This idea is just stupid, not even considering the ridiculous technical challenges. There are about 200 countries in the world, so there are many experiments going on, and many of the experiments are very successful, from the socialist northern European states to more conservative ones like Singapore. Even the USA with it's many flaws is one of humanity's greatest achievements in terms of producing wealth and welfare for its citizens. Rich people like Thiel can pretty much choose whichever of these countries they want to live in but that is not good enough for him, he has this weird obsession with creating a Libertarian utopia out at sea.
The only argument you give for why this is such a stupid idea is that everything is just fine with existing countries/governments.
I beg to disagree.
Just in recent days we read on HN about cops assaulting 15 year old and throwing in jail 17 year old who filmed that on tape. We've been assaulted with Assange/WikiLeaks stories, where government officials are calling for assassinations, scramble to find existing/create new laws to prevent their dirty laundry being known to public. US is waging two unjust, unprovoked wars, started under made up pretenses (and that only few years after Vietnam disaster). Health care costs are spiraling out of control in US, while at the same time the quality of service is bad. Broadband in US is worse than in South Korea. Law making process is out of control, with mega-bills stuffed with unrelated rules bought by lobbying. War on drugs, terrorizing war on terror, prisons population out of control (compared to other countries). I could go on (and no, other countries are no better in that regard).
What I like about that talk is that it talks about governments serving the people. On paper that's what it is but in practice the government is the master and it behaves like one. The government has all the power and the way it feels is that it is on a relentless drive to get even more power and it's a rare act of short lived triumph where some of its power is stripped away and sanity restored. The examples of power grab abound (expanding search and seizure at borders and in the airports, trying to silence whistle-blowers by e.g. bullying private sector, criminalizing behavior like recording police at work (so that they can abuse their power more freely), unconditionally accepting content industry propaganda about terrible losses from piracy and enacting censorship legislations that try to go around due process).
So no, things are far from being good and I for one would welcome a government that tries to serve its people in reality, not just on paper.
And this is precisely the reason why this is utopia.
You see, power and money are related to each other pretty much like matter and energy: they are two forms of the same thing, interchangeable from one into the other, and behaving in mostly the same ways.
As long as there is some power to accumulate you will find some people who are better ad doing it than the others, and you're getting a power imbalance which is easily abused. So there is no guarantee that any nicely engineered utopia won't become warped after a while -- if anything, human history pretty much guarantees that it will.
Human society can't be engineered, it's a living mechanism, and in the past millennia we've been through pretty much all we could (although that heavily depends on technological advances, such as communications and the like). So far, we can safely say that there are two extreme forms of society when it comes to laws: a totalitarian state, where a small group of people keep the rest in control, and a total anarchy, where there are no set laws and rules. At each point in time, any society is at some point between those two extremes, and the larger the society it's more probable that different rules apply to various subdivisions within it.
So no, it is not possible to set up an ideal society (of any form, libertarian or socialist or whatever) and keep it such for a long time -- unless perhaps for very small, heavily regulated and closed groups, isolated from the rest of society which tolerates them (as is often the case with religious cults and small but wealthy totalitarian countries).
"Human society can't be engineered, it's a living mechanism"
These aren't exclusive. Certainly there are limits, but human society is engineered every day on many scales and the effects are all around you. Just look at the the differences in culture between a new tech startup and IBM. Aren't these human societies? For a larger scale, compare North Korea and Iceland.
"...in the past millennia we've been through pretty much all we could"
No, we've been through all that we've been through. Before democracy, there was no such thing and your reasoning would have deemed it impossible to live under any system but autocratic despotism. Even though we have a long way to go, humanity has created political innovation for its entire existence, and the rate of this innovation has continually accelerated. Why would this change?
I believe it comes down to culture. If the members of a society are instilled strongly enough with the right values, it isn't necessary for a central body to enforce these values. It would actually be counterproductive. For companies, these values relate to ingenuity, productivity, cooperation, ethics. For countries, the same apply, but replacing a central legal authority also requires strong judicial values. These already exist to an extent. Try punching an old lady on a crowded city street and see what happens to you--it won't matter whether there are police around.
Compassion and charity are also necessary. Luckily, in spite of the bad news we see constantly, these values are also quite pervasive in the world. Pervasive enough? I'm not sure. But I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that humanity could make great strides in improving its political systems, and perhaps reach a point that would look utopian to our present day, even if it takes a hell of a long time to get there.
I meant that we've been through most varieties we could considering the environment so far. Of course new forms of societies will appear as the environments (technological, sociological, environmental, biological etc) change.
My whole point was that it's impossible to create a "frozen", immutable form of society. There is no ideal form, it's always a compromise of some sort, and it always changes.
it is not possible to set up an ideal society (of any form, libertarian or socialist or whatever) and keep it such for a long time
Human society is probably the most complex system in the known universe. How can you understand it well enough to claim that no better configurations exists ?
Of course your use of the word "ideal" gives you an out since that is an absolute asymptotic concept, similar to that of "God", which bears no relation to any observable reality.
For my part I believe that solutions exist to the organization of human society which are undeniably better than the tiny set that has so far been tried in the short history of human civilization.
Sure, there are tradeoffs and frictions in the practicalities. But the potential solution space isn't dictated by a few simple axes of decentralization vs. concentration, or totalitarianism vs. anarchy. It's massively dimensional, and we already know governance variation can make a massive difference in quality of life: consider West vs. East Germany, or Hong Kong vs. pre-liberalization China, or South vs. North Korea.
What if there are other configurations as much better than the current best, as the current best is better than the current worst? Or put more concretely, compared to North Korea, South Korea is already a 'utopia'. Maybe there's another solution as much better again, which makes South Korea look like a retro prison state, and would to its vurrent residents be a comparative utopia. (Of course, this utopia's residents, once inured to it, would still find plenty to gripe about. C'est la treadmill hédonique.)
Most existing states have strong incentives to send the message: "Current tradeoffs are as good as it gets; this is already the best of all possible worlds — so get back to your station." They're lying.
I definitely don't think the existing governments are fine, there's tons of things that make me rage about the state of things. My point was that if you want to (unpatriotically) give up on your country instead of trying to improve it, and you're rich, and you ignore language and culture (like the seasteading idea does), you have many other countries to pick from.
Now if out of all the other countries in the world you can't find one that's even close to your ideals maybe there is a reason for that, maybe your utopia is not possible. Thiel as a CEO got to tell people what to do, he seems to have this idea that he will setup his government and people will just follow his rules. So I guess he's thinking of being some kind of benevolent dictator. In some other of his social writing* he has said he doesn't believe in democracy anymore. But even in a dictatorship you have to get consent from at least your security.
In his effort to escape politics he doesn't seem to realize that politics is what happens when you get a lot of people together making decisions. What happens when charismatic socialist or conservatives leaders rise up in his country? What happens when special interests start competing with each other?
If he were somehow able to solve the technical, economical, security and legal issues the whole thing would just devolve into the same political mess that every society goes through. How do I know? Because that's what happens everytime a government has been formed, it's what's happened to every single other country in the world.
What I wonder reading that article is what freedoms people like Thiel perceive are missing from his life - he is successful, immensely wealthy and living in what most people would regard as a free country.
The freedom to avoid, rather than have to pretend to be respectful to, incompetent, arrogant, often obnoxious officials, like cops, TSA, zoning boards, code enforcement, etc, etc, ad nauseum?
I really don't think many of things are a big problem for someone as wealthy as he is (e.g. private air travel avoids the TSA problem). I'm sure high powered law firms/lobbyists/political contributions could soon remove any problems in other areas.
Maybe he is scared. Governments change, many civilization's have been left poor and defenseless by politicians. Seeking liberty is a form of self defense.
The reason you're wrong is right in the title. There are plenty of countries already, with plenty of different systems. There's great variation from one extreme to the other, but otherwise there are smooth clusters around particular areas.
The point of this project is to create a startup country, a place where greater risk--in terms of the system used, not necessarily within the system--can mean greater reward. Yes, Thiel is a libertarian, but TSI quite explicitly concentrates on enabling anyone to partake of their output. This isn't Galt's Gulch in the Water, nor is it intended to (maybe in Thiel's private dreams, but definitely not in the way TSI is run).
I'd love to find out if the common modes of living we're used to are local maxima, or if we'll find that the various experiments converge again towards familiar clusters.
To be content with what's out there is the same as saying "well, pick one of the many companies out there and join as an employee. What's the point of starting your own company?"
> To be content with what's out there is the same as saying "well, pick one of the many companies out there and join as an employee. What's the point of starting your own company?"
Not only that but you don't even get to pick your company. (unless you consider immigration but well, it's not as easy as switching job)
