They want serfs

A pretty good recent episode of Gil Duran’s Nerd Reich podcast had an odd hole in it.

In the one I’m talking about, the one with Quinn Slobodian, Quinn explains that there’s a reason the many efforts to create a seastead, charter city, network state, and such never go anywhere: They’re unnecessary.

[Y]ou don’t actually need to create a new polity to have your own sense of entitlement and privilege reinforced in every imaginable way, and to have your own economic comfort facilitated by the institutional arrangements of the state in almost every way. With some creative accounting and some use of offshore havens and trusts and so on, you can really game the whole thing very well already, right?

Having said that, they do talk a bit about why, given that there are already tools to protect your property and money (freeports, trust, special economic zones, and the like), anybody would work so hard and spend so much money to create an actual place that’s outside the control of any government. They don’t quite come around to answering that question, which I think is unfortunate, because I think they both know the answer.

The people pushing these efforts want serfs.

They don’t want workers who can join unions. They don’t want software engineers who hesitate to create autonomous munitions or tools for surveillance capitalism. They don’t want maids or pool boys who feel free to resist their advances.

They want the right to be mean to people, in a situation where the people have to just take it.

That’s what places like Próspera offer that you can’t get from a family company incorporated in a special economic zone.