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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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Asklemmy
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So?
In the first place, a "corporation" could set up a legal system easily - draft some laws, build some facilities and appoint some officials, and done.
But they wouldn't even need to do that. They likely would, because an impartial system wins voluntary compliance and thus promotes stability, but the only really necessary part of a legal system is sufficient power to enforce its dictates, and with enough armed professionals, that's relatively easy, at least within secured borders.
Who is bankrolling all this?
Whoever wants in on it really.
Primarily I presume it'd be the corporations themselves, but banking is certain to change to accommodate the growing independence of the "corporations," and I expect that to some notable degree, the two will merge - that the largest "corporations" will have their own banking sibsidiaries and will handle most everything internally.
There's a broad point underlying all of this - all that's really necessary is that enough executives/owners at enough institutions have a desire to divest themselves of associations with governments and establish their own "states." Once the will is there and they possess enough wealth and power to enforce their will, the rest is just details. They have entire staffs who are employed to figure out how to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish, and they will figure it out.
You can use your private army to gain currency and other assets by stealing them from other entities. Governments typically don’t like this but if you’re a big enough force they will negotiate.
So is maintaining a large workforce and infrastructure, but they do that as a matter of course. And already, there are corporations with operating budgets larger than some countries. That's only going to become more the case with time.
The same things that generally stop countries from doing it to each other - insufficient forces and/or unacceptable losses and/or a preference for stability and/or established alliances and/or any of countless other considerations.
This isn't rocket science. Realpolitik is a fairly straightforward thing.
From the sale of goods and/or services.
Duh.
Yes. Consumers of whatever goods and/or services they provide.
Duh.
Or more likely not.
Here's just one quick idea - accept local currency with a handling fee sufficient to cover any potential losses on exchange (which are unlikely, since at that point their currency will likely be harder than about any government's), and advertise a discount for the use of their private currency, accompanied by the offer of free and automatic currency exchange with an account at the corporate bank.
So you promote your currency, avoid the hassle of dealing with competing currencies and gain new bank accounts, all at the same time.
And that's just one idea, off the top of my head.
The funding they would get still originates from government spending or banks chartered by the government and consumers are using a government currency to facilitate trade.
What would be the medium of trade with another countries?