• themeatbridge
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    361 month ago

    This shit is the basis for like 12 different dystopian sci-fi novels.

    • President Camacho
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      91 month ago

      When I read Snow Crash, I had a hard time getting into it because I though the idea of wholesale privatisation of government responsibilities and territories went a bit too far…

      Tech bros really have a hard on for the Torment Nexus.

      • @[email protected]
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        61 month ago

        A lot of well-connected scions of wealth read that, along with Ayn Rand, and thought “fuck yeah”

        • @[email protected]
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          21 month ago

          These 10 percenters all think they will be Uncle Enzo and his pizza company while in reality they will be running low cost Rent-a-Copz outfits in rotted out strip malls in middle America when the real wealthy people crash them out of the system becoming untouchable ultra elites.

  • @[email protected]
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    271 month ago

    These zones would allow wealthy investors to write their own laws and set up their own governance structures which would be corporately controlled and wouldn’t involve a traditional bureaucracy.

    As if a corporation isn’t just another form of hierarchical organization with departments and redundancy.

    The new zones could also serve as a testbed for weird new technologies without the need for government oversight.

    Ah, there it is.

    They also want to build on Federal land, which is mostly national parks. So obviously conservation is not a part of our future.

    And this is just a fucking speed run into a cyberpunk dystopia. Like an extra stupid mix of Snowcrash and BioShock. If the Federal government allows a bunch of technofascists to build independent cities free of Federal regulatory oversight, then what’s stopping them from just not being part of the US at that point? They won’t be paying taxes, they won’t be represented in Congress, and they won’t be subject to Federal law, so why should we allow this?

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    Article starts with Honduras, and wtf does that have to do with US, but

    the Network Staters want to build them in our national parks.

    The key is how much “we” get paid for their privilege, and does it buy the “utlimate tax free sov cit dream”? while residents get to make money from America, and evade American tariffs.

    Best part if it fails, everyone leaves, it can be turned into unregulated nuclear waste dump with child hookers.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 month ago

    Hot take: this is not necessarily a bad idea, and worth experimenting with. After all, Disneyland is an existing example of such a setup, and it’s arguably better governed than other jurisdictions within Florida. And when Ron DeSantis flexed the state government power to transfer decision making from Disney back to the politicians, it was not an improvement.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      This is not ENTIRELY the case. These would effectively be sovereign states in all but name. They would have full autonomy and exemption from US law and state law. Further, they would have abilities to set laws in these cities with real, actual criminal penalties, and enforce them via their own monopoly on force.

  • Majorllama
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    21 month ago

    Good thing letting corporations run things has never gone poorly for anyone in the history of the human race even once!