateless, but rather forced to be stateless.   It is different situation altogether in the West.

I wish everyone in the world could be stateless.. A beutiful world it would be.

Does a life of statelessness involve more harm than good?
I cant understand why not wanting to pick a plantation to govern over me and my family restrict me from rights as a human being.... am I suddenly less human?  I dont become less of a consumer or anything like that, I just dont want to be affiliated with a country... I want my freedom papers!!!!   ;D

Being stateless isnt a good thing, no healthcare, insurance etc.

Although I do like the idea of not paying taxes :/

Stateless =

no passports, so no travel
no identity, so not recognised
not recognised, so no healthcare, no jobs, no social welfare, nothing

100% freedom ... yup  ::)

No passports,  no medical insurance, you are as good as dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_citizen

 :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTrL6WfblKk

Today I learned there are stateless people. Crazy!

No taxes = good
No council to take care of roads, no healthcare & no passports = bad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gogulski

No nationality = 0% freedom

we only can pray for them

Here are some stateless children enjoying their freedom. The freedom to make bricks.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Everyone%20Else/images-10/modern-slaves.jpg

Do you know where the picture are take from?

you dont need a passport to travel. you can travel to many places with a sail boat and no passport i suspect.

identity doesn't come from the state.... your parents give you that and later you can chose to change it to something else if you wish, your identity is just what you chose to call yourself everyone has one of those.

certainly there is no reason to expect that you couldn't get health care. there are doubtless many hospitals all over the world that would look the other way for cash up front.

not everyone needs social welfare....

Also before you say that i said something that i didn't say, refuting your arguments against it is no proof that it would work well only that you haven't proven that it wouldn't.

and lastly you would clearly need to be atleast middle class. while it may or may not be the case that wealthy people would experience greater levels of freedom as soverieigns, its clear that poor people would experience less.

Stateless does not mean that you have no healthcare and insurance. In Europe at least. You can declare yourself stateless and still have those, simply because those are contracts you make, not government benefits...
Also, you can travel. There are special papers called Travel Documents for Stateless Persons.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staatenlose   google translate it if you want.

it says on the wiki the he is a bitcoin talk member. ne idea what his handle is?

mikegogulski (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2285)

lol i didnt even think of trying that

No. It looks like Pakistan? And the kids are almost certainly not "stateless".

Wondering what they eat everyday for living

That pitcure is from modern-day slavery topics. Put it into google image search... Not stateless, but "freedomless". Leaves a bad taste afterwards.

That makes me wonder. If I wanted to enslave a stateless person, who would/could stop me?

it would be totally legal for you to do that.

but anyone might stop you, i might stop you if i was around at the time. he definitely might stop you. if he was wise he would have bought insurance against that. if he had bought insurance than his insurance company would probably stop you.

The same people who will do that if you try to enslave every other person.

Legal? Where exactly do you live? It is never legal to enslave anyone!!! If it is in your country, please move somewhere else; I for myself would not want to live there...

im assuming for the sake of simplicity that this is happening between two stateless persons in international waters.

sure. for simplicity. well, in that case it is still not legal, there is just no law except sealaw. I don't know much about that though...

Change "insurance company" to "state" and "insurance" to "tax". Almost back to square 1.

I guess the only difference then is that "insurance" is not mandatory.

i would argue that insurance would be mandatory for a stateless person in the same way that paying taxes is manditory for a citizen. if you dont pay x goons will come beat you up and take your stuff, if you dont pay y goods will come beat you up and take your stuff. the distinction lies in the fact that i can change my insurance company with out changing my residence.

It seems to me that it is very difficult to turn crypto into fiat in Stateless status:(

Thats one hell of a necro bump. How did you come across this thread if you don't mind me asking?

This is interesting and looking for the truth of this .... there may be positive things but it looks fantastic and unreal ... no one chooses to be stateless ...

Citizenship isn't a magical thing. It is just an organization that you pay for membership and it provides the service of advocacy on your behalf. There are many individuals out there who have more power to advocate on their own behalf than many countries could bring to bear on their behalf for them. For example: being bill gates and therefor being a citizen of bill-gates-astan is a more valuable self advocacy than having the advocacy of Afghanistan behind him (Afghanistan has the worlds least valuable passport). So I think it probably wouldn't be so bad if you had significant means. You would probably be better off being stateless and rich than Afghani.

The big problem for bill gates though is that he doesn't have time to handle the diplomatic relations necessary inorder to insure that no one declares war on his yacht. He could probably pay a hand full of diplomats to jettison around the world and advocate for him and hire a head of security to install guns on his yacht to repel any groups too small to be influenced by his diplomats (think pirates). He probably could do it but what a mess. Its just better to outsource this sort of thing. And almost all of us do and the ones who dont, its like you said, its not by choice. So just get a citizenship right? Countries provide advocacy services at scale and so are able to bring quality up and price down and tie it all up in a neat little package that save busy people valuable time. Maybe but there are some serious drawbacks to the prevailing model.

When you "contract" with a nation the contract is one way. You provide a guarantee that you will hold up your half and grant the nation the authority to imprison you or worse if you fail to uphold your duties. But what about their end? Not only is the contract ridiculously onerous on you but all you get in return are vague promises. We want the advocacy of course but that contract has a lot of baggage! When you contract with them you become a citizen and they are a sovereign. You are in effect ceding your sovereignty to them.

Is it possible to get the advocacy we seek provided cheaply and effectively at scale without agreeing to onerous terms and while having some accountability on the other end of the contract? I think an insurance policy provides the perfect model for this. The sort of organization that would be best in the position to offer a service like this would be a large multi national insurance conglomerate.

This would be a lifestyle only available to the rich at first but as with all other new technologies the price is highest for the trailblazers but comes down and becomes more and more affordable with time. Perhaps it could reach the lower upper class then the upper middle class some day. Probably the poor would always be required to cede some of their sovereignty inorder to be able to afford effective advocacy. Ceding some of your sovereignty is in effect one form of payment and for people who lack other means of payment this is perhaps the one they will always be forced to fall back on. But one of the big takeaways here should be the idea that people of significant means should be able to afford effective advocacy without needing to stoop to bartering their sovereignty. Its just crazy to think that a billionaire should have to give up anything more than some of his money in order to be able to afford this. But that is the prevailing world order. We need only one very rich person to push that first domino for us.

Maybe ill work on improving this and turn it into a proper essay and try to get someone with real means to read it. Either way its good enough for now. Tired of writing for the moment.

I wish everyone in the world could be stateless..
Cz no nationality = 0% freedom😃

Is there anyone in the world who doesn't have a heritage. You have to come from somewhere else you'd be an alien. Even aliens come from somewhere. except i am not sure what your post means.

How you will be free if you are stateless.if stateless no taxes involve but in that case you dont have any priveleges as human being so dont believe that has a people wgo are stateless

How is anyone stateless? As long as you didn't come from the moon, you cannot be stateless. we all do have a heritage. We belong somewhere!

No nationality. Difficult to occur when all the land is claimed. You just really call it freedom when you live on an island that nobody has found or known about. :) And that means no network connection at all. And bitcoin will not help you either.