Sunday, May 10, 2009

Where is Galt's gulch?

This blogger has some interesting thoughts about getting away from it all, although the more I think about it the more convinced I am that setting up "Galt's Gulch" in any physical location will be very difficult to impossible to do in any practical manner, at least not if you like living in a high energy civilization with hot and cold running water....http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/05/04/libertarian-democraphobia/

I still haven't quite figured out the details, but I can see a combination of survivalist mentality (being physically secure and self sufficient to whatever extent possible, ranging from living in the back 40 to building an urban greenhouse in your balcony), secure VPN and anonymizer software to communicate without the busybodies finding you easily, and some sort of virtual economy where you can interact and trade value with other people in the "Distributed Republic". Your virtual currency would be based on and backed by "free banking" (i.e. only the issuer can control the supply of credit, but anyone can set up a bank and issue currency), although how this money would interact with the real world is less clear (you can pay real money to to other gamers to buy virtual stuff on "World of Warcraft", for example, but how do you use your "World of John Galt" money to buy real groceries or machine tools?).

Like real pioneers hacking a new society out of an uncompromising wilderness, virtual pioneers will have to experiment with a large number of ideas, and be prepared to defend them against hostile people and elements determined to close off the frontiers to settlement and exploitation by determined and free people who refuse to remain as serfs.

The roughneck was watching them from above, listening with curiosity. She glanced up at him, he looked like a truck driver, so she asked, "What were you outside? A professor of comparative philology, I suppose?"

"No, ma’am," he answered. "I was a truck driver."

He added, "But that’s not what I wanted to remain."

2 comments:

BeanDare said...

I think your thinking in terms of this world. But if you enlisted the great minds of this time and those that have sought not to contribute their brilliance for exploitation and grouped them on a island (some are for sale) and built a world separate to this. I believe there are great innovations out there but that those individuals see the expiration of society and choose not to release them.

Anonymous said...

What are we waiting for? Isn't time? One Island of like minds could out-produce the world. RE