Philosophical investigation into seasteading

Editor's Notes

• #3: In an essay called ‘The Education of a Libertarian’ (2009), Thiel writes that many libertarians after college become disillusioned with politics and folk activism as “capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd” (Thiel, 2009). Nick Cross (2012) describes Thiel’s political message as follows: “the masses have given up on unregulated capitalism, so those who support unregulated capitalism should give up on the masses”.
• #4: It will be argued that governments are poor at finding solutions to human problems and that what is best for humanity can best be discovered by letting millions engage in trial and error; thus, let a hundred seasteads bloom and let a hundred social organizations contend.
• #5: Political disagreements include disagreements about the interpretation of political values, such as freedom, equality, or justice
• #6: Rawls calls a person’s set of values and concerns the person’s comprehensive doctrine. He accepts that it is an inevitable reality that people hold different comprehensive doctrines, and upon this notion of reality he builds his political philosophy. In order to deal with the reality of value pluralism, he looks for sufficient commonalities that will serve as the basis for an overlapping consensus on a particular structure of society. Political philosophy should be practical. It must therefore be able to identify an “underlying basis of philosophical and moral agreement” (Rawls, 2001, p. 2) for the purpose of maintaining social order in a divided and pluralistic society; Political philosophy should help us think about the aims, purposes and roles of people in society. “[I]t belongs to reason and reflection (both theoretical and practical) to orient us in the (conceptual) space, say, of all possible ends, individual and associational, political and social” (Rawls, 2001, p. 3) It has therefore the role of orientation; Political philosophy should be “realistically utopian” (Rawls, 2001, p. 4). While it prescribes a utopian society, the society should also be realizable and realistic. It must therefore have ideal and realist elements.
• #7: The clearest and most common form of social organization that is assumed to deal best with a pluralistic society is a representative democracy, a system in which majority agreement is considered to decide or influence public policies consensually through a voting process. It is generally believed by proponents of a representative democracy that the voter elects political agents who will decide policies that represent the will of their principals. As these principals all have different comprehensive doctrines and values, the political agent is therefore seen as the unifying force of the pluralistic society.
• #8: Can political agents truly represent their constituencies when members of a society have different comprehensive doctrines, hold different values, and have different interests? Imagine that there is a piece of legislation that our representatives can either pass or not with 35 per cent of the public in favour of the legislation and 65 per cent who oppose it. If our representatives pass the legislation, they will represent the 35 per cent and ignore the interests of the 65 per cent. If they do not pass the legislation, they will represent the 65 per cent and cease to represent the interests of the 35 per cent. “In this very normal political scenario, it is not that it is difficult to represent a constituency – it is rather that it is impossible” (Casey, 2012, p. 125). Democracy is moreover a system that is inherently violent, because it divides people along the lines of their comprehensive doctrines. People with similar political thoughts organize themselves into groups to campaign against people who hold conflicting ideas. In a democracy, these people then vote for their preferred ruler to rule over people who may have contrasting views or who may be indifferent to political issues at all. It has never happened that the turnout at elections is 100 per cent. The average turnout rate in Europe is around 43 per cent (Eurostat.com). Nonetheless, the 43 per cent are choosing political agents who are expected to represent the 57 per cent of the non-voting constituency. The violent nature of democracy is that with every vote the voter attempts to enforce their preferred rulers or legislation unto others. This basically makes it a system in which people lose their political autonomy to other voters.
• #10: Meta-system level perspective of the industry of governments Nozick argues that utopia is meta-utopia which is an environment in which societies with different ways of lives or utopias can co-exist.
• #11: In Liberal Archipelago (2003), Chandran Kukathas presents a view of diversity and freedom that is similar to Nozick’s idea of meta-utopia even though he does not mention Nozick’s work. He maintains that “[T]he principles of a free society describe … an archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions” (Kukathas, 2003, p. 75). In his model of the ‘liberal archipelago’, sovereign communal entities are like islands in an archipelago with their own ways of life. Individuals are then free to move between and associate themselves with communal entities and to live a life that they prefer. Kukathas writes that the principle of freedom of association is the fundamental principle of a free society, and that the principle of mutual toleration of associations is a second corollary. He furthermore asserts that society should be structured “according to norms of mutual tolerance or civility, under which people accept that different groups or communities live by different moral beliefs, but also recognize that no group has the right to compel anyone to become, or to remain, a member”
• #12: SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION The term sociological imagination is defined by C. Wright Mills (1959) as a certain “quality of mind” that enables a person to see social problems and social possibilities from different perspectives. He envisions it as a practice by which the mind becomes “a moving prism catching light from as many angles as possible”. The sociological imagination can provide us with a vision of change and human flourishing, and it can guide us towards progress. New technologies New customs and values EPISTEMOLOGICAL MODESTY We should realize that our intellect is fallible, and we should know how little we know so that we can prevent ourselves from falling into dogmatism. This epistemological modesty is also required for the experimentation with new forms of social organization. One of the fundamental reasons why Popper developed his theory of falsification is his fear for dogmatic thought. He wanted every theory to be open for experimentation in the real world and falsifiable, refutable or testable. Popper thus seems to warn us against focusing too much on abstract theory and too little on real life observations. When the intellectual focuses too much on abstract theory, he may lose touch with the real world while holding “pretensions of expertise” REALIZATION THAT ORDER CAN EMERGE SPONTANEOUSLY Carl Menger (1883) has asserted that: “Language, religion, law, even the state itself, and, to mention a few economic social phenomena, the phenomena of markets, of competition, of money, and numerous other social structures are already met with in epochs of history where we cannot properly speak of a purposeful activity of the community as such directed at establishing them (Menger, 1883, p. 146).” REALIZATION THAT UTOPIAN DREAM OF A SINGLE PERFECT SOCIETY IS IMPOSSIBLE The epistemologically modest intellectual furthermore knows that he does not know what the best form of social organization is for everyone as every person holds different values of life. He admits that there is not one single social organization that adheres to everyone’s comprehensive doctrines. Therefore there is not one single utopia that is objectively the best for everyone.
• #13: The concept of starting new societies or utopias has sparked the imagination of several story tellers. AYN RAND – ATLAS SHRUGGED One example is the Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand who, in her novel Atlas Shrugged (1957), tells the story of a secretly organized strike by the world’s creative leaders. John Galt, the man that has organized this strike, takes them into a secluded town where they form a small community that lives by libertarian principles. BIOSHOCK Another example is the famous videogame BioShock. It tells the story of a philosopher and entrepreneur Andrew Ryan, who due to growing discontent with the government decides to build an underwater city in the oceans. The city has been built to set the industrious and inventive “free from the clutching hands of parasites” (Shirley, 2011, p. 89). Andrew Ryan, who is as resentful of government interventions as John Galt, describes a parasite as someone who “hates three things: free markets, free will, and free men”. Both John Galt and Andrew Ryan are dissatisfied with the legal structures of society and all have a vision of creating a space where they can build up a particular social structure in the absence of government meddling. However, whereas John Galt has moved into a secluded town, Andrew Ryan actually is a seasteader for he has homesteaded part of the seas. SEASTEADING One of the core ideas of seasteading is that an open experimentation space for social organizations will lead to progress in social rules and legislations, just as an experimentation space for new technologies leads to technological progress.
• #14: 1. LOWER COST OF SWITCHING SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS A person who dislikes the state could (a) continue living in the same state, (b) emigrate to another state, (c) change the state through the democratic process, or (d) change the state through violent revolution. All these four options come with considerable costs which makes them unattractive.