Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I’d love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I’d love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
I’m going to go against the trend here and say that libertarian corporate city-states actually sound pretty cool. They’re generally not portrayed positively in fiction but I think they might work well in practice. I’m a lot less optimistic about cooperating with all my fellow Americans in order to govern the whole country democratically than I used to be. Choosing to move to an independent city-state with a government that I agree with (albeit one I don’t elect) might work better.
The problem is capitalism and corporations. We don’t need fiction to see those two don’t work, they don’t work in real life.
Look at the companies that are really successful. Telecoms, Amazon, Nestle… the big ones. Note the trend of every single one of them doing the absolute most unethical shit they possibly can to make a quick buck. Do you really want to hand them things like a military/police force, or authority over your civil liberties?
Not to say that existing governments aren’t also abusing those powers, but do you seriously think your life would improve if you gave that power over to fucking Comcast or something??
Corporations are predictable - they try to make money. If their profit motive aligns with my own interests, then what they do will be good for me. Amazon, for example, sells me all sorts of things for low prices and with great customer support. My interests and corporate interests won’t necessarily align and that’s why exit rights are so important, but at least I will still be dealing with an entity acting more-or-less rationally.
Their profit motive does not align with your interests - not by choice. Their hand was forced by labor and consumer protection laws. Take off the legal constraints, and suddenly their business model includes things like slavery, child labor, unsafe work conditions, insane hours, monopolies… these aren’t crazy-extreme hypotheticals, they’re things we’ve had to actively step in and say “no!” before because they were actually happening.
Companies are not your friend. They’re not even a symbiotic parasite: they’re a barely contained cancer.
Plenty of other people’s interests don’t align with mine either - these days, it seems like most people’s interests don’t. What makes a corporation less reliable than my fellow Americans?
Divisions of power. Notice how shit things are getting under the Trump administration due to his (successful) attacks on our checks and balances.
Handing the reigns over to a corporation would be a similar situation, except that a corporation doesn’t waste half its time playing golf or shitposting on twitter.
Imagine a Trump that doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, isn’t stupid, and doesn’t have any legal framework to tell him ‘no’ …and can’t just be assassinated by a fed up civilian. Literally no checks and balances, including vigilante justice.
…also did you see the bit about slavery and monopolies and such? Kinda seems like we’re glossing over that to address relative alignment of interests, which is moot as fuck when things like slavery and monopolies are on the table.
You’ll get more interest in an anarcho-syndicalist zone.
Gonna be hard to move to Amazonia if all you’ve got in terms of money are Zuckbucks.
Found Peter Thiel’s account
yeah, being blacklisted and exiled from modern society all because I called great leader “Fuckerberg” in 2010.
so fucking cool /s
Anarcho capitalists freecities are a horrible idea. Wont take long before you can buy people in there, because the only rule is the golden rule.