181–190 of 275 posts
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Because the UN will get on you. While this isn't an issue for some random warlord in Africa if you're a tiny island who still wants to operate within the world you're still fucked.
The UN doesn't have an army
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?
Because there's no plausible way we can build one in near/medium future, we aren't constrained by pesky reality, so we can let our imaginations run wild and claim that it will solve the problem of government power and save mankind. And probably also cure cancer.
It's the same pattern as how some startups avoid making money at all cost, so that their valuation can be detached from market reality.
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The New World was a bleak dystopia for a few hundred years. Preserving the Earth is a better option than colonising other planets, although less sexy.
> The New World was a bleak dystopia for a few hundred years That's a bit of an overstatement. I expect if that were true, people wouldn't have kept on coming.
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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. They might work or they might not. I find the hostility towards people trying new things to be strange and misplaced.
One would assume that on a site like Hacker News, there would be more imagination and enthusiasm for innovation. Perhaps it's mostly selection bias on articles like this one that brings out the comments we see around us?
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…
Hate to break it to you, but democracy and dictatorship are not mutually exclusive. See Kenneth Arrow.[1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theo...
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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…
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>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. Many rural counties have them as well. In fact entire states have rules against fireworks. Outside of places where wildfires are likely, firework ordinances are often there to prevent the people who are shooting the f…
What stops Russia or China to send their troops there?
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It seems to me that the primary difference is your ability to reverse course once you have relocated if you aren't the guy at the absolute top. Rather, it's not the switching cost going in, so much as the switching cost going out - it's the same problem you'd face joining Scientology. The original question I responded to is "why the fear of opt-in competition to the current model of governance?" The answer is that me…
> It seems to me that the primary difference is your ability to reverse course once you have relocated if you aren't the guy at the absolute top. Rather, it's not the switching cost going in, so much as the switching cost going out - it's the same problem you'd face joining Scientology. Yes, indeed. That is the essential question for Patchwork-based ideologies. However, that is something they actively try to think ab…
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> "nearly all of the value is created domestically and the actual material value is inconsequential." Only because the laborers are being horrendously underpaid, no? If globalization had really fully happened you wouldn't be able to pay people in china slave labor wages to make your clothes for you.
In the US that labor is so extremely unvalued that it's almost always automated - other countries have such intensely undervalued labour that it can actually compete with automation. And yea, I think we do have some twisted and perverse version of globalization - rather than bringing the world up we seem to be perpetually exploiting the third world... eventually that might piss of the third world enough that they do…
We still have centuries of third world countries to exploit until they are fully developed.
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>We all choose to spend time here anyway, because he does a good job responding to our needs. >A lot of things work this way, in fact. When you go to a restaurant, you don't get to vote on the menu. You order what's there. The problem isn't that someone else might choose something for you. That's not what anyone is worried about here. An incredibly silly comparison. The environment they are trying to set up makes the…
> The environment they are trying to set up makes them unaccountable and undemocratic, capable of entrapping and exploiting people to no end. This is the environment, as it exists, for hundreds of millions around the world right now . So even if your critiques are true, we're no worse for trying.