| Prev | Up | Next |
| General Questions | Further Questions | Alternative Strategies |
People often seem quick to tell us why our ideas won’t work, which is very helpful of them. However, we’d prefer not to keep hearing the same reasons, so here are some of the common objections that we have already considered.
Some of our reasons for being pleased with the cost estimates from our initial spar platform design, which can be found on the engineering page:
The costs that we are talking about (say $200 - $400 / ft2 final cost to residents) are not out of line with first world house prices in metropolitan. It’s not as cheap as Costa Rica, but it isn’t as expensive as Silicon Valley either. If these estimates are right, we can build brand-new sovereign territory for a cost similar to the housing of many upper-class Americans. To us, this seems incredibly encouraging!
It is certainly true that you could build some kind of platform, like Rich Sowa’s plastic bottle island, on a shoestring, but it is unlike to serve as the base for a new way of life. (It’s already been destroyed once by a hurricane). If you disagree, you are of course welcome to take whatever approach you’d like, and we’d love to see what happens.
Some of our favored options for reducing the price:
We are not ignoring those with less money, and we believe that in the long-run, they will benefit from seasteading also. But it takes cash to start the ball rolling.
Variations on this theme are quite common from libertarians who are sympathetic with our goals but pessimisstic about our chances. For example, Rex Rhino comments on Marginal Revolution:
Who wants to make a bet that the same die-hard peaceniks (not that there is any problem with being a peacenik in and of itself) who condemn say military action in Afghanistan despite the U.S. being attacked, will suddenly call for military action the second someone sets up some sort of tax-haven free-market seasteading community?
Don’t get me wrong, I think seasteading is great. But the second it becomes viable, expect to be militarily annihilated with almost universal popular support. All you need to get the right wing in line is some fear mongering about drugs and terrorists, and all you need to get the left wing in line is fear mongering about tax revenue for the welfare state.
If the left and right wing agree to attack you, you are so so dead. Seasteading is a nice idea, but unless you have some sort of super weapon, or you can go under the sea where conventional military can’t attack you, you will be lucky to survive.
We are certainly worried about interference. We believe, however, that only by holding up unrealistic goals can one prove that this project is doomed to failure. So here is our favorite response:
We are not seeking a perfect libertarian paradise where we can do whatever we want without any interference. We are simply looking for a significant improvement. To see how large a gain this might be, look at current states and consider the union of available freedoms.
For example, there are countries in Europe (Switzerland, The Netherlands) with fairly lax drug laws (social freedom). There are tax havens (Luxembourg, Bahamas) with very low tax rates (economic freedom). Unfortunately, the drug-tolerant countries tend to be left-wing and have high taxes, while tax havens are more right-wing, socially conservative, and generally tiny countries. As libertarians, we feel that the combination of these two types of freedoms is worth striving for, even if both are restricted to the levels currently being tolerated by the powers-that-be. Such a state would be more libertarian than any currently in existence, without pushing the legal envelope.
And in practice, we think we can get even more freedom than this. Countries really do have a great deal of leeway in their internal affairs, after all. A libertarian seastead nation should easily be able to have no zoning laws or building codes, low or no taxes, no import/export tariffs, few restrictions on weapons, local consumption of marijuana, no minimum wage, no legislated work week, no coerced welfare system, no eminent domain and many other items from the laundy list of libertarian demands.
Sure, there are some definite limitations. Actions that are seen as a serious threat to the security or sovereignty of a nation are likely to bring military force. Some examples are:
Letting terrorists launder money
Producing drugs which are exported to countries where they are illegal.
Researching or building WMD, particularly nuclear capabilities.
But so what? Libertopia is not an option, and we’ll take what we can get. We don’t think the list of proscribed activities is actually very long, and a seastead which cooperates with existing nations in trying to stop these activities still seems to us like a pretty great place to be.
We know we say this a lot, but it’s worth also keeping in mind that there is no one way to do seasteading. Every group is welcome to try different rules. Some of those rules will annoy existing countries enough that they’ll do something about it. Others will not. There may be severe consequences to individuals, which is unfortunate, but the system as a whole will learn from its mistakes and move on. So while it is worth discussing how much freedom we can reasonably expect to get, it’s not like we all have to make the same choices about how much risk of interference to run, or like the whole movement will live or die based on whether anyone ever gets invaded. This is a decentralized movement, which makes it robust.
We think this is a great question, and we’ve often asked it ourselves. The keys to our answer are timesharing and incrementalism
Incrementalism is an answer because we never need to find 10,000 people willing to take the plunge. We only need to find the core of enthusiasts to start, say 10 people. Then the 40 people who are willing to move now that there are 10 people. Then the 100 that will move because there are 40, and so on. it’s not that there is no one willing to be the first, just that there aren’t very many. But that’s ok because we don’t need very many to bootstrap.
Having many residents be timesharers or hotel guests, by letting people participate part-time, is crucial as well. Rather than moving to this floating platform, people can just visit, which many more will be willing to do, as there is a gargantuan difference in the level of committment. This is especially valuable in converting the skeptics and realists, who will have reasonable doubts about such an ambitious venture. While there are 52 weeks in a year, our anecdotal surveys suggest that the ratio of people willing to do a new country full-time vs. 1 week a year is at least 1,000:1, possibly much higher. Hence many initial residents will either be guests or support staff.
One version of the question points out the importance of network effects as a threat to the incremental approach. (A network effect is when something is valuable based on the number of interconnections, which go up as the square of the number of participants). While network effects can be important, if they were truly incompatible with incrementalism, there would be no networks that started small. Yet almost all networks (big cities, land and cell-phone networks, websites like Google and eBay) that are cited as examples of the importance of network effects started small, growing from a tiny seed one piece at a time. The big, successful networks have both incremental properties, which allowed them to grow, and network properties, which make them more and more useful as they grow.
So, sure, a new society will have network effects, which will make it hard to grow at the beginning. Just like any new venture. Which is why, like any new venture, it will need to start out appealing to niche markets that are currently under-served. The application of this principle to sovereign floating cities seems rather straightforward.
Some reader comments:
“What would make this seastead more attractive to potential investors/buyers/renters than a beautiful piece of pristine oceanfront property in a cheap Caribbean paradise”
“this project will have to compete in the marketplace. And since there are lots of pristine paradises left in the world at cheap prices, why would one choose a flimsy little artificial floating platform…with dubious politico-legal status, if one can have a romantic piece of paradise with real solid ground under one’s feet. “
What will people do on a seastead?
Seasteads and islands have different kinds of romance, and will appeal to different people. As long as we can find enough people who think seasteads are romantic, it doesn’t matter if many prefer islands. Niche markets are not necessarily a bad thing for a business, if they aren’t served well by other options, and they are big enough niches.
Some reasons people might find a seastead vacation attractive:
In general, the answer is to leverage the uniqueness of seasteads. And if that only appeals to a tiny fraction of the world, that’s still plenty to start with. (Note, for example, that Burning Man is remote and uncomfortable, yet has all three of these characteristics).
Also keep in mind that this question ignores [Dynamic Geography][], our central thesis about why societies on the ocean will work better than those on land. Sure, oceanfront property in the third world is cheaper and prettier, but there is a reason that most people who can afford to live in the first world instead. Political and social institutions matter. If we can provide an innovative society that efficiently provides government services, we believe that productive people will flock to it as a place to live and work - and save those Caribbean “paradises” for vacation.
As for what people will do onboard, our first response is “the same things anyone else does”, but perhaps we don’t get out much. As long as there’s an internet connection, it might take us quite awhile to notice that we were on a small, isolated platform.
The simplest answer is to point out other similar lifestyles. For exampe, vacationers will be able to do pretty much anything they could do on a cruise ship, and they can focus on the unique activities offered onboard, since anything else they need to do can be done at home. Resort employee on a seastead will find it much like working on a cruise ship.
In terms of permanent residents, it will be more like the many people who live in isolated, rural areas, or to the live-aboard boaters. While such a life does not appeal to everyone, those who like it rarely seem to be bored. And permanent residents can always take a vacation elsewhere if they need to be surrounded by masses of people. Note that the closer a seastead is to land, the more it becomes possible to just go to a major city for the day or the weekend. This makes seasteading even more like just living in the outback, and is one of many reasons a CoastStead seems like a good place to start.
Piracy is still a problem on the high seas, but does not seem particularly worrisome for a seastead. It seems to mainly consist of two types.
Much piracy is small-scale theft - for example, of the 335 attacks reported in 2001, only 73 involved guns. 16 ships were hijacked, and 21 people killed (all but one in asian waters) [ICC2001]. A sea-city will be much too large for this kind of criminal. Even an individual seastead - a concrete tower - will be a much tougher target than a luxury yacht. This type of piracy is mainly notable for being vivid and exciting - it is rare enough that oceans are still full of private pleasure craft. Still, we recommend that small seasteads avoid the few pirate hotspots (Southeast Asia and Somalia).
Some piracy is done by large organized groups who capture entire ships and their goods (often tens of millions of dollars worth) to be fenced. They use forged documents to obtain a new load of cargo from legitimate shippers, and then steal it too. It is worth noting that these groups specifically target container ships, not cruise ships, which is not at all surprising. After all, a container ship has only a few crew and vast amounts of cargo, nicely boxed and ready to be fenced. A cruise ship has far less saleable stuff, and far more people to deal with. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if there was 100 times the “crew per $ of movable cargo” for a cruise ship vs. a container ship, so it’s no wonder that thieves focus on the latter! The cost/benefit analysis just doesn’t work out for this kind of crime:
In other words, why attack a platform of people who would be defending their homes when you could attack a cargo boat with a few lightly armed sailors who would much rather not die to protect some corporation’s cargo?
One response to this is to worry about ransom. Well, there are plenty of high-end cruise ships with multimillionaires on board, and we’ve never heard about one being hijacked for ransom. Just like us, these cruise ships use low-tax, low-regulation flags, so it isn’t like they have special protection.
As of 2008, Somalian pirates have been in the news quite a bit, most recently capturing an oil tanker. This does not change our analysis in the slightest. An oil tanker has few crew and an incredibly valuable, easy to fence cargo. This is very different from a seastead. Furthermore, the Somalian pirates have small boats and operate out of Somalia as a base - in a CNN article they brag about operating as far as 80 miles from Somalia. It turns out, amazingly, that very little of the ocean is within 80 miles of Somalia. As long as seasteads avoid Somalia and mount some small arms, we have nothing to worry about from pirates.
If you’d like to see data, I encourage you to check out A map of 2008 pirate attacks. You can click through to the details, and notice that, for example, most occur while anchored and involve no weapons (ie robbers sneak onto the ship to steal things). These banal attacks are the equivalent of someone stealing your car stereo - not pleasant, but not the sort of life-threatening horror that would render the seas uninhabitable. Also notice the complete lack of pirates in the North Atlantic and North Pacific.
The armed and organized groups which seasteads should be the most worried about are the navies of traditional governments, as you can see in the Politics section. Seastead defense is discussed in the infrastructure section. If you compare the size, scope, and sophistication of pirates to that of government navies, it’s just ludicrous. Like a guy selling watches on a street corner vs. Microsoft!