Acquiring Sovereignty

[8bit]

There are several fairly large groups of people who are mostly socially progressive and are interested in forming their own sovereign nation. (These groups mostly belong to online communities.)

So I'm curious, how does a group go about peacefully acquiring land and becoming recognized as it's own nation?

I understand there are several micronations which own their own land, however they are not recognized as their own separate nation by most world powers. However, the state I'm referring to would be much larger than these micronations.

[Joemakerman]

The only thing I could think of would be to get many many people to help and perhaps buy land from a country that is willing to sell. The only thing would be that people would probably already live there, and it would be extremely expensive. It's very unrealistic, but I suppose if you have enough people, each with enough money to buy even maybe 1/4 an acre, you might be able to pull it off. Maybe trying to buy from a relatively poor country would be easiest, since your dollar would likely be much higher than said country. Otherwise, I do believe you would have to revolt, or possible make an alliance with a larger nation and promise them a percentage of the land acquired, etc.

-Joe

[MarxSchmarx]

For better or worse, not a parcel of land on earth is unoccupied or unclaimed.

No nation on earth will give up its land to the highest bidder. This is a utopian fantasy borne of people who haven't read a history book about anything in the world since 1908.

Even the (relatively) promising Republic of Minerva, stocked with cash and resources, was conquered by the 300 pounds His Highness King Taufaʻahau Tupou IV.

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

Antarctica comes close, but even then you are still under the jurisdiction of the country which you are a citizen of. If you become stateless, and move to antarctica, you might have a claim under international law that no state can claim jurisdiction over you, and hence that you are basically free to do as you please. However, you cannot establish sovereignty as, under international law, antarctica belongs to no one.

However, I think it is indicative of the current state of affairs that as of yet nobody has gotten much mileage out of trying to go this route.

[Diagoras]

It would largely depend on where you would want to do this. If you were willing to take some crap land, you could find more of it that would likely be less populated. Of course, aside from the prior occupant issue with this idea, the problem of governments pose another difficulty. Essentially, every major spot on the map is controlled by a state. You would have to convince (in some manner) a state to cede control (:laugh:) over part of its territory. Assuming you could do this (through purchase, all moving to the area and fomenting an uprising, etc...), you would also have to fight for international, de jure recognition of your "sovereign nation". There are actual de facto nation-states and regional ethnic communities that don't have this yet, so good luck :thumbup1:.

[lvl100]

Actually i think its possible not on continental land, but in one of those thousands in the ocean, like they tried with Minerva. Minerva failed because of the bad management.
But the recognition it going to be a problem.

[The Douche]

How will you create infastructure? You're talking about a bunch of people (many of whom are either quite young or quite old) picking up and leaving the civilized world to inhabit some remote location which is totally barren.

How will you create the things necessary to support life/mass society? You think there is a place full of natural resources that hasn't been claimed?

But mainly my question is how you would create industry out of nothing?

[davidasearles]

In the United States (the country that I am most familiar with) sovereignty is through "the people". Most lefties will employ a sour grapes argument that says that there is something in capitalism that prevents the people from being able to grant power in their own benefit instead of to the capitalists.

However the appalling truth is that the "people" have chosen to give authority to capitalism and its lackeys, or at least to allow it to remain with them.

It has been our failure and failures, and no one else’s, that we have not been able through logical and informed discourse to convince the source of sovereignty, the people, to ordain anything else.

We in the US have a Federal constitution, and many other countries have national constitutions but only rarely do we find serious propositions being set before the various peoples to alter the constitutions in a way that would affect the relationship between the workers and the products of social labor.

We whine and moan that the capitalists of the various countries would never allow such constitutional alterations to be made - the real reason is that we just like to whine and moan and allow capitalism to continue without practical political challenge - and then blame capitalism, the stars, fate, or anything else that is convenient for our misery.