Hi all, Openworld, Inc. is a company which sets up free enterprise zones around the world. The "free zones" are akin to Hong Kong and Singapore and are self-governing, independent entities as recognized by the parent country. Free zones usually have the ability to issue citizenship, business licenses and incorporation status to entities as well as have their own police force and arbitration structure. A lot of them are not nearly big enough to need that kind of independence, but there are a few. Free zones rarely have bureacracy, taxes, etc. because the idea is to create an environment for the rapid creation and deployment of new businesses. Land is leased for 50-100 years with a parent entity buy-back at the end of the term. Can anyone say corporate state? Basically, free zones are corporations (or groups of) leasing land from a country in order to make it valuable enough to sell back at a large profit in 100 years. Notice that the emphasis is on very long-term results. The free zone only makes money if the residents are happy, educated and making money. Environmental issues are addressed immediately. There is no bureacracy to hold things back. I'll be the first to agree that a corporate state is very easy to abuse (soon the world could end up being a Microsoft corporate state <joke>). But you have to start somewhere. Most of these zones are created in third world countries and poorly developed areas. Free zones are exempt from telecommunications monopolies so the bandwidth and connection fees are at regular US wholesale market rates. When you consider that the economy is moving to be information and bandwidth dependent, and the main thing holding a new country back is the cost of a satellite feed, a free zone has enormous impact on the growth of an area. It is a bit mind-boggling to realize what the marriage of a free economic zone and the Internet can accomplish. Openworld, Inc. is developing drop-in modules for health, education, business and governance functions for free zones as well as Internet connectivity and infrastructures. A division of Openworld, Inc., The Digital Society Group, has been formed to apply technology to the infrastructure of the free zones and essentially mirror them in cyberspace <argh, the cyber word again>. Without getting into too much detail, The Digital Society Group is constructing a pure-technology infrastructure to provide for the operation, governance and existence of a complete digital society within a free enterprise zone. My priorities are: 1. encryption for all 2. anonymity for all 3. digital currency for all 4. the ability for the creation of ad-hoc micro-communities by citizens more or less on-the-fly 5. the ability for any entity - hardware, software, etc. to be a citizen and be entitled to certain rights such as property ownership, incorporation,etc. (the legislation is being written right now) 6. do it very, very cheaply and give it to the end-user (the world) for free. Check out: http://www.openworld.com/digitalsociety Sorry about the sparse web pages and the crappy graphics, but there is no money for a graphics designer. Locations are planned for Africa, Southeast Asia, Russia, etc. We are already coding... :) Jalon --------------------------------------------------------------- Jalon Q. Zimmerman, Director The Digital Society Group A division of Openworld, Inc. http://www.openworld.com/digitalsociety jalonz@openworld.com --------------------------------------------------------------- The government is not your mommy. ---------------------------------------------------------------