We Tried the Sovereignty Thing and It Just Didn't Cut It

The island nation of Niue may soon disband.

[Via bOING bOING.]

Comments

[ed]

Maybe New Zealand could sell it to the Palestinians?

[Vic the Appraiser]

Why doesn't Microsoft or - hell - Linus Torvald buy the damn place? Sovereignty for sale. Nobody would recognize it as a country anymore, but nobody would have sovereignty over it, either. I can't imagine it could cost more than $20 million to buy everybody out and build a nice house there. I should think sovereignty would be worth a lot more than $16,000 a head.

[Vic the Appraiser]

Or in keeping with the libertarian flavor around here, why doesn't Reason use this blog to start a Niue fund to buy the place and deliver libertarian utopia? Call the the Republic of Sanchez and Walker or, perhaps, Postrelia.

[Keith]

"Hui Paola, who returned to live on the island in 1999, said he visited his ruined shop the morning after the cyclone to find people taking stock from the ruins.

"It's a shame . . . people were grabbing everything they could get hold of. I felt sorry for them, I couldn't tell them to leave it alone. When I thought about it afterwards, I realised it was my loss."
"

OK... in a population of 1200 spread over 14 villages, this guy must've recognized every single looter. In a population this size, this can't be anonymous crime.

[ed]

I think the highest bidder should claim naming rights. I hereby pledge $10 to the Edland fund.

[Slippery Pete]

People's Republic of Slippery Pete - $20.

[xray]

Step-back-from-the Island
$30

[ed]

Oh no.

[Jean Bart]

I claim this land in the name of France!

I bid ?50!

[ed]

OK, JB, but the "official" language has to be English!

[Slippery Pete]

I think France and the US should partition Niue. Maybe let the Poles administer part of it too - coalition of the willing.

[Jason Ligon]

Danged foreigners takin' over everything. He's in cahoots with the Merovingian ...

[Xboy]

Sorry, but greedy selfish white guys taking advantage of indigenous peoples doesn't cut it anymore, either.

[Slippery Pete]

Did you know that a Niueian government agent met with Mohammad Atta in Prague in early 2001?

[Jean Bart]

Slippery Pete,

Ha ha ha!!!!

Tr?s bon!

[Madog]

Maybe we can get some Samoans to invade it for us. What would the world do if one small polynesian island nation conquered another?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Vic the Appraiser makes a good point. What stops a corporation from buying out some jerkwater island, move in their headquarters, and enjoy the tax shelter? The amount of money they would save would offset any infrastructure/security concerns.

I also recall a story making the rounds a few years ago about some company buying an abandoned oil rig (international waters) to do that.. urban legend?

[ed]

I have the solution:

Let the Swiss handle all financial matters, the French will provide the cuisine, Germany will keep the clocks up to date and the Americans will keep the Mexicans out.

[Vic the Appraiser]

It was called Sealand. Nobody recognized it, but for obscure reasons (having to do with a British judicial ruling that the oil rig was not in British territory), a guy was able to set up shop out there and declare himself prince of "Sealand". He tried to start several businesses out there, and at one point got into a financial dispute with some Germans, who invaded Sealand with helicoptors. After a machine gun battle, they left. He also tried selling passports and citizenship.

It was a libertarian Disneyworld, really. I think Wired Magazine wrote it up a few times.

[Slippery Pete]

They should give Niue to that Randroid French hottie, Sabine - the one manning the barracades, defending McDonald's from Jose Bove's peasant army.

[Madog]

Here's the CIA world factbook entry on Niue for those interested:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ne.html

[Jason Ligon]

Is Cuervo Nation in the UN?

[Slippery Pete]

Jason,

Yes, it is. It just signed an extradition treaty with George Clinton's Parliament of Funk.

[ed]

Funniest thread yet.

[arthur]

What will happen to the .nu domain names if Niue disappears? Andcan anyone find the suck.com piece on the hypothetical U.S. invasion of Niue?

[xray]

ed: What you propose would be a paradise for Mexcians who enjoy fine food, accurate clocks and impeccable banking privacy. What about the rest of us?

[Jean Bart]

Slippery Pete,

For all Bove's (and Herold's) screaming, they don't really do very much (except scream and sell t-shirts). 🙂

[Jean Bart]

Slippery Pete,

A Starbucks is in Paris now, BTW. Its nice to see Americans adopt French culture. 🙂

[Slippery Pete]

I guess not, but they're still interesting stories. France's energetic political culture is fascinating (yes, this is my way of apologizing for the dumb France jokes).

But those Niueians - who needs em, right? 😉

[ed]

xray:

When I am king, all will be welcome.
As long as they follow the rules and pay their tributes in a timely manner.

[Jean Bart]

Slippery Pete,

I only wish the Niueians prosperity! 🙂

In personality, I don't know whether Herold or Bove is more of a jackass. Though i agree with much of what Herold says, her tone and what she says much of the time - that she is being oppressed and not able to speak (this in front of crowds of thousands) drives me crazy - I hate the way she paints herself as a fucking victim. Bove is an oppurtunist fucker. I'd like to shove a McDonald's burger up his ass and tell him to "enculer un vache" (fuck a cow) and "ferme ta putain de gueule" (shut your fucking mouth!).

[thoreau]

Imagine this:

A handful of wealthy libertarians (or at least libertarians who know how to raise money) somehow purchase the island and gain sovereignty. They buy up all the private property and pay the residents to move elsewhere.

Then they write a Constitution. They put in strong, explicit, no-buts-about-it clauses concerning taxes, privacy, guns, free elections, free speech, due process, the inalienable right to invade Iraq, and whatever else. (Just kidding on Iraq, although I know it's a cause near and dear to many here.) They also specify that at least some parts of the Constitution can NEVER be amended (certainly not the parts on guns, free speech, taxes, etc., but the clause that "All public elections shall be conducted between 4:20 am and 4:20 pm on April 20" might be left open for subsequent amendments ;). This way they don't have too much to worry about when they open up the island and let other people become citizens and participate in representative government.

They start letting people in. Depending on their views the citizenship test could range from "are you alive?" to "Discuss the philosophical distinctions between Ayn Rand's thesis in Atlas Shrugged and the works of Hayek." Whatever. Anyway, the biggest filter is the utter lack of a welfare state.

Although joining international bodies would generally be a no-no, it might not hurt to ratify whatever treaty or convention governs passports, just so the citizens of Libertopia can travel elsewhere without too much hassle. Getting diplomatic recognition from neighboring countries might be useful to make trade and travel easier. But beyond that foreign policy would be minimal.

What would drive the economy?

1) Island resorts with legalized drugs, gambling, and prostitution.

2) Zero restrictions on stem cell research, cloning, etc.

3) Nice tax shelter.

4) A thriving trade in Ayn Rand novels 😉

Why would it never work?

1) Getting two or more libertarians to agree on anything would be impossible, hence it would never get off the ground.

2) That's awfully far away.

Still, neat idea.

[Slippery Pete]

Yeah, but Jean, she's hot. I saw a picture of her today and she looked like Liberty Leading the People. My only regret was that her breasts were not exposed.

[Jean Bart]

thoreau,

Ayn Rand thought that libertarians were morally bankrupt.

There are all manner of international laws you would have to sign onto - mostly dealing with things like what is a legal contract, etc.

[Jean Bart]

Slippery Pete,

Was she holding a rifle and wearing a tri-color cockade? 🙂

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arriv?!
Contre nous, de la tyrannie
L'?tendard sanglant est lev?!

[Duke of URL]

The obsession with tax havens forgets the fact that you need to have acess to major financial markets and those markets have cut access to existing tax havens like the neighbouring Cook Islands. Would you live in one of the concrete huts so that your taxes are nil ?

[Russ]

Jean Bart,

Isn't "putain" the derogatory term for a prostitute?

At least that's what I was led to understand after ignorantly mispronouncing my order for a "petite poutine italienne" (a small order of french fries covered with cheese curds and drenched in tomato sauce rather than the traditional chicken gravy) some years ago in a restaurant in la belle Ville de Qu?bec and watching the server nearly collapse in laughter.

[ed]

It's Quebec's national dish, is it not, Russ? I may have had the same incident in St. Hyacinth. I got my meal, but they looked at me kinda funny...

[Russ]

Poutine (correctly pronounced "PUTs-inn") certainly is a popular side-dish, exceptionally high in calories from fat and low in nutritional value.

It could be partly to blame for the generally lower life expectancies found among the Qu?becois. However, one could just as easily attribute causation to the ever-present influence of C?line Dion music.

[Jean Bart]

Russ,

Ha ha ha. Excuse my laughter your expense. 🙂

The Quebecois may use it differently than we in France. It does literally mean "whore." However, today in France it is used as a general explitive - just as "fuck" and "shit" are used in the US. If you miss a cab, "Putain!" I've seen this explanation before, so it is not mine, but in the film Independence Day, when the "hero's" boss (the boss of the computer "guru") is about to be killed, he says very slowly "puuuu-tain." It is pronounced, "pu-teh."

If you really want to attract attention say "Putain de merde!" (pu-teh de mayrd!)

[Russ]

Profanity in Qu?bec is truly a refined art, worthy of extensive study by visiting Anglophones.

A variety of lower-grade of swear words was to be found, (eg. "putain" & "merde") but these almost seemed to border on acceptability and such mild words and phrases were generally discarded as insufficient for the occassions where truly offensive parlance was required.

For such times, words that were common eucharistic vocabulary in churches and religious schools across English Canada were magically tranformed into the essence of vulgarity upon crossing the border into "La Belle Province".

The most commonplace were "tabernacle", "chalice", "sacrement", and "host" (the spelling of the exact translations escape me, but were pretty simlar to their English equivalents) and were considered to be the pinnacle of profanity (effectively staking a claim in "motherfucker" territory).

[mak_nas]

"putain". my french education continues! 🙂

[mak_nas]

oh, umm...

mon ?ducation dans la langue fran?aise continue!