[mahmud]

As someone who holds three nationalities, and is 2 years away from a fourth: I look forward to the day I hold none.

Beligerence of the "State" knows no bounds, I hope we can free ourselves from this regressive construct and, once again, live in this world judged by our own merit and character, beholden to none.

[InclinedPlane]

The idealogically pure idea of stateless citizens working in harmony of their own free accord is a fantasy that doesn't mesh with reality and just as dangerous as any Marxist Communist fantasy. In the right here and right now states are far from perfect, and we are in the middle of a period where lots of forces are pushing for greater consolidation of power in the hands of the state. But the benefit of having governments (some of them at least) still outweighs the extreme dangers of not having them.

[biomene]

In what way is communism dangerous? I fail to see any inherent danger in a form of society that distributes its wealth evenly across its citizens.

[run4yourlives]

Well, for one, it fails to address the inherent need of people to achieve for personal/selfish reasons, thus removing life purpose for many of your best and brightest - it kills ambition.

Ambition is what drives humanity forward, for better or worse. Unless you can channel the needs of the state as a replacement for personal ambition, your society under communism is unsustainable. This is very difficult to do without reverting to a society that is either 1) capitalist or 2) utterly corrupt.

Either way, communism is self defeating, and therefore dangerous.

EDIT: Just to note that I upvoted you and encourage others to do the same. This is a place to share knowledge and you asked a perfectly valid question that many people have. This is not reddit and nobody should be downvoted for asking a question, regardless of how basic it might be.

[morestuff]

I'm not so sure that it's clearcut that personal/selfish ambition is exactly identical to financial ambition. Further, there's probably a few different configurations of societies that distribute wealth evenly that are compatible with financial ambition. As for corruption, you probably need to convince someone that capitalist corruption is better :)

[run4yourlives]

I'm not so sure that it's clearcut that personal/selfish ambition is exactly identical to financial ambition.

It really doesn't matter if they are or not. In order for communism to truly work, you'd need to abolish all rewards. That is, the very act of having hockey players and cosmonauts and musical talent recognized by the state at large - regardless of financial reward - creates the very imbalance that communism is supposed to address. As I said: self defeating.

People may seek different rewards based on their character, but the very nature of man is that we work best when challenged and respond will to the rewards earned when overcoming those challenges, financial or not.

If your economic system essentially requires a man with a gun to ensure and enforce its existence, there is something wrong.

[jakeonthemove]

What run4yourlives said.

To put it simply - when all the wealth is equally spread, there is no incentive for anyone to do anything. If everyone is paid equally and has the same benefits, there's no point in working harder or smarter - you just do the bare minimum and be done with it.

Let's take a capitalist factory: workers are paid $5 per assembled iPad. Those who want more money can assemble 100 iPads and make $500 in a day's work. Most are happy with $100 per day, so they'll assemble only 20 iPads (let's say that's the minimum amount required).

Now a communist, state-operated factory: workers are paid $100 per day because everyone is equal. Those who want to make $500... can't, even if they assemble 1000 iPads. So they just assemble the bare minimum of 20 and are done with it, secretly cursing the government for this injustice/inequality (how ironic is that?).

The overall production level drops significantly unless the state raises the minimum amount of iPads made to 100 per day. Obviously, the people who are happy with $100 per day are now pissed off, either because they don't want or simply can't work that hard.

The only ones benefiting from communism are those who make the laws and control the factories/country.

[_delirium]

To put it simply - when all the wealth is equally spread, there is no incentive for anyone to do anything.

I don't think this is true in general, though it's true for some jobs (mostly jobs that nobody wants to do). For example, I don't think scientists, or even most HN types, are motivated solely by money, and would just sit around drinking beer if they couldn't make more money. Many of us are more motivated by science and technology. Making money is nice, but I would still work on tech if it made absolutely no difference to my salary. The reward is finding interesting things, gaining recognition for my ideas from my peers, etc., not just some monetary bonuses.

If anything I think there's a slight negative correlation between in-it-for-the-money and quality in science. The people who are there to optimize money are usually good game-players, adept at working the system and working their way up bureaucracy. Brilliant scientists often aren't even very good at that, and are more often really driven by the science first, perhaps peer recognition second, and maximizing money a distant third.

[jakeonthemove]

True, but what's the incentive beyond creating your new product/tech? There's no one to buy it but the government (unless it's something that appeals to the ordinary citizen and is not banned because it's competing with a gov-issued product), and then what? How will you develop your new theory/tech in the future?

[_delirium]

I don't have in mind some kind of Soviet-style authoritarian state that would censor things and whatnot. Was just commenting on the more general issue of whether people would create things if it had no effect on their salary; I think many people would. I certainly would; actually I probably do more things as side projects than as "real" projects as it is. The incentive is that technology is interesting, and people using and commenting on my stuff is rewarding. How to actually set that up in practice, I have less confidence in. My own politics tend towards more Scandinavian style social-welfare state, rather than communism, because it seems much clearer how to make it work in practice (market economy, but with high taxes, high level of public services, and a strong social safety net).

Even within a strongly capitalist system like the US, being motivated by things other than money actually used to be closer to the norm for a large number of professionals. The current situation where people change companies a lot, get large bonuses, and have widely differential pay, is a pretty recent phenomenon. At Bell Labs, everyone got fairly similar salaries, despite the fact that some people were much more successful in research than others. Of course, you had to be at a certain level of success to get there at all, but once you were there, you just got the normal Bell Labs salary, with raises tied to seniority, old-corporate-style. Yet many people there excelled anyway, despite the fact that they could've sat around pulling the exact same salary without putting in much effort. Why? Because they were motivated by things other than money, I would guess.

[dalke]

Wow. I do not recognize your description of factories, economics, or political systems. iPads are made in China, governed by the Communist Party of China. They have migrated from a planned economy to one of "socialism with Chinese characteristics." Is this a communist factory?

I think you are confusing a "planned economy" with "communism." But even then, there is nothing in the definition of a planned economy to say that all people in a certain position have the same daily wage. The Soviet union had an incentive system. For example, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668134908409742 says "encourages the foremost collective farmers by means of adding extra labour-days."

You idealize the idea of the piece-rate system, without realizing that that's the system used in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. Read in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_reform_in_the_Soviet_Union... how the Khrushchev era reform movement pushed to move from a quota system to "standardising their wages and reducing their dependence on overtime or bonus payments."

From that page, "The piece-rate system led to an enormous level of bureaucracy and contributed to huge inefficiencies in Soviet industry. In addition, factory managers frequently manipulated the personal production quotas given to workers to prevent workers' wages from falling too low."

So it seem that your "capitalist factory" is using the same piece-system incentive system as used during the Soviet era, which is about as communist as you can get.

I also think you are confusing "capitalist" with "meritocracy." The US during the period of slavery was under laissez-faire capitalism, but quite obviously slaves did not enjoy the same benefits which you attribute to capitalism, and a slave working the same job, with the same abilities as a free man was unlikely to make the same rates.

You write "Obviously, the people who are happy with $100 per day are now pissed off, either because they don't want or simply can't work that hard." Or they might put their family life ahead of the company's bottom line and think that 40 hours of week is enough even if some people want to work 80 hour weeks.

Finally, you wrote "The only ones benefiting from communism are those who make the laws and control the factories/country." There's nothing unique to communism there. The same holds with capitalism. If only the richest 1% in a capitalist country make the laws and control the factories/country, then it's very likely that they are benefiting the most. The economic system and the form of government are not as strongly coupled as you suggest.

[dantheman]

It requires the use of force to redistribute weatlh. It also removes the price mechanism, thus robbing the people of information required to produce and evaluate.

[InclinedPlane]

What if we just gave everyone like vouchers or something that they could use to trade for whatever they wanted? Although, how do we encourage people to do work that's more important than other work? Or people who have skills that are in short supply? And how do we make sure that people don't hog the stuff that takes a lot more work to produce? Maybe if we gave people more vouchers if they worked in more difficult or more needed jobs, and maybe we could make it so that the stuff that takes more work to produce requires more vouchers to trade for. But then how do we set the values for such things? Who could possibly collect enough information to get all the ratios right? Oh wait, who knows better than the people who use goods and services? What if we just let them set their own rates for voucher exchanges and let everyone sort out things on their own? That way people who have skills that are rarer or more needed by the public will be able to collect more vouchers and people can choose what goods and services are most important to them personally by deciding how many of their vouchers they're willing to give up for them.

There you go, I think I fixed communism.

[raintrees]

Or (re)invented capitalism?

Vouchers == Church Indulgences == Dollars

[InclinedPlane]

#cough#that'sthejokecaptainobvious#cough#

[InclinedPlane]

The pursuit of communism resulted in the tragic deaths of over 100 million innocents during the 20th century. More than were killed by Nazism, Facism, and Japanese Imperialism combined. And that is merely the darkest portion of the shadow that communism has cast on human civilization, the full extent of suffering and loss is on a scale that makes the Black Death look like a walk in the park.

[jebblue]

Of interest to those who are down voting you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

[morestuff]

History can't convince a nerd until you show that history was caused by an intrinsic quality, not an accidental one. I think it touches too closely to 'decline of pirates linked to increase in global warming' without any explanation of how their ice cold hearts kept us cool.

[jarek]

I don't think it's fair to say killing millions of people is an intrinsic quality of communism or that pursuing it will inherently cause millions of deaths. As an example, pursuit of communism in Cuba has not caused magnitudes more deaths than pursuit of capitalism and generally "right wing" politics during Operation Condor.

[nirvana]

An example of how and why this will always fail is well presented in the story of the Twentieth Century Motor corporation. A reading of an excerpt can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmJUobwKQk

If you'd prefer text here's one: https://thesnarkwhohuntsback.wordpress.com/favorite-passages...

[jseliger]

Maybe, but if you're in a country that's going to hell (Russia invades Georgia, Rwanda in 1994) and you're a U.S. citizen, you can be evacuated.

In addition, if you're captured in the United States and labeled a "terrorist," you're less likely to be tortured and held in "black" facilities if you're a U.S. citizen. Perhaps not an optimal reason, but it still exists.

[mahmud]

The U.S. embassy has evacuated my family and we're still paying for it. It's not free. We could have hired a private militia and escaped to safety for 5% of what we paid the state department.

[jstabbac]

Could you elaborate? I'm interested in knowing more. Where were you, how much did it cost, what services were provided?

[mahmud]

Somalia 1991. [two-digit]k per person. Do the math.

(I need to ask the family, I remember it being more than 30k)

[igorsyl]

Did they disclose the fees before providing this service? Or they just surprised you with the bill in the mail? Was this tax-deductible?

[waffle_ss]

I'm kind of glad to hear that it isn't free. U.S. taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize the risks that some take to travel to dangerous areas, even if it's an aid worker (most recently, like [this guy][1]).

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/world/asia/kidnapped-ameri...

[mikerice]

Yes, if you go somewhere that's dangerous, the local embassy will usually warn you to leave asap if something is going down. It's not a free pass to get out. If you want that, become a diplomat.

[driverdan]

You should do a reddit AMA. I'm sure many people would like to hear your story.

[InclinedPlane]

If we erased all governments and rulers from the Earth in the next second, by 2013 there would be a panoply of tyrants, warlords, and all manner of governments imaginable. There are only so many ways that people self-organize, and the perfect ideal of a peaceful anarchist commune is not one such method that is stable or practical with our current level of technology.

[ma2rten]

I also hold three passports. I think that having multiple nationalities does make you see how arbitrary the concept of a nation state is (getting privileges solely because of your place of birth or who your parents are), however I don't see that changing anytime soon, because there is not really a realistic alternative.

EDIT: In case people are interested, my nationalities are: Dutch, German, Canadian. I was born with all three of them (even though I found out only much later). I would loose both my Dutch and my German citizenship if I were to acquire another one.

[achille2]

Mind listing out the countries, and how one goes about becoming a citizenship collector?

My parents sacrificed an incredible deal to come to the US. For the life of me I can't comprehend why someone would do this. Loss of citizenship is permanent. Your kids lose it as well. Why would derek would do this to his kids.

[jarek]

> For the life of me I can't comprehend why someone would do this. Loss of citizenship is permanent. Your kids lose it as well. Why would derek would do this to his kids.

Maybe he doesn't want his kids to have to deal with the U.S. I.R.S. every year of their life, regardless of whether or not they live in the U.S.? Just one of the possible reasons.

[doktrin]

That seems implausible. If anything, maybe he doesn't want to deal with the IRS for the rest of his life.

After all, it's not a burden on his children until they begin collecting income. If the concern is really for the children, it would be more pragmatic to give them sufficient time to make up their own mind.

[_delirium]

His kids will now be forced to do two years of mandatory military service in the Singapore army, though, and in addition, must remain in the army reserves and attend annual refresher training until the age of 40. I'd consider that considerably worse than dealing with the IRS once a year.

[jarek]

Valid point, but the Singaporean citizenship or residence being more onerous does not invaluate U.S. tax laws as a reason to drop U.S. citizenship.

[woe]

You seem to be assuming that his children have acquired Singaporean nationality. We don't know that this is the case.

[woe]

> Your kids lose it as well.

No. Parents cannot, under any circumstance, renounce US citizenship on their childrens' behalf. If they gained citizenship at birth, they can only lose it by their own actions.

[tzs]

According to his blog, as of last year he had moved to Singapore and it appeared he intended that to be his permanent home.

Perhaps he has decided to obtain Singapore citizenship? Singapore requires those who obtain naturalized citizenship there to renounce all other citizenships they hold.

[secure1234]

His wife has dual citizenships in the U.S./India.

[dangoor]

My wife is Indian with US citizenship. As far as we've been able to tell, India does not allow dual citizenship (a quick google turns up many references to this, including Wikipedia). An Indian who becomes a US citizen can become an "Overseas Citizen of India" (OCI) which is not exactly the same as citizenship (you can't vote in India on that status, for example)

[mih]

India does not allow dual citizenships. Rather people of Indian origin get the equivalent of a lifetime visa should they choose to be citizens of other countries, but this can be in no way equated with citizenship.

[secure1234]

I heard that she's Indian, so she might just be a citizen there.

[ChuckMcM]

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the discussion of Sealand on Ars Technica [1] was the notion of 'laws of state' vs 'laws of self' which is really nicely explained in this PDF http://illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/ilr-content/articles... . The money quote being:

"Juxtaposing these three theories of the rule of law allows us to see that there is something deeply anomalous in HavenCo’s simultaneous rejection of national self-government and embrace of formal legality and restraint on government. Having started from the premise that the political systems of existing nations could never be trusted to protect free speech, HavenCo needed a place outside of them to stand while it beamed its bits their way and undermined their national Internet laws.

That place needed to be able to stand up to annoyed nations, which led HavenCo to seek Sealand, with its colorable claims to sovereignty. And once HavenCo had chosen a protector with power, it also needed to be protected from the abuse of that power. HavenCo expected international law to protect it from the rest of the world and expected Sealand law to protect it from Sealand itself."

We can discuss and agree that people have fundamental rights, but having that discussion only makes sense in the context of establishing a way of enforcing those rights. The day you hold 'no' citizenship is the day that nobody is going to help protect your rights and you become someone else's slave. That isn't a day I would look forward too.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-...

[monochromatic]

The belligerence of the state doesn't hold a candle to the belligerence of unfettered individuals.

[joering2]

you want to live in a "free state" but yet you are acquiring just another citizenship? it feels to me like a meat lover giving a presentation on a vegan conference how beautiful world would be if we all eat veggies only, lol!

btw: how is the custom board patrol treating you when you cross? some countries like in US while pulling up your name they can see all nationalities you have. I would assume they are hostile towards you in some way, right?

[rdtsc]

> some countries like in US while pulling up your name they can see all nationalities you have

How does a third world tell US which are its citizens. Doubt there is a global citizenship database? Is there?

[joering2]

I would imagine by now there are some treaties between most nations that exchange such information. There is also passporting system. You gave them any sort of passport (at least here in US) and they will look it up in the computer. They have to be looking up some sort of database, right?)

I could imagine someone holding so many citizenships would be very valuable asset to government agency that hire spies.

[refurb]

Indeed there are! This one is just for signals intelligence, but you can be sure that they share a lot more than that.

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

"The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA, /juːkuːˈsɑː/ ew-koo-sah)[1][2] is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence among the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand."

[jarek]

I think you would be required to disclose your other citizenships when obtaining the U.S. one.

They wouldn't necessarily know about others if you got the American one by birth, though if you were born abroad you can be sure that's going to be in the profile.

[nirvana]

Mind sharing which one you're pursuing or which ones you think are worthy nationalities to hold?

[jarek]

Personally I think a combo of one of EU countries and Australia or Canada is nice. You get pretty much all of the first world benefits, can live anywhere in the EU while it's still together with minimal hassles, have Australia/Canada when you're missing an environment a little more the U.S., without the crazy that's U.S. citizenship and corresponding tax laws. (But of course I'd think so as a dual CA/EU citizen.)

[rdtsc]

Normally these are collected along the way while "moving on up in the world". Start in some poor country. Get citizenship in another slight better country and so on. Now "better" is subjective and defined by the individuals. For example, most people would consider Belize better than South Sudan.

Some just optimize based on the most travel permissive citizenships. Like, say the British passports let you in quite a few countries without a visa, so does an US passport but the countries are different.

[mahmud]

Be a U.S. citizen but don't live there. That is the best option of them all, and one I took.

[brd]

What? This is most certainly not the best option.

As a U.S. citizen you are required to pay taxes on income earned worldwide and from my understanding you can only deduct up to ~95k in 2012.

From what I've read, being a US citizen and working abroad is expensive and one of the main motivations for people to renounce their US citizenship.

[mahmud]

I can't afford not to be a U.S. citizen. I'm a non-millionaire atheist black man with a Muslim name and an American accent. My kind don't last long in the wilderness, I will be traded by intel agencies like a baseball card.

[mahyarm]

Why not be Canadian and not live in the USA?

[jarek]

If you aren't a permanent resident you are almost always tied to your current job, and can technically be required to leave within two weeks if you are laid off or fired. (Getting a new job that would accommodate your visa requirements on a two-week notice might not be trivial.) If you are a permanent resident, you are subject to many of the annoyances discussed (i.e., IRS) without the benefits of citizenship...

[mahyarm]

He was talking about not living in the USA specifically, so your not tied to your job like that, and you don't have any US tax requirements unless the income comes from the USA.

[jarek]

Wow, sorry, I completely missed the "not" in your post. My bad.

[ios84dev]

But then you still have to pay taxes on worldwide income right?

[culturestate]

The tax system for overseas income is complicated, especially if you hold foreign assets (bank accounts or corporate interest), but the short version is that any income earned as an employee up to ~$95,000 can be excluded. It's called the foreign earned income exclusion.

[refurb]

Don't forget that if you live in a country that has a tax treaty with the US, any taxes paid to your home gov't counts towards any taxes you would pay to the US.

So if you live in a higher tax jurisdiction (i.e. the majority of the countries in the world), your US tax bill ends up being $0. However, you still have the hassle of filing your US tax return each year.

[refurb]

I didn't think it was that complicated at all. I held assets in Canada while working in the US and all I had to do was declare what they were and how much.

i.e. Mutual fund account - $32K

[jarek]

To add to this, you legally have to declare to the U.S. government all foreign cash in excess of $10k. You may not pay tax but you definitely have to file regardless.