-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: Sunday, June 28, 1998 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: New Utopia
>
>This is another of those threads that seem to reincarnate from time to
>time. The appeal is obvious: a place where we can be free and do what
>we want to do. Great! But then reality intrudes, and we get all the
>problems of practicalities of sea engineering, silly laws about
>territories, the worry about defenses, and eventually it tend to run
>into the perennial libertarian discussion. There have been several
>similar projects beside Oceania, and none have succeeded (most never
>left the paper). The reason seems to be that while a lot of people
>like the idea, few are really wanting to pay a lot to participate, and
>you need serious funding and planning for a project like this. This is
>actually a worry I have about the Millennial Project, which at least
>has thought about making the islands profitable from the start.
>
>Maybe we should rethink the question. Last time this thread of
>building an extropia came up people began to discuss various islands
>instead. After all, a completely independent new nation might be
>overdoing it, it might be enough to have breathing room. Maybe one
>could back down even further: the most important thing in order to
>really create a working community for this kind of project is of
>course the community itself. Where it is and what jurisdiction is
>involved is really secondary, since if you don't have the community in
>the first place there is no way you could make the floating island
>work. It is a good idea to figure out how to build the core community
>and test it out first before trying to achieve soverignity.
>
>What form the community might have is interesting. Right now we have
>the extropian nexi, and one could imagine something like an
>employee-owned transhumanist corporation that grows out from it. If we
>can create transhuman communities that have not just social but also
>economical potential I think we will be on to something.
>
>
>To sum up: I want to live in Oceania/New Utopia/Stateless too, but we
>need more than a loophole in UN regulations to do it. It might be
>better to start with thinking of how to create transhumanist
>companies.
>
>--
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
>asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
>GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
>