Intentional Community

For most of our existence, humans have lived in tribes or extended families. This helps make better use of scarce resources such as housing, heating, etc. Only in the past century has the first world achieved the wealth for each nuclear family to have its own dwelling, appliances, and utiltiies. While there are clearly advantages to this, some people find it unsatisfying to be so isolated. The Co-housing, or Intentional Community movement has developed in response to this. An IC is any group of people deliberately living together, which can mean anything from a college co-op to a commune.

When seasteading, especially towards the beginning, space, utilities, and appliances will be expensive. Hence seasteaders will almost certainly want to use the techniques of communal living. For example, sharing the use of energy-efficient appliances, workshops, boats, a helicopter, an internet connection, and so forth.

Communities are strongest when united by shared ideals, and it seems quite likely that early seasteads will exist largely for ideological reasons. This gives an additional reason why they will be communal in nature. Also, being isolated will increase interdependence among seasteaders. Note that communal does not necessarily mean a communist society where all property is owned jointly. It simply means that the line between what portion of property is public and private will likely be a bit farther than in normal society. People’s lives and property will be more intertwined.

This does not necessarily mean loss of control, in fact there are some ways in which it can result in the opposite. One of these public sectors will be the basic infrastructure of the entire platform. In normal living, such utilities are owned by large companies, often monopolies, and it is difficult for one customer to have any control. When a small group of 100 owns the utility, individuals will have much greater say in how it is run.

As they will draw on the green movement for physical technologies, seasteads would be wise to draw on the intentional community movement for communal technologies. These people have useful experience about topics like architectural design - how to lay out common spaces. We would suggest hiring consultants like the CoHousing Company to help with such aspects [CoHoCo].