Lord of the Billionaire Flies

Picture this: you wake up one morning to find yourself living in a shipping container. You step outside and see that you’re not alone; dozens of shipping containers are strung together on a floating platform, creating a sort of trailer park Alcatraz. You can see a tiny island in the distance, and the GPS on your phone tells you that you’re somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific.

Before long, the other residents begin to emerge from their own shipping containers. They all look the same, which is to say they look the same as you: white, well dressed and groomed, the wrong side of middle aged. More than half are visibly armed, though you wonder against what out here in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, and they’re all billionaires.

Seasteading

In case you missed it this scenario got a little closer to reality over the past week. The Seasteading Institute (founded by Silicon Valley billionaire and free speech champion Peter Thiel) is in the final stages of a deal with the government of French Polynesia for the rights to float their planned penal colony somewhere near the Society Islands (the location is my guess, anywhere else in FP would be too remote to be practical).

The purpose of the exercise is to establish a libertarian utopia, free from the conventions of polite society, where only the opinions of fellow billionaires amount to law. Though no longer publicly associated with the project, Thiel has long been a proponent of individual sovereign nations offshore.

There are more than a couple of really obvious problems with this plan, however.

The location is a big one. When Thiel first started talking about the idea, the vision was for a community 200 miles off the coast of San Francisco in international waters. I could actually see that working, even if just as a curiosity. But French Polynesia might as well be on another planet. I know, I’ve been there. It’s gorgeous and the people are great, but it’s so isolated that it takes days to even get there. Gone is the appeal of proximity to the real world.

That exacerbates the problem of construction, and explains why the early settlers might have to live in tin cans despite their vast wealth. If you look at the current plan being proposed compared to the early artist renditions, things have moved considerably downscale. The handful of billionaires I know aren’t keen to live in a trailer park.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the plan, though, is that it’s already been tried and found wanting.

The Free State Project

Almost two decades ago the libertarian community hatched a plan to take over a US state and turn it into a libertarian paradise. The original plan (and I know this because I was an enthusiastic participant) was to choose a state we thought we could take over and then all move there over a period of five years. Once we took over the electorate, we’d create our utopia, with the ultimate goal of secession and total autonomy.

Fast forward to today. By most rational measures, the Free State Project has been a success. They chose to take over New Hampshire (at which point I tapped out, because fuck the cold), and managed to get enough people to move there that they control a respectable block of the legislature there today.

Then the predictable happened. Libertarians gonna liberty.

The achilles heel of collective action on the part of libertarians is that they’re not big “joiners”. It’s probably the reason the Libertarian Party hasn’t gone anywhere in four decades. Even legislation which most clearly benefits libertarians is often met with, “Yeah, how ‘bout fuck off?” from people who just want to be left alone.

So it didn’t take long for this loose coalition of libertarians in New Hampshire to fracture and break into factions. There exists all sorts of infighting within the movement, and some members have already been excommunicated. Obviously the good people of New Hampshire aren’t particularly enamored with their ideological invaders either.

And I haven’t even mentioned PorcFest, a bacchanalian shitshow of epic proportions. I haven’t attended, but I’ve heard that the drug-fueled orgies are truly a sight to behold. Libertarians gonna liberty.

The Island of Misfit Tax Cheats

So now that the Free State Project has shown us what’s possible, let’s examine what’s likely with regard to our (way, way, way) offshore archipelago of liberty.

The absolute best case for the seasteaders is that they somehow pull off recognition as a sovereign state. This will take some serious payoffs to third-tier governments, but let’s assume for the moment that it can be done. What’s next?

Tax laws. And by tax laws I mean no tax laws. People are probably hoping the islands will become tax havens for billionaires beset on all sides by the unwashed expecting them to pay their fair share. This won’t work for American billionaires, because their government doesn’t give a shit where you make your money in the world, they’re gonna get their pound of flesh. But it’ll be awesome for deposed third world dictators absconding with their national treasuries. Same goes for drug cartel leaders, human traffickers, and global arms dealers. Those guys are gonna make terrific neighbors.

And that brings me to my final point: What happens when shit goes all Lord Of The Flies on Liberty Island?

Think about how little it would take to upset the balance of this delicate ecosystem. Hell, everything could go perfectly to plan and things will probably still devolve all on their own. Put a bunch of well armed billionaire misanthropes together on a 50-acre island and see how long it takes for them to tear each other apart.

I’d certainly pay to watch that, so I hope they sell the TV rights.