Needlenose

Back in ’03, there was discussion among the proto-Tea Bagger Libertarians about moving to some state like Montana or Wyoming and make it a Libertarian Utopia by using electoral clout to remake the state in Ayn Rand’s image.  Well here we are in 2011, and it looks like Libertopia may have already arrived – firemen in Tennessee refusing to save a burning house unless they get paid.  They don’t want to stop at taking us back to the 1890s, they want to go back to ancient Rome!

The first Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history was created by Marcus Licinius Crassus. Marcus Licinius Crassus was born into a wealthy Roman family around the year 115 BC, and acquired an enormous fortune through (in the words of Plutarch) “fire and rapine.” One of his most lucrative schemes took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value.

 

*Update 12/7/11* Looks like Tennessee isn’t a true Libertopia, but rather just another Crony Capitalist state.

I’ve been airborne more than usual recently, and in a recent flight, stumbled across a ‘Wired’ magazine.  And I rediscovered why I stopped reading that Tired Libertarian-leaning rag many years ago when I hit the article about Patri Friedman, the arrogant scion of the pseudo-intellectual Libertarian David Friedman (who was in turn sired by the pseudo-economist Milton Friedman) and his Seasteading Institute, the latest word in Libertopias.

In the early days of this blog, I sneered at a movement to relocate hundreds of thousands of asshole Libertarians to some low-populace redneck state, in the hopes of taking over from the locals and creating an Ayn Randian ‘utopia’ where they could ‘prove’ to the rest of us how much better they’d run things under their extremist ideology.

Well the biggest flaw with their plan is that trying to get a bunch of selfish, self-righteous blowhards to agree on anything, much less organize a community, is pretty much of a non-starter.

So here we are in 2008, and spoiled little rich kid Patri Friedman (a pale shadow of his famous wacko gramps Milton) wants to create a bunch of floating offshore platforms where fellow egotistical blowhard assholes can make money just outside the 200 mile economic zones by running such creative businesses as:

(horribly polluting) Fish farming and aquaculture. Prisions…Gold warehouses. Brothels.   Cryonics intakes. Gene therapy, cloning, augmentation, and organ sales. Baby farms. Deafeningly loud concerts. Rehab/detox clinics…Abortion Clinics. Ultimate ultimate fighting tournaments.

Well this did give me an excuse to air a fantasy I’ve been contemplating for months now, inspired by watching the new documentary series Whale Wars on Animal Planet as well as the continuing success of the pirates off the coast of Somalia.

In Whale Wars, a hard-core eco group harrasses Japanese whalers in the Antarctic using non-lethal weapons (stink bombs. slippery powder and propeller-fouling gear) and the Media.  And we all know the story of the plucky Somali pirates, who continue to manage to kidnap major trade vessels under the eyes of the world’s navies, and successfully get paid handsome randsoms with apparently little repercussion.

I was thinking how nice it would be to buy one of those new super-quiet diesel subs the Chinese are putting out, create a base on an uninhabited volcanic island in the S. Pacific, and go around sinking eco-criminals such as whalers, poachers and shark-finners around the planet.  But how much more fun, I thought, if Patri were actually able to establish numerous floating platforms just out of national waters (and protection), and stock them chockablock full of Libertarian assholes…can you picture a more worthy torpedo target?

‘Flat-Earth’ libertarians and reactionaries continue to remain in denial, but scientists are converging in agreement that human activity is the most significant factor in global warming over the last century. What is worse is that the ‘wailing Cassandras’ of the environmental movement were right – global warming will lead to a tremendous numbers of extinctions.

Of course there is a rhetorical silver lining for the SUV-huggers; the scientists also determined that the Kyoto protocol was by far too wimpy to have a serious impact on global warming, so in blowing off the treaty, President Asteroid-Impact hasn’t significantly influenced the final outcome.