5 ms·

The best thing about a sovereign seastead is how any properly equipped Real County(tm) will roll up in a boat and just blow it away. It’s like barbarian cities

The best thing about a sovereign seastead is how any properly equipped Real County(tm) will roll up in a boat and just blow it away. It’s like barbarian cities in Civ, essentially.

hitekker 8y ago
Or will tear themselves to pieces. Like all the libertarian camps in South America, particularly “Galt’s Gulch” of Peru. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v...
marcosdumay 8y ago
Unless they start doing stuff that is crime on the neighboring countries, I don't see why any of them would bother. But they better have some protection against piracy.
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  Committing crimes is the basic activity of Libertarians. The point of getting rid of the rules is you want to do the things that are against the rules. If the other countries still have the rules then you have conflict. Especially considering one outcome of the Libertarian philosophy is pollution of air and water is to be prevented not by regulation but by the self-interest of the person who owns the air and water. If that person takes leave of their self-interest and starts dumping toxic waste into their personal water property, Libertarians have no solution to that pollution. And the neighbors are going to be mad.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    So an easy defense is to avoid dumping toxic waste on your neighbors. I don't see why people assume seasteaders will be idiots. Meanwhile coastal cities are dumping all sorts of waste into the oceans. Some of the seasteaders want to build offshore of those, and use forms of aquaculture which would clean up that waste.
    - ebikelaw 8y ago
      Unfortunately pollution is not easily reversed. It's easy to say that if someone pollutes your water you'll sue them, but in reality it's unlikely that you'll be able to recoup your damages; pollution is often irreversible and the other guy doesn't have any assets anyway. Example: Libertarians love to hate RoHS and other lead controls. But one standard bar of lead is enough to poison tens of millions of people. Much better to prevent that, hence regulations. You're right that coastal cities pollute. Large groups of people can make decisions as badly as small groups and individuals. It's an unsolved problem.
      - DennisP 8y ago
        You just said upthread that rather than relying on lawsuits, nearby countries would "roll up in a boat and just blow it away" if a seastead polluted. If you're right then the seastead has a pretty good incentive not to pollute; if you think now that you're wrong then we have nothing to argue about. In any case, for a long time the main industry for seasteads will be open-water aquaculture, which is completely nonpolluting in experiments so far, and able to clean up the excess nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff and coastal city waste.
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    Being on outlaw is the basic reason for creating a libertarian place, but the law is not all criminal. Most libertarians I see on the web (I rarely see one in person, I guess they are rare) mostly want lower taxes and less public services.
  - jeffbax 8y ago
    This is a naive caricature by people who don't understand libertarianism in the first place. Posit that a lot of laws on the books are unjust, and incredibly hard to reverse. See marijuana prohibition, which has caused countless societal problems for decades and has been particularly problematic for minorities with disproportionate punishment. To say that they just want to break laws and pollute is plainly ignorance and a garbage argument. Some libertarians may argue that property rights and tort law will handle things like pollution externalities, there's also perfectly reasonable libertarian argument for government to prevent the tragedy of the commons (and even in the name of defense -- that doesn't mean that the EPA is perfect and doesn't overstep its bounds, see countless municipalities needing to develop projects that are held up for years due to bureaucratic absurdity) "The neighbors are going to be mad" - Every libertarian system has mechanisms for handling externalities, primarily through the courts. Seems like polluting my land and causing health problems is a pretty clear violation of NAP. Seasteading, and charter cities, are of the most exciting things happening and likely to be the best development for human flourishing and particularly those who are trapped in bad governmental systems. The point is to lead by example with experimentation in government on smaller scale. The right to get up and move and self-determine is probably more important than any other in regards to alleviating human suffering.

The best thing about a sovereign seastead is how any properly equipped Real County(tm) will roll up in a boat and just blow it away. It’s like barbarian cities in Civ, essentially.

hitekker 8y ago

Or will tear themselves to pieces. Like all the libertarian camps in South America, particularly “Galt’s Gulch” of Peru. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v...

marcosdumay 8y ago

Unless they start doing stuff that is crime on the neighboring countries, I don't see why any of them would bother. But they better have some protection against piracy.

ebikelaw 8y ago
Committing crimes is the basic activity of Libertarians. The point of getting rid of the rules is you want to do the things that are against the rules. If the other countries still have the rules then you have conflict. Especially considering one outcome of the Libertarian philosophy is pollution of air and water is to be prevented not by regulation but by the self-interest of the person who owns the air and water. If that person takes leave of their self-interest and starts dumping toxic waste into their personal water property, Libertarians have no solution to that pollution. And the neighbors are going to be mad.
- DennisP 8y ago
  So an easy defense is to avoid dumping toxic waste on your neighbors. I don't see why people assume seasteaders will be idiots. Meanwhile coastal cities are dumping all sorts of waste into the oceans. Some of the seasteaders want to build offshore of those, and use forms of aquaculture which would clean up that waste.
  - ebikelaw 8y ago
    Unfortunately pollution is not easily reversed. It's easy to say that if someone pollutes your water you'll sue them, but in reality it's unlikely that you'll be able to recoup your damages; pollution is often irreversible and the other guy doesn't have any assets anyway. Example: Libertarians love to hate RoHS and other lead controls. But one standard bar of lead is enough to poison tens of millions of people. Much better to prevent that, hence regulations. You're right that coastal cities pollute. Large groups of people can make decisions as badly as small groups and individuals. It's an unsolved problem.
    - DennisP 8y ago
      You just said upthread that rather than relying on lawsuits, nearby countries would "roll up in a boat and just blow it away" if a seastead polluted. If you're right then the seastead has a pretty good incentive not to pollute; if you think now that you're wrong then we have nothing to argue about. In any case, for a long time the main industry for seasteads will be open-water aquaculture, which is completely nonpolluting in experiments so far, and able to clean up the excess nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff and coastal city waste.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  Being on outlaw is the basic reason for creating a libertarian place, but the law is not all criminal. Most libertarians I see on the web (I rarely see one in person, I guess they are rare) mostly want lower taxes and less public services.
- jeffbax 8y ago
  This is a naive caricature by people who don't understand libertarianism in the first place. Posit that a lot of laws on the books are unjust, and incredibly hard to reverse. See marijuana prohibition, which has caused countless societal problems for decades and has been particularly problematic for minorities with disproportionate punishment. To say that they just want to break laws and pollute is plainly ignorance and a garbage argument. Some libertarians may argue that property rights and tort law will handle things like pollution externalities, there's also perfectly reasonable libertarian argument for government to prevent the tragedy of the commons (and even in the name of defense -- that doesn't mean that the EPA is perfect and doesn't overstep its bounds, see countless municipalities needing to develop projects that are held up for years due to bureaucratic absurdity) "The neighbors are going to be mad" - Every libertarian system has mechanisms for handling externalities, primarily through the courts. Seems like polluting my land and causing health problems is a pretty clear violation of NAP. Seasteading, and charter cities, are of the most exciting things happening and likely to be the best development for human flourishing and particularly those who are trapped in bad governmental systems. The point is to lead by example with experimentation in government on smaller scale. The right to get up and move and self-determine is probably more important than any other in regards to alleviating human suffering.