Quote from: RandyFolds on August 17, 2011, 10:53:02 PM

Quote from: J180 on August 17, 2011, 10:49:22 PM

Quote from: AyeYo on August 17, 2011, 10:17:56 PM

Quote from: J180 on August 17, 2011, 10:11:15 PM

Quote from: AyeYo on August 17, 2011, 09:59:48 PM

Quote from: J180 on August 17, 2011, 09:18:27 PM

Quote from: AyeYo on August 17, 2011, 08:25:58 PM

Quote from: ansible adams on August 17, 2011, 08:16:05 PM

Quote

The first seasteads will operate under the same maritime laws as existing ships... Although [cruise] companies have major operations within U.S. territorial waters, the U.S. does not interfere very much with their operations. This is due, in part, to the fact that cruise lines bring in jobs and revenue to the U.S. economy. If the U.S. were to try to interfere too much, the cruise lines would simply move their operations elsewhere. Similarly, seasteads will trade extensively with land-based businesses. The people who profit from those relationships will encourage their government not to interfere and drive away the seasteads business.

LOL That's classic. Because the economic bolstering of doing business with a community of a couple thousand people (at most) definitely outweighs the advantage of simply blockading food from the community and then seizing all the assets.

There's a lot of assets to gain from invading Switzerland too, it doesn't stop small countries from existing. What if the couple of thousand people pay taxes for defense, making the cost of invasion outweigh the assets?

Switzerland is a mountainous, land-locked country of almost 8 MILLION people that is plenty capable of defending itself and also capable of sustaining itself.

How you think you can compare that to an oil rig of maybe 1,000 people sitting in the middle of the ocean and relying on importation of... everything... is mind boggling. These people would be, in quite a literal sense, sitting ducks.

It was off the top of my head, there's many smaller countries, have a look at this list: http://geography.about.com/cs/countries/a/smallcountries.htm

My argument is that a large power, whether the US, France, Germany, etc, all the have the miliatary power to steal their assets. But that doesn't mean it's always politically feasible or worth the cost.

I don't have enough military expertise to argue for Switzerland specifically, so I'd rather do it for a small country where there's obviously not much chance of a successful defense. Consider one of the islands with roughly 10000 people on it.

I don't think you understand the irony of this situation. These people on this totally dependent platform want to be independent. This is a group of "rugged individuals" trying to get away from some evil system and social contracts, by starting a massively interdependent society that's going to have to run like clockwork for everyone to stay alive - it'll be FAR less free than any current society. Then to top it all off, they want to be free from all international laws and such... but international law is still the only thing preventing them from getting blown out of the water or having their platform taken over, because the attacking force would see international prosecution/blow-back.

It's the ultimate fail and ultimate irony. Individuals that want isolation banding together to form the most interdependent society created since the last biodome experiment, and the most externally dependent society ever to exist.

Do you know what these platforms really are? They're tax free zones for the very wealthy, nothing more.

It's a social experiment. Whether it's less free or not is a subjective judgement. Are property rights freedom or less freedom? Is removing welfare really freedom if someone starves because of it? I am not asking for a reply to that question, I'm pointing out how the difficulty of defining 'freedom' is a debate which had gone on for at least a century, and which is continuing over the internet as I write this. It's not something you can state as an fact. Plenty of people will see them as 'free' even if you don't. And some people will support them irrespective of whether their free or not, It's possible to be a libertarian in a purely utilitarian or materialistic sense.

I have not heard of the creators wanting to be free of international law. The article doesn't mention it. International law is a way of resolving defense and contracts, something that is quite important. But international law does not have a tax authority. It doesn't forbid the use of drugs or have a minimum wage, i.e. the things they want to avoid.

In fact the purpose of these islands seems to be a method to test new types of societies, libertarian ones in particular. It is not an attempt for people to exclude themselves from humanity, which your last sentence seems to imply.

When did 'international law' come to exist? What is it? Who wrote it?

Various voluntary agreements. I'm including things like private arbitration. My understanding is that (other then a few recent developments) most international trade contracts are not enforced by government courts, but work on a reputation system through private agencies.