7 ms·

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 migh

by darawk 7y ago

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.

arrosenberg 7y ago
> 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 rather well-reasoned.
- nsxwolf 7y ago
  Weren't there always native populations involved in these cases? That isn't the case with seasteading. For now you have to assent to the idea and immigrate.
  - klyrs 7y ago
    > For now you have to assent to the idea and immigrate. Unless you're a victim of human trafficking. Or, for example, read up on how scientologists use their cruise ship [1]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/world/scientology-cruise-ship/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/world/scientology-cruise-ship...
    - darawk 7y ago
      So...your concern is that seasteading will promote human trafficking?
      - klyrs 7y ago
        I'm saying it's a risk, and directly responding to the notion that "for now" emigration is at-will.
        darawk 7y ago
        Human trafficking is a risk in any scenario, though. It's unclear why that's a salient issue here.
        klyrs 7y ago
        It's salient because seasteads are relatively lawless and, like Alcatraz or a cruise ship, difficult to flee without assistance.
        solveit 7y ago
        I'm glad you brought up cruise ships because, as you say, they are difficult to flee, and they have indeed been embroiled in human trafficking. Few people think that this means that cruise ships are inherently a bad idea; it just means that they should be done well. Why do you think seasteading can't be done well?
  - arrosenberg 7y ago
    Local populations AND the underclass. It's not like the entire population of the United Kingdom benefited from the largess of the Empire — the benefits accrued to the wealthy and the Monarchy. What happens when you move there and some local strongman with the most weapons decides he needs slaves? Government exists because the majority of people got tired of being hassled by warlords, and they got banded together to create and enforce laws they could all abide by or one warlord was able to create a stable coalition for a time by taking responsibility for the justice of the land. Why would anyone in their right mind, other than a warlord-wannabe billionaire, assent to this idea?
    - darawk 7y ago
      > Why would anyone in their right mind, other than a warlord-wannabe billionaire, assent to this idea? Maybe they won't. You are, in a certain sense, assenting to it right now. Websites have exactly this governance model. Hacker News is run by a king. 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, but you choose which restaurants you patronize. There is no, in principle, reason that the same cannot be applied to where you choose to live. The primary difference is the transaction costs of relocation and the cost of mistakes. It's easy to go to a different restaurant if you don't like the menu. It's less easy to move. But some people are willing to make that tradeoff for more efficient governance.
      - arrosenberg 7y ago
        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 meaning of "efficient" can vary widely depending on who wields power. At our current evolutionary state communalism works up to about 150 people. Beyond that, you need a higher level of government, and historically that means some form of authoritarian government. Since this idea is being proposed by tech-funded billionaires, I can apply a filter to history to glean some insight as to what happens when a group of wealthy sociopaths are given absolute rule over a state. Since I value popularly elected, republican forms of government and free markets empowered by organized labor, I would naturally oppose an experiment that will very obviously lead to more autocracy, servitude, and exploitation by billionaires seeking to bestow feudal fiefs on themselves.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  ReallY? Can you list a few historical cities founded under a similar model that had the awful results you claim?
- dtwest 7y ago
  Since you're talking about proper historical context, it should be mentioned that none of the "nations" you speak of of were nation states in the modern sense. Many of the local populations were experiencing theft from their local warlords or kings or emperors before the Europeans came. Human history is full of people abusing power, it certainly wasn't first introduced by the Europeans, and it isn't unique to colonial style oppression.
- grey-area 7y ago
  The same could be said of any governance model, including democracy, tyranny, monarchy etc. Perhaps the problem is humans, not a particular system of government.
- whowhatwhy 7y ago
  yea damned humans will rape the mermaids
Omnitaus 7y ago
How are neocolonial company towns based on British common law a new form of governance?
munk-a 7y ago
I'd love to actively prevent people from moving to these places because it'll continue offshoring domestic wealth into tax havens. Honestly, this is the huge problem of our time - globalization has happened and the concepts of tax laws and taxation of value production haven't properly adapted. The US should be taxing all the value legitimately made in the US - if a designer in the US makes something that is then mass produced in China the value taxes currently only comprehend the physical good value, not the intellectual value of the good - for things like fashionable clothing nearly all of the value is created domestically and the actual material value is inconsequential. Over time the ability to dodge taxes in this manner has placed unfair downward pressure on countries to lower taxes in an effort to attract the revenue that can be freely moved around and hence we've got spiraling wealth inequality due to insufficient taxation. People opting out of taxation while reaping the benefit of educated populations (or their personal education) along with security and the laundry list of the benefits of society is simply ethically unacceptable.
- p1necone 7y ago
  > "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.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    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 something about that but it hasn't happened yet.
    - npo9 7y ago
      This is happening one country at a time. It happened to South Korea and a lesser extent Japan. It’s happening in India and China. We still have centuries of third world countries to exploit until they are fully developed.
clarkmoody 7y ago
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?
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  It's because those who are invested in seasteading tend to have libertarian, if not outright objectivist or anarchy-capitalist ideals, and thus their commitment to free enterprise at the expense of other values are seen as suspect, or at least are accused of behaving as such.
- keiferski 7y ago
  Over the last two decades, HN (and hacker culture in general) has shifted from a creator-oriented, anti-authoritarian (both left and right) culture to one supporting the establishment. I suppose that was inevitable - someone has to build the tools of surveillance capitalism at Google and Facebook.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Would you describe YCombinator as part of 'the establishment'? In my recollection, HN has always been pro-YC and pro-venture-capital-in-general, for obvious reasons :)
    - keiferski 7y ago
      Eh, I wasn't really referring to venture capital in particular, more the general philosophy. For example, here is an essay on the word "hacker": Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other. http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html This sort of attitude is definitely not the one held by most coders at BigStartupCo today.
growlist 7y ago
They're scared it might succeed.

by darawk 7y ago

arrosenberg 7y ago

> 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 rather well-reasoned.

nsxwolf 7y ago
Weren't there always native populations involved in these cases? That isn't the case with seasteading. For now you have to assent to the idea and immigrate.
- klyrs 7y ago
  > For now you have to assent to the idea and immigrate. Unless you're a victim of human trafficking. Or, for example, read up on how scientologists use their cruise ship [1]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/world/scientology-cruise-ship/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/world/scientology-cruise-ship...
  - darawk 7y ago
    So...your concern is that seasteading will promote human trafficking?
    - klyrs 7y ago
      I'm saying it's a risk, and directly responding to the notion that "for now" emigration is at-will.
      - darawk 7y ago
        Human trafficking is a risk in any scenario, though. It's unclear why that's a salient issue here.
        klyrs 7y ago
        It's salient because seasteads are relatively lawless and, like Alcatraz or a cruise ship, difficult to flee without assistance.
        solveit 7y ago
        I'm glad you brought up cruise ships because, as you say, they are difficult to flee, and they have indeed been embroiled in human trafficking. Few people think that this means that cruise ships are inherently a bad idea; it just means that they should be done well. Why do you think seasteading can't be done well?
- arrosenberg 7y ago
  Local populations AND the underclass. It's not like the entire population of the United Kingdom benefited from the largess of the Empire — the benefits accrued to the wealthy and the Monarchy. What happens when you move there and some local strongman with the most weapons decides he needs slaves? Government exists because the majority of people got tired of being hassled by warlords, and they got banded together to create and enforce laws they could all abide by or one warlord was able to create a stable coalition for a time by taking responsibility for the justice of the land. Why would anyone in their right mind, other than a warlord-wannabe billionaire, assent to this idea?
  - darawk 7y ago
    > Why would anyone in their right mind, other than a warlord-wannabe billionaire, assent to this idea? Maybe they won't. You are, in a certain sense, assenting to it right now. Websites have exactly this governance model. Hacker News is run by a king. 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, but you choose which restaurants you patronize. There is no, in principle, reason that the same cannot be applied to where you choose to live. The primary difference is the transaction costs of relocation and the cost of mistakes. It's easy to go to a different restaurant if you don't like the menu. It's less easy to move. But some people are willing to make that tradeoff for more efficient governance.
    - arrosenberg 7y ago
      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 meaning of "efficient" can vary widely depending on who wields power. At our current evolutionary state communalism works up to about 150 people. Beyond that, you need a higher level of government, and historically that means some form of authoritarian government. Since this idea is being proposed by tech-funded billionaires, I can apply a filter to history to glean some insight as to what happens when a group of wealthy sociopaths are given absolute rule over a state. Since I value popularly elected, republican forms of government and free markets empowered by organized labor, I would naturally oppose an experiment that will very obviously lead to more autocracy, servitude, and exploitation by billionaires seeking to bestow feudal fiefs on themselves.
BurningFrog 7y ago
ReallY? Can you list a few historical cities founded under a similar model that had the awful results you claim?
dtwest 7y ago
Since you're talking about proper historical context, it should be mentioned that none of the "nations" you speak of of were nation states in the modern sense. Many of the local populations were experiencing theft from their local warlords or kings or emperors before the Europeans came. Human history is full of people abusing power, it certainly wasn't first introduced by the Europeans, and it isn't unique to colonial style oppression.
grey-area 7y ago
The same could be said of any governance model, including democracy, tyranny, monarchy etc. Perhaps the problem is humans, not a particular system of government.
whowhatwhy 7y ago
yea damned humans will rape the mermaids

Omnitaus 7y ago

How are neocolonial company towns based on British common law a new form of governance?

munk-a 7y ago

I'd love to actively prevent people from moving to these places because it'll continue offshoring domestic wealth into tax havens. Honestly, this is the huge problem of our time - globalization has happened and the concepts of tax laws and taxation of value production haven't properly adapted. The US should be taxing all the value legitimately made in the US - if a designer in the US makes something that is then mass produced in China the value taxes currently only comprehend the physical good value, not the intellectual value of the good - for things like fashionable clothing nearly all of the value is created domestically and the actual material value is inconsequential. Over time the ability to dodge taxes in this manner has placed unfair downward pressure on countries to lower taxes in an effort to attract the revenue that can be freely moved around and hence we've got spiraling wealth inequality due to insufficient taxation. People opting out of taxation while reaping the benefit of educated populations (or their personal education) along with security and the laundry list of the benefits of society is simply ethically unacceptable.

p1necone 7y ago
> "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.
- munk-a 7y ago
  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 something about that but it hasn't happened yet.
  - npo9 7y ago
    This is happening one country at a time. It happened to South Korea and a lesser extent Japan. It’s happening in India and China. We still have centuries of third world countries to exploit until they are fully developed.

clarkmoody 7y ago

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?

Apocryphon 7y ago
It's because those who are invested in seasteading tend to have libertarian, if not outright objectivist or anarchy-capitalist ideals, and thus their commitment to free enterprise at the expense of other values are seen as suspect, or at least are accused of behaving as such.
keiferski 7y ago
Over the last two decades, HN (and hacker culture in general) has shifted from a creator-oriented, anti-authoritarian (both left and right) culture to one supporting the establishment. I suppose that was inevitable - someone has to build the tools of surveillance capitalism at Google and Facebook.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Would you describe YCombinator as part of 'the establishment'? In my recollection, HN has always been pro-YC and pro-venture-capital-in-general, for obvious reasons :)
  - keiferski 7y ago
    Eh, I wasn't really referring to venture capital in particular, more the general philosophy. For example, here is an essay on the word "hacker": Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other. http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html This sort of attitude is definitely not the one held by most coders at BigStartupCo today.

growlist 7y ago

They're scared it might succeed.