The Expected Death of the Institution of the State - and with it the Conflict over a Palestinian State

The question of whether you want a capitalist or socialist economy will not be decided in elections between right and left, but will become a personal question of what kind of economic insurance you buy

A simplistic division of land, which will lose relevance in the era of the "state in the cloud" (Source)

One state? Two states? What about a zero-state solution? The institution of the modern state is the strongest institution in the world despite being a relatively new institution on the stage of history that did not exist until the late modern era. But like any historical phenomenon, it too may be approaching its end. There are many signs indicating this: the collapse of the two-party political system, the loss of relevance of the state's frontal education system, the inherent ossification of the state establishment's response to accelerating technological changes, the death of the economic model of journalism - the watchdog of democracy - and the rise of Google and Facebook as meta-political superpowers (controlling the platforms of political discourse itself). But how can the political framework that will replace the state look? Is it possible to imagine a plausible scenario in which the states we know collapse one after another? Perhaps the idea of the virtual state will be the first nail in the coffin of the state as we know it.

Like the collapse of a rickety house of cards, the establishment of the virtual state may produce a relatively rapid domino reaction that will fundamentally change the political structures we have become accustomed to living under. The logic of virtual state supporters goes something like this: Once a virtual state is established, competing with other states in everything states do, every citizen in the world will be able to give up their citizenship and pay taxes and receive services from the virtual state and physically stay in the world as a tourist (or with additional citizenship). As a result, a massive movement of people with means will begin from physical states to virtual states, where people will be able to decide which tax package they pay for which services, in an insurance-like structure. And only the world's poor will remain in existing states, which will gradually collapse under the burden in an escalating dynamic of brain and wallet drain.

Thus, the state will transform from a construct of national ideology to a market where services are purchased, and virtual states will compete for citizens as customers. In a natural and irreversible process, virtual states will become much richer and more efficient than the dying physical states, attracting strong, mentally flexible, and educated populations who are tired of the state tax burden that sustains parasitic populations, corrupt public mechanisms, and just plain poor people. People will be able to choose which security system in the world will protect them, or who will be responsible for infrastructure (the virtual state will be able to pay existing states or private contractors), which health system to belong to, and so on. Surely a basic package will also be offered as a default, which will negotiate with existing infrastructures to reduce costs.

Conceptually, the essence of the state will be understood as insurance, including the judicial system. The idea that the state has interests that are not economic or that people have something to say about foreign policy will seem strange. According to this vision, all national conflicts in the world will gradually fade, and the idea of sovereignty over land that is different from ownership will lose its power. The world will converge into one economic and legal system, but not by external coercion, by force of international organizations and government agreements, but as a result of citizens' behavior from below, many of whom will migrate to successful immigration states open to any person with desirable capabilities in the world, built as economic firms.

For example, beautiful women from all over the world will be able to immigrate to a state that gives preference to beautiful women, for instance through tax exemptions, because the men there want this and are willing to pay taxes for it. A state could also be established for the wealthy, who are willing to pay to live with those similar to them. Or alternatively, a state for the intelligent, who are willing to pay to live in a state with intelligence much higher than the world average. Thus will begin a competition of states for people. Not an empire or a world state will rule the world, but a global stock exchange entity that will be the market of virtual states, without government, just as the internet has no government but does have a market and economy. The question of whether you want a capitalist or socialist economy will not be decided in elections between right and left, but will become a personal question of what kind of economic insurance you buy, what package, and it will no longer be understood why some should decide for others what their package is.

Only the miserable ones without economic value and insurance will live as stateless charity recipients, or as the state of the miserable and aid that other states donate to save themselves trouble, and different miserable states, with charity budgets and measurable goals, will be able to compete for them. Charity will be a firm whose purpose is to turn worthless people into valuable people and market them as citizens to regular states, or to turn people with negative value like criminals into worthless people, and live off the savings created. In such a situation, national identity will gradually die, and with it our conflict, and all the national wars of the past will seem incomprehensible.

As the future of the institution of the state is increasingly called into question before our eyes, and on the other hand, the solution to the conflict is beyond the horizon, it may be that in the end, the death of the institution of the state - both the Jewish state and the Palestinian one - will be a global process that will uproot the complex state component from the conflict. Thus, the true solution to the conflict will be revealed in a sharp irony of history as a zero-state solution.