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[Reelya]

Well there's that city in India which all the corporations love because it effectively has no city governance. It's an example of a city run by corporations, but it's not really representative, since national companies base themselves there to avoid taxes, but they're still making money off other cities, mainly.

It probably wouldn't scale up in the same way that a "tax haven" or trade-based port city doesn't scale up. You can make one city that runs ok by attracting all the tax dodgers in a nation of 1 billion people, but that doesn't mean that every city could boom by attracting tax dodgers. Ultimately, people somewhere else are footing the bill.

Additionally, it's not like Gurgaon is a paradise. It's a paper-thin "development" where it's nice and pristine, but outside that area it's a toxic dump because nobody could be bothered piping the sewage any further than the edge of town, or paying for water treatment.

https://www.businessinsider.com/gurgaon-the-town-without-a-government-2016-3/?r=AU&IR=T

[Egan_BW]

These sorts of systems don't deal well with the concept of children. If babies become a commodity to be produced, sold, bought at the discretion of each citizen, at what age do they cease being commodities? And how do you enforce that without laws or a social contract?

Sure, maybe people will stop abusing children, because children become a commodity and abusing them lowers their resale value. But, you could equally "train" the children in certain (unpleasant) ways and have their resale value increase for a specific "market niche". I wouldn't trust the subset of people willing to buy and sell children on the "free market" to have the children's best interests at heart.

This can be solved by technology. Infants go from commodity to person with rights when their body finishes developing the weapon packages, designed to make it as easy as possible to enforce your own rights.

[George_Chickens]

I wonder if a group of people of significant size has ever actually attempted to put the heavy Libertarianism into practice.

There have been several "libertarian experiments" in small towns and municipalities in the USA. There was one, I think it was Von Ormy, which completely lacked stable electricity and sewage disposal because they waited for private companies and entrepreneurs to do it for them without providing any incentive for it to happen. Apparently, their attempts to rectify these problems have made it practically impossible for a company to come in and fix it, too, due to an incoherent self designed water system without a centralized source.

Also of note is that the predecessors of these types and their influences, that is, Austrian School economists, were hired in and allowed to economically experiment with the Chilean military dictatorship.

[scriver]

Instead, everyone's free to define they're own little kingdoms and fight over the borders. You are the ruler of as much as you can personally grab.

S! M! Å! L! A!
N! D! Småland!

[Reelya]

Also of note is that the predecessors of these types and their influences, that is, Austrian School economists, were hired in and allowed to economically experiment with the Chilean military dictatorship.

Sorry, but I think those were the Chicago Boys group, not the Austrians. Milton Friedman and co.

[George_Chickens]

Also of note is that the predecessors of these types and their influences, that is, Austrian School economists, were hired in and allowed to economically experiment with the Chilean military dictatorship.

Sorry, but I think those were the Chicago Boys group, not the Austrians. Milton Friedman and co.

Yeah, I was misremembering. It was the "Chicago Boys", as they were called, with the blessings of Friedrich Hayek and I think one other major figure of the Austrian School economists.

[Rowanas]

Haven't we all played enough Bioshock and read enough...Ayn Rand (it causes me physical pain to speak her name out loud, but typing it is okish) to know that anarcho-capitalism as an extreme form of libertarianism is a bloody awful idea from head to toe?  It's just genuinely nihilistic, and the only difference between the most extreme and least extreme libertarianism is in just how nihilistic it is!  Are all morals, social constructs and laws meaningless, or just some of them?

It pleases me that western Europe is (i'm looking at you Scandinavia, you beautiful countries, you), in general, a much more reasonable and more functionally socialist place than most of the world.

[scriver]

Less and less every day

[Rowanas]

Less and less every day

Don't make me miserable, scriver.  I know, and I thought it while typing.

[ChairmanPoo]

The double espresso burns with Hellfire as an eerie red glow blurs your vision. Fresh tears flow into your eyes, and you begin to hear the tormented whispers of the Damned. You have done what you knew must be done. The essence of Bewley's Coffee is contained... For now.

You pray that you have become strong enough to contain the Demon and keep it at bay. Although you have been fortified by your quest, you can still feel it clawing his way up from the dark recesses of your bowels.

Fighting to retain control, your thoughts turn toward the ancient mystic lands of West Eire. Perhaps there you will find an answer. Or perhaps, salvation....

[Kagus]

It pleases me that western Europe is (i'm looking at you Scandinavia, you beautiful countries, you), in general, a much more reasonable and more functionally socialist place than most of the world.

I'd slap down some Norwegian political buffoonery here, but our best and brightest clown got kicked out of government a while back when she figured it'd be a good idea to spread a Facebook image talking about how "Labour is too busy protecting terrorists to care about Norwegian safety!" on the opening day of the movie dramatization of the terrorist attack on Labour's youth activist camp. She will be missed, if only for making absolutely everyone look better by comparison to her.

Right now we just have a high-ranking classified-access minister who snuck off to Iran without saying anything and with an unsecured phone containing personal information of a lot of people/departments in government.

"It's a witch hunt!" he said, when made to step down from his position and be stripped of his security clearance.


We also have an actual card-carrying communist in parliament now, thanks to the last election giving his party enough votes for the first time in history for them to get a single seat. To his credit, the young man's been incredibly busy since getting in! Starting motions for votes of no confidence hither and thither, including the one that finally knocked out the racist old hag mentioned earlier.

...he's still a filthy idealist though.

[scriver]

Sweden in election season, which means it's also politician season. So far two (maybe three?) realmsdaysmen has been forced to step down over corruption allegations. One top-tier name on local voting lists of the Centre Party (formerly very near centre right wing with a heavy countryside focus; nowadays the most right wing party in the Riksdag and extremist neo-liberals) got ousted from the list after it turned out he had a not-so-secret life as a Turkic ultra-nationalist.

[Loud Whispers]

SCALLOP WARS
So in a minor but nevertheless highly interesting news of great significance to coastal England, Scotland and France, a clash of 5 English & Scottish scallop trawlers vs 40 smaller French scallop trawlers occurred in the English channel. The clash occurred when the Anglo-Scottish fishers showed up to fish some scallops in the channel, angering the French fishermen who also fish that area. The French fishermen were forbidden to trawl from that area until October by the French government, but no such limitations apply to the British fishers. The French responded by chucking rocks, chains and smoke bombs (petrol bombs? The latter seems to change depending on whether British or French report on it) at the British fishing vessels.

All thoroughly stupid behaviour all round, goes without saying that these sort of disputes ought to be settled out in meeting rooms, not endangering everyone's life at sea. Despite the fairly minor significance of this incident, I believe it will have vastly outsized influence once both sides start calling on their ministers to defend them from Islay to Normandy. Then come the memes

[Kagus]

First the Cod Wars, now the Scallop Wars... Will British fishing never prevail? Will the switch to chicken tikka masala as official street food be finally set in stone? Will the kippers industry take its last kip?

All this and more, only on The History Channel BBC One and a Half.

[smjjames]

I thought they won those so called Cod Wars?

Just gonna be another headache among all the other headaches after Brexit.