We need new countries !
Do you remember times when people from Europe were migrating to America because of better life ? Ok, you don't, but you might've read about it. People were moving for better living conditions, new unoccupied land, or simply running away from old europian monarchs. I have a hypothesis, that the most life-capable beings are those, who are able to cope with risk and fear, cross the line of comfort zone, and explore new unknown areas. In this manner, America inherited the best ones in the world, and I think this is one of the reasons why America is the wealthiest country, according to several measurements.
Another reason for nurturing wealth was freedom. Freedom allows to test new extremes, new uniqueness. Without freedom, all this variability would be hammered to the mean. Limits, as opposed to freedom, are conservation of what is considered normal. Greater limits leads to greater uniformity. And uniformity kills innovation. Innovation comes from creativity, and creativity comes from experimentation, lot of failures, craziness and freedom to be unique. This is not allowed in limitating environment. I think this is one of the most important trait of America, or it was in the past at least.
Where are we now ?
In my humble opinion , governments of the world are amazingly lost, or confused would a better term. The system is overly bureaucratic, overly limitating, and the tech people are living in their own race, where speeding and breaking rules is the new standard. Old structures within the state institutions, are trying to take their breath, but they are just too slow. Innovation comes faster increasingly, and they can just watch. It doesn't matter ,if we are talking about the US, Europe or Asia, every one is more or less limitating to the experimentation, whether it's governments regulations or cultural conventions.
What to do ?
I have a proposal. It's aimed mostly at big capital, Google, Apple are some another giant which may arise within few years. Build you own country ! Country with its own rules, no or minimal bureaucracy, no patent trolling, no restrictions. I know it sounds utopian. We should look at the numbers, this idea would be feasible when costs for lobbying the governments are bigger than this experiment. Even if it's not, I think it could be a good investment, consider it diversification. Imagine attracting the best talent in the world in every possible profession, and imigrate them to one place, let them start fresh, let them interact without the burden of the past. Globalism / multiculturalism in its purest form at one place.
How to do it ?
This one is bigger. There is simply no new unoccupied physical land on earth. We could consider moon or mars, but that's just too costly and extreme. There was this one project by Seasteading institute, it was backed by Peter Thiel as well. They plan to create a new society on seasteads in the international waters. It might be one option.
The other option, is to buy some land from some country, and build there a separate city. It might be hard, but everyone has its price.
I have another hypothesis, that we are currently at state bonds bubble. Private capital is overly trusting governments to collect their earnings through taxation and regulations, without lowering the costs of bureaucracy. Without restructuring, government institutions in this form can not catch up with innovation speed, they will loose, sooner or later. There is this restructuring emotion in the world going on, if you watch news. Arabian spring, protests in south america, Ukraine ? If my hypothesis is correct, we will see more of this in the first-world countries in coming years. Only counter-argument would be salvation from some unpredictable economic stimulus from private sector innovation in spite of governments limitations, but I rather doubt it. During this restructuring of governments, there is greater pressure for optimization of costs or selling unnecessary baggage. And that will be ideal moment for buying some land.
I heard that Silicon Valley is living in its own world, there might even be some separatists ideas growing. Well, lets imagine being Silicon Valley as independent country with power of setting its own rules without external limitation.