No Passengers:

On Building a Real Crew in an Unreal World

I’ve always loved pirates. Not the Hollywood caricatures, not the parrots and eye patches—but the real historical pirates. The ones who broke away from empire, turned their backs on tyranny, and carved out strange, temporary zones of freedom in a world built on control.

When I read David Graeber’s Pirate Enlightenment, that instinct turned into understanding.

These weren’t just rebels or criminals. They were builders—people who used the spoils of empire to construct something of their own. Stateless societies. Mutual leadership. New rules written by those who refused to be ruled. And above all, shared responsibility. Every man a fighter, a contributor, a voice. As Graeber wrote:

“The crew was the sovereign body… The captain could be deposed at will. Everyone had a vote. There were no passengers.”

That line stuck with me.

There were no passengers.

And that’s exactly why it worked.

A pirate ship, like any real crew, was forged in crisis—held together by shared risk and shared reward. What they created wasn’t utopia in the romantic sense, but something far more radical: an asymmetric world of their own making, running parallel to the collapsing systems they’d left behind.

That’s what The Tortuga Society is.

And that’s why I’m here.

Tortuga isn’t a product. It’s not a brand. It’s not a “network” in the Silicon Valley sense of the word.

It’s a crew. And on this ship, there are no passengers.

We’re a high-trust, high-performance alliance of professionals navigating collapse with our eyes wide open. We’re not trying to fix the system. We’re not trying to play nice with it. We’re extracting what we can from the old world, and using it to build new ones—asymmetric empires, modern equivalents of the pirate utopias once dreamed into being in Madagascar, Nassau, and beyond.

The original Tortuga was a pirate haven—a rough, imperfect, high-agency society outside the reach of the crown.

This Tortuga is no different.

It started as a tactical strike: a handful of knowledge workers stacking remote jobs, sidestepping HR bottlenecks, and pulling multiple six-figure incomes through operational stealth. But we’re not just job stacking anymore. That was the entry-level piracy—raiding the merchant fleet.

Now, we’re building permanent bases of power.

We’re launching companies from scratch.

We’re deploying AI like cannons.

We’re crafting systems that allow us to live and earn outside the rules.

We’re turning the chaos of the new economy into fuel—and we’re sharing that fire with each other.

This is what I mean by asymmetric empire. Not legacy institutions. Not corporate ladders. Not influence bought from above—but sovereignty built from the edges. Fast. Flexible. Sometimes hidden. Sometimes loud. Always owned.

Like the pirate captains of old, we trade on intelligence, not allegiance.

Like those ships, our power doesn’t come from a title—it comes from that sense of crew, from ship mates having each other’s backs.

If you’re in Tortuga, you contribute. You act. You bring ideas, tools, feedback, tactics. You ship. You sharpen others.

You rally when someone stumbles, and you reach for help when you do.

Because the truth is, the storm isn’t coming—it’s already here.

The institutions of empire are hollow.

The rules are fake.

The elite class is senile, and the maps they gave us no longer work.

You can’t play it safe anymore.

Not in your work. Not in your income. Not in your identity. Not in your mind.

We’re not preparing for collapse.

We’re living through it.

And in that kind of world, the only people who thrive are those who build faster than the old systems break.

Tortuga isn’t a refuge from reality—it’s a command center for those ready to navigate it with precision and strength. This is a lifeboat, yes. But it’s also a warship.

We’re not here to survive.

We’re here to win—and help others win.

That’s the code.

In an environment this unstable, your crew is your edge. When someone cracks a new revenue stream, we build on it.

When a tactic works, it gets shared. When it fails, we dissect and improve it.

We move fast.

We move together.

Because we’ve seen the inside of the system. And we know too much now.

We know freedom has a price.

We know no one’s coming to rescue us.

And we know the ones who thrive will be those who take ownership, move without permission, and align themselves with people doing the same.

There is a price to enter.

But it’s not gold. It’s not status. It’s not clout.

It’s skin in the game.

It’s your willingness to take the wheel when the seas rise.

To raise your hand when something needs fixing.

To fight, build, and bleed with the crew—not because you’re told, but because you choose.

You’ll need teeth. A spine.

And above all, sovereignty—the kind you forge by living like your life depends on it.

Because it does.

This is no place for tourists.

No stowaways. No driftwood. No dead weight.

If you’re here to be carried, you’ll be thrown overboard.

But if you’re here to be part of something—

To navigate the fog with courage, to face the unknown with your hands on the ropes—

Then step aboard.

We’re not sailing back to safety.

We’re charting new maps.

Claiming new ground.

Building from the wreckage.

Because on this ship, in this moment, in this wild ungoverned sea—

There are no passengers.

Only crew.

— Sirius White