Paul Romer has recently been promoting the idea of charter cities: special administrative zones modeled after Hong Kong, designed to connect Third World countries to the global economy.
There are obvious similarities to microsecession and seasteading; the concept of creating new cities with innovative systems of governance should be very appealing to libertarians.
I saw this last week and it was really interesting. I sent an e-mail via the chartercities.org site looking for more information, but all I got was “In terms of specifics, the TED talk was the public launch, and so the conversation has just begun with the idea that more information will be provided over time.”
I’m new to this, so don’t expect me to debate this answer because it is only a few days old in my mind, and I am still working through the finer concepts of it.. You’re best going to TSI and getting information from them.
Once at sea and outside the 200 mile economic zone of any coast, you could fly a flag of convenience from say Liberia or Panama. Liberia and Panama aren’t very aggressive at enforcing their law at sea, so one could operate out there quite freely, but have some admiralty legal precedent to fall back on if things get complicated.
That is basically phase one. Phase two is where it gets interesting. This is where a conglomerate of (or individual) seasteaders could negotiate with an economic free zone like Dubai to provide legal arbitration services to contractual relations designed by the seasteaders themselves.
You could arrange arbitration like that now, but you would fall under the legal precedents of whatever sovereign nation you were on when conducted the arbitration or participating in the contract, and as we all know, contracts do not exceed federal law.
The idea isn’t so much to get everyone on the water and sovereign, as to get everyone on the water and create as many new orders as possible. Sovereignty in the classic sense (land as property based) may be hard to create on the sea, where there is no precedent for it. So instead, create stateless orders beyond the control of any particular sovereign.
It’s really really clever. Obviously there are going to be problems with it, but that is the whole point in doing it. To discover what does and does not work, what can and cannot be done.
One other thing. Patri Friedman is involved in this intimately, but there are other people like Peter Thiel as well. If you’re not aware of Thiel, check him out. He’s a radical libertarian and one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 21st century.
Going to sea doesn’t disengage you from government, that’s why you don’t ‘get’ that part. And not only that, going to sea makes you an even easier target for the government.
Seasteading could be the starting point to a worldwide anarcho-capitalist movement. I find the idea of incrementalism very exciting and I am looking forward to first results. Are there any similar projects?
Way easier to sink a couple of boats full of ‘terrists’ than sending all libertarians to the concentration camp. By the way, choosing the sea because, allegedly, the state has not claimed jurisdiction over the sea, only reinforces the notion that the state can own a geographical area and the people living in that area.
Imperialism, in other words. Except instead of “charter cities,” they were called “colonies.” And instead of “Viceroy,” you’ve got “clueless, stupid Berkeley grad with degree in social work.”
And since the government will own the cities instead of private actors, they will be Potemkin villages at best, and sinkholes of corruption and violence at worst.
I’m not opposed to the concept though. In the future, investors will purchase city-sized trade zones which will compete intensely for human and financial capital. As the initial owners and entrepeneurs age and die, their shares will pass to their heirs/friends, and so on. Over time, the zones will evolve into hereditary institutions.
Complete with arranged marriages and feudal hierarchy.
I’m under the impression that running from the State just won’t do it. Somehow, someone, sometime will have to face it and emerge victorious. Only than, only a few shall have anarchy.
Not when they fly a sovereign flag as protection. The argument is somewhat silly really, being on land didn’t save the Jews from concentration camps.
You can stay on land and continue to pay taxes and submit your papers if you really believe that makes you more free. I’m sure that paying taxes and being given a state number reinforces the notion that the state can own a geographical area and the people livving in that area, as much, if not much more than going to sea.
Not sure what a sovereign flag is. I thought only individuals are sovereign.
Anyway, are you talking about anarchists founding their own state (odd) and saying that such a organization will be respected by the current nation states (even more odd) ? Or am I missing something ?
That’s not what I say. I think that challenging the state on land is better than basically running away.
Or else : if a sizable amount of libertarians were to found a free society then it would make sense for other libertarians to move there But regarding infrastructure, it’s way more expensive to live in the middle of the ocean than to live on land.
Seasteading is a bad project from the point of view of logistics…