Bitcoin Forum

For some reason people are really worried about how the government is going to continue to tax them after bitcoin takes over:

* http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13622.0
* http://owni.eu/2011/05/30/the-information-policy-case-for-flat-tax-and-basic-income/
* http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/19/the-information-policy-case-for-flat-tax-and-basic-income/

However, this is not our problem. I propose another solution. Now is the time for private cities. We will design these cities on the internet. In these cities, every thing is free market, including the cities themselves. You live in which city you decide is best for you.

Bitcoin is a free market solution to the problem of centralized control. Why in the world should we be trying to solve government's problem of how best to coerce us into paying for their wars? Instead, let's solve the problem of taxes the bitcoin way: with a free market. You decide which city you live in. Some will charge higher fees than others. If you don't want to pay for wars, then don't live in cities that charge you for them.

I'm with you astro, but that sounds crazy expensive. How we gonna get the money, Kickstarter?

It would probably be very expensive to design and construct an entire city from scratch. However, there is another option. We could wait for some government to collapse, and then take over one of their cities. The way we could do this is as follows. We find an unstable city, and then establish ourselves in one of their neighborhoods, or create a new neighborhood nearby. We will establish services and try to be as independent as possible. When the government collapses, chaos will reign everywhere except in our neighborhood. If we are successful, we would be able to expand our neighborhood until we encompass the entire city.

Of course, the point is not to coerce people or use violence in any way. We would take over the city because we were better, not because we were more manipulative.

There are plenty of hollowed out cities, abandoned and waiting for fresh life.
Make a call to flight of every able bodied, worth while, individual to flash mob one of them and start
making it live...

most people will end up in the city with most nukes paying highest taxes and taking over everyone else until one city = the world, then we repeat this all over again, and continue until we find some aliens to fight them so they pay taxes to us and not the other way around.

'Lets all go to Detroit'?

...



You know, that actually sounds like a good idea. We'd need to get the entire social structure set up beforehand, though, and just put it into place once we get there. Basically, like Astro said, design the city online, and once we have enough people to constitute a 'skeleton crew' of a city, we start moving.

Awww... can't we do the airship instead?

As long as you could periodically connect to the internet, why not :)

That is the main question here. Also, I'd look out for trying this anywhere that would be threatened by a potential 'new sovereign state' in their midst. Even if you don't mean it to be, it could be taken as such.

I do like the mental exercise though. Really comes down to where can you hit the net (without satellite) and still be out of range of greedy sovereigns?

Please, by all means go ahead and do that. Someone must have failed their junior sociology class...

I absolutely love the idea of city states.

City-unState? City-Non-State?

It's not a City-State, that much I know. But yes, Defense would pretty much have to be priority #1.

It's already been done (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alphaville,_S%C3%A3o_Paulo).  City is owned by a company, Alphaville Urbanismo, and you pay them for all the utilities and services and so forth.  You don't get to opt out of certain ones though IIRC, you just pay or don't live there.  I heard about it on bitcoin-otc.  One of the BTC day traders on otc either lives near by or used to work for the company or something like that.

Can I move there and start up my own say... Trash Company, compete with the existing company?

If not, That's not what we're talking about.

This is already being done, at least to the extent that it can be done (in the US): http://freestateproject.org/

Also keep in mind that it isn't exactly easy to start a new society completely from scratch, especially with unbalanced demographics.

I'm a member but not yet a mover. I wonder if we could get a group of Porcs together to start a new city?

Yeah, it's called Detroit, MI  ;D

So, you pay tax to live there? But for the rest it's free ;)

Yeah, that's not what is being discussed here.  There is a name for what you guys are looking for.  It's a phyle.

In America, some states need to start seceding from the Union. Then smaller parts of these states could begin creating these communities which would grow rapidly. In fact, there are some communities already like this in many states in the more remote regions. They are self-sufficient, with a variety of skilled workers and do-it-yourselfers.

I have a feeling that the US Federal Government would send in troops though. Especially in states where there are a lot of nuclear missiles, like Montana.

you mean like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd-0keS6uDI

I worry about large waves and storms lol but I don't know how bad seasteading would be, tbh.

If you are looking for escaping taxes, what you need is a new country, not a city. No matter were you setup your city, the country's government will pronto step in and claim it's fair share. They will do it democratically too, by convincing people in other cities that your city is rich simply because you are exploiting everybody else, and so you must pay for it.

The libertarian state was attempted and failed, google for Minerva Republic. It failed because it's an oxymoron, the free market can only survive on a solid bed of statehood that's defended from outside attacks by altruistic individuals, i.e. an army willing to die for it's country. Otherwise it's just a cluster of self interested individuals that can be easily dispersed by a bunch of angry pacific islanders armed with sticks and rocks.

I think the idea is more of an intellectual idea. The sea stead would not have permanent residents (for the most part).

Alphaville are just big and rich condos, they have no political independence.

I think that you might actually be able to build a state within a state, at the moment setting up your own state results in other states attacking you.

You set up inside a state and your protected from outside threats (depending which state), and only have to worry about internal ones, i.e. the state itself cracking down on you.

 ;D

How about supporting The Free State Initiative (http://freestateinitiative.org), it aims at doing pretty much what you ask, create a new state (in the size of a giant city) with everything free market. The people behind have stated that it has a fair chance of achieving its goals within few years.

I know that the Englands havent tried to conquer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand) because they did not want bear the risk of dead soldiers and negative press

I personally find it very closed-minded when people go "you must have failed a class" when someone presents an unusual idea. If every idea was shot down and abandoned like that, because "school said it's not possible", we would probably not be anywhere near the level of technological advancement we are at now.
To pull out the old analogy, flat earth vs. round earth.

You'll have to think freely, without boundaries set by previous events or knowledge, to find truly revolutionary concepts.

I agree, nonetheless you have to be a total n00b to history and to life itself to come out with this sort of libertard nonsense.

So what you are saying is that we should entertain flat-earthists as possible visionaries on the sole basis they go against the current, despite lacking basic knowledge of astronomy, physics or history ?

School is good. It's sometimes wrong. If you want to find the wrong parts, it helps to know them. If you want to convince other people, you'd better have expert knowledge of the status-quo of the field. Otherwise you are just a quack who skipped some classes.

Who cares about schools and classes. Ideas stand on their own regardless of what classes someone took. Orelse you got yourself an argument from authoriteee

Except when they don't, revealing lack of basic literacy in the field. Literacy that can be obtained freely in the age of Wikipedia and pirated ebooks, no actual school required (yay, no homework!).

No, I am saying you should not assume that something you learned in school is correct, and the ultimate and absolute truth.

Zeitgeist movement is thinking of developing self-sufficient communities. Their primary objective is figure out a way to be energy independent. They believe that our technologies advanced to the level that most human labor can be replaced with technology, etc. etc etc...

Yep, I failed sociology. I also failed economics, hence my belief in bitcoin.

Check out this podcast for discussion on this topic: http://agoristradio.com/?p=95

The guest points out that you could easily hire military vets to defend the city states, militia-style. Give them actual benefits instead of fucking them over like the USG.

This. This is exactly what we're talking about. Also, thanks for the new podcast.

Edit: Having now listened to the guy's suggestions, they're not exactly what we're talking about, but it's closer than Rapture.

Yeah he wants teepees which seems silly to me but the concept's the same. For cheap housing I'd personally prefer taking cargo containers and figuring out how to slap them together in a modular fashion (e.g. plumbing, networking, power.)

We can't get to the point of having private cities while the USG holds all the guns. My opinion is that our only recourse is to wake everybody up and get them to vote for actual leaders who will allow free market initiatives like that. We're on a knife edge, on one hand we have a technological singularity approaching, on the other hand, Bitcoiners and agorists will be deemed domestic terrorists and tossed into FEMA camps. I think the tipping point is internet legislation, like the PROTECT IP (http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show) act. We've got at most a couple years to hand out enough red pills.

Here's an outline (http://paste.pocoo.org/show/408485/) of my plan to do this. Start idling in ##subverse on freenode if you're interested in helping.

Interesting. I take it, then that you've read some Sam Konkin?