Starting Your Own Island Country

 

“Let’s blow this fascist popsicle stand!  Purchase a small island somewhere, and start our own country.” – Montgomery Burns

 

People thinking about forming their own nation often turn to islands: they appeal to people’s sense of dominion, and their borders are clear.  One just might get away from it all, and start something new.

 

But a new island country requires an island, and citizens, and there difficulties begin.

 

Problems

Four problems are paramount:

1.    There are no undiscovered or unclaimed islands—with one partial exception.

2.    Existing countries are quite protective of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

3.    There is no recognized process for forming your own country, and it comes essentially down to power.

4.    It is difficult to obtain a population for a startup country.

 

Solutions….and more problems

People have tried to get around these problems in a variety of ways.

 

Problem 1: No undiscovered islands

●   Since existing islands are claimed, some conclude that they should just build new ones.

●   However, it is quite difficult to find suitable places that do not fall under some kind of national jurisdiction.  If you are making your own land, it has to be outside countries’ territorial waters (generally 12 miles offshore) and exclusive economic zones (generally 200 miles from land)—and there is little or no shallow water outside of such zones.  For instance, the would-be Principality of New Utopia is planned for the Misteriosa Bank in the Caribbean—but it seems to be in the Exclusive Economic Zones of both Honduras and the Cayman Islands (UK).  Both countries have signed the Law of the Sea Treaty, which gives them power to regulate new island creation.

●   The partial exception to the dearth of unclaimed territory is Antarctica, which is essentially international, with nations’ territorial claims effectively suspended.  But the continent is supervised by all the most powerful countries on the planet, and they would not let a startup country grab some of it.

●   (There is a cheat to the land problem, in the eyes of the island purist: build a floating island city—there are several schemes kicking around.  But these would be mere ships, in truth.  And there is the oil rig solution, notably represented by “Sealand,” a surplus-gun-platform “country” off the coast of England.)

 

Problem 2: Existing countries want their islands

●   You can buy islands in many countries, but that means that you are a landowner, not a separate country.

●   While most countries will not surrender sovereignty over a piece of land, it might be possible to find one so poor or corrupt that it would do so.  Some right-wing Americans thought Haiti fit the bill a couple of decades ago, and attempted to buy the Île de la Tortue (Tortuga Island) off the northern coast.  They were going to form the usual libertarian paradise, but even Haiti proved insufficiently abject to fall for the scheme.  (The fate of thousands of Haitians already living on the island was unclear.)

●   You can try to take an island by force, but fortunately for the small states of the Pacific and the Caribbean there are powerful countries that prevent that sort of thing.

 

Problem 3: No process for forming new countries

●   The best solution is to become a leader in an island that might like to break away from its country: Nevis, of St. Kitts-Nevis, for instance.  The separate islands of the Comoros have each achieved substantial autonomy under their own leaders in recent years.  And East Timor has made the transition to sovereign nation.

●   You still need recognition from the international community.  And that requires sympathy, triggered by oppression of your little island, or at least popular support for its breaking away.

●   Barring that, you can try to seize an island nation whole.  This has been attempted by mercenaries in the Comoros (with some success), Vanuatu, and the Maldives.  Once again, it runs into the problem of great power protectors.

 

Problem 4: Need for citizens

●   The breakaway inhabited island solves this problem, but otherwise you have to convince people to come live on your island.

●   Build-your-own-island schemes typically dangle libertarian freedom as their lure.

●   Forming your own cult is promising.  A breakaway Mormon sect in the mid-19th century took this route, briefly declaring Beaver Island in Lake Michigan to be their kingdom.  But cults tend to be unstable and draw the attention of authorities quickly.

 

So starting your own island country is not easy.  As a consolation, you might buy one of the many uninhabited islands in a tolerant country such as the US, Britain, or Canada and declare your own “nation.”  If you don’t cross certain legal lines, you may get away with a lot.

"Can I start my own country" is frequently asked by people interested in private islands. Despite all the hopeful dictators and Kool-Aid drinkers out there, it's pretty difficult to start your own country.
Pirate Island

Islands are a natural choice for starting a country. Islands create a sense of autonomy and independence because their border is already clearly defined. However, there are no undiscovered or unclaimed islands on the planet. Every island on the planet falls under the jurisdiction of one country or another. And countries are naturally quite protective of their territories. You cannot buy an island from a country and claim independence anymore than you can declare sovereignty from your armchair inside a suburban bungalow.

However, you may be able to find a country that is so poor or so corrupt that it would surrender sovereignty over an island in exchange for cash. If you can find a spot that exists outside the territorial waters of any country, you could build your own island. Alternatively, you could create a floating city on a ship. A 'citizen' on a floating city in international waters could be a citizen of the world.

Cautionary Tales of Those Who Tried
sealand passport

People have tried to get around the endless problems of sovereignty by building their own islands, through sand reclamation or floating platforms, often ships. Regardless of where you build, or float, you will probably land in the hot territorial waters of one country or another. Building an island from scratch, like the failed World island project in Dubai, requires relatively shallow waters. If you're far enough offshore to be outside territorial waters, you will need an awful lot of sand (and money) to reach the bottom. If you should decide to take over a small island and create your own banana republic, be prepared to defend yourself against a large neighbouring country who will not take your invasion lightly.

Principality of Sealand
The Principality of Sealand, home to the Bates family since 1967, is a dilapidated and algae covered eyesore, 10 miles off the coast of Suffolk, England. Sealand's claims to sovereignty aren't recognized by any country, but Sealand is still managed (and defended with gunfire if necessary) by the Bates family as though it were recognized. In 1975, Paddy Roy Bates introduced a constitution, flag, national anthem, currency and passports to Sealand. In 2000, HavenCo was said to have established a secure offshore data haven on Sealand, intended to be the Cayman Islands of hosting. HavenCo's Acceptable Use Policy prohibited child pornography, spamming, and malicious hacking, but all other content was acceptable. After HavenCo collapsed, Sealand's government is building a new online casino expected to be open by 2012. Thirty employees would work in Sealand. We'll see.

Minerva Reefs
Claiming sovereignty over an island is nearly impossible, but that hasn't stopped a few people from trying in recent history. Libertarian millionaire Michael Oliver attempted to create a sovereign micronation called Minerva by reclaiming underwater reefs in the Pacific in the 1970s. The site was located about 400 miles south of Fiji and 250 miles west of Tonga. Oliver shipped in some sand from Australia and planted his flag. After Oliver had staked his claim by sending out a declaration of independence to neighbouring countries, Tonga responded to Oliver by dispatching an angry and armed envoy of Tongans to defend their turf. Minerva's flag was unceremoniously removed and Tonga laid real claim to the reef.

I think we would be very well advised just to attempt to take over an established sovereign instead of trying to gain international recognition on an oil platform or a boat. check out nauru, its almost as small as a large boat and its internationally recolonized by pretty much every governing body in the world as a totally legit sovereign.

According to friedcat's latest update, they should be 'ready' next week (as in sometime after tomorrow) but no further details on what 'ready' means.

.b

Update

Deploying
At the same time waiting for the new place's power supply system and our second batch's assembly, we have tested the fully enclosed rack approach, which turned out to be denser and has better cooling over the devices.

The projected earliest date to start installing new hardware and releasing brand new hashrates is 22th this month. The whole deploying process will take at least two weeks, with the final hashrate decided by how much we are going to sell to consumers and how much we will keep for ourselves.

Device Selling
Apart from the same boards we use for mining, we also have an adapted version of the mini boards which we used at early January for our first arrived chips that are nice as small gifts. Here is a picture of a not-yet-assembled one with 300MH/s. It can be powered by merely the USB port:



Since the most important mission of ASICMINER is the maximization of profits for shareholders and the security of the network (hashrates should be in hand of good people and decentralization has to be preserved), we will balance the ratio of kept and distributed hashrates based on our portion and the market price of devices.

Financials and Business Plan
We are always aware of the openness and transparency of how we operate. We keep almost if not all the agreements, trading receipts and bank/exchange records, which could be used for restoring a full history of financial report when put in the hands of an accountant with some knowledge of Bitcoin and some of our help. Sooner or later it has to be done, and most likely it would be in the period between the next batch and later batches, during which we will expand our core team with both technical and financial people.

We will start a google-doc-based business plan for us and all board members to edit and update. I will make a stub version as a basis for extending and modifying first this week.