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> GBurch1@aol.com on Sun, 22 Feb 1998 Wrote:
>
> >"Very Large Crude Carrier" ("VLCC") (295,000 dwt) [...] presumably
> >VLCCs are what utopians have in mind when envisioning "floating free
> >zones". 95 NB - 2000 Resale
> >VLCC: $100MM - $78MM - $140MM
> >daily and annual operating costs over the next 5 years
> >VLCC: $46,000 - $16.8MM [...]
> >these boats are EXPENSIVE.
>
>
> Some VLCC's are larger than 500,000 dwt, but the economics are even worse
> than what you say. For their size supertankers are the cheapest ships on the
> sea, partly because they're poorly made and designed to last only a few years,
> but mostly because they're nothing but floating oil tanks. To convert such a
> hulk into a ship capable of carrying lots of people could easily cost 10
> times as much. If you were low on machine guns and thus expected people to
> make the ship their home voluntarily then you'd have to make it somewhat more
> comfortable than a slave ship, and that would cost at least 100 times as much
> and probably much more.
>
> Even if these economic problems could be overcome we'd still only exist at
> the whim of the superpowers, if we were not good little boys they'd send a
> torpedo up our ass and sink the ship so fast it'd bounce off the bottom.
> I think countries suck and there are too many of them already, and I think
> David Musick got it exactly right when he said:
>
> "Aren't we *beyond* thinking of countries in terms of land area? Is't it
> more realistic to think of countries in terms of organization,
> communication and resource movement? [...] I see the idea of a "country"
> as a relic from a dying age, as global economics blurrs and erases national
> borders."
>
As national borders of those nations that willingly give up sovereignty to some
nebulous international order, all this does for the average person is make it that
much harder to tell who is trying to screw you. Call it political luddism, or what
you will, but it would be nice for a change to have one bureaucracy that was
responsible to you, and couldn't pass the buck up or down or round and round until
you just gave up and bent over.
Recen'ty here in Lebanon, a gentleman who was having difficulty registering his
car with the local busybodies simply said in frustration,"I'm suprised that that
shooter didn't start his spree here. I would." (this was a month after the Carl
Drega shooting spree in which a property tax protester finally went postal on the
corrupt judge who assessed his property at 3 times its actual market value, such
that his property taxes would be so high that he would have to move out of the
community.) In no time at all this average citizen was tracked down and arrested
for assault. Now the local gov't busycrats want guns to be banned in all public
spaces. I say turn it around. Make it legal for any citizen to give a bureaucrat
who is giving them a hard time a good smack up side the head. At the very least
allow the average citizen to issue citations to bureaucrats for stupidity,
obfuscation, and inefficiency.
I dunno, John, maybe you enjoy spending an entire day of your working life in the
DMV, trying to get the legal fabrications of a few states off your record just so
you can drive to work. I don't. Fact is that the current system needs a good
razing. As this doesn't seem likely, starting from scratch somewhere else is a
more cost effective solution.