0:01

I Robert

0:06

Evans, this is Behind

0:08

the Bastards.

0:09

You sure you didn't

0:11

sound so sure? You

0:14

know, Sophie, the nature of identity

0:17

is so complicated. Who can say

0:19

who anyone is?

0:22

Who is us? Who is us? This is my

0:24

new podcast Who is Us? With Robert

0:26

Evans, presumably and

0:29

definitely Sophie Lictorman. Definitely,

0:31

definitely, so, Sophie Lictorman. This is a

0:33

show about bad people. It's called Behind the Bastards.

0:36

Uh, And to talk about bad people with

0:38

me is one of the better people I

0:40

know. David Christopher Bell, jeez,

0:43

thanks full legal name legal

0:47

Dave. Yeah, just work

0:50

together for many a year. We

0:52

lived together for a year.

0:55

We did Our cats were once as

0:57

friends. M Ark allied

1:00

together against another cat might be a better

1:02

way of putting yes and me, Like whenever

1:04

I cat said, your cat

1:07

would have want to have nothing to do

1:09

with me and loved my cat and

1:11

you know, honestly that's fine. Yeah,

1:14

I'd rather be that Yeah

1:17

cat cat

1:19

cat lies, Dave. How do

1:21

you feel about libertarians? Oh?

1:23

No, people

1:29

know that you don't tell the guess anything, right.

1:31

They that the show would not work

1:33

if we told me coming sometimes

1:37

they know the broad subject. But I don't

1:39

even like that. That's not my preference. But that

1:41

bit is so good it will never get old.

1:43

What do you think about here,

1:47

libertarians? My thoughts are,

1:50

like anything, the most vocal

1:52

people representing it are incredibly

1:55

irritating. But I suspect

1:57

there's a lot of very good ones who keep

1:59

to themselves. I I I was

2:01

a libertarian for many years. I still think

2:04

there's a lot of good stuff in in some

2:06

of the things libertarians say. I think

2:08

John Carpenter might be one, but he

2:10

might John Carpenter. Um.

2:13

Yeah, today we are talking about

2:15

the most vocal ones and and specifically

2:17

the most kind of unhinged vocal ones. We

2:19

are today, Dave, Well,

2:22

this week, really I'm going to give you the

2:24

long history of libertarians taking

2:26

to the sea to try and establish floating

2:28

nations. Oh my god, are

2:31

we gonna beat? I don't want to spoil. Are we gonna

2:33

be talking about Sealand? Oh

2:35

you bet a little bit, a little bit about Seland

2:37

yeah, we're we're talking about the

2:40

whole history of it because spoiler, every

2:43

story in's the same way, which

2:45

is a bunch of

2:47

people lose money and there's no libertarian

2:49

floating nation. I feel like when

2:51

step one is taken to the seat. It

2:53

does not end well generally

2:56

speaking. I mean I've known sailors

2:58

and no it doesn't. Yeah,

3:01

uh so sorry, I just

3:04

I have a blanket view of the ocean. I don't

3:06

think it wants us in there. It doesn't

3:08

want to. We're not we don't

3:10

belong there. And if I mean, you

3:12

know, well, we'll talk about why people

3:15

do this, and yes, for the folks who want

3:17

to there's always people who want to be like pedantic

3:19

about like I don't know if this one's really a bastard,

3:21

or like we'll do like two episodes

3:23

on like we recently did two episodes

3:25

on like industrial level child

3:28

molesters, and then we did an episode

3:30

on a guy who was like an early fitness

3:32

influencer and just like kind of

3:34

shitty about eating disorders. And people

3:36

are like, well, they're not really like this doesn't

3:38

really mean. Yeah, they're not all gonna be guys

3:40

who raped five thousand kids. You know what kind

3:42

of show. That would be a bad show. People

3:45

would not want to listen every week. So

3:47

absolutely we're going to talk about libertarians

3:49

taking to the sea to build their own nations, and

3:51

yeah, most of them are shitty people. So it's

3:53

fine they belong here. Okay, speaking

3:56

of which, we're gonna start by talking about Peter

3:58

Teal. So Peter

4:00

Teal, PayPal co founder, UM

4:03

monarcho libertarian, uh

4:06

quasi fascist influencer UM

4:09

on a grand cash scale UM,

4:11

and you know, just just man about

4:14

town. Peter teele is bank. Yeah,

4:16

he's running for president or he's running

4:18

for senator under the name Jade Vance. I think

4:21

he is currently running for senator under the name

4:23

Jade Vans. Dark money kingpin. Peter teele

4:26

Um has been on a couple of

4:28

occasions has shotgun

4:30

money out towards bankrolling and exploratory

4:32

round of sea steating experiments UM.

4:35

In libertarian utopian living c s

4:38

sea steads in general, that refers

4:40

to self sustaining colonies

4:42

of like floating UM

4:44

homes basically, So sometimes it could be about

4:47

it could be like a little island of these

4:49

weird little hexagonal like housing

4:51

units that float. There's a bunch of different designs around

4:53

there. UM. Everybody's kind of arguing about

4:55

what the best version of this is. But a lot of libertarians

4:58

think c stetting is the future. In eater, Teal

5:00

has put and not it's

5:02

not significant to him, but significant

5:04

amount of money to normal people into

5:06

backing different c stetting projects.

5:09

And the basic idea, um is

5:11

that with the c stead you'll be in

5:13

the ocean, so you won't have to you won't

5:16

have to um abide by

5:18

any nations laws. So all of these different things

5:20

ideas libertarians have about taxes

5:23

and gun laws and age

5:25

of consent laws, uh, mainly

5:27

age of consent pass um won't

5:29

won't apply. They can, you can, you can try

5:32

to, you can. Really it

5:34

could be. I think there's an idea that like, well,

5:36

if you get enough people out in the sea living

5:38

living the way we think people should live, everyone else

5:40

will see that it works and then our ideas will

5:42

take over. Right, There's a number of different ways

5:44

that gets sold to people. And um,

5:47

yeah, it's it's water World rules.

5:50

Yeah, it's water World rules. Um

5:52

one second, I have the wrong document open.

5:54

I just realized that's fine. You want me

5:57

to just talk about water World for a little

5:59

bit. Yeah, talk about water World for a second, Dave.

6:01

I mean I I imagine it's water World

6:03

rules down to like, yeah, Kevin Costner being

6:06

like a shitty dude who like, at

6:08

one point I think he's going to barter the woman

6:10

and child that he's with he share. Does

6:12

that is a moment in that movie? Y? Yeah,

6:14

that movie is terrible, So you

6:17

may have heard Dave that. In September of this year,

6:19

The Guardian published an article about

6:21

the doomed voyage of the Satoshi, which

6:24

was a cruise ship a bunch of libertarian crypto

6:26

nerds had bought and tried to turn into a floating

6:28

city. Did you catch this story? I vaguely

6:30

caught it. I think that's one of those headlines that I

6:32

was just like, not today, Yeah, time

6:35

for this one. It's it's very funny,

6:38

it's it's it's a pretty hilarious failure. We'll

6:40

talk about it in detail later. But like

6:42

when this when it went viral that like libertarians

6:45

were trying to like create their own independent

6:47

nation on a boat in the middle of the

6:49

ocean, a bunch of people started bringing up BioShock.

6:52

If you played BioShock Weirdly

6:55

enough, I've played BioShock Infinite, Okay,

6:58

I do. I do remember I played all

7:00

the first one, and I do recall that

7:02

he is making an ocean city in that.

7:04

Yeah, yeah, it's a libertarian I haven't played the

7:06

game either, but I'm familiar as an Internet

7:08

person with the basics, which is that it's like a libertarian

7:11

underwater city that goes disastrously

7:13

lying and everybody murders each other. Right, Um,

7:16

yeah, that's the basic idea. Um.

7:19

So I think most people are at least broadly aware

7:21

of it. Um. And yeah, it's

7:24

uh, it's it's it's funny that people

7:26

would compare libertarians

7:28

buying a boat, calling naming it after the founder

7:30

of bitcoin, and then like trying

7:32

to create a nation with it, too rapture,

7:35

because the reality of the situation is that like rapture

7:38

in BioShock, which is that Libertarian City

7:40

was itself like inspired

7:43

by about like sixty years

7:45

of libertarians trying to make cities and boats

7:48

um in various parts of the open ocean.

7:50

Like yeah, like it's

7:53

not tire, Like it was made as a satire.

7:55

It was made as a satire, so you

7:58

you wouldn't want to like watch the satire

8:00

and be like, hey, that's a good

8:02

idea, I should model it after that. Yeah,

8:05

it's it's missing the point.

8:08

Yeah, it's missing the point. But it's also funny

8:10

to me that people are like, oh,

8:12

this is how ridiculous some of these people are

8:14

that they like inadvertently did the

8:16

thing that happened in this video game

8:18

and was like clearly a bad idea. Um.

8:21

And the reality is that the video game was just kind

8:23

of making fun of the fact that they keep trying to

8:25

do this. This is like this is this

8:27

is like two of our lifetimes of a

8:30

certain kind of libertarian trying to make

8:32

a boat nation and it never works, um,

8:34

but it's always very funny. So

8:37

the history of this, this this this

8:40

longstanding like

8:42

drive more than half a century old

8:44

to like create an habitat

8:46

in the ocean that libertarians can try

8:48

their ideas out in that goes

8:50

back to the golden age of science

8:52

fiction. Specifically, it goes back to a guy named

8:55

Robert Heinlan Um. Heinlan most

8:57

famously wrote Starship Troopers. Um. He's

8:59

also one of the founding fathers of

9:01

modern libertarian politics. He

9:04

like helped create American style libertarianism.

9:07

Um. He was a fascinating guy. He was kind

9:09

of like Gene Roddenberry in that, like a

9:12

number of his his science fiction books

9:14

at the time were like ahead of the

9:16

curve on things like racial justice and

9:18

not in a way that is particularly impressive

9:21

today. But he had like a habit of like he'd make his protagonists

9:24

not white dudes, um, but not making

9:26

a big deal. It was just like you know this

9:28

this this guy's Hispanic and that's just the thing that's

9:30

going on, which was not super common at

9:32

the time for

9:34

its time. There's also some racist hell stuff

9:36

and some high loss but yeah, um,

9:39

I'm I'm not trying. I'm just trying to give you an

9:41

idea of like why this guy is is

9:44

stuck out to people. Um, he

9:46

played around with a lot of libertarian

9:48

ideas and a lot of really authoritarian

9:50

ideas. He was a weird because like Starship Troopers

9:53

is like a fascist book, Like it's it's

9:55

extremely fascist if

9:57

I recall, um, their hope

10:00

and his interpretation is

10:02

not what the book intended, and it's

10:04

making fun of the book. It's a it's

10:07

and now I know there's talk of making like

10:09

another adaptation without

10:12

that satire. Yeah, and it's like we're

10:15

I think they're going the wrong way with that.

10:17

Yeah, that definitely Yeah, because Verehoven

10:19

like heard people describe Starship Troopers,

10:22

which is the military runs the state, which

10:24

exists entirely to like service,

10:26

its ability to continue to do violence against

10:28

these aliens that, as far as we know, had

10:31

no role in provoking, like a fight with humanity.

10:34

Um. And Heinlan or or

10:36

Verehoven heard that it was just like, well, that sounds fascist

10:38

as hell. I guess I'll just make a fascist movie,

10:41

um, right, And no one knew I

10:43

saw at the time. Yeah,

10:45

I saw a screening of Starship Troopers where

10:47

Verehoven did a Q and A afterwards, and

10:50

he talked about his exasperation where he's

10:52

like, I literally dressed them like Nazis.

10:54

Yeah,

10:56

yeah, like no one, no one realized

10:59

it. Yeah. Uh, it's incredible.

11:02

Yeah, and it's some of what happens with Robert

11:04

Heinland is also incredible. Um

11:06

because so in addition

11:09

to some fascist stuff, Heinland plays around

11:11

with a lot of libertarian ideas, which is a big part

11:13

of why he's remembered today. His book, in particular,

11:15

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is like

11:18

a lot of people would consider

11:20

it a foundational text for like the American

11:22

libertarian movement. It's a it's a very

11:24

influential book. Um. And to kind

11:26

of describe what happens in the book, I'm going to read

11:28

a write up of it from The Baffler.

11:32

Heinland's own apparent anti government ethos

11:34

is channeled through the elderly Peruvian born

11:36

Professor Proft. Bernardo de la Paz.

11:39

Prof Is one of among hundreds of outcasts,

11:41

outlaws and outsiders inhabiting underground

11:43

colonies on the Moon, or as it's known in the late

11:45

twenty one century. Luna. Proft's

11:47

cheap comrades and arms are an Amazonian

11:50

blonde rabble rouser, wyoming not and

11:52

a one armed computer technician, the narrator

11:54

Hero Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis,

11:56

the Ragtag Trio spearheads of revolutionary

11:58

movement to make this ramph Ecco outpost for the marginalized

12:01

into a self governing nation free of the repressive

12:03

rule of Earth. So there's

12:07

like, you see why like this this is attractive

12:09

to people, Right, there's this idea that there's a lot of like

12:11

libertarian politics in it. There's also

12:13

weird stuff like it's a mix of

12:16

Congress is dumb and like governments can't get

12:18

anything done, and also monarchy would be cool.

12:20

Um, yeah, I

12:23

get the like every year when I pay

12:25

taxes, I become a libertarian for a

12:27

second, Like, I get it. I

12:29

understand the government's extremely frustrating

12:32

and there's something very appealing about

12:34

going off and starting your own thing.

12:37

I absolutely get it. Yeah,

12:39

it's like in the d m V everybody is a

12:41

libertarian or yeah exactly, like you're

12:43

just ready to burn it all down. Um,

12:47

but no, And what what's interesting there to me

12:49

is kind of like with Starship Troopers,

12:51

people take like a weirdly like

12:54

the Minute of the Horse Mistress is about

12:56

like people who are part of who are living in a

12:58

colony that's being a by a government,

13:01

rebelling in order to become independent.

13:04

And see setting which is heavily influenced

13:06

by this book is about sailing

13:09

to the ocean to just hide from the government

13:11

and and mind bitcoin. So I

13:13

think there's a difference. I don't think. I don't

13:15

think they're necessarily reading Heinlan right.

13:18

That said, Robert Heinland probably would be into

13:20

cease stutting. So perhaps I'm the one that's wrong here.

13:22

Um. It also seems like never

13:25

are a good policy to like start your

13:27

belief structure from a fictional

13:29

book, because

13:32

it's it's not the writer isn't intending

13:34

it to be something that you're you

13:36

you take like an instruction manual, I assume.

13:40

So it just seems like a recipe for disaster

13:43

in general. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure

13:45

like Heinlan was playing with ideas that were

13:47

interesting to him and that some of which he thought

13:49

should be instituted. Like that's pretty common

13:51

and in fiction with a political edge,

13:54

But I don't think I don't think

13:56

he was seeing it as being as

13:58

influential as it was in the way that it was.

14:01

I think he'd be bummed that it's mostly been used

14:03

for people to steal money from other people in order

14:05

to not build boats. I think he would be

14:07

unhappy with that.

14:10

Fair um So, yeah,

14:12

you can see the influence of

14:14

the Moonsha Harsh Mistress and of Heinland

14:16

in general, and like Elon Musk's plans

14:19

to colonize Mars, the Crypto Orders

14:21

making an an f T cartoon about

14:23

apes flying to another planet

14:25

to set up a colony. Like all of this, it's

14:27

a common theme in in libertarian

14:30

kind of angled fiction ever since.

14:33

Um Now, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

14:35

was published in nineteen sixty six, and

14:37

in nineteen seventy one, a millionaire developer

14:40

from Las Vegas, a guy named Michael Oliver attempted

14:43

to create his own libertarian utopia.

14:45

So, I don't know, we know Michael Oliver

14:47

was definitely a Heinland fan. I don't

14:49

know which which book in particular spurred

14:52

him on, but I kind of think it's The Moon

14:54

is the Harsh Mistress. Um.

14:56

So five years after that gets published,

14:58

this guy Michael all of her decides he's going to

15:00

make his own independent libertarian state. And

15:03

since there was no room on land, he decided

15:05

to take to the sea. He established

15:07

what he called the Republic of Minerva on a

15:09

partially submerged reef near Tonga.

15:11

Was called the Republic of Minerva because a boat called

15:14

the Minerva had sunk there. Um, which

15:17

could start, yeah, naming

15:19

it after the last failure that happen

15:21

around there. My goodness. Yeah,

15:24

it is a little bit of a weird call.

15:27

Um. So there's a little bit of land here.

15:29

It's mostly just like barely reef that's

15:32

barely above the water line and sometimes

15:34

under it, like depending on kind of where the tide

15:36

is. Um. It's only

15:38

land in the technical sense of the word. But

15:40

Oliver decides, like, I'm going to take this

15:42

since it's in the it's in the it's up for grabs,

15:45

right, anyone can own it if nobody owns

15:47

it, right, no one. No one's gonna stop him

15:49

there, And they're like, yeah, sure, that is what

15:51

he thinks. He gets together two other co founders

15:53

who put in funding alongside him,

15:55

um, and he announces through like

15:58

magazines and stuff, that he's creating a

16:00

republic. Uh. He said in these

16:02

ads that he wanted to make quote and escape from

16:04

high taxes, riots, drugs, and

16:06

crime. Um. Which

16:08

magazines like libertarian

16:11

magazines. Yeah, we've got the name of one of them in here.

16:14

Um. It is because this is right after

16:17

like the Holy Week

16:19

uprisings, after Martin Luther King's murder

16:21

and all of the different kind of protests

16:23

and riots in the wake of that. So there's there's

16:25

kind of a little bit of a of a white supremacy

16:28

angle here where it's like all

16:30

the cities are so fucked up because of all the bad

16:32

things we did to black people. Time to take

16:34

to the ocean. Yeah, evergreen

16:38

statement that there's always a little bit of white supremacy

16:42

in these subsidies go in

16:44

there too, Like okay,

16:46

um, yeah, I want to quote from the website

16:48

curbed here about Michael's plans.

16:52

They intended to build a four acre artificial

16:54

island over the reef and turn it into a resort

16:56

that would sparkle like a jewel in the

16:58

blue South Pacific. According to one of the Republic

17:01

of the Nervous self published newspapers, they

17:03

hope to attract tens of thousands of residents and

17:05

base their governance structure on zero taxes,

17:07

no welfare, no subsidies, and no economic

17:10

intervention. A coin collector and a

17:12

real estate investor, Oliver used much of

17:14

his own wealth to establish the Republic of a Nerva.

17:16

Soon after sending a declaration of independence,

17:18

another founder, Morris Davis, built a tower

17:20

of stones on the reef and planted a flag, a

17:23

golden torch set against a blue background

17:25

for the new country on it. So

17:28

they got a flag. Now they got a little stone

17:30

tower and a flag. That's step one gets

17:33

step one flag there, and then you're good to

17:35

go. I do just love that this guy,

17:37

with his experience speculating

17:39

in real estate and collecting coins, is like, I

17:41

can make a country, right, I could be

17:43

the founding father or something. I got some

17:47

means founding fathers they weren't anything. I

17:49

mean, yeah, I mean honestly, you look at like George

17:51

Washington and it's like it is just kind

17:53

of some jackaspion, Like, yeah, I think I

17:55

can make his work. They're

17:59

just bunch of dudes hung out like at a bar.

18:02

Yeah, it is funny, but you are right. Every

18:04

country was just founded by a bunch of dudes

18:06

at a bar. Right, it's

18:08

for me. It's with the libertarian stuff.

18:10

It just always seems like they're

18:13

gonna accidentally invent government every

18:15

time. Right, you should say that,

18:17

Dave, because that happens in every one of these

18:19

stories. So because they're like, how do we pay

18:21

for things? I don't know, maybe everybody gives a little

18:24

bit of money, Like they start slowly

18:26

stumbling on the same conclusion. It's

18:28

the same thing that's happened with cryptocurrency,

18:30

is like, because all these people get all of their

18:32

money stolen constantly because there's

18:34

no protections or safeguards, and then there's no

18:36

recourse if all of your money gets stolen, and

18:39

so people have like created things

18:41

like coin base and crypto dot com

18:43

that are places where you store

18:45

your money and you have a guarantee

18:47

to be protected. It's like

18:50

like, we're getting out of the bank system, right.

18:52

It was like Lift was like, we're creating shuttles

18:55

that go from point A to B and everybody pays

18:57

a little bit. And it's like, do you mean a bus?

18:59

Are you talking about a bus? Yeah,

19:01

but more expensive. Yeah, that's

19:03

the the genius innovations of

19:06

liberal It's very frustrating.

19:08

I just once, I would like to see some Libertarians

19:11

innovate in their community. But I don't know, filling

19:14

in potholes um or altering

19:16

the speed limits on on an interstate

19:18

that has speed traps. Um,

19:20

go go do something you don't. If they don't,

19:22

don't just go don't. Don't try to make another boat

19:25

city. It's not gonna work anyway. Whatever. So

19:28

the founders of the Republic of Minerva,

19:30

after they get their flag up at everything

19:32

higher an Australian boat to fill the reef

19:34

stuff with up with sand and their plan is just to

19:36

dump sand on these shallow reefs until

19:39

there's land. Right, that's the idea. That's

19:42

how I'd do it. But yeah, that makes

19:44

sense. Yeah. They wanted to get

19:46

it to about eight feet above sea level um

19:48

and they figured that if they could create fifteen

19:50

acres of actual land that

19:52

would be enough to convince investors that they

19:54

were legitimate and thus get enough money

19:56

to raise up to undred acres.

19:59

So like, we're gonna make fifteen acres

20:01

and we'll use that as a proof of concept. And then

20:03

once people realize how much money is being

20:06

made in having a barren island

20:08

of free enterprise with

20:10

no resources other than sand, um,

20:13

they'll come crawl, they'll cut, the money will

20:15

pour in. Absolutely. Yeah, there's

20:17

no taxes. Is there fresh water? Well?

20:20

Know, can you can you grow food? Not really

20:22

there? Shopping? No, but

20:25

no telexes. Look at all this land

20:28

we got. We can play like volleyball,

20:30

and yeah it's tax free

20:32

baby. Um. That said,

20:34

like, there's ways it might have worked, especially

20:37

if it actually had, if they'd got somehow gotten

20:39

you in recognition, and rich people could just claim

20:41

to live there and not pay taxes. Like I

20:43

could see how this could be a money making scheme, And

20:46

it might have been a money makes making scheme

20:48

that worked if not for one thing, the

20:50

existence of other countries. That

20:53

was the one thing they didn't take into accounts. So damn

20:55

other countries, These these

20:58

these barren shoals that they're trying to pile

21:00

sand onto are a little you

21:02

know, I think just a couple of miles off the coast

21:05

of Tonga, which is an island in the South Pacific,

21:07

an island that has a government Dave and

21:10

the military, and Tonga

21:12

cease these foreigners

21:15

creating what like it

21:17

looks like they're trying to create a new country

21:20

right outside of Tonga on land

21:22

that on the land, like their naval vessels

21:24

patrol and it's like, well, We're

21:26

not really okay with this. It's

21:29

like I'm imagining, like looking through binoculars,

21:32

like, yeah, I better call somebody forget

21:34

to do them about this. Huh. If

21:36

you don't, if you don't get libertarians, if you don't

21:38

get rid of them quickly, you're just gonna have a nest

21:40

of the bastards. Darn we got libertarians?

21:46

Wait, social or free market? Now? Free

21:48

market? God damn it gets

21:53

spray libertarians?

21:57

Are they at least mutualists? No? God

22:00

him? Yeah? Um so

22:02

the head of State of Tonga sent them

22:04

a letter basically being like, We're not gonna let

22:06

you set up an empire on our doorstep. That's

22:08

that's not okay. So the first thing

22:10

Tonga does is they start air dropping just random

22:13

boxes of AIDS supplies onto the reef

22:15

in order to establish ownership, right, like,

22:17

if our government provides a service to this barren

22:20

reef, then clearly it's part of our

22:22

territory. That's also like a really good way

22:24

to insult libertarians. I feel like

22:27

it's like, here, have some help, and we

22:29

don't want help. God damnit, none

22:32

of them know.

22:34

Nobody's there at the time. Maybe some

22:36

crabs. Maybe some crabs got

22:38

some free food out of this. Yeah, this is absurd

22:41

on the side of Tonga too, because they're literally

22:43

just being like, well, okay, let's

22:45

drop random supplies on this island

22:48

with a population of zero, then it's our suddenly.

22:51

Like again, like cryptocurrency

22:53

does kind of accurately get

22:56

across to people like, yeah, money is nonsense,

22:58

Like it's all, it's all, it's all a fucking con

23:00

game. Yeah, so

23:03

actual governments to be fair,

23:06

like you see it in this where they're like, oh,

23:08

they're saying that's there's what. We never cared about

23:10

this piece of nothing before, but now

23:12

let's drop some random crap on it, so

23:14

it's ours. It's

23:17

very funny. Um

23:20

so, uh, this

23:22

did not succeed in dissuading the Libertarians,

23:24

they still continue to claim that they were a republic,

23:26

and so in June of nineteen seventy one, the King

23:28

of Tonga used his military to officially

23:31

seize the land, which again had nobody

23:33

on it. The dream of the Republic of Minerva

23:35

died, but the grift did not die,

23:37

because grifts are eternal. Michael Oliver

23:40

started minting coins for his country after

23:42

it was taken back by the Tongan government

23:44

in order to raise funds too, I guess

23:47

reconquer it. It was kind of unclear what

23:49

the money was for. I was gonna say,

23:53

yeah, yeah, what a step two

23:55

here, buddy. You know what that feels

23:57

like to me is that he had a really good idea

23:59

for coins and

24:01

then they threw this in front of him, and he

24:04

wasn't going to change his plan. Yeah, he was gonna

24:06

stop making coins. Yeah I had I have

24:08

cool designs for coins. I'm gonna do them

24:10

no matter what he had. He had gold coins

24:12

for seventy five dollars in silver coins

24:14

for thirty five dollars um.

24:17

And I should note now that these are Minerva

24:19

dollars. Seventy five Minerva dollars

24:22

um and thirty five Minerva dollars, So I don't know

24:24

the actual value. I'm not certain of the exchange

24:26

rate. This is like when Usher

24:29

was Usher, who was handing out his own Usher

24:31

bucks. Yes, sounds

24:33

like these our Usher bucks. So

24:35

he advertised these these Minerva

24:38

dollars um as late as nineteen

24:40

seventy five and austere publications

24:43

like the Libertarian Review. So

24:45

the Tongue and Government takes him out. In seventy one and

24:47

seventy five, he's selling Minerva dollars

24:49

into the tagline the World's

24:52

most unusual new country inspiration

24:54

for the most unique metal coin ever minted.

24:57

M Yeah, it is on usual

25:00

to have a country with no people that gets immediately

25:02

conquered. That that is not common.

25:05

Yeah, I'm not sure house you'd sell it by being

25:07

like this is fucking weird, right, you

25:09

want a piece of this? Yeah? We made

25:11

some calls, didn't we. Yeah.

25:13

That said, if anyone can find any

25:16

Republic of Minerva coinage, um, I

25:18

would love that. Yeah. They

25:20

come up online for sales sometimes, but I

25:22

haven't found any recently. I feel like, ironically

25:25

they're now worth a lot because it's

25:27

probably like a problem, like how expensive

25:30

they are you know. Oh yeah, they're probably just a collector's

25:32

item. Yeah, um,

25:35

collectors for fans of horribly

25:37

failed grifts. Yeah. I'd

25:39

be lying if I said I wouldn't get one

25:41

just for fun, to have it like on

25:43

on my shelf or something and have a little story

25:46

there. I had a friend who got very

25:48

excited to buy an in Ron mug. You know,

25:50

it's just some of the somethings

25:53

are exciting. Um.

25:55

Yeah, So moving on from

25:57

there, Um, I I should make a note

26:00

because we're starting with the Republic of Minerva, which I think

26:02

is the first example of the thing we're talking about

26:04

today, But there is one

26:07

other thing that kind of happened

26:09

around the same time that before

26:11

you get to that. It is time.

26:14

It's time for you know, are

26:16

you interrupting me to make us go to add

26:18

Sophie just for capitalism sake, just

26:20

for capitalism sick and so that

26:23

we can stay in our houses.

26:25

Yes, I do love staying

26:27

in my house, all right. Oh

26:37

I do love a good house. Um, I

26:39

love a bad house. Just a big fan of houses,

26:43

house music, so good

26:45

perfect house m D the TV show.

26:48

Oh yeah yeah, great, great,

26:50

great, great vehicle for um. Laurie

26:54

that's his name. M

27:00

you know there's an episode with Jeremy Renner in

27:02

House. Oh no, I've forgotten, meanness.

27:05

I remember this. It's all coming

27:07

back to me. Yeah. God, what a tragedy.

27:10

Um. So we're gonna talk

27:12

now about the Republic of Seland, which is kind

27:15

of it happened right around the

27:17

same time as the Republic of Minerva. Um.

27:19

I kind of think Republic of Minerva is more the

27:21

Republic of Sealand isn't quite

27:23

a libertarian thing. It's weird. Um

27:26

alright, talk about it. Yeah, I've

27:28

always wanted to go to Sealand. I actually a

27:30

long time ago, I wrote a screenplay

27:33

with Sealand in it, and I did a lot of research

27:35

that I now completely forget. It's

27:38

a principality. It's principality.

27:41

The Principality of sea Land was established

27:43

on an old Royal Navy platform

27:47

that was built during World War Two to like protect

27:49

shipping. So it's it's not

27:51

not even shoals. It's just like this big metal

27:53

looks a little bit like a tiny oil derrick kind

27:56

of situation built in in the ocean

27:58

in order to uh uh

28:00

put guns on it to shoot things. And after

28:02

the war, the British take the guns away

28:04

and it's just this platform. And you might

28:06

think, well, didn't the British Navy own it? No,

28:09

because they illegally built built it

28:11

in in foreign foreign countries

28:13

waters or an international water. Sorry, and

28:16

you can't. You're not allowed to weaponize international waters.

28:18

So the Royal Navy builds this this

28:21

platform and they're like uh. And

28:23

then the Warren's and the other countries

28:25

are like, you know, it's an international crime

28:27

for you to have that. And since you built it to fight

28:29

Nazis, nobody's gonna say anything,

28:31

but you should probably bounce. So the Royal

28:34

Navy leaves this platform. Um. And in

28:36

nineteen sixty five, UM, the

28:39

UK has all these really harsh laws about what can

28:41

be played on the radio and not so

28:43

in the sixties and seventies there's a bunch of pirate

28:45

radio stations that will like take to the sea and

28:47

illegally broadcast music

28:50

that can't be played normally in the UK. And

28:52

one of these that that's fucking rat

28:54

as. It's like pump up the vall the

28:58

principality of ceiling. There's some ad ship here

29:00

because it first gets inhabited when a pirate

29:02

radio crew in nineteen sixty five occupies

29:05

the platform. UM, and it

29:07

looks like a couple of them get in there. And in September

29:09

of nineteen sixty seven, a British citizen

29:11

and radio pirate named Roy Bates

29:13

occupies it and while he's broadcasting

29:15

illegal music from it, declares it an independent

29:18

principality. Um. There's

29:20

a whole fun story here. Mercenaries get involved.

29:22

At one point, there's like a civil war and

29:25

Sea Land basically and a government in exile.

29:27

UM. A lot of a lot of wild

29:30

ship happens in Sea Land. UM.

29:32

It's not really a LIBERTATETD. It's not a super

29:34

political thing like from

29:36

what I recalled they do like online gambling

29:38

now Like yeah, I I it's

29:41

it's more of like it's more

29:43

of what I can get behind, which is like, look at

29:45

this thing that's just out there that no one owns.

29:48

Yeah, let's brick up the place and like do stuff.

29:50

There's not a pretension that they're like experimenting

29:53

with a new frontier and civilization. They're

29:55

like, Hey, if we take over this thing in the

29:57

middle of the ocean that no one owns, we can broadcast

30:00

songs without paying and gamble, which,

30:02

right, I am entirely supportive

30:04

of. Yeah, I feel like if a bunch of libertarians

30:06

showed up, they'd be like, no, we're full, Like,

30:09

I don't think they want to build anything. We're

30:11

not in this pret your revolution, buddy, Yeah,

30:13

we got here before you too badly, you

30:16

know. And Roy dies his I think

30:18

his kids are now running everything. Like

30:20

it's basically like a gimmick branding opportunity

30:23

for the family. I'd call it. There's

30:25

a roadside attraction vibe to it,

30:27

even though obviously getting there is a nightmare.

30:30

Um So, yeah, you've

30:33

got Celand, you've got the Republic of Minerva. Late

30:35

sixties, early seventies, but for obvious

30:37

reasons, the libertarian dream of taking

30:39

to the sea to avoid regulation it was clearly

30:41

present that early, but it had to

30:44

wait until the Internet age to really take

30:46

off. You know, people try this back in

30:48

the day, but it's just it's really hard

30:50

to build a libertarian boat city without

30:52

modern technological resources.

30:54

I should say, it's hard to grift people into

30:57

crowdfunding a libertarian boat city

30:59

that never gets built. It's that idea

31:01

that there's like, right, there's

31:03

like there's probably like a couple of thousand people who

31:05

will buy your grift. The problem is they're

31:07

spread out throughout the world. There's not

31:10

many in each town, right, And the Internet

31:12

has made it, you know, instead of being

31:14

the person going town to town selling

31:16

tonics and whatnot, you can just

31:18

like blast it out on Twitter and

31:21

then they all come to you. Yeah. Otherwise

31:23

you'd have to go person to person and ask like, hey,

31:25

is anything bad if it happened to you, and then if

31:27

they say no, say I got a deal for

31:29

you. Yeah. Exactly. You

31:32

seem like a trusting little lamb. So

31:36

in nineteen a guy named Howard

31:38

Turney was he claims, and

31:41

he's a liar, so can you take that with a bit?

31:44

He says that for years before he'd

31:46

had a dream of like following in the footsteps

31:49

of the Republic of Minerva, but but getting it right

31:51

and creating like an independent nation

31:53

or an independent community in the ocean

31:55

that could abide by libertarian principles. In

31:58

n he's hanging out in Caribbean

32:00

c and he finds a nice stretch

32:02

of unusually shallow water that's

32:04

in international waters, so it's

32:06

underwater, but it's shallow, so with enough sand

32:08

you could actually like build an island out there. It's kind

32:11

of his idea. Um,

32:13

So he says, he finds this in n and

32:15

he decides to raise up new Land and establish

32:17

a utopia. Now right around

32:20

this same time, I'm not sure if the desire

32:22

to fund the creation

32:24

of a new island utopia came

32:26

first or if this came first. But he changes

32:28

his name to Lazarus Long. Oh

32:31

my god, yeah that is that

32:33

is a porn star name. And yeah, I was about

32:35

saying he's not doing porn. Come on,

32:38

no, no, he changes it to Lazarus

32:40

Long because Lazarus Long, in addition to being

32:42

obviously a porn name, is an homage

32:44

to a Robert Heinland book. Um,

32:47

and I'm gonna I'm gonna quote from an article

32:49

Independent from in the Independent

32:51

explaining Howard Attorney's thinking

32:54

here he decided there were too many

32:56

Howard turneys around and anyway, as he puts

32:58

it, Prince Lazarus has a ring to it. He

33:01

took his new name from a character and time Enough

33:03

for Love, a novel by the American science

33:05

fiction author author Robert Heinland. I

33:07

admired his philosophy. It was so close

33:09

to my own philosophy, as he says of his fictional

33:11

antecedent, the Lazarus Long of Heinland's

33:14

epic saga, is centuries old and lives in a world

33:16

where aging is a thing of the past. His philosophy

33:18

amounts to a series of pro individualistic

33:21

slogans that can fairly easily easily

33:23

be said to represent the thinking of the man who

33:25

created them. Heinland coined the phrase

33:27

there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and

33:29

among his other catchy aphorisms, are all

33:31

men are created, unequal, taxes are

33:34

not levied for the benefit of the text, and

33:36

beware of altruism. It is based on self

33:38

deception, the root of all evil. Huh

33:42

yeah, So okay, So going back to so

33:44

Lazarus Long you

33:46

mentioned there about people like living forever,

33:49

and like that's what that's what's

33:51

going on, right, the Lazarus, like

33:53

that was that's a reference to like Jesus

33:56

resurrecting people for sure, And

33:58

then long as in Long,

34:01

yeah, just you

34:03

know, like if he just wanted to make sure

34:05

he had that double. In the golden

34:08

age of science fiction, subtlety had

34:10

not yet been invented. We

34:12

hadn't we hadn't cracked the nut on being

34:15

subtle. So yeah, every

34:17

character. I mean, let's be fair, the founding

34:20

the founding fiction piece for

34:22

a cyberpunk. The most influential

34:24

piece of science fiction in in decades

34:26

was hero protagonist. Yeah. No,

34:29

I mean two of the biggest sci

34:31

fi things is Star Wars.

34:35

Yeah, and very little

34:37

to the imagination and the one where they

34:39

explore in space. Yeah,

34:42

we're not good at that, but at the same time

34:44

it sells. It works, so yeah, you don't need

34:46

to be Look if the if the story is good, people

34:48

will forgive a shitty title. Yeah, um,

34:51

I don't know. I haven't read this. Heindland book. Maybe it was good.

34:54

So before his name change, Howard had

34:56

been a small town kid from Bowie, Arizona,

34:58

who had worked briefly as a cowboy before becoming

35:00

an entrepreneur. He had definite narcissist

35:03

vibes, telling an interviewer once, it took me

35:05

a few years to realize that I had more intelligence

35:07

than the average person and more imagination.

35:10

This is funny because he speaks

35:13

to all of the guys who try this, and

35:15

literally all of their experiments in creating

35:17

new nations are the same and all in the same way.

35:20

So I love the fact that he's like, I'm more imaginative

35:22

than the average person. I mean, it's

35:24

one of the biggest Yeah. Like,

35:27

if anybody's like I'm smarter and

35:29

more imaginative than most people, I'm like,

35:31

all right, I'm gonna walk the other

35:33

way. We don't need to be having this conversation.

35:36

Yeah. Yeah. So Howard

35:38

was a successful businessman. He made money

35:40

in the restaurant industry and then started

35:42

marketing products for grocery stores. He

35:45

farmed shrimp, he repaired and sold generators.

35:47

He's just like makes a bunch of different businesses. And

35:50

then in July of nineteen nine, when he's fifty

35:52

nine, he reads a report in the New England Journal

35:54

of Medicine about h g H, or

35:56

human growth hormone UM, and the

35:58

study show that world were two vets injected

36:01

with h g H lost body fat and gained

36:03

muscle mass. So Howard starts

36:05

selling g h g H like he's he's

36:07

like selling steroids. Basically, two

36:09

people, this is the thing that like Joe Rogan takes

36:12

um and uh. He sells

36:14

it for like eighteen months before the pharmaceutical

36:17

industry realizes there's profit to be made um

36:19

and starts like selling them officially. Um.

36:22

So Howard like gets build a clinic

36:24

in Mexico. Um, in order

36:26

to sell H g H to bodybuild the

36:29

pharmaceutical company. Was like, wait, we

36:32

can't do they make money off this ship?

36:35

Yeah? Um

36:38

yeah, So he gets rich selling h g H

36:40

as one of the first people selling h

36:43

H. Um. So it's exciting that like

36:45

supplements have been with with us for a while

36:47

in the libertarian space. So

36:51

um he Prince Lazarus

36:53

again, that's how he's known when the story starts,

36:56

I know it's amazing. Pays four thousand

36:59

dollars of his H g H money into

37:01

the New Utopia Project, as he calls

37:03

it, which is his planned to build an island

37:06

in the shallow part of the Caribbean.

37:08

He estimates the total project will cost

37:10

two hundred and sixteen million dollars.

37:13

So, like literally every other dude in our story

37:15

and yeah, they're all dudes, he starts trying to raise

37:17

money to fund this. Um. He raises

37:19

it through what's called the New Utopia Development

37:22

Trust, which he registered in Bailey's because

37:24

they don't make you pay taxes. When

37:26

journalists would question whether or not this was all

37:29

just a grift. He would assure them that neither he nor

37:31

his governors were members of the trust, which

37:33

he said was independent and would only give a small

37:35

percentage of construction costs to members

37:37

of the government, which I'm sure it

37:39

was completely true. It seems

37:41

on the level, totally seems on the level.

37:44

Nothing weird here. New Utopia

37:46

gets off the ground right around the same time as another

37:49

very dumb project called Oceania,

37:51

which was another floating libertarian city

37:53

that started raising money to build itself in the

37:55

early nineteen nineties, right around the kind of the

37:57

same time as New Utopia. I haven't found

38:00

much about Oceania and never got

38:02

off the ground. Is more than a website, so I'm not going to talk

38:04

about it in detail other than to reference how

38:06

the Prince you have to call him the Prince

38:09

responded when a libertarian writer asked

38:11

him why Oceania hadn't gone anywhere.

38:13

So basically, these two start around the same time,

38:15

one of them fails. A guy interviewing Prince Lazarus

38:18

is like, hey, why do you think it failed? And

38:20

Lazarus says the problem was that

38:22

it was conceived by a bunch of radical militiamen.

38:24

Everything was going to be legal. You could carry an

38:26

anti tank gun down the street if you wanted, and

38:28

they were going to have dueling made lawful. Now,

38:30

who's going to invest their money in something like this where

38:33

some drunk challenges you to a duel and kills

38:35

you. There's not much incentive there. Mmmm

38:39

feels like he's circling the point, Like

38:41

it's that thing of like, yeah,

38:44

we can't make it free for everybody

38:46

all the time we have. There has

38:48

to be like limits set. And then it's

38:50

the question of well by who ye,

38:53

And it's like, well, those people were clowns.

38:55

I'm the I'm extremely

38:58

intelligent and creative. Yeah,

39:00

and it's I'm not. I'm not obviously

39:02

coming from the perspective of that, like the only

39:05

way to have a society is with like a top

39:07

down government. But you, you, you

39:09

do have to think about it more than like everyone

39:11

can just do everything, and it's well,

39:14

what do you do if someone starts killing people? You

39:16

have to have an answer to that question. Like it

39:19

says a lot that none of these none when these

39:22

guys find themselves asked that question, none of them

39:24

propose anything new. They just wind up

39:26

recreating the government um as

39:28

it exists. It's like, well, you don't actually have any ideas,

39:30

you just don't want to be told what to do. But when

39:33

you're angry at someone else, you just do government

39:35

shit. Again. They want to be at the top. It reminds

39:37

me a lot of when people are like back

39:40

in the day, are like this forum is bullshit,

39:42

I'm gonna create my own forum, and then

39:44

they end up doing all the same

39:46

stuff because it's

39:48

just that they want to be in charge, and

39:52

that's that's how you make four chance Like it's

39:54

just it's it's it's

39:56

just like you either if you do complete

39:58

lawlessness, it's very

40:01

hard to maintain that right. You

40:03

have to like, you have to have an idea about

40:06

what you want to replace the laws. And

40:08

if your only idea is I don't think I should

40:10

have to pay taxes and and

40:12

should be able to sleep with twelve year olds, um,

40:15

then your society is not going to have

40:17

You're not going to have anything ready other than well,

40:19

I guess I'll do what I just left when the problem

40:21

happens. It's it's it feels

40:23

the same as starting a cult, because well

40:26

it is, yeah, because

40:28

it's always like if I would be fine if

40:30

someone was like, look, I just don't want to be bothered.

40:33

I'm gonna go into the woods and I'm going to live

40:35

off the land or in this case, off the

40:38

ocean, and I won't bother you

40:40

and you don't bother me. The problem is that

40:42

then it becomes this whole thing where

40:45

they like want other people there

40:48

and they think they think that they can make some sort

40:50

of new government and it it

40:53

it's like depressing to say it's like, yeah,

40:55

it's all sort of we've we've thought

40:57

it all up. Yeah. And that's

41:00

the thing if you if you're not coming to it with like here

41:02

is if you're only saying I don't think these

41:04

things should be present, but you're not saying

41:07

I think we should do this instead, then

41:10

you actually have an idea. You're just

41:12

angry because things that exist are

41:14

imperfect. Um. I

41:16

think there's there's a if all if these guys

41:18

are being like, hey, we're going to start a new society in the

41:20

sea, and here's how we're going to deal with violence,

41:23

and here's what how we're going to decide

41:25

what's restricted, and here's going to be the community

41:27

accountability. Okay, well maybe that will work

41:29

you guys clearly have an idea other than

41:31

I don't want to pay taxes or subsidies.

41:34

Yeah, yeah, if you're creating

41:36

some sort of yeah, communal

41:39

system where everybody But yeah, this

41:41

feels very have a plan right,

41:43

Like, it feels very

41:46

much the idea that their ideas

41:48

stop short of I want to be in power.

41:50

Like it's still it feels like a power

41:53

grab. Yeah, I think it's. Yeah. The

41:55

hope is I think, well, I think our most of them is

41:57

just like trying to make money.

41:59

But yeah, I think for a lot of people,

42:02

it's the idea that like, well, I'm I

42:04

got in too late to wind up ahead in

42:06

where I came from. But if I create a new

42:08

place out of the sea, then I can be the king

42:10

there or literally the prince. And

42:13

again I feel like we've all had that

42:15

instead uh, to

42:17

take to the sea article in the woods

42:19

and be like, you know what, I'm

42:21

gonna stop all of this. I'm just But then

42:24

once you if you get into that scenario, then

42:26

it's like, oh, no, how do I actually

42:28

serve I mean, when I bought

42:31

acres in Idaho and then cut off all

42:33

of the power and internet access to that small

42:35

town Um, I thought

42:38

it was gonna be simple, but it

42:40

turns out people need all sorts of things.

42:42

You don't sounds simple, It does

42:44

sound simple. Um,

42:46

but my god, for one thing,

42:48

Dave, I don't know if you know

42:50

how expensive it is, but digging

42:53

six foot holes the size of a human

42:55

body real problem anyway. And

42:57

if you get other people are real winers about

42:59

that stuff. They hate digging corpse

43:01

holes. Um, and

43:03

they get pissed just because you blocked

43:06

food from any what's It's a real problem.

43:08

But the point is I thought about it more than these guys

43:11

did, um, because I didn't have to already make

43:13

land because there's lots of Idaho, right

43:15

yeah, so and who gives a shit about that

43:18

land? Let you go out there and just do whatever

43:21

for a while and for a while,

43:23

and then you know, okay,

43:26

well yeah there there there are some laws.

43:31

So yeah. But what

43:33

we just talked about is like this thing you notice a bunch

43:35

is that like they don't they

43:37

always default to doing things the way they're

43:39

done in the world. They left when a problem

43:42

occurs and they don't have the only ideas,

43:44

like political theory ideas that they seem

43:46

to want to institute are like not paying taxes

43:49

UM, and in fact, Prince Lazarus

43:51

was one of the most blatant about this. He bragged

43:53

that New Utopia would quote out Cayman

43:55

the Caymans as a place to hide wealth, so

43:57

he was very open about this is just for rich people

44:00

as to use as a tax shelter. UM.

44:03

Citizens of New Utopia would pay no taxes,

44:05

just a fifteen hundred dollar five year bond

44:08

that both buys you citizenship and promised

44:10

to pay nine point five annual interest

44:12

to the bearer. So you're an

44:14

investor if you're a citizen. UM.

44:17

So that's good. No way that could wind up

44:19

with a situation that becomes slavery, like if

44:22

people who come there and don't

44:24

have the bonds have to pay in labor. I don't

44:26

know a number of ways I could see that going UM

44:29

and interviews the princes compared this positively

44:32

to the fifty five thousand dollars a person had

44:34

to pay in order to become a citizen of Belize for

44:36

tax purposes, which is a thing you only

44:38

know when you've become the citizen of another nation

44:40

for tax purposes. Lazarus

44:43

his goal was to get four thousand citizens to fund

44:45

start up costs, and by the time The Independent

44:48

interviewed him in nineteen seven, he

44:50

had almost five hundred backers. So you

44:52

know, that's

44:55

half a million dollars. More than half a million dollars.

44:57

Yeah, it's not six seven thousand, So

45:00

he actually did invest four hundred thousand. He's got a good

45:02

ready to return already. That

45:04

was the year Prince Lazarus began agitating

45:06

for UN membership for his country.

45:11

Yeah, he's giant. Um,

45:18

I'm sorry, it's just have

45:20

some land first, and like that is

45:23

literally what the UN says. Yeah,

45:26

the UN is like, we would consider your

45:28

membership if there was land with people

45:30

on it, which is our our requirement

45:32

for a country. That's fair. I

45:35

think that's more than fair from the U. N. Yeah,

45:37

I think because otherwise you're not gonna be able

45:39

to get anything done. As the UN people are going to be trying

45:41

to make everything into a country. Yeah. Yeah,

45:44

oh yeah, I'd be doing it left and right. And

45:46

I would say land with people on it is a

45:48

pretty good line. If you're like minimum

45:51

characteristics of a nation, land with

45:53

people on it, we'll start. We'll start there and

45:55

then we'll ask some more questions. Yeah,

45:58

which I think there's more you could do. Is

46:00

it your land by

46:02

another government? Do the people know you're

46:04

making them into a country. Yeah, you're

46:10

planning committing Yeah,

46:13

right, the number of genocides you plan to commit

46:15

next to and listen. If

46:18

it's more than one, that's okay.

46:20

A lot of countries have Most

46:22

countries really are on the three to

46:24

five point. There's that instinct to put

46:26

a zero, but it's like, we're more concerned with you

46:28

being honest at this. It's it's like if you

46:30

put nothing on your customs declaration

46:32

coming into the US, like you get away with a lot

46:35

of ship if you're like, yeah, I bought some stuff. Like

46:38

I came through customs once and he asked if

46:40

I brought any illegal drugs and I answered

46:42

with I don't remember, which is

46:44

not the right answer, that turns out. But

46:48

I was just being honest because

46:51

I hadn't slept in a very long time

46:54

because of the illegal drugs you took out with you. That's

46:57

correct, speaking

47:00

of illegal drugs. You know what you

47:03

know well sells illegal drugs, Dave,

47:05

Oh No, all sorts of people, I imagine,

47:08

namely the products and services that support

47:10

this podcast delicious

47:14

well here's

47:17

hardcore drug use. M hm

47:26

uh, we're back

47:28

and we are we we just smuggled

47:31

some ship into the country, then some ship out of

47:33

the country. Then we kind of we

47:35

kind of square danced with the country a

47:37

little bit. Uh, it's been it's

47:39

been good, good times. So Prince

47:42

Lazarus decides Tonga

47:45

sent their military and to take the last

47:47

libertarian island nation that we tried

47:49

to establish. I don't want that to happen

47:51

to me, So I'm gonna get you in membership.

47:54

Then I can't be invaded. Um

47:56

famously a thing that happens when you're in the U. N

47:58

you don't. You don't get invade, did um. But

48:01

that's what he decides to do, and he starts

48:03

trying to raise money from libertarians, saying I need

48:05

a hundred million dollars before the UN will

48:07

accept me as a country. That is

48:09

not how it works. Yeah, I was gonna say,

48:11

do they take bribes, which,

48:14

just like anybody with a hundred million bucks, you

48:16

get to be fucking every millionaire

48:19

would have a country if that was the way it worked,

48:21

like it would be nothing to them. Elon Musk

48:23

would have like thirty each based off of meme

48:26

coins he would be issuing

48:28

passports. Yeah, oh yeah.

48:31

I love the idea that the u N takes pride.

48:33

It's just like und million bucks,

48:36

not even like if if it's just the right clerk,

48:38

you slip him a hundred dollars. He's like, yeah,

48:41

sure, you guys are in the country. I'm

48:45

just imagining a shady u Win guy and

48:47

a fucking uh trench coat and the

48:49

alleys of New York. Hey, you want to start

48:52

a country, could

48:54

be get really easy for you. Oh

48:56

yeah, it's a good gript. Yeah

49:00

so yeah. So he announces

49:03

this, he starts raising money, and the UN sends

49:05

a response being like, will

49:07

consider your membership when there's evidence

49:09

that there's literally anything there.

49:12

Um. This pisses off Prince Lazarus

49:15

and he lashes out, telling a reporter that he

49:17

didn't want to be in the UN anyway. Quote,

49:20

they're trying to implement worldwide banking

49:22

rules and regulations that are not in keeping

49:24

with the philosophy of New Utopia. Plus

49:26

they have a refugee policy for all their members.

49:28

As a new little country, I cannot afford boatloads

49:31

of people from Central America or Cuba or

49:33

Haiti coming to my shores. Because I

49:35

have no welfare system and I have no plans to have

49:37

a welfare system. You also don't have

49:39

shores. Yeah, you

49:41

don't have a lot of things, abuney, there's there's

49:44

there's actually nothing that you have. It

49:47

really seems like you're just a guy.

49:50

It's calling himself a country and

49:52

running around and just like

49:56

absolutely not. Yeah,

50:00

we're gonna put up my CREDNZA. Yeah,

50:02

it kind of seems like we need to call like your

50:04

family and see if they could come get you. It

50:09

would be funny if the if the U N had accepted

50:11

him but then just started sending refugees

50:13

to his house. Look,

50:15

man, until you get ashore, you gotta put these people

50:18

somewhere. He's just kind of boxes

50:20

of currency and refugees.

50:25

Lazarus had another plan to make his city

50:27

profitable, unrestricted medical

50:29

testing on humans. H

50:32

H business had gotten eaten away, been big

50:34

Farma hopped on the h g H train, and

50:36

so Lazarus next got interested in anti

50:38

aging medication. When he was interviewed

50:40

in he told the reporter that

50:42

he had secret knowledge of upcoming anti

50:45

aging developments. Quote, there are

50:47

things on the horizon that people today can only dream

50:49

about. We are not that far from being able to live

50:51

multiples of what we look at now is the human lifespan.

50:54

His name is Lazarus. His name is Lazarus,

50:58

and it's the saint. Peter til is also really into

51:00

immortality. It's a bunch of like, rich

51:03

white dudes who are scared of death and

51:05

even more scared that someone at any point

51:08

might tell them what to do, or just that

51:10

they might not be able to act with complete

51:12

impunity and never consider other

51:14

people or society like that's

51:16

the thing that's most offensive to them. I think

51:19

part of the money diseases that, like,

51:22

for example, if you were to say, hey,

51:24

what if I sold books online and

51:26

you happen to be the first person to do that,

51:29

you think that every idea you have from then

51:31

on is amazing, when the reality

51:33

is just that you did a thing first and

51:35

it was easy for you because you were in the right place

51:38

for it, and ideas

51:40

and like expansion

51:43

seems easy in their minds, and

51:45

so it feels like it's a lot of people who want

51:47

to cut corners. Uh,

51:51

who got successful once and

51:53

assume it's always going to be like

51:55

that. Yep, Yeah,

51:57

I'm sure the cave person who invented

52:00

fire for the first time, Like I got

52:02

a lot of clout for a little while, and

52:04

then tried some other experiment that ended

52:06

with them like catching their dick on fire and

52:08

dying. Also, I'm guessing people at

52:10

the time, we're like, you didn't invent fire, Like

52:13

lightning hit that tree over there and you grabbed

52:15

the fire, like you you know,

52:17

you just were the first. You're the damn first.

52:20

Yeah, it would be funny the

52:22

side of a caveman with like a burning branch

52:24

with a wild fire in the background, being like, look,

52:27

if you guys, if you guys all invest I

52:29

can make this like this. There's no into

52:31

how big this thing could get. Oh yeah, this fire

52:33

could really spread. This fire could really

52:35

spread all

52:38

the kids uncontrolled

52:40

wildfire. Yeah yeah, they

52:42

kind of do. They kind of do so.

52:46

Um yeah he uh he claimed

52:48

that basically. So the claim he starts making

52:51

is that there's a bunch of miracle anti aging drugs

52:53

that are totally ready for people to take and can cure

52:55

death, but the damn f d A won't let

52:57

him get approved. Um right, And

53:00

so New Utopia. What will make

53:02

it profitable is once they get this island built,

53:04

you can sell these unapproved drugs to anybody.

53:07

Um, and that'll that'll.

53:09

So he's like, that's why I think rich people will invest

53:12

because they want my anti aging drugs. It

53:15

just keeps getting better and better. Yeah,

53:18

it's it's very funny. Um.

53:21

Next from the Independent quote. Later

53:23

this year, if everything goes to plan, a construction

53:25

company will begin pouring piles at thirty foot

53:27

intervals into these virgin reefs. Then

53:29

precast concrete platforms will be placed

53:31

on top of them, and on top of these a city

53:34

will be erected. Plans for the initial

53:36

stage of development include apartments,

53:38

are three d fifty thousand square foot shopping

53:40

mall, five hotels, a bank, a hundred and

53:42

fifty thousand square foot medical center, a casino,

53:45

a convention center, and a university offering

53:47

scholarships to students from every country in

53:49

the world. There will be no taxes in

53:51

New Utopia, with the single exception of

53:53

an import duty tax on consumable goods,

53:56

nor will there be any kind of welfare system. A

53:58

constitutional sovereignty. The Tree will be

54:00

run by a board of governors appointed by the Prince

54:02

himself. Currently, these governors are scattered

54:04

all over the world awaiting the time when they can formally

54:07

take up their posts. All of them, the Prince

54:09

told me, are experts in their chosen fields.

54:12

Really wish we knew who those guys were. Oh

54:14

god, yeah. Imagine going out into the world

54:16

with a degree from New Utopia Community

54:19

College and being

54:21

like, no, it's a real thing, trust me,

54:24

my guests, and I would

54:27

I would wager to bet that of the governors

54:29

who are experts in their field he hired to run

54:31

his his country, not one of them knew how

54:33

to do things with sewage. Absolutely,

54:36

I'm just certain there was no one. There were no

54:38

thoughts going to like what about all the poop? Yes,

54:41

I I really get into like that that vibe

54:43

that they would build the city and then they'd

54:45

be like, wait, what do we put

54:48

under this? Like they would

54:50

not have started there. And my

54:53

guess is that they would have just shat straight into

54:55

the ocean and like killed all of the

54:58

sea around it and formed like this disease is

55:00

filled poop bog thearians.

55:02

Yeah, I think that it's right

55:04

there. I get just walk

55:06

into the ocean, do your business and walk out

55:09

that it would be the benefit of living at sea self

55:11

cleaning. Yep. So the first

55:14

phase of construction is was scheduled

55:16

to be completed by the start of September

55:19

UM and UH of September.

55:22

On December, the country's first birthday celebrations

55:25

were going to be held. UM would start with the

55:27

class the crowning of Prince Lazarus.

55:29

Then he would bestow titles on those who

55:31

had helped to create the new nation. UH.

55:33

There would be celebrity guests and an inaugural

55:36

speedboat Grand Prix. UM.

55:38

So they had a lot of they had a lot of ambitions.

55:41

UM. Oh my goodness, did

55:45

Yeah, they really did. Um.

55:47

But of course New Utopia never got off the ground.

55:49

The Securities and Exchange Commission eventually

55:51

declared it a fraudulent nationwide Internet

55:53

scheme. And this is like nineties seven,

55:56

so this is a really groundbreaking

55:58

fraudulent on internet skim, like

56:01

not a lot of precursors at that point. Really,

56:03

I love that it's like, we have downgraded

56:06

your New Utopia to Internet

56:08

scheme to fraudulent internet

56:10

scheme. The stark difference between what he's

56:12

selling and what it actually is, it's pretty amazing.

56:15

It's extremely funny. Um.

56:17

Yeah. The sec ruled that there was like no evidence

56:20

he'd even tried to figure out how to construct

56:22

the project. Like, I don't even think Lazarus

56:24

Long ever wanted to make this. He just wanted to get

56:26

a bunch of money. Um.

56:28

Now, the fact that the SEC,

56:31

like, if he was real, the fact that the SEC had

56:33

declared it a fraud, should not have stopped him.

56:35

If he was really motivated to make this thing. And

56:37

in fact, he had told a reporter in n

56:40

that there is nothing, no law that can stop

56:42

me. If for some reason it's slowed down or postponed,

56:44

I'll still make it happen. It's something that needs

56:47

to happen. Lazarus Long

56:49

died in two thousand twelve at age eighty eight,

56:51

unable to obtain the immortality drugs

56:53

he desperately needed because he'd never gotten this country

56:55

built. Dave, that's a shame, man, It's a real

56:57

tragedy. Imagine definitely that country

57:00

going. Yeah, that's probably his last thought. Yeah,

57:02

if only I got Mike Utopia started.

57:04

Maybe that's what was going through his daughter, Elizabeth

57:07

Henderson's head went In two thousand seventeen, she

57:09

announced that she was restarting New Utopia

57:11

and that the project would have a completed floating

57:14

city that's

57:16

heartbreaking. As we

57:18

record this, we've still got about six seven weeks

57:20

left, so she could pull it out.

57:22

She could could. Honestly,

57:25

I have more sympathy for her. Uh

57:28

and you know, if I can help in any way,

57:31

can Yeah, I'll help

57:33

with this floating city. It's fine. She probably

57:35

had a lot to deal with. I'm guessing. Yeah.

57:38

I'm just thinking, like, you're raising the environment,

57:40

and then you probably love your

57:42

your father and you want to honor

57:44

them. And it's like I'm getting into the family

57:46

business, or it's I'm getting

57:48

into the family business of committing

57:51

from libertarians. It's

57:53

just probably what it actually is.

57:55

But I like, I like to hope she's a

57:57

true believer, and it's like, I'm gonna make

57:59

this voting city, got damnit? Yeah? Um

58:03

so yeah is

58:05

when the New Utopia project like both

58:08

started and blew up. Um. It

58:10

was also the year that the first boat born libertarian

58:13

ce nation concept really got started. So

58:15

you had these guys trying to make platforms

58:17

and islands and stuff in the middle of the ocean. Now

58:19

we're gonna have some libertarians. They're like, what if a boat

58:21

was a country? But it's just like, guys,

58:24

we've had boats this whole time. Boat

58:27

already exist. Let's make what a country.

58:31

The freedom Ship was the dream of an engineer

58:33

named Norman Nixon in the early nineteen

58:35

nineties, right around the same time as Lazarus

58:37

found his shoals Norman had. Norman had

58:39

the brilliant and totally original idea to

58:41

create a planned community

58:44

on an island outside of the US.

58:46

Unfortunately, wars kept breaking out

58:48

around the islands that he wanted to choose,

58:50

so he was unable to pick any of them. Norman

58:53

decided then to build his own damn island.

58:55

He brought on specialists to help him sell

58:57

this idea, including a marketing director who

58:59

asked him, if we're going to build an island and we're

59:01

going to put some houses on it, then why not make

59:03

it move? Oh my

59:05

goodness, I just you know, you're talking about reinventing

59:07

the government, just like working back from island

59:10

to boat. Yeah. I also love

59:12

Okay, I got to create a government. I need a

59:14

marketing director. Top

59:17

of the list, top of the list. Yeah.

59:19

And yeah, this is just cruise ships,

59:22

which are which are terrible

59:24

places for horrible people. Yeah. Yeah,

59:27

and it's like just go on a

59:29

cruise just just

59:31

just become like a waiter on a cruiseal

59:34

and fine as

59:36

this will end. I think the visions a lot of these

59:38

people put forward of life in their cee utopias.

59:41

I would prefer to be a waiter run a cruise ship,

59:43

knowing full well that's about the worst job on

59:45

planet Earth. So

59:49

Norman decided his new his new

59:51

nation would live aboard a ship. Um, but not

59:53

just any ship. He announced through

59:55

the same kind of libertarian magazines and online

59:58

spaces as as the other people did. He

1:00:00

announced that he was going to build the largest boat

1:00:02

in human history. It was going to be forty

1:00:05

feet long and twenty five stories high,

1:00:08

six times larger than any ship ever built.

1:00:10

Norman put the price tag for this project

1:00:12

at a lean six billion dollars, which feels

1:00:15

like a bargain. Yeah, I guess

1:00:17

if he got it. If he got that six billion,

1:00:20

Uh yeah, why not? So the

1:00:22

idea was brilliantly unhinged. Norman

1:00:25

said the ship would never dock, it would never

1:00:27

get close to the It would never get closer

1:00:29

than twelve miles away from the shore, so it would always

1:00:31

be within international waters, never

1:00:33

crossing inside the legal boundaries of any

1:00:36

nation. People would only be able to reach

1:00:38

it by boat shuttles or airplanes. It

1:00:40

was going to have an airport on it. Also, Yeah,

1:00:44

just the biggest a mile long boat. Is

1:00:47

he going to escape with all that money when

1:00:49

it all crashed? The biggest

1:00:52

boat ever. Um

1:00:54

condos Aboard would start at four and twenty

1:00:57

five thousand dollars with a one thousand dollar

1:00:59

monthly maintenance its fee, because in this libertarian

1:01:01

utopia, you're not allowed to fix your own

1:01:03

home. Norman estimated twenty

1:01:05

four thousand units would be on the ship, and he was

1:01:08

sure that once he'd sold that many, he'd have enough

1:01:10

cash to actually build

1:01:12

it. And and by the way, again it's worth noting

1:01:14

he's not just talking about building a boat. He's talking about like

1:01:16

the most significant construction project in

1:01:19

human history, like an order of magnitude

1:01:21

more complicated than the tallest building ever

1:01:23

made. He's talking about the most amazing

1:01:26

thing. Yeah, that

1:01:29

can grow its own food, and all it needs

1:01:31

is the money first. Yeah, it's just

1:01:33

a money problem. Good deal, good deal.

1:01:37

So Wired actually interviewed Norman

1:01:39

over this, and best of all, they brought an experts

1:01:41

to analyze how realistic his claims were.

1:01:43

Quote I don't imagine

1:01:46

that people would buy this and would live on this thing for the rest

1:01:48

of their lives. They would see it as a sort of vacation

1:01:50

home. I could see a lot of criminals buying condos,

1:01:53

said Gene Feldman and ocean an

1:01:55

oceanographer with the NASA Goddard Space

1:01:57

Flight Center. Based on his own experiences

1:02:00

living on ships and small islands, Feldman said,

1:02:02

it's very different living in an environment where you

1:02:04

have very definite boundaries. You can see the extent

1:02:06

of your world, and that does something to your brain. After

1:02:08

a while, you lose your sense of time and space.

1:02:12

He's just like, I don't think they're thinking about what it would

1:02:14

be like to live forever on a boat that never

1:02:16

gets closer than twelve miles to shore. They're

1:02:19

creating their own prison like that. You're

1:02:21

making a floating prison for everybody

1:02:23

going back to water world. That's not

1:02:25

a cheery look at the future. Like

1:02:28

us all living in the ocean would be

1:02:30

exhausting. Yeah, there's a lot

1:02:32

that you have to People aren't supposed to be in the

1:02:35

ocean. As you so astutely noted, Dave's

1:02:37

it literally adapt a lot to it.

1:02:39

It literally pushes us out of it. Every

1:02:41

time we try to go in. It doesn't

1:02:43

want us. We can't drink

1:02:45

it. It's filled with monsters. Leave

1:02:48

it alone. Just leave it alone,

1:02:50

Leave it alone. Toss some car batteries into

1:02:52

it and get on with your day. Give it a car

1:02:54

battery or two. Yeah,

1:02:57

for the heels, Yeah, exactly, or the dolphins,

1:03:00

whatever they want to do with it. It's their card battery.

1:03:02

Now, you know, once it hits the ocean,

1:03:05

they own it. Which if

1:03:07

that, if we actually made that law, they might

1:03:09

have enough nukes to stop us from

1:03:11

destroying their environment. Um,

1:03:14

so they just need thumbs.

1:03:16

That's the one thing they need. I think

1:03:18

they could figure it out. They're smart um

1:03:21

in media, sort of

1:03:23

like blasts and whatnot.

1:03:25

Norman and his agents bragged that they're

1:03:27

floating island would be a huge tourist

1:03:30

draw, with more than ten thousand hotel rooms

1:03:32

available, casinos, printing companies, furniture

1:03:34

outlets, department stores, all tax

1:03:37

free. They were particularly bullish

1:03:39

about the promise of taking an American style

1:03:41

mall around the world so foreigners

1:03:43

could shop just like us, but on a boat.

1:03:46

Did he see selling point? Did he? Did

1:03:48

you say? Printing companies? Yeah?

1:03:51

Where it's like there's casinos and restaurants.

1:03:53

Also, you can make copies of the

1:03:57

yeah yeah, like no government

1:03:59

interviews with you. You can print

1:04:01

anything you want, printing your zines,

1:04:04

even tasteful nudes of wealth. And then we get into

1:04:06

the age of consent stuff again. Um,

1:04:09

So as it happens, the Liberty ship organizers

1:04:12

plan to go just go ahead and use U S.

1:04:14

Dollars as their currency. Um.

1:04:16

This was justified because it was easier. Thank

1:04:19

everybody values dollars. We'll just use th

1:04:22

I get it, like money, money, do

1:04:24

that later, do that. I've already lived under

1:04:26

the tyranny of a nation. But like I mean, you

1:04:29

know, dollars

1:04:32

sort of again, inventing your own money.

1:04:34

It's just yeah, it's

1:04:36

it is. It's a whole thing. If you're convinced that people

1:04:39

need money, you might as well just use money that

1:04:41

already exists. Um. Although

1:04:43

now we have crypto, which we'll talk about it a little

1:04:45

bit. Even though the ship

1:04:47

planned to stay in international waters,

1:04:50

the Liberty was going to fly the flag of a nation.

1:04:52

This is a requirement for international maritime

1:04:55

law. Uh Norman. Norman

1:04:57

claimed that Ireland had agreed to let them register

1:04:59

there and that the ship was going to fly in Irish

1:05:02

flag, which would mean that the people on

1:05:04

board the Liberty would be bound by Irish

1:05:06

law, which did not at that point I think, allow

1:05:08

abortion, among other things. Oh

1:05:10

Man, also you said claimed that,

1:05:13

Yeah, he said that they had worked out a deal.

1:05:16

You know, I feel

1:05:18

like I know where that's going. Yeah, so

1:05:20

he's saying we're gonna fly under

1:05:23

an Irish flag and everyone will be accountable

1:05:25

to Irish law. But then there's all sorts of principle

1:05:27

libertarian jargon and the promo materials

1:05:29

like quote, there will be no intrusion

1:05:31

into or involvement with personal business

1:05:34

finances or commercial transactions,

1:05:36

which I don't know Ireland might have something to say

1:05:39

about Ireland's like, yeah,

1:05:41

there will be. Norman

1:05:44

bragged that only food sanitation would

1:05:46

be regulated, which, beyond making him f

1:05:49

D a cukeed is still at odds with Irish

1:05:51

law and with libertarian practice. Why

1:05:54

just why just food sanitation? Can people

1:05:56

not take care of that themselves? Norman R

1:05:58

This This feels like if I set up

1:06:00

like a cardboard stand outside

1:06:03

that sold crystal meth and called it

1:06:05

Starbucks, you know, and it's

1:06:07

just like this is another Starbucks, folks,

1:06:09

Starbucks approved, here's

1:06:11

your crystal meth, like, that's that's what

1:06:13

they're creating here. Yeah,

1:06:16

and he's he's trying to get it people

1:06:18

to believe that like, well, well, flat flight or in Irish

1:06:20

flag flag. But whatever crimes you want to

1:06:22

do when you're living here, they're not gonna have any problem

1:06:24

with. You can run your cocaine empire from

1:06:26

our floating boat and you're good to go. It's

1:06:29

a real like, don't worry my roommates, totally

1:06:31

cool. That

1:06:33

is what they're doing. So

1:06:36

Wired did their due diligence and they reached

1:06:39

out to experts in boat stuff to put some of

1:06:41

the claims by the liberty people to the test. And here's

1:06:43

one example. David Hall at the Center

1:06:45

for Marine Conservation said, dealing with massive

1:06:47

amounts of solid wastes generated on board,

1:06:50

it's just one of many concerns. There are all

1:06:52

sorts of questions that they'll have to deal with, such as what

1:06:54

hazard, if any, would it post marine animals?

1:06:56

Whales are hit by ships all the time. He said,

1:06:59

it sounds as if a collided with this thing,

1:07:01

I don't think it would have much of a chance. Still,

1:07:05

the plan and The fundraising went on in

1:07:07

two thousand. After three years of feverish

1:07:09

propagandizing, the freedom Ship had evolved

1:07:11

beyond just a project of Norman Nixon, and

1:07:14

now it accumulated a sports team's worth

1:07:16

of managers and investors speaking for it.

1:07:18

Here's how they sold it. In an article three years

1:07:20

later, the freedom Ship's

1:07:23

creators say the vessel, whose construction is due to

1:07:25

start in Honduras this summer, will be one of the

1:07:27

wonders of the world. The company behind

1:07:29

the scheme said reservations for the twenty thousand

1:07:31

homes on board have begun to accelerate, and there

1:07:33

were already plans for two other floating cities.

1:07:36

Freedomship will be nearly a mile long, seven

1:07:39

ft wide and three ft tall,

1:07:41

and will have room for forty thousand people, including

1:07:43

a staff of ten thousand. There will be a school

1:07:45

in a university on board, not to mention, a landing

1:07:48

strip, a hospital, a shopping mall, a casino,

1:07:50

and two hundred acres of open space. Roger

1:07:53

Gooch, the ship's marketing vice president,

1:07:56

claims fiftcent of the units

1:07:58

reserved. Later in the article, which

1:08:00

opens with the author noting that creators

1:08:02

say the ship will be a new wonder of the world. Construction

1:08:05

was claimed to be starting in sixty to ninety days.

1:08:08

Um so yeah, by this point,

1:08:10

tourism is no longer the draw. They're not claiming

1:08:12

people are gonna like show up here. Gooch

1:08:16

claims that the boat company, the people making

1:08:18

this are just a giant landlord and that's all

1:08:20

they want to do is provide entrepreneurs with spaces

1:08:22

to do their businesses. But they also want to set

1:08:24

up a university. Um

1:08:27

where it's bragged like they want to set up a university

1:08:29

for the kids there to go to, but also so that

1:08:31

drug companies can do unregulated tests

1:08:33

on people. Sure they

1:08:35

and they love this casino thing. They

1:08:38

really want casinos, and I get it because

1:08:40

it's basically they want to they're just trying

1:08:42

to create a town. But then

1:08:44

just like a shady town. That's it. It's

1:08:46

a town, a town for just

1:08:48

crimes in one school, yeah,

1:08:52

where they want to shoot you up with unregulated

1:08:54

drugs, right, like if it weren't

1:08:56

for the shady stuff, just create

1:08:58

a town. Yeah, you know, like that's

1:09:00

it, that's all you're making. You can do that anywhere,

1:09:03

uh well not anywhere, but yeah,

1:09:06

it's it's purely I

1:09:08

think that's why it's always sketchy, right,

1:09:11

because it always comes down to we

1:09:13

want to do really shady stuff,

1:09:16

and we're gonna make it seem like we're

1:09:18

just you know, we're sucking off into the ocean. We're doing

1:09:20

our own little utopia where you can do

1:09:22

anything. Like that's always like the underlining

1:09:24

part. Yeah.

1:09:28

So here's the thing, David.

1:09:31

You you know libertarians right, like

1:09:35

personally, I mean, how do you think as a

1:09:37

general rule, how do you think libertarians feel

1:09:39

about the FBI? Oh

1:09:41

god, I'm sure they like, I'm

1:09:44

sure they really respect them. Uh

1:09:47

well, you know they understand, you know,

1:09:49

it's a job. You know, you you gotta do what you

1:09:51

gotta do, and they're very respectful

1:09:53

to them if they like talk to them, well

1:09:56

any authority. David. It's

1:09:58

funny because you're you're you're going, you're doing

1:10:00

this because normally when libertarians and the

1:10:02

FBI intersect, it's a gunfight. Um

1:10:05

right, This it's very funny

1:10:07

because they hire an FBI agent to

1:10:09

to keep track of law and order on their floating ship.

1:10:12

Oh wow

1:10:14

wow. Yeah, so they're just doing

1:10:17

doing in America, but with like you

1:10:20

can you can sell drugs. I guess

1:10:22

right, they're just doing the Pirate Bay,

1:10:24

Like that's the whole thing is. It's just know,

1:10:26

the Pirate Bay would have been way cooler, Dave,

1:10:29

Oh, absolutely, it's just but all

1:10:31

these things are it's just like, hey, get in

1:10:33

on this before we're shut down, you

1:10:35

know, like that's it. And if they were honest,

1:10:39

I don't know if I'd respect them more because

1:10:41

you know, some of the things they want to do is horrifying.

1:10:44

But like if it was like, look, we

1:10:46

just want to go gamble on stuff and like do

1:10:48

a bunch of drugs. So we're creating this

1:10:50

quote unquote country. Uh,

1:10:53

and we don't really believe in anything.

1:10:56

But I might be a citizen if it was

1:10:58

exactly if that was that what's going

1:11:00

on. But now these are like, look, we're just being Vegas

1:11:03

in the ocean, uh, and we're you know,

1:11:05

you can't kill people there, you can't do

1:11:07

like, you can't do a lot of funked up stuff.

1:11:09

We just want a little more freedom,

1:11:12

just a little able to be like like do

1:11:14

a little do some stuff that's crimes elsewhere,

1:11:16

but we don't want to people to be murdering each other.

1:11:19

This is not an ideological thing. We

1:11:21

just think it would be neat if we could sell crack cocaine

1:11:23

and operate a casino, I would be like great,

1:11:26

exactly, But it's like we'll go to your casino

1:11:28

and smoke crack. If it's like, look,

1:11:30

if someone murders someone, that's not cool. But if you

1:11:32

yeah, if you like do a bunch

1:11:35

of PCP and fall into our engine,

1:11:37

I mean that's that. It is what it is, like,

1:11:39

it's what you're here to do, and and

1:11:41

it's it's frustrating to me. Like these

1:11:44

guys, that's kind of how they want

1:11:46

to, Like they say, they talk a good

1:11:48

game about like liberty, like no intrusions

1:11:50

on personal liberties, all that stuff, and

1:11:52

then they hire like so

1:11:55

in this article from like three years later,

1:11:57

Mr Gooch tells the interviewer that they

1:12:00

hired a former FBI man to head a two thousand

1:12:02

person security force with state of the art

1:12:04

defensive weapons. Um, yeah,

1:12:08

and different. He talks about how like, oh,

1:12:10

different, every deck and Flora will have their own elected

1:12:12

representatives, but also the captain's word will

1:12:15

be final final. So it's like, so you

1:12:17

want to have an ocean dictatorship run

1:12:19

by the FBI with guns and

1:12:21

no one else gets guns, and you're calling yourself a

1:12:23

libertarian right there, Like look, every

1:12:25

deck has its own like representative,

1:12:28

and then there's like a president of the

1:12:30

vote, like just

1:12:33

it's just doing government. It's always just doing

1:12:35

Yeah, and we'll have an unaccountable

1:12:38

armed wing of the state that can do violence to

1:12:40

you with no recourse and yeah, it's

1:12:42

it's see, we're freedom freedom.

1:12:46

This all reminds me a little bit. This is weird

1:12:49

of Disney World, because Disney World

1:12:51

is like when it was established, they

1:12:53

did a lot of stuff with Florida where they're like, look,

1:12:56

just stay out of here, We'll have our own

1:12:58

E. M T s and stuff like fire

1:13:00

like that's essentially what they're

1:13:02

trying to do. But like Florida

1:13:05

obviously still or Disney still exists

1:13:08

in the country, but it feels very

1:13:10

much like like well Disney's dream

1:13:12

of Epcot and stuff where he was like, I

1:13:14

want this to be its own nation. Uh,

1:13:18

but you know, Disney has

1:13:20

rights. So I guess what I'm saying is

1:13:22

have some fucking rights on your country,

1:13:25

and I think it'll work out. Like if they

1:13:27

have a like a like a log Flume,

1:13:29

I'd be like this is great, that's great, good

1:13:31

for them. But instead

1:13:33

they just want to Yeah. I don't know

1:13:36

what they want. I guess they just want to, uh do

1:13:38

a bunch of illegal ship yep.

1:13:42

Yeah, and and which is fine

1:13:44

too. I guess I don't have their own FBI.

1:13:46

To have their own FBI.

1:13:48

Yeah, it's cool. You know what else

1:13:51

is cool? Dave? Oh no, your

1:13:56

my plugables? Is

1:14:00

the episode over? Yeah? This part one

1:14:02

is over? Okay, okay,

1:14:04

hey listen, Hey hi.

1:14:07

Um, I'm on Twitter at movie Hooligan.

1:14:10

Um. I run a podcast network with

1:14:12

Tom Ryman, uh called game Fully

1:14:15

Unemployed. You can find that wherever you find

1:14:17

podcasts. We have we we

1:14:19

we we do stuff about movies

1:14:22

and such. Uh. We have a Patreon

1:14:24

Patreon dot com slash game fully Unemployed.

1:14:27

Uh, there's a bunch of exclusive podcasts on that.

1:14:30

I'm also I'm a head writer for some more

1:14:32

news. Check that out

1:14:35

as well. That's all my stuff. Well,

1:14:39

um, I'm no one and

1:14:41

you can find me nowhere. Good Bye forever.