Perhaps Mark is onto something

The Boat That Rocked (or in North America, Pirate Radio) was a 2009 British rock comedy, based on a true story, reminds me of FTL without the boat.

Mark reminds me of Bill Nighy’s character, while Ian and Darryl remind me Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Ifans’ characters. Radio pirates confronting the government over the airwaves.

The true story is pretty interesting. But the reason for the post is to encourage Mark’s cruise-line idea. A libertarian/voluntaryist cruise-line operating and living without anyone’s unneeded permission? Sounds like the Seasteading Institute is missing a great mind.

Two of my favorite quotes from the movie sums up FTL to me: “Governments loathe people being free” and “I don’t give a hootenanny…about your nitpicking limey laws. I intend to broadcast from this ship 24 hours a day until the day I die. And then for a couple days after that.”

If this ever becomes a reality, I hope this is uttered out of someone looking out into the ocean without a government in sight, “we should’ve set sail years ago.”

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Great movie - must have been an amazing thing to be a part of.

Sadly, now this ending to the story:

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Sad, but true. But then again, like in the movie, they were one-issue pirates. A libertarian cruise ship would be the real deal.

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Not only is Ian skeptical, but my wife is too. She doesn’t want to be trapped on a boat with the worst of people that she has seen move for the FSP over the years.

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Good new is, this idea would weed out the mentally-lazy and the free-riders. Pay to get on board, and pay for any services its domiciled members offer.

Not to mention not being beholden to any forced authority, there are many options about fuel, supplies, and the like. I know once I’m settled in the Shire, I’d save money for this and offer manual labor if this idea was taken seriously.

I’ve paid to be on a cruise ship through the Carnival Imagination, and a libertarian version of that would be heavenly.

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I concur. It sounds like the obvious choice. It is much more expensive than living on the land, but you would get to travel the world while living your life. That seems like it is worth it.

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“Show me the way to go home
I’m tired and I want to go to bed
I had a little drink about an hour ago
And it’s gone right to my head
Wherever I may roam
On land or sea or foam
You can always hear me singing this song
Show me the way to go home.”

doesn’t she get to push them overboard?

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Mark’s wife playing Goldie Hawn? That might be going overboard.

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Brilliant or not, Mark is at least putting a lot of thinking into various things. I think the where do we go for freedom thing has been picked over for over a decade, and the answer was obvious to many (though not me) within more like two days. After the free state project yahoo group was born in 2001 they immediately drew a bunch of accurate conclusions. If you look at posts from their discussion, within two sunsets it was clear that the race was New Hampshire’s to lose. Sometimes your first impression is the most accurate one…15+ years of hashing this out have given us not only zero better options, but zero viable alternatives. One might become viable at the 20 year mark with luck with great luck, at which point it will be 20 years behind NH.

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I think the cruise ship thing is a horrible idea. It seems like a libertarian town, or gated community is pretty much the only answer.

There already is a condo cruise ship.

Cost of entry keeps the riffraff off.
http://www.cruisecritic.com/reviews/cruiseline.cfm?CruiseLineID=210

130 families hail from 19 countries throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and South Africa. Some live on the ship year-round, although most tend to be onboard for three to four months. The ship has an average occupancy of 150 people. Potential buyers must have a minimum net worth of $10 million to buy from World of ResidenSea.

There is a guy in Maine, Allen Weiner, who did the offshore radio pirate thing and got busted a couple of times, now he runs a licensed station.

Weiner and Ferraro continued throughout the 1970s and '80s with various unlicensed stations. Some projects were operated separately from one another, but others saw the duo collaborating as they did on Radio Newyork International, which operated from a ship, the M/V Sarah in international waters off the Long Island coast. Again raided by the FCC, Weiner and Ferraro began purchasing airtime occasionally on licensed shortwave station WWCR.

Another attempted shortwave station operated from a ship at sea, this time from aboard the M/V Fury and operated from off the South Carolina coast, was raided before the ship had left the harbor when the FCC claimed to have monitored test transmissions coming from the ship. The South Carolina operations were to be funded partially by controversial fundamentalist preacher Brother Stair, whose broadcasts would also be carried from the ship. The ties to Stair, whose views stood in sharp contrast to Weiner’s, led to accusations that Weiner had “sold out” his long-held beliefs in religious tolerance and eclecticism. Stair frequently clashed with Weiner and especially Weiner’s engineer Scott Becker during the abortive project.

After the M/V Fury fiasco, Ferraro purchased a small licensed AM station, WHVW in Hyde Park, New York.

In 1998, after a decade of lobbying and another threatened off shore broadcasting effort, Weiner was granted a license for shortwave station WBCQ and AM station WREM in Monticello, Maine.

Programming on WBCQ is an eclectic mix of music, plus brokered religious and political programming. Some former radio pirates produce shows on WBCQ as well. WREM is now known as WXME, simulcasting WSKW Skowhegan, Maine, an oldies formatted station previous formats on WXME include news/talk, simulcasting Caribou-based music Channel X Radio under the call letters WCXH and as WREM rebroadcast the talk programming of Presque Isle’s WEGP. Having received a license after years of battling the FCC has brought more criticism from pirate radio enthusiasts. Also criticized has been Weiner’s sale of airtime on WBCQ to the incendiary government informant Hal Turner and radio preacher Brother Stair.

WBCQ’s first service operated on 7415 kHz, a frequency that was the most popular for shortwave pirates in the early to mid-1990s.

We’re on his AM station, I’ve talked to him - good guy with a cool history.

It doesn’t have to be new to work. Ask Edison.