Seeking Self-Determination Is Not Selfish

Two hundred years and 25 days before I was born, some wise men wrote the following stirring words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

And so the nation was founded on the principle of political self-determination via secession and settling the frontier. Not abandoning law for anarchy, not might makes right, not selfishness and greed, but the simple idea that a group of people who feel their government is not serving them and will not change have not only the right but the duty to create a new system which will better effect their Safety and Happiness.

It is this tradition in which seasteading was conceived, and this tradition in which libertarians want to use it. We are a small group with their own vision of a just society which is not shared by the majority, and thus we have little political influence in America. Like anyone else, we don’t like this, and would like to achieve political self-determination. If we are so passionate about this vision and so dedicated to it as to be willing to leave our home country to achieve it, then to mock and prevent us is at best churlish and at worst a form of political imprisonment.

Brad Reed somehow fails to connect these dots in his Alternet piece: Seasteading: Libertarians Set to Launch a (Wet) Dream of ‘Freedom’ in International Waters. With delightful candor, he states:

Before I continue, I’d like to point out that while I’m not a libertarian, I do value the contributions that they make to our political discourse. Think of libertarians as the short-sellers of state power — the people in the back of the room who reflexively call “Bullshit!” whenever the government tries to expand its reach. While I think they’re often misguided, their role as bipartisan skeptics of government intervention is a necessary and important component of any democracy. That said, libertarians can get themselves in trouble when they fail to accept that they’re doomed to be a frustrated minority who only score points when the government tries to overreach its authority.

While I share his viewpoint that libertarians are “Doomed to be a frustrated minority”, it makes his later perplexity about why libertarians would want to expatriate rather baffling:

In the end, the strangest part about the seastead project isn’t its founders’ impracticalities but rather their base motivations. Normally, when a minority of people want to break off from their homeland to form a new country it’s because of genuine oppression such as religious persecution, ethnic cleansing or taxation without representation. Thiel, on the other hand, lives in a society whose promotion of capitalism has let him grow rich enough to blow $500,000 founding his own personal no-girls-allowed treehouse in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What exactly does he have to be angry about, again?

Now, I can understand him not finding the libertarian vision of a just society appealing. Most people don’t – that’s why libertarians are doomed to be a frustrated minority. But in a country founded on the idea that people should be free to determine their political destiny, what is strange about people who don’t feel they have that freedom wanting it?

I don’t agree with the types of oppression which the author has determined are “genuine”, on a practical or historical basis. First, his list neglects political self-determination, the principle that led the founding fathers to revolt, and one which modern American liberals have supported for a number of breakaway republics. And second, he includes “taxation without representation”, yet doesn’t seem to realize that someone in a tiny political minority in a democracy has little more effective representation than, say, a colonist ruled by a remote sovereign. (Especially with FPTP voting).

If you have the good fortune to adhere to one of the two popular political belief clusters in America, try to imagine the situation of the libertarian. Pretend that the only top-two Presidential candidate your party ever ran was way back in 1964, and he was crushed in one of the most lopsided elections in the nation’s history. Pretend that your party is currently represented by a single Congressman, who had to run under a mainstream party to be elected to Congress, and who entered the Presidential primary, ran a massively successful campaign by your party’s standards, and still only got a few percent of the primary vote. Can you see why you might be a bit down on democracy – at least with this set of voters?

There is something almost zen-like in Mr. Reed’s ability to simultaneously hold these two contradictory thoughts: to be outraged about the idea of women having no political influence in a democracy, while being outraged that libertarians might object to having no political influence in a democracy. Perhaps this is because he believes in the romance of democracy – that what matters is getting to vote, and not whether your vote ends up giving you a voice in government and giving you a country vaguely like the one you want. Or perhaps it is simply that he likes women and hates libertarians.

Either way, let us have no more of this facile musing about what the silly privileged libertarians might possibly have to be angry about. We are angry because we have no political influence and no chance at getting any via the current system, because we see through the (admittedly brilliant) mirage of the ballot box which makes everyone feel counted even when they never win. Our movement is unusual in that it is based on beliefs, not ethnicity, and has no geographic center (though NH is trying), but just like any other secession movement, it is based on the desire for political self-determination. We may be a frustrated minority, but we don’t have to be a doomed one. Is that really so hard to understand?