SeaSteading or how rich guys want even more freedom and privilege

Db0

The Sea is mostly free right? So why not turn it into property where the rich can have even more luxury? Fuck the rest of the world.

I am annoyed. I get annoyed when I read shit like this, telling us how some rich white guys are not happy enough with their (really well-off) lot in life, and just need some way to escape all their (multi-million) misery by founding their own nation of absolute freedom.

What a load of dicks!

When we have a world that is fast going down the drain, with millions of children starving every year, with hudreds of millions of workers surviving in subsistence wage and 16-hour workdays, with all the shit that is happening around us, creating untold misery and suffering, these amazingly lucky and  privileged people can only think of how to make their life even better.

Fuck the rest of us. It’s not like their wealth had anything to do with the rest of society. It was all created from the sweat of their brows.  So they have every right to take their ball and go (make a new) home.

For someone like me, who would like to see everyone in the world be better off, this kind of attitude makes me want to punch some rich geeks in the face. It makes me ashamed to even be in the same sector as them.

As always however it shows us that the ones who really support this bullshit ideology are the minority of lucky people who are quite better off than the vast majority of humanity and are quite happy to never help the rest. What else can you expect from shameless individualism of course. This is why the classic attempts they make are always escapist. From building new land they can use, to floating cities to taking over states.

But there’s also one more thing that bugs me about this Seasteading which goes back to the Libertarian right core concept of Homesteading that is necessary to avoid moral implications for their accumulation of wealth. The idea that one has the right to claim any territory that is not already claimed by anyone else. Can someone explain to me from where this right comes from and why I should accept it?

Anyway, I just needed to rant a bit after reading on how the rich feel so oppressed that they have to throw parties on floating restaurants to discuss how to escape their tragedy. And then they go for a fucking kayak trip.

24 thoughts on “SeaSteading or how rich guys want even more freedom and privilege”

  2. "The idea that one has the right to claim any territory that is not already claimed by anyone else. Can someone explain to me from where this right comes from and why I should accept it?"

    A relatively simplistic, and perhaps unsatisfactory argument would say something like: It is precisely because anyone could've claimed the unclaimed, and yet nobody did, which can justify the first-owner approach to the homestead principle. NB that a consistent homestead claim is not simply about putting a stake in the ground, it's also about occupancy and use.

  3. By offering an alternative to the state they seek to undermine it. Can't be having that though, might give people some freedom.
    You can shout and piss in the wind all you like, but they are hoping to show that the state is not necessary, that freedom works and that anarchy works.
    Sounds like you don't want freedom though. Some anarchist you are.

    1. There nothing undermined through escapism. Nothing will change is some rich people leave their nation and control their assets from their little kingdoms.

      Also this is not anarchy, I suggest you learn what the term actually means. Hint: it's not simply a stateless society.

  4. This land could easily have been used communaly before or in the future. I don't see why anyone has the right to take something that was common and claim it just because nobody else did. If someone wants to use a land, that's all fine. I'm all for people "owning" what they use. However where I draw the line is when that person lays claim to land that he is not using.

    1. "I don't see why anyone has the right to take something that was common and claim it just because nobody else did. If someone wants to use a land, that's all fine. However where I draw the line is when that person lays claim to land that he is not using. "

      I don't know if you're aware, but that's exactly the mutualist position as well.

        1. Insofar as I can understand the substitution, yes, although the original mutualist thinkers didn't think it was important if the workers owned the means of production per se, as long as they got the full product of their labour (which in my mind seems to be pretty much one and the same: how can there be a work hierarchy if there's no profit to make?). Personally I am the most leftie of the mutualists I know, and I fully support the takeover of the means of production by those who are actually using them.

    1. Untrue, I am opposed to the bastardised version of libertarianism as understood in the US which is like a Minarchist Capitalism.

      As for your question, depends on how you mean libertarianism. Do you mean the libertarian left like Noam Chomsky or the Moderate Libertarianism which is still on the right side of the political compass?

      1. I think Noam Chomsky is more on the syndicalist side actually, and he's not completely anarchist. Left-libertarian is the term used to designate the socialist pro-market anarchist ideologies like mutualism and Georgism. The whole Proudhon-Tucker-Warren line.

        My thought is, being opposed to libertarianism is a strange thing to be for an Anarchist, since in its technical meaning (still used in Europe), libertarian simply means "non-coercive."

        1. As I thought, you are using the wrong definition of "libertarianism". An explanation from Chomsky himself:
          So to answer your question, I am not very familial with moderate pro-market ideologies (Other than a small introduction with Proudhon, enough to find him a dick) but as long as they support private property and the "free" market I will cautiously think of them as flawed.

          1. Well, I believe Chomsky is absolutely wrong in saying that the democratic system is more accountable to the people than the capitalist system: neither is accountable to the people in any way whatsoever.

            That being said, I also believe there is a semantic issue with "private property" and "free market." As I understand it, mutualists are proponents of possession, not property. As for "free market," I think your quotes indicate that you do not believe that what is commonly advocated as a free market is actually free, and on this we also agree.

            To make this clear, I am a socialist, in the technical definition of the term. I do not support capitalist (perpetual and absentee) property rights, and I don't support hierarchical economic control or monopolies over people's actions.

        2. As I thought, you are using the wrong definition of "libertarianism". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugq86q9KyPE“target=”_blank”>An explanation from Chomsky himself

          So to answer your question, I am not very familial with moderate pro-market ideologies (Other than a small introduction with Proudhon, enough to find him a dick) but as long as they support private property and the "free" market I will cautiously think of them as flawed.

  7. neither is accountable to the people in any way whatsoever.

    I think you misunderstand him. He does not mean "democracy" as we have now but the general concept of democracy as it's supposed to work. Theoretically it is indeed more accountable and it gets more accountable the more the practice approaches the theory.

    1. If he's using the term as it's "supposed to work," why doesn't he use the term capitalism as it's "supposed to work"? That's a semantic dead-end, as far as I'm concerned. Both are equally fantasy (as long as we remain in a statist system, anyway).

  8. To make this clear, I am a socialist, in the technical definition of the term.

    From what you've explained to me about mutualism, I do not see significant differences with Socialism to tell you the truth.

      1. I do not have a concrete one, I generally fall somewhere between anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian communism with generally Marxist ideas. The political compass puts me on Kropotkin eye 🙂

        I generally pick and choose which ideas sound best from each system

Comments are closed.