An island of sin and vice?
Free society is great, but my fear is that, being the only island of freedom in a "sea" of governments that repress victimless vice, the seasteaders will inevitably find themselves in a society of perverts and unsavory characters.
I predict that industries that will thrive on seasteads will be those that modern governments have regulated out of existence, or nearly so. Presuming a seastead society would be more or less libertarian in its legal framework (a near certainty given the ease of secession), the industries that would really have a competitive advantage in seastead-opia might include
- private banking (read: tax evasion)
- prostitution
- other adult industries (pornography, dancing, etc.)
- gambling
- abortion clinics
- drug dens
- baseball games cruelly using only kittens as the equipment
- okay, probably not that last one
. . . and so on.
Admittedly, most libertarians would say that we prefer to live in a society where such activities are permitted than one in which government is powerful enough to stop them (with the exception of the kitten baseball thing – I think I'd convene a citizens' militia to stop that.)
But most would also probably prefer not to live in a society where every street in every neighborhood is lined with shops pedlling vice - like the Las Vegas strip but much, much smuttier. But given the huge world demand for such activities and the extremely limited outlets for them, I believe that there's a very strong chance this is what you'd see in the seastead colony.
And two more things just occurred to me: One is that mobsters already know how to do this stuff pretty well, so you may expect them to join up once it appears that your society will work. They may remain peaceful, but – hey – you’d be living right next door to those who were mass murderers in a former life (and may become so again the instant they get back on shore). And two: governments are going to absolutely hate you. Take the U.S.: we spend tons every year helping Colombia combat their cocaine cartels. Is there any chance we wouldn’t take at least a passing interest in a floating island that just happens to have become a haven (if not a headquarters) for drug operations?
So in summation: (1) a free society but one completely overrun with sin and vice, and (2) the U.S. may bomb you as a matter of principle.
Can somebody point out a flaw in this logic?
Question: how exactly do you envision a 'street' in a seasteading community?
Each and every bit of 'land' will be created out of thin water, and have a well defined owner. Just because i might happen to run a drug resort, doesnt imply i would allow my clients to set a foot on the platform i live on. The same applies to most of the potential issues you mention.
As long as no drugs are being exported from there, i do not see much reason why anyone would take offence. Nor do i see any advantage in trafficking through a seastead.
The "US bombing on principle" question is more interesting, for the US has a track record of bombing or shooting people, abroad, for funding organized crime in the US (be it terrorism or drug turf wars). As far as I know the US never bombed or shot people abroad for comitting victimless "crimes".
I can't see any reason for seasteads to end up hosting such a funding of large-scale crime. People engaging in these activities are much better off choosing a location that is not easily sunk by a few well-placed rockets and is a little harder to spot from an observation satellite.
As for the question of "vice" and "sin", please provide objective definitions of "vice", "sin" and "moral", or else I can't see this discussion going anywhere.
Fellas -
You guys are a whole lot of fun, so I'll bite:
I'm familiar with the "begging the question" fallacy, there Jesrad. But just to be more clear, my basic point is twofold:
1.
(major premise) "victimless vice" is less costly in a location where government does not devote vast amounts of money and coercive power to preventing it
(minor premise) a seastead colony would probably be such a place
(conclusion) victimless vice will probably be less costly in a seastead colony
2.
(major premise) there is a huge demand for victimless vice the world over
(minor premise) a seastead colony will initially be quite small in size relative to the demand
(conclusion) people will flock to the colony in numbers disproportionate to its size, making vice-related industries the most valuable use of the available space
The "bombing" thing was really just hyperbole for the sake of emphasis. On a more serious note (seems to be the general tenor on this discussion ), I'd say a seastead colony would face a lot of interest and potentially intervention from the US and other nations interested in stamping out the drug and skin trades. My argument for this is mostly based on the example of US intervention in Colombia and other nations. The danger, of course, is that other nations may un-libertarian the seastead colony at the point of a gun as soon as it starts to take steam.
Finally, I think the best way to assail my arguments is probably with Eelco's rejoinder that you could just sail away from the sin if it didn't appeal to you (or close your window curtains or whatever - it's your private property after all). I would say his argument pretty much carries the day if by "seasteading" we're not talking about the forming of a relatively large (1000+ people, say) libertarian society. But my fear is that, in that society - the larger one that the Christian fundamentalists have already floated away from - you'd be surrounded by vice.
To this, the libertine should well answer “who cares?” but not necessarily the libertarian.
P.S. Jesrad - your challenge to please define sin is an excellent philosophical question. But I'm going to leave it be, respectfully. I think it should be clear - in broad terms - what I'm talking about.
A seastead will only be full of "vice" and "sin" (or anything) if most people on the seastead prefer this. And if they do, what is the problem? If they don´t there will be no market for it and it will go away. If you happen to be the last of the puritans in a haven of sin, move elsewhere. Things that are universally accepted as evil (like kitten baseball) have a very small audience and kitten baseball seasteaders will have to consider if it´s really worth the risk of aggravating everyone else (in the world) to play their favorite game.
Finally, I think the best way to assail my arguments is probably with Eelco's rejoinder that you could just sail away from the sin if it didn't appeal to you (or close your window curtains or whatever - it's your private property after all). I would say his argument pretty much carries the day if by "seasteading" we're not talking about the forming of a relatively large (1000+ people, say) libertarian society. But my fear is that, in that society - the larger one that the Christian fundamentalists have already floated away from - you'd be surrounded by vice.
Redefining 'society' is in large part what this is all about for me, so that deserves discussion in some more detail.
The way i see this: Say you have a one-family seastead, which is your property in the same sense that a house is typically regarded. It is connected to a bunch of seasteads of people that you share a lot of values and ideals with, and feel like associating with, voluntarily. Probably there wil be some 'public' property within this community, where people get together to drink coffee and discuss their local politics. But this property will be equally 'public' to anyone not in this community as my house is: you dont get in without being let in.
Similarly, these small 'tribes' would probably feel like floating around near similar minded tribes, whom are perhaps not such close friends that you feel a need to be able to walk to their door, but whom you still would like to associate with on some level. On such a level you could also have as much public property as is mutually agreed upon, although i personally see the utility of public property rapidly decreasing around this point: i doubt there would be much. But id imagne forming a union that explicitly recognizes the property claims of its members, and a defensive pact. Rules for dealing with criminality between tribes, that sort of thing. Again, any common property this union would have would be entirely private to said union.
I imagine most commercial activity would happen in a more anarcho-capitalistic sphere. I could imagine setting up a coffee shop on tribal ground, but youd have a limited clientelle, so there wont be room for wallmarts there. Drug resorts seem unlikely too. In what legal sphere a business would like to set up shop is up to them: they could choose the stability and credibility a union or super-union might have to offer by subjecting themselves to their laws, or if it proves viable, go completely ancap and carve out their own rights.
The point being: society will be what you choose it to be. You might run into drug tourists in the wall-mart, but they probably will take some effort in making and enforcing rules that will make different kinds of people get along in their shop (probably to the detriment of the druggies). And this is the 21th century: you can always order online.
With regard to professional criminals i should say: their comparative advantage probably lies mostly in their ability to subvert the law, so they lose their strongest card by moving to a seastead.
Eelco's vision of a heirarchy of organized physical spaces matches with my vision as well. I don't want to live near a drug exporting platform - because it's going to get attacked by the US. I think most people will feel the same. So regardless of whether seasteads in general attract this sort of attention, I can assure you that the seasteads that most of us live on will not. Because we will band together with like-minded people, and those groups of like-minded people will band together, and one of the reasons we will be banding together (besides the pleasure of company) will be to enforce rules keeping out people who are unpleasant to be around, or dangerous to our existence.
In other words, your critique is fundamentally missing the way that mobility and the resulting consensuality of geographic relationships changes things. It's a hard thing to get one's head around, just like anarcho-capitalism, because we tend to think in more "fixed" terms. But if we design modular, mobile structures, the rules will be totally different. No one will have to live with anyone they don't want to - certainly not with anyone they hate or who threatens their sovereignty.
I liked this discussion enough to reply with a blog post.
In his blog post, (very courteously worded, I might add - thank you) Patri rightly points out that my basic assumption was wrong.
I had been thinking that an eventual aim was to have a long-term, floating, libertarian “city" of some size. (I am sure that there are posters to this forum who still speak in such terms.)
This is probably why the restraints that accompany permanent settlement factored into my thinking.
What Patri and Eelco (probably correctly) envision is more like a game of Tetris with the gravity turned off - many little communities that may or may not link together to form larger societies for a significant amount of time.
But I hope it will not be beating a dead horse to propose that, if ever there were a floating “settlement” of some 10,000+ people (though I’m flexible on that number), it will either
1.Not be truly libertarian (e.g., they may banish any large crack cocaine consortium that tries to link up and start operations);
2.Not hold together very long; OR
3.Be deemed a “rogue” city-state by the U.S. and others and be subject to the possibility of intervention by on-shore sovereigns.
Regarding 1. : A true libertarian society is one in which rules are unanimously consented to. You can have a truely libertarian floating city where drugs, abortions, and even extramarital sex are banned entirely. The basic tenet of human interaction becomes "no obligation nor interdiction": a "floating drughouse" couldn't forcefully link up, and neither could the city sink it or push it any further than its incorporated territory. There's nothing un-libertarian about that.
Now, I can't really argue about 2, except note that people make mostly rational choices about their daily lives, that labor division is a very rational reason to open up and tolerate the other, and that insisting on a fixed configuration of society is missing the point of dynamic geography: only a dynamic equilibrium sort of society-forming is required, not a static one. In other words, it matters little if Seastead1 and Seastead2 disjoin after a lively relationship of a decade if they are (statistically ?) bound to link up again elsewhere, or if the link is very likely to be replaced by another between other seasteads.
3. is a very real threat, but not, IMO, for the reasons you have given. The highest threat I think is that nation-states "insist" upon "providing their protection" to all those "poor stranded 'discivilised' float-people who don't even have a nationality anymore". I can't think of any government sending troops abroad just to bomb a "den of sin", however I can propose Waco and many many other examples of people trying to dismiss the state they live under and ending up getting shot. It's all a matter of sovereignty and not morality: any significant population without a form of national sovereignty (a nation-state sort of government) imposed onto them will attract the attention of such nation-states who will see it as an opportunity to increase the breadth of their sovereignty. That's what happened between Minerva and Tonga, IIRC. All nation-states also have a deep interest at suppressing individually-sovereign people, because they'd be a living advertisement in favor of such individual sovereignty. They can't have that happen if they can avoid it. Nationalism is still very alive and well, if it was reason enough to cause World Wars it'll be cause enough to squash our dreams regardless of the blood and lives and costs.
"Free society is great, but my fear is that, being the only island of freedom in a "sea" of governments that repress victimless vice, the seasteaders will inevitably find themselves in a society of perverts and unsavory characters."
A careful study of past and current societies points to the opposite: more vice arises when people have more power over their peers, not the opposite.
"Can somebody point out a flaw in this logic?"
Well, it seems you start your reasoning from a purely unsubstantiated assumption which is later reinforced by the reasoning. This is called a petitio principii sort of logical fallacy.