| Prev | Up | Next |
| Book FAQ Intro | Further Questions | Concerns |
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 general 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 (but don’t enslave yourself to get it!).
Be active in the seasteading community, which is rapidly growing. This includes: joining TSI’s membership program, volunteering at TSI, providing feedback on our ideas, reading TSI blogs, spreading the word about the idea/site/book to people who might be interested. As the movement grows, this will include meetup groups in various areas and even festivals on the high seas (Ephemerisle). Evangelism is definitely important - getting 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!
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.
Move to the San Francisco Bay Area, or another Seastead Outpost. Physical presence will be useful in helping to build and test prototypes, and several of our favorite models for incremental seastead development (link to making it happen) require a group of founders all in the same coastal city. The listed cities are currently the most likely candidates for an initial seastead. 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 one of these areas, and so it’s one factor to consider if you happen to be moving. And these are great places to live, so even if seasteading doesn’t work out, there are other benefits.
Found businesses in our space. Any business based on jurisdictional arbitrage on the ocean (cruise ship medical tourism), or making use of the ocean’s resources (offshore aquaculture) that improves the ocean economy will be very useful for seasteading in the long-run.
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…)
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, Singapore, or other expatriate-friendly jurisdictions. The low tax rate and low cost of living may also help you to accumulate 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.
The patent that we filed for the Clubstead design - along with any patents we will file going forward - are intended as defensive patents only. It’s not our goal to use patents to prevent others from building seasteads based on our designs, or to extort money from those who wish to. We intend to make our patented material available freely (or for a nominal fee if this better suits the legal and business requirements of the organizations who wish to make use of the patents), and our maintenance of patents is intended to protect the seasteading community as a whole.
We are investigating other possible methods for maintaining the availability and protection of the patented material that we produce. We may make use of something like the Open Invention Network, which holds patents for Linux software and allows free usage to anyone who agrees not to assert their patents against the Linux system. Offering our patented inventions to anyone who agrees not to assert their patents against seasteading companies or individuals would help to promote collaboration among seasteading businesses, which we believe will benefit the seasteading community long term.
We are also researching defensive publishing, which allows us to protect against patents being filed, without patenting our work. The patent system is bureaucratic and complex, with an extremely high barrier to entry for small businesses and individuals. We hope to find an alternative to traditional patents that we can share with the seasteading community at large, making it easier for DIYers and new seasteading ventures to protect their work.
For the time being we will make use of the patent system to safeguard the work that TSI produces while we research other methods. Our primary goal is not to collect intellectual property, but to make sure that seasteading inventions are protected for the seasteading community at large.
(Thanks to volunteer Chuck Grimmett for this section)