This is a basic Frequently Asked Questions file for seasteading. Most sections originated from email responses to questions. If you have additional questions, feel free to email them or add them as comments to our blog. We’ll enter the frequently asked ones here. This material serves to supplement the remainder of the text, which contains more detailed information.
“Seasteading” means to homesteading the high seas. In other words, build permanent dwellings on the ocean. A seastead is a structure specifically designed for the purpose of long-term living in the marine environment. On the right you can see our conception of what such a structure looks like. More detailed pictures are in the section on our design.
In the short-run, for political freedom and the thrill of pioneering. In the long run, to create a laboratory for innovation in social and political systems. In neither case is any particular ideology necessary: seasteads will empower people with a wide variety of beliefs to experience self-government and serve as examples (good and bad) for future systems. Other advantages include utilizing barren portions of the earth’s surface and preparing for colonization of other planets.
Some people think our cost estimates are surprisingly cheap, others that they are tremendously expensive and we are restricting our nation to the very rich. So clearly price is a matter of viewpoint! Our basic view is that we want the lowest cost which is compatible with our goals, including safety and comfort. 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. If you disagree, you are of course welcome to take whatever approach you’d like.
Some of our reasons for being pleased with our current cost estimates:
We think there will still be some room for people with lower incomes to participate by renting space onboard. Unfortunately, this is more difficult in our situation because seasteads can’t be built with low-interest bank mortgages like houses. But this stems from the unique nature of the project and will be difficult to avoid. 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.
Also see the related question: How will you pay for seasteads?
A wonderful reader writes
It’s really great that you invest so much time and efforts in the Seasteading project! Maybe you should consider creating some fund or Paypal account where people like me can send (small, as i live in a semi-socialist country) donations to show our respect and to cover some of the costs like your days off work, hosting and alike?
We are currently establishing a 501c3 nonprofit to be able to receive donations, so hold that thought! For now, we’d rather that supporters save their money until we have a formal organization set up, with memberships, and products to offer. Products / membership schwag will include books, bathstead models and kits, and similar items. Eventually, of course, we hope to offer substantial products such as small seasteads and timeshares on large ones. In anticipation of that day we recommend that you build up a nest egg so that you can put down a deposit on a seastead share when they someday become available.
This is a great question, although somewhat hard to answer because it is unclear exactly how seasteading development will proceed. However, we can provide some advice:
Definitely useful
Save money. It is going to be difficult to get a loan to build something as novel and unproven as a seastead, which means we’ll need to pay up front for our real estate. And while it would be nice if someone rich built a huge seastead and rented out rooms, it is much more likely that the starting founders will have to scrape to provide their own space, and won’t be able to afford much extra. This has the extra advantage that if you don’t end up going the seasteading route, your nest egg will still be useful. Money is freedom (although don’t enslave yourself to get it).
Be active in the seastead community (which should become more cohesive as we add features to the website.) This includes: providing feedback on book drafts, reading the blog (Seasteading LJ / Seasteading RSS), spreading the word about the idea/site/book to people who might be interested, linking to it, etc. As the movement grows, this may include meetup groups in various areas and even festivals on the high seas (Ephemerisle). An important element of this is evangelism - get people excited and inspired to hear more about the idea and perhaps someday participate. This is a grassroots movement - it’s up to you to spread the word!
Move to the San Francisco Bay Area (or, less ideally, any coastal city). Physical presence will be useful in helping to build and test prototypes, and for the incremental phase of launching the first community. Our favorite models for incremental seastead development involve building up a community on land, where people can get to know each other, get critical mass, build their seasteads (individually, or larger ones in groups), move on board, test them out, and ease the transition to this radical new lifestyle. While this can be done as a distributed effort, our experience with communal living suggests that physical colocation is far preferable. () While we certainly wouldn’t want anyone to move on the sole hope of being part of seasteading, it seems quite likely that the movement will kick off in that particular area, and so it’s one factor to consider if you happen to be moving. And it’s a great place to live, so again, even if seasteading doesn’t work out, there are other benefits.
Probably useful
Gain experience with communal living, for example by living in an Intentional Community or CoHousing development. While seasteading may attract rugged individualists, a project this big will need to be a team effort. Living in a community can sometimes be challenging and requires excellent interpersonal skills. Strong communication abilities, experience with group facilitation, group processes, and conflict resolution skills like NVC will all be quite useful. And these skills will serve you well in a wide variety of other circumstances as well (management roles, relationships…)
Develop methods for generating income onboard by providing local or exportable value. Examples of local value would be food production, mechanical expertise, massage, or entrepreneurship experience and ideas for seastead businesses. Exportable value might be marine research (and ability to score grants), coaching or therapy by phone, or telecommuting work like freelance programming or web design. One of the toughest things about any small economy is finding ways to make money, and being able to work online seems like the most general solution.
Expatriate. The ultimate goal of seasteading is to have living space in sovereign – or at least non-US – territory. You can learn to adapt your life and take advantage of non-resident status today by moving to Costa Rica, Panama City, or other non-US expat low-tax destinations. The low tax rate and low cost of living may also help with accumulating savings.
May be useful
Develop self-sufficiency skills, such as first aid, gardening, and appliance repair.
Develop very seastead-specific skills like ferrocement building or marine law. The risk in doing these is that the seasteading approach may change, or other more experienced professionals in these fields may get involved. While it would certainly be great if people with these skills helped out, keep in mind that experts can always be hired.
There are a number of questions that boil down to “Why do you recommend this particular structure or strategy”:
This is a good question, and there are certainly some advantages to the boat approach:
However, there are substantial disadvantages to using boats rather than platforms as well.
Weighing these factors, we think our seastead design is a better approach. However, boatsteading is a pretty reasonable strategy as well.
With regard to islands, a little-known fact is that there no such thing as an “unclaimed” island. Even if an island is unoccupied, it extends the owning country’s EEZ, including fishing and mineral rights, which are always of potential value. So even small, barren, remote rocks are claimed by existing countries, and buying an island requires obtaining sovereignty, just like buying any part of any country. Some find this approach more natural. For example, one reader wrote in an email:
“For the investment required to build 100 acres of floating condo, you could take over three Third World hellholes, complete with workforce and low-quality army.”
Strauss gives some of the reasons why countries don’t sell sovereignty:
There are reasons for existing countries to be reluctant to sell sovereignty over pieces of their territories. The closest thing to sale of sovereignty that is conducted routinely is the sale of corporation charters and ship registrations…but any number of those can be sold without reducing the size of the country doing the selling. In addition, such sales produce revenue year after year, in the form of renewal fees. And in the case of emergency (e.g. embarrassing activities by the buyer), the seller can decline to renew the charter of registration. But there is only so much land a nation has to which to sell sovereignty…and once it’s sold, there is no further income to be had.
There is also the great-power factor…These great powers tend to want to see the status quo maintained…the fewer the players there are in the international game, the easier it is for the great powers to manage things to their own advantage. A country selling sovereignty would face being cut of from the aid, trade, etc. that the great powers can offer. Thus they are only interested in doing such things if there’s a large, ongoing profit to be realized…The small countries really aren’t interested in taking the grief that would be involved in selling sovereignty just for a few, one-shot payments from buyers. Strauss1984, pp. 12-13
While we don’t have the geopolitical expertise to evaluate his claims, we find seasteading more appealing for the following reasons:
So while it’s theoretically possible that a country could be persuaded to sell sovereign title to some of its land, to us this path appears difficult, uncertain, inflexible, and extremely expensive. And in the end it results in less. Hence it does not seem like a good way to proceed. There is one minor caveat: as discussed in the Ocean Environment:Politics section, to ensure the long-term political viability of seasteads they may need a friendly host country to give them representation in international affairs. A new land-based country with a similar philosophy would be ideal for this role.
Potential seasteaders don’t dislike people, or groups of people banded together for mutual support, they just dislike the currently available political systems. They don’t want isolation, they want to be part of a community, but one which operates under rules which are currently unavailable. Seasteading is not just about freedom, it’s about freedom, infrastructure, and community united in one place.
Many people see separatist movements like seasteading as a cop-out, running away from problems instead of confronting them. While we think it is noble to try to change a system, we believe it’s important to be honest about how much you can accomplish. For example, a minority viewpoint such as libertarianism is unlikely to ever be accepted by a large country. In a democracy, this means the minority view will not prevail. And of course, there are many minority views, and they can’t all take over the country.
Some people’s solution is to proselytize their particular view. While winning more converts always helps a philosophy, we think a successful example helps it even more. And it seems far easier to create a small society with the already-converted than to convert a hundred million to a view that is currently unpopular.
In addition, we think there are serious structural problems with current systems. Activism cannot change the static nature of land’s geography, and we think this greatly limits how well any political system can work. Moving to the oceans is not simply running away, since we believe that dynamic geography addresses one of the root causes for bad government. We are creating a new system that is easier to change, a society where activists are empowered by exit as well as voice.
Since your authors are libertarians, and expect many of their readers to be, we have thought long and hard about how this strategy compares with other ideas for making the world more free.
First, let us stop laughing and catch our breath. Consider recent history. Ron Paul was (by libertarian standards), a smashingly successful candidate, getting more votes in the primaries than most Libertarian Party candidates have in the general election. Yet he never had the slightest chance of winning the nomination - his strong showing got him about 1% of delegates. There are a lot of reasons for this, but these two should suffice:
A libertarian running for president is trying to get something of enormous value in order to not use it. This means that he will have far less support from concentrated interests, because unlike a normal candidate he can’t borrow on his future expectations of power. Sure, he may appeal to dispersed interests, but concentrated interests have much more to gain from a candidate’s support and so can give more. (Quote Jonathan’s Catallarchy piece on the subject)
Most people are not libertarians.
An analysis of nation-wide democratic reform will quickly demonstrate that this strategy is in many ways opposite to our own. It:
Is very non-incremental (even a small country like NZ is much bigger than a fully-functioning sea-city would be).
Requires huge resources, which are wasted on advertising (a one-off) instead of turned into permanent infrastructure (which generates continuous benefits).
Involves converting others rather than serving as an example.
Only results in transforming one existing political unit, rather than creating a system for innovation in politics.
The benefit to this strategy is of course that people don’t have to move anywhere, but the benefit is worthless if it can’t succeed. And the reluctance to move is exactly why this route is hopeless, since current governments are exploiting their trapped populace. We think that getting out of that trap is the key to avoiding exploitation, and so we believe that any efforts to reform large existing countries are a hopeless waste of resources.
We frankly admit that this sucks - we love living in California, and would much rather freedom came to us. But as libertarians are fond of pointing out about other people’s utopian dreams, wishing does not make it so. Specifically, it will not make a system act differently than its nature and the incentives it provides to the people who participate in it. And just as this dictates that centrally managed economies will be slow and lack innovation, it dictates that modern democracies will have highly parasitic governments, because we are too rich for it to be worth fighting and too tied to our homes to run away.
To get a libertarian society, we must change these systemic incentives, and we think seasteading is the best way to do that. If you have a better idea, we’d love to hear it.
The Free State Project is “A new strategy for Liberty in our Lifetime”:
The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.
When you sign our Statement of Intent, you signal your commitment to move to the chosen free state, New Hampshire, within five years of obtaining 19,999 other people who commit to move. The more signatures we get, the more secure people can be in their decision to move, because they know that many other people will also be moving– enough to make a real difference! You don’t have to wait until we have 20,000 signatures to move, of course, but that option is there to let you be more secure in your decision.
The FSP is the brainchild of Jason Sorens, a Yale PhD student whose thesis was on the political economy of secession. He describes the motivation in an interview:
At the time, around 2001, there was a great deal of discussion among libertarians about the failure of libertarian electoral and political strategies up to that point. The libertarian movement had been active for at least three decades, but with only a few policy successes to show for it.
Many people were considering new strategies to increase the weight of libertarian ideas in the policy debate. And the Free State Project seemed to me to be an appropriate way of concentrating activist resources into a single geographical area where they could have a much greater impact.
Another factor that caused this idea to occur to me was my own research on autonomous movements around the world. The fact that the regional or state level is becoming more important worldwide seemed to indicate that the same trend may happen in the U.S. – that the state level may be the level at which important political action takes place in the future.
…
Well, the federal government – including stray libertarians operating within it – is very far removed from American citizens. I think it’s highly unlikely that libertarians could ever control congress, the presidency, and the federal judiciary. It’s much more likely that a libertarian state could emerge.
Simply at the state and local level, many reforms can be accomplished – everything from privatization of education, to deregulation of utilities, to ending abuses of eminent domain and asset forfeiture.
But even further than that, we can begin to rein in federal power by using the state to challenge the federal government’s authority in many areas, from pursuing tenth amendment lawsuits, to passing state laws that render federal laws somewhat ineffective, to the more extreme possibilities of outright nullification or some kind of unilateral declaration of sovereignty.
The FSP is an attempt to get around some of the problems of the previous approach (nation-wide democratic reform). The key observation, of course, is that in our winner-take-all political system, a libertarian movement that is a few percent everywhere has no power, but by concentrating all those people in one state, the movement can take over the state. We find much to admire in the movement, especially as compared with previous efforts:
The idea is based on systems-level thinking, not just blind hope. For example, if it really worked, then it would not only change the target state, but also encourage other disempowered minorities to start similar movements. This would turn the 50 states into a laboratory for experimentation and innovation, much like Dynamic Geography. There would be more friction (it’s still costly to move between homes, and the barrier to entry to take over a state is much higher than starting a new sea-city), but it’s an idea in the right direction.
By picking an already free state, participants can immediately increase their freedom by moving, so they get some benefit whether or not the project succeeds.
The participants are willing to move their homes and jobs in order to live in greater congruence with their values, and change the world in a positive direction.
Sadly, we see some serious problems with the FSP:
Participants are still tied to a single geographic location, thus (according to our theory) vulnerable.
It targets change to where it is least needed: the local and state level. The problems of government are problems of size and distance between those paying the bills and those wielding the power. Most of the tax and regulatory burden in the US comes at the federal level. So the places where the FSP can concentrate enough people to make a difference are exactly those that need the least change. We should note that the FSP has some longer-term strategies to address this: by refusing federal funds and asserting state independence they should be able to somewhat decrease federal control. For example, states have in the past temporarily resisted Medicaid and the drinking age of 21 through these methods. And states which allow open containers of alcohol in vehicles are currently doing so in defiance of federal policy at the cost of some federal highway funds. Still, it is unclear whether a substantial assertion of independence would be permitted by the federal government.
It doesn’t seem to be working in practice - as of February 2008, there were 8,221 signups and only 516 local participants. These numbers may make for a good festival, but they fall far short of the number needed to significantly influence NH state politics. (Which bodes poorly for us, and behooves us to plan carefully how we can attract a larger audience).
Here is crypto-anarchy described in Tim May’s Crypto Anarchist Manifesto way back in 1988:
A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy.
Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re- routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.
While computer technology has developed enormously since this was written, the main impact seems to have been on record industry sales, not on “the ability to tax and control economic interactions”. Digital cash has not taken off. People occasionally establish significant anonymous reputations, but they usually seem to get outed eventually.
Despite the enormous possibilities of crypto anarchy, it has been hampered by the fact that the real world remains incredibly important. Even if you earn money virtually, it’s hard to evade taxes when most of your money is spent on physical goods. And while technology seems likely to continue chipping away at the physical world, we aren’t all going to be jacked into cyberspace full-time anytime soon. We certainly wouldn’t discount Tim May’s predictions, and over time we expect more of them to come true, but only slowly and for a limited subset of human affairs. For those of us who want true freedom now, this is not a solution.
Wikipedia describes this philosophy as:
Anarcho-capitalism (a form of market anarchism or individualist anarchism)[1] is an anti-state political philosophy that attempts to reconcile anarchism with capitalism. It advocates the elimination of the state; the provision of law enforcement, courts, national defense, and all other security services by voluntarily-funded competitors in a free market rather than through compulsory taxation; the complete deregulation of nonintrusive personal and economic activities; and a self-regulated market.
Ancap is also known as polycentric law, and it is in many ways a brilliant and elegant idea, so it is difficult do it justice in such a short space. If you are interested in the design of social systems we recommend David Friedman’s book Machinery of Freedom as a great introduction (disclaimer: MoF was written by Patri’s dad). We think this system has great promise, and would like to use some of its principles on seasteads (implementing government with competing private companies whenever possible).
Some benefits:
It is based on systems-level thinking: trying to change the incentives facing those who govern so that they’ll do a better job.
Like the FSP’s federalism, it is not only system-oriented but meta-system oriented: it is not a specific legal system but a system which will generate efficient legal codes through competition, innovation, and copying. (See Friedman1996)
While there are no present-day anarcho-capitalistic societies, proponents believe that some past societies can be regarded as operating under this system (or at least it’s essentials), most notably saga-period Iceland (Friedman1979). This means that there is some empirical evidence that the system can work.
However, we have two main concerns: incrementalism and stability.
Incrementalism
How do you get to ancap incrementally? One might imagine privatizing one industry at a time, but that can’t really be done without government cooperation. You could privatize one area at a time if governments were local, but in the first world most power is concentrated in huge central entities. Central governments around the world have a strong tradition of using their military to suppress any threat, including regional autonomy.
A variant of ancap called Agorism suggests:
Achieving a market anarchist society through advocacy and growth of the underground economy or “black market” – the “counter-economy” as Konkin put it – until such a point that the State’s perceived moral authority and outright power have been so thoroughly undermined that revolutionary market anarchist legal and security enterprises are able to arise from underground and ultimately suppress government as a criminal activity (with taxation being treated as theft, war being treated as mass murder, et cetera).
While we are certainly in favor of a flourishing black market, to us their endgame appears laughingly unlikely. It’s going to take one helluva black market to be able to suppress the largest military in the world!
Stability
Is ancap stable? Many critics have expressed concern that the private protection agencies will combine to terrorize the populace. And the limited evidence so far is that anarchic societies (medieval England, Iceland) tend to develop centralized states over time, especially when there is an external threat. This should be of no surprise if you buy the arguments advanced earlier that rents attract rent-seekers and wealth attracts stationary bandits. Ancap may be a more efficient system, but it’s missing Dynamic Geography’s “reset button”. While it lasts, it changes incentives for the better, but it doesn’t seem to address the incentives which, empirically, seem to consistently lead to large central governments.
See “Why not just buy an island or part of a third-world country?”
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.
One of the nice things about seasteading is that there are two answers which apply to a large number of objections. Generic Response 1 is “Cruise Ships”, and Generic Response 2 is “Fine, you’re welcome to disagree”. To expand:
“Cruise Ships”
It’s really amazing how many of people’s questions and objections are answered by these two simple words. “Won’t it sink?” “Where will you get power?” “Won’t it be really expensive?” “Where will the service staff live?” “What if someone gets sick?” The fact is that over 10 million people a year already visit a floating city, which provides water, food, power, service staff, and safety from the waves at a cost as low as $60/night, which is less than people in some current first-world cities spend on the same amenities (although even in Manhattan, they get a bit more space).
This is not to say that seasteads and cruise ships are the same. We have a different structural design, which we think will provide many advantages, such as more freedom, more space, and lower cost, at the cost of being much slower-moving and not able to pull into a port. And our ambition is to achieve substantially more autonomy than a cruise ship, so as to facilitate innovation in political systems.
However, using this existing industry as a starting point eliminates many common worries. Rather than thinking, in isolation, “is that really possible?”, one might imagine starting with a cruise ship and then making a series of design changes that reflect our different goals and use cases. Unless your objection or worry hinges on one of the necessary differences between seasteads and cruise ships, it will get Generic Response 1.
“Fine, you’re welcome to disagree.”
While the first response comes at the beginning of an answer, this one comes at the end. It is important to remember that seasteading is an incremental, bottom-up, doing instead of talking movement. We don’t need to convince everyone that our ideas are practical - only enough people that we can put them into practice.
Ideas can be debated and talked about forever, but at some point, in order to see if they’re any good, you need to try them out. Those who find ours plausible and desirable will join us, those who don’t will wait. If the seastead pioneers succeed in creating an attractive society, that will provide evidence to sway some fence-sitters, who will start their own experiments and provide yet more data to bring more people into the movement.
Given how widely varying people’s political beliefs are, and how much dispute there is even among those with similar beliefs, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever get clean theoretical answers to very many political questions. A little empirical evidence may be just what we need to cut through these argumentative knots.
So maybe you don’t think seasteading will work out. But isn’t it at least worth a try?
The answer is that our approach is very different, partly because we’ve learned from other’s mistakes. The essential difference is that we are dedicated to finding a realistic way of achieving success, rather than simply dreaming about grand visions. You can learn the details under Why - Philosophy.
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.
Many similar ventures failed because they expected billions to materialize from thin air. Our ideas for seastead financing are more realistic, and they can be found in Making it Happen - Our Proposal.
The basic summary is to proceed in self-financing, incremental steps. First, a small group will build a prototype seastead in US waters and live onboard. They will pay for it as a replacement for their houses. With this demonstration of practicality, they will begin taking deposits for both full and part-time shares in a larger, sovereign seastead. While only a few true enthusiasts will buy full-time shares, we hope for wide interest in part-time shares. When enough people have signed up, the rest of the money will be collected and construction can start. Future seasteads can be built the same way, although they are more likely to be funded by investors once the demand and practicality has been shown by the first platform.
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.
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. There won’t be as many locations visited, but there may be some extra activities due to the unique legal situation. Working as a resort employee on a seastead will be much like working on a cruise ship. Another parallel is to 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.
Vacationers can focus on the unique activities offered onboard, since anything else they need to do can be done at home. 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 we’d think the initial location should not be too remote.
Pioneers have traded comfort for freedom many times in the past. Those who find this tradeoff unattractive won’t participate, which is fine since we don’t need to appeal to everyone. A niche is just fine. Over time, comfort will increase and the market will broaden.
Note that the rough life is not our goal, it’s just that we see it as the necessary first step. Focusing on luxurious cities at this stage would be like the first settlers of New York City thinking about the Empire State Building instead of planning their village. Our development cycle is much shorter than theirs was - after all, we get to start with filtered water and satellite dishes. But we still need to take it step by step.
Two 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. “
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. There are people who will find the unique legal status of a seastead appealing, especially because this status will let a seastead have some unique attractions onboard.
There is also the “wow” factor, which the Freedom Ship is appealing to. Seasteads aren’t quite as wowie as a mile-long ship, but they can make up for it by actually getting built. 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.
Finally, 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. 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 the Caribbean paradise for vacation.
While we think that seasteading will have an enormously positive impact on the world, there may be some bad consequences. Here are some of the ones that readers have been concerned about:
Overpopulation occurs when there are too many people struggling for too few resources. Seasteads allow us to use more of the space we have, and harvest more of the renewable energy resources. This means that while they add population, they also add capacity. We see no reason why they should add more of the former than the latter. And we think a greater population, when sustainable, is clearly a good thing. It allows for more potential geniuses, more sharing of ideas, and more activities for the common good. Additionally, as countries are becoming better off and technology like birth control is becoming more widely available, population growth is fixing itself. Growth is decelerating, and the UN expects world population to peak this century at levels less than twice today’s Nature082001. In fact, many first world countries are now worrying more about declining birth rates and their aging populations than about overpopulation!
We admit that some rogue seasteads will probably pollute. But we’d also like to point out that most of the technologies seasteaders depend on will be much less polluting than what is used on land. Also, resources will be more expensive, which means seasteaders will use less of them, so the net result may well be a reduction in footprint. And it’s not like seasteads are completely unaccountable - we see pollution as one of the areas most likely to provoke interference from traditional nations (and with good reason).
The pollution most likely to occur from seasteads is their use of concrete, a material which is responsible for 7-10% of CO2 emissions worldwide [http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001610.html]. This is because most concrete is held together with Portland cement, which gives up lots of CO2 when it is made. There are a number of alternative cements available, and eco-sensitive seasteaders will want to look into them.
Seasteads enable all marginalized belief systems to experiment with their own societies. We think the net result of this will be hugely positive, but we do admit that there will be negatives along the way. After all, some belief systems are marginalized because they are harmful. In addition to enabling pacifists to live without paying taxes to support murderous wars, seasteads will enable cults to brainwash their members far from watchful eyes. This may lead to some tragedies. But we see far more pacifists than cultists in the world, and so we believe that seasteads will enable far more people to live their ideal lives than to harm others.
The hidden assumption made in asking this question is that any change to the world must not make anyone worse off (what economists call a Pareto improvement). We don’t think this is a very realistic standard to hold new ideas to, and so we are happy to just do net good. That said, accepting that some people will use our ideas to do harm does not mean that we have to help them, and any seastead construction company we start will have ethical standards about who it sells to. For example, see the Universal Human Right, which we think will go a long way towards ensuring that seastead residents are not exploited.
Dan Tarrant writes in a comment on Marginal Revolution:
One can imagine Seastead Alpha hiring Blackwater to invade upstart Seastead Beta and enslave all their residents. Or a few of the richer members of Seastead Alpha deciding that the “contract” is null and void and all residents are now their personal surfs[sic].
Byrne’s reply “Doesn’t this apply to government in general?” is the first part of the answer. To expand: One can also imagine a small group of people taking control of a country, expropriating much of the income of its residents, concentrating military power into one army, forbidding its citizens to wield the same power as said army, and greatly limiting their freedom. Except one doesn’t have to - that’s what all the freest existing countries already do.
Put another way, the possibility of a worse outcome than we have now, with less freedom, isn’t much of an argument against trying something new if there is also the possibility of a better outcome with more freedom. The relative probabilities matter, and the current state of affairs has some pretty serious problems itself. If we can reduce some risks, they need to be weighed on the scale along with other risks that we may increase.
It is certainly possible that at some time, one seastead will wage war on another. The more successful the movement is, the more seasteads there will be, and the more likely this is to happen. But the relevant questions are:
Whether it will happen more often than in land-based countries, where war and violence are, we hear, not unknown.
If intra-seastead violence is more frequent, whether it is compensated for by other factors, like decreased violence done by governments to their people. Keep in mind that more people were murdered by their own governments in the 20th century than killed in wars between countries. And if you count jail as a physical risk, even citizens in the US can’t be counted as safe, since that country has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
We would certainly encourage seasteads to take precautions against becoming victims, such as:
Having defensive weaponry like rifles and small ship-to-ship missiles.
Relying on volunteer, rather than professional, soldiers (citizen militias rather than Blackwater or an army). This disperses military power among the populace, and is so important for preventing tyranny that the founders of the US mentioned it in the Bill of Rights.
Avoiding societies where military power accumulates in a few hands, whether they be private, as implied by “a few of the richer members”, corporate, as in “Blackwater”, or public, as happens when citizens leave defense entirely to the police and army. Note that the modularity and mobility of seasteads makes this a much easier proposition than on land. If a seasteader doesn’t like the way things are going, they can always take their seastead and leave for a friendlier group.
Forming loose cooperative alliances with other seastead-cities for mutual defense.
It is our belief that these measures will suffice to make seasteads less physically dangerous than many existing countries. But (to invoke Generic Response 2) you don’t need to just trust us on this one. If you think seasteads will degenerate into violence, then you can stay home. Those of us who think this new way of life is worth a go will try it, and we can all see whether war and violence are any more common among seasteads than on land. Experimentation will provide the ultimate proof, not argument.
People often ask whether a seastead will bob uncomfortably in the waves. Because our design has little cross-section and little flotation at water-level, it will actually be quite steady. See Designs - Bobbing for a more detailed explanation.
The short answer is “A little, but not very much”, and the basic reason is that seastead’s are very, very heavy. For the more technically inclined, they have a very high weight to surface area ratio, and their righting force increases with angle of deflection due to leverage. A free-floating seastead will list even less, as it will get pushed instead.
Ah, a healthy skepticism - excellent. The answer is that ferrocement has a poor strength:weight ratio, hence is poorly suited to mobile applications like ships. Most marine structures are mobile and care about weight. There was a ferrocement boat movement in the seventies in the US (and earlier in New Zealand), and quite a number of ferrocement hulls have been built. But stronger, lighter materials like steel (for larger boats) and fiberglass (for smaller ones) are much more common.
However, non-mobile marine structures, like piers and docks, often are made out of concrete. So are some oil rigs, like the mammoth Troll A. So it’s not that ferrocement perfect for everything, just for large, non-mobile marine structures.