Starting a Micronation - the Basics

Everyone has said, at one time or another, "In MY country..." Well, how many people have thought about the logical extension of this? Not many - and most who do dismiss the idea as silly in short order.

This is not written for those people.

Do you have drive? Vision? Do you want YOUR viewpoint out there, contending in the Community of Nations? Tired of getting yelled at over "your" country having nuclear weapons?

If a schlep of a comedy writer in Britain can garner 50,000+ Citizens simply by going on TV as a gag, what do you think YOU can do?

Well, this is the Internet, and it's time to realize that everyone has an opinion...okay, knock it off - I HEARD THAT!

If you're reading this, you are at least somewhat interested in micronations or ephemeral states -- you also probably know very little about how to actually start a country. Below, you will find some links to help out.

Whether you are starting this for fun, or whether you intend to risk your "Life, Fortune and Sacred Honor", there are four hard and fast rules to live by:

1. "The Nail That Stick Up Is The First One Hammered Down" - Unless you are making an outright joke-nation, you have to be realistic, for the very real reason that this can be a dreadfully serious business, one in which very real people can really be killed very permanently dead, for real -- see: "Fort Davis Standoff Ends Peacefully" - and "Separatist Killed", for two crushingly-good examples.

Now, this doesn't mean to just quit and knuckle under, abandoning your principles wholesale, but it does mean that you need to maintain a realistic outlook - most "real" countries out there won't care about a "social debate club", but some may take it deadly-serious...especially when you start doing silly things like telling your Citizens to stop paying taxes to "a foreign government".

2."ENGAGE!" - Once you hang out a shingle, you will probably start getting inquiries from people interested in joining your country; there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there about the current crop of poorly-run states, so if you are a persuasive writer, be prepared for an influx of people.

Once you've got them, however, then what? This is what kills most micro's outright. You have to engage your Citizenry - your country has no traditions, unless you're good enough to get them crunching and moving from the start. Your prospective Citizens wouldn't be joining you if they were happy with their current country, but you have to give them a reason to stay.

You have to be fast out of the gate: create surveys and polls for your Citizens; encourage them to post their thoughts and views on your national message board; maintain a Citizens Directory (but DO NOT publish their actual street addresses!), and encourage Citizens who are physically close to each other to have parties and post photos thereof; create sections on your web board to debate things like National Animals, Plants, Birds, Fish, etc.; if some of your people are cooks or chef's, INSTANTLY have them start a "National Dishes" cookbook; ask people to voluntarily submit pictures for a National Calendar, etc. - you are limited only by your imagination!

Next: DO NOT MICROMANAGE! You CANNOT do this on your own! I don't care how many businesses you've run successfully, this is FAR AND AWAY too difficult for one person to manage effectively. Once you have about five or six people, start offering them government positions that they can do: have one person manage the web board, another to field communications, another to write news commentary and post news bites - you get the idea. Feel free to invent unique names for your government offices -- every "real" country out there does, after all!

It's the concept of "collective investment": the more your Citizens are engaged and invested in your country, the faster and stronger it will grow.

3."Money" - Be VERY careful when it comes to real money! Nothing develops bad blood faster than badly managed cash. State up front that you do not charge "taxes" - yet - but that you will accept donations...and PLEASE make sure to tell people that their "donations" are NOT tax-deductible from their local "macro" government! Then, make SURE that you publish an accounting of figures at least once per year; a simple balance sheet will be sufficient, but make sure to retain physical receipts if at all possible.

On publishing your national budget, you might want to try something like this:

• Publish a "Gross Domestic Product" (GDP): This includes all money made via online sales (see 'Communication, Marketing and Sales', in the links below), all Citizen donations, and VOLUNTARY submissions by Citizens of their gross income figures; tally all of these figures; this is your GDP

• Next, tally all monies spent on things like domain name registry, hosting, advertising supplies, etc; this is your "General Administration Budget"

• Now, on a STRICTLY VOLUNTARY basis, ask your Citizens to report the following: 1. What they paid in income and property taxes, and 2. What money, if any, they spent on "defense" (buying ammunition or weapons, alarm system bills, etc.):

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...1 = This is your country's "Foreign Aid"; break it down by country, since you may start getting Citizens from around the globe signing on. Try using this website http://www.x-rates.com/calculator.html for currency conversions.

...2 = This is your country's "Defense Budget"; REMEMBER: #2 is STRICTLY VOLUNTARY!!!! DO NOT ask for specific details!

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4. Finally, a word on "inventing" a national history. If you are making a gag-state, this is not only a good idea, it's a requirement. On the other hand, if you are going to be even semi-serious, stay away from "invented histories" like the literal Plague - these kinds of things are fine for "WoW", but not if you expect to be taken seriously.

I hope this helps.

Good luck.
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On to the links and tools:

Basic Information Written By Someone Else

HOW TO START YOUR OWN MICRONATION
http://www.geocities.com/micronations/
http://www.wikihow.com/Start-Your-Own-Country

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Legitimacy

The first thought most people have on this topic is "Is this legal?" Answer: Of course!...Well, in the US, Canada and most of Europe, it is...other parts of the world? I guess that depends entirely on where you currently "hang your hat", doesn't it?

Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montevideo_Convention - General info
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/intam03.asp#art1 - See Article 1, quoted here:

"ARTICLE 1

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a ) a permanent population; b ) a defined territory; c ) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states."

Memorize the relevant portions of this treaty until you can quote them from memory!This is the very BEDROCK that you and your country stand on, and when a reporter shoves a microphone in your face after a local food donation drive (see below), hit this treaty's high points in as short a time as you can - PRACTICE.

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Examples Of Current Micronations

New Country Projects
http://www.angelfire.com/nv/micronations/newcountry.html

This is the best clearing house/directory for "fairly serious" (and not so serious) micro's on the 'net.

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Free Tools - Critical for getting set up and running

Now, there are two ways to look at this. On the one hand, shelling out hard cash means that you're definitely serious, or are at least willing to part with some real money to make a new country work, which in turn means that outsiders will see that you mean business. Free sites can be taken as either you not being serious, or being too cheap. Free sites also usually have fairly tight restrictions on data storage, traffic or bandwidth and will not offer cool email addresses ("you@mykingdomgov.info").

On the other hand, times are tough, and we all need to eat. Another point in the free websites favor (other than not costing anything) is that you can take the moral high ground on that thing that EVERYONE hates, Taxes: "The Government of 'X' does not feel that it should burden its Citizens with undue taxation to simply fund primary Governmental communication and administrative operations..." -- you get the idea.

Lastly, there are a HUGE number of things involved in getting any government functioning at a basic level, and I'm not talking about paper and pencils. You need to be able to publish items for sale at a profit; you need to create professional documents; stay up to date on the world situation; communicate with your Citizens, reporters and interested parties...the list goes on and on. Do some searching around, and you will quickly find that there are a vast number of tools out there that are of an extremely professional quality -- and are expensive in the extreme.

Below, you will find the best free alternatives the author could locate. Don't hesitate to search for more on your own, and remember: the following list is merely the tip of the iceberg.

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Heraldry - Make Your Own Coat Of Arms (Critical for any Monarchical State)

http://www.makeyourcoatofarms.com/app.asp
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/british_galleries/designa/coat_of_arms/coat_of_arms.html

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Professional Currency Designers

The Atlantic Banknote Company - A little on the pricey side for me at the moment, but worth every penny! (Or Ducat!)
http://www.atlanticbanknote.com/

Micronational Coin Mint - See previous
http://www.usns.info/

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Web-Presence Administration

Webpage Setup

Free
http://pbwiki.com/ - Free websites rendered as Wikipedia-like pages
http://www.angelfire.lycos.com

Not-Free, But Very Reasonable
http://www.godaddy.com

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FORMS

Email Me Form - Allows you to build your own forms online. People go there, fill out your form(s), hit "Submit" and the results are emailed to you...
http://www.emailmeform.com/

Free Survey Questionnaire Hosting
http://www.questionpro.com

Free Poll Hosting
http://pollcode.com/

Free Forum Hosting
http://www.proboards.com/

ClustrMaps - Free website hit counter that works; I use this, and it is absolutely AWESOME!
http://clustrmaps.com/index.htm

Free Online Communication - Be careful if you are using this for business, as the phone companies HATE Skype!
http://www.skype.com/

Photobucket - Host pictures for free; good for helping to cut down on bandwidth usage and storage
http://photobucket.com/

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Administrative Tools

Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and Sea Monkey -- In order: Web browser, Email and HTML Editor...for free. (MS equivalents: IE, Outlook, FrontPage)
http://www.mozilla.org/

Open Office -- MS Office Equivalents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), All For Free
http://www.openoffice.org/

PDF995 - Create, combine and manage PDF files (See "Communication, Marketing and Sales", below)
http://www.pdf995.com/

MediaJoin - Combine audio/video files into one continuous file
http://mediajoin.en.softonic.com/

SlideShare - Free online host for presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/

Google Docs - Create Word-like doc and Power Points online (no downloads or purchases necessary!) to share and collaborate
http://docs.google.com

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Communication, Marketing and Sales

Send faxes online, for free...
http://faxzero.com/

Generate Free Barcodes Online - This site will take your ISBN and generate a standard barcode for it.
http://www.tec-it.com/online-demos/tbarcode/barcode-generator.aspx

This will generate ISBN codes after you buy them from...HERE - ISBNs are the registry numbers you see on the back of books, printed as barcodes.
http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/isbn-fees.asp

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Cafe Press - Create and market t-shirts, sweats, coffee mugs, bags etc
http://www.cafepress.com/

Lulu- Online self-publishing
http://www.lulu.com/

National Playing Cards - Not Free; Like Card Games? The premier supplier of playing cards, the United States Playing Card Company - printers of the famous Bicycle Rider Decks - offers very reasonably-priced personalized decks of cards from this website:
http://www.bicyclepersonalizedcards.com/

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Audio/Video Production Hosting and "National Television Channels"

Video
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/
Google Video: http://video.google.com/
Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/

Podcasting
http://www.podbean.com/
http://www.mypodcast.com/

These five sites are critical, as they give you a literal voice online. In this day and age, there is nothing like the spoken word for getting your message out.

The reason for including Hulu, however, requires a little explanation. Hulu makes movies and TV shows available online; there are commercials, just like TV, but they are usually a single 30-second spot. By building your "National Broadcasting Network" via their playlist and embed functions, you will have effectively created your own television network.

Ponder that.

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Special

Vista Print
http://www.vistaprint.com/

I saved Vista Print for last, and for good reason: this can be the most powerful tool of all to market your country. How? Simple. Go to VistaPrint and design some free business cards for your nation and your government officers - it will help them feel like real officials.

Then, get the proverbial rubber stamp.

Have the stamp read something like "This Material Provided Courtesy Of The Kingdom of 'X'". Then, go to a shopping club, like Sam's, COSTCO or something similar, and shell out about US$100 on bulk canned or bagged food items. Stamp the food item containers with your "Material Provided Courtesy Of" stamp, drop them into a box, toss in a couple of informational pamphlets for your country, maybe a couple of t-shirts with your nation's logo from Cafe Press (or made yourself: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-and-Use-Iron-on-Transfers) -- then drop the box off at your nearest homeless shelter or soup kitchen.

This serves to present your country in a very positive light, may get you good media exposure - and may get you a few recruits.

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General Links

Crime, Disaster, Terrorism and War Monitoring
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/map.php - EXCELLENT! But full access requires a paid account
http://www.mipt.org/
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/conflictmap/
http://www.spotcrime.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20060326000736/www.specialoperations.com/Terrorism/SOCGuide/Default.htm
http://www.disasterstuff.com/
http://www.disasterstuff.com/store/pc/CERT-Kits-c27.htm

News Websites
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/
http://www.breitbart.com/
http://news.myway.com/
http://www.associatedcontent.com/