The Movement

What is "Seasteading"?

Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean - homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture above, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean.

Why would you want to do that?

The exact motives we see vary widely, but the common element is the need for a new frontier, a place where those who are dissatisfied with our current civilization can go to build a different (and hopefully better) one.

Currently, it is very difficult to experiment with alternative social, political, and legal systems on a small scale. Countries are so enormous that no individual can make much difference in how they work, and the existing entrenched power structures have tremendous inertia. Seasteaders believe that government shouldn't be like the cellphone or operating system industry, with a tiny number of providers who offer few choices and make it hard to switch. Instead, they envision something more like web 2.0, where many small governments serve different niche markets, a dynamic system where small groups experiment, and everyone copies what works, discards what doesn't, and remixes the remainder.

Why would this be a good thing? Think about all the hot air and argumentation about a whole host of different political issues - freedom vs. security, absolute wealth vs. inequality, strong family vs. tolerance, open vs. closed borders, whatever the topic du jour is. Instead of deciding them through rhetoric, or voting on a few representatives to decide them for tens or hundreds of millions of people at once, imagine if we could try them each on a small scale and see what happens. If people could create societies with different priorities - the environment, civil liberties, economic freedom, religious values - we'd be able to see how well these ideas actually work in practice. In some cases, certain approaches will work so well (or terribly) that everyone (or no one) else will use them too. In others, it will turn out to be a matter of preference, in which case small societies would give people the opportunity to meet their preferences for an ideal society at a much finer level than they can today.

In short, we seasteaders are people who, whatever their ideals are, want to stop arguing about them, stop proselytizing them, and start living them. And it looks like homesteading the oceans is our best opportunity.

Is that really possible? How would it work?

It's hard to give a short answer to this. The briefest answer we have is to point to the cruise ship industry as evidence that providing power, water, food, and internet on the ocean is not only possible but can be profitable. Our lifestyle and business model will be very different, based on permanent occupation and businesses besides tourism, but cruise ships at least demonstrate that the basics can be covered without breaking the bank. It remains for us to show, by building small seastead prototypes, that comfortable, spacious, permanent dwellings can also be built at reasonable cost.

And similarly, while we don't yet know if there is a realistic path to recognized sovereignty, the history of the cruise ship industry demonstrates that a great deal of practical autonomy can be achieved using flags of convenience. If the idea still seems crazy (the bad kind), we have answers to some of the common objections in our FAQ, and we have written a book with much more detail.

The Institute

We (Patri & Wayne) had been spreading the word about our ideas for over 5 years via blogging, research, a book, and talks, and in 2007 we decided that interest in this movement had reached the point where it was worth creating a formal organization as a vehicle for fundraising and research. So we founded a nonprofit organization, The Seasteading Institute, with the mission:

Establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.

Focus Areas

While we are still developing our strategy for TSI, we currently envision three main focus areas:

• Community: Inspire a social movement around our mission. Build a membership of people who are committed to and passionate about seasteading, and see it as the answer to the world's most pressing problems. Create a network of potential residents who have the skills and resources needed to make a vibrant new city. Establish revenue to enable the Institute to operate in perpetuity.
• Baystead: Prove that our plan is viable by building a safe, cost-effective, gorgeous seastead, based in the San Francisco Bay and able to travel along the coast. Use it for publicity to grow the community, and as a platform for research.
• Research: Explore the core seasteading requirements: Structure (not sinking), Autonomy (getting left alone), and Infrastructure (having light, heat, food, etc.). When current solutions are sufficient for our needs, learn them. When they aren't, invent new ones. Secondarily, advance seasteading technologies through grant-funded research and partnerships.

Current Status

As you can read in our press release, we have secured $500,000 in initial funding, which we'll be using in 2008 and 2009 to achieve the goals described above. Please use the navigation bar above to learn more about our ideas and progress.  At the very least, you will probably want to subscribe to the Press Releases (RSS) to see major updates.  If you are interested in more frequent news, there is the Captain's Blog (RSS) and the discussion forums.

We hope that you will be inspired to join our community and help us change the world.