Part One: The Not-At-All-Sad History of Libertarian Sea Nations | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

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Part One: The Not-At-All-Sad History of Libertarian Sea Nations | BEHIND THE BASTARDS
Robert is joined by David Bell to discuss the history of Libertarian Boat Cities.
Original Air Date: December 1, 2021
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There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.
New episodes twice a week on iHeartRadio.
#BehindtheBastards #BehindtheBastardsPodcast #RobertEvansBehindtheBastards #BehindtheBastardsMerch #BehindtheBastardsJohnLandis #BehindTheBastardsHost #BehindtheBastardsIvermectin #BestBehindtheBastardsEpisodes #BehindtheBastardsBestEpisodes

[@awkwardukulele6077]

This whole story AND Robert’s discussion of his political opinions changing is making me feel much better about my Libertarian->libertarian shift over the years. I’m glad I’m not the only one who went “we should all be free to do what we want, and that means getting rid of government so capitalism can work better,” To “we should all be free to do what we want, and that means taking care of everyone so no one has to worry about dying, and dismantling capitalism so no one becomes a shitty government and people are stopped from becoming fascist.”

[@GilTheDragon]

As a onetime Libertarian I am convinced it is an adolescent ideology that must necessarily resolve into right wing reactionary or like lefty AF

[@gibbcharron3469]

@@GilTheDragon As a fellow former Libertarian, I am inclined to agree!

[@LTrotsky21stCentury]

Fascism is capitalism's shadow.

[@Attmay]

“Fascist” is just another degenerate buzzword at this point.

[@Attmay]

@@GilTheDragon”Right wing reactionary” is communist projection.

[@chrisball3778]

Pirate radio stations in the UK weren't set up because the music they played was illegal per se. It was because the government heavily restricted broadcasting licences for radio stations. Until 1967 the government-controlled BBC stations refused to play most pop and rock music, despite the fact it was rapidly growing in popularity, and the pirate stations were set up to meet the demand for radio that played the music most British young people of the 60's actually liked. The government responded to the popularity of the pirate stations by setting up BBC Radio 1 in 1967 in order to provide a legal station that played the same styles, but by that point the pirate stations had dedicated audiences and they lasted for a while longer. There's still a small pirate radio scene in the UK, usually playing dance and urban music genres and music by unsigned artists that's underserved by state and commercial broadcasters, but it's now entirely land-based and declining in popularity as internet distribution allows musicians to get their music out there without any radio play.

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

I learned something today!

[@stinkytoy]

Thank you for this background info 😊

[@alexcarter8807]

Radio Caroline has sailed into the chat...

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

You are correct, but it is worth mentioning that the BBC were, and still are, very censorious and continue to deny controversial songs and/or artists airtime well beyond the introduction of Radio 1, so up until the advent of fully legal commercial radio broadcasting the pirates still had a legitimate reason for existing beyond the fact that they had counter culture credibility.

[@chrisball3778]

@@casanovafunkenstein5090 Well... sort of. They're probably less censorious than the vast majority of commercial outlets. I grew up in the UK in the 90's and pirate radio stations were definitely the least censored, but there was quite a lot of overlap in the music they played with the late-night DJ's on Radio 1. But you could hear very, very little underground music on UK commercial radio.

[@Bigmackenzie]

Libertarians are just like cats, totally dependant on you but act like they are fiercly independant 😂

[@Attmay]

Punching down and missing as usual. Dehumanizing people for recognizing that the state is the root cause of every problem is just another form of bigotry in support of totalitarianism.

[@hellbreakfast1590]

I almost fell over when Heinlein was invoked. That man invokes so many weird feelings. Just. So many. What a complex weird man.

[@ReallyBadJuJu]

The Moon is A Harsh Mistress was a personal favorite of mine during my libertarian years...I've definitely come to view the world differently since, but still love so many of Henlein's books.

[@mattgilbert7347]

I loved Heinlein in my youth, especially Moon and Job.

[@Attmay]

Remake *Starship Troopers* to remove the communist schlock of that fucking movie.

[@BaronVonQuiply]

If you did an episode on whoever invented the browser popup, I think we can all come together and call them a bastard.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Oh yes, by all the gods

[@slimysomething]

Ethan Zuckerman

[@BaronVonQuiply]

@@slimysomething Thanks

[@_s827]

Everyone here should read A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear for another great look at libertarian utopia gone wrong. It's about New Hampshire, and the early 2000s internet experiment that resulted in libertarians moving to one town in New Hampshire. Hijinks ensued

[@msmagsmn]

Oh my God that was so beyond crazy. I was reading it and had to keep stopping to text my friends to tell them about it because I just couldn't believe it actually happened.

[@_s827]

@@msmagsmn oh man I've pushed Libertarian Walks Into A Bear on so many people over the years. I"ve been to that part of New Hampshire before the events of that book happened and it was so weird to see where that experiment went.

[@TheDarthbinky]

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of Libertarians here in NH. Also, there's the Galt's Gulch fiasco in Chile, where about 10 years or so ago, some Randbots hatched a scheme to raise money and use it to buy a chunk of Chilean wilderness where they would build a Libertarian utopia. And... mild spoilers... it ended exactly how you'd expect. It fizzled out, there's a court battle over who owns the land that they bought, and one of the guys running it stole the investors' money.

[@TheGhostpuncher]

It's kind of wild how much like bears and fire, the sea is not an individual problem. And yet: they want to make the sea a mandatory shared problem.

[@thejokerl1ves]

Disease filled poop bog is an accurate description of pretty much every conversation I've ever had with libertarians.

[@rothloaf1980]

Seems like a boat nation would soon be a big sewer. "No, you don't want to swim in that."

[@PhilipPetrunak]

His description of the book The Moon is a harsh Mistress it's basically the entire plot of the original Gundam series.

[@youmukonpaku3168]

...I hate that this is, in fact, Not Wrong.

[@EnsignGeneric]

Having read a full plot synopsis, the setup is similar, but they diverge pretty widely after that. Gundam was more about war in the abstract and the tragedy of humans being at cross-purposes when they should be friends. TMIAHM is pretty much all about the process of a successful revolution and its inevitably disappointing aftermath. Though I guess that makes it closer to the Gundam: The Origin OVA series. Except instead of ending with, "And then the One Year War happened," it ended with, "And then basically nothing happened."

[@rustkitty]

34:19 Hiro Protagonist was from Snow Crash written in 1992, which wasn't early cyberpunk fiction. It was labeled by Neil Stephenson the author as "post-cyberpunk" because it's kind of a deconstruction of the genre. So I'm pretty sure the name choice was satiric. btw while it's a good book I'm not sure I'd call it the most influential, and also that's where the term "metaverse" was coined so it's influence is not spotless either.

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

id say its diffidently Cyberpunk it still fits into the "High tech , Low life" qualifier though im sure like you said Stephenson feels different

[@Kalulosu]

@@SgtKaneGunlock To deconstruct a genre, most of the time you want to use the conventions of the genre. If not then it's just a different genre.

[@miguelvelez7221]

Ever read CRYTONOMICON? I don't know a lot about Stephenson's social views, though at least a strong familiarity with Libertarianism is evident in his writings, I have to say there's a conclusion in it, I won't spoil the particulars and just call it the Athena and Ares thing, that I CANNOT shake as... Right. PS I am quite a long my lifetime Left of Center political allegiance, so it's not that anything he is saying on that specifically is appealing. But what he says about culture and tech and how those are interwoven going back since forever and how we represent that in our history, how we express the tensions that arise can guide us today in seeing what the real dividing lines are and in my opinion you can view that through a lens as a criticism of how Fascist societies happen and function, and ultimately why they can never succeed.

[@gloomy_gus]

Hiro Protagonist is a samurai hacker pizza delivery driver for the Italian Mafia (which is a corporation in that universe.) The name is 100% a joke.

[@windyrockbell3814]

While Heinlein was certainly inspirational, I'm surprised and disappointed you didn't bring up Galt's Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, the location where all the productive people leave, creating a thriving society from their own objectivist will and leaving the rest of the world destitute for lacking the two thousand odd people who actually did work within the logic of the book.

[@msmagsmn]

I'm hoping Ayn Rand gets her own episode at some point. If we have to suffer her trash-brained fanboys in perpetuity, I at least want to hear Robert Evans read her for filth.

[@alexcarter8807]

Within the logic of the book indeed, as Great Geniuses are notoriously bad at things like gardening/farming, taking out the trash, doing the laundry, etc. For more on this see the founding of modern Israel, yeah, I'm gonna go there. Tons of intellectuals flowed in from Europe after WWII and that's great but the original Zionist idea was that Jews were going to create a "complete" society again, no longer restricted to paper-pushing and money-lending but that along with Jewish intellectuals there would be Jewish farmers and trashmen and street-sweepers etc. This .... was not completely realized and hence Israel imports a ton of labor for tho "lower" professions, with the resulting disunity and discord.

[@sophia-helenemeesdetricht1957]

Re: Veerhooven's annoyance that nobody got the fash satire in Starship Troopers, didn't Doogie Howser have a techno-totenkopf on his cap? Am I remembering that wrong??

[@TheDarthbinky]

He didn't have the totenkopf but his uniform was indeed hilariously similar to Nazi uniforms.

[@hiding_my_name]

I dont understand how nobody understood it was satire. It was the same thing he did with Robocop. I assume people didn't get the satire in that one either...

[@ChumblesMumbles]

Everyone got the satire. The film as whole was bad though, and Paul just got bent out of shape for all the legitimate criticism and fell back on "oh, you just didn't get the higher meaning stuff". No, Paul, we got it. It was hardly subtle. Some of it was pretty funny, but the film sucked anyway.

[@gloomy_gus]

Hiro Protagonist was the main character in Snow Crash, which was a later addition to the cyberpunk genre. The main character in Neuromancer is named Case. It's also important to point out that Snow Crash had a strong comedic element, so Hiro's name was intentionally jokey.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Snow Crash is a great book. Interesting conception of how shallow Zucker's metaverse would be. And Neuromancer is just insanely good. Edit: _both_ books.

[@Daedalus117]

It's pretty funny how the concept (or at least the name) of the metaverse is taken from the book with the shittiest depiction of a metaverse, where it's basically a strip mall 65,000km long

[@FakeSchrodingersCat]

It is also interesting that it was brought up here because of it's portrayal of a Libertarian world.

[@alexcarter8807]

@@Daedalus117 I took a long ride on my bike yesterday which took me out into Cupertino, you know, where all the super smart people live and I can tell you, their preferred environment is lots of roads and lots of strip malls. Oh do they love strip malls. You could say the the strip mall is the pinnacle of human achievement.

[@bln8285]

unhinged libertarians taking to the sea to form their own nations is one of my favorite subjects!!!

[@Chatrbuug]

I wouldn't mind more libertarians walking into the sea

[@GuerillaBunny]

@@Chatrbuug They wouldn't even have to drown. Just build their underwater utopia, and the rest will take care of itself.

[@falloutghoul1]

@@GuerillaBunny "Under Pressure" starts to play.

[@GuerillaBunny]

@@falloutghoul1 Sure. Another alternative is AI generated dubstep/vaporwave with snippets from Ayn Rand.

[@banjohero1182]

i think we'll need a citation for your wild implication that there exist hinged libertarians.

[@emiliestinson3086]

34:18 - The founding text of the cyberpunk genre was William Gibson's Neuromancer, Hiro Protagonist was a character in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

[@brazoshopper5081]

tax-free volley ball? sign me up!

[@L4NkYb]

Spaceballs? Shit! There goes the planet

[@lukemccann8930]

I love the idea of the sponsors constantly randomly calling in like "sooooo, we just found out that this program keeps saying we're committing crimes?"

[@loorthedarkelf8353]

Another thing Gene and Heinlein had in common; high concept horny plots. And more than a little homophobia, though Gene came around late in life and said in an interview, openly, that he was wrong and had learned better. I know of no such moment for Heimline, and Stranger In A Strange Land devoted a jarring number of asides that say outright Something Is Wrong With Gay Folks and HOO BOY that's a yikes.

[@marocat4749]

Did you see lexx, or a lot scifi really, but with lexx its really creative and good in a weird way. I mean its generally a scifi thing. And anime maybe. Anime love horny and a scify or similar higher concept plot , that can be great,or terrible. Its not a bad principle to maybe get a good media. And that counts for a lot anime and scifi. Maybe fantasy that are out there too.

[@loorthedarkelf8353]

I did not say horny high concepts are a bad thing. Simply that it's something they had in common. Also why I gave credit for Gene coming around from his homophobia because he was writing stories to explore new ideas and came to rethink old ones. I love high concept horny plots, that's why Riker is best boy. His actor, Jonathan Frakes, also argued that Riker should flirt with masc and gender ambiguous aliens played by male actors. ( I'm just gushing now, lol )

[@marocat4749]

​​​​​@@loorthedarkelf8353 sorry😅 Horny high concept good. And vredit for apearently even admitting to the kirk spock slash, it would made no difference, he really came around Too bad we didnt got a not femininy coded alien to flirt with him. Also that riker is pretty sensitive on boundaries. Sexy.

[@VayaKahvi]

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls has the main character going to bed with two very beautiful women, and waking up, with a big gap in his memory (time travel and drugs were still messing up his head), and one of the women replaced with a very handsome man (I think his name was Gabriel, and was described as looking a lot like the Statue of David, but endowed better), and there is some commentary from folks that witnessed that night say the protagonist did in fact have some fun even if he can't remember it, so I think he started getting better about it later in life at least.

[@1000huzzahs]

The guy really only knew how to write one type of love interest, didn't he. "Stereotypically Hot Person." I mean, "Like Michelangelo's David but with a bigger D---"? This man won awards? @@VayaKahvi

[@b.p.879]

I'll trade you 10 Shrute Bucks for a Minerva dollar!

[@LollipopKnight2]

It occurs to me that governments dropping aid on places to establish that they own those places is a surprisingly close analogy to animals marking their territory. There's more sophistication here, but it's a notable reminder that we're not that far removed from other forms of life.

[@Daedalus117]

I've never actually had a bad experience in a DMV. The ones I've been to were run pretty efficiently. Don't blame the concept of government for your shitty institutions, blame your local government (or lack of)

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Yep. It does vary a lot.

[@johnkneeshaw8008]

It's the high cost of low taxes.

[@youmukonpaku3168]

yeah, here in Canada the local equivalent (usually bundled into the Service [Province] locations) has rarely been much of a hassle to deal with. Of course, that might be something to do with our government, bastards though many may be, being set up to actually serve the population of the country, while the USA's is mostly focused on redistributing taxed wealth to people who already have too much wealth.

[@patricksinger357]

Honestly all the problems I ever had with the DMV were caused by other DMV patrons. Not that I really blame them, nobody wants to go to the DMV and it can be pretty stressful situation to be in.

[@Attmay]

@@johnkneeshaw8008 California has the highest taxes and the shittiest DMVs. I went to two of them to renew my car registration automatically, and the kiosk was broken at both of them!

[@marocat4749]

As someone who has a good memory of waterworld. I like kevin costners maybe not great but fun creative movie series thats not too bad. Waterworld is a good movie. As far as i remember. Its fun. Ok its campy fun good but i like him experimenting in movies that often make commentary against liberterians? Where he pöays a gangstef getting to care more about a kid hostage than his parents. Postman maybe is too long, but same. Ok maybe i just miss campy adventure movies and kevin costner had a knack for them.

[@lunaticlizzie4525]

Cruelty Squad has a level themed after libertarian boat cities, it's great

[@BaronVonQuiply]

How far away do you think we are from Libertarian Orbital Catastrophes? (unregulated RCS motors aren't always the best idea)

[@Neuttah]

Er...how far from manned flight is Starship again?

[@msmagsmn]

I am so here for multiple episodes on this topic. Every libertarian I've ever met has been an exhausting main character and I absolutely would help them launch their boats into the sea

[@Attmay]

So you’re saying you would kill people for not being a statist totalitarian.

[@sampagano205]

I am shocked that none of these libertarian ocean cities thought to abandon the concept of staying in one place. I think the best way to do this would be as a nomadic fleet city whose flagship is a really big cruise ship that you run as basically a floating town. That ship is the meeting place for all the officers in the fleet who are the only real citizens. Then manage it like an old school pirate fleet where all the captains are paying a portion of the money they make doing stuff like drug smuggling in the third world.

[@sampagano205]

I feel like you could probably get Saudi Arabia or one of the other gulf monarchies in on giving you a letter of marque.

[@sampagano205]

Hell you could actually just use pirate code.

[@Daedalus117]

Pretty sure somebody already tried the cruise ship thing. I think it was some crypto bros. Didn't go anywhere of course

[@chrisblake4198]

Read about the Satoshi debacle. The Guardian has a great long article on it. Unsprisingly to everyone except Libertarians, it's very expensive to sail anywhere legally, and even more expensive to find a place to safely moor a big ship and keep it seaworthy without becoming an environmental hazard. Even when you don't want to go places, it takes a lot of skilled labor to keep the lights on, the drinking water in the pipes, the poop water in it's pipes, and the ocean on the outside where it belongs.

[@jsmithson9076]

Look into the “Freedom Ship” floating city project.

[@jimcat68]

@1:00:00 This guy should have listened to some naval history podcasts. If you're planning to build a ship bigger than any ship that has ever been built before, where are you going to build it? You need to build the shipyard first.

[@lisacook8235]

I don't know if they qualify as Bastards, but an episode about the hilarious walking oxymorons that are Sovereign Citizens might be fun....Maybe not enough substance though. I hope Robert resolves his identity crisis!

[@GuerillaBunny]

Münecat did an episode on them. It got so much weirder than I expected...

[@TheWonkster]

They definitely qualify

[@raycearcher5794]

> Be me, unscrupulous mining executive > Hear about island made of sand where you can do whatever you want > Go there > Dig up all the sand to sell at home depot > Island was pretty awesome while it lasted

[@sonder420]

If Robert ever does a 6 part metal gear podcast sign me up

[@billmozart7288]

I wouldn't be surprised to learn Hideo Kojima is a bastard in some way

[@jessaminehaak8253]

I have mixed feelings about the idea of seasteading because. I like the idea of living on the ocean. But I don't like libertarianism lmfao. I wonder if any non-libertarians ever look into this kind of thing XD

[@youmukonpaku3168]

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the less conventional anarchists have similar ideas; the basic idea of "free of all but the most universal international laws" has the same appeal for them. They're more concerned with trying to fix where they already live, in most cases, so they're not pooling money to build boats or buy decomissioned oil rigs and AA gun platforms any time soon, but I'm sure at least one has written about the idea.

[@kennethmoore7770]

The libertarian idea of a free market is what economists call a captured market, and it is the opposite of a free market in pretty much every way

[@TheWonkster]

I mean, we're getting dangerously close to it ourselves. Perhaps it's just an inevitability that all capitalist systems that aren't heavily controlled to ensure fairness will end up this way?

[@Attmay]

When are you going to admit that communism doesn’t work and that the state creates nothing but war and bloodshed?

[@theguilloriousmind5832]

I've been waiting for this subject! Yes! So psyched!

[@pinealservo]

Lazarus Long was a recurring Heinlein character; "Time Enough For Love" was just wrapping up his story in the weirdest late-Heinlein way. At the start of the story we're thousands of years into the future and Lazarus has done everything seen everything and is really bored, so he wants to die. His friends figure out how to send him back in time, so he goes back to meet his mother... and become his own father. So yeah; weird character arc from a weird author.

[@professorhazard]

Hopefully Part Two will chronicle the story of Big Boss, Outer Heaven, and Militaires Sans Frontieres.

[@boonehamilton6720]

Infotainment is best long on KZbin. Please combine your multipart’s. Many of us want to start it and over the next 24 hours we experience your 2 hour plus video during breaks and off time. We also tend to fall asleep with your content playing. We can’t intentionally leave the video while we are asleep.

[@boonehamilton6720]

I love infographics. New part to a similar theme. Add the new bit to the overall video. I see a new video upload. It’s only 15 mutes longer but I watch it all again. Mostly because infotainment is background that I can listen to while doing a mindless work task.

[@kevinhengehold4387]

On the theme of "libertarian moments of genius," can you please do an episode on the bastards featured in "a libertarian walks into a bear"?

[@pauldaigle2344]

Heinlein most famously wrote "Stranger in a Strange Land".

[@M_M_ODonnell]

Now I kinda want to come up with a major grift to funnel money from Libertarians and use it to fund an OG libertarian (i.e. anarchist-communist) project. Nah, too much work, the Libertarians have too much access to state violence, and I'd be terrible at scamming people. Maybe build a plot for a book around it, though.

[@schrecksekunde2118]

brilliant!

[@WowUrFcknHxC]

So these people saw Waterworld and thought it was aspirational?

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

its more like they saw bioshock and ignored all the abuses of power and genetic Fuckery

[@M_M_ODonnell]

They think the main problem with Waterworld is that there are too many people not living under the iron rule of the property owners. Because it's only authoritarian statism if the enforcers are representatives of an entity claiming to act in the public interest instead of being openly plutocratic, apparently.

[@DirtyDruid]

They really did! "I just need a pee-distiller and I'm in business!"

[@saurianwatcher4437]

1:04:00 ish, i think the printing companies bit is a reference to "we won't have copyright law, so you can pirate books"

[@hiding_my_name]

David Bell was great in this episode

[@DavidDylanFisher]

Is Part 2 going to be about all the failed attempts at establishing Libertarian Utopias in rural New England/out west?

[@ch3burashka]

Last night I showed my gf the Bioshock Infinite reveal trailer because I was thinking of it.

[@noop1111]

The wonderful world of amazing live sea-libertarians

[@marocat4749]

The sea deserves better 😑

[@yourlocalnerd7788]

Bioshock is making fun of libertarians but it's also specifically critquing Ayn Rand to the point that the guy who made Rapture is called Andrew Ryan

[@ecyor0]

Ah, I remember dipping into the surface of this stuff back as a teenager - never from the political angle, just from the "oh wow, turning a cruise ship into a floating town? That sounds rad as fuck!" aspect of it. Looking forward to seeing how this thing I haven't thought about in a decade has panned out, I'm sure it's only good things.

[@EvilWeiRamirez]

Years ago, I met Patri Friedman who used to hang out with some guys that we referred to as the Google millionaires because they were all founding members of Google. He was one of the founders of the seasteading institute, and back then I was naive enough to think that there could be potential.

[@thomaskalinowski8851]

Time Enough For Love was a bad late-Heinlein sequel to a good early-Heinlein novel called Methuselah's Children.

[@SesshyLover777]

As someone who had to recently move back in with her mom, BIG FAN of one's own house...😅

[@Attmay]

Maybe if you had stopped voting for shitlibs, you could still afford your own home.

[@chrisblake4198]

Whoever it was that was tapping or knocking on something was driving me nuts.

[@user-te5po4bu8o]

Oh lord, Farnham’s Freehold is a libertarian wet dream. It’s what I always think of when libertarians imagine they’ll recreate society after an apocalypse. They want that world.

[@jimcat68]

@34:52 "I haven't read this Heinlein book. Maybe it was good." Narrator : "It was not good."

[@Attmay]

You didn’t read the book, you just watched the movie and projected its flaws onto the book.

[@jimcat68]

@@Attmay That is, in fact, not true! I read the book in 1982.

[@FakeSchrodingersCat]

The republic of Minerva coins are going for $250 each.

[@ryanedwards7487]

So…none of these people have ever played ANY Bioshock game?

[@notinspectorgadget]

46:37 Goddamn that's funny.

[@KurtisHord]

Turns out;

[@IdToaster]

I'm still sad Hero Protagonist never came face-to-face with their archrival Villain Antagonist.

[@theangryholmesian4556]

Sea libertarians have to watch out for sea bears.

[@dirk_gently]

Libertarians - 40% "huh, that's an interesting idea" 60% "OH, MY GOD - NO!"

[@computer_toucher]

Wtf was so difficult to understand about verhoeven’s Troopers; i saw it at 18 ish and got the satire, like, robocop i laughed at at like 12

[@majuuorthrus3340]

Sealand's coup is fucking hilarious. There's all this drama, but it's over a fucking... lump of iron floating in the North Sea.

[@Subjectivity13]

If we didn't have to pay taxes, we would just get paid less. Taxes are factored into our pay. We'd still end up with about the same amount of money left over, but without any government services. It's not like every form of government or no government at all hasn't been tried hundreds of times before throughout human history. This is the best we could do. It's not perfect, nothing is, but if you want to see less regulation, look at the US in the 1800s. Kids losing limbs working in factories. It took us a long time to get here, and it's better than it was. Nobody is going to suddenly start from scratch and make a utopia. That's automatically a disaster waiting to happen. Improving society is a slow, gradual process.

[@ScottLahteine]

33:00 - Sounds like Robert Heinlein was just cribbing from Ayn Rand for a lot of that stuff.

[@youmukonpaku3168]

two of the characters in Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of whom is pretty transparently a Heinlein self-insert (the most obvious one to not be named Lazarus Long) directly discuss Ayn Rand. They conclude that she has *some* good ideas, but neither can agree on which ideas those are, and the self-insert can only settle on not being offended by the assumption he was a "Randite."

[@AB-dm1wz]

41:15

[@idicula1979]

Those Princes of Nigera couldn’t touch these Libertarians in internet grifting.

[@orchidrose1410]

“ biggest boat in the world” will this boat also be “unsinkable”? Because I think someone already tried and failed at that😂😂😂

[@RConnickJr]

Neuromancer predates Snow Crash by almost a decade

[@jesuscoutofandino6280]

"No taxes except an import tax"... which is going to be on everything cause you will have to import it all :P

[@idicula1979]

What if like several thousand connected RV’s where a country. BAM !!! I just won Libertarian secession fantasies and mania.

[@alexcarter8807]

"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" is YA (Young Adult) level reading. It's a quick read, too; you can polish it off in an evening and there's probably an audiobook out by now. Another Heinlein book that's talked about a lot is "Farnam's Freehold" which I never got through, but it was sort of the Heinlein-filtered Galt's Gulch, not sure which planet it was on. Lots of hairy-chested don't need no help from no one libertarianism yadda yadda.

[@Eruidraith]

Heinlein would have been interested until he found out that they were all rich kids who knew how to code and nothing else, and that’s before the finance bro guys. Heinlein’s Moon is a libertarian society but one of interlocking groups. There’s no free lunch, sure, but everyone helps each other. If shit happens we have couches to crash on level. Everyone learns skills to be useful. The level of communally minded civic-mindedness on Luna would instantly kill a crypto-bro on impact with his brain

[@williamchamberlain2263]

I've been listening to BTB on Spotify, and the adverts for I Heart Radio podcasts are depressing. I know it's different content for different people, vut you _really_ need better marketing advice and editing.

[@meatmobile]

This is even funnier after nft bros tried to pull that Cryptoland shit

[@cogsworther1639]

Wanna feel sad? Imagine if a fraction of the money and effort put into building new utopias was spent on trying to improve the lives of people currently living in normal society

[@hospice8896]

Robert just pulls anyone in. They don't know anything

[@lostinthemasses]

Libertarian printing on a cruise ship that uses US dollars, how did they not realize people would be using these libertarian printers to make counterfeit money?

[@fusionspace175]

This is a pretty boring story, I mean I'm an hour in and they haven't even built the first sea nation yet. I'm starting to wonder if they ever will.

[@DeiwosN]

Look at you all who forgot that there was a whole arc of House MD with Lin-Manuel Miranda.

[@Attmay]

Just like nobody wants to talk about how he is a whore of Nestlé.

[@rorylynch1203]

Let’s go! Hemingway’s brother has to be in here. Don’t let libertarians in they attract bears

[@11myricka]

Vigilante pot hole filling on forest service roads tbh

[@TheWonkster]

So which part is "good stuff" Robert? The whole thinking that you can trust completely unbound corporations to handle social/infrastructure systems? Thinking that you shouldn't ever have to help anyone do anything ever and those that die deserve it? The age of consent thing and how libertarianism as a whole is a safe haven for child diddlers and people who aren't all that hung up on things like bodily autonomy or consent for women or anyone younger than them?

[@shanesaunders6156]

Love this podcast, but I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS WATER WORLD SLANDER

[@IanOPadrick]

The reason libertarians don't actually do any effective outreach is because they are either too poor to do that outreach, or have so much money that they think they can make an island nation. There is no in between

[@puddles5501]

channel needs less screeching. would be so interesting without the co-hosts

[@Chaosqueenngami]

Country that has undeveloped shoals: Exists Rest of the world: Ohh, is that what you want? Because that's how you get free market libertarians.

[@samwiseb2799]

I feel like Libertarians need to stop and think about why a sea faring “free society” is a horrendous idea. Like guys I know how much you like Pirates of the Caribbean or even Bioshock but those systems of government and society fall apart for an obviously painful reason. People will not act like adults if you don’t establish some ground basic rules on how to act. Like it just turns in to Spring Break on Crack for a reason. There is a reason “screw the rules I can do whatever I want Dad!” Only works with Teenagers. Because teenagers are morons. Plus there is nuance of authorianism, and pure anarchy. I’m all for having a system of anarchistic stateless in which case everyone is in a community and works together but you still have have some form of government like a democratic council or something. Ancapistan is a joke and would never work because Greed is not good!

[@cowbatboots282]

First!

[@ho-hyongyoo3251]

Rapture

[@alittlewasted3869]

An-caps and ultra-neoliberals have ruined the term libertarian.

[@GaryChurch-hi8kb]

I liked many of your podcasts but "I think libertarians have a lot of good stuff" just got you unsubscribed.

[@theangryholmesian4556]

This isn't an airport dude.

[@GaryChurch-hi8kb]

Whatever that means, "dude."@@theangryholmesian4556

[@youmukonpaku3168]

@@GaryChurch-hi8kb "you don't have to announce your departure." It's an old joke.

[@GaryChurch-hi8kb]

I have noticed libertarians tend to think everything is a joke. Especially things like the truth and the reality of others in need. The most selfish arrogant spoiled children I have ever interacted with. @@youmukonpaku3168

[@CaptianKatsura]

I wouldn't really hold that line against Robert. Libertarians are right-wingers who have co-opted the language of Anarchy, so if you take them at their word they do have some good points, especially to an Anarchist like Robert. The problem is that when you ignore their words and pay attention to their actual beliefs and actions you'll realize that Libertarians have no interest in anarchy, they just want to be allowed to hurt people with no repercussions.