How You Can Help

UPDATE: Now that we have founded The Seasteading Institute, go to http://seasteading.org/ to donate time or money to help make seasteading a reality. In particular, the donations page at http://www.seasteading.org/donations and the volunteering page at http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/VolunteerList. The below is somewhat out of date.

We’d like to start by thanking you for your interest. In order to make the tough transition from dream to reality, the seasteading movement needs supporters. People who understand that talk is cheap, that it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to create a new way of living, but still agree that it will ultimately be worthwhile. If you are a realistic visionary like ourselves, hard-headed and open-minded, we’d love to have you participate.

For the project to work, however, we think it’s important to expand steadily and gradually. This incrementalism approach is at the core of our philosophy. it’s a huge project, and will require labor and money from lots of people to achieve true success, but we think it’s important to go step-by-step. Committees don’t govern effectively, and effort spread too widely tends to be poorly focused. We want to weld our group of supporters and volunteers into a solid structure, but rushing will only result in a disorganized and vaguely committed crowd. For this reason, we prefer to slowly bring people into well-defined roles.

Here are some of the ways in which we envision people contributing time, money, and professional skills. They are listed in approximate order of when the help will be needed.

• Paper Review
  The current stage of the project consists of performing the fundamental research which will guide our choices later on. Helpful comments, constructive criticism, and pointers to relevant information are all useful. Send us email, or utilize the commenting system.
• Baystead - Founders
  Baystead requires a small group of founders to fund its construction and then live on board. While we can take this role entirely ourselves (and will if necessary), for a number of reasons we’d prefer to share it. The cost will be on the order of $50K - $250K per person, most likely about $100K/p. Unlike normal real estate, there are no seastead mortgages and the market for baysteads is not yet liquid, which means this is more of a financial commitment than buying a house. Interested individuals should be enthusiastic about running their own infrastructure, experimenting with a new lifestyle, and sharing that lifestyle with visitors. They must also want to live in the SF Bay area. Useful skills, experience with communal living, and a desire to help achieve the larger vision are a plus. We are likely to be somewhat picky in order to make sure incompatibilities don’t cause problems.
• Baystead - Supporters
  As a trial version of the seastead timeshare system, we plan to have a Baystead Supporters program. Basically, Supporters would donate some time or money, and have the right to come stay on Baystead some number of days a year. While we are leery of anything which seems like asking for money or could be construed as being a scam, we have personal acquaintances, at the least, who have expressed interest in such a plan. And since Supporter money is not required for construction, skeptical individuals are welcome to wait until they’ve seen a built Baystead with their own eyes. { This will be written up in more detail elsewhere and referenced here - P }
• Baystead - Builders
  Just like building a house, there will be a lot of work involved in building baystead. While the superstructure will likely be built professionally, there will be tons of flooring, plastering, piping, painting, etc. We’ve had several people offer to help with this stage already, and will gladly accept volunteer labor. This will be another way to achieve Baystead Supporter status, as described above.
• Seastead Research Team
  There are lots of research experiments to be done on various aspects of seastead life. In fact, we expect this to be the case for pretty much the foreseeable future, even when there are many seasteads. Unlike the academic world, much of this research should be perfectly doable by ordinary folk. Baystead is a great place for research, by the residents and by visiting Supporters. But research can also be done by interested people anywhere else in the world. We’re holding off on creating a research program until we’ve built Baystead, which we see as a higher priority. (Though if someone else wants to do the work now…)
• SDC - Founders
  When it comes time to found a Seastead Development Corp., we’ll need some business partners / investors / employees. When the time comes, we’ll announce what skills we are looking for. We’re likely to be very picky, as with any business venture.
• Seastead I - Principals
  The first sovereign seastead will need a core group of full-time residents. This group will likely serve multiple roles as residents, employees (doing the jobs needed to keep things running) and investors (since they will own much larger shares than a timeshare residents, and are the most likely people to own multiple shares for rent or later sale).
• Seastead I - Timesharers {We need a cleverer name for part-time residents }
  While the Principals are the depth of membership, Timesharers are the breadth. This is a vital role, and will likely make up the bulk of seastead funding, and certainly the largest number of residents. Most people will begin by participating in this manner, because they are interested in someday becoming full-time seasteaders, but are not yet ready to move their whole lives (which we find perfectly reasonable). Seasteading will be driven by demand from customers. The sooner we can get people to sign up, the sooner it will happen. People willing to put down deposits count for much more than those who just express interest. We’ll let you know when we’re in a position to accept them.

If you are interested in one of these roles, drop us a line and we’ll put you on our lists.

Misc Topics