To be fair, lepirate repeatedly said that it would be easier to build on Antarctica than it would be to claim Bir Tawil or colonize Mars. He never claimed that it would be easy though. In fact, he claimed that it would be hard.
I'm not at all interested in discussing all technical details (basically because I'm not really read in on all technicalities), but the fact remains, it would be cheaper and easier to: Build the base, make it inhabitable, find the people willing to live there, make it self-sufficient.
Also, I think lepirate agreed on the artificial island thing earlier in this thread.
He clearly said it was easy until faced with facts, and change his stance from easy to easier than .
How can you say it would cheaper and easier without even getting proper solutions, lets just put things into perspective here which important here:
his plan is to be build an independent nation/area where a group of people can live independently from other countries, not only politically independent but in almost every domain, aka energy independent, supply independent ect ect achieving such a think is no easier than going to Mars and this was my whole argument.
How can talk about facts if you can't talk about technical challenges and cost related to those challenges it is not logical by any mean.
Now if you want to have a station on Antartica for a small group of people (a dozen of person) that will not live there permanantly (to this day Antarctica has 0 permanant habitant for reference) and that you'll be supplying from the outside world all the time sure that's much much cheaper and technically less challenging than going to Mars, this goes without saying, but the other thing that goes without saying, is what's the point in this case.
Yeah, but remember that once on Mars there's no way back (unless we develop return crafts as well, which would raise the price with a few more billions). Most people running from NSA and IRS will not be willing to do that.
Also, we would not have any use for bitcoins whilst on Mars anyway. There's nothing to buy there, so there would be no use of bitcoins, not even money (depends on the size of the colony).
With those things even the original idea is gone, with its freedom for bitcoiners and weed.
It would be cool with a colony on mars though.
No way back? you just take your space craft to get you back with or even send it before hand <.< , euh hello Apollo program, the challenge of getting of Mars is much easier than lifting of earth due to the low gravity, and the heaviest thing in a space craft is fuel, and you can create rocket fuel on Mars surface while carying minimum of chemicals that are not easly available/produceable on Mars.
There is no doubt that such project will cost billions of $ I'm sure I mentioned this, but anything related to owning own land and nation would cost as much, unless it is very small