Definitely an interesting idea and I might be interested. Was wondering though what you mean by the "government" being the shareholders and the executives being the "state"? I thought those were two words that mean about the same thing. I'm an anarchist myself, so maybe I'm just seeing this from a completely different perspective.
Many people draw a distinction between the government and the state. Government makes decisions about how a sovereign is administrated, the state does the administration. The senate, the house of representatives, the supreme court, and the executive branch are examples of "the government". The state department, the fbi, the justice department, the department of education, the nsa, these are examples of "the state".
in this project residents would not get to vote on who is in the government or on any functions of the state. the shareholders would fill the role of voting and instead of it being 1 person 1 vote it would be 1 share 1 vote. it sounds tyrannical but, unlike existing democracies, it actually puts the economic incentives in the right place to do the right things. You see the shareholders would expect the management to maximize their dividend payouts or to increase in the value of their shares. the dividend yields/change in value of shares gives the voters a price by which to measure the effectiveness of the management/the state in satisfying the preferences of its residents. The more people were willing to bid for real estate the more the dividends could increase or the more the firm could invest and the more the stocks would be worth. The only way that the price of real estate would be bid up is if the firm were providing value to the residents. The more people valued the management the more the price would be bid up for real estate and the more secure the management would find its self in its employment and the bigger its bonus. Unlike with domcraticy, here the state actually has real economic incentives to do its job well and care about the preferences of its residents rather than its own personal agendas.
Also, I'm assuming this corporation wouldn't run the same as others, in that the corporations receive person-hood status, providing a legal shield for the executives. Would that be true?
This corporation would be sovereign so it would have the same level of authority as the sorts of organizations that usually grant limited liability to corporations. Meaning that in a legal sense it wouldn't have limited liability, it would have 0 liability. However it would have strong market discipline. Lets say it started polluting the ocean. This would piss off other governments. Pissing off other governments would make them more likely to attack. This would cause the price of insurance to rise. This would add extra expenses to the administration thus reducing profits. Reduction in profits would cause dividend yields to reduce, thus shareholders would take action and replace the existing administration with an administration that polluted less.
Even if you don't, what happens when you get sunk by an anonymous torpedo and your insurer flips you the bird? I think you're overestimating the amount of backlash there would be from fellow customers who aren't also attempting hair-brained sovereignty schemes.
Very good criticisms. These are something i have been wrestling with myself. But i dont think you should just dismiss the whole idea because the answer isn't immediately apparent. these problems may be soluble.
In fact, I think that would be a useful experiment. Float a small structure into international waters, and see how much it costs to maintain insurance on it. You could do that for 30 BTC or so. I give it two years before it's been scuttled and you're back to square one.
International law does not allow for floating structures to be considered sovereign. You have to build "new land".
I like the proposed business model... but perhaps a different direction which would involve much less BTC would be more realistic.
sovereignty would be expensive. there is no avoiding that reality.
Interesting thoughts here. Are you referring to making a business out of something like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicronationDo you think an oil platform can be substituted with a boat, or even an island?
Also, two years of navy experience, skipper, mountain guide & first aid technician.
I would like to apply for residency!
no i wish it could, a boat would be better, however international law forbids it.
