Galt's Island

[Francisco Ferrer]

The Seasteading Institute's Communication Director and Author Joe Quirk answers: "What Do Seasteaders Want?"

"The United States hasn't invaded the Cayman Islands. Malaysia hasn't invaded Singapore. Small island nations, if they set a better example, often change the course of old, large nations."

YouTube link.

[syrakusos]

You need a real nation like Singapore. Anything else is just a pipe dream. How to Start Your Own Country by Erwin S. Strauss outlined the opportunities and threats over 30 years ago. His careful reporting revealed the failures of several "libertarian" new country ventures. He also detailed why one attempt - the radio station platform Sealand: When Pirates Rules the Waves - actually succeeded. Ronald Reagan rolled over Granada like Sherman through Georgia - and for the same reason: no threat to national sovereignty can be allowed. Look at what happened to Silk Road. The government launched a massive disinformation campaign including a phony "murder for hire" scheme just to discredit the hapless guy they decided to declare "The Dread Pirate Roberts." Cartoons of airships landing at island entrepots make great graphic novels. All you lack is the Justice League of America.

[Selene]

Ronald Reagan rolled over Granada like Sherman through Georgia - and for the same reason: no threat to national sovereignty can be allowed.

Do you still have the famous photos of our troops in Granada burning Granada's granaries and shit like Sherman's boys did in Georgia?

A...

[Selene]

OMG!!!

This sounds awful!! Worse than Sherman!

Here is Granada...

Nearly 8,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines had participated in Operation Urgent Fury along with 353 Caribbean allies of the Caribbean Peace Forces. U.S. forces sustained 19 killed and 116 wounded; Cuban forces sustained 25 killed, 59 wounded, and 638 combatants captured. Grenadian forces casualties were 45 killed and 358 wounded; at least 24 civilians were killed, 18 of whom were killed in the accidental bombing of a Grenadian mental hospital.^[2]:62

Here is Sherman and Georgia...

Sherman's march frightened and appalled Southerners. It hurt morale, for civilians had believed the Confederacy could protect the home front.
Sherman's March to the Sea

Sherman had terrorized the countryside; his men had destroyed all sources of food and forage and had left behind a hungry and demoralized people. Although he did not level any towns, he did destroy buildings in places where there was resistance. His men had shown little sympathy for Millen, the site of Camp Lawton, where Union prisoners of war were held. Physical attacks on white civilians were few, although it is not known how slave women fared at the hands of the invaders. Often male slaves posted guards outside the cabins of their women.

Confederate president Jefferson Davis had urged Georgians to undertake a scorched-earth policy of poisoning wells and burning fields, but civilians in the army's path had not done so. Sherman, however, burned or captured all the food stores that Georgians had saved for the winter months. As a result of the hardships on women and children, desertions increased in Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia. Sherman believed his campaign against civilians would shorten the war by breaking the Confederate will to fight, and he eventually received permission to carry this psychological warfare into South Carolina in early 1865. By marching through Georgia and South Carolina he became an archvillain in the South and a hero in the North.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-march-sea

Not sure if this is representative of Granada, or, Georgia...it is not easy because they both start with "g" and they both have "r" "a" are in them...

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

Hurrah, Hurrah, we bring the Jubilee

Hurrah, Hurrah the flag that sets you free

So we went marching from Atlanta to the Sea

as we went Marching through Georgia....

[Francisco Ferrer]

I suppose there would have been cheering among some readers if Atlas Shrugged had ended with the 1st Armored Division rolling through Galt's Gulch.

No threat to national sovereignty can be allowed.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Not sure if this is representative of Granada, or, Georgia...it is not easy because they both start with "g" and they both have "r" "a" are in them...

The most relevant similarity is that both wars were unconstitutional.

[Francisco Ferrer]

How to Start Your Own Country by Erwin S. Strauss outlined the opportunities and threats over 30 years ago. His careful reporting revealed the failures of several "libertarian" new country ventures. He also detailed why one attempt - the radio station platform Sealand: When Pirates Rules the Waves - actually succeeded.

I've read Strauss's book and heard him talk a number of times. What's in the Seasteading proposal that's inconsistent with Strauss's ideas on how to start your own country?

[syrakusos]

I suppose there would have been cheering among some readers if Atlas Shrugged had ended with the 1st Armored Division rolling through Galt's Gulch.

No threat to national sovereignty can be allowed.

I meant that the United States in particular will not allow a threat to its own sovereignty in the Caribbean. As you know the Strauss book, you have read about the failure of Minerva. You also understand his theories on forming a new nation. Just building the airship in the picture is a totally different and complicated venture of its own, yet there it is. I expect a Seascape to be served and supplied by more conventional craft, just because that is what is most easily available. But an old container carrier is not the stuff of dreams.

Certainly, for some science fiction future - if this happens; if that does not - entrepreneurs may indeed launch ventures like these. In the immediate future, my confidence would be raised by a story in Reuters Finance or CNN Money, rather than a YouTube video calling for socialists and anarcho-capitalists to just up and do this interesting thing.

[moralist]

Utopias don't work because they only attract collectivist failures who are too weak to act on their own.

Understanding that nations will not tolerate threats to their sovereignty, the obvious approach is to build a Galt's Gulch which poses no threat. This is where acting as an individual trumps the futile flailings of utopian collectives.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

Utopias don't work because they only attract collectivist failures who are too weak to act on their own.

Understanding that nations will not tolerate threats to their sovereignty, the obvious approach is to build a Galt's Gulch which poses no threat. This is where acting as an individual trumps the futile flailings of utopian collectives.

Greg

Read "The Man who sold the Moon" by Robert Heinlein.

[Francisco Ferrer]

The most famous historical example of a utopia that failed to live up to its written promise was the United States of America.

[Wolf DeVoon]

The most famous historical example of a utopia that failed to live up to its written promise was the United States of America.

A couple objections. It wasn't framed as a utopia. No one in 1787 conceived of governing a continent or becoming a superpower.

It took 200 years to fully implement the Rights of Man set forth in the Declaration ("all men are created equal") but we did it.

Utopia is an entirely different proposition.

The goal of expanding liberty presupposes new ideas. Without new ideas, we stay stuck in the past, because today's political establishment is yesterday's solution. The last time America did anything strenuous in defense of Liberty was 1776. The War of Independence was a giant step forward. But the Declaration's premise of equality took a Civil War and two centuries of struggle to deliver something like one person, one vote, regardless of race, religion, gender, brainpower, etc. In hindsight, voting and its attendant political vanity was not a very good idea. However, if it required 200 years to explore a simple idea like democracy, it behooves us to start asking what's next? What's next will take a long time to discuss and understand. New ideas, by definition, are unconventional and risky. You have to surrender the familiar, to go forward. Standby to jetison Old Glory. Let's noodle on New Glory.

["The End of Fukuyama", LFC Times, Oct. 16, 2000]

[Selene]

The most famous historical example of a utopia that failed to live up to its written promise was the United States of America.

So we can at least have a copy of the "written promise" that you state exists, so we shall not waste too much time trying to guess.

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

The most famous historical example of a utopia that failed to live up to its written promise was the United States of America.

It was never Utopia. What about all those slaves being whupped to within an inch of their lives?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Francisco Ferrer]

To be accurate, no place has been a utopia, because human behavior is simply too erratic to fit preplanned models.

But look at the Preamble of the Constitution: it bears in every phrase a promise of a society that approaches the ideal--which is precisely what every other utopian experiment has been organized to achieve, be it Brook Farm, New Harmony, or your sister's college commune.

Here's what George Ripley, founder of Brook Farm, said was his intention:

Our objects as you know, are to insure a more natural union between between intellectual and manual labor ... guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry ... thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life, than can be led amidst the pressures of our competitive institutions.

There was no promise of perfectionism in his plans, but like the Founder's compact, there was a hope for the creation of a "a more perfect Union" by breaking with the past.

[Selene]

To be accurate, no place has been a utopia, because human behavior is simply too erratic to fit preplanned models.

But look at the Preamble of the Constitution: it bears in every phrase a promise of a society that approaches the ideal--which is precisely what every other utopian experiment has been organized to achieve, be it Brook Farm, New Harmony, or your sister's college commune.

Here's what George Ripley, founder of Brook Farm, said was his intention:

Our objects as you know, are to insure a more natural union between between intellectual and manual labor ... guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry ... thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life, than can be led amidst the pressures of our competitive institutions.

There was no promise of perfectionism in his plans, but like the Founder's compact, there was a hope for the creation of a "a more perfect Union" by breaking with the past.

You really do not see the fundamental difference between this crap [guarantee] and the Preamble [form a more perfect union]?

A...

[Brant Gaede]

Here's what George Ripley, founder of Brook Farm, said was his intention:

Our objects as you know, are to insure a more natural union between between intellectual and manual labor ... guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry ... thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life, than can be led amidst the pressures of our competitive institutions.

This is a carrot. A stick is around somewhere. Whether the Declaration of Independence was a carrot, it didn't sound like communism.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

...hope for the creation of a "a more perfect Union"

Perhaps you know the back story, perhaps not. The Federal Convention of 1787 addressed five urgent problems: (1) bankruptcy of the several States and irredeemable Continental paper; (2) import taxes laid by one State on the produce of another -- New Jersey was compared to "a cask tapped at both ends," taxed by New York and Pennsylvania; (3) disputes over Crown Lands and overlapping State boundaries; (4) no venue to settle disputes or enforce contracts between citizens of separate States; and (5) the very real possibility of secession and alarming foreign intrigue by England and France to split the infant country.

Those tremendous economic and political problems, undeniably a dire crisis, drew delegates to Annapolis in 1786 and to Philadelphia in 1787 to consider amendments to the Articles of Confederation (not a new "Federal" constitution). After nearly three months of debate, what emerged had to be presented with a rational explanation. A committee of Style wrote the Preamble, pitching it as "a more perfect Union" that would fairly and effectively resolve the multiple troubles that imperiled the Confederation of 13 sovereign States who were in awful financial and political straits, its one-State one-vote Congress hopelessly deadlocked by the rule of unanimous consent, unable to compel States to pay agreed requisitions or discharge war debts.

In that, the Federal Constitution and its bicameral U.S. Congress succeeded. The five urgent problems I mentioned were resolved.

That's all "a more perfect Union" meant to the framers and their respective State legislatures who ratified it.

[Selene]

That's all "a more perfect Union" meant to the framers and their respective State legislatures who ratified it.

Correct.

I believe that a number of folks who may read these intricate Constitutional threads would be astounded as to who opposed the Ratification of the Constitution.

When you research the State by State debates and political intrigues and how razor sharp the votes were, it certainly was no discussion of utopia and property rights were pivotal.

A...

[moralist]

The most famous historical example of a utopia that failed to live up to its written promise was the United States of America.

That's really strange, Frank...

...the US of A failed to live up to its written promise to you and yet it has lived up to its written promise to me.

You did know that promise was contingent and not indiscriminately for everyone, didn't you?... No? I didn't think so.

That promise which failed you was made for those who live lives deserving of it.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

--John Adams

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

The most famous historical example of a utopia that failed to live up to its written promise was the United States of America.

That's really strange, Frank...

...the US of A failed to live up to its written promise to you and yet it has lived up to its written promise to me.

You did know that promise was contingent and not indiscriminately for everyone, didn't you?... No? I didn't think so.

That promise which failed you was made for those who live lives deserving of it.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

--John Adams

Greg

The Constitutional United States died over a century ago. What we see now is its decomposing corpse.

U.S. Constitution. R.I.P.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

The most famous historical example of a utopia that failed to live up to its written promise was the United States of America.

That's really strange, Frank...

...the US of A failed to live up to its written promise to you and yet it has lived up to its written promise to me.

You did know that promise was contingent and not indiscriminately for everyone, didn't you?... No? I didn't think so.

That promise which failed you was made for those who live lives deserving of it.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

--John Adams

Greg

The Constitutional United States died over a century ago. What we see now is its decomposing corpse.

U.S. Constitution. R.I.P.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Whether the Constitution is alive or dead in your own life depends on how you live. The Constitution does not fail you... you can only fail It by being the kind of person who is unfit to be governed by It.

See how each of our two views come from two completely different places?

While you're disappointed about It... I aspire to be deserving of It.

One view is negative... and the other is positive.

Greg

[Wolf DeVoon]

no place has been a utopia, because human behavior is simply too erratic to fit preplanned models.

Francisco, I wish to apologize retrospectively, concerning my pedantic recitation of U.S. constitutional history, and in advance for taking up yet another portion of your remarks, quoted above. I don't wish to dissuade you from the proposition that human behavior is erratic. All of history and all experience (including my own) is littered with folly and regret. Most men are loathe to admit mistakes or moral turpitude, for fear of shameful humiliation.

Men are not angels. Our protestations of innocence and truth are frequently exaggerated

and unwarranted... Men lie. We also remember wrongly, forget, etc. [COGIGG, p.131]

So, I willingly admit that men are incapable of good government, neither of themselves nor of others. That's why Thomas Paine rejoiced in his Common Sense that "in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." In 1780, John Adams enshrined this principle in the Massachusetts Constitution by seeking to establish "a government of laws and not of men."

In the long, dark tragedy of recorded human history, until very recently -- the last 15 minutes of the 24th hour of our sordid stumble toward justice -- did men like Paine and Adams catch a first glimpse of enlightenment, that law should rule men equally and impersonally. Like pioneers in a wilderness, they misjudged what it meant and what it required. But the principle they discovered was a solid cleat upon the shrouded craig of human aspiration that pulled other honest hearts along, in hope of climbing higher.

Abraham Lincoln was such a man. "The ant who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest will furiously defend the fruit of his labor against whatever robber assails him. So plain that the most dumb and stupid slave that has ever toiled for a master does constantly know that he is wronged. So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume after volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself."

I'm not defending what Lincoln did in office, nor what followed, when America became enamored with legislation, tumbling down into the weeds of vote peddling, ward healing, and graft. It was an easy flattery to convince men that equality was a matter of arithmetic and law could be anything a plurality wanted it to be. The first strong point of American justice remained on a fog-shrouded ledge far above party politics -- forgotten.

I went looking for it 40 years ago.

Like Paine and Adams, with no comparison of stature implied, a flux of circumstance in 1999 led to another upward ascent that required three years of groping with every bit of energy I could muster, to reach a summit they could not have imagined. The rule of law does not need a legislature or public purse. Having won this knowledge in a trial by ordeal (I'm not joking: my life was in jeopardy) I have something pertinent to explain, commemorated as follows:

I hereby certify that the law cannot catch or deter a clever evildoer. That's not the purpose of law, which exists first as a means of restraining mob violence, ignorant prejudice, and statist tyranny. If we apprehend a callous predator, from time to time, that's laudatory. But ending systemic, wholesale injustice is far more urgent, especially the heavy lifting of securing constitutional rights, which are few in number — no summary punishment, fair trial by jury, no perjury, no secret evidence, and the right of appeal to ensure fundamental fairness. [COGIGG, p.66]

A "government of laws and not of men" cannot be Utopia. There will always be tragedy and wickedness that the rule of law cannot ameliorate. But we can put a stop to the worst evil of all -- the criminal conspiracy of voters and politicians to obstruct justice and put themselves above it as Kings.

[syrakusos]

America did and does have a Utopian element in its history, from the first English colonies, certainly.

(The Spanish were here for something else, though, once they began serious settlement, they followed many of the same norms and forms as the English, but with a different cultural context. The French, I cannot typify. Largely, Spanish, French, or Swedish or whoever, everyone came here for "a new life." Otherwise they would have stayed in Europe.)

That being as it may, the English colonies started with charters. Then, they formed compacts. Everyone knows the Albany Plan of Union. Do you know this one:

The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England; May 19, 1643

The Articles of Confederation between the Plantations under the Government of the Massachusetts, the Plantations under the Government of New Plymouth, the Plantations under the Government of Connecticut, and the Government of New Haven with the Plantations in Combination therewith... http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/art1613.asp

Writing a workable constitution took 130 years of trials and errors. It may not yet be perfect. It may have been flawed even 1789. But it was not dreamed up whole by some self-inspired visionary. Read California's Utopian Colonies by Robert V. Hine. No place on earth was more hospitable to experimenters. No people were more motivated to make new futures. Not one was successful. You cannot plan social order. You can only plan a fence around social disorder. Hence the parsimonious Constitution of Galt's Gulch. Great document; wrong nation.