[_delirium]

Misleading branding maybe, but not quite a hoax. It's just a login system: you get an ID# and a way to authenticate to digital services in Estonia (both the government's, and anyone in the private sector that implements the system). It will be genuinely useful for nonresidents conducting business in Estonia who previously couldn't get Estonian digital credentials, b/c a lot of stuff is easier if you have them (filing online tax returns, logging in to online banking, etc.). But it doesn't come with legal rights, so the "residency" part is a bit misleading.

[andy_ppp]

To be fair I think the idea is to eventually keep adding rights to these certificates.

    "we are moving towards the idea of a country without borders"

I think the nation state, borders, the tax system, voting, what laws you work under and how you interact with the state should all be rethought as we move towards a post scarcity society[0].

Or we could just keep the old system and destroy the planet because, by god, it's good fun for billionaires to hoard all the worlds resources.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

[_delirium]

That's the branding, yeah, but I doubt it's too serious. Literally anyone can sign up for an Estonian ID, with some basic background check, so in principle this "country without borders" includes billions of people, at least once they loosen the requirement to physically travel to Estonia (which currently puts a de-facto income/visa filter on it). I suspect Estonia will not grant those billions of people any "hard" rights, like the right to immigrate to Estonia, to work there if not already permitted to work there, to be considered Estonian for legal purposes if not already so considered, etc.

From what I can gather, what they really want is to make it easier for people to set up businesses in Estonia, for good old-fashioned countries-with-borders reasons: they want to improve the Estonian economy and the employment prospects of Estonia's real residents, as a government typically wants to do.

[msh]

I think we are quite bit away from post-scarcity, just look at the third world where there are quite a bit of scarcity.

[teknologist]

Unnecessarily. That's kind of the point.