Nearly 150 Companies Show Interest in the Tech Love Boat 332
New submitter dandv writes with a story from VentureBeat about another entry in the race to escape national jurisdiction by offshoring work — literally offshoring, that is : "Blueseed is a Silicon Valley company that plans on launching a cruise ship 30 minutes from the coast of California, housing startup entrepreneurs from around the world. These startuppers won't need to bother with U.S. visas, because the ship will be in international waters. They'll have to pay tax to whatever country they're incorporated in, though. So far, 146 startups said they'd like to come to the ship."
I fail to see the point (Score:4, Insightful)
You can remotely access and program pretty much any system you'd ever work on in an offshoring relationshing. Your physical location has little or nothing to do with the ability to provide the contracted services.
While there is demand for at least some of the offshore service provider's staff to be working on-site with the customer companies, you wouldn't be able to do that with this ship. You still wouldn't have a visa, so you still wouldn't be allowed to "land" from the ship for such meetings.
In order to be in international waters, the ship would be what, 200 miles out from shore? That's a pretty long ride for any landbound customers to take in order to come meet with you on the ship. Customers don't tend to meet at provider sites; they expect the provider to come to them.
That being the case, what is the actual purpose served by working on this ship?
Or is this like the old Sealand failure? A great idea in concept that has no practical purpose and few real backers?
The US should provide no protection (Score:5, Insightful)
None. The "Tech Love Boat" exists solely as a tax and immigration dodge, and its founders are proud of it. May real pirates raid this libertarian haven; may real storms smash its bow. Let me hazard a guess that they'll incorporate in Antigua, and pay no taxes, and that they'll import slave labor from India to work in the bowels of the ship.
Blueseed wants the benefits of proximity with Silicon Valley, and none of the costs. Why should we give a damn about them?
I'd also like to know who these "entrepreneurs" are. Let them live in their cabins and bar them from the shore. They don't want to pay for civilization, due to their brilliant and stunning gifts. They choose to leave civilization to live in their Brave New Race to the Bottom, _stay there_.
When a crime occurs on the "Love Boat", who will settle that crime? Blueseed? So they'll be a government, too. Hmm, maybe an invasion sounds good..
However, just like Ayn Rand (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, worked for Sealand (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it that every Libertarian seems to think that they can skirt laws just by taking some boat out to international waters? As if the nearby country is going to be like "Damn, we know you committed the murder, but you were JUST over the line into international waters, so we're going to have to let you go!"
Living on a boat. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah. Most of all, this just looks like a anarcho-libertarian's wet dream.
Forget insurance ... what about health care? (Score:4, Insightful)
When the nearest hospital is over 200 miles away, you'd better have helicopters ready to make the jump. And you'd better have them cleared for permission to enter US air space with no notice (like that's going to happen).
This is just another scam. Another variant of the "company town", where they deduct your room and board and other expenses from your pay, and if at some point you don't like it, you can take a long walk off a short plank.
VC Vipers (Score:5, Insightful)
Quick primer on the downfall of the US economy (Score:2, Insightful)
Late 80's: there were a lot of skilled trades and professional labor in the US. Cars, Steel, Mass production, Agriculture, skilled trades, software development, science, NASA, everything was going pretty well compared to today.
mid 90's: NAFTA [wikipedia.org] took root. Companies began leaving in droves to offshore labor to the far east and Mexico. Many companies who wanted to keep the labor at home, had no choice but to follow the leader because they couldn't compete with such cheap labor.
Late 90's Early 00's: software development, tech support and engineering started heading for India [slashdot.org] and other regions. Workers were told "too bad" and laid off in huge numbers. Corporations were swimming in revenue.
Today: Michigan, the hub of manufacturing in the US has no economy to speak of. Detroit is the most dangerous city to live in [buzzle.com]. The US no longer has much of a Scientific community. It's all been sold off or off-shored. We have no manufacturing to speak of. Most of what people buy now comes out of a Chinese shipping container.
The industry is crying that we have no engineers, software developers or scientific professionals and act like they have no idea why. Now companies want to float a boat out in international waters so they can ship in more cheap labor and not have pay for visas and probably skirt a shitload of tax revenue that would otherwise go into the US economy? Yeah, great idea.
Re:I'm Andrew Ryan... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice reference, great game, but here in reality the man did not toil alone. He was not able to produce without the poor being kept away from his warehouse at night, he was not able to risk only his investment by nature but by laws governing incorporation, nor was he able to get it to market without roads. I love how those who have never done a day of physical labor like to talk about sweat, blood and tears though.
Re:The US should provide no protection (Score:4, Insightful)
That sounds like a really good response.
If you're a nationalist.
Seriously, it's not a tax dodge, though it is an immigration dodge. It's about startups being able to engage with the tech centre of the world without arbitrary red tape blocking them from doing it on the US mainland.
I don't even understand how you can complain about both immigration and tax avoidance in the same post. If they were allowed to immigrate they would be able to pay tax, if they were allowed to pay tax they'd be able to immigrate. You can't bitch and moan about the two in one sentence, the fact they can't immigrate means they can't pay tax. Whining that people for not paying tax in your country whilst simultaneously implying you don't want them in your country is one of the most laughably irrational arguments I've heard on Slashdot in a while, and in recent months the standard hasn't exactly been particularly high.
The fact that your country is horrendously paranoid, and massively afraid of immigration despite having a relatively tiny population density is why these sorts of far fetched schemes arise in the first place. Of course, none of that would be so bad if it weren't for the fact that your entire nation is built off the back of relatively recent mass immigration.
Re:Totally wrong! (Score:3, Insightful)
In terms of government, Libertarians simply want to take over - and then leave you alone. That's the extent of it.
And by "leave you alone", they mean allowing any employer to mistreat you as much as they want, and giving you no fucking recourse whatsoever. They mean allowing any company to pour whatever toxic sludge in the environment that they want, and forcing YOU to bear the burden of trying to prove they did some harm, against their legion of highly trained lawyers.
You have no clue whatsoever what the people in charge of the "Libertarians" think. You cannot learn from history, and see how bad this shit would be.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. In a truly dog-eat-dog world, any dog that gets too far ahead gets eaten by the pack.
Yeah, except it has never once worked out that way in reality. In lawless regions or other areas where the government is weak, what inevitably happens is that you end up with a handful of powerful warlords who basically terrorize and dominate the populace. They build up their own private armies to not only protect themselves from the "pack" but to do whatever the fuck else they want too, including showing up at your home periodically to take anything they want and rape your wife. Life is great if you happen to be one of those warlords (or one of their family or close friends). Life is complete shit if you're anyone else.
And you're not escaping the leash. You're just trading in the democratic government leash for the much tighter and shorter leash that the rich and powerful will have you on in your libertarian paradise.