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The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

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Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#21

Post by GhettoMaestro »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #15
mindcrime wrote: post #13

I don't know if they will ever succeed or not, but it sure is heart-warming to see people still pushing these ideas and trying to get something going. Competition is Good Thing and if we can come up with something better than nation-states, then we should. Personally I encourage these guys to keep experimenting, keep iterating, and keep pushing to break the mold. Maybe "government" as we know it today is a just a "fa…

It really does sound like a bunch of wealthy folks (and I don't mean your-town's-surgeon wealthy, I mean billionaire-class-wealthy) want to further remove themselves from laws that govern everybody else. Imagine this - a group of super wealthy bound by no laws of any nation but benefiting from them all. Terrifying.

> Imagine this - a group of super wealthy bound by no laws of any nation but benefiting from them all. Terrifying.

Not really. There is this one interesting thing called the US Military. If necessary, anyone deemed enough of a threat can either be droned, or black-bagged by Seal Team 6.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#23

Post by keiferski »

ouid wrote: post #19
keiferski wrote: post #17

Obviously it's sci-fi scenario, but the real solution (assuming that you see it as a problem) to overbearing and entrenched government power will probably be self-sustaining space colonies. Experimental governments on Earth are limited by the fact that [large state power] can invade you in a matter of hours for arbitrary reasons, no matter where you on are the planet. Fly off into the deep cosmos, though, and your ch…

I thought the key to sovereignty was mutually assured destruction. You don't need a deep space ship, you just need an ICBM.

That is true as well, but acquiring an ICBM seems rather difficult and once you have one, everyone else tends to treat you as a pariah. If I were building a libertarian paradise, I'd probably opt to avoid the whole issue and just leave the solar system.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#24

Post by shantly »

kauffj wrote: post #16

I think this is one of if not the most important issue in the entire world. We currently have two primary forms of government: dictatorship and democracy. Almost everyone prefers democracies. But many, if not most, living in democracies also take major issue with the way their countries are run. The best defense of democracy is Churchill's: democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest. A framewor…

> The best defense of democracy is Churchill's: democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest.

So Two Cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that.

- E.M. Forster, "What I Believe", 1939, from a collection bearing the name Two Cheers for Democracy

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#25

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

the-dude wrote: post #7
52-6F-62 wrote: post #5

This is as suspicious and creepy to me as the unbridled control Alphabet sought with Sidewalk Labs’ Toronto experiment.

We have corporations as big or bigger as countries. The class war has ended. What are we going to do?

The largest corporation (not government-owned) in existence today is a microscopically small fragment of the size of the corporate behemoths of 100 years ago, and the corporations of one hundred years ago were microscopically minuscule compared to the largest corporations of 400 years ago.

Not only that, but the ancient proto-corporations were not partners with government, they were governments.

For about 20 years, the Mississippi Company was worth between $5-7 trillion, adjusted for inflation. That's about 6 Microsofts, and at the time of the Mississippi Company there were many chartered trading companies that ruled over their dominions with iron fists. Microsoft doesn't have a private army.

How did puny little Microsoft/Google/Apple/BP/GE/Chase/whoever/whatever "end" the class war when Standard Oil did not?

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#26

Post by mandevil »

keiferski wrote: post #17

Obviously it's sci-fi scenario, but the real solution (assuming that you see it as a problem) to overbearing and entrenched government power will probably be self-sustaining space colonies. Experimental governments on Earth are limited by the fact that [large state power] can invade you in a matter of hours for arbitrary reasons, no matter where you on are the planet. Fly off into the deep cosmos, though, and your ch…

I can't see how libertarians would actually work in a space colony situation.

Leaving aside how self-sustaining a space colony could ever truly be (Charlie Stross has written a lot about that), in a world as fragile as a space colony would be, I see fascism as vastly more likely than libertarian. If literally anyone can push the a button and kill a substantial percentage of the colony, you have substantially more risk from mental health issues, angry people, etc. than you do here on earth. And that leads to repression and using force to assert control.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#27

Post by irishloop »

kauffj wrote: post #16

I think this is one of if not the most important issue in the entire world. We currently have two primary forms of government: dictatorship and democracy. Almost everyone prefers democracies. But many, if not most, living in democracies also take major issue with the way their countries are run. The best defense of democracy is Churchill's: democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest. A framewor…

That's all well and good but it seems to me all of these "new" forms of organization are essentially to benefit the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else. There is nothing here that will help working-class people, and instead, seems to seek to abandon them.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#29

Post by nickik »

mandevil wrote: post #26
keiferski wrote: post #17

Obviously it's sci-fi scenario, but the real solution (assuming that you see it as a problem) to overbearing and entrenched government power will probably be self-sustaining space colonies. Experimental governments on Earth are limited by the fact that [large state power] can invade you in a matter of hours for arbitrary reasons, no matter where you on are the planet. Fly off into the deep cosmos, though, and your ch…

I can't see how libertarians would actually work in a space colony situation. Leaving aside how self-sustaining a space colony could ever truly be (Charlie Stross has written a lot about that), in a world as fragile as a space colony would be, I see fascism as vastly more likely than libertarian. If literally anyone can push the a button and kill a substantial percentage of the colony, you have substantially more ris…

Even as a libertarian I would argue that libertarianism will not be the guiding principle of space exploration for a long time to come.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#30

Post by lisper »

keiferski wrote: post #17

Obviously it's sci-fi scenario, but the real solution (assuming that you see it as a problem) to overbearing and entrenched government power will probably be self-sustaining space colonies. Experimental governments on Earth are limited by the fact that [large state power] can invade you in a matter of hours for arbitrary reasons, no matter where you on are the planet. Fly off into the deep cosmos, though, and your ch…

> the real solution (assuming that you see it as a problem) to overbearing and entrenched government power will probably be self-sustaining space colonies

Why in the world would you think that the politics of self-sustaining space colonies would not devolve into the exact same (dys)functional states (pun intended) as politics here on earth?

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