Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 275 posts

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#51

Post by big_chungus »

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.

Except, it doesn't have to work like this. If a nation is being exploited via loopholes of some sort, she has the freedom to close those loopholes. An increase in small personal nations would necessitate a change in policy (mostly around taxes), but would not be disastrous.

Aside from taxes, most other laws exist to prevent one harming another. If someone goes to an island in the ocean, why ought we to care what he does there? To put it differently: many cities have regulations against shooting off fireworks due to safety concerns. Few rural counties do, because while people can still harm themselves, there aren't too many others nearby to injure.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#52

Post by twright »

Seasteadding today seems a lot more like the ambitions of billionaires for their own benefit. I am not convinced they are interested in new forms of governance insofar as they are just interested in a tax-free region where they can skirt regulations on an absolute level.

I might be convinced if the discussion around these new societies they want to build were more focused on egalatarianism. Otherwise, it sounds like the societies they want have already been built and tried around 100 years ago with company towns like Fordlandia.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#53

Post by echelon »

I'm immediately reminded of Sealand:

https://www.sealandgov.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/08/se...

They tried everything: hosting servers, their own currency, their own crypto. It never really took off, but it was a fun and interesting effort.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#54

Post by bpodgursky »

lisper wrote: post #30
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?

Dynamicism and innovation has always come from the frontier.

There's a lot of space out there -- the frontier never closes (well, a speed-bump once we fill up the solar system).

So of course individual colonies eventually will fill up, stagnate, and calcify. But we won't run out of land, the way we have on earth, where there's no room for new ideas -- because every useful square foot of land is claimed by a nation-state with guns and rigid ideologies.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#55

Post by big_chungus »

lisper wrote: post #30
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?

Some will, some won't. Just like on earth, new forms of government will evolve. What we _do_ know from our historical past is that small communities can do much better at self-government in most cases. It's always harder to screw over your neighbor than a random guy from the other side of the nation, and easier for the neighbor to get redress.

More importantly, I don't think the possibility of a bad outcome ought to halt the progress of mankind in perpetuity.

Interesting thought: many suspect nations with frontiers flourish due to having an "escape valve". I am curious to see what an unlimited escape valve will enable.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#56

Post by sovietcattle »

dang wrote: post #46
sovietcattle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest" That's until you realize that representative democracy (rule of majority) is effectively an authoritarian system, which is based on the monopoly of force and the monopoly of currency, and which incentivizes politicians with low time preference to spend more money than what they take (by force) through taxes, therefore indebting and impoverishing the…

Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It leads to tedious, repetitive, and usually nasty discussions—see first reply below. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My observation is not ideological, it's a reference to the work of an economist...

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#58

Post by nickpinkston »

twright wrote: post #52

Seasteadding today seems a lot more like the ambitions of billionaires for their own benefit. I am not convinced they are interested in new forms of governance insofar as they are just interested in a tax-free region where they can skirt regulations on an absolute level. I might be convinced if the discussion around these new societies they want to build were more focused on egalatarianism. Otherwise, it sounds like…

[flagged]

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#59

Post by teh_infallible »

A more effective way of approaching this goal would be to propose a seastead as a way of creating valuable waterfront property as part of an existing coastal city.

The technologies could then be developed with less political controversy, and once the technological/practical concerns are ironed out, it would be easier to build a more politically-contested settlement. You would no longer be confronting political and practical obstacles simultaneously.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#60

Post by pathseeker »

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.

That's not really possible. Once they start pissing off other countries they will lose their access to deal with them and "benefit from them".
Post reply on HN