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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

#61

Post by dang »

sovietcattle wrote: post #56
dang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

People understand these words differently, but by the standards that apply on HN, it's definitely ideological and generic. These are things we're trying to avoid, because internet forums don't have anything new to say about them. The arguments just get increasingly repetitive and nasty.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#62

Post by big_chungus »

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?

As a historical "for scale", a bunch of rich businessmen once bailed out the American federal government: https://historydaily.org/panic-of-1893

In 2008, the American federal government bailed out JP Morgan: https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/jpmorgans-12-billion...

Now you tell me, who's bigger? America has huge companies that are nevertheless tiny in relation to her GDP and government expenditure. America happens to be quite populous, geographically-large, rich in resources, and highly-developed. It stands to reason that she supports many of the world's largest companies.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#63

Post by Matticus_Rex »

nickpinkston wrote: post #58
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]

So people with money finance research people are doing that advances things they care about, like...

checks notes

The Kochs' efforts on criminal justice reform?

This is the Soros conspiracy theory for lefties.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#64

Post by Matticus_Rex »

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?

If you look at how path-dependent most countries' forms of governance have been, it's reasonable to assume we'll see something that's at least substantially different.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#65

Post by vbuterin »

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…

I've talked to a bunch of these people. I definitely don't think abdication of social responsibility of any form is the goal. Those people don't bother with the effort of trying to cook up new jurisdictions, and just go to various existing small island nations that give them favorable tax treatment. These are people that genuinely think that governance of physical space is the next great frontier that needs to be innovated/disrupted.

That said, I actually agree with the critique that at least the Silicon Valley-based "let's rebuild new governance zones from scratch" community tends to have a way too uncritical love of capitalism, and doesn't appreciate the myriad ways in which shareholder voting, and fancy new-age analogues of shareholder voting like coin-holder voting, are terrible. I remember one conversation where we were discussing cryptocurrencies, and one person pointed out how "VC chains" (new blockchains funded by VC firms where a small number of VC firms hold the majority of the tokens) were not being received well around the world, and this person was met with blank stares. But this is a medium-sized ideological disagreement, very far from "these people are just selfish freeloaders".

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#66

Post by droopyEyelids »

pathseeker wrote: post #60
theflyinghorse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Why would they piss off the decision makers in our countries when they can buy their loyalty?

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#67

Post by the-dude »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #25
the-dude wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

Thanks for your comment. I did not mean to blame the end of the class war on the mega-corps.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#68

Post by Matticus_Rex »

irishloop wrote: post #27
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.

Stable governance and solid protections for property rights would be a massive benefit to the working class in at least half the world.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#69

Post by twright »

echelon wrote: post #53

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.

When I think of seasteadding one of the things that pops into my head is Sealand as the cover story of Wired magazine [1]. I think it's a good prequel to the linked Atlantic article.

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2000/07/haven-2/

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#70

Post by arrosenberg »

SerLava wrote: post #43

Isn't this the plot of BioShock? If this sounds like a dorky joke post, it's not. Isn't this literally motivated by the same neo-fuedal oligarchical narcissism that made the bad guy in BioShock build essentially the same thing as this? Tell me one of these "seasteads" won't get hit by some speedboat pirates and decide OK, we're gonna arm up and hey why not build down? And you know what? No one's gonna say we can't do…

> “Do I want to create the first venture-backed city-state? Hell yeah”

Ahem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_Indies

And we all know how well that turned out for the locals.

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