Thanks Amaia, there is interesting context in David De Ugarte's history of alt.sovereignities, at http://p2pfoundation.net/From_Nations_to_Networks Part two of the book has a fascinating history of 19th cy. Segregationist attempts, i.e. refusals of the nation-state such as Mormonism and alternative Zionisms, and of 20th cy. Libertarian and other microstates. Their common mistake is to want to ground alternative socialities in derivatives of imaginary nation-states. But early attempts at internet ‘societies’ like Freedonia are also failures, because they lack a viable shared economy, which coincides with the human network. Thus, after this vital and interesting history of post-national attempts, comes a very interesting passage: David de Ugarte et al.: “The Freedonia story represents the transition and continuity between the Randian segregationism and the new world of trans-national communities. The segregationist temptation appeared repeatedly in virtual networks in the second half of the nineties. It was the easiest option. When network life occupies the identitarian space and explains more about who we are and who we speak to than the nation, the immediate temptation is to replicate the national model, seeking a territory and building a customised micro-state. Segregationism was always there, underlying, inviting us to occupy a distant island or build a floating city where the real community can be accommodated and new forms of social organisation can be tried. And the myth of Mormon success is still powerful. But the 20th-century groups were no longer like 19th-century ones. Randian attempts are unlike those of the Mormons, a presential and real community. With their form of shareholders' society, Randian experiments resemble more the failed colonisation societies than John Smith's persecuted and cohesive religious parishes, where, despite their being more people, everyone knew each other, worked alongside each other, and personally trusted each other, generating, in so doing, an economic basis and emotional tries which were strong enough to support the gigantic efforts and sacrifices which proved to be necessary. Actually, when we think about it, Sealand, once the mythical layer of Cryptonomicon and Wired is stripped, is nothing but the adventure of a family of British squatters who kept some bad company. Freedonia, the first internet-era community that sought its own territoriality, was, in its naivety, both a forerunner and a frontier. Its scarcely 300 members led a real and intense political life. They built a conversation that provided them with an explanation and a meaning. They shared their daily lives and built a common identity which bound them together more than their respective national contexts. Briefly put, they constituted a trans-national community. But they never had an economic basis, a map, a common space between the conversation flows and their own way of making a living. It is true that a community can be based on collective conversation and the consequent political play. In an extended and interesting experiment51, Dutch ethologist Frans de Waal showed how a group of chimpanzees all whose members enjoyed unrestricted access to food not only preserved power structures, but experienced them more intensely than ever. Politics does not arise in politics as a result of scarcity: it is not only an organised struggle for the surplus, as Marx thought. It is there before and after abundance. But maintaining a conversation and social game does not equal supporting a human community. Beyond conversation, nothing generated the need or the possibility of a headquarters territory in Freedonia. There was no persecution forcing them to do so, not a prior economic activity among its members which justified their settling in a specific place. Randians likewise lacked both. That's why Freedonians and Randians sought their destiny from the settler's logic. Believing that the territory would generate its own economic structure, an economy hardly sketched out from libertarian principles which would ground a community which would not longer be trans-national or virtual but territorial. This is a mistake. … Segregationism fails. Without a shared economy, there is no human community which will endure in time. That's why unfaithfulness, transitoriness, and temporary alliances are, as Juan Urrutia points out52, common to all network conversational identities. After Freedonia, trans-national conversational communities evolved dramatically, both in number and in form. Some of them, like Second Life, included as an extra attraction a small parallel economy – which artificially produced scarcity – and a certain political space. But, for the time being at least, they are merely a game and a representation, a pastime and a simulation of a world which can already be intuited but which must come from elsewhere. New identities will only emerge when trans-national conversational spaces are superimposed onto economic spaces within a similar domain and they interact. On different scales, from the networks constituted by tens of thousands of Neonomadic individualists to the great corporate Venices, this is exactly what we are starting to see this decade, and what prefigures the forms of the great future postnational map.” (http://deugarte.com/gomi/Nations.pdf) On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Amaia Arcos <[email protected]>wrote:
https://freecity.ufm.edu/index.php/Videos_of_presentations
I have no idea whether this is good or bad. Just found it.
Universidad Francisco Marroquín is proud to have co-hosted, along with The Seasteading Institute, the first Future of Free Cities conference in April 2011 on the tropical island of Roatán in Honduras. This event brought together leaders from several different fields and countries for a series of high-level discussions that focused on how to establish successful politically autonomous communities.
Interest in free cities continues to grow as more and more people recognize their potential to expand individual liberty throughout the world.
-- “We would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if we moved continuously on foot across the surface of the earth” Bruce Chatwin
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