A libertarian seasteading project

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Most of you have probably heard about this already. Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and one of the first investors in Facebook, has invested one and a quarter million dollars in the Seasteading Institute company, which funds a project by one Patri Friedman, a former engineer at Google. The project is to build the perfect libertarian utopia on artificial islands off the coast of California.

The islands are expected to be constructed on floating platforms powered by diesel engines. The weight of each platform should be 12 thousand tons and one of those things should host up to 270 people. The islands will float some 370 km away from San Francisco, which means in international waters. The project includes building a whole archipelago of these islands and eventually hosting millions of people by 2050.

The first floating office will be built sometime during this year, and in 2019 the first towns will appear in the Pacific, ready to be populated.

The purpose of all this is ideological. Peter Thiel is planning to create a sovereign country on those islands, which would eventually be recognized by the UN. The new country will consist of poleis, whose citizens will experiment with various ideas of government. The stated principles of this new society include nice things like the freedom of thought, of expression and action, freedom from moral and other dogma and norms, and from the now existing laws. The creators of the project are aiming to build a new type of society which they believe hasn't been tried before.

It's worth noting that the creators of this utopia don't reject money and capitalist relations, in fact they embrace them. Their statement, although still a bit vague, goes along the lines of "we'll avoid doing the same mistakes that our predecessors did". As for water, energy and food supply and other resources, the new state would get them exclusively through trade with other countries.

I think this is a consequence from the notion that true libertarianism hasn't been tried in the real world yet, at least not in its purest form as imagined by the hardcore libertarians. I invite our libertarian friends here to correct me on this if I'm getting it wrong. That said, I think this project can't be a bad idea, and people who are willing to pursue their own understanding of a better society, and who have the means to realize their dream, should act upon it, and join such a society. I'm not sure how this would work differently than all previous attempts at building similar utopias, but I can't help wishing good luck to all who'll join the project. The more diversity of ideas and experiments, the merrier. What say you? And the critics of libertarianism, do they think this project poses a threat that people might actually see a successful libertarian example and start embracing libertarianism in larger numbers?

Many analysts keep saying that the 21st century will be a time of a major shift of paradigm in both the social and political sense, with new ideas and systems being introduced and eventually re-shaping the status quo on a global scale. Is a project like this, and other such ideas, the precursor to these changes? Or is it just a bold but naive attempt to social escapism that is unsustainable in the long run? Gimme your opinions, please.

And finally, a hypothetical question. If you see such a project actually working just fine, and being a success, and if it matches your personal understanding of a better society, would you venture to join it? If yes - why? If no - why not?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And then someone realizes "Hey, wait, what if I start using guns to ensure that everyone "voluntarily" pays me taxes and if they don't like it, I do unto them what Indiana Jones did unto the guy with the whip?". The idea that voluntary societies last long in a modern context where any damn fool can make an AK-47 in his backyard is a humbug.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Even if you were correct in your assertion, and you're not, then the worst that could be said of such a failed experiment was that it degenerated back into a State. Damnation by faint praise, anyone?

The idea that voluntary societies last long in a modern context where any damn fool can make an AK-47 in his backyard is a humbug.

What you are complaining of here, in libertarian circles is known as the Warlords Will Take Over Fallacy. (http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston8.html) If you want to understand why it is a fallacy, and why you're going to need a better argument, then read and learn...or not.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

From the original article referenced by your link: http://mises.org/daily/1855

For the warlord objection to work, the statist would need to argue that a given community would remain lawful under a government, but that the same community would break down into continuous warfare if all legal and military services were privatized.

...

Private agencies own the assets at their disposal, whereas politicians (especially in democracies) merely exercise temporary control over the State’s military equipment. Bill Clinton was perfectly willing to fire off dozens of cruise missiles when the Lewinsky scandal was picking up steam. Now regardless of one’s beliefs about Clinton’s motivations, clearly Slick Willie would have been less likely to launch such an attack if he had been the CEO of a private defense agency that could have sold the missiles on the open market for $569,000 each

History is FULL of Coup d'etat's:
* Phillipines
* Trinidad & Tobaggo
* Pakistan
* Sudan
* Chad
* Madagascar
* Greece
* Turkey
* Egypt
* Thailand

The belief that groups wont wage war on each other because the costs are absorbed by them personally doesnt make sense since the *rewards* of such warfare would outweight the costs.

The rebuttal presented in the article seems more a practice of ignoring history and less giving a reason why a private, non-regulated force with it's own paramilitary would be compelled to just say "screw it" and take over everything.

Consider also the American Civil War -- the South would have resisted the North even if they were a conglomeration of private companies....because...they *DID*.

The people fighting were not all government soldiers but private citizens and mercenaries as well -- so to argue that privitization somehow makes warfare less likely just doesnt make sense.