There is no shortage of tax havens. Anyone who wants one will just move to the Bahamas. They already do, as you point out. Charter cities are thus totally orthogonal to this (despite the article's misleading implications). The point is to improve life for the 99% of the world who can't just move to a tax haven, by building prosperous cities they can move to. This is not just a theory - China lifted 500,000,000 out of…
As much as I like embracing the statement "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" I think we really need to solve tax havens before we can make more places that can serve as them.
The simple solution to me is that a country offers good value for the taxes people pay to it.
Then people and their taxable assets will gladly stay.
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.
A city of all billionaires sounds like a very small city.
Just stay in Manchester or whatever, and pay your god damned taxes to the king. Moving to the New World is bleak, bleak stuff. Just stay on Earth or whatever, and fix your god damned environment. Settling the Solar System - how dare you? Tell me one of those space ships won't get hit by an asteroid. I mean, heck, the idea of doing a startup of any kind is dangerously transgressive. If you make new things, something b…
I don't see humanity doing anything but descending into self-destruction. I'm sure tax-haven offshore city states will prove once again that humans, taken as a whole, are craven ruthless creatures. It's the reason we are the dominate species on this planet.
Or maybe we are the dominant species because we cooperate so well. :)
> 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…
> 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.
Can you expand on this? I think I understand the general implication but it’s not something I have considered before. If you have more thoughts/writing on this I’d like to ingest it.
If I understand correctly the idea is “undesirables” can go to a place where they are free to explore their ideas.
Ah, so you're an actual libertarian, not a Libertarian. I tend to agree with libertarian principles but often times they just get co-opted by Libertarians.
Do you mean the Libertarian Party? I am not a member because I don’t want to be a member of any political party out of principle. As an independent I have voted for candidates of different parties depending on the situation. It’s impossible that 2 parties (or 3) capture all of someone’s views.
In part yes - in America there is a Libertarian philosophy that doesn't match what the rest of the world calls libertarianism, big-l Libertarianism seems much more heavily focused on fiscal freedom at the expense of freedom of opportunity, while little-l libertarianism tends to value freedom of opportunity and freedom of expression above the purely fiscal freedoms.
Sadly, both groups tend to cling to the term l/Libertarianism which can confuse things. I mostly mention this because different people will read your self-described libertarianism differently with some people reading it as Libertarianism.
> Why the fear of opt-in competition? Nobody is forcing anyone to move to these places. What they are is an opportunity to try out new governance modes. It's a governance mode that was heavily used throughout the European colonial period and it resulted in the rape and theft of the local populations and underclasses of all the nations involved. When you put things in the proper historical context, the hostility is ra…
Weren't there always native populations involved in these cases? That isn't the case with seasteading. For now you have to assent to the idea and immigrate.
> For now you have to assent to the idea and immigrate.
Unless you're a victim of human trafficking. Or, for example, read up on how scientologists use their cruise ship [1].
As much as I like embracing the statement "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" I think we really need to solve tax havens before we can make more places that can serve as them.
Solve them internally in your own country instead of the near-impossible task of trying to bend the whole world to accommodate your interests.
Actually, I emigrated - I now live in a country with more rigid tax laws and left the US behind. This is somewhat of a salve, but we live in a post-globalization world, cleaning up your backyard doesn't mean anything if your neighbor's sewage is leaking under the fence.
Huge tax loopholes being accepted by central world players like the US puts pressure on smaller countries to accept them as well.
Do you mean the Libertarian Party? I am not a member because I don’t want to be a member of any political party out of principle. As an independent I have voted for candidates of different parties depending on the situation. It’s impossible that 2 parties (or 3) capture all of someone’s views.
In part yes - in America there is a Libertarian philosophy that doesn't match what the rest of the world calls libertarianism, big-l Libertarianism seems much more heavily focused on fiscal freedom at the expense of freedom of opportunity, while little-l libertarianism tends to value freedom of opportunity and freedom of expression above the purely fiscal freedoms. Sadly, both groups tend to cling to the term l/Liber…
It's an aphorism that if you put 1000 libertarians in a room you will have 1000 definitions of what a "real" libertarian is. For me, the essence of libertarianism is about valuing the individual over the collective. This includes protecting individuals from the state by restricting state power, strong protection of private property, economic freedom, and allowing people the freedom to make their own decisions even if they are dumb decisions. It's a very natural and free way of living. So many people want the state to coerce others into doing what they want - essentially running other people's lives. That is a great evil and how casually people resort to this makes me ill. I just want everyone to have maximum freedom possible.
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.
A city of all billionaires sounds like a very small city. Also, hiring for service jobs might be hard :)
Why hire? There's no law against kidnapping or slavery on a seastead.
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.
A city of all billionaires sounds like a very small city. Also, hiring for service jobs might be hard :)