Seasteading: Cities on the ocean

http://www.economist.com/node/21540395?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/citiesontheocean

by llambda • 15 years ago

100 106 15 years ago

economist.com

njloof2• 15 years ago

Dear Somalian Pirates,

You're never going to believe this.

yummyfajitas8• 15 years ago

Dear Internet Guy who's clearly never sailed,

Have we mentioned our rubber dinghy's and fishing boats can only sail a few hundred kilometers?

viscanti• 15 years ago

I think the idea of security still exists, regardless of the viability of one particular group of pirates. Given a big enough target, someone will be motivated to come see what they can get. The question really is, what level of protection/security is necessary to defend a sea-stead?

arethuza4• 15 years ago

It's actually a pretty big area where they have been operating:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map...

[NB I actually did some sailing in 2010 right on the edge of the area on that map, just north of Mombasa - I did wonder about pirates at the time, but I assumed I was being silly!]

njloof2• 15 years ago

What's Peter Thiel worth in ransom? We're going to need a bigger boat.

urbanjunkie• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_York

The MV York is a liquified gas tanker that was captured in 2010 and is/was used a mothership.

The use of larger and more robust vessels as support / launch platforms greatly increases the operational range of piracy.

cturner• 15 years ago

Somali pirates vs seasteaders has potential as as a Neal Stephenson plot.

ams61102• 15 years ago

... stay away from those "seasteads", they have Exocet anti-ship missiles and Aegis missile defense systems, as well as conventional artillery and gun defenses and an army employed from Blackwater.

Czarnian10• 15 years ago

In other words, Blackwater got there first. Maybe they'll leave some scraps we can salvage after the mercenaries bleed them dry.

bradleyland2• 15 years ago

This is one of the more outlandish ideas I've seen show up in The Economist. There are a mountain of hurdles to cross before you get to any kind of autonomous "state". Still, I hope someone tries it. Some casual observations:

* Would this be Bitcoins first big opportunity? For a Seastead to make the leap to true statehood, they'll need some kind of currency that isn't controlled by a foreign government. Bitcoin, with it's entirely decentralized design, would seem to fit the bill.

* The artricle makes some statements that these Seasteads could be used to prove the utopian Libertarian ideology. The notion that a small colony of a few hundred people are going to prove that any ideology would work in a state the size of the US, France, U.K., etc is patently absurd. They'll ignore it, dismiss it, or find good reasons why mechanisms that work on a micro scale don't scale to larger nations.

* The article talks a lot about the need to be outside the jurisdiction of large nations like the US, and even mentions the willingness of the US to extend its jurisdiction pretty much anywhere in the world. The author seems to believe that if they stay away from the big-naughties, they'll be ok. I think he's wrong. If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes, large, tax-dependent governments will find ways to replace the revenue. So you want statehood? You got it. Time to negotiate a trade agreement. How does a 60% tariff on all goods imported to our nation sound? Don't want to play ball? Embargo. Good luck with your 700 person economy.

* The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally. Say this idea eventually scales to $10,000 people. What is an acceptable level of safety for an entire population of that size? Lifeboats for everyone? Will the platform be sold as "unsinkable"? We know how that goes. Even land-based settlements face the risk of natural disaster, but it would seem the probabilities are greatly in favor of dry land.

T-hawk• 15 years ago

> If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes

I think we can be reasonably confident that somebody in these large corporations has done that math. What this argument misses is that the comparison isn't seasteading vs US taxes, it's seasteading vs existing tax havens like Bermuda and the Channel Islands and Caymans. Those probably get you 90% of the way there on avoiding US and EU taxation, and would seem to be good enough that corps haven't had the need for seasteading or they'd already be doing it.

tryitnow6• 15 years ago

Yes, that's a good point. The advantage of seasteads is you can control the geography.

Another advantage is that you don't have a large native citizen population that you have to deal with. For example, on Bermuda the big reinsurers have to comply with local laws around hiring citizens (really how many genius level actuaries can an island nation produce - answer not many, you're going to have to bring in outside talent).

Yet another advantage is that it provides you choice. This is the biggest advantage of all. Even if all the current tax havens change their laws, groups of entrepreneurs can always create another one.

rohit89• 15 years ago

> The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally.

This. I wouldn't want to live somewhere where a rogue wave[1] could come and take out everything. Given its unpredictability, you wouldn't even have time to evacuate.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_waves

tikhonj• 15 years ago

As for your last point, we already have oil rigs and the like far out at sea, don't we? I don't know exactly how they work, but they show that it is at least plausible.

bradleyland2• 15 years ago

Evacuating 50-100 highly trained rig personnel is different than several hundred rank-and-file knowledge workers. Rig workers are paid high salaries because of the risks associated with working on oil rigs. We lost a close family friend to an explosion that occurred during a "routine" welding operation. Routine is quoted because nothing on an oil rig is truly "routine".

A fire alarm in an office building means everyone saunters outside. A fire alarm on a oil platform elevates everyone's heartrate. There is a not-insignificant chance that you're going to die. Mitigating these risks to the point that it would make sense for companies to utilize them for operational duties will be very difficult, not to mention expensive.

oceanician• 15 years ago

Just been watching a documentry on floating homes in Amsterdam. Could be worth checking it out. Look for 'Amsterdam's Futuristic Floating City'. It's one of the Extreme Engineering series. Episode 7. I saw it on Discovery Science. Hth.

jotm4• 15 years ago

I really don't see the point of seasteads - escaping the law is not really feasible (you'll need supplies from a country, and if you do anything the US or other nearby countries don't like, you'll be cut off or heck, even torpedoed). There's plenty of land to build a small city on, much cheaper.

Even if you want a private island for your getaways, you can buy a big yacht for cheaper, anyway. Heck, even if you want to create a criminal haven, it's cheaper and easier to do it in some third world country by bribing everyone (Pablo Escobar and Cuba is a great example)...

todsul2• 15 years ago

  "you'll need supplies from a country"

It's called importing. Most countries do it these days.

jotm4• 15 years ago

Yes, and when you decide to create your own country with your own laws, you'll either be importing at exorbitant fees or be embargoed by everyone...

Czarnian10• 15 years ago

Importing isn't the problem, exporting is. A seastead will necessarily pay a steep premium on imported goods, even basic ones.

The cost of shipping is mitigated by goods going both ways. When you are shipping to a zero-export entity such as a seastead, the receiving entity is expected to bear the cost of the return trip with empty holds.

LukeHoersten• 15 years ago

"THE Pilgrims who set out from England on the Mayflower to escape an intolerant, over-mighty government and build a new society were lucky to find plenty of land in the New World on which to build it." -- I love how the English think of the American colonial settlers versus how Americans do.

philwelch2• 15 years ago

That, by the way, is a popular myth. It's closer to the truth to say that the Pilgrims sailed to America to establish an intolerant, over-mighty government.

yummyfajitas8• 15 years ago

True, but they abandoned communism quite quickly when it's failures became obvious.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_t...

ramanujan• 15 years ago

Much of the commentary on seasteading is underinformed. It doesn't have to be "libertarian", as the concept can just as equally be used to build states for progressives, or North Korean refugees, or any displaced or oppressed people.

The engineering issues exist, but cruise ships are a pretty good proof-of-concept. Cruise ships show that we can get stable, luxurious accomodations at a per-day cost that is on par with an expensive hotel (2-3X SF Bay Area daily rent). The only question is the extent to which we can improve on that.

Hacker News will get a lot out of the full Seasteading book, which anticipates most arguments and goes through many interesting details, from structural engineering through power, water, food, and cost.

http://seasteading.org/book_beta/full_book_beta.html

jotm4• 15 years ago

But WHY not build it on land? Find a remote piece of land and build your progressive city or refugee center at a quarter of the cost, with much easier access to food, building materials and other stuff. There are thousands of acres of land around the world that are perfect for establishing a new settlement, far away from any civilization, if that's your thing.

It'd be easier to create a sort of enclave state (like Lesotho, but smaller, for example) than a seastead...

throwaway64• 15 years ago

all land on earth is claimed by a state in some fashion, its much easier to sea stead than to deal with the politics of claiming political independence.

kstenerud2• 15 years ago

I just read the whole book. Here are my comments:

1. "Pilgrims." The author consistently makes comparative references to pilgrims to the American continent. This is disingenious. For the homesteaders, the cost of expansion was very low. Their technological advantage allowed them to drive out the native inhabitants with relative ease. Their infrastructure requirements were minimal, but most importantly, there was fruitful land to be taken at very low cost.

Not so with seafaring. Your "land" must be planned and built up-front at substantial cost. Once you've built your "land", you're stuck with that design. You can't just take more "land", since it would require building an entire new platform, once again at substantial cost. What happens when your platform capable of supporting 1000 people can no longer support its growing population? Do you kick people off? Who decides who stays and who leaves? And who would be willing to live with the sword of Damocles over their heads, knowing that at some point in the future, they could be ousted by the council of elders, forced to leave their home and friends, to fend for themselves?

2. Maintenance. The author is very opposed to taxation, and yet the very nature of seafaring incurs substantial maintenance costs. Who will bear those costs? Who will collect the funds? How will you handle disputes over the taxation rate, or people who refuse to pay?

3. Wealth generation. This one was particularly poorly thought out. Tourism? The amount of space dedicated to tourism would have to be so huge to offset the living costs that I don't see this contributing in any meaningful way to economic surplus. Manufacturing dangerous goods? Space ports? Who would want to live near such places? All of the possibilities offered were of small economic value. Any balance of trade would tilt massively in favor of land based economies.

4. Expulsion. How and when do you expel members of the community? Do you write a set of laws, with the more severe prescribing exile? How about people who fall behind in their financial obligations (i.e. taxation) for one reason or another (for example, someone gets sick and can't pay their bills on their salary)? That works well for those on the top, but for those at the bottom of the totem pole, it would be intolerable.

5. Government. I realize that the author is a libertarian, but this worship of the "corporate" government as some sort of panacea is really naive. A corporation is a despotic form of government. Despotism is very well suited to small communities, but still suffers from the flaws of all governments: tyranny. Anyone who has spent time dealing with corporate politics will know how much it resembles swimming in shark infested waters. Political rot builds up, and is all but impossible to remove. Psychopaths make their way to the top and rule with an iron fist, making the company financially profitable, but a nightmare for those who work there.

6. War. The author glosses over arguments of war by hand waving that it might not be as bad as with historical autonomous governments, or that "war drives away trade". Historically, this has not deterred those who bear a grudge. Furthermore, outright armed conflict is unlikely to be the norm. Far easier to simply sabotage the rival platform, since damage to a sea platform is orders of magnitude more devastating than damage to land.

7. "You can just leave if you don't like it." This always makes me laugh. Leaving is not something simple like changing washing powder brands. Leaving involves uprooting your entire life, leaving friends & family, giving up all agreements, titles and numerous other intangible benefits, and then starting over with only whatever money you have in a new place where you don't know other people. The barrier is actually quite huge, especially when the community is small. It's even worse for people who are born on the platform, but don't agree with its politics. You know, just like libertarians who are born in a country but don't like its politics. You can always just leave, right?

tryitnow6• 15 years ago

1) Pilgrims. I would imagine moving to a foreign land full of potentially hostile natives is a bit riskier than living at sea. So that cost needs to be factored in. For certain purposes we already know that people are willing to pay a premium for living in a more friendly jurisdiction. For example, there's a huge premium for living in Bermuda. As for deciding who goes and who leaves? That's for the owners of the seastead. I can't imagine it will be as bad as what governments do now.

2) Maintenance. There are lots of options. My guess is that maintenance will be baked into rents or usage fees, just like in every other line of business. As for enforcing contracts, that's where the owner of the seastead will be careful about who they allow in.

3) Wealth generation. There's a few ideas here. First is simply regulatory arbitrage. Just like tax/regulatory havens like Bermuda, Caymen's etc. This could take the form of housing immigrant workers (like Blueseed) or financial firms (like the CBCs) or medical tourism (which might not work because the AMA will crack down on it).

4) Expulsion. That's a good point and would have to be addressed in the contracts signed by the customers of the seastead. I don't think "Expulsion" is the problem here, I think it's more an issue of contract enforcement. My guess is the seastead would have to be very careful about who they grant access to. This isn't a problem of early adopters. This is a problem of scale. But it is a very legitimate concern.

5) Government. I deal with corporate politics everyday. I would prefer to deal with corporate politics over any interaction with the federal government or the state of California any day. Just going to the DMV is a nightmare. As for greedy executives making companies a nightmare to work for. My recommendation is simple. Get a job at one that is not. That's my plan. Unfortunately, I can't do that quite as easily with the state or federal government.

6) War. If you're talking about wars between firms, a much bigger problem is rival firms hacking one another's computer systems. I'm sure that happens now and how do we address that problem? Through security measures. Likewise on seasteads. There's just no way to live in a perfect world, we don't now and seasteads won't solve that problem. If you're referring to actual armed conflicts, that's not a big problem with island westernized technologically advanced island nations now, why would it be under seasteading. My guess is that the early adopters will be silicon valley tech types and other high skilled workers, not crystal meth gangs.

7) "You can just leave" Yes, leaving is sometimes hard. That's called "life" and it's no different than the way things are now. I left my friends, family, and work colleagues to move to the SF Bay Area. It was the best decision of my life. Yes, I left a lot behind, but I gained a lot more. In case you haven't noticed, there's a whole country built on this concept...I'll let you guess which one it is (hint: it's flag is red, white, and blue).

Honestly, I appreciate your critique. I am disappointed in the book. It is not doing it's job of clearly communicating the pros and cons of seasteading. If it did, I think you would have more thorough answers to the concerns you raise.

Czarnian10• 15 years ago

Where exactly would one put a space port on a seastead? The minimum safe distance for a launch at Kennedy is something like 2 miles. And launching anything into space from a floating platform . . . let's just say that the basic laws of the universe are not on your side.

a3camero3• 15 years ago

I'd take this book with a grain of salt. I don't think they've consulted with an IL/maritime lawyer (or a lawyer at all?). Seasteading might sound like a hacker's dream but there are a lot of issues not explored in this book that would be incredibly important for anyone considering investing in this idea.

1. EEZ is not 200nm from the territorial sea. It's 200nm from land, they didn't read the UNCLOS definition properly "The exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured." (Article 57, UNCLOS).

2. The contiguous zone is not "pretty much the same" as the territorial sea.

3. They don't really seem to understand what sovereignty is or how the international legal system works... a common theme of people who've previously tried to start their own countries. It's important to understand how flags work WRT sovereignty.

paganel• 15 years ago

> The engineering issues exist, but cruise ships are a pretty good proof-of-concept. Cruise ships show that we can get stable, luxurious accomodations at a per-day cost that is on par with an expensive hotel (2-3X SF Bay Area daily rent). The only question is the extent to which we can improve on that.

I Ctrl-F-ed both the article and the comments and I was sad not to see any reference to Jules Verne's "Propeller Island" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propeller_Island)

""" It was first published in 1895 as part of the Voyages Extraordinaires. It relates the adventures of a French string quartet in Milliard City, a city on a massive ship in the Pacific Ocean, inhabited entirely by millionaires. """

Mz4• 15 years ago

Until seasteaders are able to bank their money with independent, ocean-going financial institutions, they may not be able to escape the taxman’s clutches.

You probably can't really escape the taxman's clutches anyway. It is mostly a matter of whom you pay, not if. Taxes exist to cover the costs of governing the people, providing infrastructure and services for the citizens and so on. Even if you can get unplugged from existing governments, someone has to pay for the infrastructure of the seastead and essential services. You can give it a different name, but charging your people to help pay these costs is basically the same thing as taxes. Not charging your people to help pay these costs would mean eventually sinking to the bottom of the ocean. These costs are likely to be relatively high, higher than what it takes to maintain roads and sewage and the like on land.

Unless a seastead were the size of Manhattan its citizens would have to forgo the cultural life, the parks and the wide choice of shopping and restaurants offered by large cities.

They might have to forego a lot of that anyway. I briefly considered applying for a job in Hawaii and I asked around regarding things like food in Hawaii (because I have special dietary needs). I was told basically that spam is a staple food, good luck getting meat and milk on a consistent/reliable basis as it sometimes isn't very available, things get flown in from far away so a lot of it is frozen not fresh, and what is available is quite pricey. There is plenty of sea food available, but I am allergic to shell fish and don't tolerate large quantities of fish well. In fact, I rarely eat fish.

A few years ago, I stayed in Port Aransas, Texas for a few days. I loved the place and have toyed with the idea of going back (as in living there). But I struggled to feed myself while there. There is a great deal of sea food and some very expensive restaurants and some real dives and a very limited grocery store. Given my dietary restrictions, these details made it a daily challenge to try to eat properly for my needs and I don't feel it really did an adequate job.

So if an island a short drive off the coast of Texas has challenges in offering "a wide choice of restaurants" and Hawaii has challenges with making sure food (in terms of variety and affordability) is consistently available, what on earth makes them think a floating platform will do better merely based on population size?

yummyfajitas8• 15 years ago

Taxes exist to cover the costs of governing the people, providing infrastructure and services for the citizens and so on. Even if you can get unplugged from existing governments, someone has to pay for the infrastructure of the seastead and essential services.

Suppose a seasteading nation provided the same transportation, protection, defensive and other public goods as the US government. An eyeball estimate [1] suggests the cost would be 35% of what the US govt spends, and that's assuming the sea-based nation still pays for things like military adventurism and the war on drugs.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total

So while it's true that you have to pay some taxes, they could easily be far lower than most first world nations.

You are correct that ocean dwellers should be comprised of people who enjoy seafood or people willing to pay $8/avocado.

[1] I'm including defense, protection (police+fire), transportation and "other spending" (e.g., water treatment, community development).

xiaoma• 15 years ago

>An eyeball estimate [1] suggests the cost would be 35% of what the US govt spends, and that's assuming the sea-based nation still pays for things like military adventurism and the war on drugs.

Only if that eyeball is completely blind to economies of scale.

Mz4• 15 years ago

If one's main concern is taxes, they vary considerably within the US from one state to another. There are websites with good info on that. Here is just one: http://retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html

Further, my best understanding is that for most jobs of the exact same type, it makes little or no difference to take the same job title elsewhere for more pay because in most cases the additional salary merely covers higher local cost of living. Those increased local costs of living are typically there due to more amenities (ie San Francisco is more expensive in part because there is more infrastructure, culture, etc there than in Nowhereville USA). Plus, people who are well off in a way that makes them highly mobile (some US retirees fit this descripton, even if not "wealthy" per se) so they can live just about anywhere they choose can already take advantage of doing things like moving south of the border.

I do understand the argument in the article about looking to escape existing governments. That's a very different motivation from wanting to escape/reduce taxes, which can to a large degree already be done without jumping through the hoops involved in seasteading.

Aloisius• 15 years ago

I was told basically that spam is a staple food, good luck getting meat and milk on a consistent/reliable basis as it sometimes isn't very available, things get flown in from far away so a lot of it is frozen not fresh, and what is available is quite pricey.

Uh. There are a lot of reasons why someone may not want to live in Hawaii, but availability of milk/meat/produce or the cost should not be one of them. I don't know why someone told you that, but Hawaii has to support a shockingly large tourist economy of people from places that don't eat seafood. Or spam.

In fact, I rarely, if ever, ate seafood or spam when I lived in Hawaii.

While it is more expensive than on the mainland, frankly it isn't that much different than the prices at your average Whole Foods. And as most fruit/vegetables grow year-round on Hawaii, they are not only fresher, but frankly taste better.

Mz4• 15 years ago

My second hand information about food in Hawaii may well be inaccurate and/or out of date. That wouldn't surprise me at all. It does, however, fit with my first-hand experiences in Port Aransas, which is also on an island and a largely tourist economy. Iirc: town of about 3000 and population can swell to 60k on weekends -- which is the only reason such a small town even has a grocery store when (as I understand it) you typically need about 10k to 15k local population to support a grocery store.

However, my main point was to suggest that food variety/restaurant variety and related "culture" may be limited (or only had at enormous expense -- and Hawaii isn't cheap) on a seastead anyway, regardless of size. I am curious if you think that point holds water.

Thanks.

LisaG• 15 years ago

" good luck getting meat and milk on a consistent/reliable basis "

Maybe in 1950. Or on Niʻihau. But on the bigger islands it is no problem. There is a giant Safeway in the Manoa neighborhood of Oahu that is just as good as the one on Townsend in SF and there are many Foodland grocery stores. I lived there as a broke postdoc and had no trouble.

Mz4• 15 years ago

FWIW: I believe I was inquiring about one of the smaller islands, though I can't tell you which one. It was some years ago.

Thanks for your reply.

rdl3• 15 years ago

There is also the world's busiest Costco (they send execs there to learn how it works).

a3camero3• 15 years ago

Although this post is rather off the HN path, people might appreciate a draft of a law paper I've coincidentally just written on the legal issues with doing these sort of things: http://private.summerhilldesign.com/SeaLawPaper.pdf (3rd year law student).

If this is too long, pg. 17 has a chart that shows how far out the different boundaries on the ocean. Starting at pg. 12 you'll see what things you can't do and pg. 24 has some conclusions. Might help take some of the "but that's illegal!" and "I don't think you can't do that" out of this discussion. Cheers!

dctoedt• 15 years ago

Defense costs for a seastead would be ruinous. A seastead is just another form of island. An island that's close to a land power will almost certainly need the deterrent effect of a strong navy --- its own or that of a friendly power --- if it wants to retain its independence. Strong navies are really, really expensive to build and maintain; a seastead probably would not be able to do either.

Example: Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, mainland China probably would have invaded and conquered Taiwan in 1949 or 1950, or on any of a number of "crisis" occasions since then. It's no accident that whenever China rattles its saber about Taiwan, one or more U.S. aircraft carrier task forces moves into the Taiwan Strait.

Example: Had it not been for the presence of the Royal Navy, the Germans probably would have invaded and conquered England in 1940. The same is true of Napoleon in 1803, for that matter.

Economically, a seastead probably couldn't maintain the kind of navy needed for this task. England was able to maintain the Royal Navy in the 17th through 19th centuries, but it could draw on the resources of a growing empire. Today's Britannia doesn't come close to ruling the waves; it can't afford to.

Could a seastead get a strong, friendly power to extend its own navy's umbrella of protection, the way the U.S. has done with Taiwan? Possibly, but the friendly power would have to perceive a benefit to itself before it'd be willing to do so.

todsul2• 15 years ago

So you think the Germans or Chinese would want to invade the seastead? Do you think it's because the Germans/Chinese would want the seastead's land to extend their own borders?

ams61102• 15 years ago

I'd think it's typically not the land itself that they really want, it's the resources. If a Seastead were to become established and wealthy, you can bet it would eventually come under threat of attack.

JeffL• 15 years ago

Don't you think navies are getting a little outdated in their current form? I have to think going forward it's going to be all missiles and anti-missile missiles. Not saying that having a good missile defense won't also be expensive, but probably cheaper to have missiles based on the sea stead than having missiles on a destroyer floating next to the sea stead.

But honestly, it seems hard to really see a hot war between a Libertarian sea stead and a 1st world democracy. The 1st world aggressor would probably do the sanctions thing instead. Actual wars seem to be when one side is authoritarian or fascist or else religion is somehow involved.

stewbrew• 15 years ago

Sea ... island ... ships ... My first guess would have been heavily armed pirates.

nradov• 15 years ago

These clowns will be crying for the US Coast Guard to come and rescue them the moment their "seastead" springs a leak.

christkv• 15 years ago

I could not help it

I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well. Share this quote

eftpotrm• 15 years ago

The man in Moscow I won't attempt to defend.

The Vatican will say that, as a Catholic, 10% of the bounty which God has enabled you earn should be donated to God in thanks.

The man in Washington will tell you that, in exchange for security and protection from outside threats, you will be required to contribute in proportion to your ability to pay (which is where far, far more of your money goes than to the bogeyman of the undeserving, lazy, workshy poor). Frankly I like to think of it as insurance against Red October.

Now, I don't for one minute think that the seasteaders would be able to provide infrastructure and security for the rich any cheaper than existing national governments, but I have to say that I consider going to such lengths to try and dodge them spectacularly miserly.

snowwrestler• 15 years ago

I think the urge to seastead comes from the same place as the urge to refactor code. "Let's just start over, it's bound to be way better because of all we've learned." But as well know, there is no guarantee that refactoring from scratch is going to produce a better product.

Modern states are like old codebases. They are a huge pain in the ass to maintain, BUT they also contain bug fixes and tweaks from 1,000+ solved problems. In fact all those fixes are probably why it is such a pain in the ass to maintain. That doesn't mean they aren't good fixes that are still relevant and necessary.

adrianscott• 15 years ago

Uh, what you describe is rewriting, not refactoring... Refactoring is often a great investment, and is not done 'from scratch'.

I would question your assertion that modern states have 1,000+ solved problems. They have no unit testing, shoddy QA if any, etc. It's a bad analogy, imho. When they do generate a 'tweak' it is often not solving a problem, but generating more problems than it solves.

hristov• 15 years ago

It is funny how deftly libertarians turn "freedom" into slavery. Note this passage in the end of the article:

"Indeed, as Mr Keenan notes, the most viable political model for a seastead may not be a libertarian democracy but an enlightened corporate dictatorship."

Yes it will probably be a dictatorship of some type, but I would not go so far as to assume it would be "enlightened." What will most likely happen is these will turn into floating work camps for poor desperate immigrants that have been promised a lot of money and then find themselves in a floating prison with no legal system to protect their rights.

getsat• 15 years ago

Dictatorship does not imply slavery, and democracy does not imply freedom.

henrikschroder• 15 years ago

"...I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

tedsuo• 15 years ago

China Mieville wrote a great piece ripping apart this concept: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/

vacri3• 15 years ago

Libertarians don't need to build fake islands (and all the safe waters in which to do so long-term are already claimed). No, there is Vanuatu, the libertarian dream state.

Forget the usual cry of 'Somalia!' for libertarians. Vanuatu gives them what they want - miniscule government with few services offered, small police which doubles as the military. There is no income tax unless you own rental property. Defense is sorted as it's not strategically located against other countries. It's a tropical paradise and the people rate as the happiest in the world.

If libertarians really were going to spend resources on an island, why not save themselves some dosh and go to Vanuatu? I mean, apart from libertarians pretty much all having income reliant on high-tech skills that won't get much demand in an agrarian society.

There are places for libertarians to go in this world to experience what they claim they want, that aren't war-torn Somalia. They won't do it, because deep down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with complex government. If libertarians won't move to one of these countries, there's no way this fake island is anything but a pipe dream.

yummyfajitas8• 15 years ago

..deep down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with complex government.

Which goodies, specifically?

Also, since most government programs are excludible (e.g., don't pay SS taxes, you don't get SS when you are old), do you feel libertarians would choose not to exit if given the option?

vacri3• 15 years ago

I'm not getting into a dot-point argument with a libertarian. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. In my experience, libertarians are very bad at seeing the gestalt. They're also great at false dichotomies and selective reasoning. I'm not interested in another dot-point yawnfest.

What I am saying is that there are places on Earth that conform much, much better to stated libertarian ideals than modern industrialised democracies. Some of them are paradises; it's not just Somalia on offer. If libertarians really wanted to opt out - the options are there already. And yet libertarians aren't leaving in droves. Why would a fake island be any more successful?

Czarnian10• 15 years ago

Off the top of my head, I'd say the internet which you are ironically posting this on. The electric lines that are powering your computer. The sewer pipes that carry your waste away from your living space. The streetlamps you travel under at night. The legal system that protects your property from anyone who wants to take it from you. Should I go on?

You know who didn't invent any of those things? The folks living in the liberterian paradise of Vanuatu.

arethuza4• 15 years ago

What about Monaco, which is already full of the very wealthy, has no income tax and is a bit more conveniently located:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco

david927• 15 years ago

I live next to Monaco and the word on the street is that it has only a few years left of tax haven status.

mmaro• 15 years ago

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/seastea...

jmj4• 15 years ago

You can seen Peter Thiel's homage to Atlas Shrugged with funding this thing, but I think logistically its a little bit too much. I'm firmly in the libertarian camp, but things in this country would have to be pretty bad to move full time to a place like this.

Another cool idea is the possibility of creating self governing city's, with minimal regulation, inside of existing countries. Ex-Stanford economist Paul Romer is proposing ideas along these lines. If you partner with a country (Honduras is considering this) who give you land to set up an independent city, you could have the type of self-governing, anti-tax/regulation environment that libertarians yearn for. I can't see the US ever agreeing to something like this, but some countries would.

luriel• 15 years ago

The "self governing city" concept you are talking about is called "Charter Cities", it is quite interesting and one can find more information about it at:

http://chartercities.org/

rdl3• 15 years ago

I think the key for Seasteading to be successful is to try to separate the engineering challenges, organizational challenges, economic/business model challenges, and political challenges.

Oil platforms and cruise ships do a great job of solving engineering, in a benign environment otherwise. As the article points out, large corporations are the best at this kind of megaproject.

I predict the first successful consumer seastead will be set up by a cruise line as a 2-3 week timeshare vacation/diving/excursion in a remote area, possibly with a jet airstrip. Somewhere too far from ports for cruises to comfortably visit, but with local interest.

Before that, we'll see natural gas fields in the middle of nowhere with either LNG facilities or downstream chemical production on a seastead nearby, and large labor force (relative to an extraction platform); thousands of people, possibly. Increasing resource/energy costs will support this.

We'll possibly also see temporary structures for disaster recovery, supply staging, etc. for military or relief work. The huge hospital ships (e.g. USNS Comfort) serve a role like this, as do aircraft carriers and LPDs; scaling up wouldn't be hard.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

Despite being on land, Guantanamo is a nice preview of non-"libertarian" implementation of seasteading.

6ren• 15 years ago

> Nobody anticipated the immense variety of uses that would be dreamed up for the internet, Mr Keenan observes, and the same may apply to...

...any idea you can think of. It's always possible there are upsides to an idea that could not have been imagined beforehand. Technology is littered with them. But it's useful to have some sense of the probability of such upsides, and we can get some idea by looking at those from the past, such as the internet.

The internet has been so successful because it provides communication, better than others in many respects. That's the benefit that makes it valuable to people; the specific technical features that produce it are secondary. There's a long history of improvements in communications technology that have been successful. There's even been the idea that the benefit of airline travel is communication (e.g. for business travel, a large segment).

We can ask if seasteading provides communication - and also if any new idea we might have provides communication. If it does, it will likely enable many unanticipated uses that require communication, and could be as wildly successful as the internet.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

The arguments here and elsewhere are all pretty much spot on. Lots of people like the 'concept' of being able to start fresh but few really internalize the challenges. One person I know feels it would be easier to privately colonize the Moon than to build a viable seastead.

That being said, there has been some interesting work in seawater chemistry that suggests you might precipitate out of seawater a form of concrete [1]. Of course it would be hard to precipitate out a floating island but one might imagine building a 'reef equivalent' by growing it from the seafloor up. I personally don't think it is practical but I find the exploratory engineering entertaining and thought provoking.

[1] http://www.build.new-atlantis.org/seacrete.htm

brc• 15 years ago

I've had this discussion with other people before, and I like to remind people of the first seasteading city : Venice.

It was built specifically to get away from people on the mainland, and thrived based on a platform of trade.

I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect example, but it is pretty interesting how one of the most powerful cities in the world at one stage was developed by deciding to build a settlement in the middle of the water, which was pretty high-tech for the time.

Of course the true power of Venice wasn't achieved until it acquired some mainland territory to shore up it's supply lines, so perhaps the lesson is that a seastead needs to be setup adjacent to a relatively weak nation state that can be reverse absorbed at some time (assuming a peaceful treaty rather than by force). There are plenty of caribbean + pacific islands that could fall into this task. It may not mean taking a whole country but simply signing a century-long lease over a portion, maybe like British Hong Kong or modern Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure plenty of poor nations would gladly accept rental revenues for a mostly unwanted piece of land.

As for revenue streams - if a settlement could be located somewhere climatically agreeable, and out of jurisdiction of sovereign states, simply having cheap alcohol + food, and gambling would be more than enough to get the cash rolling in. An off-shore casino could simply run tighter odds and more drinks and make it worthwhile for people to go to. After all, Monaco and Las Vegas used this to their advantage for a long time just by being places where gambling could exist.

I think it's a very novel idea and I hope someone tries it one day. If it's the same site I've seen before (TLDR) they posit the idea that the first attempt would likely be a re-purposed cruise ship. And don't forget, there is already a cruise ship ('The World') that is doing something like this but mobile instead of stationary.

Bascially, instead of predicting what would or wouldn't work, someone should try it out and see what happens. Predictions of larger governments squashing it may turn out to be incorrect if the politicians of said governments find it to be convenient for their purposes.

CapitalistCartr• 15 years ago

We have enormous land still readily available far cheaper than ocean living. Barring a major breakthrough, this isn't going to change soon. As for the political reasons, we have plenty of liberal governments here on land. If you can escape a lousy government to get to a "Sea-Land", you can get to a normal country easier, and they're more likely to accept you. There just isn't a compelling reason for these, aside from frustrated libertarian fantasies.

bane• 15 years ago

Coming soon, Rife's Raft

http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/Snow+Crash

Seasteading: Cities on the ocean

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