Mieville’s article on the failure of the Floating Libertarian Utopia to materialize nicely points up the flaws in the libertarian world view. A Rapture-like underwater city or a floating fortress would be expecting a bit much, mind you. But building an ocean-going vessel and keeping it afloat is a straightforward capitalist venture. There are whole armadas of cruise ships, after all.
And yet the Libertarian Princess Liner has yet to set sail. Why is that?
Partly because there’s just no market for it. It’s a tenet of libertarian belief that living in the bowels of The State is overwhelmingly oppressive, something that any aspiring entrepreneur would attempt to escape. But successful entrepreneurs do not in fact try to escape The State; they control it instead. Why spend your time worrying about pirates and storms and leaks in the hull when any little problem can be solved with some cash and a few calls to lawyers and politicians?
And partly it’s because, frankly, the libertarians are not up to the job. They imagine themselves as capitalism’s shock troops, the best and the brightest. In fact they’re dreamers, not doers. There’s nothing wrong with that (someone in the game biz can hardly afford to throw stones at dreamers.) What’s wrong is not understanding their own limitations. If Patri Friedman were a real entrepreneur and not just playing at being one he’d know that raising a grand total of two … million … dollars in venture capital is pretty pathetic. (No doubt the socialist leech dreamers at Irrational raised more than that to make Bioshock.)
No Brett, he means people from the mainland flying to the crazy floating city to get medical care, not that people living there will come to the mainland for medical care.
This probably isn’t what you’re thinking of (the originating post isn’t Charlie’s – and I don’t think that’s him in the comments), but there’s a fair bit of discussion along these lines in the Not going Galtthread on Crooked Timber.
A commenter there notes that “It’s widely understood among libertarians that, were you to actually somehow put together a real libertarian nation, it would immediately be invaded by the non-libertarian nations, unless you made it substantially non-libertarian by cooperating with the war on drugs.” (My emphasis.)
I don’t follow libertarian stuff beyond the broad outlines, so I don’t know how prevalent that understanding actually is, or what the implications are for their current philosophy and policy positions. Interesting, if true.
I don’t think it’s ignorant and retarded to say that people leave the country for cheaper medical care. It is presumptuous (but predictable) for people here to assume this ronpaulboat would be less safe then other destinations.
I find it incredibly unlikely that it would even be cheaper. As anyone that has spent time on a small island knows, isolation and the loss of economies of scale makes everything considerably more expensive.
The difference is that real countries typically have the means to be self-sustaining. External trade improves quality of life (sometimes considerably), but it isn’t typicaly necessary to support life. I have a hard time believing that a tiny floating city-state can even produce enough food to feed itself, let alone have surplus resources to trade with other countries. And trading services? You realize that companies typically outsource service jobs because labor in the outsource destinations is cheaper, right? How cheap do you think labor is going to be on this non-self-sufficient, maintenance-hungry floating nation?
The point is that they are idiots, and people that would travel to the Failboat to purchase not-cheaper, almost-certainly-less-safe medical care are even dumber.
Yeah, that’s probably it. I also don’t see how a libertarian state would defend itself; the adherents certainly don’t act like they want to pay for a modern military.
Why is it presumptuous? Libertarians have explained in detail how they think it’ll work out - no regulations with “the market” weeding out bad practitioners. There’s scenarios where that could work, but “a giant pile of one-off visitors from another country” sure doesn’t sound like it; the incentives are terrible.
Why would doctors, nurses, etc move there? And why would patients visit GaltBoat instead of India, Mexico, etc? It would seem to sort of defeat the purpose.
But if they were being paid better than other places (USA), then wouldn’t that combine with the having-to-import all-supplies thing to make the health care there be more expensive? Thus defeating the “I’m flying to the deregulated zone for cheaper healthcare” thing?
I guess your assertion is that all the regulation is what’s causing the price to be what it is here?
Ok, assuming your first assertion is correct, let’s get a defination of “they” here. Also, if the doctors are getting better pay, aren’t “they” or “them” going to have to charge higher rates in order to cover that higher pay? Seriously, walk me though this, 'cause I’m not seeing it.
As to your second postulate, that’s already available (India, China, Mexico, etc).
And seriously, $2 million ain’t buying that big of a GaltBoat.
The premise itself is deeply disappointing in it’s puerile imagination; that is, walking outside of another groups’ self proclaimed jurisdiction, in order to do things that jurisdiction likely considers illegal, reveals how narrow these wannabe industry captains plan. Relying on states to maintain their own self proclaimed restrictions, with no recourse other than whining if they don’t, is just stupid.
In order to proclaim an extraterritorial legal entity, and not be hillbillies on a flat bottom fishin’ for food, you need services that are high value; and the only one with the weight to pull it off would be finance. To “float” a mutual fund would have a quite different meaning then. It’s still insane though if you can’t keep the simultaneous and contradictory needs of being disconnected from the world’s legal entities while being instantly connected to their financial markets. Finance could pull off the vulnerability thing by bottling up value on their floating pleasure palaces and holding the world’s economies’ valuations on board vicariously, at least in theory, if you designed it right; the hard work these lazy libertarians haven’t (and probably couldn’t) do.
