Whither Shall We Flee from Thy Tyranny?
A case for libertarian societies on board ships
Published: 2020-07-25 Sat 14:47
Audio version
Voluntary exchange of goods and services has been a great catalyst in the improvement of the human condition throughout history. Despite its glorious record and clear benefits, few people are willing to embrace the idea to its full logical limit. Instead, most people arrogate to themselves or others the right to intervene violently in at least some peaceful voluntary exchanges. They have devised and codified elaborate systems to infringe on the freedom of others, and expropriate their economic output.
The most successful of such systems have given rise to governments and states, and the less successful ones to bandits and robbers. A successful functional state has the monopoly of violence, and consequently plunder in its geographic realm, kept at bay only by the power and might of other states. Unfortunately, practically every piece of habitable land on planet Earth is claimed by a state, and as such all human beings enter this world as subjects of at least one state. Any person born into this hegemonic system faces three choices: A) to accept and endure the tyranny B) to fight it or C) to flee it.
Most people go for option A. To the majority of them, the existence of the state and its aggression is akin to the laws of nature, a fact of life. The states happily encourage such fatalistic submissions. Expressions such as "in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes" exemplify the attempts of the state to present its transgressions as inexorable. Once deemed as such, it is not strange that ordinary people who consider themselves ethical, who never condone stealing an apple from the corner grocery store under normal conditions, acquiesce in theft and murder in the grandest of scales (taxation and war). Many actively try to join the ranks of the operators of the machinery of compulsion, plunder and murder, by taking government jobs. To add insult to injury, they employ the euphemism "serving the people" to refer to these jobs.
Those who believe in peaceful voluntary exchange in all aspects of social life, the libertarians, see the state for what it is: a grand network of hegemonic relationships. The libertarians are far too enlightened to deem the state as necessary, and far too ethical to join it. Naturally, they are left with two choices if they do not want to submit to its tyranny: to fight or to flee.
The libertarians can fight the state and its propaganda through peaceful means. They can champion their cause and try to educate others on the moral superiority of their ideals, as well as the happy side-effect of affluence and economic expansion as the results of adhering to them. But in practice, their attempts to convert large portions of the host societies to become sympathetic to the cause of voluntarism and freedom, and to transform and arrange the social order around these ideals have failed.
The calls for (possibly violent) revolts against not only the governmental transgressions but the whole concept of a government are even more futile. Indeed, the ethics of liberty allow the exercise of violence against the initiated violence of the state.1 Nevertheless, no revolution is successful without a critical mass of sympathizers, and in this case, it is simply not there. The hearts and minds need to be won, and so we are back where we started from. As noble as the effort is to enlighten others, perhaps it is time to consider plans to continue doing so without having to inhale the toxic fumes of statism.
The statists, the proponents of regulated and systematic violence and plunder across the society, have taunted anyone who laments the current sad situation. The extent of mercy a statist bestows upon the victims of the state aggression is to allow them to migrate and leave behind their estates, to be eventually confiscated, partially (as property taxes) or wholly. The unfairness of the choice aside, where can one flee to?
The era of pioneering into unexplored land frontiers, away from the long arms of the governments, has long come to an end. The libertarians need to look beyond the land surface of the Earth if they want to live free of the tyranny of the nation-states. The universe is a vast place, but sadly, the technology for space colonization is not there yet. For the time being, the libertarians are stuck on this rocky planet, politically dominated by those who do not share their ideals. If refuge is to be found, it needs to be here on Earth.
There have been suggestions of the possibility of bribing the economically weaker nation-states, willing to look the other way in exchange for cash, to establish politically independent enclaves with free economies inside the bigger territories of the states. To date, the efforts to establish such communities have not come to fruition, but the plan remains worthy of pursuit.2
Alternatively, the high seas, the international waters away from the jurisdictions of nation-states, provide the space for the libertarian societies to flourish. There have been efforts and plans in the past to establish (at times remote) floating cities moored to the seabed or artificial islands in the international waters to host libertarian communities.3 Besides the technological challenges in establishing such communities, there are practical and political considerations.
It is well known that the prospect of affluence is greatly improved through trade. The larger and the freer the trade network, the more certain is the path to prosperity. Given the initial tiny size of the marine libertarian colonies, it is a great blunder to aim for their autarky. There needs to be trade with non-libertarian societies, and to have that, it is expedient to be close to the larger pockets of population. This, in turn, means that the libertarian cities cannot be too geographically isolated and need to stay relatively close to the shore.
Even if the libertarians are successful in building artificial islands, or any sort of permanent fixtures big enough to host a large population, near the shores of a nation-state, outside the contiguous zones (typically farther than 24 nautical miles (nmi) from the shore) or even the exclusive economic zones (typically farther than 200 nmi), they are always in danger of the invasive acts of the neighboring states. At least in the beginning, it is doubtful that the libertarian colonies will be able to amass enough defensive resources to fend off the aggressors. Additionally, in all likelihood, the colonies with their permanent fixtures will not be recognized as sovereigns by the international community, i.e. the states, and will be up for grabs by whoever owns the ships with the biggest cannons.
The situation is not as bleak as it seems though. A community does not need to be anchored to something in order to flourish. One can imagine colonies of ocean liners flying flags of convenience, permanently staying in the international waters, but close enough to the shores, and staying within a neighborhood for extended periods of time, perhaps years. We can imagine a vast economic network developing around these big motherships. High-speed boats, and even helicopters and airplanes, can provide a fast network of transport which allows for the efficient daily flow of labor and goods between the libertarian society and the neighboring states. The entrepreneurs and businessmen in all communities will rush to make a profit from the arrangement and in doing so will improve the lives of those who are involved.
With this arrangement, the libertarian experiment does not require a drastic breakaway from the convenience and the economic network of the ordinary life as we know it. The residents of the ships can still easily visit the land in a matter of minutes to hours if they choose to, and can maintain their economic or social ties with the land-dwellers. If the fleet stays in the neighborhood for extended periods of time, extra infrastructure can be developed for further convenience. For example, underwater cables can be laid from the land to a major ship acting as a hub, for the period of the stay and provide better connectivity with the mainland and the rest of the world. Anybody who has been aboard a cruise ship knows the sad and expensive state of cellphone reception and internet connectivity. To have a libertarian community, well integrated with the global trade network, the situation needs to change.
Being on board ships, flying convenience flags, as opposed to being on artificial islands, has more cache in the international maritime law (for what it is worth) and will offer more protection to the nascent libertarian community. Of course, as the colony grows and its population and affluence increases, it will be able to acquire protection services and hire defense contractors, and thus need not be reliant on the shaky ill-enforced international laws of the sea. One can imagine the success of the experiment will result in more libertarian communities sprouting all over the oceans, and within a few decades the libertarians will turn into the dominant power of the high seas. The defense contractors serving the libertarian communities will become the keepers of peace, and the guardians of life and property of all mariners. Perhaps the future of the libertarian movement is not on pieces of natural or artificial land but rather aboard the fleets of mega-ocean-liners.
Footnotes:
M. N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press: 1998.
See for example the charter city experiment in Honduras https://news.yahoo.com/honduran-supreme-court-rejects-model-cities-idea-171737298--finance.html.
The Seasteading Institute is one of the prime promoters of the idea: https://www.seasteading.org/