The World’s First Internet Country is Coming (Here’s what to expect)

- What I have to share with you in this video can change the way you travel forever. The world's first country on the internet is in development now, and no one is talking about it. This isn't some kind of dystopian novel or sci-fi thriller.

This is real life and it's happening sooner than you think. So let's find out what this internet country is all about. And if you should be a citizen, before I tell you about this digital country, however, and how you can get a passport, why do we even need one?

What are the problems with global mobility and travel that can only be solved through an internet country? Well, humans have been moving around the planet since almost the beginning of our species. And at first, the only limitations on where you could go was how far you could actually physically travel with enough food, water, and safety to get to your destination without dying somewhere between 50 or a hundred thousand years ago, homo sapiens, that's us.

We started leaving the continent of Africa and exploring farther afield to places like Europe, Asia, Australia, and ultimately the Americas. There were no passports, there were no borders, just human beings with a desire to move and the freedom to do so. Now, although there were walled cities and boundaries around ancient settlements, the idea of an imaginary border didn't become a thing until the 19th and 20th centuries.

The idea started to spread in the 16 hundreds, along with the concept of the nation state that we know today, which makes it a lot easier to control the movement of people through borders and military force. But the system we have today is a recent phenomena. The first passport wasn't issued until 1920, and it's been this way ever since.

Today, most of the borders you see on a map are less than 100 years old because all of us alive today, were born into this system. We've accepted this global cultural norm because we don't have any other choice. If you want to travel internationally, you need a passport.

And how far and wide you can travel depends on where you're from. If you're born from a country with a weak passport, well you lost the birth lottery. It's crazy that we're even talking about this, but today, something called the passport index actually exists, and it's a ranking of the world's strongest and weakest passports.

The strongest passport on the index right now is Singapore, where you can enjoy visa free travel to 195 countries. Citizens of Afghanistan hold the weakest passport. And if that's you, you can only travel to 28 countries without getting a visa.

What this essentially equates to is gentrification or racism on a global scale, depending on how you want to see it. And with the first passport being issued right after World War I, I think we can say it's a mix of both. Now, if you're from a wealthy or developed country, then you might not have to apply for visas very often.

But what you might not think about is that your ability to travel is still restricted to the amount of time that you can stay in a country on a tourist visa. But if you ever wanna travel somewhere and stay more than a couple months, then you need to apply for a Visa or residency permit. And how hard is it to get one of those?

Well, it depends on where you're from, where you're going, and the category of visa or permit that you are applying for. But suffice to say, it always takes a significant amount of time, money, energy, and resources, a lot of waiting around a lot of government bureaucracy, and in many cases, a lot of standing and waiting in lines in different countries at embassies, and sometimes having to go back year after year waiting for your visa to be approved. And the best case scenario, you can apply online for a tourist visa, but it still costs time, money, and hassle.

So what is the solution to this passport problem? Well, I don't have all the answers, but digital nomad visas are one way that this playing field is being leveled. Because digital nomad visas are open to citizens of any country.

So if you are a remote worker, a remote employee freelancer, or in some cases a retiree or pensioner, you can apply to stay for anywhere from six months up to five years in upwards of 80 different countries with their digital nomad or remote work visa. The catch is however, that you still need to have proof of income. The application procedure is also very lengthy and cumbersome, and you might need to show between 1,007 or $8,000 per month in income that is coming from a foreign or remote source.

So it's not possible for everyone to get these types of visas. This problem leads us back to the idea of a digital nation and one company is taking matters into their own hands. Enter Safety Wing, a startup founded in 2018 by three Norwegian Digital Nomads.

Now, this company already has a couple of products online that you might be familiar with. One of them is called Nomad Insurance, which is International Travel Medical Insurance for Digital Nomads world travelers, pretty much anyone who wants it. They also have Remote health, which is an international remote healthcare plan for remote workers and employees.

And this video is not sponsored. They don't even know I'm making this video. I'm just really passionate about this topic, and I wanna share this information with you.

So if you wanna learn more, you can always check the links below this video. But basically, Safety Wing is on a mission to build this global social safety net. But what is that?

This is a term that's very unfamiliar, especially to people of countries like, oh, I don't know the United States. Well, according to Safety Wing, their social safety net will include travel and health insurance, life insurance, remote retirement, pensions, disability coverage, virtual healthcare, and Plumia their country on the internet that is going to offer visa free travel to multiple countries. And ultimately, one day a passport.

Plumia is the name of Safety Wing's, future Internet country, and it's part Innovation Lab, part think tank, and part startup at this phase. But they'll be launching a special travel pass next year that I'll tell you about in just a minute. The goal of Plumia is to eliminate barriers to global mobility, and they're doing this by actually creating policies for foreign governments and lobbying them to adapt them as well.

In now deleted articles from 2019. The founders originally wrote that the rules of the game have changed. Government has less leverage.

Now, not too long ago, if your country's government imploded or your area suffered some kind of natural disaster, you were pretty much stuck there because a lot of people lived where they worked and their jobs were tied to their locations. But things have changed a lot in recent years. And if you work online and you have access to finances, transportation, and a travel document, you can escape and you can relocate to another place, said the founders.

When your life and livelihood is online, a tyrannical government goes from being life ending to being more like an inconvenience. Now of course, fleeing a dangerous government is still difficult if you're from certain countries, especially if you have a physically located job, if you have limited financial resources or if it's just dangerous to leave. But for the hundreds of millions of people who can now earn an income online from Silicon Valley founders to freelance graphic designers to Russian and Ukrainian war refugees, leaving your country for political reasons or safety reasons is now a viable option.

The founders note that digital nomads are now choosing cities and countries the same way we consider buying a product. We look at a place and we say, what can this city or country offer me? Which place offers me the best services, the best cost of living, the best quality of life, and the best infrastructure for me to be able to do my job?

In other words, which country is the best service provider? That's essentially the way that digital nomads choose destinations these days. But of course, it depends on how strong your passport is.

So the first way that the Plumia team is chipping away at this passport inequality is by creating something called the Nomad Border Pass, which is essentially a multi-country visa for digital nomads. The cost for the Border Pass will be $500 valid for five years, and it will give you pre-approved access in participating countries for up to 90 days each. Currently, there are 10 countries on the list with many more planned.

So if you're from a country with a weak passport, then this is definitely going to be a benefit for you because you won't have to worry about all of that paperwork. They're also helping connect like-minded people and potential future citizens through their website, plumia. org.

I recently interviewed Lauren Razavi, the executive director of Plumia for my weekly podcast, Badass Digital Nomads, which is among the top 1% of podcasts in the world. And you can tune in every week for free on your favorite podcast platform or subscribe on badassdigitalnomads. com.

And here's what she had to say about it. - The thing that we want to do with our global mobility work is sort of unlock borders to stop the world kind of operating on this principle that the coincidence of your birthplace determine your life opportunities. And instead to kind of like, um, open up that space so that more people are able to pursue the digital nomad lifestyle, um, and are able to kind of like, uh, have the same rights given that they have the same internet connection.

That's kind of the, the group, the area that we're kind of working on, the ultimate sort of 10 year vision, um, which we have in our roadmap slated for 2032, uh, is to develop a new global passport that works at borders worldwide. How are we gonna do this? You know, it's very good to have the like long-term vision, but how do you start today towards that vision other than talking about it, which I think is useful as in to do the thinking and then do the kind of like sharing of, uh, of what you've discovered is great, but you do actually need to build stuff as well, uh, as in bring it to life.

And that's something Safety Wing was extremely competent at already. You know, it already brought to life this new kind of travel insurance for digital nomads and that are truly global and borderless health insurance. Um, but the idea of, okay, how do we, how do we develop a product that is relevant, kind of what people need, what people want today, and then how do we, um, how do we sort of turn that later into a, a fully functioning passport?

- The Nomad Border Pass is available starting in 2025, and you can apply or join the waiting list with the link below. Now, I, for one, am on board with the idea of a digital country because I think that if humans have been able to travel freely for 100,000 years, then the system that we've had in place for the last 100 years, really it doesn't make any sense. So maybe one day we can all be citizens of Plumia with our extra passports and our digital nomad retirement pensions, but I'm curious to know what you think.

How do you feel about the current nation state and this current Passport strength system? And do you think that having an internet country is the solution? Will you apply for a passport or the Nomad Border Pass?

Let me know in the comments below. And if you're new here, then welcome. Make sure to subscribe if you value freedom and the freedom to travel, and for some ideas of places that you can live on a thousand dollars per month or less, check out these videos next.