# creating a nation - online **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 11, 2010, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-nation-online/556734 "2010-10-11T00:06:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-nation-online/556734/21 "2010-10-11T19:10:38Z")
So how would you call a people united by a common culture, be it their history, their language, or their religion, or another commonality, **Exapno**? ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-nation-online/556734/22 "2010-10-11T19:24:48Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > To be sure (as should be clear from the wiki article as well as some other [dictionary entries](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nation) (#3), if you insist on relying on those), the academic notion of nation that I am using is far from abandoned - it is not some sort of archaic sixties usage or something. Instead, it is still the standard among the very ‘good writers’ you mention and in the social sciences the distinction between nation and state I make is broadly accepted, common-place and uncontroversial, whereas the usage that you advocate is (rightly) seen as inaccurate and unsophisticated, since it does assumes incorrectly that every group of people that is considered to have a shared destiny (both by the group itself and by outsiders) has a government, and that every group that has a government necessarily has a shared destiny. Well, I wouldn’t call the use of “nation” to mean “independent state or country” to be inaccurate or unsophisticated. It is an acceptable colloquial meaning, if one that is less precise because it causes confusion with the formal meaning of “nation”. So in academic or other formal contexts, the use of “nation” should be reserved to mean a people with a shared culture, history and/or destiny. Now what the OP meant by his use of the word, I can’t quite say. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-nation-online/556734/23 "2010-10-11T19:35:03Z")
I think we are in agreement. You say it is [QUOTE=Hypnagogic Jerk] an acceptable colloquial meaning, if one that is less precise [/QUOTE] I say that [QUOTE=Švejk] …there is also a more colloquial usage (…) which clearly exists but which is much less precise. [/QUOTE] As for calling it inaccurate and unsophisticated, I think it is fair to say that the colloquial usage is seen as such in the social sciences. I am fairly certain that if an undergrad mixed up state and nation in a term paper and used a dictionary to back it up, they’d get dinged for it and they’d be told to go do their homework and use the literature instead of a dictionary. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-nation-online/556734/24 "2010-10-11T20:39:24Z")
Well, let’s ask ourselves, why would someone want to be a citizen of one of these artificial microstates, rather than wherever it is they’re living now? What benefits do you imagine? Lower or no taxes, no cops hassling you for smoking pot, your own passports and currency and laws, that sort of thing? But every benefit you imagine you’d enjoy as a citizen of a microstate is the exact reason no other state will recognize your state. What’s in it for the United States to agree that your living room is an independent country? The United States isn’t going to agree to pretend that your living room is an independent country unless there’s some benefit to the United States in pretending your living room is an independent country. Thing is, you can move out to a remote part of the world, and you’ll de facto have most of the benefits you imagine you’d get by being an independent country. Very few cops are going to be hassling you when you’re 200 miles from the nearest road in the Canadian wilderness. No economic contact with larger society means no taxes. You can even issue your own money legally in the United States as long as it doesn’t resemble US currency. Issuing your own currency isn’t the problem, the problem is convincing other people to accept your currency instead of US dollars or Canadian dollars or Euros or whatever. You can avoid a heck of a lot of laws just by living in a rural area and keeping to yourself. The problem is that people don’t want to do that. ---
**Author:** ![ultraman100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b77776/32.png) [@ultraman100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultraman100)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-nation-online/556734/25 "2010-10-11T23:28:56Z")
> [@Fubaya](#): > > > [@ultraman100](#): > > > > maybe one tiny island, with servers and a satellite dish would suffice for the physical element of this nation. ive heard of people buying islands for amounts of dollars one human can accumulate in less than one lifetime. > > This is basically a [micronation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation), the [Principality of Sealand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand) being a good example. The problem with them is they don’t usually qualify as states and no one recognizes them as such. Thanks for mentioning this. Today, could one erect some sort of floating structure and be independent from anyone else’s laws? Maybe it would depend on who claims the waters to be theirs. I wonder if there is water that not claimed in the pacific or atlantic ocean. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-nation-online/556734.md?page=1)