[Haumea]

	Why would people bother to go out to a bunch of lashed-together oil rigs for a prostitute, a casino and a duty-free shop when all they have to do is drive to the biggest nearby city for the first two

Well, that and year-round nice weather puts them over the top.

EDIT: Oh, you mean their South American competition. Well...I'm guessing you could throw legalized drugs into the mix.

[yoginimama]

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	it's considerably easier to make a society work if you control who gets to participate. Betcha they keep all the scum out.

--Who will decide exactly which categories of human should be on the "scum" list, and where will their pay come from?
--Who will adjudicate the entry applications, and where will their pay come from?
--Who will patrol for stowaways and unapproved entrants, and where will their pay come from?
--Where will captured stowaways and unapproved entrants be taken, who will contact their home countries, who will coordinate their repatriation, and who will foot the bill for the detention facilities, their employees, and the travel costs?
--What will happen once the society starts growing its own "scum" as children are born? Whoops, can't "control who gets to participate" once the generations get rolling.

[nowt]

	Originally Posted by yoginimama To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	--What will happen once the society starts growing its own "scum" as children are born? Whoops, can't "control who gets to participate" once the generations get rolling.

Perhaps some kind of yearly rental fee to offset the scumminess of the whole endeavor?

[Haumea]

	Who will decide exactly which categories of human should be on the "scum" list, and where will their pay come from?

You've heard of the Golden Rule, right? He who has the gold, makes the rules.

	What will happen once the society starts growing its own "scum" as children are born?

Umm..."an armed society is a polite society." The scum would be weeded out in short order, I think.

[yoginimama]

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Well, that and year-round nice weather puts them over the top.

What, you mean the outpost on the open sea? "Year-round nice weather"? You're joking, right?

Even if such a rig did manage to find or create a perpetually calm and clement spot, would its facilities and amenities be up to par?

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	EDIT: Oh, you mean their South American competition. Well...I'm guessing you could throw legalized drugs into the mix.

Are you going to set up facilities to make them? Or are you going to buy them?

If the latter, you've just become business partners with organized criminals.

If the former, you have just become targets of organized criminals.

Speaking of which, that could be a hazard of importing prostitutes too.

To me, the continual mistake of the pro-sea-steading camp is their seeming belief that anything--ANYTHING--about this is simple or straightforward. "We'll just find oil!" "We'll just turn ourselves into Amsterdam-auf-den-See!" "We'll just keep the scum out!" "If pirates come, we'll just shoot them!" No. Really, no.

---------- Post added 08-22-2011 at 08:31 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You've heard of the Golden Rule, right? He who has the gold, makes the rules.

Ah, so you envision the "islands" being run as plutocracies.

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Umm..."an armed society is a polite society." The scum would be weeded out in short order, I think.

Again, that statement is incredibly vague. "There won't be any bad people because the good people will shoot them."

Besides being vague, it's also ludicrous. If scum can "be weeded out in short order" like an act of nature simply by giving everyone access to the available weapons technology, we'd have turned into a species of angel long before recorded history.

[Persona]

Yeah, sorry, the bad people are the ones who shoot good people, not the other way around. If someone will shoot a person who genuinely wrongs them, there's only a short step from there to killing everyone who stands in his way; he's already overcome his natural empathy response.

That said, I don't think we should be dismissing this concept entirely. Think about Microsoft and Paypaldude himself; they're both rich from products with no physical resources whatsoever. It's easy to collaborate with people from multiple countries, too, so they could have their corporate HQs in no man's land and outsource most of the labour.

Think of Monaco for example, where to be a citizen (iirc) you have to buy a $500,000 share of the country. Sure, it's on land but it's a proof of concept for a lot of the issues being discussed here.

[blueback]

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Actually, they would make excellent floating brothels. Gambling, whores and tax-free goods. Think Nevada-meets-Delaware on water.

They'd also make excellent additions to the human trafficking network. Geographically and politically isolated, totally dependent on a few rich patrons, and full of armed enforcers...it's a sex-slave pimp's dream.

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Also, I think what people are missing here is that it's considerably easier to make a society work if you control who gets to participate. Betcha they keep all the scum out.

I think you should replace the word "society" with "club."

	Originally Posted by yoginimama To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	But it's not a model for a future country, or even a colony. It's a model for a business.

To be fair, a lot of places started out as businesses, particularly on the various frontiers throughout history. The company towns got things started. They weren't sustainable, but no organization is; they just vary in how long they last on average. Getting the routes and infrastructure in place sets the stage for better organization later.

	Originally Posted by yoginimama To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Why would people bother to go out to a bunch of lashed-together oil rigs for a prostitute, a casino and a duty-free shop when all they have to do is drive to the biggest nearby city for the first two, and order things from Skymall catalogs for the third?

That's why I suggested they find some resource that's scarce in other places and mine it.

Drugs are already easy to get. Sex is already easy to get. Wealth shelters are already easy to get. (at least for the sorts of people who have enough disposable time and money to go hang out on an isolated island)

The exclusive resort model doesn't make sense; that would just be a cruise ship that doesn't cruise. They'd have to do time-shares or something else more permanent. But then the place would have to contain enough recreational activities to keep rich people occupied for several months. But that model is just a resort town, and there are already tons of those, both attached and unattached to the mainland. They could play up the uniqueness of the near-total lack of laws, but that would probably just scare most of the customers away. They'd also have to have recreational activities that took advantage of the near-total lack of laws...and that would get dark pretty quickly...scaring away most of the rest of the customers.

They could manufacture stuff that creates a whole lot of toxic waste to take advantage of the freedom to dump it all in the ocean at will. They might be able to find a few niche markets where they could undercut the Chinese. But that will probably associate them with all sorts of bad things they don't want to be associated with.

It seems like the rather vague mission of "political experiment" is all they've got. I just wonder how they're going to get people to live out there so they can run the experiment.

I know what I'd do if I had one of those islands. I'd build one of several possible space launch facilities. One idea is to create a giant cannon that would shoot satellites into orbit. Another is a pair of islands that would anchor a dynamic structure that would be like an elevator to LEO. Since those will be big, you might as well toss in a regular airport.

[Persona]

Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

They'd also make excellent additions to the human trafficking network. Geographically and politically isolated, totally dependent on a few rich patrons, and full of armed enforcers...it's a sex-slave pimp's dream. I think you should replace the word "society" with "club." To be fair, a lot of places started out as businesses, particularly on the various frontiers throughout history. The company towns got things started. They weren't sustainable, but no organization is; they just vary in how long they last on average. Getting the routes and infrastructure in place sets the stage for better organization later. That's why I suggested they find some resource that's scarce in other places and mine it. Drugs are already easy to get. Sex is already easy to get. Wealth shelters are already easy to get. (at least for the sorts of people who have enough disposable time and money to go hang out on an isolated island) The exclusive resort model doesn't make sense; that would just be a cruise ship that doesn't cruise. They'd have to do time-shares or something else more permanent. But then the place would have to contain enough recreational activities to keep rich people occupied for several months. But that model is just a resort town, and there are already tons of those, both attached and unattached to the mainland. They could play up the uniqueness of the near-total lack of laws, but that would probably just scare most of the customers away. They'd also have to have recreational activities that took advantage of the near-total lack of laws...and that would get dark pretty quickly...scaring away most of the rest of the customers. They could manufacture stuff that creates a whole lot of toxic waste to take advantage of the freedom to dump it all in the ocean at will. They might be able to find a few niche markets where they could undercut the Chinese. But that will probably associate them with all sorts of bad things they don't want to be associated with. It seems like the rather vague mission of "political experiment" is all they've got. I just wonder how they're going to get people to live out there so they can run the experiment. I know what I'd do if I had one of those islands. I'd build one of several possible space launch facilities. One idea is to create a giant cannon that would shoot satellites into orbit. Another is a pair of islands that would anchor a dynamic structure that would be like an elevator to LEO. Since those will be big, you might as well toss in a regular airport.

You could also make it a financial network hub. Yes, there are several ideal spots out in the middle of the ocean.


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[Liberalis]

I think this is a very interesting idea, though I am skeptical of it succeeding. Similar attempts have been tried in the past, and all have failed embarrassingly. I think the biggest problems these rig-societies will face is that if they ever come close to being too successful, some government somewhere is going to demand they be shut down.

I think they would be most successful in providing services currently illegal in countries they are near. For example, they could offer gambling, marijuana (though how would it grow in that climate I do not know), even prostitution. Of course, once people find out about this, government will come and shut it down. But still, it is an interesting concept.

I think such ideas are more likely to succeed through reforms of the current system. For example, the Free State Project is another interesting idea. The basic concept is taking over a US state by simply concentrating a large number of libertarian-minded people there. The state of choice was New Hampshire because it is small and has a large congress to population ratio and is already sympathetic to more libertarian ideas.

[sircockburn]

	Originally Posted by Malkavia To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	[URL] (yahoo) So whos going?

A little petri dish will simply fail to reflect the larger, international effects of a libertarian regime (or lack thereof?)

America's too big. It's comparing blueberries to watermelons.

---------- Post added 08-24-2011 at 03:49 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by Lonpone To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	As for thieves and foreign invaders, the libertarians have always had a relaxed view on the regulation of firearms. I see any pirates that may come their way having to engage in some serious firefights to claim the island.

LOL right, because a few rich uncles in cashmere sweaters with their heirloom shooters stand a chance against military tanks and explosives.