St_Francis_P: Colonizing the ocean is pretty cool, so I'm quite happy to see billionaires wasting their money thinking they'll have their Randian utopia.

Seconded

theorellior: FTA: Blueseed expects its offshore seastead will bypass U.S. immigration and business restrictions to draw entrepreneurs from around the world to work near Silicon Valley.

Okay, who here thinks this will be a luxurious colony of pampered tech geniuses or a bobbing warehouse full of sweatshop coders? Bets?

Put my money on both. Geniuses get staterooms, and coders get a damp cubicle in the hold.

Hello, this is the US Coast Guard. You say you're in the floating city, the "independent" one? You say you're being boarded by pirates? Fine.
Will that be Visa, Mastercard, or American Express?

redsquid: I've done some preliminary checking and you can buy retired floatels, which are floating towns on barges, at surprisingly low prices. These are used to house workers and they have dorms, private cabins, theaters, rec areas, infirmaries, surgeries, cafeterias, etc. Everything you need for a small community. A group of like-minded people could easily buy a barge with a kickstarter -like program. It sounds great but while you're planning your vegan, open love, ocean going meditation retreat some one else is planning a racist dreamboat or a floating sweatshop to side step safety standards. It will be interesting to see it develope.


*googles 'floatel'* ... welp, there goes my next hour.

You know, you make a good point. People imagine it will be entrepreneurial captains of industry who will establish groundbreaking industries offshore, but who is to say it won't be some sadistic drug lord or dictator type who will build a private palace staffed by slaves? We think it will be Tony Stark who'll do this, but who is to say it won't be Saddam Hussein?

Or we could, you know, just not have so many damned kids.

/Only had 2
//Refused to consider having more than that
///The wife agreed

davidphogan: You'd want to make sure you have some surface presence because at 30 feet you could get hit by a lot of ships.

Or depth charges.

So what happens when a hurricane hits?

Old idea rehashed.

Check for a copy of "How To Start Your Own Country," by Erwin S. Strauss. I met him in 1976 at Worldcon 34, and he was talking up the idea to anyone who would listen.

We've run out of frontier. All land is claimed.

[cough]Bullshiat![/cough]

Weaver95: falcon176: spend 200 million to avoid paying 30 million in taxes

y'know...the easiest solution to all the world's problems is to simply push the reset button. think about it - if you are the 1%, the best move for you is to wipe out 90% or so of the world population. some sort of engineered plague or whatnot. you want the world to return to something similar to what europe looked like in the wake of the Black Death.

then you and your army of immunized goons and thugs could move in, 'save' the survivors and easily enslave them. you could build just about any type of society you wanted. you'd have plenty of room to expand. debts would be wiped out. no more taxes. A fresh start, if you will.

By definition if you are in the 1% you want things to stay exactly like they are, only more so (i.e. more coming to you). Killing off 90% of the population would mean 90% of the 1% would be downgraded to the 99% (even if they all survived), and they would have 90% less wealth in the long term (and probably more, due to the exponential way wealth tends to accumulate at the top as overall wealth increases).

It's not about the money for these cockgobblers, it's about the principal.
Wealthy people who can run from the evil IRS to other countries have more than enough money to pay their taxes, in some cases enough for a hundred lifetimes worth.
The issue is that they get pissed at the thought of any of their taxes going to help "those people", meaning any people who they perceive as "unlike" them. This seems to be a common streak among anti-taxers, only the rich ones can leave while the poor ones just sit and b*tch.

Any american citizen who leaves the country for the purpose of evading taxation should be given one year to pay up. If they don't, revoke their citizenship after that year is up, and after two years of non-payment deny them entry into the country forever.

You play here, you pay here.

jaylectricity: "We've run out of frontier. All land is claimed. And our revolutions have become superficial," said Patri Friedman, who cofounded The Seasteading Institute four years ago with billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

Posted this before in reference to another topic. Seems like a good time to post it again. From Chris Cooper's character in "Interstate 60" whom I find myself identifying with more and more:

Bob Cody: Ever hear of Frederick Turner, Mr. Oliver?
Neal Oliver: No, sir.
Bob Cody: Well, he was an historian. About a hundred years ago he came up with a theory about the frontier. He said the frontier was a safety valve for civilization, a place for people to go to keep from goin' mad. So, whenever there were folks who couldn't fit in with the way things were, nuts, and malcontents, and extremists, they'd pack up and head for the frontier. That's how America got started - all the crackpots and troublemakers in Europe packed up and went to a frontier which became the thirteen colonies. When some people couldn't fit in with that, they moved farther west, which is why all the nuts eventually ended up in California. Turner died in 1932, so he wasn't around long enough to see what would happen to the world when we ran out of frontier. Some people say we have the frontier of the mind, and they go off and explore the wonderful world of alcohol and drugs, but that's no frontier. It's just another way for us to fool ourselves. And we've created this phony frontier with computers, which allows people to, you know, think they've escaped. A frontier with access fees?
Neal Oliver: What about space? You know, the final frontier!
Bob Cody: Ah, Star Trek isn't space. That's television - fine farkin' frontier that is. Besides, how many folks can just pack up and go to space?

I have to agree with the frontier safetly valve analogy.

Yeah, it may be good for a few years, but then the UEO will step in, and things will go back to the way they were, with taxes and what not...

If, after more than ten years, you still can't find 20,000 Libertarian assholes to take over farking New Hampshire, you might be biting off more than you can chew with floating sea-cities.

/farking Libertarians.

Say hello to Isaac, your bartender.

"I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers."

RexTalionis: [fc05.deviantart.net image 600x790]
Where have I heard this one before?



Would you, kindly?

Would one of these "cities" be like the "massive refugee flotilla centered around Rife's personal yacht, the former USS Enterprise aircraft carrier" as described in "Snow Crash"?

I think the appropriate Bioshock quote is:

It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea. It was impossible to build it anywhere else.
--Andrew Ryan

mat catastrophe: If, after more than ten years, you still can't find 20,000 Libertarian assholes to take over farking New Hampshire, you might be biting off more than you can chew with floating sea-cities.

/farking Libertarians.

I thought I was the only one! Their inability to take over New Hampshire makes me furious.

It's somehow guaranteed, when this thread comes up, that an overwhelming number of people will start whining "but if they go away, who's going to pay for my social services?"

MilesTeg: "I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers."

"Eww!" says the normal person, "It's sweat. But if, with this poetical allusion, you're referring to the income you made from living in a society with a good standard of living that we have all contributed, either directly through our taxes or indirectly through the fact that we conduct ourselves in a socially moral manner, then yes, you should pay your share of your income to the community of which you are a part. And if your income is very high, then you have benefited greatly from living in our community, so you should pay a higher share."

lizaardvark: It's somehow guaranteed, when this thread comes up, that an overwhelming number of people will start whining "but if they go away, who's going to pay for my social services?"

How much of that do you see in this topic? That's right, none.

Because the countries most wealthiest people are all libertarian and going to leave?

Another butthurt uneducated libertarian.

And let's see, we have a group of cashed up billionaires, who made their fortune creating companies that sell services to a huge volume of middle class people or to other companies that do this. Their fortune came from the consumer demand of a huge body of people who have income they can use to buy their goods and services. The income of these people depends upon their ability to get and secure decent paying jobs. This relies on them having access to expensive education that most of them can't afford themselves, except perhaps through massive levels of debt, so is subsidised by the national economy though the mechanism of taxes paid to the government and public spending on educational services.

Now these guys want to move offshore to minimise their exposure to taxes and to give them the freedom of bringing in pre-trained labor from other countries.

So, in effect, they want to stop paying taxes, which are used to increase the educational standards and economic capacity of the Nation. And they want to bring in educated workers from other nations. And then they'll try to sell their goods and services back into the national economy.

This isn't 'Libertarianism'. This is a farking free ride.

And they know it.

And you guys are buying it.

I didn't see the part where they plan to raise sea level past the point where there is any dry land.

Paging Marshall T Savage to the delusional loon thread...

DO NOT WANT Poster Girl: mr intrepid: Hello, this is the US Coast Guard. You say you're in the floating city, the "independent" one? You say you're being boarded by pirates? Fine.
Will that be Visa, Mastercard, or American Express?

Came here to say this.

A floating material-rich city with wealthy inhabitants, a handful of police, a bunch of resources including women and children, and isolated in international waters?

Ca-ching.

If only the police(or whatever they call it) are allowed to have weapons I could see it being a big Ca-Ching for pirates. If most or all persons of fighting age were required or at least allowed to have weapons by the time you had a big enough fighting force to be able to take it over the split on the pot would be so small as to not be worth it.

Aarontology: So they want all the benefits and privileges of the United States without the obligations and duties.

How bootstrappy of them. If they were serious, they would move completely outside of US territorial waters and take their chances.

huh?

DO NOT WANT Poster Girl: mr intrepid: Hello, this is the US Coast Guard. You say you're in the floating city, the "independent" one? You say you're being boarded by pirates? Fine.
Will that be Visa, Mastercard, or American Express?

Came here to say this.

A floating material-rich city with wealthy inhabitants, a handful of police, a bunch of resources including women and children, and isolated in international waters?

Ca-ching.

Wealthy people aren't always stupid. I'd wager this will be a well guarded place since being outside the jurisdiction of gun laws, and having more than enough cash to pay mercenaries, will make that a certainty.

The question is if real nations will let this thing sit in the ocean without wanting to exert their own claim on such a wealthy little tax haven. The potential mobility of the thing is probably why it seems more attractive than just buying some banana republic and taking over the government.

Aarontology: So they want all the benefits and privileges of the United States without the obligations and duties.

How bootstrappy of them. If they were serious, they would move completely outside of US territorial waters and take their chances.

Once you get enough people out there, you'll have to start taxing and regulating, you know. Anarchy sounds nice and peaceful, but it isn't really very much fun after the novelty wears off and things wear out, you know?

ansius: And let's see, we have a group of cashed up billionaires, who made their fortune creating companies that sell services to a huge volume of middle class people or to other companies that do this. Their fortune came from the consumer demand of a huge body of people who have income they can use to buy their goods and services. The income of these people depends upon their ability to get and secure decent paying jobs. This relies on them having access to expensive education that most of them can't afford themselves, except perhaps through massive levels of debt, so is subsidised by the national economy though the mechanism of taxes paid to the government and public spending on educational services.

Now these guys want to move offshore to minimise their exposure to taxes and to give them the freedom of bringing in pre-trained labor from other countries.

So, in effect, they want to stop paying taxes, which are used to increase the educational standards and economic capacity of the Nation. And they want to bring in educated workers from other nations. And then they'll try to sell their goods and services back into the national economy.

This isn't 'Libertarianism'. This is a farking free ride.

And they know it.

And you guys are buying it.

Show me a Libertarian or Republican who wouldn't take such a "free ride". They're all about squeezing as much wealth out of a system as possible while paying back the least that they can. (ideally zero).

Certainly a helluva lot cheaper.

Shostie: Aarontology: So they want all the benefits and privileges of the United States without the obligations and duties.

How bootstrappy of them. If they were serious, they would move completely outside of US territorial waters and take their chances.

You mock, but this is all just bringing us baby steps closer to a real-life version of BioShock.

Yes and we know how gloriously Bioshock ended!

St_Francis_P: Colonizing the ocean is pretty cool, so I'm quite happy to see billionaires wasting their money thinking they'll have their Randian utopia.

And then laugh as the first hurricane or tsunami slams right into their precious little Galtistan.


Ant...................................Boot.

I used to think this would be a great idea. Then I stopped being 17.

And at any rate, this sounds less like some utopian libertarian micronation, and more like a gimmicky condo.

Put it this way: who shovels the shiat? Both metaphorically and literally, any community of even moderate independence needs people to clean toilets, wash dishes, and take out the garbage.

More generally, who thinks that assembling all of the "malcontents" in an isolated and confined space is going to end well?

I don't think the people who are willing to leave home behind to be janitors on a rusting tub with zero worker protections are going to play nice with everyone. It will be interesting to see whether the underclass or the mercenaries will take over first...

And it speaks to the more general assumption that trips up the wannabe Rugged Individualist. They assume that all of the taxes and regulations and social programs are just bleeding-heart do-gooding run amok. When in reality, there are generally good and pragmatic reasons for the way things are done.

They get so focused on this BS vision they have been sold of how things could be if they weren't having so much stolen from them, that they completely lose the ability for critical thought, and realizing that if the answers were easy, we'd have implemented them long ago.

Iguess in that respect they are no different from any dogmatic cult, but it is really frustrating to watch them ignore the repeated evidence of history as to how bad things really do get for most people in the absence of social order. They want to believe that people act in enlightened self-interest. fark, if that were the case, communism would work!

TV's Vinnie: St_Francis_P: Colonizing the ocean is pretty cool, so I'm quite happy to see billionaires wasting their money thinking they'll have their Randian utopia.

And then laugh as the first hurricane or tsunami slams right into their precious little Galtistan.

[haightashburytattooandpiercing.files.wordpress.com image 476x322]
Ant...................................Boot.

hurricaines would be serious business, but [in best morbo voice] windmills tsunamis do not work that way.

Out at sea in deep water tsunamis are just an underwater shockwave and not a giant wall of water. It can pass right under a ship without you knowing you did so.

As long as they build it with Reardin Metal I say go for it.

Sorry folks, we're all together on this ball made of water,dirt and dinosaur turds together, the sooner, if ever, people accept it the better.

way south: DO NOT WANT Poster Girl: mr intrepid: Hello, this is the US Coast Guard. You say you're in the floating city, the "independent" one? You say you're being boarded by pirates? Fine.
Will that be Visa, Mastercard, or American Express?

Came here to say this.

A floating material-rich city with wealthy inhabitants, a handful of police, a bunch of resources including women and children, and isolated in international waters?

Ca-ching.

Wealthy people aren't always stupid. I'd wager this will be a well guarded place since being outside the jurisdiction of gun laws, and having more than enough cash to pay mercenaries, will make that a certainty.

The question is if real nations will let this thing sit in the ocean without wanting to exert their own claim on such a wealthy little tax haven. The potential mobility of the thing is probably why it seems more attractive than just buying some banana republic and taking over the government.

The REAL NATIONS (TM) of the world would not tolerate it if it actually worked out good and was sucessful, someone's Navy would show up on your doorstep and inform you that you are now thier citizens.

Weaver95: falcon176: spend 200 million to avoid paying 30 million in taxes

y'know...the easiest solution to all the world's problems is to simply push the reset button. think about it - if you are the 1%, the best move for you is to wipe out 90% or so of the world population. some sort of engineered plague or whatnot. you want the world to return to something similar to what europe looked like in the wake of the Black Death.

then you and your army of immunized goons and thugs could move in, 'save' the survivors and easily enslave them. you could build just about any type of society you wanted. you'd have plenty of room to expand. debts would be wiped out. no more taxes. A fresh start, if you will.

Except that the Black Plague actually benefitted surviving workers: there was such a contraction in the labor pool, workers took the opportunity to demand higher wages and better conditions.

fusillade762: "Good Lord! That's over 5000 atmospheres of pressure!"

"How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?"

"Well, it was built for space travel, so anywhere between zero and one."

I don't think people realize that the Lunar Orbiter and the LEM were basically inflated aluminum balloons.

Weaver95:
then you and your army of immunized goons and thugs could move in, 'save' the survivors and easily enslave them. you could build just about any type of society you wanted. you'd have plenty of room to expand. debts would be wiped out. no more taxes. A fresh start, if you will.

The unpleasant realization then being that you have wiped out most of the skilled people who keep the infrastructure running. Sure you may have nuclear engineers etc. on staff but what about the people who do all the million other fussy jobs that provide parts, chemicals etc. for, well, everything we call civilization.

So, you could build any type of society you wanted, as long as it was a medieval-level agrarian one.