The Internet will weaken nation-states over the 21st century. It has happened before.
The Catholic Church ruled over Europe for nearly 1,000 years. Its weapon was information: a European-wide network of agents who shared education, books, and correspondence in Latin, the lingua franca they monopolized.
That monopoly suppressed dozens of proto-protestant movements before 1500.
The printing press ended that.
Suddenly, content was cheaper, more plentiful, and accessible, written in local vernaculars. The monopoly on information ended. The moment the printing press spread, the first serious protestant movement under Martin Luther broke the Church.
Books also created the languages we know today, as people learned the printed language of cultural capitals. Those sharing the language shared their ideas and started feeling they belonged together.
A symbiosis appeared between nations and states. Nations strengthen states through citizens who think alike and are willing to sacrifice for each other. States strengthen nations by inventing anthems, flags, education, broadcasting, gatekeepers. They control information to gain power.
The Internet, the new information network, kills all of that.
States lose power to alternative players:
1. Digital corporations grow to trillions of dollars in value, span the globe, and eliminate local companies that states controlled before. Social networks dictate the rules of engagement and cut the megaphones of those who endanger their integrity, including the US President.
2. As problems become international, supra-national organizations grow to solve them: from the UN or the EU after WWII, to the WHO, WTO, IMF, WB, and all the other global coordination bodies absorbing national sovereignty.
3. Decentralization, led by blockchain’s technology and ethos, eliminates state gatekeepers that operate with knowledge, from the banking industry to education.
Meanwhile, states lose their income. As assets become digital, corporations, wealth owners, and workers become more mobile and shop around for the cheapest jurisdiction, the way companies incorporate in Gibraltar and cryptobillionaires settle in Puerto Rico. Tax-hungry states vie for rich remote workers in a bidding war that will floor tax rates.
Automation mints mobile multi-billionaires and millions of low-skilled, low-income, underemployed workers who can hardly be taxed.
As fertility rates plummet and lifespans grow, old-age benefits empty coffers and void future promises of social nets.
The Internet makes English the lingua franca of the world. As earthlings exchange ideas and realize they have more in common than their states made them believe, alternative identities will appear, not based on who lives near you, but on who thinks like you. Climate change, crypto, transhumanism, or alt-right will become stronger identities than nations.
The question is not whether nation-states will keep their power. The question is: who will replace them?