Passport to Purgatory: How Nationality Became the World’s Priciest VIP Pass

Passport to Purgatory: Why Your “Nationality” Is the World’s Most Expensive Participation Trophy
By Santiago V. Black, roving correspondent for Dave’s Locker, presently marooned in Terminal 3

If the planet were a nightclub, nationality would be the velvet-rope policy—arbitrary, mood-dependent, and enforced by bouncers who’ve never read the dress code. One queue snakes toward free-trade champagne and investor visas; the other curls back to metal detectors and a cavity search. Which line you shuffle into has less to do with merit than with the cosmic lottery of birth, a fact we politely ignore while pretending the club has a coherent guest list.

Consider the numbers. There are 195 recognized sovereigns, give or take a breakaway republic or two whose passports are printed on an inkjet in somebody’s basement. Each insists it is unique, much like every tech bro thinks his meditation app will finally fix humanity. Yet the average modern nation-state is a Frankenstein stitched from 19th-century maps, 20th-century debt, and 21st-century branding consultants. The glue holding it together? A shared delusion that the people on this side of the squiggly line are fundamentally different from the people on that side—usually expressed through cuisine, football hooliganism, and the precise way we mispronounce each other’s names.

Globalization promised to erase those squiggles. Instead, it monetized them. A German “national” can land in 189 countries without a visa; an Afghan “national” gets roughly the same welcome as a flat tire. The market speaks: your passport isn’t a document, it’s a credit score with a flag. Nations, therefore, function as loyalty programs—collect enough air miles of birthplace, and you too can skip the queue at Heathrow. Collect the wrong ones, and you’ll discover that “human rights” are actually “human suggestions,” subject to the fine print at the bottom of the geopolitical brochure.

Meanwhile, the super-rich treat nationality like a subscription they can cancel anytime. A Maltese passport is just €750,000 away, less than a pied-à-terre in Knightsbridge and considerably quieter than an oligarch’s yacht. Caribbean islands have become the Costco of citizenship: bulk discounts available if you bring a friend. The irony is exquisite—states that once sent colonizers abroad now sell themselves piecemeal, like aging starlets auctioning off their stage costumes. Sovereignty, it turns out, is perfectly willing to be Airbnb’d.

Downmarket, the rest of us cling to our birth certificates like sentimental drunks clutching last call. We wave flags at the Olympics, outsource our rage to nationalist influencers, and pretend that voting every four years is the apex of civic virtue. It’s cheaper than therapy and considerably more photogenic. Governments oblige, serving up identity as comfort food—heavy on the salt, light on the protein. The recipe rarely changes: a pinch of foreign enemy, a dash of nostalgia, simmer until someone forgets to fund the hospitals.

Beneath the pageantry, the concept of “nationals” is quietly dissolving. Climate refugees are already stateless in practice; their islands sink faster than paperwork can swim. Tech nomads roam Wi-Fi archipelagos, paying taxes nowhere and everywhere. Corporations, those immortal citizens, shop jurisdictions the way teenagers swap Instagram filters. When the sea finally reclaims the coastlines, the question won’t be “Where are you from?” but “Which server farm still recognizes your retinal scan?” At that point, the bouncer at the planetary nightclub will be an algorithm trained on your Spotify history, and the velvet rope will be woven from undersea fiber-optic cable.

Until then, nations remain the world’s most successful reality TV show: dramatic, repetitive, and profitable for the producers. The rest of us are unpaid extras, milling about in the background, occasionally upgraded to speaking roles when a war breaks out or a census taker knocks. We rehearse our lines—patriotism, heritage, sacrifice—while the cameras zoom in on the latest scandal in the palace. Curtain call is scheduled for the next fiscal quarter, subject to bond yields.

So cherish your passport, dear reader. Laminate it, photograph it, whisper sweet nothings to its RFID chip. It is both prison badge and backstage pass, the laminated punchline to the cosmic joke that someone, somewhere, is in charge. Just don’t read the expiration date too closely; like the rest of us, it’s living on borrowed time.