Floating Utopias

The very talented China Mieville in In These Times:

Freedom is late.

Since 2003, a colossal barge called the Freedom Ship, of debatable tax status, should have been chugging with majestic aimlessness from port to port, a leviathan rover with more than 40,000 wealthy full-time residents living, working and playing on deck. That was the aim eight years ago when the project first made headlines, confidently claiming that construction would start in 2000.

A visit to the “news” section of freedomship.com reveals a more sluggish pace. The most recent messages date from more than two years ago, forlornly explaining how “scam operations” are slowing things down but that “[t]hings are happening, and they are moving fast.” Meanwhile, the ship is not yet finished. Indeed, it is not yet started. Despite this, Freedom Ship International Inc. has been startlingly successful in raising publicity for this “floating city.” Much credulous journalistic cooing over “the biggest vessel in history,” with its “hospitals, banks, sports centres, parks, theaters and nightclubs,” not to mention its airport, has ignored the vessel’s stubborn nonexistence.

Freedom Ship’s website claims that the vessel has not been conceived as a locus for tax avoidance, pointing out that as it will sail under a flag of convenience, residents may still be liable for taxes in their home countries. Nonetheless, whatever the ultimate tax status of those whom we will charitably presume might one day set sail, much of the interest in Freedom Ship has revolved precisely around its perceived status as a tax haven.

Comments

[Cyrus]

Great article by one of my favorite steam-punk writers. The American brand of libertarianism has always seemed a shallow copy of its European cousins, and Mieville does a great job deconstructing it here.

[Elatia Harris]

Who is this writer? I love her!

[Robin]

Elatia, China is male and probably the most talented science fiction writer of his generation.

http://www.powells.com/s?kw=China+Mieville&x=0&y=0

[Robin]

Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Miéville

[Elatia Harris]

Oh. My. God. I begin to see... Thank you, Robin -- I could have read for many more years and not known.

[Robin]

Also Crooked Timber had an online seminar on Mieville's Iron Council.

http://crookedtimber.org/category/mieville-seminar

[Pete Chapman]

China is very cool. A great article about a boat for people who refuse to see that we're all in the same boat. But I think it's unfortunate that this ship of fools will never set sail. Just imagine what one well aimed torpedo could do...ooops did I just violate some anti-terrorism statute with that callous remark? Forget I said that...please...Sail on o' Ship of Statelessness.

[Mike D]

Am I the only one who felt like his article was a little obnoxious? Obviously "libertarianism [that] ... venal petty-bourgeois dissidence" is only going to spring out of America. We don't have a history of monarchy and taxation without representation. We have a history of protest. Even if libertarianism often manifests in some particularly unfortunate ways the idea does spring from a place of liberty and freedom.