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No taxes. No welfare. Welcome to libertarian paradise island

9 points| antr | 3 years ago |ft.com

20 comments

order

Comevius|3 years ago

It's 500 people on a tiny island demonstrating that 500 people don't need a government to function as a community. They say they can just make agreements between themselves, which is the purpose of the government, to solve that problem at scale. If one of them needs help I'm sure the rest of them would try to help, which is what wellfare is when millions of people are involved.

I'm guessing that if I go there and start a business dumping waste on the island (which would be very profitable for me, it is increasingly costly to get rid of waste in most countries because of the stringent regulations) the people there would have to learn what taxes and regulations are for.

homonculus1|3 years ago

If you piss off 500 people on an island with no police force I suspect YOU are going to learn how informal governance works!

s1artibartfast|3 years ago

Anarcocapitalist and Libertarian frameworks can still have methods of dealing with such problems. At best they have laws, contracts, and private police and you would be sued. At worst, they might shoot you.

fknorangesite|3 years ago

See this is where that libertarian-paradise-town in New Hampshire went wrong: if you put yourself on an island, you are less likely to be overrun by bears.

jl2718|3 years ago

> anarchy doesn’t scale

Fair argument, but mostly a strawman against peaceful progress.

Call it “nonviolence”. Define the broad goal of civilization as eliminating coercion, and these experiments seem useful.

kalupa|3 years ago

I feel like I know this story plot ...

ehutch79|3 years ago

Is it ironic that it's behind a paywall?

poulpy123|3 years ago

Must be nice to be a parasite