| Prev | Up | Next |
| Concerns | Further Questions | Bad Consequences |
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 a platform is a better approach if your goal is to create permanent ocean settlements. However, boatsteading is a pretty reasonable strategy as well. It may even be better in the short-term, but we think it is much less likely to transform the world.
First, many people don’t realize that there is 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 does not get you sovereignty - that is an entirely separate matter. Still, 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.”
We see a number of major disadvantages with the approach of purchasing sovereign territory, let alone invading it.
First, there is the empirical evidence that sovereignty is simply not for sale. I have talked to people involved in two attempts to purchase sovereignty (Minerva and Laissez-Faire City), and the world’s countries were not responsive. Strauss gives some of the reasons in his classic book How To Start Your Own Country:
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
Note that free trade zones which allow economic freedom but not political have been very successful, and countries seem quite willing to allow them. But we should not confuse these with new country prospects: they are temporary and the host country maintains political control. We have not historically seen free trade zones develop and then secede, but rather the opposite - after developing for a number of years, free trade zones like Hong Kong get reincorporated into the parent country. In fact, this “Build - Operate - Transfer” model, where “Transfer” is back to the host country, is a standard model for economic zone partnerships. And I shudder to imagine the reaction of the sort of despotic government that needs free zones to a rumor that one of its “Special Economic Zones” had a secessionist movement.
One issue is the scale on which most governments think. There are only 10 countries with a GDP of less than $500M/year (of which 3 are < $100M/yr: Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Niue), and those countries are almost all quite small. For a country to give up some of its sovereignty permanently, it is likely to want a pay-off equal to a substantial chunk of annual GDP. The small selection and high cost make a deal difficult. Some disagree, however, like an article in the May/June 2009 issue of The Futurist Magazine: Seven Predictions for the Coming Age of Micronations.
Besides the empirical difficulties, there are a number of reasons why we find seasteading more appealing:
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.
However, we don’t want to overstate the case. Land has a big advantage, which is that it is much cheaper and easier to build on, with far fewer engineering challenges. It also has a clearer place in international law (although this is a mixed blessing). Many of our concerns are based on our expectation, due to past history, that opportunities for purchasing sovereignty will be poor. If a good opportunity was found, where there was reason to believe that the deal would last, that it would not result in a territorial feud, and the price was good, it would certainly be worth exploring. For an opportunity to be good, we believe it would almost certainly have to be geographically isolated and uninhabited - a distant island, for example. This minimizes the risks of later revolution, reneging on the deal, or bad PR from building “skyscrapers next to slums”.
There is actually some synergy between the two approaches, because seasteading would allow a new land-based country to franchise its sovereignty, through the ship flagging system, or through contracts for floating cities within its 200 mile EEZ. Thus seasteads would benefit from having a sovereign territorial ally, while being able to provide some revenue in return.
While there have been successful social movements born from squatting (Christiania comes quickly to mind), we find efforts that don’t include legal title unattractive for many of the reasons in the FAQ entry “Why not just hide?” Rightful owners, or the coastal state, may re-assert their rights - especially if the squatting is successful.
At least one nonprofit, the Gulf Coast Preservation Society (link), has a donated oil rig. The donor gets both tax writeoffs and the savings of not having to pay for decommissioning. A used or donated oil rig, if the structure is in safe condition, might be a good place to conduct scientific research. There are some disadvantages, however.
Artificial islands and installations such as oil rigs are all in EEZs, where they are under the legal jurisdiction of the coastal state. So there is no political freedom to be had there. And much of the scientific work we’d like to do is explicitly regulated within the EEZ, such as marine research, energy generation, and aquaculture, so would require permits from the coastal state.
That said, if someone were to offer a convenient oil rig, we could probably find a way to make use of it!
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 in the Republican primary. Yet he never had the slightest chance of winning the nomination - his strong showing got him 1.6% of delegates and zero states. 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).
One of the common FSP counter-arguments to Seasteading is summarized by George Donnelly:
I enjoyed your presentation, but you said something about how you felt uncomfortable with the FSP strategy because it was on land controlled by the strongest military in the world.
But the US Navy controls the seas. So the risk is similar if not greater with seasteading, no? At least with NH, it’s contiguous with a huge landmass and we have a reasonable chance of escape, but if the navy puts a missile into a sea city, seasteaders may be left at the mercy of the sharks.
I really liked your concept and your presentation, just playing a little devil’s advocate. Thankfully, NH has a seacoast so the two plans are in a sense complementary.
Imagine a belligerent, territorial guy who owns a large number of guns, grenades, and mortars. The mortars can shoot up to 3 miles away, and he claims the land within a mile of his house. Which is safer, taking a dump in the woods 2 miles from his house, or taking a dump in his living room?
Yes, the US can, in theory, attack you anywhere. But they are a zillion times more likely to attack you if you take a dump in their living room!
I don’t see how the option of forfeiting all one’s non-moveable property and fleeing from the law makes the “shitting in the living room” scenario more attractive. We don’t want to run, we don’t want to hide, we want to be autonomous and open. If it comes to a fight against the most powerful military in the world, we have lost, no matter what happens afterwards.
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) 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.
Market anarchism 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?”
Some people’s instinctive reaction is to question why we need new countries when bad laws can just be dealt with by ignoring them, hiding illegal activities. What would you want to do on a seastead that you can’t just do in your own home? There are a number of serious problems with hiding as a solution to bad laws:
Integrity. Imagine asking gays “Why do you need to be accepted by society, when you can just hide your sexual orientation and do whatever you want in the bedroom?” Being able to live one’s lifestyle openly and honestly, whatever it may be, is of enormous value to integrity and self-esteem.
Scale. Hiding is a solution that only works at small scales. The bigger and more successful your movement or community, the more likely it is to be noticed and shut down. We are not interested in starting something where success will quickly and inevitably breed failure. We want to change the world, and that means building something way too big to be hidden.
Limited scope. Some activities, by their nature, are easy to hide (drug use). Others are not - opening a hospital. Hiding thus greatly limits what can be done. And hiding works terribly for systems (as opposed to activities) - how do you hide the fact that 1,000 people have agreed to be bound by a new legal system from those trying to enforce the new one? Our main goals, after all, are at the level of systems. We think the world would be enormously better if people had more freedom to create and experiment with alternative political systems, because we think that existing systems are far from optimal and cause a great deal of suffering. Existing systems would be even worse if we couldn’t hide from their bad laws - but we dare to dream of a world where we get rid of bad laws instead of hiding from them.
Long-term planning. A life of hiding is a life of uncertainty. One never knows when one will be exposed and suffer consequences for hidden actions. This is personally stressful, and bad for business and investment.
Security by obscurity. Protecting by hiding is simply another version of this rightly-maligned concept from computer security.
Capital and Property. As Hernando De Soto documents in The Mystery of Capital, wealth differences between nations can partially be traced to differences in their capital markets. In rich nations, property rights are clear and enforced, business is done out in the open, and so businesses can get loans to expand. In poor nations, most things are done on black markets where property rights are fuzzy, and most capital is informal. This means that small business owners can’t get loans, because they can’t prove what they own, and investors don’t have confidence that the business can continue operating. Restricting yourself to the black market can be quite profitable (consider drug smuggling), but it is also a dangerous life (consider drug smuggling). To really change the world, we need investment, contracts, and property rights, and that means operating in the open.
As you can see, for people with integrity, who think big, want to reform political systems, plan for the long-term, raise investment, and run businesses, hiding is a poor solution.