I wouldn't consider Elwar a loon. Not even close.

You're going to have to bring that down and talk to us on our level 

I could live for about 20 years on my Bitcoin and retirement investments. More if Bitcoin keeps growing. But it wouldn't be much of a life. Yes, there's no stress about starving on the street, but there is stress about failing in my projects, not seeing the places I want, not accomplishing my goals, failing my family, etc. After that, there are wants regarding being able to accomplish certain things, and reaching certain ... I guess you would call them status levels and ways of life. So, food is nice, but there's always a need for more money.

So, honest answer? Food takes up a small fraction of the rest of the stuff I need to spend money on. Free food would barely even help (I need $20MM dollars. Anyone? Anyone?)

No, I'm upset about them having tax exempt status. I want one too 

This just tells me you don't know much about insurance  I wish it was the same.

A banker, managing a $100,073,005 insurance portfolio, and a $116,315,000 mortgage portfolio. I work for state government though (a department dealing with housing), so it doesn't count.

If the only infinite thing we would get out of this is food, then I would buy a wood gassification generator, feed it chips, tortillas, and other dry food, and use that energy to power bitcoin miners.

I think that's the part no one has really figured out yet. Used to be you were forced to learn how to work a farm to survive - not fun. Now it's being forced to learn how to do office work - still not fun. When is the fun supposed to come in?

I have ny sympathy for religious nutcases, even if they call themselves Tea Party.

Though I'm wondering, why are getting tax exempt? Can we get tax exempt status too please?

Also, it would probably be in Democrats' best interests to help the Tea Party as much as possible. They divide republican voters quite well, allowing Democrats to win more seats. Hell, some Democratic politicians actually admitted to funding local Tea Party candidates, just because they are so loony that beating them in elections is easier. So I doubt this is an order that came from above.

At least they didn't use guns, so no one was killed ( )

I think we should force them to learn how to learn, and then provide them with materials and sources to learn from. I think kids are lazy. I also think "letting them learn" shirts parenting and educator responsibility by suggesting that as long as they know how to learn, they're on their own, instead of providing them with tools. My bias comes from me growing up and being surrounded by lazy American kids, and watching them be completely wiped out in education and skills by Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Russian/Ukrainian kids.

Then again, I guess as long as America can sustain being lazy, and competing in the world by continuing to import immigrant labor (I don't mean for farming, I mean for all the top management and research positions in top businesses), then it'll be ok. But my fear is that fewer and fewer educated immigrants are choosing to come to America.

I'm pretty pissed about this situation, too, but all I'm saying is, if Roman isn't talking, yelling at him or flooding him with e-mail won't prompt him to talk either. And if he has a lawyer and he is protected by an LLC, then you likely won't get much with legal threats, either.

Actually, if you are concerned about him holding your USD, and you sue him, instead of getting your USD back, all the USD he holds might get divided between the USD he owes from the recent bank closing and the BTC he still owes from the September hack. Since the BTC is a much bigger value, your USD portion may be tiny compared to what the BTC people get. (Disclosure: He owes me a lot of BTC, so this would actually be a better outcome for me).

So all I'm saying is, look at it from his point of view. If your business had its bank account closed, and you didn't feel like talking (I know you would keep people informed, as would I, but pretend you didn't want to or were advised not to), what would your reaction be to e-mail complaints and/or threats? Would they motivate you to be more open? Hopefully, Roman is a professional business type, and can just ignore them instead of taking any of them personally.

Source? I am fairly certain he is American, and living just a few hours north of me...

Sure, but then, if you wanted to use this game as a model for the real world, you would also have to demonstrate from historical and sociological perspective that "cooperation is a bad strategy" applies to the real world, too. Good luck with that.

Conversely, if the premise of this game is that "cooperation is a winning strategy," all you have to do to disprove this theory is to let people in the real world play it out. It if turns out that not cooperating is a better strategy, then the premise of the game is disproven, and you can go on claiming that NAP is wrong, and taking things by force is the natural order of things.

Why tell us, instead of just playing the game and seeing what happens?

I know it would be nice to have a little bit more information from him regarding what's going on, but what will harassing him achieve? Is he not aware that people want to know what's going on?

What would be the source of energy to keep the ship moving? Diesel transported to the ship by ferry? Solar or other electric motors?

The description makes it sound as if this will mostly be computer labs for software development and engineering with computer simulations. Will you have science research labs that would allow researchers to build and develop technology onboard? Two things instantly came to mind: sea-based energy generation, such as through waves or wind, and sewage and waste water recycling for farming. It would be much more ecologically sound to have a large barge somewhere near by where food can be grown experimentally, and fertilized by the people eating that food.

Would you consider adding research or other modular barges to the area? It would be nice to have a floating runway. Helicopters are nice, but they're ridiculously expensive and complicated compared to a prop plane, and as mention in last paragraph, extra space to work and research on would be nice.

I know the boat will be privately owned, but will you allow businesses to set up and sell their own services, such as afformentioned energy and food, or internet access, or other things that may not be considered savory in some countries? Or will all business have to go through your approval and require to pay you a cut?

Will you follow any regulations such as FCC radio band reservations, or will it basically be a free-for-all with conflicts resolved privately?

Will you be capable of providing a safe haven in case of a zombie outbreak on the mainland, including a well trained medical team to inspect arriving refugees for signs of infection, and a well armed security force to suppress any issues should an infection threat come on board?

I'll play

And yet, despite understanding this, you claim that this reality of human interaction is only possible due to laws and fear of consequences from police...

Sure, just as long as you remember that each of your actions is not an isolated event. It's not like you can lie or kill when it benefits you, and then come back and trade and donate as if nothing happened. Lying costs you trust, meaning you could get ripped off, and killing costs you in increased personal security expenses. If you add all your options and all their costs together, you'll still see that being honest and trading has a higher overall payoff than lying, stealing, and killing. Sure, there are outliers where doing the bad things is more profitable, but only if you can get away with it, and then you still risk being found out.