B***@nuts.net
2009-05-29 13:57:37 UTC
Seasteading: Libertarians Set to Launch a (Wet) Dream of 'Freedom' in
International Waters
By Brad Reed. Posted May 29, 2009.
A fringe brand of libertarians have been planning to escape the iron
fist of democracy by founding a new country in the middle of the
ocean.
Ever since the Democrats' November rout, various factions of the
conservative movement have demonstrated widely varied but always
amusing methods of coping.
The economic conservatives have held tea-bagging summits, where they
protested President Barack Obama for raising their taxes, even though
he didn't actually raise their taxes.
The neoconservatives have formed a virtual death cult surrounding Dick
Cheney and torture advocacy that's eerily reminiscent of the bomb
worshipers in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
The militia wing of the movement, meanwhile, has devolved into bizarre
conspiracies about Obama's birth certificate or outright public
weeping.
Gone largely unnoticed, however, has been a fringe brand of
libertarians who have been planning to escape the iron fist of
democracy by founding a new country in the middle of the ocean.
Before I continue, I'd like to point out that while Im not a
libertarian, I do value the contributions that they make to our
political discourse. Think of libertarians as the short-sellers of
state power -- the people in the back of the room who reflexively call
"Bullshit!" whenever the government tries to expand its reach. While I
think they're often misguided, their role as bipartisan skeptics of
government intervention is a necessary and important component of any
democracy.
That said, libertarians can get themselves in trouble when they fail
to accept that theyre doomed to be a frustrated minority who only
score points when the government tries to overreach its authority. The
problem with being against any sort of government expansion is that
the public often votes for politicians who pledge to proactively make
their lives better.
This inevitably involves expanding state power, whether its through
increased funding for health care and education to wage a war on
poverty, or increased funding for the military and law enforcement to
wage a war on drugs.
When libertarians get overly upset with their fellow citizens' statist
preferences, they can retreat into Randian fantasies of fleeing their
unworthy societies to found their own small-government utopias.
One such escape plan currently is being hatched by the Seasteading
Institute, a think tank that is encouraging libertarians to build
large, floating, concrete platforms in international waters where they
can live without the greedy hands of Uncle Sam taking their
hard-earned cash.
Seasteading is largely the brainchild of Patri Friedman, a libertarian
activist and the grandson of famous right-wing economist Milton
Friedman.
In an essay published by the Cato Institute earlier this year,
Friedman proclaimed that democracy was "not the answer" for
libertarians who wanted to live in true freedom because "libertarians
are a minority" and thus "winning electoral victories is a hopeless
endeavor."
Friedman said that seasteading was his personal solution to this
problem because, "expensive though ocean platforms are, they are still
cheap compared to winning a war, an election, or a revolution."
Additionally, Friedman pointed out that "the unique nature of the
fluid ocean surface means that cities can be built in a modular
fashion where entire buildings can be detached and floated away."
In other words, if one seastead platform decides to sell out and
implement tax hikes, libertarian True Believers can stick it to The
Man by floating their house farther out into the ocean. Suck on that,
Obama!
Although Friedman's proposals have a distinct "They called me mad,
mad!" quality to them, he insists that seasteading is a very pragmatic
endeavor. To prove this, he and his fellow seasteaders have published
their own manifesto dedicated to allaying the concerns of skeptics who
ask sensible questions about how they'll make money or acquire fuel
and food when they're stuck on a platform in the middle of the damn
ocean.
Fear not, though, because the seasteaders have come up with a
brilliant solution to these issues: They're going to base their
economies on illegal activities. In the "business models" section of
their book, the seasteaders sketch out a variety of plans to bring
money into their oceanic platforms, many of which involve using
seasteads as havens for activities banned by most countries.
Drug addicts, for instance, can benefit from an offshore facility that
"offers a wide variety of high-quality drugs in a legal setting with
available medical care in case of an emergency." Companies that don't
want to obey patent laws, meanwhile, can use the platforms to
"implement some portion of a patented process on a seastead" to sell
cheap goods without paying royalties.
The best idea, though, is to have a seastead dedicated to experimental
medical research where companies will be free from the iron fist of
the Food and Drug Administration, which "has historically been slow to
approve new medical treatments." One presumes that this platform will
be distinct from the other seasteads in that it will be populated
mainly by children who have five eyes and no knees.
At this point, some practical concerns arise. First, any offshore
facility that specializes in narcotics trade is going to become the
world's No. 1 target for pirates. The seasteaders briefly address the
threat of piracy by explaining that "most pirate attacks are either
very small-scale, preying on unarmed ships, or very large-scale, with
organized groups stealing entire cargo ships. A seastead will be too
tough for small pirates and not financially worthwhile for big ones."
Really! An entire sea platform filled with highly profitable illegal
drugs would not be financially worthwhile for pirates to attack! Good
luck with that.
The second big problem that seasteaders face is that most governments
will be none-too-thrilled to have platforms located just off their
coasts that pay no taxes and that profit directly from undermining
their own legal systems.
In the best-case scenario, governments will enact heavy tariffs on any
goods imported from a seastead, thus negating whatever competitive
advantage is gained from erecting "patent-free zones." In the
worst-case scenario, they'll send out their navies to shut down the
whole operation.
The seastead manifesto keenly observes that ocean platforms would be
"quite vulnerable to larger weapons" from navies since "concrete is
tough but far from indestructible." But even these limitations
shouldn't keep a good seasteader down, because "sea-skimming anti-ship
cruise missiles like the Chinese Silkworm are fairly cheap and quite
effective," and "a rocket engineer in New Zealand has set out to prove
that you can build a small cruise missile for $5,000."
The manifesto concludes that while seasteads will initially be
militarily weak and thus dependent on diplomacy for their survival,
their eventual success could make them "large and rich enough to join
the ranks of dangerous nations."
Although seasteading is very clearly a pie-in-the-sea project, it has
amazingly attracted a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter
Thiel, whose enthusiasm for seasteads derives from his belief that
freedom and democracy are "no longer compatible."
Indeed, Thiel thinks democracy in the United States has been a dead
end since the 1920s, when "the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries
and the extension of the franchise to women -- two constituencies that
are notoriously tough for libertarians -- have rendered the notion of
'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."
While Thiel never explicitly states that women would not be allowed to
vote on his seastead, you can surmise from his attitude that their
chances for achieving equality on his concrete platform are very slim.
Why Thiel expects any woman would willingly give up her right to vote
to join him on his oceanic dorktopia is puzzling -- perhaps he'll take
a page from North Korea's Kim Jong Il and start kidnapping famous
actresses.
In the end, the strangest part about the seastead project isn't its
founders' impracticalities but rather their base motivations.
Normally, when a minority of people want to break off from their
homeland to form a new country it's because of genuine oppression such
as religious persecution, ethnic cleansing or taxation without
representation. Thiel, on the other hand, lives in a society whose
promotion of capitalism has let him grow rich enough to blow $500,000
founding his own personal no-girls-allowed treehouse in the middle of
the Pacific Ocean.
What exactly does he have to be angry about, again?
International Waters
By Brad Reed. Posted May 29, 2009.
A fringe brand of libertarians have been planning to escape the iron
fist of democracy by founding a new country in the middle of the
ocean.
Ever since the Democrats' November rout, various factions of the
conservative movement have demonstrated widely varied but always
amusing methods of coping.
The economic conservatives have held tea-bagging summits, where they
protested President Barack Obama for raising their taxes, even though
he didn't actually raise their taxes.
The neoconservatives have formed a virtual death cult surrounding Dick
Cheney and torture advocacy that's eerily reminiscent of the bomb
worshipers in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
The militia wing of the movement, meanwhile, has devolved into bizarre
conspiracies about Obama's birth certificate or outright public
weeping.
Gone largely unnoticed, however, has been a fringe brand of
libertarians who have been planning to escape the iron fist of
democracy by founding a new country in the middle of the ocean.
Before I continue, I'd like to point out that while Im not a
libertarian, I do value the contributions that they make to our
political discourse. Think of libertarians as the short-sellers of
state power -- the people in the back of the room who reflexively call
"Bullshit!" whenever the government tries to expand its reach. While I
think they're often misguided, their role as bipartisan skeptics of
government intervention is a necessary and important component of any
democracy.
That said, libertarians can get themselves in trouble when they fail
to accept that theyre doomed to be a frustrated minority who only
score points when the government tries to overreach its authority. The
problem with being against any sort of government expansion is that
the public often votes for politicians who pledge to proactively make
their lives better.
This inevitably involves expanding state power, whether its through
increased funding for health care and education to wage a war on
poverty, or increased funding for the military and law enforcement to
wage a war on drugs.
When libertarians get overly upset with their fellow citizens' statist
preferences, they can retreat into Randian fantasies of fleeing their
unworthy societies to found their own small-government utopias.
One such escape plan currently is being hatched by the Seasteading
Institute, a think tank that is encouraging libertarians to build
large, floating, concrete platforms in international waters where they
can live without the greedy hands of Uncle Sam taking their
hard-earned cash.
Seasteading is largely the brainchild of Patri Friedman, a libertarian
activist and the grandson of famous right-wing economist Milton
Friedman.
In an essay published by the Cato Institute earlier this year,
Friedman proclaimed that democracy was "not the answer" for
libertarians who wanted to live in true freedom because "libertarians
are a minority" and thus "winning electoral victories is a hopeless
endeavor."
Friedman said that seasteading was his personal solution to this
problem because, "expensive though ocean platforms are, they are still
cheap compared to winning a war, an election, or a revolution."
Additionally, Friedman pointed out that "the unique nature of the
fluid ocean surface means that cities can be built in a modular
fashion where entire buildings can be detached and floated away."
In other words, if one seastead platform decides to sell out and
implement tax hikes, libertarian True Believers can stick it to The
Man by floating their house farther out into the ocean. Suck on that,
Obama!
Although Friedman's proposals have a distinct "They called me mad,
mad!" quality to them, he insists that seasteading is a very pragmatic
endeavor. To prove this, he and his fellow seasteaders have published
their own manifesto dedicated to allaying the concerns of skeptics who
ask sensible questions about how they'll make money or acquire fuel
and food when they're stuck on a platform in the middle of the damn
ocean.
Fear not, though, because the seasteaders have come up with a
brilliant solution to these issues: They're going to base their
economies on illegal activities. In the "business models" section of
their book, the seasteaders sketch out a variety of plans to bring
money into their oceanic platforms, many of which involve using
seasteads as havens for activities banned by most countries.
Drug addicts, for instance, can benefit from an offshore facility that
"offers a wide variety of high-quality drugs in a legal setting with
available medical care in case of an emergency." Companies that don't
want to obey patent laws, meanwhile, can use the platforms to
"implement some portion of a patented process on a seastead" to sell
cheap goods without paying royalties.
The best idea, though, is to have a seastead dedicated to experimental
medical research where companies will be free from the iron fist of
the Food and Drug Administration, which "has historically been slow to
approve new medical treatments." One presumes that this platform will
be distinct from the other seasteads in that it will be populated
mainly by children who have five eyes and no knees.
At this point, some practical concerns arise. First, any offshore
facility that specializes in narcotics trade is going to become the
world's No. 1 target for pirates. The seasteaders briefly address the
threat of piracy by explaining that "most pirate attacks are either
very small-scale, preying on unarmed ships, or very large-scale, with
organized groups stealing entire cargo ships. A seastead will be too
tough for small pirates and not financially worthwhile for big ones."
Really! An entire sea platform filled with highly profitable illegal
drugs would not be financially worthwhile for pirates to attack! Good
luck with that.
The second big problem that seasteaders face is that most governments
will be none-too-thrilled to have platforms located just off their
coasts that pay no taxes and that profit directly from undermining
their own legal systems.
In the best-case scenario, governments will enact heavy tariffs on any
goods imported from a seastead, thus negating whatever competitive
advantage is gained from erecting "patent-free zones." In the
worst-case scenario, they'll send out their navies to shut down the
whole operation.
The seastead manifesto keenly observes that ocean platforms would be
"quite vulnerable to larger weapons" from navies since "concrete is
tough but far from indestructible." But even these limitations
shouldn't keep a good seasteader down, because "sea-skimming anti-ship
cruise missiles like the Chinese Silkworm are fairly cheap and quite
effective," and "a rocket engineer in New Zealand has set out to prove
that you can build a small cruise missile for $5,000."
The manifesto concludes that while seasteads will initially be
militarily weak and thus dependent on diplomacy for their survival,
their eventual success could make them "large and rich enough to join
the ranks of dangerous nations."
Although seasteading is very clearly a pie-in-the-sea project, it has
amazingly attracted a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter
Thiel, whose enthusiasm for seasteads derives from his belief that
freedom and democracy are "no longer compatible."
Indeed, Thiel thinks democracy in the United States has been a dead
end since the 1920s, when "the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries
and the extension of the franchise to women -- two constituencies that
are notoriously tough for libertarians -- have rendered the notion of
'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."
While Thiel never explicitly states that women would not be allowed to
vote on his seastead, you can surmise from his attitude that their
chances for achieving equality on his concrete platform are very slim.
Why Thiel expects any woman would willingly give up her right to vote
to join him on his oceanic dorktopia is puzzling -- perhaps he'll take
a page from North Korea's Kim Jong Il and start kidnapping famous
actresses.
In the end, the strangest part about the seastead project isn't its
founders' impracticalities but rather their base motivations.
Normally, when a minority of people want to break off from their
homeland to form a new country it's because of genuine oppression such
as religious persecution, ethnic cleansing or taxation without
representation. Thiel, on the other hand, lives in a society whose
promotion of capitalism has let him grow rich enough to blow $500,000
founding his own personal no-girls-allowed treehouse in the middle of
the Pacific Ocean.
What exactly does he have to be angry about, again?