Libertarianism and Extropia?

John Blanco-Losada (jbl@clark.net)
Thu, 27 Feb 97 17:01:53 -0500

The recent discussions about libertarian/anarcho-capitalist political
philosophy and the supposed benefits and flaws which would be found in
societies operating purely under those principles points out a crucial
missing element - real world experience. In other words, all of this is
pure speculation until such a society actually forms and provides an
example of whether or not such a society society actually works.

To my knowledge there are several projects underway which would attempt
to create such societies:

1. The Atlantis Project (http://www.oceania.org) aims to create an
island. As far as I can tell, this one just kinda mysteriously stopped
about 2 years ago.

2. The Laissez Faire City (http://www.lfcity.com/) project takes a
different tack, and is planning to obtain a 100-year lease of a parcel of
land from some host country. I assume they've done their homework and
are confident that such a property could be run/operated independently
from the host country. They also claim to have established an "interim
community" in Costa Rica which allows members to live tax free. All of
which sounds interesting, but I have a gut-level suspicion of any group
that asks me to pay $35 for additional "research materials."

3. The Millenial Project (http://www.millennial.org), has a comprehensive
plan for "colonizing the galaxy in 8 easy steps." One of the beginning
stages involves building ocean colonies. In addition, the members of one
of their chapters are currently planning a land-based colony to research
the social and environmental aspects of living together in a group
(http://www.neca.com/~dimitri/lbc.html). While the folks at TMP are not
explicitly libertarian, from what I've seen they lean towards strong
protection of individual rights for their colonists.

And these are just the ones I know about which focus on Earth-based
colonies.

I'm interested in getting additional feedback from the members of this
list:

Do you know of other similar projects?

Do you feel that you can achieve personal freedom within the confines of
current government structures, or would you only feel truly free living
in a libertarian society?

Do you feel that a libertarian society can be realized by working within
the political system to change existing governments, or do you feel that
such a society can only be realized by starting fresh from scratch?

Would you "put your money where your mouth is" and actually move to a
libertarian colony?

Thanks in advance. Hope this helps to turn our discussions towards the
more practical aspects of libertarianism.

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John Blanco-Losada "You must be the change
jbl@clark.net you wish to see
http://www.clark.net/pub/jbl/jbl.html in the world." - M. Gandhi
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