My question is what do people want a Gulch to be. As I asked in my other post, is it just a country like the US but with 25% lower taxes? http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/69...

I want to know if there is big tent that would fit most people's views on the six issues I brought up.

Let's start with designing a project plan.
1. Conceptualize:
Gather together a team.
Create a mission statement with the goals and visions identified.
Identify the vulnerabilities and threats.
This is only the first step....
So who is interested?

It also explains why there aren't very many universities in the Caribbean, and why 10% of Florida Tech's student population is from the Caribbean. One island that has a very enterprising (and extremely personally friendly) population is Trinidad. I have met about 100 students from that country and have been consistently impressed with them. What Venezuela is losing in terms of brain drain should go only about 30 km away to Trinidad.

And you are definitely right about how the
fish shirts, boiled peanuts, iced tea, and key lime pie belie the fact that the Caribbean island people are hard-charging mavericks.

I would never trust the world at large with any knowledge of a gulch like community. Why ask for trouble? What advantage would you have to be in the open? Even in nature the young and vulnerable are hidden until they can fend for themselves. A gulch like community would be well served with a private hidden face and a public face that could change depending on the communities current need, like a number of corporations...to serve a variety of purposes.

You can start on the business aspect first to generate revenue as a prelude to designing the gulch attributes...and gathering like minded. The internet diminishes the distance between all of us.
Create a membership blog with two faces...public and private.

@jbrenner wrt the Caribbean island
If they crop up in several places, maybe they would form a loose confederation standing up to state power and other use of force.

It would be tricky because powerful interests in the old world would try to turn them against one another, as a way to get a little more control without risking institutional investments in the industries there. The other Caribbean states say you're draining off their best and brightest, and banishing anyone who's criminal or can't support himself. Several financial institutions might approach the seastead east of San Francisco with $100 billion USD over ten years for shares with favorable terms to build another platform/superstructure for nanotech research, but they can have no trade with the Caribbean island, the underwater coop serving as a base for oil exploration, or those funny-talking software guys in Greenland. The seastead board would be scared companies would leave if they alienate financial institutions. The Caribbean islanders might need to offer them some cheap IP licensing arrangement. The happy ending would be if being persona non grata in Washington and the EU forced businesses their to run lean and look for alternative funding, and that caused them to be more productive than places that are connected. People move the Valley b/c that's where the VC money is. It takes audacity and/or desperation to locate somewhere investors are leery of and where there's no "eco-system" in place. The fishshirts, boiled peanuts, iced tea, and key lime pie belie the fact that the Carribean island people are hard-charging mavericks.

There are startup income generators that would need very little startup capital. What you would need is the right complement of skill sets to launch such an endeavor and you don't have to sell your idea to some investor...

You'd need a separate business case to get it started. I'm imagine it would start as a legal place for startups to bypass immigration laws to get employees from around the world to work all in the same place and cut off from other distractions. It would also be a way to bypass business and investment regulations.

Investors would fund the initial construction, thinking of it as a startup incubator. If one or two startups go to IPO, some of the founders and employees might invest the profits in expanding the incubator. As it expands, a bunch of other industries crop up. You have the beginnings of a real micronation.

Though a private island is very appealing in the abstract. :)

All raw materials would be very expensive to import. Internet connection... probably not. Bad weather.... Nowhere to hide. Rising oceans and in a few years ....destruction.....You would need some serious money to create a community with all of the current civilized world amenities and you would need most of it up front so you would have a livable start.

Of this list:

Here are some locations, starting with the most plausible:
1. A ship or steadstead off the coast of California.
2. An island in the Mediterranean
3. A remote arctic island or peninsula
4. Some where in Antarctica near the Southern Ocean
5. A rural location east of the Andes in South America
6. An African location south of the Sahara and north of South Africa.
7. A habitat orbiting the earth
8. An underwater habitat


I find number five not only the most plausible, I find it the only plausible one on the list. I won't go into detail here, but I would be happy to provide my thoughts on the other seven in future posts.

Google "Galt's Gulch Chile" to find one that is making a serious attempt to establish a gulch with Rand's philosophy in mind.

Also search for "La Estancia Cafayate" that Doug Casey started, referring to it as "a bit of a gulch" (though it is a relatively expensive development with an 18 hole golf course, polo fields, Olympic size swimming pool, a Grace Hotel, and monthly maintenance fees in excess of $300 USD).

"How to Start Your Own Country" by Erwin S. Strauss discusses those options. (In the Gulch under Books here: http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/5b...). Another resource is "Last Frontiers on Earth: Strange Places Where You Can Live Free" by Jon Fisher. Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" certainly gave strong impetus to such plans. A classic that I recommend is "California's Utopian Colonies" by Robert V. Hine from 1953. California's climate - both weather and culture - was inviting and comfortable. Ultimately, not one of these succeeded. Mostly, they failed specifically because they were exclusionary. As political or religious communities where ideology was the first standard, not one of them achieved the pluralistic mix necessary for a meta-stable society.

Interesting. I started with the unstated premise that it had to be a remote place with a harsh climate so that no one would want to mess with it.

I like your notion of a libertarian "church" operating in the open.

If you look at the "Preppers" there are lots of alternatives. It's a matter of getting off the grid and not be conspicuous. I would think climate and availability of resources would be at the top of the list. How about Tennessee ? Lots of cheap land, great climate, tax friendly....the community can have a "religious" front and still operate in the open. Revenue can be obtained from agricultural surplus and mostly from intellectual products...which can be easily sold through the internet. I have a number of ideas on these type of products so it's very doable. The first step is to buy a big chunk of land with necessary attributes.
Maybe the real first step is to form a group of serious members and outline the goals of such a community.
.....