Nicked from twoeleven: A tale of two (proposed) cities

[james_davis_nicoll]

I can see no way in which this could go horribly wrong. Oh, wait

Mr Friedman is an outspoken critic of democracy. It is “ill-suited for a libertarian state”, he wrote in an essay in 2009—because it is “rigged against libertarians” (they would always lose) and inefficient. Rather than giving its citizens a voice, he argues, they should be free to exit; cities should compete for them by offering the best services.

Mr. Friedman in this this case would be Patri Friedman, "the grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and economist Rose Friedman and son of economist and physicist David D. Friedman."

The Hondurans forgot to spray for libertarians, didn't they?

Comments

[zeborah]

"they should be free to exit" only works if exiting is in fact free (both of constraint and of cost). Otherwise cities needn't compete for citizens, only rig their lives so they can't afford to move.

(See also: various privileged folk who seem to think that anyone living in Christchurch has only themselves to blame for suffering from ongoing aftershocks. This is wrong in so very many ways, but the assumption that everyone has the means to uproot themselves and their family and get a house and job in another city is surely chief among them.)

[(Anonymous)]

Patri is a friendly acquaintance, and a smart guy. Which is not to say that I agree with him politically. I think Seasteading is pretty silly, but the link is more scary than funny.

[wild_irises]

That anonymous comment was me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

Exactly how is a non-democratic libertarian state governed?

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You'd rent the services of one of several competing private states, of course!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Rule by the most ideologically pure, of course. Perhaps a group, if it's too much for one person - organised like a business (as is right and proper), but called something else to make it clear that it runs the State - maybe a "Party" or something. And instead of "CEO" you could have a "Chairman". And Party members would have a say in the decisions of the running of the state, possibly as members of various committees, and non-Party members would not.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

It's not. That's why it's called anarcho-capitalism.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Same range of mechanisms as a non-democratic non-libertarian state. Hoppe was a libertarian monarchist.

But David and I assume Patri are anarcho-capitalists; ideally they'd have no state as such. Law would be via "polycentric legal systems" or "private protection agencies".

[avram]

Sadly, the Honduran government insists that the citizens of these cities retain some bare minimum of civil rights. Thus, the great libertarian project is doomed.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Not free enough.

(I need a libertarian version of pedobear to use as an icon when I say that kind of thing.)

[izeinwinter.livejournal.com]

.... Arrghhhrahraahaa. The number of states which put any barriers whatsoever in place to prevent emigration is very, very small. This is surprisingly unhelpful as a guarantee of liberty, because nearly the world entire does have immigration controls. I hate the very existance of said controls, but I do recognize this makes me a fringe lunatic as far as that debate goes, and you cannot ignore their existance when making political proposals.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

See, that's probably the definition of a state that's "sufficiently libertarian": one that doesn't need immigration controls.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Ah, and here I thought I was the only person whose sole-issue-libertarianism was immigration. Why should the tax, drugs, and gun-libertarians get all the fun?

(Well, I suppose I'd want to stop at the border people currently wanted by other countries we have extradition treaties with. And I can accept medical quarantines on people/goods/agriculture/animals. But as a guiding principle, the idea that any nation's in danger of being filled up by the pesky insufficiently white? I don't buy it and I want to return the whole notion.)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Friedman's Ghost is never gonna leave the banquet, is it?

*much gnashing of teeth and muttered invective follows...*

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

In addition to the seasteading and the Xtreme Libertarianism, he is also one of those people who believes in living forever by starving yourself until the Singularity arrives. So you have to imagine all of this coming out of the mouth of someone who looks like the Crypt Keeper with sideburns.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

If we're expecting to upload into immortality Real Soon Now, why not just keep munching Big Macs until we trade in our flesh for Reality 2.0? The whole point is to view your current body as a starter home anyhow.

Personally, I don't expect it all that soon, but I prefer to be well fed while I wait.

[actsofminortreason.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

So, what, is this supposed to be a beta version of the grand libertarian seastead Friedman wants to build? I mean, can you think of anything more likely to succeed than an artificial island out in the ocean, built and settled by libertarians who think building codes represent big government?

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Well that's no problem. See, when it suffers the inevitable disaster, they can just move to the one built by someone offering better services. Except, of course, of the minor issue of life jackets not having been required in the first one. Libertarian paradise, after all.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

The original and now sadly defunct Seasteading page Friedman had up was especially hilarious. He started talking about it in 2001, and had a to-do list. First item on the list: "learn about sailing."

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Why is government regulation the only conceivable way to achieve tolerable levels of safety in design/building? Especially since many of the important decisions there have been carefully shunted to non-governmental organizations to avoid politicizing them?

[connactic.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of problems like this with seasteading that could (perhaps) be overcome, if the basic idea made any sort of economic sense, which it doesn't.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

This looks like the sort of plan that an innovative anti-libertarian skeptic could use to solve our DOOMing organ bank and medical school skeleton deficit.

"Hello Patri, in which judicial system would you like the laws against involuntary organ harvesting enforced?"

[clack clack]

"What's that, you don't have a preference?"

[clack clack]

"Well, that's mighty ronpaul of you. These are remarkably smooth gloves, by the way. Thank you for using so much lotion."

Et cetera.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

You're laughing, but IIRC he and his then-wife had their child with a gestational surrogate in India because fewer nanny-state laws designed to protect the surrogate's health and rights thwart the Invisible Hand.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

So wait, has Friedman given up on the Seasteading thing entirely?

Of course, it is probably marginally easier to learn Spanish than to learn sailing...

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

My guess: He discovered that every shipbuilding port had a bunch of intrusive worker-safety laws and all that nonsense, which would contaminate the perfection of Seastead right as it was being constructed. So the new Step 1 is to make a new shipbuilding port without said laws.

Patri Friedman does at least get a few points for honesty

[(Anonymous)]

My favorite Patri Friedman quote (on his previous utopian venture) follows. He's surprisingly direct in his contempt for his fellow utopians:

"Like I said earlier, I want to live in the seastead city that takes everyone. But I want to live in a community in that city that is very selective in who it accepts. Perhaps simply by being an expensive neighborhood that only the rich can afford, perhaps by other methods."

http://patrissimo.livejournal.com/1225451.html?thread=11253227#t11253227

Re: Patri Friedman does at least get a few points for honesty

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's an embarrassment of riches.

Do you agree that if we had a democracy of libertarians with IQs over 130, and we opened immigration to anyone (even limited numbers of anyone), the immigrants would quickly outbreed the geniuses, and the whole place would become a welfare state?

No, I don't agree with that, because it's *based on a science fiction story from 1951*, not on empirical fact. Your social views are based on sixty-year-old science fiction, and therefore they are *stupid*; and therefore *you* are *stupid*, no matter how well you do on the Stanford-Binet (on which I almost assuredly can beat you, yeah even if your score is that high. worship me, peon).

[florbigoo.livejournal.com]

"איך בין קוקן פֿאַר דעם " דירעקטאָר "משפּחה, פון קזאַרטאָריסק. האב איר געזען זיי?"
"ניין לייענען דעם דענקמאָל שטיין."
"פארוואס עס?"
אַטש, זיי קען נישט באַקומען אויס - ווייַל זייער אמעריקאנער קאַזאַנז וואָלט ניט געבן זיי אַ אַפאַדייוואַט! (ווי רייַך זיי האבן!

What a piece of shit.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Translation?