WatDabney

Whoever wants in on it really. Primarily I presume it’d be the corporations themselves, but banking is certain to change to accommodate the growing independence of the “corporations,” and I expect that to some notable degree, the two will merge - that the largest “corporations” will have their own banking sibsidiaries and will handle most everything internally. There’s a broad point underlying all of this - all that’s really necessary is that enough executives/owners at enough institutions have a desire to divest themselves of associations with governments and establish their own “states.” Once the will is there and they possess enough wealth and power to enforce their will, the rest is just details. They have entire staffs who are employed to figure out how to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish, and they will figure it out.

Of course. Gambling is a hallmark of civilizations in decline. The Polymarket thing is a bit different though. It’s built on a foundation of saps hoping to strike it big, but it promarily benefits insiders, who are turning their knowledge into financial windfalls. Just another of the privileges afforded the wealthy and empowered few.

So? In the first place, a “corporation” could set up a legal system easily - draft some laws, build some facilities and appoint some officials, and done. But they wouldn’t even need to do that. They likely would, because an impartial system wins voluntary compliance and thus promotes stability, but the only really necessary part of a legal system is sufficient power to enforce its dictates, and with enough armed professionals, that’s relatively easy, at least within secured borders.

Yes. And specifically one of the things that impressed me about Snow Crash’s predictions was the idea that federal governments didn’t get overthrown or cease to exist - they were simply irrelevant. The “corporations” had amassed enough wealth and power that they could, and did, simply ignore the governments.

Sure. They could even do it today simply by paying in Bitcoin. I expect though that the future will see private currencies backed by the-entities-formerly-known-as-corporations. Governments don’t monopolize currencies because nobody else wants to issue one, but because it’s in their interests to monopolize them, and they have sufficient power (for the time being) to enforce their monopolies.

No and yes… A business entity that is proactively protected from liability could not exist without government charter. However, a business entity could employ its own paramilitary and/or hire mercenaries and effectively make itself immune to liability, which works out to the same thing pretty much. And I’m reasonably certain that that’s the future - that corporations will continue to acknowledge and submit to governments only as long as it’s to their advantage to do so, and that when the costs outstrip the benefits, they’ll simply stop, and instead manage their properties as essentially states unto themselves. And at that point, whether or not they have an official declaration of their corporate identity will be irrelevant.

Weird how so many techbro ideas boil down to registering your identification with the tech oligarchs...

That’s the current version of a power fantasy he’s had ever since he was the nerdy kid getting picked on by the mean kids on the playground.