What had once been at the fringes of right-wing libertarianism is now mainstream in Washington. Greenland has long been on the radar of the crypto-libertarians as a territory to start their ‘network states’ dream; coincidentally, just as their cash has captured Washington politicians, the US is now talking of invading it.
Is there a more harmful dynamic at play? If those who believe your country is in irreversible decline are put in charge, might they intentionally worsen its state to prove their point? Some argue this is already happening.
Coincidentally, some might argue that is happening too.
I wonder if these guys have thought this through. I mean, network states run by business owners is going to require vast and reliable infrastructure and resources: who’s going to fund, build and maintain those? The business owners? Who won’t want to spend a penny more than is absolutely necessary? Especially if the wires/roads/machinery et alia crosses into some other guy’s territory/system and benefits a competitor? And where are they going to find the expertise to do all the analysis, design, engineering, building, wiring, programming, tracking, maintenance and repair? Do they think LLM AI and robots will be capable?
Let’s remember that this idea is being pushed by the same type of people who are sure they can just wave their hands and rewrite the laws of physics, chemistry and biology sufficient for humans to be able to colonise other planets, and in their lifetime!
They’re pouring their money into immortality research so their lifespan will be long enough to reach Mars.
Better they pour that money into figuring out how to instantly terraform a planet completely different from the one on which our type of life evolved, which would take about 4.5 billion years, and only work if an enormous number of unique events that happened on and to this planet were arranged to happen to that one, too. Despite all the sci-fi and tech bro brouhaha, it is next to impossible for a life form that evolved here to adapt, even with huge amounts of genetic engineering, to a different planet with a different history around a different star (or stars, it is very likely that about half of all the stars in any galaxy you can see are in binary or bigger systems of their own.
There are books and articles written by real scientists who have actually studied the topic all their lives that make it very clear that the moon is a possibility, Mars is on the edge of the odds, and anything beyond that is a Isaac Asimov dream for quite a long time to come – probably longer than there will be humans to dream it.
if its run by companies, then they can change the payment to being allowed to have food and shelter instead of money. What are people going to do, rebel? Boil the pot slowly enough and majority will accept anything, even slavery as long as you dont call it slavery.