"Near-future scenario inspiration in the news" Topic

Billionaire libertarian funding floating microstate news story:

link

Anyone else see hyothetical scenario possibilities there? Libertarian "paradise" fighting to survive pirate attacks, repel hostile national armed forces, defeat megacorporate mercenary troops looking to quash competition, or (if they catch on) fending off raids from competing floating settlements? I bet they're going to need those relaxed gun laws. The terrain would be interesting to build, anyway.

"looser building codes"

On a man-made island in the middle of the ocean? Sorry, no.

I see the social order breaking down and gang rule taking over – Necromunda at sea. It could be fun.

Or it floods, sinks and is overrun with genetic mutants — a la BioShock the video game!

Good lord, he's donating $1.25M to the project? That's nothing for a guy like him. It would be like me flipping you a wad of 20s and being like "I would love to see a libertarian football stadium over here somewhere."

He's kicked in smaller amounts in the past, but yeah, not exactly plunging on it. The seasteading idea has been around a while, and the existing Sealand micronation-of-sorts has been talked about here in the past:

link

Even if the platform seasteads never come to pass, as a hypothetical future development they have real gaming potential. The idea of "shipsteads" of retasked cruise ships sailing around some sort of post-collapse setting and fighting one another over scarce resources has both campaign and scenario potential.

BTW, anytime you want to throw me a wad of $20 USD bills, I'll be happy to tackle that Libertarian football stadium thing. Might be a while till it's done, but that won't stop me from taking donations. :)

That's pretty much what they do in Brink, a first person shooter. The fluff is good…the game…so-so:

brinkthegame.com

I suggest they name the thing "Rapture" and build it on the sea floor.

I'd be more inclined to "Erewhon" or perhaps "Laputa" myself. :)

I wonder if this guy has thought about Piracy.

I've seen him (Peter Theil) talk at a great many conferences out here in California, and he is kinda scary politically).

But, he talks about moving all of these rich people out into the sea, in international waters, as an independent nation.

Sure, they are going to be able to have some money to hire private security, but will it be enough to protect them from Drug Cartels with just as much money, and things like Home-Built Submarines to sneak up on such a colony.

And, who are they going to ask for help, if such a thing happens?

They are just trying to build a mythical Galt's Gulch to retreat to without having given thought to what that really means.

So… It presents ALL KINDS of gaming opportunities as Pirates invade their "Galt's Gulch" and show them why their politics don't really work in a world where most of the world is not yet civilized.

You could have four or five Pirate Subs, loaded with 20 to 50 men each.

Then, on the island, you have one to four "moles" who have got themselves hired on as private security to case the place and prepare for the invasion.

I know, from having talked extensively with the Seastead people, and some people on the other side of their quest to buy weapons, that they have been trying (without success) to buy Torpedos and Missiles.

So, it is possible that they might succeed in getting something along those lines eventually.

The obvious way to encourage nasty "illegals" to cooperate is to offer them access to whatever legitimacy a micronation can grant them. The cartels would be willing to invest a lot more than a piddly couple of million to help set up their own nautical drug labs if they honestly thought they'd be shielded from international policing efforts due to "nation" status, and I suspect there are quite a few big businesses that would love a place to plant utterly unmonitored research labs.

The fact that Seasteading isn't rolling in money from donations of this sort tells me that even the illegals don't believe for a minute that international law would actually protect them in one of these places. Set up a major designer drug factory on an international-waters seastead and you'd have somebody's navy blowing the place out of the water within months. Plus, it's still easier to just set up shop in an "ungoverned area" of a land-based nation at this point – as long as you can push the current owners out and keep other contenders out afterward.

That sort of activity is where the cartels spend a lot of their effort – fighting each other more than the police. Making raids on a bunch of millionaires on a converted oil platform seems iffy, especially if they're helping you launder money and aiding in smuggling.

Looks like new money rip-off of the long established Sealand concept.

How about naming it "Oatmeal".;^)

Sounds like the kind of place where some pervert holes up with his cult, or a place people who want to practice all the taboo ilegal things civilised morality prevents them. Eitherway, everyone on it ends up dead or "missing".

Apparently, the fact that everybody has access to guns makes everybody safe from invasion.

I wonder how well total individualism would go down in a space habitat. Apparently it will be paradise.

bigheadpress.com/eft?page=15

"Governments have schools?"

There's an Xbox 360 game based on this premise. It's called Brink. Society collapses and some survivors on a floating city fight for control of their "island".

Ah, the naysayers are ahead.

What could go wrong?????

All applicants for money should have to play through Bioshock before they're allowed to start building.

I did not intend to imply that Drug Cartels were in any way interested in these things as a means to produce drugs.

They are only interested in them as an item of plunder. As I mentioned, a hoard of Billionaires set adrift in International Waters is a very tempting target.

Even if everyone on board is armed, so are the Drug Cartels, and the Drug Cartels are made up of people who live day-to-day by the gun, and tend to be more willing to throw their lives away on a risky endeavor if the potential reward is high enough.

Not many Billionaires are willing to throw their lives away for anything. They tend to value their lives far too much to knowingly risk them.

Which brings up the question: "What the hell do they think they will be doing if they try to move their money into international waters where they will not have a giant military to defend them?"

Where did I put those blueprints for the USS Nautilus (SS168), after the commando conversion?

If they aren't a sovereign nation, then I don't have to deal with a military, and a platoon will be enough to tackle any organized defense the inhabitants care to put together. Loot the place and hold some captives for ransom, and I have several billion dollars in cash for about a $100mil investment.

Meh. Been done and discussed – Most notably by C M Kornbluth in the short story "Shark Ship" ( The only post-apocalyptic story in the 1950s magazines to have been inspired by Betty Page ).

I think it's here – link

Where do people get the idea that:

A) The founding billionaires will actually live there? Don't be silly – they'll live where they've always lived most of the time, safely under a national military umbrella while they hobnob with the jet set. They might visit their seagoing vacation home once in a while, but they'll do so with the same kind of security precautions in place that they'd use when taking a sex junket in sutheast Asia. Their citzenship will just be another legal dodge to help save hide their incomes and perhaps allow some truly vile perversions that they can't indulge in elsewhere.

B) That taking a billionaire ransom gets you their fortune? Goofy. These people have heirs, whether they're relatives, subordinates, business partners, or even a national government expecting income from death taxes. You might get a hundred thousand, a million, but at some point Uncle Moneybags will get tossed to the sharks as a bad investment. You'd probably make more money quietly approaching those heirs about a bounty to just shoot them instead (assuming you can catch them on the island in the first place).

C) That large-scale criminal operations will work as planned in direct contradiction to the old "no honor among thieves" saw? Street-corner drug dealers shoot each other over $10 USD sales. Plan a massed assault and looting party on a nest of billionaires and someone (probably many someones) in your organization will sell your plans to them and let them set up a reception that you won't survive. Doesn't even have to be an unusually thoughtful foot soldier – your own partners or lieutenants will see a profit in selling you out. Crime lords have heirs who'd like to see them dead too, you know.

All that suggests a multi-player scenario where the players are a bunch of looters facing referee-run defenses. Give every player has secret victory conditions that involve bumping off specific friendlies (rivals) and referee models (bounty targets). Watch the havoc ensue.

Good excuse for building the terrain board for the game, at least. :)

Where I get the idea that the Billionaire (Peter Thiel in this case) will actually be there is from his own mouth at that various promotions for Seasteading he has attended in the Bay Area and So Cal Technology events.

And Peter Thiel has no biological heirs (He is homosexual). He probably has a will of some sort that assigns his wealth. I have no idea how he would react to being taken hostage. After all, when we are talking about Billionaires on Seasteads, we are pretty much talking explicitly about Peter Thiel.

And, drug cartels are not street dealers. They are a VERY different animal, that has a high degree of vertical organization.

An example would be FARC, The Northern Alliance (in Afghanistan), and so on. They have very structured organization with a HUGE amount of loyalty to the organization at the upper levels.

One doesn't build operating submarine fleets without a Gigantic infrastructure that is operating in that area.

The stereotype portrayed above of street dealers that shoot each other over $10, is pretty much the stereotype of the Urban African American Rock dealer… And yeah, most of them are petty dealers, usually strung out, who will shoot each other for $10. USD

These are NOT the people I am talking about. I am talking about the people who arrange for the growing of the crop that is then turned into Opium (and then heroin), or Coca-Paste, which is then smuggled by the ton to processing facilities near coastal areas of South and Central America (or Africa, or the Black Sea or India), where it is then turned into cake-cocaine to be smuggled (again, by the ton) into the US or Europe.

Again, that requires a HUGE infrastructure that is populated by loyal and trusted workers who often have little to lose, and are willing to do very dangerous things in an attempt to curry favor with those in power.

Organizations such as FARC are often populated with ex-Colombian or Venezuelan Special Forces, and have been trained by the USA (to fight the same organization prior to either their retirement from the military, or their planned defection/desertion to FARC or another Cartel).

The same can be said of the Drug Operations in Afghanistan and Africa. Almost every one of them is populated by soldiers trained by the USA to fight against some perceived threat to the US, without regard to the eventual use these people might put their skills.

It would not be necessary for the Mexican Army, just to give an example, to be called into Ciudad Juarez to combat the takeover of that city by a Drug Cartel (only to discover that half the army was in the pay of said Cartel) if the Drug Cartels were just a bunch of street thugs.