"Planet Government"

It started with an idea: "Planet Government".

Someone proposed, a couple of decades ago, that we find a dead world somewhere and let all the rulers and would-be rulers of the world emigrate there, along with all their militaries.  And those who just can't get along with others.

Let them fight it out among themselves as much as they want, but warn them that if they ever return to Earth, they will be expected to abide by the Zero Aggression Principle and the Covenant of Unanimous Consent, and if they don't they will be subject to self-defensive actions.  Just like any other thug.  They will never again have a "position" or any veil of legitimacy to hide behind.

It wasn't an exile, but was completely voluntary.  And, it was shocking how many jumped at the chance to live in a constant Hell of fighting and power struggles, rather than forgo getting what they wanted by coercion.

The authoritarian types were already becoming miserable here.  Too much peace.  Too few controls, and too little "crime".  They had already lost power, and since that was all that gave their lives meaning, they chose to leave rather than adapt to a voluntary life.

It took several years, and a LOT of money, willingly donated, but it did happen.  They launched long ago.  The thing is, no one here knows if the ship ever made it to its destination or not.  Their ship does have the capability to communicate with Earth, but no one was interested enough to monitor their progress.

I hope that whatever happened to them, they are happy.  And I hope they never try to come back.  But if they do, we are ready for them.  Without their lingering influence, society is more "polite" than ever- by which I mean it is the rare individual who goes anywhere unarmed- almost everyone is ready to defend against theft or aggression.  And there are anti-asteroid hobbyists who could deal effectively with the threat of an incoming hostile ship or missile.

Life is better here without them.


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Immigration in Libertopia

A little fact about Libertopia that you may not be aware of: it does not encompass the entire planet. Yet. There are still struggling pockets of State here and there.

Most of them have serious immigration and emigration "laws".

The Rulers of these dying States don't want any Libertopians moving in and giving their new neighbors dangerous ideas. Thus the immigration "controls". I doubt it's necessary- who would move to a State? But it was a good justification for putting the infrastructure in place to control the "borders".

Because, even more, they want to keep the residents (the States would call them "citizens") they have from escaping- it's hard to tax people who leave if they go somewhere without a government to help you track and control them. It is also hard to rule when you are alone.

Most of the residents of these States were in favor of the immigration controls. At least at first. What the residents of these States failed to realize was that any policy or agency that can keep "them" out, can be turned around and be used to keep "us" in. Cages and "borders" work both ways.

Libertopians living near these unilaterally-declared "borders" are usually more than willing to help people escape an oppressive State (Yeah, I'm repeating myself there). The more people who are free, the better it is for everyone. It is the new "Underground Railroad", and it is killing the last few States.

It is funny, though. No one in Libertopia worries about immigrants moving in and using up all the welfare. There is no welfare. No one worries about immigrants taking all the jobs- they are just as likely to create jobs. No one worries about what language anyone else speaks. There can be no "official language"- you communicate however you can. No one worries about their culture being destroyed by exposure to another culture. That would be an admission that your culture isn't worth saving. Yet all these excuses, as unbelievable as they sound to me, are actually used in those dying States!

Without a government to co-opt or take over- either by voting or by having more offspring than someone else- people don't seem to worry too much about who is moving where. At least as long as the new neighbors don't initiate force or steal. And if they do, where they came from is the least important piece of information you could possibly worry about.

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Vacation time and Air travel- a Perfect Match

I'm thinking about flying to a tropical paradise for a bit of a vacation. It's about time to sit under a palm tree, on a beach, and sip drinks with tiny umbrellas in them for a week or two. And maybe watch some female humans walk around in skimpy swim suits ... or less. Or maybe I'll go to the mountains. Hmmm.

As much as I enjoy vacations, getting there is half the fun. Well, 10%, at least. Air travel is always great. The suborbital flights and near-Earth shuttles, especially so.

Of course, flying means I need to buy some more frangible ammunition. It isn't required, but in case the unthinkable happens I really don't wish to pay the airline for .45 caliber holes in the aircraft skin.

I think there are still a couple of airlines who forbid guns to their passengers (although I don't know of any who still ban knives on flights). Not that I'd ever consider doing business with any of those. Sure, they have all the best security, but no "security" will ever beat self-responsible passengers and crew.

Living as I do on "Anarchist Standard Time" I generally end up running through the gate at the last possible second- tossing my luggage at the nearest luggage handler (hoping he puts it on the right plane), and sometimes paying the ticket collector onboard instead of buying a ticket at the counter. Yes, it costs a bit more that way, but I can never seem to be on time. I suppose I prefer that to the alternative of waiting around for my flight.

Although, on the occasions where I have missed the flight I intended to take (yes, it happens), I do enjoy browsing around the airport shops. I picked up an old, but very nice, Tommy Gun for a great price at an airport gun shop once. It seems a traveler was short on cash, so he traded for a cheaper carry piece and pocketed the difference, and I (and the gun shop) both made out like bandits on that deal. I never get my ammo at the airport, though. Airport ammo prices are notoriously high.

The liquor/narcotics/hemp shops in the airport are also popular with those who have an irrational fear of flying- if they didn't come prepared. Some things just go together like peaches and cream, and the airports and airlines recognize that.

I've heard that air travel wasn't always so nice, "back in the day". It's hard to imagine.

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Potholes!

Potholes happen. Sometimes even in Libertopia.

A friend (who hasn't made the move to cars that don't rely on wheels) discovered this fact a while back.

Being privately owned, most roads in Libertopia are pretty good. They'd better be since the owner is liable for any damage caused by poor maintenance or other road hazards. Still, things sometimes go wrong and cause a problem before they can be noticed and fixed.

My friend was zipping along the road when her tire's line of travel intersected a nasty pothole. The impact caused some damage to her car, but the safety system on her car kept her from losing control and having even more damage done. (Actually, one system on her car failed since it didn't take her around the pothole to prevent the impact completely. The road owner may be able to recover some of his restitution from the car's manufacturer because of this too, but that is between them and something I won't see.)

My friend's car immediately contacted her insurance company, and sent them the files from its onboard computer, as well as some photos of the pothole (which were automatically labeled with its exact coordinates as well). This information was forwarded to the road's owner, as well as to other travelers in the vicinity so that they could avoid a similar fate.

The owner of the road immediately sent a crew to fix the pothole and paid my friend for the damages and refunded a part of her road subscription fee for her troubles. Arbitration was avoided, as it usually is.

I'm sure she would have preferred not hitting the pothole in the first place, but it was "made good" the best way possible under the circumstances.

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Railroad Crossing- Look out for the cars...

Right near here is an intersection that has recently had some problems. It is an intersection of a highway for personal vehicles and a railway- commonly called a railroad crossing, although I don't see why the railroad gets exclusive billing. (It was also, in times past, the exact location of a border between two states so that neither state would take responsibility for the road at the crossing, but would pass the blame to the other state or to the railroad.)

Railroads had some pretty hard times right around the time the era of The State ended. Subsidies and government contracts were apparently pretty addictive, and doing without them was just about fatal. Yet, time (and liberty) healed the hurt and got rid of the chaff, and railroads soon came back healthier than they had ever been.

As with the crossing, though, sometimes residue and mistakes from the past era still crop up to haunt us.

While the railroads were "on hiatus" the intersection wasn't a problem. The new owners of the road (local residents and business owners) simply ignored the crossing while keeping the road in repair. The crossing was pretty easy to ignore. After all, the railroad's part of the crossing was the best-maintained component all along, even before Libertopia.

When railroads began to run again, they reached an agreement with the road's owners that allowed them to use the intersection for a fee. It was occasionally annoying, but nothing major enough to get worked up over. But recently the train traffic has increased to the point where there were significant delays many times a day as a train passed. And by "many times a day" I am talking about 150 to 300 trains per day. There was no way to avoid the intersection. The road's customers began to complain with good reason. Not only were the delays becoming inconvenient (and wasteful of time), but they were becoming dangerous. The nearest hospital is on the other side of the tracks and in an emergency a delay, or worse, a stopped train, could mean the difference between life and death.

A solution had to be found.

And it was. What eventually happened was the the road owners allowed the railroad to stop paying rent for use of the intersection for a time and put that savings into the construction of an elevated track to go over the road in that area. There was also significant fund-raising and business sponsorship to pay the expenses.

Everyone came out ahead, since the railroad owners would have been held personally liable had a crossing incident resulted in harm or death. The local businesses don't have to worry about a highway bridge resulting in customers being funneled past their doors. And local residents near the tracks don't have to listen to the crossing arms clanging, and the train whistles blowing, all hours of the day and night.

People wonder why this wasn't done sooner. I suspect that had this solution not been implemented, someone would have built a competing road with a bridge before too long (it has happened in other places), but I believe the solution which was found was the best one for this location and benefited everyone the most. As with all things in Libertopia, one size does not fit all and different solutions present themselves in different places and in slightly different circumstances. It is very liberating to not have solutions dictated from afar by clueless paper-pushers.

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Museum of Government- Migrants and "Borders"

"Now that the government has evaporated in this region, 'America', more or less, we have an interesting immigration situation. But first, the historical perspective.

"Back when the old US government was ruling this region, borders and immigration were big points of contention. The borders gave government agents a great excuse to 'earn' extra bonuses and exercise their inflated authority. Too few people recognized that a wall keeps you in as effectively as it keeps 'them' out. Or even more effectively. The state kept demanding more and more documentation of Americans, using the dreaded 'illegal immigrants' as the boogeyman. The true migrant aggressors never were worried about documentation. So, once again, the 'government solution' only harmed those who were not part of the problem. You see the same pattern emerge time and again.

"Only one side of the issue was given much attention: the aggression (usually called 'crime' back in the Era of Government) caused by independent migrants. The other side; the positive benefits, were ignored or downplayed. As is always the case, the migrants were 'taking over', costing 'us' millions, speaking some other 'unAmerican language', or had 'different values'. A hundred years before they would have been accused of cannibalism.

"The government was assumed to own all the land within 'its' borders, otherwise there would not have been an issue. That was the only justification, faulty though it was, for not allowing property owners to administer the use of their own property.

"Now that America has no government, and the governments of some nearby countries are entering their death throes, the border situation has become a bit cloudy. People come here; people leave here. Only the governments worry about it. Many Americans earn a profit ensuring safe passage into and out of free territory. That enrages those nearby governments, but they are too busy trying not to evaporate to do much about it. And each new freedom-loving friend who moves here is one more 'for our side'.

"Since there is no more welfare of any kind, no one moves to America to get free anything, except for opportunity. Since self-defense has become standard practice again, aggressors stay where they are safe: under the wings of government. So many new businesses are started by these 'liberty-migrants' that there is no way to compare the economy before and after. A 'singularity' has been achieved. Businesses compete for any new employee they can get. The pay for those workers has also skyrocketed, and with no more state to tax or extort, they keep that money and then often start more new businesses. You see why I say a 'singularity' occurred.

"As news of free territory leaks back to those other countries, still languishing under government, more people choose to stay and change their own land than choose to move here. Love for 'home' is strong. Liberty is a wildfire sweeping across the face of the planet. I can't predict with certainty, of course, but based on past experience, I would say government as an acceptable human activity is in its last decade. It will die everywhere as it did here, and not a moment too soon."

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Museum of Government- Travel

"This next exhibit shows what happens to the right to travel freely when government gets its hairy paws on it.

"When I say 'travel freely' I don't mean you don't pay for the services you may use, but that you are not subjected to the whims of someone who has no interest in allowing you to move about from one place to another. While someone else may own the vehicle or the path, they don't own you.

"As you probably know, back during the "Era of Government" almost all roads were owned and maintained (poorly) by government of one form or another. This was taken as 'authority' to demand that people carry a license that was used as identification and for tracking purposes. The Nazis had started this practice, but the governments of the early 21st century took the concept and expanded on it greatly.

"Counterfeit 'laws' were passed insisting that cars have a visible registration number to allow the state's enforcers to identify the drivers. People were targeted for extortion if they were not wearing a restraining belt while they travelled, or if they travelled faster than the enforcers dictated, or... well, it was a very long list. The 'highwaymen' of earlier times were rank amateurs compared to the 'mobile extortion units' employed by the state. The entire business of travel became a huge windfall for the authoritarians.

"Unfortunately it did not end there. Peoples' safety was thrown aside in order to allow government to have even more control. Airlines were not openly owned by the government, but in practice it was a different story. Passengers were disarmed and subjected to 'state-rape' before being allowed on airplanes. Here you can view a slide show of the excuses for the abuses spouted by the authorities... and the debunking of each and every one. For other kinds of travel, the oppression was the same. People were kidnapped and robbed by enforcers for carrying tools of self defense on their own person through zones where you were 'legally' required to die peacefully when attacked. It was never about 'safety'; it was always about 'control'.

"Most people were so thoroughly conditioned to the lies of the statists that they couldn't even imagine the world we live in now; where roads are privately owned (although that is redundant since that is the only kind of ownership that has ever been real) and only marginally necessary, and people do not give up their rights simply because they leave home. The whine "But who will build the roads?" was one of the biggest barriers for some otherwise rational people to let go of the fiction of government. As you see, it was a non-problem that was solved simply once our 'conditioning' was overcome.

"Now, please turn around for the next exhibit."

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