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We now proceed to get more detailed, and describe the specific approach we feel is the best way to make seasteading happen. While this particular plan will take a lot of work and needs a lot more fleshing out, we do not believe that it involves any miracles. It does not require a billion-dollar investor or loan. It does not require ten thousand (or even a thousand, or a hundred) people to leave their lives and move permanently into the middle of nowhere. It does not require the technology of tomorrow, only of yesterday and today. Nor, we must humbly add, is this because of any particular brilliance on our part. We’ve simply done the research, evaluated the alternatives, and made our choices based on realism, not romance.
We propose the founding of the Seastead Development Corporation, whose goal will be to make money by building seasteads. A small group of devoted people, including SDC’s founders, will be its first customers, buying the Coaststead prototype. SDC’s capitalization beyond this will be quite small.
Coastsead will be permanently moored, most likely in the San Francisco Bay. It will be open to tours by those who are interested in learning more about this new way of life. The goal is publicity and creating a market for the next product, timeshares on Seastead I, a full-size self-sufficient deep-ocean platform. Think of Coaststead as a floating Goodyear Blimp. Having built an actual structure, we will have made more progress than 99% of all nation founding attempts, which gives us credibility.
We believe that there is a substantial market for timeshares in Seastead I. We will not be requiring a whole-life committment, a large amount of money, or dedicated volounteer labor from our customers. We will not ask for a major leap of faith on their part, as a 1,000,000 pound token of the practicality of our vision will be floating under them while they ponder the idea.
When enough deposits have been made and contracts signed with residents, construction on Seastead I will begin. At this point, with the first seastead funded, the hardest part of the work has been done, and the movement can take off on its own steam. Once an operating Seastead I is demonstrating that seasteading is technologically, financially, and politically feasible, interest will continue to grow.
As seacities develop, the seaconomy will grow, and seasteading can become a full-time way of life for an increasing number of people. Different political and legal systems will be experimented with, and the most successful emulated. Seasteads will have become, not a utopia (which is impossible), but an incremental improvement, a freer and more adaptable form of life. That is our goal. But while we must keep it in the back of our mind, our focus should be on the next couple steps. Thus we proceed to your contribution and then a more detailed business plan.
Let us compare this strategy with the strategies being employed by the Atlantis, Millennium, and [New Utopia projects][]. All three of these projects require significant up front investment from investors. Which strategy do you think has a greater chance of happening? A bootstrapping process from small prototype seasteads or going straight to the ultimate city on an artificial island that skips all the intermediate steps? Our opinion is that the bootstrapping process is far more likely to succeed.
Seasteading: A Possible Timeline
Note: This section has not been updated since the founding of [The Seasteading Institute][]. We have added sections containing TSI’s proposed timeline and 2-year strategy for 2009-2010 to supplement the original material.
The Seasteading Institute
Updated March, 2009
The Seasteading Institute’s mission: To establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.
About the Timeline
The purpose of this timeline is to put forth a vision that is more detailed than our mission statement. The intent is not to lock ourselves to a particular set of steps or expectations, but merely to align our organization and community in the same general direction as we begin to walk this path together.
This document describes what might be achieved, but not much detail about how we hope to get there. There are multiple paths to TSI’s vision, and we intend to pursue them all in parallel. For more information about our overall strategy, and how we intend to grow the seasteading movement in the near term, please see our (soon-to-be-published) strategy document.
Obviously, this timeline is highly speculative! It is hard to say how seasteading will unfold even 5 or 10 years out, much less 50 or 100. The goals and approaches described here will almost certainly change substantially as the seasteading movement evolves.
For general background about seasteading and TSI, please see our introduction and FAQ.
Seasteading: A Possible Timeline
2 years from now:
Commercial sector:
Legal landscape:
5 years from now:
10 years from now:
15 years from now:
TSI’s focus:
Growth: Focusing on global public awareness; helping the business world understand the competitive advantages and practical approaches to seasteading, and helping global citizens understand why life on a seastead might be right for them.
Support: Supporting seastead communities in the areas of establishment, law, activism, and civil scale.
20 years from now:
25 years from now:
50 years from now:
75 years from now:
100 years from now:
Note: For legal reasons, it is important to clarify that as a non-profit corporation under U.S. law, TSI is limited in the ways in which it can assist specific for-profit companies, as opposed to the commercial seasteading sector in general.
Note: This section has not been updated since the founding of [The Seasteading Institute][]. We have added sections containing TSI’s proposed timeline and 2-year strategy for 2009-2010 to supplement the original material. The most recent version of the strategy can be [found here online](http://docs.google.com/a/seasteading.org/Doc?docid=dck5q6sr_12cqrdxrf2&hl=en). Below is the strategy as of May 2009: The Seasteading Institute
Organizational Strategy
Updated April, 2009
Contents
1. TSI’s Mission and Role
What are we ultimately trying to achieve, and what is our organization’s part in the solution?
2. Overall Strategy
What’s our overall approach to achieving our mission?
3. Current Strategic Focus
Where should we be focusing our efforts in 2009 and 2010 to best further our mission?
4. Annual Goals
What concrete goals will we set for 2009 and 2010 within our areas of focus?
5. Quarterly Goals
What steps will we take to achieve our annual goals in 2009?
6. Strategic Risks
What are the major risks to our mission, and how will we mitigate them?
7. Conclusion
1. TSI’s Mission and Role
What are we ultimately trying to achieve, and what is our organization’s part in the solution?
TSI’s Mission
TSI’s mission is to further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems. By opening a new frontier, we intend to revolutionize humanity’s capacity to improve quality-of-life worldwide by creating experimentation and competition among governments.
For a more detailed picture of what this might look like, see Seasteading: A Possible Timeline.
TSI’s Role
Ultimately, TSI’s role is to create the conditions that will make seasteading happen, as opposed to making it all happen ourselves. While we fully intend to “get in the trenches” when necessary, our vision is too large and too diverse to be realized by any single organization. It will take thousands of organizations – corporations, non-profits, and communities – to make this a reality. As a non-profit organization, we will welcome these organizations as partners in our goals.
In the early years, we will jump-start the seasteading movement wherever it needs a boost, whether it’s spreading the idea, understanding the legal landscape, or building and selling the first seasteads ourselves. Eventually, other organizations will begin to form and carry the torch, one example being for-profit seastead manufacturers. Long-term, we will continue to pursue initiatives that have a high centralized cost yet provide great benefits to the seasteading movement as a whole, such as advocacy, research, education, and evangelism.
It’s also important to understand that TSI will not operate any actual seasteading communities on the ocean. Central to our vision is the idea of experimentation and competition among new governments and social systems; the power of this vision will be realized only when seasteaders are left to self-organize. Some of the first communities are likely to consist of employees living on a seastead being used to operate a business. Residential communities will create their own means of self-organization (in effect, fledgling governments). Our role is to support these communities however we can, as long as they operate with the consensual participation of their members and are not having an overtly negative impact on the seasteading movement as a whole.
2. Overall Strategy
What’s our overall approach to achieving our mission?
Strategic Principles
Additional detail on some of these principles is discussed in our book.
Incrementalism: Much of our philosophy revolves around incrementalism – starting small and building up over time. Unlike previous projects in this space, we aren’t expecting the first seastead community to form with thousands of citizens, or to build something by securing billions of dollars in funding. We expect the movement to start small, with individuals purchasing single-family seasteads at prices comparable to San Francisco homes, and businesses investing in seastead-based business models that have already been proven on ships. We also approach our political goals incrementally. We won’t start out demanding recognition from other nations, acceptance of our passports, or a seat in the UN; if this comes, it will take decades. We’ll ask only to be left alone to experiment with our pioneering lifestyle in peace.
Transparency: A solid, realistic plan can stand criticism and review. It is the scams, the half-baked, the grandiose but insubstantial, which must hide behind a facade of mystery. In our experience, the less you see up front, the less there is behind. Sure, it’s possible that behind the curtain lies a complex and well-considered plan which is being hidden for some legitimate reason, but the odds are heavily against it. We intend to be transparent in our plans, our successes, and our failures, both to gain our community’s trust, and to benefit from their insight.
Realistic compromise: While our goal is to change the world, we believe that compromise is an important part of the process. We accept that seasteads will not have full freedom to choose their own laws. There will be substantial limitations on what the rest of the world will tolerate. This willingness to compromise does not mean that our new way of life offers no improvements on the old, but we think it’s far better to get what freedom is possible than to fail because of a refusal to compromise. In the long term, focusing our efforts on a few changes at a time is the most effective way to succeed.
Centralized and decentralized: We think that there are significant strengths to be leveraged from both centralized and decentralized approaches to seasteading problems. To cite just one example, we think it’s important to use professional marine engineers to do detailed structure design and analysis. The ocean is an unforgiving and deadly environment, and the tools to test structures that can withstand it are best left in the hands of professionals. That said, the community is driven by a passion and creativity for seasteading that professionals in established industries may not have, and this may help them find unique solutions to problems. We want to tap this creativity through programs and events like contests, Ephemerisle (described below), and so on.
Strategic Paths
We currently see three promising paths to achieve our mission, which we are pursuing in parallel:
1. Seastead-based businesses: Seasteading for profit. Profit is a fantastic incentive for growth, and we expect it to be so for seasteading. The key is finding business models which can create a competitive advantage based on the ocean’s unique physical and legal properties. At our 2009 conference, many such ideas were brainstormed and evaluated in a workshop, some with great promise. Growth of the commercial sector can be a major population driver, as people will immigrate to seasteads for live-aboard jobs.
2. Seastead-based homes: Seasteading for personal freedom. In the near-term, this will involve small single-family seasteads, providing a way for the first steps of the seasteading movement to be taken with personal capital. Eventually, we might see larger seasteads which communities purchase and move to as a group. We can seed the path of seastead-based homes from existing communities: live-aboard boaters, libertarians / Free State Project enthusiasts, and so on. As comfort, safety, and cost improve, this will be accessible to more and more people. Small residential seasteads have the additional benefit of risk dispersion – there is not one big seastead for a hostile government to shut down.
3. Seastead-based festivals: Seasteading for recreation. We call them “Ephemerisles.” Picture a temporary festival, its spirit similar in some ways to Burning Man – lots of people, lots of fun, creative art, and a good deal of engineering ingenuity. Ephemerisles can start in calm waters, and gradually move to international waters over the course of a few years. This path has two key advantages: First, the power of experiences to change peoples’ mind is substantial – Ephemerisles will make seasteading “real” for a large number of people who wouldn’t otherwise “get it.” Second, it lets us harness the community’s creativity to discover and solve practical challenges about the actual, on-the-water seasteading lifestyle. In the long-term, Ephemerisles could grow in duration and size until they gradually become de facto cities.
3. Current Strategic Focus
Where should we be focusing our efforts in 2009 and 2010 to best further our mission?
Focus
What this is
Why this is a focus
1. Awareness and community
Increasing the number of people in the world who are aware of seasteading and their degree of engagement with the movement.
As a non-profit, our success depends heavily on donations of both time and money from others. To find them, we need to quickly grow our community.
This includes both fostering positive public awareness (media coverage, outreach to partner organizations, etc.), and especially fostering the core community of passionate people who are actively involved in the seasteading movement. As a new non-profit, this must be one of our top priorities.
2. Seeding businesses
Working to help a few pioneering ocean-based businesses (which should be adaptable to seasteads) get off to a successful start.*
With seastead-based businesses as one of the most likely areas of growth in the movement’s first decade, this is an important area. Without any seasteads operating yet, it’s too early to start actually building a business to run on one – but we can start with boats, focusing on business models that would have an additional competitive advantage when transitioned to seasteads.
3. Engineering
R&D and prototyping of seastead designs, both centrally through TSI and through distributed community efforts.
We think it’s extremely important to create real physical seasteads as soon as possible. This promotes public awareness, improves our understanding of what challenges we’ll face, and ensures that we don’t get caught in the trap of endlessly thinking rather than doing.
4. Legal exploration
Investigation of legal questions pertaining to seasteading.
Addressing the legal and political issues facing seasteading is going to be an extremely long process with many surprises. It’s important that we start to understand the landscape now.
* For legal reasons, it is important to clarify that as a non-profit corporation under U.S. law, TSI is limited in the ways in which it can assist specific for-profit companies, as opposed to the commercial seasteading sector in general.
4. Annual Goals What concrete goals will we set for 2009 and 2010 within our areas of focus?
The seasteading movement is evolving very quickly, and we’re constantly exploring many areas which might yield important strategic developments. A major source of additional funding, a new ocean-based business idea, or discoveries in the legal landscape are just a few examples. However, windy seas are no reason not to chart a course, and so we’ve laid out some key goals based on the landscape as we see it today. Even if we should need to change these, it’s likely that our near-term strategies will involve many of the same elements described here.
2009 Goals: Build a foundation for the seasteading movement and community
Average at least 3500 website visits per day by end of year
Seeding businesses
The first boat-based business which is directly adaptable to a seastead has secured funding
Engineering
Publish a new (post-ClubStead) seastead design
Launch a community-driven R&D program
Complete design work for a prototype seastead to be placed in the San Francisco Bay
Legal exploration
Produce an informal whitepaper giving a brief overview of seasteading’s legal landscape
Financial
2010 goals: Make seasteading a reality
At least 1 individual is living full-time on a seastead
Successfully hold Ephemerisle 2010, in conditions closer to the high seas than Ephemerisle 2009
Have at least 250 paying members of TSI and 15 regional chapters
Seeding businesses
The first boat-based business which is directly adaptable to a seastead is successfully operating
Engineering
Build a prototype seastead in the San Francisco Bay
Legal exploration
Produce a formal report with an initial assessment of seasteading’s legal landscape, and well-researched options for navigating it
Financial
5. Quarterly Goals
What steps will we take to achieve our annual goals in 2009?
Q2 2009: Continue focusing on community growth
Website improvements: Front page redesign, blog launches & upgrades
Seeding businesses
Create a strategy for how to most effectively foster the commercial seasteading sector as a non-profit*
Engineering
Begin design work for next model of seastead
Launch an Ephemerisle “Do-it-yourself (DIY) seasteading” contest to promote the DIY movement
Legal exploration
Complete broad overview whitepaper of legal issues, challenges, milestones
Financial
Prepare fundraising program (potential key donors, strategies to contact, moneybombs, etc.)
Administrative
Complete pitches to book publishers
Engineering
Create a high-level plan for prototype construction (budget, funding, personnel, etc.)
Financial
Launch targeted donor appeal program
Administrative
Build out our Board of Directors with new high-level seasteading supporters
Q4 2009: 2009 Conference and Ephemerisle and new seastead design work
Hold 2009 conference and 2009 Ephemerisle (a floating festival for seasteaders)
Launch a Free State Project-style program for people interested in living on seasteads
Seeding businesses
The first ship-based business which is directly adaptable to a seastead has secured funding
Engineering
Complete and publish new seastead design
Test community DIY seastead designs at Ephemerisle
Legal exploration
Produce second whitepaper, giving a more detailed description of seasteading’s legal landscape and strategies
Financial
Reach $100,000 in donations
6. Strategic Risks
What are the major risks to our mission, and how will we mitigate them?
In this section, we explore what we consider to be the major risks to the successful development of the seasteading movement. For each risk, we describe it in detail, assess its likelihood, and most importantly, explain what steps can be taken to mitigate it.
Risk: Intervention from existing governments may make it difficult or impossible for seasteads to innovate politically, or even to operate at all.
Explanation: At the beginning of the seasteading movement, many seasteads are likely to operate close to existing countries for reasons of safety, economics, and convenience. These seasteads will be subject to some laws from the neighboring country, whose jurisdiction extends, in some cases, up to 200 miles past their shore. That country’s government might interfere with the seastead’s affairs if the seastead breaks their laws – intentionally (which TSI wouldn’t recommend, but might happen regardless) or unintentionally (since seasteads will, to some extent, be operating in uncharted legal territory.)
Even if a law is not being broken, these neighboring governments might feel a seastead is breaking the spirit of their laws in a way that adversely affects the nation’s interests. An extreme example would be a seastead which sits right outside the border of that country’s legal jurisdiction and starts manufacturing and exporting an illegal drug to that country. One can also imagine countless less black-or-white examples where the likelihood or nature of a government response is harder to predict. For instance, what if the drug in question is prescription painkillers? What if the seastead is a hundred miles out of the nation’s jurisdiction, or a thousand? What if the drug in question is MDMA, and is being used for therapeutic purposes to treat PTSD?
Yet another possible cause of government intervention is special interests. One example of this is a seastead-based business that begins to take away market share from powerful, entrenched industries in a nearby nation. These industries can obviously influence political policy, even if laws are not being broken and public opinion is supportive.
Likelihood: In our opinion, this is probably the largest risk the seasteading movement faces.
The risk is greater when seasteads are closer to an existing country. Because being close to existing countries is so beneficial to the success of early seasteads, this risk requires careful attention during seasteading’s early years.
Mitigation:
*
* *Understand our legal status and don’t break the law. Flagrantly disregarding the law is a great way to invite intervention – whether for breaking the law itself, or just as a convenient excuse to act on some other motivation.
Realistic compromise. This is one of our strategic principles, and it strongly applies here. It’s better to have whatever additional freedoms is practical, than to lose them all because we’re unwilling to compromise.
*Proactively discuss potential issues with neighboring countries. *In most cases, transparency is more likely to help a seastead than to hurt them – if a seastead tries to hide something from a government, they will almost certainly find out eventually anyway, and be angrier when they do.
Establish positive-sum relationships with neighboring countries. Nations, like people, respond to incentives, and if we can further a nation’s interests, they’ll be less likely to interfere with us. Trade, especially that which provides valuable and unique goods and services to influential people in the nation in question, is one way to do this.
Diversify the movement’s risk. Encourage the establishment of seasteads around the world, so the movement is not overly dependent on the whims of a few nations.
Achieve greater autonomy. Long-term, as seasteads become more self-sufficient, proximity to existing countries is less important. Moving further away will greatly reduce the risk of intervention from existing governments.
Risk: Seasteads might prove too cost-prohibitive to catch on for the foreseeable future.
Explanation: Low cost fuels growth, and it’s hard to be certain about the cost of a technology that hasn’t actually been built yet. Cost issues might arise at any stage of seasteading’s development. For example, we could discover unforeseen technical challenges while constructing the first seastead that could drive the cost up. Or we might discover that artificial breakwaters, one of the key ideas for building a large seastead city at a reasonable cost, are not practical.
Likelihood: This is a moderate risk, though not an extreme one. Much of the technology is very similar to that used for cruise ships, which can house people for as cheap as $60/night (though admittedly with less comfort than on land). We have done a detailed engineering design that projects the cost of a hotel resort built on a seastead ($259/ft^2) will be substantially less than home prices in San Francisco ($517/ft^2 as of April 2009). Less analysis has been done on breakwaters so far, so this is a larger risk.
Mitigation:
Professional, detailed engineering design. This help us understand the cost of building seasteads with a greater degree of confidence, so that we can identify and address any risky areas.
Tap the community’s creativity where conventional engineering approaches fail. The Ansari X PRIZE is a great example of this. By offering a $10 million prize, the X PRIZE Foundation was able to spur innovative spacecraft designs that could be built for drastically less money than they could by the massive government agencies who had always pursued spaceflight.
Risk: There might be a lack of demand in using seasteads for residential and/or commercial purposes.
Explanation: For a number of reasons, seasteading just might not appeal to very many people. The early pioneers in particular will face a difficult lifestyle, and that cost might prove so limiting that seasteading never takes off. Perhaps more importantly, people have very strong ties to the area in which they live. Their extended families, and personal and professional social networks, are largely based in a particular area. Finally, many land-based governments are very established and very stable, which creates security that may not be present in early seastead city-states. This is appealing to many people – even ones who don’t like their government.
Likelihood: The risk of the “high cost of pioneering” does not seem particularly high; pioneers have always faced a difficult lifestyle, yet they have settled new frontiers regardless. As new frontiers build up, they become less risky, and more and more people have found it worthwhile to settle them, seeking whatever unique properties that frontier offers.
The risk of low demand due to “land stickiness” is a moderate risk. People have a great deal invested in their existing lifestyles.
Mitigation:
Risk: There might be massive public resistance to the idea of seasteading.
Explanation: This might happen in a number of ways. Some people simply find certain lifestyle decisions morally objectionable, even when those decisions don’t affect them. In this context, a system which creates more freedom for people might be viewed negatively. Other people might fear that seasteads will cause them, or people they know, more harm than good, due to unsafe conditions, facilitating unhealthy behavior, or providing a haven for groups with dangerous motives.
Likelihood: Early press about seasteading has been extremely positive, which is a good sign. However, it is virtually certain that major concerns will escalate as seasteading changes from a fun, creative idea in the far-off future to something more tangible and immediate. Concerns are possible in almost any area that is more heavily regulated in first-world countries than they would be on a seastead.
Mitigation:
Risk: There could be an accident or disaster on a seastead with major human casualties or financial damage.
Explanation: The ocean is a dangerous environment. There are massive waves, hurricanes, and even pirates. If major disaster strikes a large seastead, the PR backlash could be very damaging. Examples might be deaths at an early Ephemerisle festival, a large seastead destroyed in a hurricane, or an act of organized human violence against a seastead.
Likelihood: Most of these scenarios are unlikely to become issues. Our book talks at length about effectively handling waves and storms, and the minimal risk that pirates pose to seasteads. However, they are not impossible.
Mitigation:
7. Conclusion
With this strategy in place, we expect 2009 and 2010 to be an extremely productive and exciting time for the seasteading movement. Grounded in clear strategic principles – incrementalism, transparency, realistic compromise, and balanced centralization and decentralization – we’ve charted a path that’s going to make real progress. This path is clearly defined, realistic in scope, and has measurable results.
Within two years, we’ll see the first seastead floating in the San Francisco Bay. We’ll see the commercial seasteading sector in its infancy, beginning operation on ships. Real progress will be made understanding our legal and political challenges. And the community will really take off; Ephemerisles will be happening, a large TSI membership will be built, and we’ll have lots of strong, wide-reaching press coverage. What’s more, we’ll be well-positioned to lead the movement into its next phase, with a strong team built here at TSI and significant funding from new major donors.
In short, we’ll be well on our way to making this vision a reality.
We invite your feedback on our strategy. Please feel free to send any comments to strategy@seasteading.org.
Ephemerisle: A Festival Of Commerce And Self-Government
Imagine being at the first Burning Man…except it’s someplace even bleaker, harsher, and wide open, with less rules. Where it can scale without local law enforcement getting involved. Like I said, if we do this thing…this is some seriously crazy shit, folks. If you like crazy, and anarchism, and changing the world, you ain’t gonna wanna miss it. This is where it all begins to be real. Ideally w/o too much loss of life :).
I want to live in freedom (by which I mean at least libertarianism, if not anarcho-capitalism). Unfortunately, no such political system is implemented on a significant scale anywhere in the world. Fortunately, there are lots of other people who claim to be interested in the same thing. It seems like you ought to be able to just start a new country (read more on my desire/reasons to do this). Unfortunately, it turns out to be hard. I mean, really hard. Sealand somewhat succeeded, but Oceania, SeaState, Transtopia, The Freedom Ship, and Laissez-Faire City are all examples of visions that have so far failed to become reality.
I think that these projects all suffered from too much ambition. They attempted to tackle a difficult problem all at once, rather than dividing it into realistically small pieces. Realistically small, for a country, may not merely mean space, it may also mean time. Rather than attempting to solve the paradox of finding good land that no government wants, or the thorny engineering problems of building economical barge-cities or floating platforms, I propose the Ephemerisle: a temporary, autonomous, anarcho-capitalist community in international waters (fuller description).
Many critics of anarcho-capitalism have pointed out, quite correctly, that it is an almost purely theoretical system. How do we know that it can work if its never been tested? This argument makes sense, and given the difficulty of convincing people to move to some remote corner of the earth in order to test out a new political system, the question is: how can we get there gradually? In an interview, David Friedman proposed one method: “My ideal path to anarcho-capitalism would be one in which private institutions gradually replaced government institutions, so that when the state finally vanished nobody noticed. An entertaining tongue-in-cheek version of such a society is described in the science fiction novel Snow Crash. “
While the sit and wait attitude is easy, it is slow and not guaranteed to work. Governments have managed to keep a pretty tight grip so far. The Ephemerisle approach is more aggressive than just continuing to develop theory, more timely than agitating for our neighbors to see the light, and more realistic than trying to convince a government to give up sovereignty at an affordable price.
The Ephemerisle is a proposed gathering in international waters for the purpose of experiencing freedom and learning more about anarcho-capitalist interaction. Basically, a bunch of people in boats travel to someplace outside governmental jurisdiction and hang out for a week or two. Kinda like the various ship city and found your own libertarian country projects that have been attempted, or the Raft from Snow Crash, except temporary and initially much smaller in scope. It’s like the Burning Man or Maker Faire, but instead of being about artistic self-expression or technology, it’s about radical political expression and DIY politics and societies.
Bold bulleted buzzwords: * Experimental - Rather than just theorizing about political systems, lets try them out.
Temporary - Because it will be easier to get people to go someplace for a week than to move there permanently.
Autonomous - It is the quest for freedom which is the Ephemerisle’s inspiration. How can we truly experience freedom or explore anarcho-capitalism within the boundaries of a coercive government?
Anarcho-capitalism - A theoretical political system based on freedom and consensual, contractual interactions. Perfect for governing an eclectic, temporary gathering subject to no land-based jurisdiction.
Community - By gathering and inspiring lovers of freedom, the Ephemerisle will help them on the path towards eventual permanent autonomy.
Maybe anarcho-capitalism doesn’t work. Maybe we really do have more freedom inside national boundaries. Maybe freedom isn’t worth the loss of safety. Maybe no one is really that interested in moving to a new country. Maybe it will be too dangerous. Maybe existing governments won’t permit autonomy.
Let’s find out the size and shape of the obstacles we face. All of these potential problems seem, to me, more surmountable than converting the american public to anything resembling libertarianism.
Here are some brainstorms I’ve had about neat things that could happen at this event. Some of them may not be realistic, especially for the first Ephemerisle, but hopefully they will serve to inspire others to help turn visions into reality.
Intranet - This would be a fundamental enabling technology for the event. Communication would greatly aid market-based coordination and the anarcho-capitalist legal system. Wireless seems like a good way to implement this, probably 802.11, which can get a 1mile radius on a flat surface with a high, amplified antenna. A protocol that was conducive to cryptography and robust against malicious attacks would be a plus.
Digital Cash - With a data network, digital cash becomes possible.
Digital Reputations - An eBay-like digital reputation system could be developed, and used to help enforce court decisions and consensual interactions. Maintain a web of trust so people can see what links of trust they have to each other.
Lots of other digital-society stuff like arbitrators, certificates, and timestamps.
Anarcho-Capitalist institutions - The above would make it easier to interact through a market-based system. Some a-c institutions would be useful (perhaps even necessary), others fun:
Private Protection Organizations - there will be a need for rule-enforcement, protection of people, protection of goods, and perhaps even protection of the entire event.
Arbitrators/Judges - to resolve disputes.
Courts - and associated legal systems .
Private Currencies - preferably backed by something.
Electricity - Might be useful to sell. Can be generated from solar, wind, waves, or gasoline (although negative noise & pollution externalities may be an issue).
Radar - might be a useful part of national defence. But who pays for it? Perhaps they sell subscriptions to the information for fun, or provide early alerting in case of an incoming flotilla of US Navy vessels.
Drugstore - No prescription necessary.
University - talks/classes of interest to attendees could be given, free or for pay.
Casino - What could be more precious than the freedom to risk money with negative mathematical expectation?
Mail-order goods - Forget to bring something? No problem! Have a company that finds out when lots of people are leaving and contracts with them to take additional goods, if necessary. If you run out of your favorite brand of toothpaste, their continental agents can buy it and get it to the next people who are leaving, and you’ll have it in a few days.
Floating Green Tortoise - like the Green Tortoise bus which goes to Burning Man so that people can get there without arranging their own transportation. Someone just rents a ship w/ lots of room for passengers and sells berths.
Other events - This is a little science-fictiony, but one could certainly see Ephemerisles becoming like a modern carnival or trade gathering. Rather than being a fixed-location yearly event, gatherings could be announced for various locations at various times. People would go to whichever were most convenient, and spend a week or two doing conducting business which is best done away from nations.
Burning Man
Burning Man was part of the inspiration for this idea. Here are some similarities and differences between BM and the Ephemerisle.
side from the anti-commerce element, its a lot of people expressing their creativity without the normal shackles of government. In the early years they had a drive by shooting range. They shot mortars. The sky is lit up with lasers and flare guns. I floated into the air on a stack of helium balloons. Its fucking amazing!
Seeing what people create at burning man is part of what inspired me to think that a floating ancapistan can actually happen. And would be cool if it did happen. Here you have this enormous artistic effort, in the middle of nowhere, in a harsh environment, happening just because you let people do whatever the fuck they want. Wow!
If people put the amount of time and effort into trying to create ancapistan that they put into making cool shit for burning man, we’d all be having this conversation on a floating platform while we smoked phat joints, fired our guns into the air, and listened to selections from our pirated archive of every song ever made. These people don’t sit around and talk, they build cool shit, and lots of it. They build their dreams, instead of whining about how things aren’t how they want.
Personally, the art aspect is what bothers me about it. I stayed home last year and worked on the seasteading book while my roomates were there. Because its a festival about fun art, not changing the world, and I think the latter is more important. People’s efforts are directed into temporary efforts, which is ultimately less valuable.
When I say “less valuable”, I am neither saying “less valuable to me”, nor saying that other people must have the same values as me. What I think (I could be wrong) is that, measured by whatever standards or values all the people impacted have, temporary things will generally have less positive impact than permanent ones. Because they don’t have as long to make an impact.
I agree that a consequence of art is its impact on observers. But it seems to me that art which is not destroyed after a week will generally impact more observers than art which is destroyed after a week. It will create more ripples. For example, I think community is great - but I find, say, the permanent community of the ABL far more rewarding than the temporary community of BM.
I am not saying that burning man is not worthwhile. I think its awesome. I think it has some great influence. But I question whether it gets the most influence for the effort expended. I worry that temporary = inefficient.
I also worry that by having something like that for one week a year, people are satisfied to not change their normal lives. They compartmentalize off their desire to experiment with alternate ways of living and do it as a yearly vacation. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it inspires them to make changes in the rest of their lives (as it did for me).
Commenter: I think you are making the assumption that people are wasting time and energy on art that would otherwise be spent on changing the world. (I won’t get into whether art can change the world.) I think that these are not the same drives. People who go to burning man may well spend plenty of other time trying to change the world. Perhaps going is instead an inspiration or rejuvenation from how they spend the rest of their lives. You felt you had limited time, so you worked on your book instead of going. But there’s no reason why you can’t both write your book and go to the festival.
Ephemerisle: Burning Man Part of the inspiration for Ephemerisle is the annual Burning Man festival. Similarities: • annual gathering • harsh conditions • crazy technology • inspiration for the rest of the year However, there are some important differences between the concepts: Burning Man Ephemerisle Focus on free creative expression Focus on free political expression Open-ended, no eventual goal A stepping point on the way to establishing a free nation Rejects money and commerce Enthusiastically embraces money and commerce Expression severely limited by american law (at least, now that its big) Expression limited only by the contracts you choose, the physical world, and the power of your resources and imagination Participants protected by US law enforcement and BM rangers Participants only protected by their own resources and contracts High ticket prices pay for juice to local law enforcement, insurance, rangers, and medical facilities Ain’t no one gonna make you pay for nothin’ you don’t want ‘round here.
We are tentatively planning to hold the first Ephemerisle July 4th weekend, 2009, off the coast of San Diego / LA.
The tricky thing about implementation is walking the line between decentralized anarchic participation and centralized planning. For example, tying up a bunch of boats together seems unlikely to make for a great festival. It is difficult to tie up boats without docking, moving between them will require a lot of climbing, there is no centralized space - it’s not a good foundation. Much better would be to construct a temporary centralized area which includes a marina, and rent space on this “land”, berths at the marina, and so forth. A great combination of anarchy and decentralization would be to have standards for interlocking land areas, or even instructions for manufacturing standardized land modules. That way people could bring their own land, and all could be hooked up. The organizers of the event would guarantee a certain base area with some central facilities.
This is a great example of a good spot on the anarchy / planning curve. The organizers come up with a standard land module, and guarantee a certain quantity - but anyone can make / bring their own.
This is, of course, a big project. Fortunately, no one person or institution needs to handle it. Ephemerisle will be implemented by minimizing explicit centralization and maximizing communication between event participants. We won’t sell monopolies, but we’ll try to provide ways for people to tell whether anyone else will be competing with them. We won’t assign jobs, we’ll just suggest things that would be nice to have done. Doing a job will often be tied into profiting from it, although doing things for the good of the project is also encouraged.
As an example, consider the question of whether the world of coercive governments will allow such an event to happen. What exactly are the laws of the sea? What agreements cover the use of international waters? These are good questions, and we’ve found a few web references on the subject. We’d love to see these issues explored in further detail, textual references found, webpages built. But not only do we not want to do this work, we don’t want to delegate it either. More accurately, we want to neither do nor delegate the large number of things that are around this level of importance. Hopefully someone else will be interested. Maybe they’ll charge for the resulting document. Maybe they’ll give it away. Either way, we avoid the issue.
Methods for communication are the next step. A mailing list/web forum to begin discussion, with initial discussion focused on feasibility, and then on the meta-techniques of how to provide the right framework to let the project grow.
Seasteading Future
Could lead to seasteading future even aside from any other method. Independent and parallel. People discover that Ephemerisles are good places to conduct commerce, let loose, etc. They grow in frequency, length, and size. Eventually, you have one that just never disbands.
Even if the rest of seasteading fails, this would be a pretty cool thing to gift to the world. This thing could be huge, partly because (unlike Burning Man) it would encourage, rather than restrict, commerical activity. One can easily imagine these offshore gatherings starting to happen regularly around the world, where people get together to temporarily escape their oppressive governments, and trade free of regulation. Perhaps centered around existing seastead colonies - but greatly augmenting their size temporarily.
The above was written as the inspiration for Ephemerisle, before planning began. This section is reserved for major updates about the actual implementation, to be filled in just before this book goes to press.
(Tentative plan: first Ephemerisle in San Francisco Bay over July 4th weekend 2009. We are starting in sheltered waters due to the difficulties of creating artificial land and mooring boats to it in open waters)