Despite my deep respect for Ron Paul and others who have tried to reform the system from within, I have now become deeply disillusioned with thinking that the US government will ever be knocked down even a peg. However this creates a dilemma for me because I do not see how a free society can move forward any other way. I'm completely at a loss of imagination regarding this.
What could I be doing to make Libertopia a reality?
I thought that you weren't a libertarian.
I was raised Social Democrat and identified with that for the majority of my life. I started to re-consider when I heard Ron Paul and came here. I liked the message of Libertarianism but questioned it's chance of success and wasn't sure whether to actually identify as a Libertarian because of it. But lately I realized I hate the idea of achieving my goals through political power anyway. I want to protect animals and the environment, see everyone be able to afford healthcare, housing,etc. like I did when I was a Social Democrat, but I reconciled it with this belief of Voluntaryism. It's a new thing for myself and I want to see where it takes me.
Teach others. That's all you can do.
I think more often than not revolutions result in less freedom, so it is important that, in the event of a revolution, the prevailing thought amongst the populace is one of more liberty, not less.
TheFinest:What Should Non-Voting AnCaps Be Doing to Achieve Their Goals?
That depends on what exactly their "goals" are. If you mean:
there is actually a stickied thread on this...
Thanks for the link.
I guess at this point I guess I would also like to know what's the most viable form Libertopia is going to in the near future.
Is it going to be in the form of seasteading, homesteading, free state project, buying a bunch of cheap land somewhere in Asia or Africa and forming a new nation out of it (Libertarian Zionism), or actually changing the whole of the US into becoming a Libertarian country (veeeeeeeeeeeeery unlikely)?
This is the part that bugs me the most.
I share your disillusionment with the current system. There's no way education and politicking from within is going to change anything. The amount of momentum that exists, and the political capital needed just to make any small change, make positive change ridiculously improbable.
Foot-voting is probably the best thing we can do. What we sorely lack is an actual libertarian region to concentrate in.
I think seasteading is the answer, and am planning to begin building permanent ocean-dwellings in the near future off the California coast in international waters. Are you willing to move to such a venture?
I'd like to get a libertarian society on the sea up and running in time for the inevitable US financial crash, which will drive the masses to us.
While I would definitely consider seasteading, why not just overun a low populated country like Greenland (only 50,000 at the moment) and then declare independence?
No need to reinvent the wheel. I don't like FSP. I have no strong feelings about Seasteading except that I think - at this point in time - it is a monumentally bad business idea. A halfway point between these two may be to figure out how to foster the development of Venetian havens around the world. I think that Sovereign Man, EPJ, Casey Research and the like are already doing this through purely educational means. They are identifying the "cracks in the Matrix" and pointing people towards these cracks. The Elites have been in a mad rush to push through their final agenda of a global, cashless society with a world bank funded through a global tax and an unlimited power to inflate. I think their agenda is eventually going to start faltering and we will again see the cracks in the Matrix start to widen.
Clayton -
Who says you have to do anything? If the world is going to hell and as Mises says socialism always fails then why not watch it fail? You can watch them scurry about trying to save something that is doomed to fail and have a laugh.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
-snipped venting-
TheFinest:While I would definitely consider seasteading, why not just overun a low populated country like Greenland (only 50,000 at the moment) and then declare independence?
Overrun? As in use coercion to force the existing 50k population to live as we would? That's counter to the NAP. Beyond that it's probably much harder to actually pull off than you'd imagine. In no time it would be cast as Nato vs the anarchist hordes and not only do you not get a country to run, you've furthered the statist agenda by becoming the anarchist boogieman and made things that much harder for change.
Andrew Cain:Who says you have to do anything? If the world is going to hell and as Mises says socialism always fails then why not watch it fail? You can watch them scurry about trying to save something that is doomed to fail and have a laugh.
Because political crises create political will and thereby lead directly to more statism. Therefore, actually being around for the destruction of a country is a dangerous, messy affair that will cost everyone.
Better to foot-vote out of a state on the verge of failure and insulate yourself, and provide a way out for others.
Furthermore, the existence of a libertarian haven can actually hasten the destruction of these statist regimes, because for instance the ability of business to compete world-wide is in part dependent on the one country with the lowest business taxes (though it is one factor among many). Create a zero-taxation haven and you put immediate and direct pressure on the entire world to de-tax and de-regulate.
Isn't that what we want? What could be more awesome than knowing that simply by existing you're sticking the knife and twisting it in the ribs of every statist economy worldwide. In the same way that the US buried the Soviet Union economically, a libertarian nation should be able to bury the US, especially nowadays with how calcified the US has become.
"Because political crises create political will and thereby lead directly to more statism. Therefore, actually being around for the destruction of a country is a dangerous, messy affair that will cost everyone.Better to foot-vote out of a state on the verge of failure and insulate yourself, and provide a way out for others.
Isn't that what we want? What could be more awesome than knowing that simply by existing you're sticking the knife and twisting it in the ribs of every statist economy worldwide. In the same way that the US buried the Soviet Union economically, a libertarian nation should be able to bury the US, especially nowadays with how calcified the US has become."
It's nice to see you think that. I think it is naive but nice. Do you think that the US or the UN would not actively work against such a country?
Andrew Cain:It's nice to see you think that. I think it is naive but nice. Do you think that the US or the UN would not actively work against such a country?
Sure, sure, they could. But that's where strategy and planning comes in :) We have one major advantage: they don't even imagine we're coming, that is they cannot fathom even the idea that seasteading can become a major factor in the future. For the experts, it's not even on the radar, but I plan to put it there.
For the US, it would be an alarming development for a new nation to essentially sprout along its coast. Absolutely. It would be virtually intolerable. They would have to project force into there immediately, gain some kind of influence somehow. They'd undoubtedly send undercover infiltrators almost immediately. But we have nothing to hide, it's all up and up. I plan to actually convert such people simply by them viewing and living in that region.
But let me tell you my real plan and why I think they will not only allow it but embrace it, and why this subversive idea may end up one they'd welcome, to their own ultimate long-term detriment.
For one thing, it will be started by people with American citizenship, meaning they won't perceive it immediately as a threat. Probably for the first many years this will be the case. And even though I will declare the intention to forge a new nation up-front, they won't take it seriously. But they'll help spread the news via media and the like.
Secondly, we may be able to replace the entire world's fuel importation problem with something like mass-grown kelp farming on the open ocean. If this plans proves viable, they will certainly embrace it. They'd be trading a much greater problem, energy independence away from the middle-east, for the much smaller concern of seasteading on their shores.
That should buy us enough time to attract many more people to live there, to build infrastructure, and altogether achieve critical mass.
I'm under no illusion that they could crush this plan like a bug if they so wanted. What's needed, ultimately, is luck :) And I plan to roll the dice.
The same was true of the US back when it was a fledgling republic, and it was really Napolean who kept European attention off the US. I will need a similar stroke of luck for this plan to be pulled off.
But if it all comes together, then by god, we will have a libertarian republic at last and all bets are off. Everything changes.
And what I'm banking on is that the financial lunacy of the US federal government will ultimately keep their attention off me. Another financial crash would be delivious for a libertarian society built on a crypto-currency. Have you heard about the recent bitcoin price rise? Apparently people in europe, with their failing economies, are flocking from the Euro into bitcoin. Let's pretend we bitcoin supporters didn't predict that :P
Secondly there's the absolute idiocy of the socialization of health-care. As if people didn't already have a reason to foot-vote because of massive land and housing costs and taxation. There are likely many doctors that would love to move off-shore and restore the original market-based doctor/patient relationship. Especially the high-end doctors that would otherwise see their wages cut by the gov.
And if things really do get too hot, there's always the ability to simply float away from the coast and roam the Pacific as desired. How many ideas and notions and good things have been spread worldwide by persecution which drove its adherents out of a central spot. It was just as true of Christianity in the ancient world as it was true of jazz in the modern, which was driven out of New Orleans by the Navy.
I think a better idea would be just buying a piece of land from a developing and sparsely populated country preferrably along the shore, compensating its original inhabitants in full, and then setting up charter cities.
From there you can begin experimenting in full with Seasteads if you so wish. I would actually only use one to escape emergency situations in countries.