On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, A. Melon wrote:
Well, this is not exactly on topic to any ongoing thread, but its something I'd like to get a few opinions on. It seems that while science is moving ahead at a such a rate that I'm constantly amazed to see science fiction becoming science fact, at the same time we're seeing more political(?)-fiction(nightmares?) becoming fact as well in the form of government censorship and persecution. As I'm not exactly excited about the prospect of being shot or winding up in jail indefinitely for 'political crimes', it seems the best options are to simply leave the country altogether or forget about the personal freedoms granted by the constitution.
So my question is: where to go? I certainly don't want to leave behind all the neat toys in the US like widespread broadband internet access, massive bookstores, high paying tech jobs, etc. Is there any country that has the same technological benefits as the US without the government steadily encroaching into every sector of life?
Honestly? I don't think so. Broadband is going to be planetwide in a couple of years, and massive bookstores can be found in major cities in every city on earth, or accessed remotely from anywhere if you just want to buy books. But government encroachment is also increasing planetwide as the cost of surveillence and restriction is driven down by new technology. If you're profoundly optimistic about such things, there's a dude who has renamed himself as 'Lazarus Long' who is trying to found a nation based on strictly libertarian principles and has gotten as far as getting national sovereignty over a tiny island that has basically zero natural resources. Personally I think it's going to be very marginal and isn't likely to last more than a dozen years -- leaving those who get mixed up in it at a risk of becoming stateless persons who may be shat upon by any government on the planet. Or you could try Nauru -- ten thousand people, more or less, on an island now ecologically ruined by mining -- but it's a republic and the citizens still have representation. And it's English-speaking. They are deliberately trying to cultivate an offshore-banking business, so there are opportunities for net-savvy people capable of tending server farms and caring for customer privacy there. But they may find that their close ties to Australia are strained if they take customer privacy too seriously. The problem with Nauru is they have to import all their food except for some fish caught locally, so if they refuse to cooperate with the systematic sheepshearing of citizens globally, they are likely to find themselves hungry, or spending all their banking profits paying blockade-runners for taking insane risks. If you feel so completely fed up that you want to do without government completely, there's always Somalia -- but you will need a gun, and if you have other property you'd like to keep, the will to use it. Bear