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In 20 years I'm looking forward to buying Amazon Citizenship.



Amazon Citizenship:

1) They setup an offshore corporation for you in a low tax jurisdiction and give you payment processors to take checks and credit cards over the internet. Every few years, they move all of these corps en masse to lower tax jurisdictions, if any. More efficient competition among tax regimes. Amazon will file all pertinent taxes and paperwork and connects to your quickbooks to make that even easier.

2) They provide a phone number to an Amazon Embassy hotline. If you are ever captured by anyone and local authorities cannot help, call this number and Amazon PR will lobby for your rapid release and return to safety through aggressive social media outreach. They will also setup a gofundme page for you to cover legal expenses, etc.

3) Give up your American citizenship (if any) so you no longer have to pay taxes in the US while not living or working in the US.

4) Amazon World Citizen Passport

So you can work, maybe get some physical/political help if that's needed, and travel freely. What else is there?

The cost? 5% of your income.

Traditional governments would ideally end up selling physical living permits, allowing you to live physically in a given country/area/union, keeping the rest of their tax laws intact for anyone still incorporating or working within the given country. IE, no existing laws really need to change. The price of these permits ends up being a function of location desirability, access to services, and relative guarantees of physical safety. The job of governments becomes to improve each of these variables.


Dear Citizen,

Due to too many searches and queries on your Citizen account recently your account has been closed with immediate effect. Your Citzenship is now revoked and your Amazon World Passport is no longer functional. The Embassy Help Request you opened five days ago has been closed.

We're sorry for any difficulty caused, but we strive to keep costs low for all Amazon World Citizens.

Please note this decision is final.

Amazon.


PS All of your "digital property" is now gone. Goodbye.


To be fair, that can happen already given current citizenship schemes. And if the key service provided by a "citizenship provider" is filing paperwork and running PR for groups of interests, there's no reason to assume a monopoly. If governments competed to make their citizens lives materially better, that might be better than what we've got.

On a somewhat unrelated tangent, there's that famous kennedy quote, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." It's often cited as being this profound political statement. But it's not. It's basically the definition of an abusive relationship. A lot of people believe citizenship should not (or cannot) be a fluid concept directed by competition and self interest. I generally disagree. But I'm not talking about libertarianism; I don't think government needs to be abolished. It's more like, they need tangible goals and metrics and accountability.


Bring on the Snow Crash-esque future.


It's already here.

Just look @ Snapchat HQ. There are homeless people sleeping literally right outside the main entrance. The epitome of high-tech, low life.


I'm surprised we don't have that happening in places like China or Saudi Arabia. I wonder what the Huawei compound would look like.


I'm sold. Where do I signup/send my money?


You print your passport yourself, because Bezos is proud of the cheap culture he creates.


I'd swap cheap with efficient.


Clearly the Presidential title would be: First Prime


Given what it's like working in their warehouses, this will be a two-tier civilisation, like many that exist today.


Sign up for the Amazon Space Marines! Service guarantees citizenship. Would you like to know more?


Now developers can fight bugs literally.


Yes, until they send you off to Klendathu for duty...


More like "Sign-up to be a cog in our Space Mechanical Turk."


Comes free with Prime.


Wouldn't it be more of a membership?


yearly reserved citizenship cost .... or spot citizenship (They can kick you out of the country any time when someone is willing to pay more taxes)


> yearly reserved citizenship cost

a.k.a Prime membership.


* Prime members only


The wind powered cloud.




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