[refraincomment]

Sounds awesome. Citizens don't owe anything to the government, we shouldn't be born with a liability towards the government, we should be born free and be in total control of our finances, and be free to choose the hosting city that offers us the most.

[benrbray]

No wealthy person became wealthy on their own. Almost by definition they participate in a market, which can only be established by some kind of state-like entity to prevent descent into chaos.

The marvels of modern life are all due to the stability and infrastructure provided by government. For one to rise to a high level of wealth by exploiting public resources, then simply abscond with their pile of gold, is to breach the social contract that enabled them to rise so high in the first place. It's pulling up the ladder.

[throwaway316943]

I disagree that it’s a government in itself that makes this possible. I believe it’s the restriction of predatory governmental practices that allows for a flourishing free market. A descent into chaos is prevented by an impartial legal system and police force, neither of which technically require a government. Chaos erupts when there is no fair third party to appeal to for resolution of disputes or protection from violence.

[DC1350]

Does it really matter? We live in a time where there’s no necessary relationship between the government that you pay taxes to and the one that supports the people who pay you. That’s what remote work makes possible. You’re suggesting that free movement is wrong and that people owe a debt to whichever government they happened to be raised under.

[benrbray]

Free movement is not wrong, but there is a reason that many nations including the United States charge an "exit tax" for renouncing citizenship.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

What is the reason for the US to charge an exit tax to someone that was born in the US, is raised and makes a fortune in Chile, and then that person decides to renounce his/her US citizenship ?

[newsclues]

Sounds less awesome if you aren’t wealthy

[refraincomment]

Why? Nobody, poor or wealthy, need to be a servant of any government.

[WJW]

Indeed! Powerful individuals should be free to exploit their fellow man without any interference from the plebs banding together! There's a Galts' Gulch in Chile that you might be interested in. They have no government at all there.

[refraincomment]

Use the terminology you like. If it makes you feel better this set of words, it's fine by me!

No individual owes anything to the bigger group. That's the principle. In practice you see a lot of abuse, sadly.

[EGreg]

I do not think you believe your own principle.

Do you have a family?

Do you work for a company?

Do you live in a neighborhood?

Do you hold money in a bank? Do you buy goods and services from corporations? You realize that you are not contracting with an individual when you do this, and the bank or corporation will continue to have your account in their (computer) systems long after any specific individual has left the company, because it doesn’t belong to any specific individual?

Everywhere you go, you enter into agreements with the people who are affected by your actions.

Money is just a paper or digital asset representing how much other people or organizations owed you and cleared by sending this asset.

Even property ownership itself is just a result of laws passed by certain jurisdictions. They vary from place to place and are balanced against other rights. Property rights make sense for small amounts of property but as you come to “own” larger and larger amounts of capital, you simply expect the system to scale indefinitely, without changing, but that is not necessarily a reasonable expectation. Just like you can’t just scale up an ancient ship and expect everything to work.

What you’re really saying is that someone owes you the safeguarding of your large amount of money because they are being paid some of this money to do so. You want to be able to unilaterally centrally plan where it’s going to go, including sending massive amounts out of a town or community just because it found its way into your accounts.

But all your “principles” ironically are just extrapolations of rights and affordances given to you by a state or other organization that has been running things in an orderly manner. The reality is the other way around - no organizations owe you the safeguarding and enforcing of a monopoly on the unlimited use of {insert resource here} while you unilaterally get to exclude all others from using this resource more productively. You want to centrally plan how the resource will be utilized and you get upset that your “slippage” (eg progressive taxes) is getting bigger and bigger!

[refraincomment]

I enter all of these interactions voluntarily

I choose the family, I choose the job, I choose what I consume and where I live

Unfortunately I can't walk away from being stolen 50% of my revenues every year.

[atlasunshrugged]

Agreed, if anything more migration opportunities would be much better for those who are poor. A semi-recent article put the value of free movement globally at an additional $78 Trillion for the global economy

https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of...

[nomdep]

And when another country want to invade your utopic island, who's going to defend it? Nations exists because of the need for an army.

[atlasunshrugged]

I think part of the idea is that weapons systems have changed such that if another country invades, what exactly would they capture? Laptops? Maybe the people - and then what? You're going to make them be as productive as they were but working for your regime? Plus, small nations with asymmetric warfare opportunities - e.g. you're a small city and you have a big aggressive neighbor, why not create a bunch of cyber attacks that can be triggered at any moment rendering the value of any attack moot or negative. Agreed for islands where the intrinsic value isn't the human capital this might be a serious concern, but I doubt it for a place like this.

[refraincomment]

Who said we won't have nukes?

[atlasunshrugged]

I think you're being sarcastic but exactly! It basically worked for North Korea and I bet Ukraine wishes they held onto theirs these days. But idk if even something as powerful as a nuke is needed, you just need some measure that makes attacking the place less valuable than not. Personally, that screams cyberwarfare to me (e.g. yeah you can take our city but by the time you do I will have shut down your electric grid and financial market for a few days) but who knows