I want to start my own country. I’m thinking, maybe buy a little land in a Third World country full of corruption, then pay off the officials to grant me soveriegnty. How would I go about–
=> getting a ccTLD?
=> getting the UN to recognise me as soveriegn?
=> getting people to live there?
=> establishing a currency?
=> building and maintaining an economy?
=> raising and maintaining a military?
=> establishing a Constitution and a federal government that can operate without me?
=> avoiding assassination?
Any thoughts would be appreciated. 
I think Cecel answered most of these questions in one of his books, but since I don’t have them in front of me right now, I can’t say which.
You might want to be careful regarding the appellations you select for yourself.
The “Father of Our Country” was infertile.
I have the book How to Start Your Own Country. The answer to the eponymous question seems to be “Get yourself a bunch of nukes, and be ready to use them.” The author is pretty scary in this regard. He talks about nukes and using them on major cities as if it’s a small price to pay to set up the nation of West Shithole.
Aside from this, the book is pretty interesting. It has a big section listing a lot of new country-type projects, both recent and historic, along with how each one faired. Sealand, a floating platform off the coast of England, is probably the most successful project in recent years. The guy who set it up even got the British courts to declare the platform sovereign territory. :eek:
It’s easy to set up your own country. People do it all the time. The hard part is getting other countries to recognize your country, especially the country that your new enclave used to be part of.
If you want to call your house the Pacelli Republic no one is going to stop you. If you try to stop paying your taxes to the United States government, or try to say that zoning laws don’t apply to you, or that marijuana usage isn’t illegal in your country, then you will encounter some trouble.
The main reason is, what incentive do already existing countries have to recognize your independence? If you are a large group of people with an army that can defend the country and workers that can be traded with, then that is usually a good enough reason.
But generally it would be much easier to simply take over an already existing country than to start one from scratch. Why buy some land from Gambia and declare it independent when you could probably take over Gambia itself just as easily?
Very well, I hereby declare my backyard to be the Pacelli Republic. 