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Hi, I am Edan Yago. I have been invited to speak at Bitcoin 2013 about a new autonomous region that is going to come into existence by the end of this year. It is the result of many years of dedicated work coming to fruition.
 
The region’s laws are specifically being designed to have low regulatory barriers and provide residents with the world’s highest degree of freedoms. Freedom, and the experimentation it allows, create prosperity – and our mandate is to create a zone for such prosperity. We have decided to introduce this zone at Bitcoin 2013 because we think it will be of particular interest to you: It will be the first political zone in the world to officially recognize cryptocurrencies.

I am traveling down to the conference today, so I may not be able to be responsive here. But I am interested to hear what questions you have so that I can try and answer them during the talk.

I am excited to finally be able to talk about this and am looking forward to seeing you all.

What land are you on?

All the land taken in history is either by buying the land, through force or political systems.

Wars are fought over land, I find it hard to believe you have acquired sovereign territory.

If you do not have sovereign territory then your law is ultimately dictated by the people that do have authority over the land.

The only way you have acquired sovereign territory for free with no force is probably the land being questionable, such as a offshore platform or a small island off the coast of the north pole....

EDIT: Sorry if I sound negative its just an extraordinary claim that you have created essentially a new country.

And as per tradition, unknown noob poster makes vague claims. Herpderp and gl to you.

Obviously this is the most important and interesting question. In order to make sure that we do not go through what happened in Honduras again, both we and the host country are obligated not to reveal the location until all legislative and contractual elements are finalized.


MPOE, we have worked very are to cross all our Ts on this one. I was invited to speak at the conference because we are more than a fly-by-night claim. 

He's a seasteader. That's why he's talking about zones and regions instead of land. Have fun fighting off pirates.

While it might be a lovely thing, its needs a little more meat on the bones to be taken seriously.

Fighting pirates?!  With the prospects of life in modern society, this is probably one of the most fun I can think of.

I know, right?  :D

If this is actually true then I will await the announcement, to be honest I have nothing to add because its unprecedented. I could think of questions but if you gained actual territory that accepted cryptocurrencies then it could change the world.

I think you'll understand why I will not bother with questions until some announcement is made. This is high level stuff that would be discussed at the highest levels of power.

Its highly likely your trolling, I would love to be proven wrong on this one though!

BTW, by actual territory I mean real land that is at least larger than several KM squared. Having your country on a platform or a ship is not really going to send vibrations through the political and economic world and would further make Bitcoin seem like some wacko currency.

Unfortunately the pirates would be modern too, with AK-47's and perhaps some grenades. :)

France is unregulated too.
You can do whatever you want as long as you don't get caught :-)

Dude, I've played video games all my life. That's nothing I can't handle.

I would pay to see greyhawk having some intense firefight with some pirates! That would define entertainment. :)

Oh god, I need to go shopping. I need a bandana and an 80s leather jacket.

Wait. Do they do clothing on your oil platform, OP? Like seaweed bandanas and whaleskin jackets?

Haha, gold!  ;)

No, dummy, gold is horrible for armor purposes. Bullets go right through that crap.

Use Bitcoins instead, they are proven to stop bullets!*











*Once you print them onto Kevlar...

Just find a part of the world that has real problems, and they won't care what you do with your electronic funny money. I'm thinking Somalia, Kenya (inspired by Larry Page talk), or Pakistan. Another possibility that people have tried is to cozy up with an autocrat. Problem there is you have to always be the highest bidder. So I would tend to favor lawless as opposed to laws administered by corruptible regime.

Dear Edan, could you please explain what "recognizing crypto-currencies" means in the context of an "unregulated" country.
Why would you even need to recognize crypto-currencies in any way if you're keeping the book of law as thin as possible ?
Hardly makes sense to me. But I'm genuinely interested in the answer.

An unregulated country would need two basic laws "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you", and "mind your own fucking business". Other than that I don't really see any other things that could add value.

Guess we'll see what comes out of the conference, but feel free to answer here nonetheless :-)

I'd rather fight pirates than bureaucrats. And yes, I _have_ thought this through.

And while modern pirates come equipped with AK47's, modern bureaucrats come equipped with M4's. And flash bangs. APC's. C4. And more.

No, see, what we'll have to do is do an A-Team and clad the whole thing in steel plating,

Actually if we get rid of the wholes in the roof we might catapult launch some F14s from there too.

No worries, I've flown those too and I only crash land about 2 out of 3 times.

http://blueseed.co/wp-content/uploads/Blueseed-Terraces-1-+-features.jpg

I didn't think SeaSteading was far enough along to come into existence by the end of this year. Perhaps that points to a terrestrial "free enterprise zone" agreement with an existing nation?

not sure when blueseed is going to launch, but seems like a damn good fit as well.

What are the barriers to entry for someone interested in moving?

Is this more of that sealand abandoned oil rig selling prank passports and assorted trinkets in a doomed quest for relevancy?


They have got to be married. No unattached herps allowed.

Or was that swapping not steading....

Looking at the conference schedule I think it's going to be the Blueseed ship.

Session 1: "Here's our Bitcoin startups ship full of Bitcoin startups!"
Session 2: "Oh, and we're our own nation. Bitcoin!"

Seriously, after a little research I found out where this place is without a doubt:

---------------
San Lorenzo is a tiny, rocky island nation located in the Caribbean Sea, positioned in the relative vicinity of Puerto Rico. San Lorenzo has only one city, its seaside capital of Bolivar. The country's form of government is a dictatorship, under the rule of ailing president "Papa" Monzano, who is a staunch ally of the United States and a fierce opponent of communism. No legislature exists. The infrastructure of San Lorenzo is described as being dilapidated, consisting of worn buildings, dirt roads, an impoverished populace, and having only one automobile taxi running in the entire country.

The language of San Lorenzo is a fictitious English-based creole language that is referred to as "the San Lorenzan dialect." The San Lorenzan national anthem is based on the tune of Home on the Range. Its flag consists of a U.S. Marine Corps corporal's stripes on a blue field (presumably the flag was updated, since in the 1920s Marine Corps rank insignia did not include crossed rifles). Its currency is named corporals, at a rate of two corporals for every United States dollar; both the flag and the monetary unit are named after U.S. Marine Corporal Earl McCabe, who deserted his company while stationed at Port-au-Prince during the American occupation in 1922, and in transit to Miami, was shipwrecked on San Lorenzo. McCabe, along with accomplice Lionel Boyd Johnson from Tobago, would together throw out the island's governing sugar company, and after a period of anarchy, proclaimed a republic.

San Lorenzo also has its own native religion, Bokononism, a religion based on enjoying life through its untruths. Bokononism, founded by McCabe's accomplice Boyd Johnson (pronounced "Bokonon" in San Lorenzan dialect), however, is outlawed - an idea Bokonon himself conceived for the purpose of spreading the religion and making the residents of the island happier. Bokononists are liable to be punished by being impaled on a hook, but Bokononism privately remains the dominant religion of nearly everyone on the island, including the leaders who outlaw it.

maybe that dude is an alien   :o

I hear they've got a great air force too.

♫ I never thought I'd be on a boat...   :D

It's a big blue watery road

Either way, unattached females always welcome. ;)

Stay away from the ice nine.

My suspicion is OP has partnered up with Gingrich to start a colony on the moon.

https://i.imgur.com/Zj8Te2Q.png

Quoting our esteemed leader:


Translated in mook language:


They really should feature that BlueVomit thing on Buttcoin Magazine, it's so incredibly retarded it lays comedy gold eggs. Imagine, taking a platoon of CRT tanned dorks to the high seas. Who, Cartman?


Error?

Is it not better to try and  get bitcoin accepted in our own local areas instead of going off and finding landing and starting from scratch?

Honduras is still trying to get this stuff to go through with a willing president and willing Congress and they are still having trouble with the bleeding hearts that do not want unbridled freedom in their country. Even after promising that 80% of the jobs would go to locals.

There is no country in this world that is friendly enough to freedom to get this done in a year.

Honduras had the law all set, everything ready to go but the lawyers and liberals fought it all the way to their Supreme Court and got it overturned. There was a lot of money behind it too.

Just being in talks with someone high up in government is going to do you no good unless that person is a dictator, which means he can let you build your city and he can also take it away.

Details?

I'm thinking a dolphin-head hoody, that would rock ^_~

A good long read.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/13/the-blank-slate-state

Basically the Honduran president's chief of staff is a libertarian with dreams of free cities. He was able to talk the president into giving it a trial run. After some comprimises getting the law passed through their congress it was set to go. But then it was fought at the Supreme Court level and overturned. It was overturned mainly for political reasons dealing with backlash against some corrupt politician.

Now they are back at it drafting a new law that would fit within their Constitution and be able to face the scrutiny of the Supreme Court.

More than likely, as things tend to go, the better the idea the more special interests will want to get involved to get their cut thus diluting it to the point where when it finally makes it through it is a bastardization of the original idea and will fail for those very reasons.

I think we can build a new type of marine force with this. Remember the vomit scene in "Stand by me"? We could call it the marine hurler. Imagine disabling a ship by pure vomiticity.

Not really.  It's better to try every approach.  Throw enough shit on the wall and some of it'll stick...

And then your house stinks of shit?

"The region’s laws are specifically being designed to have low regulatory barriers and provide residents with the world’s highest degree of freedoms."

Instead of trying to impose "the right laws" from the top down why not be the first society to try poly-centric market based law.

A political zone that accepts bitcoin?  SO WERE BEING TAXED ALREADY??

Actually I think the idea is more along the lines of "Have them on the ship. If done coding they can start sewing Nike shoes and balls."

It's sheer genius, for one white teenage "founders" are cheaper than azn teenage girls. For the other sausage fest so no unwanted pregnancies etc. Economically the idea wins.

Tell that to the crews of the hundreds of ships that were hijacked by Somalian pirates.

I endorse this approach, and have been studying and building a system I hope to implement on a seastead in the near future. Can't wait. It's such an improvement. Individualism applied to law, agreement-based law and individual sovereignty. It's never been tried and few have even theorized about it in more than general terms.

These same ships are prevented from carrying the kinds of defensive arms that would make a couple Somalis with a skiff and some AK's turn tail and run.

Let civilian ships install some anti-boat armaments, like the privateers of old, and you'd largely end your piracy problem.

But if they are claiming that they have legal power over the ship as if it was a independent territory they can allow themselves arms....

Unless the international community decides that to be a act of war or something.

This is interesting topic. So does this mean you will not be revealing the location at the conference?

You mean the ships passing by...Somalia?

Should people not walk down sidewalks because walking down the sidewalk in the wrong neighborhood will get you shot?

Can this please be Catalonia?

I have some friends that would assist. Agreed about being this being a seasteader. I will be listening no matter how outlandish. If such a speaker is at the conference, I hope someone posts a video.

Sealand?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Sealandafterfire2.JPG/800px-Sealandafterfire2.JPG

Oh it's been tried all right. Several times in fact. It always ends in blood, tears and shit sticking to the wall.

He's new.

For better or worse, starting from scratch is a worthwile experiment when you consider the difficulty of local implementation with the lack of such an experiment. Goes both ways though, but in places where btc is not painfully absent, New Hampshire, Germany, Cypress, are more common than new places that have it built in.
Diversity of tactix.

Please provide us with some more detail. Specifically where and when are you talking about. You said several times so please be sure to site at least 3 examples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Atlantis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva
http://chiefacoins.com/Database/Micro-Nations/Freedonia.htm

ooohhh im sorry i misunderstood you and it was my fault. yes this is a valid criticism.

Space zing from outer space zings all the way to outer space. And back.

(But props to OP for manning up to it, I was expecting a page 4 full of Mabsark (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192122.msg2190539#msg2190539).)

I love how OP doesn't continue to respond to this discussion. I'm interested in seeing if this will be another Sealand thing, or just a massive boat in the middle of some ocean. If this indeed is true, I can't wait for CNBC and Fox Business to cover it.

I guess you never heard of berkshire bucks

Berkshire Bucks are an alternative currency that was launched in 2006 in Western Massachussets.  First created by the non-profit the E.F. Schumacher Society, Berkshires continue to grow in populatirty.  To date 2.7 million have been circulated and over four hundred business accept them.

Berkshire Bucks make sense as they encourage people to spend their money locally and also give the consumer a five percent discount.  Thus, when you go to bank to exchange cash for Berkshires you recieve 105 Berkshire for every 100 dollars of normal currency. 

I've never heard of those. Keeps purchases locally though, while having 5% inflation over the dollar.

Yeah its a system that works out pretty well, I think they have a lot of farming, so restaurants buy fresh local tomatoes, etc.

Well, the conference has ended now, so I want to ask what became of Yago's talk? Did it happen? What did he say?

Ha ha.  I hear that the cats really like the cradle's there. :-)

I too am interested in what this turned out to be.  Dreaming is great, but for decades or centuries (or longer) it has been nothing more than that.

I am EXTREMELY interested in the ideas presented in this thread. Please read a little about my political philosophy/plans. I would love to become involved.
http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=collin_county
http://homegrownsouth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=133

Actually, that would be one of the most noble things you could do in modern society... And if you get really good at fighting Pirates you could start eliminating torturers and other "Hostis humani generis". Like an actual crusade for justice instead of a crusade to spread white blood and old faith.

I think you just discovered a viable currency... With all the people preparing for economic collapse, and the apocalypse and stuff like that. I really think Kevlar or Carbon Fiber is something that could be traded, and used. Like the Bottle Caps of the Wasteland, but with actual purpose.

The value of the coin is however much you value one square inch of your body, or family, or house. And each coin is just a square inch patch of carbon fiber.

Nigeria, Kameroon and Samalia.

1. I would stay clear of equipping the ship with anything like F14s, or the UN is just going to get scared and call you a rouge pirate nation.

2. Most pirates are bands of 8 or less, with 1 or less people carrying a heavy weapon. Most of the time they have machetes, ropes and small explosives. So you don't need that shit any ways. I would suggest a running everything like a cruise ship where everyone trades shifts, unless they have enough money to just live there. Then have 1 armory room, and maybe give whoever is on staff tazers and guns with rubber bullets.

There's a ship, which is Blueseed, and then there are these guys, who are on land. I went to the Blueseed presentation, but was too busy to attend this one. I heard it was a hit, though.

So, OP, are you the Nicaragua guys???

Well, someone had to have seen the discussion at the conference.

That's IT....

Someone needs to tell me when the next conference is... I was part of the promotions for the 4/20 rally in Denver and we had over 100,000 people there at once.

I am DEFINTELY advertising the next one, but I need at least 3-6 months heads up.

I'm not saying I could get 100,000 people. Just defintely more than pictured.

Let's take these one at a time...

>http://chiefacoins.com/Database/Micro-Nations/Freedonia.htm

"Governmentally, they've gone through a few permutations. By a 1992 resolution, they were “a sort of oligarchy.” That system was changed to a presidential republic in 1996, and to a constitutional monarchy in 1997. The constitution was revised in 2000. As of April 1998, their name was modified to reflect their metamorphosis from a “Republic” to a “Principality”... The Head of State is Prince John I (John Alexander Kyle), the prime minister is Dustin Gawrylow."

They clearly had no idea what they were doing. That history shows an endorsement of existing and historical governmental structures, not poly-centric law at all.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva

"Morris C. Davis was elected as Provisional President of the Republic of Minerva."

The sort of society I envision dispenses with politicians entirely. So any time you see a politician, it's not what I was suggesting. Politicians have the power to force policy of citizen-subjects. However, individualist-law means that each person would control their own legal circumstances--constitution a rejection of the idea that anyone can force laws on anyone else.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Atlantis

"The operation set out to do this by launching a ferro-cement boat into the Hudson River in December 1971 which was piloted into an area near the Bahamas. After reaching its destination it eventually sank in a hurricane...

"Stiefel endowed it with a limited government that does not violate the non-aggression principle, thereby making Atlantis acceptable to both limited-government libertarians and anarcho-libertarians."

Basically they never got as far as actually implementing a society.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

"but since the rules require a consensus they cannot be removed unless everybody agrees."

Consensus, ie: voting, ie: giving the group power to force laws on individuals. That's not what I'm proposing either. That is a mere extension of the existing political norm of democracy. It is a continuation, rather than a rejection, of the idea that others should control an individual's legal circumstances.

 

OP can't be serious if he says he was talking at the conference but the identity of his "political zone" is still a mystery.

I'm pretty sure someone said it's Nicaragua

Hmm. But is there anything issued by the government mentioning Bitcoin?

He said he can't make it public until everything is finalized......

And he doesn't really seem like trying to impress people....

Seriously, someone went to give a talk at the conference about a Bitcoin special zone, and all we can get now is just hearsay? Really?

Yes, it's like one of those TV documentaries about the Bigfoot where they are going to do DNA tests on skin and hair samples, but by the end of it you still haven't learned anything, and the subject is as opaque as ever.

No idea.

sounds like a good plan -- otherwise someone might try to acquire land there beforehand, to benefit from the increase in value...
Anyway, it looks reasonable to prepare such an endeavour rather silently and then to pull it off quickly.
The less possible opponents know, the lower the chances for generating negative spin.

Very true politics. Something like that is hard to do as it is. Acquiring land in general without government control usually is only done through war.

They are probably getting like a township. Just because he said "political zone" doesn't mean that it's a nation. It could be a city or a county that they are being given political control of. Or just a bunch of land they are being given/buying so that they can make a township. In America all you need is 6 acres and majority vote to become a new town.

+1

OP = cockmuncher

I said it. And I didn't say it, I asked if it was.

An idea to get media attention to projects like yours:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=212562.0

The Eric Voorhees interview on Let's talk Bitcoin mentioned that these new zones were "Corporate Zones" - i.e. corporations would own the land and make all the laws, and those who chose to live on that land would just have to abide by those laws.

Sounds to me a lot like  The Corporation of the City of London (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation), which is 1 square mile in London's heart and which was given it's charter by the Plantagenet Kings in 1189 and is governed by the businesses that make up the corporation. It's outside the jurisdiction of Parliament (I think only the monarch can interfere, and none has done so for centuries) but only 7000 people live in the City, so they arn't really affected if the Corporations that make up the City pass draconian laws. Not sure how this concept would work in an area larger than a square mile with more people though...

Edit: Actually the corporations of the City do affect other businesses within it negatively - see this article about the Billingsgate Fish Market (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/06/corporation-of-london-billingsgate-fish-porters). It was a fish trading market that had existed since the 16th century - but the Corporation of the City of London closed it down because they wanted the land for building, and all those self-employed fish traders lost their livelihoods. Parliament wasn't able to help because they had no control over the land controlled by the City, so it closed in 2012.

So be careful - if you are a small business that has something that the corporation that owns your zone wants, you are going to get nixed... There is no such thing as a level playing field in corporate zones, though there might be in a genuine free state.

Does the organization behind this have a website where I can follow it (other than subscribing to this thread)? I don't even know their name, but I'm interested in following this subject.

Costa Rica has a few of these free trade zones where a business can set up there and they are free from some of the tarriffs and quotas. Basically they have to follow most of the laws but they are given a waiver on several of the financial laws. They are usually set up in economically underdeveloped areas where they want to stimulate the economy. Since Costa Rica has a high import tax people go to these areas and stock up on big ticket purchases without needing to pay the high tax.

If that is what the OP is talking about, it would be ok and all...just not a free zone.

Yes, it happened. I caught the last 20 minutes or so, plus a bit of the QA session afterwards. There was a lot of interest in this talk, and a crowd of people stuck around for quite a while asking Yago questions after the talk.

Hopefully someone else who was there, or Yago, can correct me if I'm wrong about any of the following, but key points as I recall them were:

1) This will be a "zone" located somewhere in the Carribean within a "host" country.
2) Details are being finalized and will be announced around November.
3) The philosophy is to provide as small a government as possible, with as many gov services as possible run as an "opt-in".
4) No taxation (I may have missed some details on this).
5) The initial physical area of this zone will be roughly the size of Manhattan.
6) The financing model is currently to lease land to residents. Leases may be long (99yr was mentioned). Outright land sales may happen eventually, though will likely consist of relatively large blocks. The philosophy is to create a prosperous region that will experience an increase in land values naturally.
7) Cryptocurrencies will be explicit legal, which Yago actually noted was a bit of an "ideological blemish", since it was indeed specifically acknowledging a legal currency (or basket thereof).
8.) The host country will not allow the zone to have a military, though it will have an armed security force.
9) The host country will not allow the zone to have a "foreign policy" per se.
10) The zone will not be able to grant full citizenship; only the host country can grant internationally recognized citizenship.

Disclaimer: I didn't take notes and was only there for half the talk. I may be remembering things wrong and/or may not have sufficient context for accurate statements.

That seemed to be the general gist of the talk.

Heck of a lot of discussion after this presentation. It seemed to get a lot of folks thinking.

https://i.imgur.com/CXAnauO.jpg

I'd say make a reality show to attract females.
If there was a "Real World: The Political Zone" they'd go for spring break :)

I don't think documentary style crazy will ever go out of style for TV, lol.

I don't think porn would be the best way to go.

Maybe a "club med", that's the most "adult" I would go with it.

And there will be women in whatever country it's in, don't worry. It won't be a prison camp, and eventually once it's established people will move there.

Or they could, I don't know, maybe attract successful people who have families or girlfriends. I wouldn't be surprised if a big reason for Bitcoin 2013 was mostly male was because a lot of the guys left their girls at home.

Working on Starting a Bitcoin town here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=216139.0

http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2013/5/27/ayn-rands-vision-of-galts-gulch-has-become-reality-as-of-tod.html

So is this it?  In Chile?

That is a different person from the OP.

That's more of a resort with a gimmicky name than an actual political zone.

So is this really in Nicaragua?  That seems kind of difficult to believe.

Video of the presentation is now available:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-oySaDJHoI

Do they have any exemptions from Chilean govt?  Can't find any details on the site...

No, it sounds like they're just selling Florida swampland to me (or the Chilean equivalent). It's nothing to do with this thread (it's not a political entity at all).

Both Simon Black and Jeff Berwick have "Galts Gulch"-like communities near Santiago, Chile.

Both of these very smart AnCap freedom fighters picked Chile out of the whole world because it truly is the freest of all countries right now, so they decided to make these agricultural-based retirement villa communities there and sell land for retirees and people who are pretty much just sick of living under the USSA's tyranny.

These are not related to the Honduran zone that this thread is about. The Honduran experiment sounds truly interesting but somewhat risky because there is nothing to stop Honduras' government from seeing their success and eating their lunch.

In fact, If this community did well, it wouldn't be Honduras that they would have to worry about directly... It'd be a particular large country that is situated somewhat to the north of Honduras that has an impeccable history of sending in agents to invade and destabilize pretty much every successful country that ever tried to become civilized anywhere below it.

Honduras might help, but they wouldn't be in charge of the raid.

They've never said what territory they're targeting. If they've said it's Honduras, please point me to where they have.

Well I can't be sure, but it sounds a lot like this:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/11/private-city-in-honduras-will-have-minimal-taxes-government (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/11/private-city-in-honduras-will-have-minimal-taxes-government/)


BTW; I love your tagline. Brilliant.

That effort failed, though I did read something about the Hondurans trying to pass new legislation.


I loved it too, when I saw it on an Erik Vorhees (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=12149) post, so I copied it.

Dammit. I'd be like a 3rd-gen copycat if I stole it too. :(

I didn't hear about the MKG attempt falling through, but it wouldn't be surprising to hear that after MKG left the table the OP's organization tried to pick up where he left off.

I guess it could be Belle Isle (http://www.commonwealthofbelleisle.com) too, but I doubt it... Yago doesn't look like he'd make it out of Detroit alive. ;)

Please do copy it and spread the word. The world seems to equate democracy and freedom, though democracy is actually just the tyranny of the majority (John Adams is credited with that phrase, though the idea goes back to at least ancient Greece).

Some comments from the YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-oySaDJHoI) of Edan Yago's presentation at Bitcoin 2013:
- Edan Yago is a good speaker and it's worth watching if you're interested in free cities.
- It sounds like the territory will be created from an unpopulated area of a Caribbean nation with beaches, one that currently has bad governance.
- It should be more free than any country in the world or the proposed Honduran free zone.
- Law will default to common law, but you will be able to opt into other legal/arbitration systems instead, for contract, civil, and even some criminal matters.
- It will be funded primarily by land leases, but they will also have fees for services. An example of the latter would be a stamp fee on a contract to fund arbitration.
- There will be no taxation of income, assets, etc.
- They will explicitly recognize crypto-currencies, despite the acknowledged ideological blemish of recognizing any currency at all. They expect to be able to work with Caribbean banks and follow international rules when interacting with government-sponsored currencies.
- They aren't involved with Paul Romer. Yago's group won in Honduras; Romer's lost.
- Drugs would apparently be illegal there (he didn't acknowlege that as another ideological blemish).
- They'd try for the thinnest platform of law possible, e.g. setting up a corporation would be as easy as registering a domain.
- They expect to announce it in November, 2013.
- They're keeping it low profile, as media attention drew the opposition from vested interests that scuttled Honduras.
- They'll have their own security force but no military.
- They wouldn't offer citizenship or have embassies or a foreign policy independent of the host country, but would have an immigration policy and provide residency.

Yago's Twitter is https://twitter.com/EdanYago.

Honduras may be on again: Honduran "Free Cities" Plan Fully Re-Approved by Its Government (http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/13/honduran-free-cities-plan-fully-re-appro), Reason.com

No, I'm pretty sure Yago was talking about a new jurisdiction, not another attempt at Honduras.

Wow this is great man, do you mind telling me where this Politcal Zone is located?

Fascinating presentation by Edan Yago. I was dubious before but it does seem like this group has their act together. Whether this could all work or not is open question, but that's what experiments are all about. I'm intrigued!

I've met Edan and he's a very capable individual.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about the project - if it were ready, I'd consider registering bitBlu, my own startup, in that zone today, instead of any other jurisdiction). We can't wait for the zone to become active though...

Related - Best country for Bitcoin startups to register at? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=239567.0)

This is a truly stupid assumption, once you get to know humans.

Wow. It's really you. Is Leela there too?

Actually, no. Religions don't kill any humans, governments do.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/p480x480/1010313_211814282300811_1234066561_n.jpg

But of course governments used religion as an excuse in many of those cases...

I'd say only if you define 'governments' very loosely.
Basically, the winners get to rule so they become the government.
If you want to see it in that way then religion in the large is nothing but a tool. A remote policeman. A way of making people watch themselfs out of fear of being left out of heaven. And governments are not the only groups that can wield this tool. Governments are, however, in the position to do a roll-out. Smaller organisations would need to grass-root it (or possibly bootstrap it, like scientology).

I still think that it can be religion that kills because when it becomes relatively big it starts acting autonomously. That is why we have a vatican, for instance. The roman emperor had some powers over the church, but this power was never absolute and even the emperor could be played to bow before god.
And even now (and i'm taking the catholic church as an example) people die of aids because the pope said condoms are bad, m'kay. That is not something that came from a government, that is the core of a religion asserting an intollerant dogma. (intollerant because they deny scientific reality)

The problem with this is that governments are made up of people. So are armies.
It's not always possible to strictly separate humans from the notion of government.
Government is a very broad term.
Armies have fought under stark regimes where the people were forced to give their lifes for someone elses dreams.
But equally well there were armies organised lightly around a leader figure but otherwise fully motivated by their own ideals.

And there is a lot of grey area.
People criticize the US for fighting all these wars. But would the US still exist if they didn't?
I don't think so and i think that every US citizen understands this deep down. So is it the US government that is to blame or is it the US citizens that (mostly) silently agree with the whole ordeal?
This picture is too black and white in my opinion.

A micro-nation? Instead,

- you talk to your governments (say USA, China, Russia, Australia etc.) and get approval for 'special bitcoin economic zones'

- they should be giving you some land (at least somewhere in the cold dessert), if you explain mutual benefits

- operate within the laws of the land, or the terms you negotiated

- if you can do this somewhere, then you can show that proof of work and implement it elsewhere

- within, say, a decade, there'll be few hundreds of such zones :)

you guys still waiting for op to deliver ?

Mobo, before I unleash the hounds on you I want you to know that I've been an atheist for my entire adult life. I've probably made more anti-religion forum posts in my days than the state of New Jersey has.

However, this is about the difference between Power and Tools. Governments are Power. The moment you give any person or group of people a monopoly on the violence of force, that power/leader can take all of the lives in a hemisphere without telling anyone at all what their true motives to do so were.

Religion is just a TOOL. It and propaganda in general are used to keep the schleps believing that anything that the group with power wants to do is A-O-K by them. A good example of the difference between these two is how some republicans want to wage war in the middle east because "those arabs would destroy Israel," while others want to wage war because they stupidly believe that "they hate us for our freedoms." -The former is religous propaganda, the latter is just plain ol' propaganda.

Both do the exact same thing though. They make people think it's OK for governments to Kill innocent people.



No church, not even the vatican, ever held a monopoly on force, however. They simply didn't have the guns.

Every crusade of any note was fought by a king or other type of ruler... Even if "commanded" by the pope it was a government that made the crusade possible at all.


This is an unusual side-effect. One could easily argue that religious charities have saved more lives than AIDS has taken. (I don't have a clue if that's true, but hey, it's close enough to argue.)


Of course government itself doesn't exist at all. It's a delusion of "infected" people, all of whom are infected to various degrees.

My local mail carrier is a government employee that doesn't think very differently than I do about the state of politics in the US. Do I consider him 'part of the government?' Of course not. He's just earning a buck.

But then there is a class of real parasites... The politicians who are basically just making promises to the masses to do one thing while they serve the special interests of their corporate and banking bosses. They KNOW they are basically doing evil, even if they got into politics to do 'good.' -They almost always sell out in record time once they see how the game is really played in Washington and they either quit, or they become the problem personally when they start taking bribes and orders from above. (Or I guess they can become like Ron Paul but that was very rare.)

So I guess for the sake of most conversations like this one, I define "the government" as just that parasitical class of evil rulers who specifically sold out... Although there are lots of non-government employees like lobbyists for large corporations and banks that they take their orders from, so they fit in this definition too.


1970's USA was like that if I remember correctly... But it was more a profit motive than a dream.


Without a single doubt at all. Of course we'd still exist! Do you think we've been fighting DEFENSIVELY?

Jeez, even WWII was an offensive war! We egged them on; totally planned...

https://i.imgur.com/nLVDIYE.jpg

In fact, it is becoming widely accepted that the nukes dropped on Japan had NOTHING to do with japan's surrender (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii)... Stalin defeated them, not the USA.

The last 30 or so armed conflicts that the USA has entered into were all Economically motivated. All of them, offensive aggression on foreign soil. Two different presidents and lots of US Generals warned us that it would happen. Now we're just a war machine that can't be turned off.

This line is a testament to the vast power of 'Murikan-brand propaganda. I think ours makes the soviet USSR's brand of propaganda look like newbies.

It's wrong though. Lots of americans have awaken. Millions.

It is certainly our parasitical rulers who got us into this mess, without ANY approval nor even knowledge of what was really going on by the people.

I think this vid explains that concept very well: (Minus the hiding facts from the public stuff.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fasTSY-dB-s

Well, this is very problematic.
If 'government' is evil then how do you call the group of people taking desicions to make society work?

Private enterprise can do it without evil... Because private enterprise doesn't monopolize force.

Edit: Found this link for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMoPBDz5ycA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMoPBDz5ycA)

I think you'll really get a lot out of it.

I was not talking about what entities could do it, I was asking what you call the entity that currently does the non evil things that are organized in society.
And even then, what would stop private entities from waging wars etc. in order to expand power?
In other words, why do you think privately owned corporations would be any better than these societal bodies we call governments?

I've been wondering if they sold this at the Bitcoin Megastore...

http://lurch17.tripod.com/images/tinfoil.gif

Guess we now know. ;)

Like I clearly stated, there are really two different types of people in 'the government.' The evil parasites with power at the top, and the poor schleps who actually do things for a paycheck. 

All in that film I just posted for you.

A Corporation is a creation of the state, by the way. ;)

The amount of bullshit in this video is astounding.
If only real life was as simplistic as this lady makes it out to be.
If everyone thought and behaved like the cute little cartoons on her cute little island then her cute story would have some merrit.
Her whole story is based on assumptions that just don't always work out in the wild.
She is even so stupid to think that organised crime is exclusive to governments and that anarchism would somehow make it go away with guns. I've got a story for her: Organized crime can allways get more and better guns.
And crime is parasitic to anything of value anyway, no matter the form.
 
She has some strange ideas about gun ownership. Seems guns are the fix-um-all for all her social problems.
A thief is a thief, so the gun is the best solution.
What she forgets is that she would need a fortress to fend off gangs that try to pillage their island. Before she knows it she'd be screaming for an organized police force.
I think she's deeply confused.

What she does NOT consider are the important things about governments.
How are the supplies negotiated that will make that society run? Or does she assume this anarchy will automatically produce the right ammount of goods to sustain the population? What if there is a drought and the neighbours don't want to share?
If you don't want to force people to share, how will you prevent abuse of accumulated power?
If you do want to force people to share, how will you do that without a central body of force?

And this is just a small fraction of the sorts of problems you would need to solve to make a new societal form work on a similar level to our current society.
Her little story is so completely missing the point of the problems it tries to solve that it would be like explainging communism as "You know, you just share stuff and everything will be fine".
She somehow magically beliefs that things around her will automatically organize themselfs into a usable and good functioning society that is worth protecting.
Meanwhile she has no plan to actually organise a meaningfull society.
And that kind of thing can actually work on mutual basis, if you have like 10 people in the community and you are self sufficient in water and food. But as soon as this becomes bigger you will start to see problems. None of the ideas expressed in her video deal with these problems. At the same time, governments are often given the task to manage exactly these problems that arise from large groups of people interacting (including the problem of some people/companies becoming too powerfull for the good of the rest).
It turns out that certain societal necessities are better organized centrally because large commercial entities would abuse it even more than governments. Every commercial entity has a rule. This rule says that if this entity thinks they can get away with screwing you they will screw you. They exist to make as much money as possible in any 'legal' way possible.
Her ideas are moronically short sighted if you apply it to any scale. If she can't get proper control over her project it will become abused and it will corrupt, and at unexpected scale and speed. It will be over before she can have a good look around her island.
I'm sure you can organize a lot on small interpersonal scale, like protecting your shop. But if everyone in the street has a shop then it's cheaper to have a security firm handle the job. Before you know it there are just a few security companies covering millions of citizens. What makes that different from the current police? How would that not need central management that would be just as susceptible to corruption as our current governments? I mean, by the time the security firm is big enough, why should they even care about some farmers somewhere complaining about something or other.
It's a reboot without any actual fix.

Seriously, people like her can go live on a fortress island all of their own. Just deprave them of all output of our current society and see how long they are willing to survive under their own structures.

Yep. This still sums up my thoughts on the OP

Sure, i know this. I just note that the USA would not have had as much economical power if it did not fight these wars and that therefore most US citizens silently agree with this.

This thread is about a particular cryptocurrency-friendly free city. If you want to discuss freedom vs. government or anything else take it to a new thread in the politics forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=34.0). This thread has been hijacked. Put any trolls on ignore.

The one that is well documented is a fact. Guessing that someone is trying to round us up and nuke us is a theory. My mind is still made up.


That feeling you have right there... I've felt it myself once. That's the feeling of an unpleasant truth dawning in on you.

So you totally missed the dozens of parts where bad actors DID pop up on her island and everyone pulled out guns to defend themselves?

Were you even watching the same vid??


Because the wild has a government in it. Always has, excepting these few rare cases:

Historical examples of Anarchy without Chaos (http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/history.htm)

(That were very peaceful, excepting only when they came in contact with governments)

The thing is, how big could it get? It doesn't have a police department to grow into and control... It doesn't have a congress and a white house that already lays down a power structure across the land for everyone to obey, to control.

All it can be is a roving gang of armed thugs and if they piss off enough people, they're going to find that the people have put together a collection for their own temporary Army to go and kill those armed thugs. Therefore the thugs will know to be polite, like they tend to be in places like Switzerland where everyone is required to have a gun now.

In fact, right now in the USA, you are simply not allowed to build a small army to protect yourself at all. There is a monopoly of force and you're not allowed to have any, and are told you must receive your protection from the POLICE... Because you know, when seconds matter, Barney Fife is only an hour or so away.


Gun Ownership (not specifically whipping them out in public, but just the populace being armed) is very, very well documented to deter would-be theft. "An armed society is a polite society." -Robert A. Heinlein  

She hasn't forgotten anything. Her husband, Larkin Rose, wrote many books on the subject. It's a big subject, one that has been very specifically kept quiet by our evil school systems and the mainstream media.

Here's a short vid with answers to a lot of these questions from David Friedman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o)

If you have the time, I recommend this (free) ebook: Practical Anarchy (http://freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_5_PDF_Practical_Anarchy_Audiobook.pdf).

At least download that and look at the table of contents... Groups of questions like "defense from outside threats" are clearly marked.

Contracts between private companies.

The free market always has before... It's only when a ruler tried to dictate a market do things get out of balance.

Assurance, usually. Co-ops, charities, and trusts in extreme cases.

You mean like we have now?

You simply don't let the power exist by giving it to someone else.

This is a really simple concept but no one indoctrinated by a government can ever easily understand it. You simply do not have the power to rule me. Unless you willingly sign a contract that say I can rule you, then I can't.

The philosophy of Liberty (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y6g0PU2OIc)

The only reason that this concept seems impractical to you now is because you've lived under government your whole life, thinking that it protected you.


Give them an incentive. Money works pretty well I hear.

...Or were you thinking that there could EVER be a case when It's acceptable to force others into slavery against their will or steal their rightful property?

They've all been solved a million times over. The Mises institute, Voluntaryists the world over, and others have written skyscraper-high stacks of books on the subject but the sheeple just don't want to read them. There is only one problem not solved and that is the propaganda from governments that has filled heads like yours.

Without those LIES in the way of your rational thought process, you'd see it easily and just stop accepting the state.


That's called the free market. You should try partaking in one sometime... You know, like BITCOIN.


No meaningful society could ever have gotten that way from organization.

Tradgedies of the Commons. About half of that skycraper-high stack of books was written about these specifically.

The ebook I listed above goes over them in depth; but in short; the free market balances these problems in every case.


False.

Large commercial entities have THE MOST to lose by running a region dry or resources or pissing off their customers in a free market.

The only reason you believe otherwise is because you have never seen a free market that you were aware of. All big-money markets in the western world today have government contracts and regulations woven into them to such an extent that they can actually make more money by delivering inferior product!

Correct.

Now if you take the "legal" part out of that thought, and there is only a free market, what do you have left? Competitors who have to win over customers the hard way in order to survive.
 

Control control control! Are you running for office?

The free market needs NO control to work properly. Any attempt to control it and you wind up with what we have now.


You can't fire the police and hire their competition. And who said there would be just a few?

Also answered specifically in the ebook above.

If you have any valid point in your entire rant I'll give you this one, sort of.

If all of the USA woke up tomorrow and decided to never have a ruler again, there would be less organization towards large projects like space missions and so forth. Fewer big bridges would get built, because all roads would be private. Products like iPads would take longer to get developed because obviously no one could enforce IP laws. (Which is also a good thing IMHO but that's for another argument.) So to an extent, yes, living in a society of anarchists would see fewer "structures" as you called them.

But on the other hand... Corporations wouldn't have the VAST power to do the evil things that they do against us today, like Monsanto forcing farmers to use their seed and insecticides, cures for diseases like Cancer that aren't profitable to cure today wouldn't be suppressed, endless surveillance on everyone, and corn being the #1 ingredient in everything this nation makes. (Just to name the first few off the top of my head.)

All of those horrible realities we face today couldn't be possible without the power that government gives them. Take that away and suddenly those evil bastards would have no way at all to fight their competition.

So all in all, I'll take the vision without government, thank you. Rather be using slightly older technology than knowing every word I type here is being read by my overlords while I'm denied life-saving drugs any day of the week.

Yeah, well, no. The feeling i had was one of hearing a realy realy dumb person talk about their fantasy. I felt replacement embarrassment for her for bringing that shit in a serious way. Didn't you notice how stoned she was?

Yes i did see the cartoon. I just am not of the type that needs their information in cartoon form to understand the implications...
The way she deals with 'bad actors' is pretty immature and reactionary. I think she is traumatized by a robbery or something because she is really only focussing on the possibility that her island will be raped by a gang.
In reality there are many many crimes possible in society and most of them are either unstoppable by wielding a gun or would escalate in more violence. This is part of being in a human society and has nothing to do with government.

The INCREDIBLE irony is that there are MANY places on earth that have such eroded governments that you would actually need guns to protect yourself from gangs and robbers.  It is a just a very very shit situation to live in so people don't go live there. I would suggest to this lady to go live in one of these places instead of making crap fantasy youtubes.

LOL, no. I was talking about how people would behave if there was no consent of monopoly on violence. People would still become organized and rape her village and she would not have enough production in her village to have enough guns to outshoot the villains. Even worse, her little village may becme prey to two other fighting factions. If two large groups fight it out (because there is noone to stop them) do you think either of them would care about that little shitty island? I don't think so. If one of the parties thinks the other is hiding on the island they will napalm the shit out of it. Our little cute stoned hyppie cartoon chick would need a fucking frotress to deal with the outside world.
Yeah, just note that most of these were small communities with a high food and water autonomy and were fully embedded in a bigger structure upheld by what we could call governments.
This is not the situation for most humans.
The very fact that we talk to each other via computers and internet is a testimony that we as a society have grown beyond small farm towns that need to defend themselfs. We have reasonably stable world markets nowadays. It is only because the chinese can produce so cheaply that we can buy cell phones for under $2000,- .
Good luck producing computers or cell phones when you're on a fortress island spending all your resources on just surviving.

What is also striking about the list of texts you point to is that they seem to be propaganda like in nature. It is not research, it is proving their own point. The authors often have an agenda to eagerly show the world how anarchy has worked in the past.

Take this example:
"An Ancient Stateless Civilization: Bronze Age India and the State in History
by Thomas J. Thompson
"The urban civilization of Harappa in southern Asia flourished economically and culturally for seven centuries, leaving archeologists with artifacts galore but with no evidence of wars or threats of war—or even a state. Most likely, Harappa’s archeological uniqueness has to do with the civilization’s having generated purely voluntary government." "

I mean, how selective can you get with truths?
It obviously never occured to the man that the indus river was so fruitfull that it could feed everyone who started a farm and so noone had a real reason to get organized on a bigger level?
And where the hell does he take the notion that government could only have existed if they would have found war machinery?
It's like reading an instagramized text. Everything is selectively processed and most of it is black and white.
That's just not how reality works.
If you look a egypt you can see that the situation there was a lot worse environmentaly.
There were regular droughts and the population died off in large numbers once every few years when the nile failed.
Farmers that tried to keep their own stash for the bad years were robbed because there was noone to protect them and absolutely everyone was hungry and willing to pillage their supply.
This all changed when a leader started taxing everyone in grain (this is one of the earliest examples of taxation, altho the babilonians did it earlier for similar reasons). This grain was stored and kept safe untill the bad years came and it was re-distributed amongst the farmers. That way, altho some power was taken away from individual farmers, the population survived better as a whole and became more robust against environmental changes.

Anyway, there are many examples of anarchistic communities. They, however, share some characteristics.
-They are all small and act locally.
-They require that all the resources for their survival are within their community.
-None of them became industrialized.
-None of them scale to sustain the current world population and actually require people in less fuitfull areas to just die off to be able to claim a worldwide success. It's the success story of taking a good piece of land, defend it with guns and say fuck you to everyone else because you've got your own good piece of land now.
Great place to live, i'm sure. Real hospitable..

Dude, use your imagination. If there is anything to get there will be people trying to get it as long as they can profit from it. It's outrageous to think that a government is required for criminals to organize themselfs. They can do that all on their own. The fact that there is an anarchy does not change this.
Sure, there won't be statist tools to exploit. But exploitation is a world on its own. It can be applied to any situation. Anarchy is no exception.

Nah, that's just your a-team rambo fantasy.
Thugs can get organized in better ways than just roving gangs. Nothing prevents them from acting like a bank, for instance. Nothing prevents them from growing larger than any one island state. So at best you will have a constant war between the good citizens of happy island and the bad roving thugs of the crimi empire. So let's see how well the island can produce food when they get shot when working in the fields.

That's the problem with this lady's story. It's all so fucking happy happy joy joy. She just draws happy little cartoon people waving guns and everything is good again. She didn't draw farmers with their brains splattered over their land and i bet she doens't actually want to think about the realities of such situations. Yet these realities exist and are the reason people put trust in structures like governments.
As i said, she looks so crummy that i'm pretty sure that if she realy was in a situation like she describes she would be one of the first to run for statist tools to get the problems under control.
She just didn't think it through very well.

Then again, i don't see a lot of roving bandit gangs raping villages for profit in the US either.
And as far as i know you are allowed to protect yourself when you live in remote areas where you cannot expect normal protection from police.

LOL. ok but please explain why europe has a 4x lower homicide per-capita rate than the US?
Or, never mind, it will get too complicated. Let's just say that there are many countries that have gun control and people are still polite. And at least it's not 'politeness' out of fear of being shot in the head...
I'll have a look.
Private companies have no implied incentive to do the best they can for their clients. Without an overarching structure of rules and a way of forcing these companies to abide by the rules you have no chance of winning against a well organized structure.
There is no reason to put trust in a privately owned company as these are just as corruptable as any other large scale organisation and are privately owned so the public has no say whatsoever. It will just become a replica of everything you hate about goverment but will be privately owned with no democratic process whatsoever.
Nonsense. In all known civilizations free markets only blossomed within the stability created by governance. Free market requires a soil of steady input and output to be able to function in a way that can sustain a population. It cannot function on a large scale on its own without leading to massive abuse. Slavery, for instance, was a free market. You could score yerself some africans and transport them to the americas. Pure profit, you know! Free enterprise! I'm from holland and i can tell you that the dutch were very much into these free markets in the past. You just need to ask yourself if the slaves saw it as a free market.

And that's the problem with humans. Humans can be incredibly crewel and abusive when given the freedom to enrich themselfs at no cost. Without some sort of monopoly on force held by society there is no chance of having a free market. There is a real need for rules that apply to everyone and there is a real need to force this.
It doesn't really matter what form the big group has, if left unchecked it will grow out of proportions. This process is independant of the state form. So it happens in all forms of large scale organisations.
And that is why all the anarchist dreams stop at the local scale. They don't actually solve the problems of having these big complex societies that have particle accelerators and communication sattelites as output. Instead they deal mostly with the economical interactions of limited sized populations that happen to be already balanced out when it comes to survival. The reality is that there is a pretty hard limit on the availibility of land that allows such unefficient use of the eaths resources.
All these anarchist fantasies only deal with small farming communities, but how would you get organized to get your rare metals from china to build your mobile phones in india that work together with the standardized frequencies in the US?


Assurence is only possible if you produce enough extra to pay for the insurance. And then again, if the grain crop fails you can get all the insurance money you want but that still does not make the grain magically appear in your field. So if your neighbors don't want to share (they realy don't like you) you will be eating dollar bills this winter.
Co-ops only work locally and would need a more centralized approach to function on a larger scale in a stable way.
Trusts need to be trusted.
Without an overarching way of controling these ad hock organisations will too grow out into unwieldy economical monoliths that are sensitive to central corruption. No problems solved whatsoever.


Yeah, i think you have a fantasy where by telling someone they have no power over you they are unable to harm you in any way.
In reality you would need to have more and bigger guns then the other party to be able to assert such baldness.
Now there is a stupid proposition if i ever seen one.
Who the hell are you going to employ to make sure people keep their side of the contract?
What kind of force will you need to keep these institutions in check?
Or do you expect them not to become abusive and if so why? They are humans after all.

Yeah but that was not te problem, einsten.
The problem was that they don't want to share. Enogh history of groups of people denying other groups of people some resource.
Humans can perfectly well have ideological reasons for wanting others dead at any price.
That's one of the reasons a big society based purely on consent is impossible. People can act stupidly and egotistically in a very destructive way. As soon as you leave out the overarching balancing structures these elements in society will assert themselfs in a strong way.
Reality is never this simple or black and white.
What is or is not acceptable is a point of view. Slavery was perfectly acceptable just a few centuries ago. And it was mostly driven by the free makets of the new world. Get yerself a boat financed with public funds, sail out to africa and get yerself some of those ape like things, sail them over to the west indies and bingo, profit!
In a lot of ways these guy were the prime example of anarchism. It even went all the way down to piratery in the caribean. Happy times..

Needless to say this was one of the saddest examples of the consequences of free enterprise in known history...

Yeah, voluntaryism? Seriously?
You do understand, i hope, that voluntaryism requires people to act according to it in a voluntary way?
I don't know if you understand the statistics of humans, but there will only be a small portion of the population that will voluntarily adhere to any given set of behaviours. If you have no way of dealing with the rest then you have failed before you even start. There is no known way of organising humans on a large scale based purely on voluntary cooperation. It could only work for a small fraction of the earths population. It's a very egotistical way of thinking thought up by people fully supported by our current system.

I just want to note that i'm not too happy with this current system.
I do, however, believe that the structure we have now is given shape by human interactons. These interactions do not change with state form. They are particular to humans in any situation.
So changing the state form is not a solution. The problem is in getting everyone to point their noses to the same side without fighting. And an anarchy is not a magical solution to get this done.


Yeah, but a free market cannot guarantee a supply. The goods will always go to the one paying the most, not to the one needing the most. This will destabilize any power relations in the system, making the powerfull even more powerfull and capable of exploiting others. Before you know it you will need a big organisation who's function it is to secure some resource. This organisation would have so much power that there would be no distinction between this and our current governments.
The shape our governments have are based on how society works. They are actually shaped by the conflicts between groups in the world. Anarchy proposes to reset this situation but i can guarantee you that this structure will grow back in any state you wish and will carry the same problems we see now.
The problems have nothing to do with the state form, they have to do with resource conflicts and human nature.

So let me give another example.
Island A has a lot of good land and produces a lot of food.
Island B has a lot of rubber trees, but not so much farm land.
Island B cannot produce enough food for themselfs so they sign a contract with Island A for the regular delivery of food in exchange for bicycle tires.

Now we have a few years of drought.
What happens is that Island A cannot produce enough food to feed themselfs.
They have this contract with Island B but they figure that if their people are hungry they won't give away their food for bicycle tires because, you know, rubber is really tough to chew.
So they say, screw it, and just don't fulfill their side of the contract.

Now i ask you, how would your proposed system deal with this?
How would Island B assure their survival in such a situation?

That's a strange thing to say because meaningfull societies are nothing BUT organisation.
The problem with this is that society could not evolve beyong simple farming on this premise.
You realy need something like industrialisation to get anywhere near, say, crypto currency technology.
There was an incredible ammount of organisation needed to get us from 1+1=2 to making mobile phones that have built in computers operating at megaherz frequencies.
I don't expect a cooperative farming community to get a waver fabthing going.

And that doesn't even touch upon the basics of just getting your food on the plate when the environment is not cooperating.
That's why the de facto operation is milking. Or maximizing profits, however you want to call it.
And this will happen in any free market.
Prices will be as high as possible, that's where it will balance out.
Nevermind once these firms start to get monopolies on some resource.
From the perspective of a large organisation it is easy to abuse the people that make up the profits. The larger the organisation the less it is affected by pissed off customers.
The psycho-babble propaganda you hear from governments can just as easily be applied by non-governmental organisations.
Ever noticed how steve jobs acted like a athoritarian leader and all the apple fanboys falling for it?
That's a privately owned company selling an image for 3x the price of the good that is delivered.
Free market players will become at least as abusive as current market players. And there will be even less to stop them once they tip over to the large scale economics.

That's not true, i know many free markets. But they usually come in two varieties. They are either too small to be affected by society as a whole or they are too big.
For instance, most multinationals operate in the shady free markets of supranationality.
They still have to deal with governance on the local scale but they basically have an out of sight free-for-all party on the supranational level.
Does that benefit society?
I don't think so.
Would an even free-er market make these companies behave in a better way?
I don't think so.
If these companies did not have to pay taxes or abide to the law in the countries they operate in would they suddenly stop accumulating money and power?
I don't think so.
Would they care if the underlying system was anarchy?
Sure as hell they would. Anarchy leaves the people less protected and easier to subdue and control.
Anarchy will end in megacorporations that will have every sign of government but would be privately owned and would have little insentive to serve society beyond keeping them alive to work for them. And a lot of the resources would be spent on fighting off competing firms.

Lol, no. You somehow fantasize that people cannot be somehow forced to be on your side.
Once any of these firms somehow manages to control a resource everyone is basically screwed.
If they can control it (and they can because they are a very big organsation that can produce their own weapons in enough quantities to protect the resource) they can use that to control the people depending on the resource.
Hoping that no company would get in that position is a dream at best.
That is the core of the problem. People are assholes on a regular basis.
Your ideas require large autonomous privately owned companies to play nice.
I can tell you beforehand that this is not going to happen uless you genetically modify all humans into being less asshole-ish.
Fantasies, fantasies, fantasies.
Even in a free market a participant can become so powerfull as to undermine the market as a whole.
When left free to run and expand, a free market will produce fighting parties that will have to put increasing amounts of resources into just competing. If they fall over they will grant their competitor a monopoly because the arms race brought both competitors to new heights of controlling the 'free' market.
The winner(s) now have enough resources to outbid any upcoming competitor by just dumping the product on the market for less than production costs. The small competitors are without any chance to play on the market. The big party has the resources to just keep their position as monopolist.
And guess what, we already have these but at least there are some hoops they need to jump before they can excert their power. Not that it helps a lot, but a free market would have none of these.
The first quastion you need to ask is if the competing firm will be any better than the last one.
The second question you need to ask is whether the second firm is armed enough to stop abuse from the first security group. The various security groups will be competing and since their job is to threaten with violence they will apply that to the competition. This will lead to an arms race with only a few top dogs emerging as winners. This is a selective process that takes place in free markets.
Free markets do not automatically provide the best solution for society. They just make sure there is an entrance for competition. But it doesn't prevent a more powerfull market perty from absolutely crushing the competition purely based on the fact that they are smaller and have less resourcess to piss away.
It's a resource hungry dog-eat-dog process of elimination that invariably leads to uncontrolled monopolies.
It would be so much simpler if gun manufacturers just produced guns and soda companies just produced soda.
But what if papsi were so big that they could organize raiding parties that destroyed all the coca cola machines?
Of course you would hire some security firm to deal with pepsi, but what if pepsi had a small army ready to defend them?
How would you call a security firm that was large enough to take on such multinationals?
How would you go about controling such a mighty security firm when they are the ones with the big guns?
You see, you solve nothing because the problems of human interactions do not change.
Also answered specifically in the ebook above.

If you have any valid point in your entire rant I'll give you this one, sort of.

If all of the USA woke up tomorrow and decided to never have a ruler again, there would be less organization towards large projects like space missions and so forth.
[/quote]
LOL., nah., what would happen is a complete collapse of the US economy. This means most people would be without a job etc. Food logistics would go belly up, people would start rioting within a week and everything would have to be re-built from scratch. So actually most people in the US will probably die within the first few months due to famine and dissease.
They would first have to, on their own without the help of the rest of society, somehow produce some thing worth enough to get clean water, food and shelter.
Noone would care about large scale space projects. People would care about surviving another day. Happy times, no doubt.

There would be no need for roads because noone will have fuel in any meaningfull quantity. and even if they have it they would not piss it away in the engines with piss-poor efficiency that power the america dream.
IP laws are the last thing you think of when soiety collapses and you live in a large city with absolutely no chance of producing your own food and water.

You make societal collapse sound like way too much fun. :/
It isn't, really. It's a mess of people doing everything they never imagined they could just to survive.
Your fluffy ideals can only be thought up by someone in a very very privileged position.
Reality of survival is pretty brutal and unforgiving.

The problem is that the would have this power. There are so many ways of manipulating populations that just thinking of it makes me sick to the stomache. The fact that these firms act as if the operate along the law is just because at the time this is the path of least resistance for them. But these corporations are so big that they can act as rivers washing away anything in their path. They would have even more power without the governmental structures. They would probably take on other forms but these forms would be just as estructive, if not more.
So let's take Monsanto. Do you think it is a problem for them to develop some poison that will kill all crops except their own? I'm pretty sure they already have it.
So in this free for all market of yours, how much trouble would it be for them to drop a bag of magic dust into a raincloud going over land with a competing gm product?
Who will check on them? Who will be big enough to be able to screen all their activities?
Surely not your local security force.
You're gonna need a bigger force that will, again, be completely susceptible to corruption, etc,etc,etc.

You need to realize that you are not fighting a system.
You are fighting human nature.

That's pretty naive to think. It's not how determined evil bastards operate. There is always a way to be an evil bastard on a large scale.
Yeah, if i thought it would be workable i would take that vision as well.
But frankly, if i look at how people work on a psychological level i don't think its sustainable on a bigger scale.
About the technology level that can be sustained by small anarchistic communities, it would be pre-industrial.
So just forget about most technology from the past 100 years or so because you won't have the resources to pay for it. It will be back to home made candles (because what factory will produce the solar panels in enough quantity and cheaply so that you can buy it from the extra output of your commune?). I'm not sure most people would agree to going back to that situation. And so you will have a big problem of implementing this and to get everyone cooperating in this nice way all the while not thinking about the luxuries they had only yesterday.
So, actually, without forcing people to cooperate you won't get the people.
The only real chance of implemeting this is to first wait for current society to fail completely.
Then most people will have lost everything and would be willing (ould be forced) to try alternatives.

^^ That was a very long post.

I said this at the conference and I'll say it again here: private political zones will lead to slavery or some form of indentured servitude. 

That redefines "Wall of Text." I bet not one person actually read that wall.

Note that a nontrivial number of people in first-world countries are living under compulsory tax rates of 50%+ once you add up income tax, sales tax, property tax, social security tax, medical insurance tax, etc.  And thus technically they're all already slaves.  My own thinking is that any nonvoluntary 3rd party claim on another person's labor is a form of slavery, whether the percentage be 1% or 100%.

Regressing to much-maligned "serfdom" frankly sounds like a better deal than most current tax regimes:


Terminology is a red herring.  "Slavery" or "Serfdom" offered by a private zone could well be superior to most "democratic" offerings in terms of personal freedom and wealth.  The only meaningful questions worth asking are: is the contract entered voluntarily by both parties, and how much of your labor do you get to keep under any given system?

^This is the only line anyone needs to read from mobodick's wall of garbage. Every last one of his false assumptions is hinged upon the fact that he has no clue what a free market is.

</discussion>

I found really clever and have officially stolen it for spreading ^_^

You don't need a group of people making decisions for everyone else. Let people make decisions for themselves and only for themselves. Individualist government, true self-government, not collectivist. Where no one can force laws on you and you decide your legal circumstances entirely for yourself.

I'm sure there are places on earth today like this...bring your own government...but I'm not exactly sure where and I doubt it's a pleasant place.

You don't need someone else for making decisions, that's true.
But you need to make decisions, and this is a tedious, nasty and painful process, the more people are involved.

Only very small groups of people can live and work together frictionless. Very soon, there is tendency to split into sup groups, and each group defines itself as "we" against "them". Above roughly 30 members, a loose association of people becomes quite unstable. All is fine as long as some people can just walk away (read: if they can be convinced to better walk away)

And on top of this, there comes another issue. As soon as you get more people involved, you get a wider variation of people. Chances are that you get some people which don't care a fuck for anything, or which just care for fucking. In a larger group, at some point you get roughly 20% insisting on someone else to make the decisions, because they are too lazy and prefer making party instead of decisions. Then you get roughly 40% which are plain-flat indifferent, and you get 40% which care a lot (and sometimes even too much) about each end everything else. And, as spice on top, you get some very strange individuals scattered in here and there.
Have fun with free governance.

For a society with ~100% internet connectivity, and a Bitcoin-based method of secure voting, is it possible to have something like a pure democracy?

Do we really need over 500 (mostly permanent) "elected representatives" voting on new laws every year?  The corruption is enormous.

Oh mobodick!
Let me express my eternal admiration for your patience refuting each and every of these naive believes, and each one to the point.

Enjoyed the read. My favourite conclusion was this:



Incidentally, did you know that free market can impossibly fail?
Because, if it fails, how can anyone call that "free"?? -- thus, by definition
there must have been an evil interference and thus no free market to start with.
q.e.d.

I think this was the most awesome statement in that giant post, and is my entire takeaway from it:

Not everyone needs to live in a fortified city.  We just need one that supports Bitcoin.

But with regards to this one, I think they should at least disclose who their investors are before anyone gets their hopes up.

Shut up, Ms. MPOE.

A solid question would be:
Does pure democracy work at all?

Entertaining discussion, but I'm legitimately interested in this project...   has anyone that was at the conference kept in contact or heard from the OP??   

That reminds me of this in-depth research into God's killings as documented by the Bible:

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html

Total: 25 million. And that was before Jesus.

Wow, God made the greatest patsy ever, didn't he? ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-oySaDJHoI

Newer, but not as detailed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316449.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316449.0)

PM, Goat.

Let me know if it's cooler than Galt's Gulch Chile. :)

I find it highly unlikely that this will succeed. I don't think Bitcoin has the political power yet to sustain its own sovereign entity.