Nation-building is set to become the new extreme sport for the emerging wealthy and creative class

NOTE: The following article is a reprint of the cover article I wrote for the May/June 2009 issue of The Futurist Magazine.

On a recent trip to the Middle East, I was granted the opportunity to speak at the Leaders in Dubai Business Forum along with best-selling writer Tom Peters, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, and former McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta. Most of the speakers were addressing our depressingly screwed-up economy. I decided on a different tack and presented some thoughts on emerging new systems of government power.

One idea in particular raised a few eyebrows among the Dubai group: selling islands as autonomous countries.

Dubai and the United Arab Emirates are on the cutting edge of islandbuilding technology. Their creative approach to building Palm Island, a series of artificial islands in the Persian Gulf, along with the coming Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Jebel Ali, Palm Deira, and The World, have become an inspiration to other countries. In Bahrain, Thailand, and the Netherlands, new islands are also springing to life.

Countries in the Middle East have a distinct advantage when it comes to island building, because the Persian Gulf is a far more stable body of water than most other oceans. The question I presented to the Dubai Leaders who were anxious about how the global economic downturn might affect their tourist industry — the question I now present to you, the reader — is simple: Is there any money in this?

There has always been profit to be made and lost in coastal real estate. But these innovations in the creation of land could lead to the creation of real estate that is unattached and unaffiliated with any existing nationstate or indigenous group — land that can be sold as an autonomous country. No such opportunity has ever before existed in human history.

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