Challenge for Seasteaders: What about the slavers?
Challenge for Seasteaders: What about the slavers?
Not every problem Seasteaders have to face will be adventuresome & optimistic. So far there has been very little talk about the depressing but unavoidable issue of slavery.
There are no less than 50 million people living as forced slaves around the world today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30PhwyPUVBQ
China has millions of actual cotton-picking slaves forced to work for their fashion industry. Human trafficking for various types of labor is rampant across the middle east. India & Southeast Asia have unknown millions of kidnapped, forced slaves doing "pig butchering" scams via social media. Many industries such as fishing see slaves in great numbers on the high seas, kidnapping tourists and never letting them see the shore again. Then let's not forget the sex slave trade these days, especially for children.
Overall, slavery as an industry is thriving. In the year 1800, less than 1 million people were enslaved in the USA. There were about 890,000 Africans at the height of that practice from best estimates. Today we're at literally 56 Times that... And don't even get me started about the similar crime of all governments enslaving their citizens in some lesser way.
Why is this an issue for Seasteaders?
All types of human traffickers survive by bribing officials to look the other way. A jurisdictional hunt for corruption. Without the help of the very regulators that are supposed to be busting them, they'd die out or be forced to move quickly.
Once some new type of land exists that doesn't even have regulators, that'll sound like paradise for slavers! The same lax libertarian rules that would allow drugs, casinos, and medical tourism could easily allow them to bring their slaves to us and build up the seastead on the backs of these slaves in the hopes that they can stop moving around now and run their slave empires happily ever after among us.
How are we, as a free, anarchic society, going to discourage or stop slavers from making our colonies their home? Slavery is, after all, the greatest possible violation of the Non Aggression Principle and is the opposite of everything that Voluntaryism stands for.
I am still looking for the best strategy here, but so far I see a 2-pronged approach to fighting slavery. The first is having an actual immigration policy for any new seastead. For the early years, the colony would need to exist on an invite-only residency basis to ensure that Voluntaryism thrives and becomes a bedrock of society. Nobody would be invited to join the seastead that doesn't consider themselves a Voluntaryist.
The second prong is our form of law. Yes, you can have a private law system and we already do, in many places.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8pcb4xyCic
No AnarchoCapitalist court could possibly recognize the slaver's claims of property, and any kind of Assurance service would drop a slavemaster as a customer automatically upon finding out their real business structure. So put simply, we make it so that slavers will find our colony useless because our laws & culture are both naturally opposed to their business model.
Do you guys have any more specific ideas/thoughts on the matter? It's important that we have this issue solved before launching a platform or our good reputation could be tarnished from the start.
Not every problem Seasteaders have to face will be adventuresome & optimistic. So far there has been very little talk about the depressing but unavoidable issue of slavery.
There are no less than 50 million people living as forced slaves around the world today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30PhwyPUVBQ
China has millions of actual cotton-picking slaves forced to work for their fashion industry. Human trafficking for various types of labor is rampant across the middle east. India & Southeast Asia have unknown millions of kidnapped, forced slaves doing "pig butchering" scams via social media. Many industries such as fishing see slaves in great numbers on the high seas, kidnapping tourists and never letting them see the shore again. Then let's not forget the sex slave trade these days, especially for children.
Overall, slavery as an industry is thriving. In the year 1800, less than 1 million people were enslaved in the USA. There were about 890,000 Africans at the height of that practice from best estimates. Today we're at literally 56 Times that... And don't even get me started about the similar crime of all governments enslaving their citizens in some lesser way.
Why is this an issue for Seasteaders?
All types of human traffickers survive by bribing officials to look the other way. A jurisdictional hunt for corruption. Without the help of the very regulators that are supposed to be busting them, they'd die out or be forced to move quickly.
Once some new type of land exists that doesn't even have regulators, that'll sound like paradise for slavers! The same lax libertarian rules that would allow drugs, casinos, and medical tourism could easily allow them to bring their slaves to us and build up the seastead on the backs of these slaves in the hopes that they can stop moving around now and run their slave empires happily ever after among us.
How are we, as a free, anarchic society, going to discourage or stop slavers from making our colonies their home? Slavery is, after all, the greatest possible violation of the Non Aggression Principle and is the opposite of everything that Voluntaryism stands for.
I am still looking for the best strategy here, but so far I see a 2-pronged approach to fighting slavery. The first is having an actual immigration policy for any new seastead. For the early years, the colony would need to exist on an invite-only residency basis to ensure that Voluntaryism thrives and becomes a bedrock of society. Nobody would be invited to join the seastead that doesn't consider themselves a Voluntaryist.
The second prong is our form of law. Yes, you can have a private law system and we already do, in many places.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8pcb4xyCic
No AnarchoCapitalist court could possibly recognize the slaver's claims of property, and any kind of Assurance service would drop a slavemaster as a customer automatically upon finding out their real business structure. So put simply, we make it so that slavers will find our colony useless because our laws & culture are both naturally opposed to their business model.
Do you guys have any more specific ideas/thoughts on the matter? It's important that we have this issue solved before launching a platform or our good reputation could be tarnished from the start.