Today I Learnt: Micronations exist!

I was reading the Wikipedia article on artistic languages and I saw that micronational languages are a type of artlangs. At first I though, “Well, this must be Toki Pona”. But I didn’t expect them to be the languages of micronations.

It seems that there are dozens of micronations founded around the planet (and outside!). This is how Wikipedia defines them:

A micronation, sometimes referred to as a model country or new country project, is an entity that claims to be an independent nation or state but is not recognized by world governments or major international organizations.

I found that quite interesting, so I started researching more. I went to the El Regipäts Talossan (The Kingdom of Talossa) website and the MicroWiki, the free micronational encyclopædia. I also watched the first videos of the show “How to start your own country” where a man explains the process of creating his country, Lovely (that’s a lovely name, btw).

I even considered becoming a Talossa citizen, but the application form asked for my mail address and I didn’t feel comfortable giving it to strangers. Not only that, I even considered starting my own country as some sort of experiment. But you know, lots of work and no people.

And that got me thinking about the “legitimacy” of governments. I mean, Talossa has already 221 citizens, i.e., 221 people that believe in the legitimacy of Talossa’s government. What’s the difference between Talossa claiming a territory and, say, the US claming a territory?

Well, there is a difference: the US has an army (and a powerful one) while Talossa has… nothing? I mean, they do have a Ministry of Defence, a Navy and an Intelligence Agency. But I doubt they can compete against the US or any other country.

So, basically the difference between their legitimacy is the army, the violence... we live in a really cool world :-/

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These were just some random thoughts I had. Tell me what you think about micronations!