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Notes -
- (reading) "You crowdfund the territory. The diplomatic recognition comes later." That doesn't sound like a charter company to you?
- The Founders were thirteen colonies and a group chat. The fathers of our country. What's your point?
- My point is he's on the cap table of a private city that's suing Honduras for two-thirds of their national budget. In a private court. That the city helped write the rules for.
- You gotta walk in Balaji's shoes to see what he's up against. Guy's got nothing. No sovereignty, no army, no seat at the UN. People still think you need a government, for crying out loud. So he builds one. From scratch. On an island. In an empty city somebody else already went bankrupt building. That took guts. You remember when we went to El Salvador? The heat? And the wifi?
- Yeah, it took guts to bet a $1M the dollar was finished and lose it all in ninety days.
- He's ahead of his time.
- Who cares? It's what he did.
- He's founding a nation is what he did. He's a brave American founder. And in this house, Balaji is a hero. End of story.
No, it will not come. The last new country officially recognized by international community was ... guess ... South Sudan back in 2011.
All of world's powers in single day, 9 July 2011. See that South Sudanese independence was already fait accompli, decided beforehand.
This will not happen to some adventurer seizing some land in the middle of nowhere, the international community has zero tolerance for filibusters and freebooters. US+allies will treat such people like terrorists, and China the same, only harsher.
No one wants to give adventurous folks idea that you can just do thing, you can just leave your day job and become bandit in the swamp.
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Balaji Srinivasan has never been, is not now, and will never be American. He is a paper citizen, the son of two Indians, grandson of four Indians, and his well demonstrated absence of loyalty and allegiance to the country of his birth is a stain upon him and all others like him.
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