Updated July, 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
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 operating 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.
TSI's primary goal is not to operate any actual seasteading communities, though we may do so as a means to the greater end of catalyzing the seasteading movement. Ultimately, we want others to operate seasteads. Central to our vision is the idea of experimentation and competition among new governments and social systems, and the power of this vision will be fully realized only when seasteaders are left to self-organize. Our long-term role is to support other seasteading 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. ShipSteads | Exploring the social and economic aspects of seasteading in a known environment (ships) that frees us from having to tackle the technological challenges at the same time. | Given that seastead-based businesses are one of the most likely areas of growth in the movement's first decade, getting that sector off the ground is a high priority. 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.
Our work with ShipSteads does not just involve businesses, however. We're also looking at the possibility of a resident-owned residential ShipStead. |
| 3. Building Seasteads | R&D and prototyping of seastead designs, both centrally through TSI and through distributed community efforts. Also reasearching possible locations where waters are calm and waves are minimal, in order to reduce the engineering challenges faced by seasteaders. | 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. Fundraising | Researching and networking with potential donors, hosting fundraisers, planning project-based fundraising. | The long-term health of the organization is tied to our ability to recruit a healthy and diverse pool of funders. |
* 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
2010 goals: Make seasteading a reality
What steps will we take to achieve our annual goals in 2009?
Q3 2009: Begin additional fundraising and continue growing the community
Q4 2009: 2009 Conference and Ephemerisle and new seastead design work
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:
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:
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. 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.