Blueseed[1] made a lot of noise about mooring a ship off shore of Half Moon Bay, near Silicon Valley, to house developers who couldn't get US visas. They had even fancier off-shore development pictures for later phases. They had the idea that developers could live on the ship and freely visit Silicon Valley. It was mostly a tax dodge.
They discovered that 1) the county-owned small boat harbor at Half Moon Bay wasn't going to support them by building the on-shore facilities they needed for ferries, 2) Half Moon Bay isn't a US port of entry; anyone coming in from the boat would have to go through San Francisco, and 3) if people are going to work remotely, who needs a boat?
Former Blueseed team member here. This is completely misleading.
The reason we failed to get anywhere was that we couldn't find any viable path forward without raising $30M, and our team had neither (a) deep SV success & connections or (b) deep maritime experience and connections, so were unable to raise that money.
Finding the right MVP for seasteading is both extremely difficult and absolutely necessary for success.
Not part of the effort but I've found that lack of experience rarely seems to hold people back. Its a good thing in that they develop experience but it also means that when they show up asking for investment with no experience, it is unlikely to to be successful.
Of course the trick to solving any huge problem you have no experience in solving is to line up a list of all the things you would have to know before you could be successful and knock them off the list. In this case I'd expect first on the list would be to get a ship pilot's license.
Well, yes. I'd guess that most investors want the people they're funding to have prior experience in whatever industry, before starting a business in that industry.
The way the parent poster makes their situation sound, it'd be like saying "I'm starting an internet startup. I don't have anyone on my team who knows anything about computers or the tech industry, but....."
Reading the Wikipedia article on Blueseed, it does not appear that any of the three founders had much experience at anything. The Seasteading Institute seems to have some overlap with Blueseed. Not entirely clear how much.
Vessels that are intended to house people but not go anywhere are called "accommodation ships". Most of them are barges intended to be moored in a protected harbor.[1] There are only a few deep-sea accommodation ships.[2][3] Those exotic ships have cranes for deep-ocean replenishment and refueling, and station-keeping thrusters so they can be stationary in deep water. Except for offshore construction and drilling operations, there's not much demand for housing people in the middle of the ocean.
There are used cruise ship brokers.[4] Amusingly, one of their ships is marked "This vessel is not for start up companies". Cruise ships are intended to make port regularly and be serviced and replenished in port. They don't have the cranes and station-keeping thrusters for routine deep-ocean replenishment. Navies do deep-ocean replenishment when necessary, but it's dangerous to bring two large ships close together. Here's U.S. Navy refueling at sea:[5]
The Seasteading scheme seems to avoid the problems of deep-sea operations. But if they're in waters shallow enough to build a breakwater, it's easier to fill or build on pilings.
The "offshore independent libertarian country in the ocean" scheme has been tried at least four times.[6] The concrete barge scheme in the 1970s sank in a hurricane. Building up a reef with barged-in sand was tried off Tonga in 1972. Tonga invaded and took it over. A platform on piles off Italy was tried in 1968; the Italian government sent four cops and took it over. And, of course, there is Sealand, an old tower off the coast of England, which continues to pretend it is a country.
This whole thing comes across as something from people who read Atlas Shrugged and took it too seriously. Then again, the Koch brothers might go for it.
I don't see why anyone would do that versus opening up yet another body shop in Bangalore or Manila. People without visas are not going to be able to visit the valley anyway.
Getting a visa to attend a business meeting in the US is much easier than getting a visa to work there. Plus, even if they can't, it's much easier for the valley guys if their body shop is an hour's helicopter ride away and in the same timezone rather than the other side of the world in a country where you have to be careful only to drink bottled water.
I am the one who helped them migrate their old WordPress theme to Layers (http://www.layerswp.com). I haven't quite finished yet, but I am pretty close.
As an anarchist myself, I know better than most that libertarians are all mostly full of hot air.
While I don't necessarily think that seasteading is worthless as a concept, this project is pie in the sky. You don't build cities. They grow. And if you want to grow a floating city, you have to build floating homes.
Build a seastead that supports just one person--one!--without logistical support from any landmass, and keep it afloat for a few years, and I might consider that you would one day be capable of a floating hamlet. But a whole city in 5 years? I call bullshit. Reichee Sowa did more with Spiral Island, and he couldn't even raise $15k on Kickstarter for life jackets and fire extinguishers.
But TBF it's far easier to move what's essentially a giant fancy boat than it is to uproot a structure on land. When it comes to really massive (predictable) storms, I'd rather be living on an easily movable boat than a small island.
Not even a storm. On a windy day, let's say 30 knots, go to the ocean shore and see what the waves do. When the wind gets to 55 knots, a good category 10 storm, things get pretty mental.
To build a structure that can withstand category 12 storm and above would require ridiculously good engineering. Water isn't wind, it's fucking heavy, and it hits like 100 trains.
The costs to build something like that must be in the billions. Heck, modern cruise ships cost more than a billion dollars.
Submersible accomodation isn't actually that hard or expensive: You don't have to go very deep to reduce wave action to next to nothing, only 10-20 meters, and you only need to submerge in heavy weather.
There's one guy on the forums who built a couple of concrete teardrop hulls and used them as yachts. He said they were pretty comfortable.
I think this is impossible. In democracies where everyone has a vote, the majority tends to vote in politicians that promise more 'social services'. That's a euphemism for using the government's monopoly of the use of to take money/time/effort from some groups and divert it into inefficient policies like the war on drugs, war on terrorism, war on poverty, etc.
This is one reason that in the US's early history, only land owners were allowed to vote.
I believe that part of the idea behind sea-steading is to extend the concept of freedom of association to one's residence, real-estate, and business, literally enabling you to pick up stakes and move at any time you feel your environment has grown hostile to your way of life.
Granted this faces the same issues that any other utopian social movement has faced in the past (reaching critical mass, working out the kinks in a new legal, political, and economic system, avoiding tyranny etc.) but at least it has an escape hatch built in.
If someone can figure out how to make these vessels as fool proof as a car (reasonably hard to ruin, owner operable, easily stocked with energy, affordable) they'll have no shortage of disgruntled citizens waiting to try one out.
If someone can figure out how to make these vessels as fool proof as a car (reasonably hard to ruin, owner operable, easily stocked with energy, affordable) they'll have no shortage of disgruntled citizens waiting to try one out.
You mean... mobile homes. John Steinbeck, in Travels with Charley, was very positive about the motorhome's possibilities. But we know how that dream turned out.
... a multi-billion dollar per annum industry and beloved recreational past time?
I do agree that prognostication is very rarely correct but the uses for the technologies in question go far beyond the political pipedreams of the seasteading society. If you could produce something equivalent to an RV for the sea you would absolutely have a market but with the major difference that the upper size limit on floating vessels is several orders of magnitude larger than that on land based vehicles.
There is already incentive to use structures like this in cities limited by waterfront. Their uses recreationally as a summer home are extremely evident if you've ever seen a lake filled with houseboats [1], floating data centres [2] also come to mind as well as those barges that Google built.
The biggest issue would be transportation to and from the mainland or between these structures but if they can be joined together at sea this problem quickly disappears as the number of connected structures increases.
Beyond that, there is still the very real possibility that this could open up the last and widest frontier on Earth and we'll have gone from prairie schooners to seasteads.
Also, with the increasing mobility afforded by a cell connection for phone and internet, there is a growing movement in the same vein as the original dreams for the future of the motorhome [3] I'd expect a seastead to more closely resemble a tiny house than an RV i.e. more house than vehicle, since people want to live in a house not a boat.
I doubt the majority of the US population is rearing to move out to sea, but you heard about liberland right? They received 160,000 applications in a matter of days. I'd say there's a market for this, and it'll grow if the pioneers are successful.
This is an entirely reasonable question and shouldn't be downvoted. Cruise ships already have the infrastructure to handle populations of hundreds or thousands of of people, and in greater comfort than an ex-military ship. Also, they're relatively inexpensive.
Cruise ships are essentially floating luxury hotels. They are utterly dependent on supplies from port and on labor that is segregated from paying clientele. The base unit of seasteading has to be more self-sufficient. It has to supply food, potable water, and shelter for at least one permanent resident, plus many more transients to realize any economies of scale.
The ship has to be able to never make port, because all ports are potentially controlled by potentially unfriendly government regimes, and defended by armed navies. The ideal of a seastead is to live indefinitely on the high seas, outside the jurisdiction or interference of any nation, as an unflagged vessel.
But the stride from here to there is so long that even Jean Claude van Damme would pull a groin muscle trying to make it in one step.
Operating a retrofitted extended-stay cruise ship under the flag of a disinterested landlocked nation would provide very valuable maritime experience. Even Carnival Cruise Lines, a company specializing in cruise operations, has had some trouble operating regular cruises. I can only imagine the sort of unmitigated disaster these guys could brew up if given enough cash.
Keeping a ship afloat at sea is not as easy as everyone seems to think. I'd like to see these guys keep a regular ship out of Davy Jones's locker, running experiments and proving concepts for a few years before I'd find them credible operators of colossal floating concrete platforms.
Sure, but you have to start somewhere. If people can't deal with operating a cruise ship then I question their ability to create brand new floating islands and run them sustainably. Surely one could do some farming on a cruise ship (using a mix of decks and hydroponics) and likewise generate some energy on-board. Obviously not as attractive as running a small nuclear power plant but you probably can't buy a used nuclear aircraft carrier, so you're stuck with diesel in the short term.
With technologies like Freight Farm [1], solar panels, and Tesla's Power Wall [2], cruise ships could –relatively– easily be reconfigured to be much more sustainable.
I wonder if it's possible to connect a bunch of modified cruise ships in a sea colony. That would make it readily expandable and modular, plus allowing enough space for all kinds of alternative energy/food sources
Does anyone else find it ironic that they have a big page about the failure of modern democracies to protect rights and how setting out to the sea can free us from tyrannical governments with run-away spending, followed by [1]:
The Floating City Project combines principles of both seasteading and startup cities, by seeking to locate a floating city within the territorial waters of an existing nation. Historically, The Seasteading Institute has looked to international waters for the freedom... However, there are several reasons we are now seeking a host nation:... b) it will be easier for residents to travel to and from the seastead, as well as to acquire goods and services from existing supply chains; and c) a host nation will provide a place for a floating city within the existing international legal framework, with the associated protections and responsibilities.
How is this ironic? They are piggybacking on the already-established international legal framework. It is indeed possible to criticize the welfare state, defense spending, and corrupt government while still using the legal system. It is a practical decision.
Arguing against government services while still using them is not in any way hypocritical, precisely because you have already paid for those services with taxes. For example, I am not a fan of social security and how it is managed, but you can be damn sure I will use it once I reach the required age, because I have already paid for it. I will be trying to get the money that was taken from me back.
I think socialized medicine is a huge, clunky band-aid on top of a broken healthcare system already made worse by government intervention, but I won't stop going into hospitals if the US adopted a fully socialized healthcare system.
But the whole point of building a city on a ship was to avoid any national law. If you want to partner with a real country, then might as well build the city on sparsely populated piece of land, and save on the expenses and inconveniences of ship based living. Charter cities and special economic zones seem like a promising idea to me, but seasteading always struck me as very silly.
As far as I can see, the only notional advantage gained from being based just offshore is that they can theoretically leave, though that does seem to be (i) vastly underestimating the complications involved in sailing to whichever other country will have them and (ii) vastly overestimating the difficulty of selling up and leaving under a more regular land-based arrangement.
They could theoretically leave, but if they have serious unresolved disputes with their host country, it could very well prevent them from leaving by using force. What then?
I think they are trying to eventually become independent. I think of this as a kind of bootstrapping procedure, where they start off inside the waters of a nation, and eventually move into international waters once they are established. Indeed, staying inside a nation's waters indefinitely would be counter to their stated goals.
If these ships are movable, then one advantage over a land-based city is they could even change nations when they felt like it.
> I think of this as a kind of bootstrapping procedure
Sure, but a lot of the reasons they list are essential. E.g., calmer waters near large bodies of land and therefore in sovereign water. Proximity to supply chains that lead to/from large land-based populations. Etc.
> If these ships are movable, then one advantage over a land-based city is they could even change nations when they felt like it.
The ironic thing is that if the technology is successful, it'll be used by nation states to claim more territory. Spratly Islands made to order, on crack. Not that a very brief frontier period couldn't be interesting on its own account, but it'll be brief if it happens at all.
> They are piggybacking on the already-established international legal framework.
Well, no. Being out on the open sea would put them within the international legal framework. They're piggybacking on some national legal framework, and a big part of the ideology behind the project is getting away from said national legal framework. That is ironic.
> precisely because you have already paid for those services with taxes
I somehow highly doubt that they'll get the concessions they want from a government to whom they've paid taxes for years.
It is very ironic that they want the benefits of taking risks while avoiding risk. There are plenty of countries that are destroyed/impoverished yet still have signed international treaties, so perhaps it would serve better to do the experiment there.
I think the idea with this is so that they will have the means to move once they have political, financial and ideological clout. They're aiming to incubate a proto-state within an existing state, so as not to rock the boat too much (cough) while building capacity.
Well, there is very little place for this supposed "fantasy" to take hold. Seeing as every single piece of land on this earth has been taken up by states that refuse to part with any of the precious land they've accumulated inside their borders.
All this really tells me is that market forces have determined that the state is the most efficient political structure. If it were otherwise, other political forms would've replaced them.
Besides that, you can't say for certain that the environment is selecting for efficiency rather than some other factor for which nation-states have a competitive advantage over non-state societies.
Nation-states are undoubtedly best at force projection. So long as people were generally accepting of their state razing foreign cities to the ground, salting their earth, slaughtering their men, and enslaving the rest, no other political structure could compete with a nation-state, fielding a professional army funded by taxes and pillage, and secured by fortifications constructed by taxes and forced labor.
If the fundamental operating principle of the world is that "might makes right" or "political power flows from the barrel of a gun", the nation-state is dominant. If the fundamental operating principle somehow shifts to "that which is hateful to you, do not do to others" or to "money makes the world go 'round", other political forms may realize an advantage over states.
For now, though, states rule the whole world. The laws of the high sea are for their convenience, as TSI will discover the instant they get big enough to make their own waves.
You know, I'd generally agree with the caveat that it is "currently" the most efficient. However, you also have to understand the behemoth that is the state. Fighting it is inherently very difficult by virtue of it not allowing competition. It's simply illegal to compete with them on their own turf (of which they have taken all).
And to top it all off, it is deeply ingrained into our culture at this point. So much so that children, from a young age, are told the rules and made sure to spread them to theirs. Simple logic get's thrown out the window by usually smart/intelligent people when you discuss the ethics of the state with them.
If there were a system that was "better," in terms of the total way in which all of humanity measures "better," we'd be using that. That's the efficiency measure.
The state arose judged against the harshest fitness measure known, the actual world.
Maybe, but live by fitness, die by fitness. Conditions change constantly, changing the selection algorithm. If the state goes down tomorrow and chaos reigns, would it be reasonable to argue against trying to change the status quo because Mad Max had been selected?
"They should not be denied nor forgotten, but neither should they be worshiped. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness…"
> Maybe, but live by fitness, die by fitness. Conditions change constantly, changing the selection algorithm.
If you look at human history over the long term, the role of the state has only expanded over that time. I'm not saying it's the only possibility, merely that it's the most successful we've ever come up with to date.
> If the state goes down tomorrow and chaos reigns, would it be reasonable to argue against trying to change the status quo because Mad Max had been selected?
Maybe. Ask me again when all states disappear entirely and fail to re-arise.
>merely that it's the most successful we've ever come up with to date.
That is a very good reason to be cautious about throwing something out wholesale. But it is also a good reason to not fear experimentation, because the official story is that it will show the incumbent to he superior.
> Maybe. Ask me again when all states disappear entirely and fail to re-arise.
Rather than ask a question, I'll make a statement:impersonal emergent forces of the kind we are talking about use a very greedy algorithm, and are very prone to local optima. There is a place for human assistance in finding where they "ought" to be.
Humans are yet to master building cities on land let alone a floating one. Dealing with the logistic and infrastructure of a floating city will most likely make it too costly.
For small nations countries in need of land like Singapore sucking out sand from the ocean and refilling it will still probably be cheaper safer and more valuable due to the low maintanance filled land requires relative to a floating one.
> Humans are yet to master building cities on land let alone a floating one.
Last I checked people living in cities have a better quality of live than those who don't? We have the longest life spans and are happier than we have ever been in part thanks to cities.
> Dealing with the logistic and infrastructure of a floating city will most likely make it too costly.
I think you're missing the whole point of seasteading. It's about freedom from government. Which will include tax avoidance, even if it's 10 times the cost of a normal city it's still viable if the rich want to move there.
The problem is that hardly anyone is paying so much tax that it would be worth it to do this. any city worth living in is going to have government of its own, and some people living under that government's administration are going to end up feeling disenfranchised by it.
> any city worth living in is going to have government of its own, and some people living under that government's administration are going to end up feeling disenfranchised by it.
Precisely the point of the detached nature of the planned houses. If there are thousands of different (yet most likely similar) governmental systems in place, then there are two options in this situation:
1. Up and leave, travel to a new city which fits better with your current modality.
2. If a large swath of the population is disenfranchised the government must act swiftly in order to keep the city running, otherwise its state will fail and everyone will detach and live elsewhere.
We will no doubt see many more failed systems than long-standing ones, which is essentially part of the appeal in my opinion.
It's ironic how the Bioshock games vaguely follow the Seasteading Institute's plans (Bioshock 1 with Rapture, underwater cities not quite floating islands and Bioshock infinite with floating cities : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7ZWirICmG8)
The best part is, when Randies get what they actually want (http://galtsgulchchile.com/) they end up with what any rational person expects would happen.
I 'm starting to not take these people seriously. It seems to me like some libertarian billionaires do the equivalent of building dick-shaped towers in the arabian desert. Their keep planning and planning, but i never hear about how they are going to defend their cities from pirates or what will be the laws of the land.
While there are significant problems, prirates are not one of the major problems, because unlike oil tankers and cargo ships, they have far more people and don't have a large cargo.
I'm sorry, that book has been banned as it depicts sexual acts with minors.
(I was given Snow Crash 10 years ago. It contained a note explaining that it would become an illegal novel if laws against fictional pedophilia were passed as proposed. They were.)
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They discovered that 1) the county-owned small boat harbor at Half Moon Bay wasn't going to support them by building the on-shore facilities they needed for ferries, 2) Half Moon Bay isn't a US port of entry; anyone coming in from the boat would have to go through San Francisco, and 3) if people are going to work remotely, who needs a boat?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueseed