Look into the history of libertarians trying to set up paradises of like minded people to find out why this will fail. They start into the 19th century and just keep failing.

When everyone is out for themselves, the very basics of civilization collapse.

Empathy and pro social behavior are key to our survival and evolution as a species. Oligarchs and unbridled greed are a violation and exploitation of the social contract and bottleneck progress and healthy societal functioning.

The Bioshock games weren’t just spun up out of nowhere.

I'm not surprised by more of this sovereign state nonsense, I'm just disgusted that they're proposing building it on a reservation.

Because they want to build and experiment without all the red tape. Of course they do and people have to relearn why regulations are written in blood.

They hate the FDA, but one of the reasons it exists was because some folks sold radioactive beverages, mascara that caused blindness, a bunch of snake oil and medicine that killed people and/or caused deformities.

Adventures with financial deregulation and crypto haven't been much better so far.

BTC is useful though.

It's very easy to judge from the EU, but if you are in Russia and need to pay for something in the interwebs, it's very convenient to have an imperfect, but kinda functioning system like this.

(Idiots replying with "go rebel" or "change location" need not bother, I happen to have family, friends, dog, ASD and BAD, my sister who's on my support every time she makes a planning mistake can change location, I can't. I'm also not a Jedi chosen one to have useful options of "rebelling".)

Libertarianism doesn't deny empathy and "pro social behavior" (as an autistic person, I rarely see it toward myself, not being liked and not making right faces - apparently not deserving of it, but OK ; it's already good if those "pro social" people don't consider it normal to steal from you when they don't like you), it actually relies on those more.

The issue is that it's something that needs scale and consistency. You can't just assemble a bunch of idealists and crooks and expect them to make a working mechanism.

I don't think there were many more successful attempts by left anarchists.

Is that different for non-libertarian paradise-building attempts?

I swear, you guys just apparently decide nobody will ask the obvious questions, because libertarians are an allowed target.

It's all fun and games until the bears show up

It's the deregulated part that's an issue when people lose their life savings and nobody can help them because no regulations.

I know it's not anonymous.

It has the widest reach of cryptocurrencies.

The Town That Went Feral

When a group of libertarians set about scrapping their local government, chaos descended. And then the bears moved in.

The New Republic (newrepublic.com)

Libertarian attempts make it pretty obvious why libertarianism fails wholesale. Everybody says “live and let live” at first, but as the author notes in that article it must inevitably devolve into “arguments over who is living free in the correct way”. Which is blatantly antithetical to the concept they started from.

And if they didnt devolve into those arguments, then they would just all drown in a sea of trash and angry bears. Libertarianism is fundamentally flawed and inherently lose-lose no matter how it plays out. Governance is actually important. Whoda thunk?

Everyone cant just be free of their neighbor. If your neighbor feeds the bears you will deal with the consequences too. Probably worse ones, since you arent so friendly with the bears (from the bear perspective)

We probably have different understandings of the word “libertarian,” from what I’m reading.

I’m referring to the people who would also label themselves “anarcho-capitalists,” as the literal definition of libertarianism isn’t typically associated with the term. I put it in quotes since capitalism by design leads to and encourages hierarchy (private ownership etc etc). No, commerce/trade is not the same and is as about as old as written history itself.

I’m also autistic and have been ostracized for “wrong” behavior. When I say “pro social” I mean mutual aid, genuine compassion and actually treating other humans with respect for their immutable traits (beliefs like bigotry don’t count). I do not mean masking or “fitting in.” Unfortunately we do get unfairly judged and that’s bad. But - we also are generally capable of finding and forming our own groups.

Sovereign utopia building as a whole has its own set of issues, but that’s not what was specifically being addressed. Socialist policies in general improve the wellbeing of the respective societies they’re applied to, though.

It's a technical decision. There are so many things in life where you can lose everything in a moment without a fraction of your own guilt, and nobody can help you.

Thanks to that technical decision BTC still functions the way I described.

I'm talking about ancaps as well.

Err... I'm not trolling or taking any sides here but couldn't that also be claimed about communism? And the vast majority of monarchies if you start your analysis then... And I guess if we look at the current day, one could argue contemporary democracy tends to devolve into fascism...

But, you know, It's almost like the systems in use are irrelevant when there are generalized hostile war scenarios with huge foreign threats that might exterminate your nation state or make it implode through sabotage... And this seems to happen roughly every hundred years or so .

And after the horrors of war, the general population unifies to pick up what's left and swear they will never let anything like this happen again. But then they have kids and grandkids that are like "oh, gramps you so silly".

A basic notion of history and some critical thought shows us this has happened time and time again, the only significant contemporary difference being the existence of aerial and nuclear warfare.

Empires have life cycles, and they get old. Then they get corrupt and other empires start challenging them... And then you have a big big war, and then someone wins, and then people calm down for roughly 50 years... and on and on it goes.

Governance is actually important. Whoda thunk?

Some day you'll read Tao Te Ching and maybe stop thinking in absolutes.

Where I live libertarians are the most adequate part of the social fabric suppressed by that governance. Trots are the second.

In any case, you can have a thought experiment of the same town the same size with a group of people assuming governance and telling others what to do. They can collect taxes and tell they are using them as well as they can. The bear problem will probably be smaller, albeit sometimes someone complaining will accidentally meet a bear, the drowning in trash one - I dunno, probably the trash will move to the places furthest from where that group lives, but won't be really disposed of, because - why? No incentive.

I've become a libertarian after watching one enthusiastic teacher organize some sort of discussion clubs. Everyone in favor of more governance eventually shifted to authoritarianism, when talking long enough, because when you are thinking as if you were the government, you just won't understand why you shouldn't surrender power and then why you should answer to anyone. Less governance - OK, I was alone in that, but the best (in their opinion) argument the others found was "so how do you host olympics in a libertarian land, or build a centrally planned new city? checkmate", and of course there's nothing I can answer to that because I don't think a society needs global projects or flag days.

Both empathy and the lack of it are required. Humans are pack hunters. We work best as teams. Someone has to lead those teams. Guess what traits tend to make for people better at securing and conserving power within groups, and keeping loyalty within their ranks? Yep, you guessed it! Psychopaths!

There are benevolent leaders, yes, that exists, but in a competition where anything goes, a psychopath which is difficult ton detect will have the advantage over someone with more empathy and robust moral limits.

There's a reason why they're roughly estimated to be around 10% of the population. Hierarchies need few leaders. The higher the ladder, the more vicious the psycho it gets, because they'll have to be competent enough to defend themselves from the other psychos that want all their tasty tasty power.

The reason why all our leaders are psychopaths is this is the same reason why basketball players are all tall. If you don't have that trait, you just don't get the fucking job (edit: unless you're like REALLY good at it despite your disadvantage).

This used to depress me, but I chose to stop thinking about it. I don't think there's any fixing it.

No. Go build it in the ocean somewhere far, far away from the rest of us.

Casinos ring a bell...