
Seasteading: Cities on the ocean - llambda
http://www.economist.com/node/21540395?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/citiesontheocean
======
ramanujan
Much of the commentary on seasteading is underinformed. It doesn't have to be
"libertarian", as the concept can just as equally be used to build states for
progressives, or North Korean refugees, or any displaced or oppressed people.

The engineering issues exist, but cruise ships are a pretty good proof-of-
concept. Cruise ships show that we can get stable, luxurious accomodations at
a per-day cost that is on par with an expensive hotel (2-3X SF Bay Area daily
rent). The only question is the extent to which we can improve on that.

Hacker News will get a lot out of the full Seasteading book, which anticipates
most arguments and goes through many interesting details, from structural
engineering through power, water, food, and cost.

<http://seasteading.org/book_beta/full_book_beta.html>

~~~
kstenerud
I just read the whole book. Here are my comments:

1\. "Pilgrims." The author consistently makes comparative references to
pilgrims to the American continent. This is disingenious. For the
homesteaders, the cost of expansion was very low. Their technological
advantage allowed them to drive out the native inhabitants with relative ease.
Their infrastructure requirements were minimal, but most importantly, there
was fruitful land to be taken at very low cost.

Not so with seafaring. Your "land" must be planned and built up-front at
substantial cost. Once you've built your "land", you're stuck with that
design. You can't just take more "land", since it would require building an
entire new platform, once again at substantial cost. What happens when your
platform capable of supporting 1000 people can no longer support its growing
population? Do you kick people off? Who decides who stays and who leaves? And
who would be willing to live with the sword of Damocles over their heads,
knowing that at some point in the future, they could be ousted by the council
of elders, forced to leave their home and friends, to fend for themselves?

2\. Maintenance. The author is very opposed to taxation, and yet the very
nature of seafaring incurs substantial maintenance costs. Who will bear those
costs? Who will collect the funds? How will you handle disputes over the
taxation rate, or people who refuse to pay?

3\. Wealth generation. This one was particularly poorly thought out. Tourism?
The amount of space dedicated to tourism would have to be so huge to offset
the living costs that I don't see this contributing in any meaningful way to
economic surplus. Manufacturing dangerous goods? Space ports? Who would want
to live near such places? All of the possibilities offered were of small
economic value. Any balance of trade would tilt massively in favor of land
based economies.

4\. Expulsion. How and when do you expel members of the community? Do you
write a set of laws, with the more severe prescribing exile? How about people
who fall behind in their financial obligations (i.e. taxation) for one reason
or another (for example, someone gets sick and can't pay their bills on their
salary)? That works well for those on the top, but for those at the bottom of
the totem pole, it would be intolerable.

5\. Government. I realize that the author is a libertarian, but this worship
of the "corporate" government as some sort of panacea is really naive. A
corporation is a despotic form of government. Despotism is very well suited to
small communities, but still suffers from the flaws of all governments:
tyranny. Anyone who has spent time dealing with corporate politics will know
how much it resembles swimming in shark infested waters. Political rot builds
up, and is all but impossible to remove. Psychopaths make their way to the top
and rule with an iron fist, making the company financially profitable, but a
nightmare for those who work there.

6\. War. The author glosses over arguments of war by hand waving that it might
not be as bad as with historical autonomous governments, or that "war drives
away trade". Historically, this has not deterred those who bear a grudge.
Furthermore, outright armed conflict is unlikely to be the norm. Far easier to
simply sabotage the rival platform, since damage to a sea platform is orders
of magnitude more devastating than damage to land.

7\. "You can just leave if you don't like it." This always makes me laugh.
Leaving is not something simple like changing washing powder brands. Leaving
involves uprooting your entire life, leaving friends & family, giving up all
agreements, titles and numerous other intangible benefits, and then starting
over with only whatever money you have in a new place where you don't know
other people. The barrier is actually quite huge, especially when the
community is small. It's even worse for people who are born on the platform,
but don't agree with its politics. You know, just like libertarians who are
born in a country but don't like its politics. You can always just leave,
right?

~~~
Czarnian
Where exactly would one put a space port on a seastead? The minimum safe
distance for a launch at Kennedy is something like 2 miles. And launching
anything into space from a floating platform . . . let's just say that the
basic laws of the universe are not on your side.

~~~
dredmorbius
A detachable or detached launch platform would be trivially feasible -- at
least at the scale of triviality in which one envisions seasteads in the first
place.

We've been launching ballistic rockets from submerged platforms for ... oh, a
half century or so now. Space launches for most intents.

------
bradleyland
This is one of the more outlandish ideas I've seen show up in The Economist.
There are a mountain of hurdles to cross before you get to any kind of
autonomous "state". Still, I hope someone tries it. Some casual observations:

* Would this be Bitcoins first big opportunity? For a Seastead to make the leap to true statehood, they'll need some kind of currency that isn't controlled by a foreign government. Bitcoin, with it's entirely decentralized design, would seem to fit the bill.

* The artricle makes some statements that these Seasteads could be used to prove the utopian Libertarian ideology. The notion that a small colony of a few hundred people are going to prove that _any_ ideology would work in a state the size of the US, France, U.K., etc is patently absurd. They'll ignore it, dismiss it, or find good reasons why mechanisms that work on a micro scale don't scale to larger nations.

* The article talks a lot about the need to be outside the jurisdiction of large nations like the US, and even mentions the willingness of the US to extend its jurisdiction pretty much anywhere in the world. The author seems to believe that if they stay away from the big-naughties, they'll be ok. I think he's wrong. If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes, large, tax-dependent governments will find ways to replace the revenue. So you want statehood? You got it. Time to negotiate a trade agreement. How does a 60% tariff on all goods imported to our nation sound? Don't want to play ball? Embargo. Good luck with your 700 person economy.

* The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally. Say this idea eventually scales to $10,000 people. What is an acceptable level of safety for an entire population of that size? Lifeboats for everyone? Will the platform be sold as "unsinkable"? We know how that goes. Even land-based settlements face the risk of natural disaster, but it would seem the probabilities are greatly in favor of dry land.

~~~
T-hawk
> If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-
> shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing
> to pay taxes

I think we can be reasonably confident that somebody in these large
corporations has done that math. What this argument misses is that the
comparison isn't seasteading vs US taxes, it's seasteading vs existing tax
havens like Bermuda and the Channel Islands and Caymans. Those probably get
you 90% of the way there on avoiding US and EU taxation, and would seem to be
good enough that corps haven't had the need for seasteading or they'd already
be doing it.

~~~
tryitnow
Yes, that's a good point. The advantage of seasteads is you can control the
geography.

Another advantage is that you don't have a large native citizen population
that you have to deal with. For example, on Bermuda the big reinsurers have to
comply with local laws around hiring citizens (really how many genius level
actuaries can an island nation produce - answer not many, you're going to have
to bring in outside talent).

Yet another advantage is that it provides you choice. This is the biggest
advantage of all. Even if all the current tax havens change their laws, groups
of entrepreneurs can always create another one.

~~~
Czarnian
You're confusing incorporating with operating. Corporations are incorporated
out of places like Bermuda, but they operate on the "mainlands" (US, Europe,
Asia, India, etc.) Their physical presence in the country they incorporate in
is usually limited to somewhere between a mailbox and a couple of hundred
square feet of unoccupied office space. Their operating costs are the same as
if they were incorporated in the country they actually operate in. The only
thing they are avoiding is the taxes that would otherwise go to pay for the
infrastructures they are operating on. The geography is of no concern to them
and the risk of the large native citizen population doing anything to them is
nearly indistinguishable from nil. The risk lies almost entirely in the
political vicissitudes of the country they operate in that allows an
essentially foreign company to operate within it's borders. A seastead does
nothing to mitigate that risk. It just adds a whole bunch of extra operating
costs to build and maintain a mailbox on the seastead.

------
a3camero
Although this post is rather off the HN path, people might appreciate a draft
of a law paper I've coincidentally just written on the legal issues with doing
these sort of things: <http://private.summerhilldesign.com/SeaLawPaper.pdf>
(3rd year law student).

If this is too long, pg. 17 has a chart that shows how far out the different
boundaries on the ocean. Starting at pg. 12 you'll see what things you can't
do and pg. 24 has some conclusions. Might help take some of the "but that's
illegal!" and "I don't think you can't do that" out of this discussion.
Cheers!

------
brc
I've had this discussion with other people before, and I like to remind people
of the first seasteading city : Venice.

It was built specifically to get away from people on the mainland, and thrived
based on a platform of trade.

I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect example, but it is pretty interesting
how one of the most powerful cities in the world at one stage was developed by
deciding to build a settlement in the middle of the water, which was pretty
high-tech for the time.

Of course the true power of Venice wasn't achieved until it acquired some
mainland territory to shore up it's supply lines, so perhaps the lesson is
that a seastead needs to be setup adjacent to a relatively weak nation state
that can be reverse absorbed at some time (assuming a peaceful treaty rather
than by force). There are plenty of caribbean + pacific islands that could
fall into this task. It may not mean taking a whole country but simply signing
a century-long lease over a portion, maybe like British Hong Kong or modern
Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure plenty of poor nations would gladly accept rental
revenues for a mostly unwanted piece of land.

As for revenue streams - if a settlement could be located somewhere
climatically agreeable, and out of jurisdiction of sovereign states, simply
having cheap alcohol + food, and gambling would be more than enough to get the
cash rolling in. An off-shore casino could simply run tighter odds and more
drinks and make it worthwhile for people to go to. After all, Monaco and Las
Vegas used this to their advantage for a long time just by being places where
gambling could exist.

I think it's a very novel idea and I hope someone tries it one day. If it's
the same site I've seen before (TLDR) they posit the idea that the first
attempt would likely be a re-purposed cruise ship. And don't forget, there is
already a cruise ship ('The World') that is doing _something_ like this but
mobile instead of stationary.

Bascially, instead of predicting what would or wouldn't work, someone should
try it out and see what happens. Predictions of larger governments squashing
it may turn out to be incorrect if the politicians of said governments find it
to be convenient for their purposes.

------
hristov
It is funny how deftly libertarians turn "freedom" into slavery. Note this
passage in the end of the article:

"Indeed, as Mr Keenan notes, the most viable political model for a seastead
may not be a libertarian democracy but an enlightened corporate dictatorship."

Yes it will probably be a dictatorship of some type, but I would not go so far
as to assume it would be "enlightened." What will most likely happen is these
will turn into floating work camps for poor desperate immigrants that have
been promised a lot of money and then find themselves in a floating prison
with no legal system to protect their rights.

~~~
getsat
Dictatorship does not imply slavery, and democracy does not imply freedom.

~~~
henrikschroder
"...I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would
not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality.
Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of
your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

------
snowwrestler
I think the urge to seastead comes from the same place as the urge to refactor
code. "Let's just start over, it's bound to be way better because of all we've
learned." But as well know, there is no guarantee that refactoring from
scratch is going to produce a better product.

Modern states are like old codebases. They are a huge pain in the ass to
maintain, BUT they also contain bug fixes and tweaks from 1,000+ solved
problems. In fact all those fixes are probably why it is such a pain in the
ass to maintain. That doesn't mean they aren't good fixes that are still
relevant and necessary.

~~~
adrianscott
Uh, what you describe is rewriting, not refactoring... Refactoring is often a
great investment, and is not done 'from scratch'.

I would question your assertion that modern states have 1,000+ solved
problems. They have no unit testing, shoddy QA if any, etc. It's a bad
analogy, imho. When they do generate a 'tweak' it is often not solving a
problem, but generating more problems than it solves.

------
Mz
_Until seasteaders are able to bank their money with independent, ocean-going
financial institutions, they may not be able to escape the taxman’s clutches._

You probably can't really escape the taxman's clutches anyway. It is mostly a
matter of whom you pay, not if. Taxes exist to cover the costs of governing
the people, providing infrastructure and services for the citizens and so on.
Even if you can get unplugged from existing governments, someone has to pay
for the infrastructure of the seastead and essential services. You can give it
a different name, but charging your people to help pay these costs is
basically the same thing as taxes. Not charging your people to help pay these
costs would mean eventually sinking to the bottom of the ocean. These costs
are likely to be relatively high, higher than what it takes to maintain roads
and sewage and the like on land.

 _Unless a seastead were the size of Manhattan its citizens would have to
forgo the cultural life, the parks and the wide choice of shopping and
restaurants offered by large cities._

They might have to forego a lot of that anyway. I briefly considered applying
for a job in Hawaii and I asked around regarding things like food in Hawaii
(because I have special dietary needs). I was told basically that spam is a
staple food, good luck getting meat and milk on a consistent/reliable basis as
it sometimes isn't very available, things get flown in from far away so a lot
of it is frozen not fresh, and what is available is quite pricey. There is
plenty of sea food available, but I am allergic to shell fish and don't
tolerate large quantities of fish well. In fact, I rarely eat fish.

A few years ago, I stayed in Port Aransas, Texas for a few days. I loved the
place and have toyed with the idea of going back (as in living there). But I
struggled to feed myself while there. There is a great deal of sea food and
some very expensive restaurants and some real dives and a very limited grocery
store. Given my dietary restrictions, these details made it a daily challenge
to try to eat properly for my needs and I don't feel it really did an adequate
job.

So if an island a short drive off the coast of Texas has challenges in
offering "a wide choice of restaurants" and Hawaii has challenges with making
sure food (in terms of variety and affordability) is consistently available,
what on earth makes them think a floating platform will do better merely based
on population size?

~~~
LisaG
" good luck getting meat and milk on a consistent/reliable basis "

Maybe in 1950. Or on Niʻihau. But on the bigger islands it is no problem.
There is a giant Safeway in the Manoa neighborhood of Oahu that is just as
good as the one on Townsend in SF and there are many Foodland grocery stores.
I lived there as a broke postdoc and had no trouble.

~~~
rdl
There is also the world's busiest Costco (they send execs there to learn how
it works).

------
dctoedt
Defense costs for a seastead would be ruinous. A seastead is just another form
of island. An island that's close to a land power will almost certainly need
the deterrent effect of a strong navy --- its own or that of a friendly power
--- if it wants to retain its independence. Strong navies are really, really
expensive to build and maintain; a seastead probably would not be able to do
either.

 _Example:_ Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet,
mainland China probably would have invaded and conquered Taiwan in 1949 or
1950, or on any of a number of "crisis" occasions since then. It's no accident
that whenever China rattles its saber about Taiwan, one or more U.S. aircraft
carrier task forces moves into the Taiwan Strait.

 _Example:_ Had it not been for the presence of the Royal Navy, the Germans
probably would have invaded and conquered England in 1940. The same is true of
Napoleon in 1803, for that matter.

Economically, a seastead probably couldn't maintain the kind of navy needed
for this task. England was able to maintain the Royal Navy in the 17th through
19th centuries, but it could draw on the resources of a growing empire.
Today's Britannia doesn't come close to ruling the waves; it can't afford to.

Could a seastead get a strong, friendly power to extend its own navy's
umbrella of protection, the way the U.S. has done with Taiwan? Possibly, but
the friendly power would have to perceive a benefit to itself before it'd be
willing to do so.

~~~
todsul
So you think the Germans or Chinese would want to invade the seastead? Do you
think it's because the Germans/Chinese would want the seastead's land to
extend their own borders?

~~~
ams6110
I'd think it's typically not the land itself that they really want, it's the
resources. If a Seastead were to become established and wealthy, you can bet
it would eventually come under threat of attack.

~~~
tryitnow
My guess is that the wealth the Seastead generated would be more of the
bits/bytes kind (i.e. financial wealth, wealth represented in contracts). I
can't imagine a bunch of libertarians sitting in their seastead with big
warehouses full of diamonds and gold. There are more effective places to store
physical assets.

A seastead is not a perfect solution to freedom. There simply is no perfect
solution. It simply creates another option. It's still possible for states to
seize the assets of seasteaders, but being on a seastead makes it a bit more
difficult.

------
jotm
I really don't see the point of seasteads - escaping the law is not really
feasible (you'll need supplies from a country, and if you do anything the US
or other nearby countries don't like, you'll be cut off or heck, even
torpedoed). There's plenty of land to build a small city on, much cheaper.

Even if you want a private island for your getaways, you can buy a big yacht
for cheaper, anyway. Heck, even if you want to create a criminal haven, it's
cheaper and easier to do it in some third world country by bribing everyone
(Pablo Escobar and Cuba is a great example)...

~~~
todsul

      "you'll need supplies from a country"
    

It's called importing. Most countries do it these days.

~~~
jotm
Yes, and when you decide to create your own country with your own laws, you'll
either be importing at exorbitant fees or be embargoed by everyone...

~~~
tryitnow
Why would you be importing at exorbitant fees (relative to what an island
nation would be paying anyways)?

And why would they be embargoed by everyone? Not even Cuba is embargoed by
everyone. Why would everyone embargo a seastead inhabited by upper income
individuals? In general the market is pretty responsive to wherever the money
is.

~~~
Czarnian
Because you have to pay a shipper a lot of money to send a ship somewhere that
doesn't have any exports to ship back.

------
jmj4
You can seen Peter Thiel's homage to Atlas Shrugged with funding this thing,
but I think logistically its a little bit too much. I'm firmly in the
libertarian camp, but things in this country would have to be pretty bad to
move full time to a place like this.

Another cool idea is the possibility of creating self governing city's, with
minimal regulation, inside of existing countries. Ex-Stanford economist Paul
Romer is proposing ideas along these lines. If you partner with a country
(Honduras is considering this) who give you land to set up an independent
city, you could have the type of self-governing, anti-tax/regulation
environment that libertarians yearn for. I can't see the US ever agreeing to
something like this, but some countries would.

~~~
luriel
The "self governing city" concept you are talking about is called "Charter
Cities", it is quite interesting and one can find more information about it
at:

<http://chartercities.org/>

------
christkv
I could not help it

I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to
the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the
poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the
man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I
chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city
where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be
bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the
small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
Share this quote

~~~
eftpotrm
The man in Moscow I won't attempt to defend.

The Vatican will say that, as a Catholic, 10% of the bounty which God has
enabled you earn should be donated to God in thanks.

The man in Washington will tell you that, in exchange for security and
protection from outside threats, you will be required to contribute in
proportion to your ability to pay (which is where far, far more of your money
goes than to the bogeyman of the undeserving, lazy, workshy poor). Frankly I
like to think of it as insurance against Red October.

Now, I don't for one minute think that the seasteaders would be able to
provide infrastructure and security for the rich any cheaper than existing
national governments, but I have to say that I consider going to such lengths
to try and dodge them spectacularly miserly.

------
rdl
I think the key for Seasteading to be successful is to try to separate the
engineering challenges, organizational challenges, economic/business model
challenges, and political challenges.

Oil platforms and cruise ships do a great job of solving engineering, in a
benign environment otherwise. As the article points out, large corporations
are the best at this kind of megaproject.

I predict the first successful consumer seastead will be set up by a cruise
line as a 2-3 week timeshare vacation/diving/excursion in a remote area,
possibly with a jet airstrip. Somewhere too far from ports for cruises to
comfortably visit, but with local interest.

Before that, we'll see natural gas fields in the middle of nowhere with either
LNG facilities or downstream chemical production on a seastead nearby, and
large labor force (relative to an extraction platform); thousands of people,
possibly. Increasing resource/energy costs will support this.

We'll possibly also see temporary structures for disaster recovery, supply
staging, etc. for military or relief work. The huge hospital ships (e.g. USNS
Comfort) serve a role like this, as do aircraft carriers and LPDs; scaling up
wouldn't be hard.

------
6ren
> Nobody anticipated the immense variety of uses that would be dreamed up for
> the internet, Mr Keenan observes, and the same may apply to...

...any idea you can think of. It's always possible there are upsides to an
idea that could not have been imagined beforehand. Technology is littered with
them. But it's useful to have some sense of the probability of such upsides,
and we can get some idea by looking at those from the past, such as the
internet.

The internet has been so successful because it provides communication, better
than others in many respects. That's the benefit that makes it valuable to
people; the specific technical features that produce it are secondary. There's
a long history of improvements in communications technology that have been
successful. There's even been the idea that the benefit of airline travel is
communication (e.g. for business travel, a large segment).

We can ask if seasteading provides communication - and also if any new idea we
might have provides communication. If it does, it will likely enable many
unanticipated uses that require communication, and could be as wildly
successful as the internet.

------
tedsuo
China Mieville wrote a great piece ripping apart this concept:
<http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/>

------
oceanician
Just been watching a documentry on floating homes in Amsterdam. Could be worth
checking it out. Look for 'Amsterdam's Futuristic Floating City'. It's one of
the Extreme Engineering series. Episode 7. I saw it on Discovery Science. Hth.

------
ChuckMcM
The arguments here and elsewhere are all pretty much spot on. Lots of people
like the 'concept' of being able to start fresh but few really internalize the
challenges. One person I know feels it would be easier to privately colonize
the Moon than to build a viable seastead.

That being said, there has been some interesting work in seawater chemistry
that suggests you might precipitate out of seawater a form of concrete [1]. Of
course it would be hard to precipitate out a _floating_ island but one might
imagine building a 'reef equivalent' by growing it from the seafloor up. I
personally don't think it is practical but I find the exploratory engineering
entertaining and thought provoking.

[1] <http://www.build.new-atlantis.org/seacrete.htm>

------
mmaro
[http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/seastea...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/seasteading-without-that-warm-glow.html)

------
CapitalistCartr
We have enormous land still readily available far cheaper than ocean living.
Barring a major breakthrough, this isn't going to change soon. As for the
political reasons, we have plenty of liberal governments here on land. If you
can escape a lousy government to get to a "Sea-Land", you can get to a normal
country easier, and they're more likely to accept you. There just isn't a
compelling reason for these, aside from frustrated libertarian fantasies.

------
LukeHoersten
"THE Pilgrims who set out from England on the Mayflower to escape an
intolerant, over-mighty government and build a new society were lucky to find
plenty of land in the New World on which to build it." -- I love how the
English think of the American colonial settlers versus how Americans do.

~~~
philwelch
That, by the way, is a popular myth. It's closer to the truth to say that the
Pilgrims sailed to America to _establish_ an intolerant, over-mighty
government.

~~~
yummyfajitas
True, but they abandoned communism quite quickly when it's failures became
obvious.

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_t...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_thanksgiving_.html)

~~~
philwelch
I was speaking more to the lack of religious tolerance, but okay.

------
njloof
Dear Somalian Pirates,

You're never going to believe this.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Dear Internet Guy who's clearly never sailed,

Have we mentioned our rubber dinghy's and fishing boats can only sail a few
hundred kilometers?

~~~
viscanti
I think the idea of security still exists, regardless of the viability of one
particular group of pirates. Given a big enough target, someone will be
motivated to come see what they can get. The question really is, what level of
protection/security is necessary to defend a sea-stead?

------
bane
Coming soon, Rife's Raft

<http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/Snow+Crash>

------
VladRussian
Despite being on land, Guantanamo is a nice preview of non-"libertarian"
implementation of seasteading.

------
vacri
Libertarians don't need to build fake islands (and all the safe waters in
which to do so long-term are already claimed). No, there is Vanuatu, the
libertarian dream state.

Forget the usual cry of 'Somalia!' for libertarians. Vanuatu gives them what
they want - miniscule government with few services offered, small police which
doubles as the military. There is no income tax unless you own rental
property. Defense is sorted as it's not strategically located against other
countries. It's a tropical paradise and the people rate as the happiest in the
world.

If libertarians really were going to spend resources on an island, why not
save themselves some dosh and go to Vanuatu? I mean, apart from libertarians
pretty much all having income reliant on high-tech skills that won't get much
demand in an agrarian society.

There are places for libertarians to go in this world to experience what they
claim they want, that aren't war-torn Somalia. They won't do it, because deep
down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with complex
government. If libertarians won't move to one of these countries, there's no
way this fake island is anything but a pipe dream.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_..deep down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with
complex government._

Which goodies, specifically?

Also, since most government programs are excludible (e.g., don't pay SS taxes,
you don't get SS when you are old), do you feel libertarians would choose not
to exit if given the option?

~~~
Czarnian
Off the top of my head, I'd say the internet which you are ironically posting
this on. The electric lines that are powering your computer. The sewer pipes
that carry your waste away from your living space. The streetlamps you travel
under at night. The legal system that protects your property from anyone who
wants to take it from you. Should I go on?

You know who didn't invent any of those things? The folks living in the
liberterian paradise of Vanuatu.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The internet and electric lines are provided by Time Warner and ConEdison,
respectively.

As far as I'm aware, few libertarians have any beef with streetlamps or
preventing violence. Of course, like most people, you avoided the main issue -
the majority of the US government (65%, see my other post on this topic) is
not preventing violence or providing roads. It's redistributing wealth.

To bring up 35% of government spending while ignoring the other 65% is
disingenuous.

~~~
Czarnian
If that's the question you wanted answered, it should have been the question
you asked. Instead, you asked which goodies are provided by a society with a
complex government structure.

Leaving aside the direct governmental involvement in the creation of the
internet. Leaving aside the governmental influence in promoting the widespread
use of electricity in the early 20th century. Time Warner and ConEdison don't
exist without the complex governmental structures that define a corporation
and provide the framework for them to operate.

There is a reason why corporations don't exist in places like Somalia. There
is a reason why corporations who incorporate in places like Bermuda don't
actually do anything in those places. It's no coincidence that the most
technologically advanced nations on the planet are also the ones with the most
complex governmental structures. They are inextricably linked. Without one,
you simply don't have the other.

There's also the matter of the impact complex governmental structures have in
protecting your private property. The little old lady at the county records
office provides far, far more protection for your property than any gun ever
will. Your private property exists because the government provides the
framework for it to exist. Without things like car titles and property deeds,
how long do you think it will be before someone just comes along and drives
you out of your home so they can have it?

If libertarians ever really thought about how much of their comfortable
existence relied on the government they hated so much, their heads would
explode.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Again: virtually no libertarians have any objection to the enforcement of
contracts, protection of property, etc. Most libertarians believe these are
legitimate functions of the government, and that all governments should
provide them.

You seem to be confusing libertarians with anarchists. It is anarchists who
oppose these things.

Also, you are clueless about Somalia. Corporations do exist there - for
example they have about 14 phone companies and one of the best telecom systems
in Africa. Also, their system of law (enforced by 4 separate governments) is
based on Sharia (Islamic Law), not libertarian or anarchist principles. I have
no idea why you are bringing up Somalia.

~~~
mahmud
Somali law(s) are definitely NOT based on Sharia, their claims to the
contrary.

Rather its based on clan/family cooperation & paid protection. The 14
corporations are not "legal" in any sense of the word. They might be
registered overseas, but there is no central record to register business &
contracts in Somalia. People enter into agreements with the firm understanding
that the cheater WILL be physically harmed. There are multi-million dollar
businesses, even airlines, but everything boils down to mutual agreement.

If you fuck over someone they will hurt you, your family, your tribesmen, etc.
Because of that, tribes ENFORCE contracts agreed to by their members, to avoid
spilling the damage to the rest.

P.S. I'm Somali.

------
nradov
These clowns will be crying for the US Coast Guard to come and rescue them the
moment their "seastead" springs a leak.

