It strikes me as a reasonable thing. Very few people, if any, are likely to do better creating their own society than operating within their existing one.
What it strikes me as is sour grapes. Yeah, sure, like e.g. that libertarian paper says, there’s a nearly insurmountable barrier in creating a new society, but if it was made lower—like with Earth and Space open to colonization under a libertarian system, wouldn’t sufficiently motivated conservatives at least make a good effort?
Also, said society only needs to be “new” at all in the regards that the people founding it care about. All the other things and institutions and stuff they’d just re-appropriate from the parent one, given enough support.
It’s the SAME daily work as ever, except that it’d be moving in a slightly different direction now, with a few both written and unwritten changes to the familiar ruleset.
A pretty wild example, yet not unusual by the standards of such speculative SF.
1) A weird memetic mutation makes softcore erotic images of children into a romantic ideal of sexuality, which becomes vastly popular, say, in “high” art and among the higher classes. All kinds of actual intercourse with children is still forbidden, and that’s exactly the idea; depict something unattainable.
2) About 4% of the population both hate this and are motivated enough to take large-scale, organized action.
3) They move to an existing community in a federated country and make what laws they can there, as a halfway measure. At which point the outnumbered locals are free to either go along or pack up.
4) They practice building their own society, which could perhaps be classified as conservative-libertarian, upon a safe foundation, slowly replacing and optimizing whatever ‘mainstream’ institutions they can.
If they could get their sh*t together long enough and well enough to succeed up to this stage:
5) They build a sea/moon/extraterrestrial colony with both laws controlling the original ethics issue and whatever else a consensus is found upon. Everything that they don’t view as broke, they don’t fix.
Would we believe in a radically altered, broadly libertarian eutopia in, say, the 23th century NOT featuring at least one subculture like this prominently?
Yes, agreed… if they get their shit together long enough and well enough to support actually creating a separate colony with a different social standard, then they can create a different society in a different place. The work involved in getting one’s shit together that well for that long is precisely the work I think you’re underestimating, which is why it doesn’t strike me as implausible that no such society actually gets created.
What it strikes me as is sour grapes. Yeah, sure, like e.g. that libertarian paper says, there’s a nearly insurmountable barrier in creating a new society, but if it was made lower—like with Earth and Space open to colonization under a libertarian system, wouldn’t sufficiently motivated conservatives at least make a good effort?
Also, said society only needs to be “new” at all in the regards that the people founding it care about. All the other things and institutions and stuff they’d just re-appropriate from the parent one, given enough support.
I think you underestimate what is involved in preserving “all the other things and institutions and stuff” in a society.
It’s the SAME daily work as ever, except that it’d be moving in a slightly different direction now, with a few both written and unwritten changes to the familiar ruleset.
A pretty wild example, yet not unusual by the standards of such speculative SF. 1) A weird memetic mutation makes softcore erotic images of children into a romantic ideal of sexuality, which becomes vastly popular, say, in “high” art and among the higher classes. All kinds of actual intercourse with children is still forbidden, and that’s exactly the idea; depict something unattainable. 2) About 4% of the population both hate this and are motivated enough to take large-scale, organized action. 3) They move to an existing community in a federated country and make what laws they can there, as a halfway measure. At which point the outnumbered locals are free to either go along or pack up. 4) They practice building their own society, which could perhaps be classified as conservative-libertarian, upon a safe foundation, slowly replacing and optimizing whatever ‘mainstream’ institutions they can.
If they could get their sh*t together long enough and well enough to succeed up to this stage: 5) They build a sea/moon/extraterrestrial colony with both laws controlling the original ethics issue and whatever else a consensus is found upon. Everything that they don’t view as broke, they don’t fix.
Would we believe in a radically altered, broadly libertarian eutopia in, say, the 23th century NOT featuring at least one subculture like this prominently?
Yes, agreed… if they get their shit together long enough and well enough to support actually creating a separate colony with a different social standard, then they can create a different society in a different place. The work involved in getting one’s shit together that well for that long is precisely the work I think you’re underestimating, which is why it doesn’t strike me as implausible that no such society actually gets created.