Techno-libertarians are flocking to the Caribbean
Posted by andsoitis 1 day ago
Comments
Comment by Animats 1 day ago
Red Rock Island in San Francisco Bay [1] is apparently for sale again. It was supposedly sold in 2025, but that deal may have fallen through. Nobody built anything on it. Five acres of rock with cliffs. It's basically a mountain peak sticking out of water. It would take a lot of money and work to do something with it. At least as much as the Eagle's Nest [2], plus the costs of operating on an island. Which means there are about a dozen people in the Bay Area who could afford it.
[1] https://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/red-rock-island-isan-fr...
Comment by p1necone 1 day ago
Comment by Avicebron 1 day ago
It's the same energy of a kid running away from home to the tree house in the yard. All they want is to have all the benefits of society (imagine if they were barred from reentering their home country or traveling anywhere else because Pirate-Monaco-Dubai-island(tm) doesn't have real passports) and not be held responsible for their destructive behavior and impulses.
Comment by monerochan 1 day ago
The reason Pirate-Monaco-Dubai-Island isn't productive is because all of the productive land is being squatted by rent-seekers. There is some history that indicates that anarchistic sort of socities can be productive, for example kowloon walled city.
Comment by arcfour 1 day ago
Comment by monerochan 1 day ago
The most extreme form of libertarianism, minarchism, still proposes the existence of a government
Comment by m0llusk 1 day ago
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Comment by mothballed 1 day ago
http://www.queenoftheisles.com/HTML/Republic%20of%20Minerva....
Comment by vovavili 1 day ago
Comment by MichaelZuo 1 day ago
Because there clearly could be ulterior motives involved on both sides.
Comment by mothballed 1 day ago
Of course might make right ultimately trumps everything else, it is just interesting that you so often hear that if libertarians want to escape society they shouldn't use force to make others follow their ideals, they should just go off into the woods or their own island or some such. But then when they actually make their own island, actually "society" decides they will just take their shit under the auspices of a military force that will kill them if they defend themselves (although the only homicide on Minerva was one Tongan killing another Tongan).
Right now Fiji and Tonga are fighting over it and in reality neither one actually gives much a shit about the actual property rights to hold the island and as a fiji/tongan dispute suddenly the Navy is not so interested anymore. The Tongan claims were initiated after a conference with Polynesian countries and Australia where the goal was not to preserve some Tongan fishing but to smack down the libertarians using it -- Polynesian claims were never an actual reason for the invasion, only kicking the libertarians off the island.
Comment by amanaplanacanal 1 day ago
Comment by mothballed 1 day ago
(2) Yes they were militarily weaker than the entire coalition of australia + polynesia under the flag of Tonga for invasion, this applies to pretty much all sovereign islands in the Pacific, there is no particularly special lesson to be learned here about polynesian military might -- even the Tongans were ultimately proxying Australia and would find the same fate if Australia disliked their political model.
(3) The takeaway Michael Oliver did actually learn (dude was a legit genius) from this is if you find any success "democratic" countries that preach tenants of peaceful property rights actually are just frauds running under the cold veneer of "whoever can kill and steal, gets the land."
(4) The next "adventure" by the same foundation used lethal force to defend themselves (Vemerena), and IIRC it did survive a bit longer. (There were three major attempts by Phoenix foundation, one was making a new island island, another a civil war-ish breakoff nation in Vanuatu, and another an attempt at civil democratic secession in the Bahamas-- the one defended by armed actors was arguably got the closest to success)
(5) Thus ultimately we can see the property rights model of modern democratic countries are no better than the founding libertarian models, it's just violently taking whatever you can get away with whenever you can get away with it wrapped up under more flowery language than what the libertarians used and with generally higher tax rates. We see this continually whether it is libertarians or communists, the bigger democratic countries will just fuck their shit up as a mode of political alienation whether they have a "government" or not.
(6) Conclusion is duration of survival of small territories of Minerva, communists, et al has little to do with their philosophical model of property rights. Has more to do with forming allies (Cuba with Russia for instance) and/or military might. None of which is philosophically incompatible with the Minervan model of minarchism.
Comment by MichaelZuo 1 day ago
Comment by m348e912 1 day ago
This article is about a project called "Destiny" (https://destiny.com), an economic zone to be created in an undeveloped region of Nevis (of St. Kitts & Nevis)
The project goal is to become like Dubai with a 50m dollar investment, which I don't think is an admirable goal btw.
St Kitts & Nevis has had a history of being friendly to crypto and there was an initiative to make bitcoin cash legal tender, although don't think it ever actually happened.
https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bitcoin-c...
Comment by WaitWaitWha 1 day ago
Nevis (the baseball) was only boat accessible, and St. Kitts (the bat) is mostly hills of national park.
Vast majority of things must be flown or shipped in. I am hard pressed to see some "techno libertarians" doing techno without Amazon/Temu/Walmart/<insert fav vendor> in 24h drop ship.
Comment by monerochan 1 day ago
I think this is an unreasonable bar. All the fertile land in the world has been accounted for. There's no way to accomplish that type of sustainability without conquering existing land or some major technological breakthrough.
I think a fair bar would be economic sustainability. Plenty of countries depend on trade for food, but can make up for it in exports.
Comment by WaitWaitWha 23 hours ago
What is your definition of "techno libertarians"? asking because my understanding is that their primary work and concentration of work is not agriculture; there is no need for "fertile land". They can build stuff on a rock like Hong Kong.
I image this as a bunch of F/LOSS techno peeps living in condos or town homes with postage stamp grass to take care of. they would run off to the shore to do some water activities, go into the town and do some restaurants and some such.
Basically, this reads like an attempt to anchor digital nomads.
Comment by sampton 1 day ago
Comment by cosmicgadget 1 day ago
Comment by danaris 1 day ago
Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
To "become like Dubai" they'd need at least another 3 orders of magnitude on that investment.
For reference, the university I worked at until last year recently renovated the building I was working in. It was a fairly standard-sized academic building for a small liberal arts campus—three stories, with roughly 3-8 classrooms on a side. The renovation was the replacement of its HVAC system, and adding a fairly small "bump-out" addition on one of the short sides, of roughly one medium-large classroom's width.
It cost $35 million.
$50 million would build maybe a couple of decent-sized buildings, or a handful of smaller ones. No skyscrapers. Nothing fancy.
Certainly nothing like Dubai.
(According to Wikipedia, when it was built, the Burj Khalifa alone cost $1.5 billion. With a "b".)
Comment by mothballed 1 day ago
So you're effectively paying US taxes from the get go, before you even get to the point of anything at all going towards basic services.
Comment by a_paddy 1 day ago
Or
Bitcoin, cash legal.
Comment by CGMthrowaway 1 day ago
1) the Republic of Venice from 7th to 18th centuries, basically a merchant-run state controlled by a tight circle of wealthy traders. Its whole setup revolved around safeguarding trade and property and staying clear of the Catholic church and European kings.
2) the Republic of Ragusa from 14th to 19th centuries, in what’s now Dubrovnik, run by a small group of merchant families. Strong focus on open commerce and neutrality, made early advances in public health and infrastructure and had its own privately funded healthcare and insurance, all paid for by trade profits
Comment by wolvesechoes 1 day ago
Venice and Ragusa (and Genoa) were oligarchic states, had laws, and used force to enforce these laws. Civic liberties were suspended or heavily restricted.
Comment by schlap 1 day ago
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Comment by rjbwork 1 day ago
It's the convenience really, and the fact that nobody is in a hurry. Island time is real. You cannot be demanding. You can't really be upset at service. Most people are there to chill out, even if they are doing a job. Life is just slower.
This is good, IMO. But if you are a hedonically adapted/burned out western metropolis dweller, this culture shock could be distressing.
Comment by lacy_tinpot 1 day ago
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Comment by thatmf 1 day ago
These people could not be more comically despicable if they tried.
Also one of their "executives" is seemingly a teenager [0]
[0] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6866a3346a2532...
Comment by almostdeadguy 1 day ago
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Comment by vrganj 1 day ago
Theres a long history of these things being poorly thought out ideological projects by people with too much money and not enough understanding of the real world.
Curious to see the hilarous ways this new wave will fail in.
Comment by ceejayoz 1 day ago
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Comment by dabluecaboose 1 day ago
Comment by ceejayoz 1 day ago
Bears were hardly the only problem.
"Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute."
"And meanwhile, the town that would ordinarily want to address these things, say with a robust police force, instead found that it was hamstrung. So the town only had one full-time police officer, a single police chief, and he had to stand up at town meeting and tell people that he couldn’t put his cruiser on the road for a period of weeks because he didn’t have money to repair it and make it a safe vehicle."
Comment by dabluecaboose 1 day ago
Comment by mothballed 1 day ago
Comment by Terr_ 1 day ago
Did you sincerely believe that the parent poster was suggesting bear-overrun as a probable outcome?
> but don't let that stop you from making le heckin' reddit quips
If you understood the ironic subtext, then your response is a example of the same trends you're complaining about. Arguably worse.
Comment by dabluecaboose 1 day ago
Gee, maybe they should have written a comment explaining their point of view that we could then discuss, instead of a quippy, dismissive one-liner! Then, we could be discussing the likely pitfalls of this endeavor instead of circlejerking over a Vox piece.
> If you understood correctly, then your response is an example of the same thing you're complaining about.
You reap what you sow.
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