Techno-libertarians are flocking to the Caribbean(economist.com) |
Techno-libertarians are flocking to the Caribbean(economist.com) |
Red Rock Island in San Francisco Bay [1] is apparently for sale again. It was supposedly sold in 2025, but that deal may have fallen through. Nobody built anything on it. Five acres of rock with cliffs. It's basically a mountain peak sticking out of water. It would take a lot of money and work to do something with it. At least as much as the Eagle's Nest [2], plus the costs of operating on an island. Which means there are about a dozen people in the Bay Area who could afford it.
[1] https://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/red-rock-island-isan-fr...
It's the same energy of a kid running away from home to the tree house in the yard. All they want is to have all the benefits of society (imagine if they were barred from reentering their home country or traveling anywhere else because Pirate-Monaco-Dubai-island(tm) doesn't have real passports) and not be held responsible for their destructive behavior and impulses.
http://www.queenoftheisles.com/HTML/Republic%20of%20Minerva....
Because there clearly could be ulterior motives involved on both sides.
This article is about a project called "Destiny" (https://destiny.com), an economic zone to be created in an undeveloped region of Nevis (of St. Kitts & Nevis)
The project goal is to become like Dubai with a 50m dollar investment, which I don't think is an admirable goal btw.
St Kitts & Nevis has had a history of being friendly to crypto and there was an initiative to make bitcoin cash legal tender, although don't think it ever actually happened.
https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bitcoin-c...
Nevis (the baseball) was only boat accessible, and St. Kitts (the bat) is mostly hills of national park.
Vast majority of things must be flown or shipped in. I am hard pressed to see some "techno libertarians" doing techno without Amazon/Temu/Walmart/<insert fav vendor> in 24h drop ship.
Or
Bitcoin, cash legal.
So you're effectively paying US taxes from the get go, before you even get to the point of anything at all going towards basic services.
It's the convenience really, and the fact that nobody is in a hurry. Island time is real. You cannot be demanding. You can't really be upset at service. Most people are there to chill out, even if they are doing a job. Life is just slower.
This is good, IMO. But if you are a hedonically adapted/burned out western metropolis dweller, this culture shock could be distressing.
1) the Republic of Venice from 7th to 18th centuries, basically a merchant-run state controlled by a tight circle of wealthy traders. Its whole setup revolved around safeguarding trade and property and staying clear of the Catholic church and European kings.
2) the Republic of Ragusa from 14th to 19th centuries, in what’s now Dubrovnik, run by a small group of merchant families. Strong focus on open commerce and neutrality, made early advances in public health and infrastructure and had its own privately funded healthcare and insurance, all paid for by trade profits
Of course might make right ultimately trumps everything else, it is just interesting that you so often hear that if libertarians want to escape society they shouldn't use force to make others follow their ideals, they should just go off into the woods or their own island or some such. But then when they actually make their own island, actually "society" decides they will just take their shit under the auspices of a military force that will kill them if they defend themselves (although the only homicide on Minerva was one Tongan killing another Tongan).
Right now Fiji and Tonga are fighting over it and in reality neither one actually gives much a shit about the actual property rights to hold the island and as a fiji/tongan dispute suddenly the Navy is not so interested anymore. The Tongan claims were initiated after a conference with Polynesian countries and Australia where the goal was not to preserve some Tongan fishing but to smack down the libertarians using it -- Polynesian claims were never an actual reason for the invasion, only kicking the libertarians off the island.