From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Thu Feb 27 1997 - 16:51:48 MST
> 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.
Eric is still around, and the web pages are still there. He hasn't
printed the passports or done some other things in the plan, but he
still has the big model and still has copies of the Constitution and
other literature, I believe. The project took a bad hit when we
bought a much larger model than planned, and then donations dried up.
That left us in debt, and unable to continue advertising and doing
other promotional things until the model was paid off. I left to get
a "real" job; the other co-founders are out of touch. I think there
is still some hope left for this one.
> 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."
Don't know much about this one. At least when the AP sold Constitutions,
we told you up front that you were paying $30 for a paperback editition
of a document you could download for free :) Does LFC tell you what you
get for that $35?
> 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.
AP and MP have exchanged technical information on oceanic construction
and desalinization and such, and they do in fact have a fair membership
overlap with AP, so are likely to be libertarian whether they like it
or not. My impression of the other folks there is that they are non-
political technophiles.
> 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?
I think there is one way to do it from the inside: to form the nation (i.e.
the people) before you form the country (i.e., the land). Accumulate a
group, each of which pledges to never use force against any other member,
and slowly build that group into economic self-sufficiency (cybercash and
similar technologies help a lot here) so that the government of the land
they occupy simply atrophies, or sells itself off to us. It may take
decades, even generations, but I think it would work to both free us and
allow us to keep our land.
> 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.
I would, and I have. Personally, though, I am unlikely to discuss the
"practical" ascpects of libertarianism, as I do not look at liberty as
an end result, but rather as a prior condition; a means, not an end.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
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