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I agree with a lot of what he says, but not with his extremely pessimistic conclusion. It's not time to just give up on all existing countries! Separate issue:
by xenophanes 18y ago
I agree with a lot of what he says, but not with his extremely pessimistic conclusion. It's not time to just give up on all existing countries!
Separate issue: Karl Popper (a friend of freedom) argued that democracy is good because it allows for non-violent changes in Government. I think Thiel should be careful in attacking democracy itself: what non-violent alternatives are there? Suppose we form a libertarian sea steading or outer space colony. What system of Government does Thiel imagine libertarians would use if not democracy?
- byrneseyeview 18y agoThey could use overlapping corporate jurisdictions. If you don't like how things are being run, you pay someone else to enforce your contracts. You might have different service providers for, say, IP versus personal safety versus family law. And since they'd compete, it would allow people to coexist with wildly different legal regimes. You could have a drug-prohibiting regime (or even one that fines you for alcohol consumption) -- but your neighbors might not.
- mindslight 18y agoFew would sign up for a regime that prevented only their use of drugs. One would either sign up for a regime that didn't care about drugs, or one that punished others for using drugs, as a moral crusade.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoA regime that punished people outside of its jurisdiction would not last very long. It would be the equivalent to what a war is today. I suspect that people would join such a regime for religious reasons. If you're the only member of your congregation who chooses not to be punished for having a beer, not having a kid, flipping a light switch on the Sabbath, etc., your peers may take note and decide you're not really serious.
- mindslight 18y agoWell, more equivalent to crime, but yeah. What I was implying is that it costs money to punish drug use, so jurisdictions would tend to ignore it unless explicitly requested. Churches would probably become jurisdictions, rendering that kind of mismatch moot. And hey, if some people require that much institutional pressure to avoid addictive traps, I'm certainly not one to argue (as long as it's not forced onto others).
- frig 18y agoWalk me through the mechanics of a hypothetical market for IP law service providers. Who sells what to whom?
- mindslight 18y agoThe imaginary property industry would look pretty much like it does now, but the content cartels would be hiring goons with bats instead of goons with law degrees.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoThere are a couple possibilities. One is a legal regime that separates copy-rights from use-rights. One would be a system for letting people selectively share trade secrets without risking someone else making the same product. Essentially, they would enforce voluntary constriants on future actions, when those actions are made possibly by access to information known by another party. This amounts to a property right, though like our current property rights regime, it is relying on a legal fiction as a useful abstraction.
- xenophanes 18y agoI don't think starting a new country with a new, untested system, which people don't know a lot about, will work well. I often advocate for anarcho-capitalism, but only as the result of an existing system being changed one step at a time. This gives time for any bugs/kinks to be worked out at each step, and for people to gain a better understanding of what it means.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoDo you see the current system's bugs being worked out any time soon?
- xenophanes 18y agoNot really. We work out a few, here and there. But if people don't know how to improve on our system, why would a new system make them smarter? I think living at sea won't suddenly make people good at fixing bugs. Maybe your plan is only to let the smart people join you, and hope they will all agree? I think that sort of plan is hopeless, both in figuring out who are the smart people, and then in getting them to agree. Intelligent libertarians disagree about large stuff all the time.
- zzzmarcus 18y agoI'd say for every bug we work out we create about 100 new bugs that lead further away from freedom. Starting over is sometimes exactly what a "legacy" system needs to get better. Intelligent libertarians disagree all the time, the difference is they don't resort to violence or coercion to force their views on others. It's the whole point of creating a truly free society like the Seasteading movement is trying to do.
- xenophanes 18y agoSo, what do you think of the French Revolution?
- 18y ago
- byrneseyeview 18y agoAnother alternative is tiny, Singapore/Dubai-type states, which accomplish the same thing, but by having very low costs of physically moving somewhere.
- jacoblyles 18y ago>"What system of Government does Thiel imagine libertarians would use if not democracy?" Perhaps neocameralism? http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/against-political-freedom.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/against... But seriously, I expect that many seasteads will attempt some form of democracy. Markets are beneficial because they allow producers and consumers the freedom to innovate, but the outcome of their decisions is impossible to predict in advance.
- jibiki 18y agoI have some major reservations about whether a mercantilist state would have any respect for human rights.
- anthonyrubin 18y agoI think the optimal solution would be a world where there are many smaller countries with different forms of government to choose from and moving from one country to another is much simpler than it is now. A United States with less centralized power would achieve many of the same benefits.