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Digital Nomad Communities Want to Build the Infrastructure for an Internet Country (thenextweb.com) 61

Posted by EditorDavid from the over-the-borderline dept.
It's estimated there are 10.9 million digital nomads just in the U.S. — and two digital nomads writing for The Next Web point out they're just part of a larger trend. "As of 2021, there are over 35 million digital nomads

Are they also about to start changing the world? Digital nomads' growing numbers and financial clout have caused dozens of tourist-starved countries to update their travel policies for borderless workers. In Summer 2020, a handful of nations launched visa programs to attract digital nomads, starting with Estonia in June, then Barbados, Bermuda, Costa Rica, Anguilla, Antigua, and later, most of Eastern Europe. Now, 30+ nations offer some form of incentive for traveling remote workers. Sweetheart deals like income tax breaks, subsidized housing, and free multiple entry have become as popular as employee work benefits. The opportunities are so numerous, solutions exist just to help you "amenity shop" the perfect country Airbnb style...

Some ambitious nomads, like activist and author Lauren Razavi, have also started to advocate for their rights as global citizens and the future of borderless work... Remote workers like Lauren (and us) want to completely redefine the role governments play in digital nomads' movement and regulation. How? By laying the foundation for the next generation of travel and work, an internet country called Plumia... Plumia wants to build the alternative using decentralized technologies, while also working with countries and institutions on policies that achieve common goals... Begun in 2020 as an independent project by remote-first travel insurance company, SafetyWing, Plumia's plan is to combine the infrastructure for living anywhere with the functions of a geographic country...

Blockchain enthusiasts are also testing an approach that begs the question: are traditional countries still necessary? Bitnation advocates for decentralizing authority by empowering voluntary participation and peer-to-peer agreements. They've âhosted the world's first blockchain marriage, birth certificate, refugee emergency ID, and more as proof of concept... Currently in development, Plumia is focusing on developing member-focused services and content... Verifying a digital identity, maintaining a 'permanent address' whilst on the move, switching service providers and jurisdictions on the fly, complying with complicated tax and labor laws — these are all thorny issues to solve. Initiatives like Plumia are jumping into quite an active ring, however.

In addition to countries competing to serve and attract digital nomads, a number of well-financed startups such as Jobbatical, Remote, and Oyster are creating private-sector solutions to issues posed by people and companies going remote.
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Digital Nomad Communities Want to Build the Infrastructure for an Internet Country More

Digital Nomad Communities Want to Build the Infrastructure for an Internet Country

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  • First rule of digital nomads (Score:3)

    by VaccinesCauseAdults ( 7114361 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @01:50PM (#61922653)
    Don't talk about digital nomads.

    How the fuck can you write an entire summary and not tell us what a digital nomad is? Literally no idea.

    • "How the fuck can you write an entire summary and not tell us what a digital nomad is? Literally no idea."

      People who think that they don't have to pay taxes even after having been on the country for 183 days, which makes them illegal, undocumented immigrants and tax evaders.
      Some countries now try to milk at least _some_ money out of them.

    • Immigrant workers in the IT workspace. Doesn't sound so nice now, does it?

      -Job stealers too.

      • Actually the opposite.

        Emigrant workers not immigrant. (Can one explain why emigrant is written with one M and immigrant with two Ms?)

        "Digital Nomad", people living in low cost countries and mostly working remotely for companies of their home country, or any other remote job. Most of them *think* that is legal, in both countries, without paying any taxes: obviously it is not.

    • It's quite simple, really. It's the digital version of analog nomads.

    • Digital nomads: mobile remote workers with laptops (Score:4, Informative)

      by ac22 ( 7754550 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @08:31PM (#61923333)

      Digital nomads are basically people who can do their job or run their business from anywhere in the world, using a laptop and an internet connection.

    • I consider myself neither a "digital nomad" nor "remote worker", yet many apply either term to me. I've moved homes on average every 8 months for the past 25 years (rental contracts, not including hotels and couch surfing) in eight different countries. My own low duration average surprises me, as I don't feel that I've "lived somewhere" until at least a year (the "didn't work outs" and temporarily residences on the tail ends of re-location skew the numbers). It's only this year with ~95% reliable mobile bro

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )

      They're people who travel a lot and don't want to claim any one place as home. Oh, and they use the internet, hence the "digital" part. I think most of them are travel bloggers, but in principle they could be any profession that allows or encourages sufficiently frequent travel.

      Yeah, maybe some day people will get so used to the internet being a thing, that they won't feel the need to invent new terms for every single aspect of life, that imply doing it while using the internet. I look forward to that da

  • Most of these people aren't nomads (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @02:10PM (#61922693)

    They're digital homeless. For the majority of them, living light with no permanent residence is an economic necessity, not a desire. Land ownership and real estate need to be taxed progressively: The more you own, the higher the tax rate you pay. Owning a town and renting it out should incur an almost prohibitive tax burden, whereas everybody owning their own home should be taxed almost nothing.

    • As long as all that math is relative to the city/area, province/state, country, etc.

    • Re: Most of these people aren't nomads (Score:4, Informative)

      by javaman235 ( 461502 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @03:01PM (#61922781)

      Excellent comment. The greatest frustration for millions of US working homeless is driving through endless, undeveloped land (mostly in the west) thats just being held as an investment with no tax burden, while you can never buy any property as your paychecks are consumed by rent - which literally goes to paying off the property you are living in for someone else. Endless labor and strife all to buy the 17th house for a rich landlord who has never produced a thing in his life.

      • The greatest frustration for millions of US working homeless is driving through endless, undeveloped land (mostly in the west)

        BS. You can buy a low-end 3 bed, 2 bath house in Tucumcarie for $70k, and a nice one for $170k. Literally anyone with a tech job can afford those prices.

        • But are there tech jobs in that area that offer enough income? No idea, just asking.

          • No, no tech jobs directly in Tucumcarie. Nor much of anything else. But we're talking about digital nomads here, and the post I was replying to complained about how these poor, poor people were actually homeless, and would love to be able to buy something in the great western US, but it's somehow not possible.

            Which is nonsense. If someone really is a digital nomad, and is willing to live in the middle of nowhere, there is plenty of nowhere available for very affordable prices. I've been in and through Tuc

            • Thanks for sharing actually, Im a nomad in the market and NM is gorgeous. But as someone who lives there, whats the catch with NM why all the ghost towns and low development, Is it about water? Lack of industry?

              As far as the original point, the bigger issue is land prices, and the state with the biggest issue for arrested development is CA. The problem is people making money without producing anything. If government wants a strong economy they need to incentivize production, farms, ranches, businesses, live

            • Also to be fair, I should add on Fed govt owns 47% of the land in the western 11 and does nothing with most of it. If I was prez, I would announce Indian reparations, parcel it out and gift a parcel to each individual native, and just just let them sell as they like to reintroduce it to the market.

    • How do you make up the income difference?  Some locations rely on property taxes currently.  Making that tax "almost nothing" doesn't pay for the police, fire department, etc that everyone expects.

      Sales taxes are regressive, so I'd hope to avoid that too.

      That seems to leave a progressive income tax, but often that'll never pass since the rich people hate it (who donate to get pick who gets elected).
    • Property tax is entirely the fault of the smallest level of government; the school board. 90% of my property tax goes to public schools. Demand they stop spending the money on fucking cappuccino machines and gourmet pizza in the lunchroom. When the schools need more money one of 2 things happen: they increase the property tax, or they get the PVA to raise the estimated value of everyones homes. They tried to double my home value this year and I just had a value adjustment 3 years ago.

      • Property tax is entirely the fault of the smallest level of government; the school board. 90% of my property tax goes to public schools.

        That really depends on what state you live in

    • As George Carlin said "We don't have a homeless problem in this country, we have a houseless problem!"

      I was under the impression that most of the "digital nomads" in the US are working out of an RV. They usually pick a state with low taxes as a "home location" P.O. Box.

  • The naivette and lack of awareness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @02:17PM (#61922703)

    is breathtaking.

    A "digital nomad" in a "borderless" world is only able to access the world at their fingertips because they have stores of currency issued by a sovereign state stashed away in a bank account operating under the laws of (possibly another) sovereign state.

    That whole "rule of law" thing that lets you rest easy knowing your dollars or euros or even rmb won't vanish from your account because someone doesn't like your face...that's intimately entangled with someone having a monopoly on violence to enforce property rights, and with that monopoly having legitimacy in the eyes of a constituency on whose geographic territory that monopoly on violence is asserted and mutually recognized by other similar actors.

    You only get to live it up on island nations because there's a big bad mainland that'll send in the troops if your hosts start to get sticky fingers. In places where the troops won't be sent anymore (Haiti, Somalia, etc)...well...good luck trying to pull that jet setter global citize. shtick. The locals might let you putter on for their amusement before they do their thing.

    • Indeed.

      However, there's an argument that borders are a somewhat antiquated concept. Taking Europe as an example, they got rid of a load of borders and are better for it. Indeed, the US has very thin borders between states, which as been one of the ways such a large land mass has produced such wealth. The US/Canadian border is pretty thin too - it has lots of reciprocal agreements and preferential options on both sides - again, to both countries benefit. I recently found out that Japan and Ireland have quite

      • If the people on both sides of the border have compatible thoughts between their ears, then no, the border is just a formality.

        But beyond Canada/US and Ireland/Northern Ireland (hehe) there are few places where that's true. Even in South and Central America, different countries have taken different paths since throwing off the yoke of the Spanish and Portuguese crown. Venezuela went way left, Colombia didn't...and the border between them has people flowing in one direction, rather than the reciprocal flows

  • "Are traditional countries necessary?" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @02:18PM (#61922705)

    The perennial question of the anti-social asshole who just don't want to pay tax.

  • There are known resources for them; there is information about the lifestyle. Nomads are often found in hostels, rural countryside settings or Himalayan mountaintops. Up to now, nomads tended to be frugal, curious people with a backpack or VW bus. A 'digital' nomad shouldn't have much difficulty finding resources and information. Presumably they are using the internet.

    I wonder if this article is about wealthy wanderers. We used to call them the 'jet set'. Thus the emphasis on taxes and the eagerness of governments to cater to their whims. Then add activism, blockchain, nation building -- I don't think these are nomads in the usual sense. Find a different name; perhaps bored rich travelers with credit cards.

  • What's their national flag? a Plumbus? Plumia needs to open a media and design university, and get some of its graduates to rebrand itself.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Whibla ( 210729 )

      But you'll be able to use their blockchain enabled deed poll to give yourself an official 'nom-de-Plumia'...

      Which modern day erudite wouldn't want that?

  • Wake me up when these countries offer passports to digital nomads, otherwise we're just glorified tourists on extended work visas.
  • Let's not sugarcoat this - itinerant workers drift from place to place, leeching off the work of generations of natives to make the country liveable, whilst paying as little tax as possible. They'll live in the cheapest place possible and take advantage of the strong currency that their country of birth provided. When they get old or sick or bored, they will return to their place of birth to mooch off public services they had no hand in building.

  • Chickens get back in the cage (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The vitriol of the comments here.

    The chickens that escape the cage don't need to fear the fox. They need to fear the other chickens still in the cage complaining about them.

    Yeah, taking advantage of geoarbitridge is bad? So, you're supposed to stay in the country you're born in until homeless, while your job is outsourced to a cheaper country?

    I'll appeal to capitalistic tenancies: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Go to those cheaper countries and fight the fight that is _the market_. Stop treating tax and n

  • I'm a remote worker who's contented living in my country and paying taxes. I have nothing against the plan. As long as it can help the country where you are staying. Just love how they say "the future of borderless work." Just saying! - https://carmelaomana25.wixsite... [wixsite.com]
  • The workforce is evolving, we have to be flexible enough to keep up with the change. Remote working has become more normal nowadays, just my opinion. https://virtualhelpbyrm.wixsit... [wixsite.com]

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