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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

#231
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…

Let me just remind everybody that Bioshock is a computer game, its plot is fiction, and it constitutes no evidence whatsoever tht a real-life scenario that start the same way would end the same way.

Sure, it is obvious when spelt out, but it is less obvious when it is a game of implications.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're disregarding the extremely large number of people who were more or less forced to travel to the new world. Add up the slaves taken there, people sentenced to be sent there for crimes, people who had to leave their home country or starve and people who had to leave their home country or be murdered and you start to get a pretty large number.

[deleted]

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're disregarding the extremely large number of people who were more or less forced to travel to the new world. Add up the slaves taken there, people sentenced to be sent there for crimes, people who had to leave their home country or starve and people who had to leave their home country or be murdered and you start to get a pretty large number.

Exactly. A large chunk of the population was forced to American against their will, and a large chunk of the people who chose to go to America only survived because of the labor of the people who were forced to be there. Claiming success on the back of slave labor isn’t something that’s super popular these days.

[deleted]

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#235
post #84
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…

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.

They're scared it might succeed.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#236
post #228
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…

> This is bleak, bleak stuff. There have been a number of low tax, rule of law city states like Hong Kong and Singapore that did rather well and provided a refuge for many Chinese when China was going a bit nuts under Mao and the like. It's not all bleak.

I don't know if Singapore counts - it's a fascist dictatorship.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#237
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is bleak, bleak stuff. There have been a number of low tax, rule of law city states like Hong Kong and Singapore that did rather well and provided a refuge for many Chinese when China was going a bit nuts under Mao and the like. It's not all bleak.

I don't know if Singapore counts - it's a fascist dictatorship.

The extent to which their political and economic system is influenced by fascism may be up for debate, but given that they've not conducted any genocide or imperialism, the charge doesn't hold the gravity that you intend.

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#238
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

yea damned humans will rape the mermaids

Re: The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land

#239
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is bleak, bleak stuff. There have been a number of low tax, rule of law city states like Hong Kong and Singapore that did rather well and provided a refuge for many Chinese when China was going a bit nuts under Mao and the like. It's not all bleak.

I don't know if Singapore counts - it's a fascist dictatorship.

Didn't seem very fascist when I was there. The Economist Intelligence Unit has it as a 'flawed democracy', the same category as the US. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index)
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