The book you are reading is in draft form (perhaps eternally). We believe in transparency and immediate feedback, so we’d rather make something imperfect available right away then wait until it is polished. Also we’d rather work on adding ideas and content than on making it look perfect, so it will always be a little rough. If you’d prefer a slick presentation, there are lots of failed and inactive projects listed in the Review section which were better at hiding their warts. Some of them still have websites.
The first version of this book was written in 2002-2003, when the primary author (Patri) had neither a job nor a family. It then languished for a number of years while he had both. Then we got a big break: on April 15th, 2008, we received $500,000 of seed funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel to start a non-profit which we called The Seasteading Institute. Patri became Executive Director, and on July 29th, 2008, left his job at Google to work on seasteading full-time. This means more time available for writing, and a much more rapid evolution of our ideas.
Over the 5+ years since this book was first written, our thinking has evolved based on reflection, discussion, and new information. Some of these changes have made their way into the text, but due to limitations on the time available for writing, many have not. We believe that the text will catch up quite a bit during 2008-2009, but it will always be a bit behind our latest thinking. Fortunately, thanks to modern Print On Demand technology, new printed copies will always reflect the latest text.
Some of the key things we’d like to change when we get more time are:
Structure Designs: Talk about more structure designs: multi-spar platforms and flat boxes (the later either in the doldrums or protected by breakwaters). We no longer believe that dumbbells are the best structure, we think there is a lot to be said for flat boxes in the doldrums, even for early-stage ocean settlements, and for larger multi-spar platforms. We are also reconsidering ships as a transitional option for the short-term.
Making It Happen: Modify to reflect the creation of TSI and our latest thoughts about realistic business models and incremental paths.
Making Money - Emphasize aquaculture & medical tourism (“The killer app for seasteading” ?) more strongly as top business models.
Mark Twain: “Buy land. They’ve stopped making it.”
Seasteaders: “Production Resuming.”
In this book, we’ll demonstrate that a combination of technologies has finally given the lie to Mark Twain’s famous line about the real estate business. Imagine the tremendous possibility of being able to create new acreage on the vast and empty oceans. The environment may be less friendly, but the increased freedom will appeal to a motivated minority who are fed up with terrestrial politics. These aquatic pioneers will settle civilization’s next frontier through the unusual merger of green technology and free enterprise. Once there, they will experiment with new social, political, and economic systems, adding much-needed variety and innovation to the stagnant business of government.
As the earth’s population steadily increases, so does the pressure to open new frontiers. While the oceans have long been used for transportation, this book is an extended thought experiment about how they could support permanent settlements. Considering these issues will be invaluable no matter which way humanity next expands. In particular, the ocean bears some definite similarities to space: the final frontier, which will surely be an important part of our near future.
While we’re practical-minded and most of this book is dedicated to the how of seasteading, it’s crucial to also explain why people are interested in small-scale sovereingty. In perhaps the most vital section, we’ll outline the economic theory which suggests that ocean-based societies will actually work better than terrestrial ones. The relative ease of moving around entire buildings on the water means that political units will be dynamic, and so governments must be responsive and efficient or they will lose citizens. This effect will work automatically to improve institutions, regardless of the specific political system chosen. The ocean is not just the last open frontier on Earth - it is the perfect setting for a competitive market in governments .
For background, we’ll review the conventional water-based lifestyles like floating homes, sailboats, cruise ships, and oil platforms. You’ll also learn about some of the other ways people have successfully leveraged international waters for political freedom, like the european pirate radio movement of the 60’s and 70’s. We’ll describe some of the scores of colorful new-country projects proposed and attempted over the years. While their ideas are wide-ranging, including ships, reefs, spars, hexagonal cells, reeds, and tetrahedrons, they all share one thing in common - utter lack of success.
While this is an unfortunate history, we’ll explain how we’ve learned from these past mistakes. Far from being dreamy-eyed utopians, we are serious planners with realistic principles for bringing this strange vision to life. This realism dictates an incremental approach, modest political goals, reliance on mature technology, self-financing, and a willingness to make compromises.
Before planning such a venture, it behooves us to understand the ocean environment. This includes fearsome waves like the so-called rogues, known as the “Monsters of the Deep”. Scientists are finally acknowledging that this deadly phenomenon is not just an old sailor’s tale. Contrary to what you may expect, tsunamis, high winds, and small-scale pirates will prove to be little danger. The tangled morass of international maritime politics and law is a far greater concern. While current nations are likely the greatest challenge to this new way of life, we’ll sketch some promising solutions. We can’t reassure skeptics completely, but there are reasons to be hopeful.
Once our goals, motivations, and obstacles are understood, we can examine designs for meeting them. We’ll cover a wide variety of structures for living on the ocean, from boats to pillar platforms to undersea habitats. We’ll also examine some of the basic design choices which must be made. These include whether a seastead should be free floating or fixed in one place, whether to use breakwaters or pillars to stop the waves, how to make floating-cities modular, and whether to purchase new or used structures. With these considerations in mind, we’ll present more detail on our preferred design, the spar platform. This structure avoids the massive energy of ocean waves by keeping its platform above them and its flotation below. In between is a thin pillar which presents little cross-sectional area to the waves.
For the engineers and home power hobbyists, we’ll outline how to provide the amenities of civilization on a floating platform. From our unique angle, we’ll review the field of self-sufficient technology like solar panels, wind turbines, reverse osmosis, satellite internet, and hydroponics. Along the way, we’ll debunk the myths that floating cities can be cheaply and effectively built from a material called seacrete or powered by OTEC generators.
However, solving these engineering challenges is meaningless unless we can solve the substantial business challenges as well. Sure, with enough money the ocean can be made habitable. But where will it come from? How will seasteads make money? Who will want to live there? Is there a big enough market? The lack of a good incremental plan has been a major flaw in other ventures, so we must address these crucial questions with a plan for getting from here to there through a series of realistic steps.
We must note that this book was not only written to entertain and inform, but as a practical guide and a compendium of our research. These two purposes require very different levels of detail, and so we’ve had to compromise.
At some points, the casual reader may find the level of detail high enough to only interest those who are actually designing or implementing such systems. Rather than getting bogged down in the numbers, feel free to skim. While we know it can be boring at times, please reflect that our diligence is an indication that our ideas have been well-researched. The world is full of visions, but making them into reality requires spending a lot of time on the mundane details.
More technically inclined readers may find our level of detail inadequate. Calculators at the ready, they cry “Forget Review and Motivation, where are the blueprints?” (or perhaps DXF files nowadays). If this book consisted of a complete design for every system onboard, no one would read it (if it was ever finished). Such readers must console themselves with the thought that a more readable book will hasten the spread of our ideas and thus the progression to a stage that involves DXF files.
Our main goal is simply to make sure each potential problem can be solved and get a feel for the solution. Detailed design can wait until someone starts a business and hires engineers.
While the authors have a libertarian viewpoint, we want to stress that seasteading is politically agnostic. We’re attempting to describe (and create) an enabling technology for small-scale sovereignty. This will give many different groups the autonomy to experiment with their theories. We find it very satisfying to be empowering all minority political groups, not just advancing our own vision.
Since this technology enables many alternative societies, some of them will be very, very different from each other, so we’re mostly trying to give an overview of the common elements. We do have to make some occasional assumptions about the type of society to do this. Being libertarians, it is most natural for us to make libertarian assumptions. For the non-libertarians, rather than getting annoyed when you see political beliefs you disagree with, try to focus on the fact that this technology will give you too a chance to show that your ideas can work in practice.
This book evolved from the internet tradition of collaboration and many:many communication, rather than the traditional one:many paradigm. Rather than simply being written and then published, drafts have been available online at every stage. For most of the book’s lifetime, it had a mechanism for adding user comments (written by Patri). Thus the book has been a continuous dialogue between authors and readers, and many changes have been made as a result of commenter feedback.
In late 2007, we transitioned to a new website and a new authoring system for the book, and disabled commenting (which by that point had attracted a lot of spam). Our priority right now is to revise and publish the book, but we also intend to re-enable comments at some point, using a third-party commenting system.
In this book we tend to focus on smaller seasteads, thus giving short shrift to technologies like nuclear power plants and OTEC. That’s because getting started is the most important stage, and it’s the challenge we face right now. By the time there is an ocean city big enough to need an OTEC generator, the seasteading movement will be big enough to have plenty of ideas of its own - some borne from experience which we don’t yet have. We just want to get the ball rolling and seed the discussion with some initial thoughts and research, so we can someday get to that point.
We hope that many readers will immediately see the appeal of tackling humanity’s next frontier, but we some may be mystified, asking: “Why would anyone want to go live on the ocean?” Until you understand why this will make the world better, the details will be of little interest. So we’ll start by answering these questions:
We’ll answer them in very different ways, however:
We’ll mainly punt on this. After all, who doesn’t get frustrated sometimes with government or politicians? Instead of discussing the failures of democracy in detail, we’ll just provide some brief evidence that many different groups are dissatisfied with current societal options and looking for a new frontier to try new things. We’ll also provide some references for those interested in digging into the details of why government so often works so poorly.
Here is where we believe we can make a real contribution, with a new way of looking at government efficiency which suggests simple reasons why politics sucks now and how it can be made to suck less. This theory suggests that the ocean-based societies can have the least sucky governments the world has ever seen. However, they must leverage the ocean’s unique qualities, otherwise they will fall into the same pitfalls as current countries.
While we will have plenty to say here, none of it will be very profound. It’s merely the application of common sense to an area (founding new countries on the ocean) where it has been sadly lacking. Still, while our approach seems obvious to us, each of our tenets has been broken by other projects, so we feel it’s worth laying them out!
In this section, we will attempt to address the first question:
The Pioneer
“Another great project, destroyed”, sighed Carl, as he tossed the last 2x4s from his 3-story observation tower into the bonfire. His campmates, clad in paint and luminescent wire, danced, drummed, and drank in a circle around the blaze. It was the night of the Burn, and as always, he felt down. He knew some people loved the ephemeral nature of the festival, but to him it always seemed like a waste. So much creativity, so much hard work, all to be burned or torn down or at best packed and taken back to be put into a garage until next year. It had been so much fun to put the camp together: make showers and tents and set up generators and solar panels. But he wanted to build things that lasted, have art and creativity and vision and community be a lifestyle, not just a vacation. If only there was someplace where Burners could build a permanent Black Rock City and bring that spirit of art and adventure into their everyday lives…
The Environmentalist
Judy felt frustrated as she left the city council meeting. Her proposal to levy fines on recyclables left in ordinary trash seemed to her like such a reasonable idea, why did it ignite so much argument? Americans generated such sickening amounts of rubbish - all she wanted was to help cut down on it a little bit. “For a town that was supposedly environmentally conscious, they are awfully close-minded around here”, she thought. She remembered that article she’d read about a Costa Rican ecovillage. It would be so relaxing and inspiring to live somewhere where everyone was of the same mind about not polluting the Earth. They could serve as an example to the rest of the world that you didn’t have to damage the environment to live. But it ? If only there was a place that was sustainable and civilized…
The Pacifist
Glen clicked off the news angrily. Another day, another half-dozen deaths from that quagmire in Iraq. And that was just US soldiers - who knew how many innocent Iraqi citizens had died? What he hated most was that he was paying for those bullets, paying for those bombs. Sure, he hadn’t voted for Bush, but the IRS took his tax dollars anyway. And not like the damn Democrats were doing much about all that military spending. It seemed like everyone in DC was on the take. One person just couldn’t make a difference in a country this size, not unless he was a billionaire or some kind of internet-activism genius. If only he could live somewhere where he only paid for things he approved of, or at least got to choose where his money went, he’d be so much happier…
Do people like Carl, Judy, and Glen really exist? Those with an inborn pioneering spirit need only a mirror to answer that question, but others may take more convincing. Here are some actual groups which seek the autonomy to live under and experiment with different political, social, and economic systems than currently exist. There is a longer list in the Review chapter.
The residents of these future cities, throughout the world, will show by exemplary actions that people of different races and divergent political, religious, cultural and social beliefs can live and prosper together while also being good stewards of the earth, respecting, and thereby benefiting all inhabitants and ecosystems of the planet. (Celestopia)
There are tax benefits: no federal tax on coroporate profits, no state corporation tax, no social security tax. And any open sea facility is a free port. You can bring in any raw materials and ship out any finished products, without paying tariff duties. Outside government jurisdiction on the open sea, there are no regulatory agencies to contend with. You can dispense with the expense and bother of excessive paperwork, forms, and reports. You won’t be ordered to waste your time appearing before government bodies. Licenses and permits will be things of the past. Government litigation and harassment, and the uncertainty caused by changing laws, regulations, and interpretations will be eliminated.
Fisher1985, pp. 48-49
If we are going to colonize space, it is best to colonize the easiest space first…Living in colonies at sea will teach us many crucial lessons about life in space. The isolation, self-sufficiency, and political autonomy of sea colonies are the same as those of space colonies. Both types will impose many of the same requirements on their inhabitants…The Moon is a harsh mistress; we would be wise to learn these early lessons while still in Earth’s gentle lap.
Savage1992 pp. 23-24
If humankind is to survive, I see no alternative to expanding outward into space. And this doesn’t just mean settling on other planets and moons. They will be just as vulnerable to doomsday weapons as the Earth, and there aren’t enough of them to insure that some will survive an Armageddon. Only a large number of communities well dispersed in the volume of space seems likely to have a chance…The establishment of such communities space would constitute a Golden Age of new-country formation in the next few centuries. Those who gain experience in the new-country field now are the most likely to be ready to seize the new opportunities when they arise – or to see their children and their children’s children in a position to do so.
Strauss1984 p. 47
Drug users care deeply about the freedom to ingest whatever chemicals they desire (Island. In many current societies, their hobby comes with the risk of substantial jail time.
Individuals who are Environmentally Intolerant (EI), such as those suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, seek environments with minimal contamination from human chemicals:
Waterfront property offers some of the cleanest air anywhere by virtue of the high rate of ambient air exchange afforded by ocean or lake breezes. Even regions with relatively bad general pollution levels enjoy orders of magnitude cleaner air along the shore, as long as there are regular breezes. Unfortunately, few people can now afford such property -especially those who need it most. A floating home offers a potentially unlimited amount of waterfront real estate with no land cost. You can have as much as you can afford to build. There are no surrounding lawns and trees to generate pollen, no roads with cars to generate pollution -though, of course, boats are still a pollution issue albeit far less than automobiles.
Perhaps at this point you are wondering where we fall on the list. Personally, your author’s views definitely match the “libertarian” label. But don’t be deceived into thinking that seasteading is just a means to libertarian ends. While we began exploring it as part of trying to achieve our own vision of an ideal society, it turned out to be a much, much bigger idea.
There are many perspectives on what would make a better world and how to get there. Not surprising, since people have different dispositions, experiences, culture, and ideas. Yet current political systems are few in type and number, because they don’t currently allow these different perspectives to be tried out. Instead, the ideas just get endlessly debated. Seasteading is an enabling technology to let people try out all these ideas about new forms of social organization. This will result in a diverse ecosystem of alternative societies (as we’ll explain in more detail in the next part of “Why?”)
The ability to experiment with new societies will produce both benefits to the pioneering seasteaders and to the world: seasteaders will be able to choose a society which is in harmony with their values, and each society will serve as an experiment, to learn if its beliefs work in practice. So individuals will be able to live their personal ideal lifestyles, while increasing our collective wisdom about social organization. Talk about a win-win!
Nor is this a small benefit. Government is one of the largest sectors of the world economy, yet it has benefited the least from technological development. The last major breakthrough was representative democracy, with the early adopter being the USA in 1776. Think about it - we get new car models every year, new electronic devices pop up every time we go to the store, but we only get new types of government every few hundred years! We’ll discuss why this is in the next section, but for now, just think about what an enormous drag this moribund industry is on the world, and how vastly our lives could be improved if government became more local and innovative.
Cast your mind back to the stories of Carl, Judy, and Glen. Each of them (and many of the real groups we listed):
It’s easy to dismiss people like this as dreamers or whiners, but that would be unfair. Whiners are people who only have (1). Dreamers have (1) and (2) (although their visions are often impractical, since they are thought of in the abstract). But we cannot call merely dreamers or whiners those who see problems in society, have specific proposals for how to build a better society, and who would (if given the opportunity) join a group of like-minded people to create such a society.
These visionaries deserve better, for they are the social entrepreneurs who pioneer new ways of life, and are a key part of the evolution of human society. These people still exist in the modern world, and they still have plenty of ideas about what ails society and how it might be cured. But there’s a problem: They have no way to implement or test those ideas.
The United States was set up for the states to serve as such experiments, in a system called “federalism”. Each state could have different laws, and people would choose where to live based on what they wanted, and how the laws worked. Switzerland still works partially this way today, with competition between its cantons and a weak central government. But nowadays most government in the rest of the world (certainly in the United States) is implemented at the federal level, and even the states are far too large for easy experimentation. Traditionally, there was always the outlet of the frontier - trying out new societies using unclaimed land. But this no longer works because we have no frontiers left on land - every bit of dirt on the globe has been claimed by an existing government.
So society’s valuable pioneers are left expressing their ideas uselessly in bars, blogs, and books, proposing better systems that will never be. Many turn their talents to business or academia, where good ideas are (sometimes) rewarded. A few become successful activists, and have some tiny positive impact on our fundamentally broken political systems. Most get frustrated and burn out and learn to focus on their own lives, where they can make a real difference. But deep within them still lurks the urge to blaze a new path, their pioneering spirit dimmed but not forgotten.
They’ve had a rough century - it’s time to turn things around.
(This reminds us of the current situation vis-a-vis public education in the United States, where creative, active, playful children are labeled as “ADD”. Trapped in the factory schooling system, doing obviously useless tasks, the energy and impatience that can make a great entrepreneur or scientist leads kids instead into trouble. Sometimes they recover. Sometimes they do not. As with pioneering, any system that transforms a valuable skill into a dysfunction is one with room for some major improvement.)
In order to get a handle on the magnitude of the problem, we need to zoom out and talk about the economy, rather than individuals. (But please keep in mind that the economy is just a way of summarizing parts of the lives of many people. What these economic growth numbers mean is whether parents can afford to send their kids to college, what quality of medical care people get, and whether their time is spent pursuing dreams and passions or just fighting to survive as subsistence farmers.)
(Insert Gwartney Graph)
A lot of arguments have been made for the value of government spending, but they don’t seem to hold up to economic analysis. At least, in the first world, government spending is sand in the gears of progress. There is a strong linear relationship among OECD countries where the higher govt spending, the lower GDP growth. At 10% of GDP, the growth rate is 6%/year. At 50%, as in the EU, it’s 2% a year. It’s important to point out that these numbers aren’t based on some imaginary libertarian utopia. These are real statistics drawn from real first-world countries over the last 40 years. If anything, I think they underestimate what a new society could accomplish.
(Exponential growth doesn’t change things quickly, but as we can see from looking at the western world since the Industrial Revolution, or China in the last couple decades, over time it has an incredible power to transform the lives of vast numbers of people. For example, currently, per-capita GDP in the EU is $35K/year. In 50 years at current spending levels, they’ll be making $100K/year, which is not bad, but if they could cut their government to 10% of GDP, they’d be making $675K/year.
For those of us taking the long view, maximizing that exponent is crucial to the development of our species. Sure, money has diminishing marginal utility. But there are some big problems unsolved. Everyone in this room has a hereditary genetic disease. It takes many decades to progress, but it has a 100% mortality rate, that kills 100,000 people a day. It’s called aging, and a cure is possible - but expensive. One big problem. Space / one planet is another.
When the first version of this book was written, in 2002, the United States (our home country) was a different place. Despite the dot-com bust, things had been pretty good for a couple decades. But the years since have not been good, due to two major international incidents, and two counterproductive responses.
First came the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, when ???? People perished in a terrorist attack. But the greater tragedy was how our nation responded. A thirst for blood that only cared about attacking Muslims, not whether they had anything to do with terrorism, which led us from Afghanistan (which actually had a connection to terrorism) to Iraq (which had essentially none, less than most countries in the MIddle East). A new definition of patriotism that included unlimited spending on beefing up what was already the most powerful military in the world (and totally unsuited to the challenges of 21st century warfare) and excluded dissent. Security experts have testified that most of the response to 9/11 is mere “security theater”, wasting money on appearaences while accomplishing nothing.
And worst of all, our freedoms and civil liberties - the very things which make America a better place to live than most countries in the world - taken away in the name of protection. It’s hard to overstate the irony, or stupidity, of this “strategy”. The nation’s leaders used the opportunity, not to rally America into unity against a common enemy, but in a massive grab for that which government always wants to take from the people - power. And so, in claiming to “fight back” against the terrorists, we lost our way as a nation.
But that was just the first half of the game. The red hats wreaked their damage on our freedoms, and eventually, the country got outraged, and in November of 2008, the blue hats swept into power with control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Unfortunately for us, they too were handed a crisis, and you know what that means - a pretext to fearmonger while grabbing for power.
The response from the blue hats was the “New New Deal”, the largest increase in spending, debt, and government control of the economy since the Great Depression. Just as economists later showed that the New Deal was actually harmful to recovery, not helpful, this massive (and misnamed) “stimulus” is a massive waste of money. We don’t have time to explore the complicated issue of how governments should best deal with recessions now, but we’ll summarize it by saying that the economists supporting and designing the stimulus are not experts on it, and the few experts on macroeconomics and recessions believe that Keynesian stimulus in the form of spending has little theoretical and no empirical backing. Macroeconomics is one of the least well-understood economic fields, yet also the most politically relevant. This results in economics being used to justify whatever politicians want to do, rather than guiding sensible policy.
The response is worse than counterproductive - by wasting money on make-work projects when we are already in a recession, the bill is likely to prolong and deepen the recession. Not only that, but we are incurring huge deficits which significantly increase our national debt and future tax burden.
But it gets worse. The United States is considered to be the safest borrower in the world, and the US Dollar the best currency, hence the status of Treasury bills and dollars as the reserves of choice for central banks. This demand for our currency keeps it strong, which enables us to buy things from the rest of the world at a discount. And the demand for our government debt keeps interest rates low - the lowest in the world - which means the interest payments on our national debt are minimized. But like any borrower, our credit rating is based on our financial situation. The more we borrow, the more we spend, the more we waste, the more we start to look like we might not be such a risk-free investment after all.
The world has already begun to shift away from the dollar as the sole reserve currency. Our debt remains quite strong (low interest rates), due to a “flight to safety” from the financial crisis. But there is a limit to the world’s appetite for our bonds. As our deficits skyrocket to unprecedented levels (graph), the increased supply of bonds will lead to an increase in interest rates. This will increase the servicing cost on our debt, which will require an increase in taxes, which will slow our economy yet further. The US faces the small but real risk of an economic apocalypse, with massive dollar devaluation and perhaps even a sovereign default.
And even if things do not get that far, the measures taken to prevent it - high taxes, perhaps wealth taxes, inflation, capital controls - will make the country a far worse place to live. The blue hats are taking advantage of the financial crisis to wreak havoc on our economy. (To be fair, the red hats had solidly started down the same path already)
Two very different crises. Two somewhat different political parties. Two horribly counterproductive responses, each wrecking what they claimed to be saving. If you believe, even after reading our suggested references, that the US response to 9/11 increased our national security, or that the US response to the financial crisis will be good for the economy, then I guess it’s true that you can fool some of the people some of the time. But for those of us who shake our heads in disbelief at the stupidity of national policy, and seethe with anger at the charlatans who are supposed to protect our interests, it has been a truly dark decade.
The need for a new frontier and new ways of organizing a society has never been more urgent.
To do justice to the question of why current societies work poorly, and how they could be made to work better, would take a shelf of books, at least. We’re going to cover our unique contribution in detail in the next section. For those of you interested in digging into the literature, here is a quick survey of some of the sources that we’ve found most influential.
Rummell book on death. Summary: In the 20th century, 61 million people died in war. 83 million were killed by their own governments (almost all Communist), by famine, genocide, or murder. Individual homicides? Only 8.5 million. As Voltaire said: “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
Machinery of Freedom (David Friedman)
Game Theory and the Social Contract (Ken Binmore)
Mancur Olson - stuff
Myth of the Rational Voter (Bryan Caplan)
Economics In One Lesson (Henry Hazlitt) ?
Next, we’ll turn to the second question:
We initially chose the ocean as the best place to experiment with new social systems because it is the only unclaimed area left on earth - and space is still a bit expensive. (You can read more about how the world is currently divvied up by the powers-that-be in the Politics section). After considering the matter, however, we were led to the unexpected conclusion that the ocean’s unique features will lead to a revolution in the quality of government. We’ll first analyze why terrestrial governments are so bad, and then show how things are different on the ocean. These ideas were first explored in Patri’s Dynamic Geography paper [PFriedman2004].
There are some important caveats we must make before presenting our theory on why terrestrial democratic governments perform so poorly.
The first is that this is by no means a complete taxonomy of the failings of democracy. There are other significant, endemic problems, such as those analyzed by the public choice school of economics, and discussed in the previous section . We have specifically chosen to explore the reasons below because they are the things that we can change, so they most directly illustrate the effect our changes will have. But since they represent only part of the problem, we admit that our changes will only alleviate some of the suffering caused by unresponsive, inefficient, and sometimes even murderous governments. We hope only to show that these reasons are significant enough that there is hope for seastead societies to work substantially better.
Second, it is truly said that democratic government is a terrible system, worse than any other except all those which have been tried. So before dissing democracy, we want to first acknowledge its rightful place as the reigning king of political systems. Our exploration of its flaws is not meant in any way to oppose its current widespread support and adoption, and we are delighted at its continued spread across the globe. Yet democracy is a relatively recent invention, and it was only a few centuries ago that it was a radical proposal, viewed by many as a hopeless utopian dream. It would be foolish to let our acknowledgment of its superiority over past methods blind us to the possibility of it being superseded by future forms of political organization.
Failed political experiments can have a terrible cost - just look at the mind-numbing body count of the 20th century’s failed experimentation with communism . So our trials with these forms must be done cautiously, incrementally, consensually, and with great care to allow for non-tragic failure modes. Yet to refuse such experimentation would be to resign ourselves to never improving one of the areas most central to human progress and happiness.
With those disclaimers, let us consider government as an industry like any other. Citizens pay taxes, and in return they get government services. While there are a variety of reasons why this industry does a terrible (and sometimes horrific) job at serving its customers, we will focus on two of them.
The second problem is that the cost of entering the governing industry is incredibly high. To create a new government you basically have to win a war, an election, or a revolution. These are rare and difficult things. Economists call this a “high barrier to entry”. While industries with low barriers to entry tend to be very competitive, with innovative firms competing to provide the best product, those with high barriers tend to consist of a few entrenched firms taking advantage of their position (an oligopoly). This is good for the firms (Warren Buffett, for example, specifically looks for such “trenches” when investing), but not so good for the customer. Currently, the difficulty of getting into the government industry dwarfs that of almost any commercial industry - if the barrier to entry in the automobile industry was this high, we’d all still be driving Fords. Even desktop computer operating systems, famous for its low level of competition, is not as bad.
Besides the general lack of efficiency and accountability which comes with an oligopoly, these barriers to entry are particularly hard on political minorities. After all, if the cost of getting into the governing business is very high, it will only be done for large groups of people. Contrast this with the ultimate New Economy business of creating websites, whose miniscule barrier to entry results in a vast array of options serving every conceivable niche (along with some unimaginable ones!)
First, the cost of switching service providers is very high, since it involves moving to another country. An expatriate must usually leave their job (and find a new one), sell their house (and find a new one), leave their friends (and find new ones), and deal with a new culture. Compared to the cost of switching cellphone providers, ISPs, cars, or insurance agents, this is gargantuan. So even if one feels poorly served, it’s a great temptation to stay and hope things get better, or perhaps try to change them despite slim odds. The expense of moving reduces the potential impact of jurisdictional arbitrage (a fancy name for changing the system by voting with your feet, taxes, and/or citizenship). The result is that governments don’t compete to do a good job, because they don’t need to. Their citizens are trapped, which means their actions result in little market feedback, so they focus on exploitation instead of innovation.
Besides making sense theoretically, we can find evidence for this hypothesis in the real world. For example, tax rates on capital are generally lower than those on labor, because capital is more mobile. Switching cellphone providers is more difficult in the US, where handsets are “locked” to one carrier, than in Europe, where unlocked phones are the norm. The result is that Europe generally gets better handsets, sooner (with rare exceptions like Apple’s iPhone), and its cellular providers are more innovative (cite needed). Gamers can switch console systems much more easily than companies can switch office software, and so Microsoft’s Xbox is considered much more innovative and user-friendly than its Office product suite.
One potential solution to the cost of moving is an information economy with digital cash, where people can work and maintain social networks from anywhere. This idea has been championed by hi-tech libertarians, and was described in the book The Sovereign Individual [DavidsonMogg]. While it has worked for a tiny number of individuals, most people’s jobs involve some hands-on component. And current economic research suggests that the importance of physical colocation is increasing, not decreasing (hence why the newfangled tech industry is concentrated in Silicon Valley). And even when the information economy frees us from job-based geography, the other problems with moving (family, house, face-to-face contact with friends) remain.
When it is hard for new companies to form (barrier to entry), and hard for customers to switch (lock-in), you have an industry segmented into a bunch of local monopolies. Sound familiar? Government in its current form is exactly that - a geographically segmented monopoly. The natural result is for firms to focus on exploiting existing customers rather than innovating and competing for new ones. Act like bandits, not like salesmen. This industry is so badly structured that firms constantly steal from and occasionally even murder their customers, and still stay in business.
Taken together, we can see that governments do a poor job of serving their citizens, especially minority groups. it’s an industry with little market feedback, little competition, little reason to perform well, and little opportunity for incremental improvement.
It is important to note that both of these are arguments about incentives based on systems-level thinking, and that they apply regardless of the political party in charge. One could argue instead that governments and websites are different industries because they attract different types of people, or have a different culture around them. While this viewpoint is natural, we think that in general such explanations are weak, and we instead take the attitude of the economics profession, which is that the first place to look for the causes of differences in people’s performance is in the systems that organize them and the incentives they provide. The people in Germany in the 1930s and 1950s were not particularly different, yet they operated under very different political systems.
The debate is important because the different explanations lead to different recommendations for change. If the problem with democratic governments is just that the wrong group is in charge, the solution is to kick out their bums and replace them with our bums. If the problem with governments is that they are run by politicians and bureaucrats, the solution is reform that encourages other types of people to enter public service. But if the problem, as we claim, is that democratic governments have a set of systemic incentives to perform poorly, neither of the above will make much difference. Instead, we need a new system with better incentives.
We think the empirical evidence is on our side. The reins of power have passed through the hands of many bums of many professions, personalities, and parties, but little has changed since Mark Twain wrote To improve democracy, we must improve these systemic incentives. Fortunately, we can.
When we build countries from modular collections of seasteads, we change both these characteristics.
Seasteading drastically cut the barrier to entry by opening a new frontier where small groups can form independent settlements. Instead of the trillion-plus dollars it’s taking the US to enact a new regime in Iraq, groups will be able to start a new country for tens or hundreds of millions - many orders of magnitude less. And the group doesn’t need to get it all at once either, they can add structures as resources and people become available. The result is to empower minority viewpoints of all types.
This is Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of The Seas Cruise Ship, and the Empire State Building. To the same scale. It is no exaggeration to say that the ocean lets things as big as skyscrapers move around on a regular basis.
This feature of the ocean has already had an enormous impact - it’s why we have global trade, but people don’t seem to have thought about what happens if you build a country on the water. On the ocean, we can create modular, geographically flexible countries. It’s a whole new paradigm compared to land - by detaching from one ocean city and floating over to another, you’ll be able to leave your country, without leaving your house.
If existing countries followed our model, then the country of Georgia could be 1000 miles away from Russia in a week (not a made up number). Israel and Palestine wouldn’t have to be neighbors - after fighting over how to divvy up the promised land, probably blowing some of it up, they could take their pieces and go their own way. New Hampshire might not have to be so close to Vermont! And any country whose laws were too oppressive would find its best and brightest melting away to grace some friendlier land - and taking their houses and offices with them.
To some degree, this already happens on land. Capital moves to where it can get the best terms - building new offices and factories instead of moving old ones, but it’s the same idea. The United States was founded with the idea of federalism, competition between the states. Well, think of this as Extreme Federalism.
This dramatically lower cost of switching providers promotes market feedback. If the government announces an unpopular policy on Monday, by Tuesday there may be nothing left of the city but the capital building, overlooking a serene seascape of empty waves. If residents care deeply about the change, they can do more than just voice their opposition - they can act. Whether it is libertarians and taxes, drug users and drug prohibition, pacifists and military expansion, environmentalists and sustainability, a modular city will give its residents an unprecedented degree of control over their political affiliation.
Instead of huge, monolithic, unresponsive governments, we’ll have many small, dynamic, innovative ones. Power will move downward towards the level of the smallest economically feasible platform (something like 10-100 people). We don’t claim this will result in utopia, but it should increase the efficiency of any type of government.
These differences are intimately related to the difference between static and dynamic geography. You can grab dirt and hold it. Try to grab water, and it will swirl away. What little you capture will slowly evaporate. There is some deep truth to this metaphor. We believe that terrestrial governments control people because they can control territory and the immobile structures on top of it. On the ocean, control of the foundation has little relevance - a seastead can float anywhere.
While these two industry characteristics are the biggest factors, there are a lot of other ways of looking at the advantages of seasteading.
Let’s consider several different levels on which we could discuss politics:
Policy. For example, a debate about whether to criminalize drug use, attempt to reduce the harm of use, or completely legalize it. What are the effects of each specific policy? Which does the most net good? Who is hurt, and who is helped?
System. What types of policies does a specific political system tend to generate? For example, in a democracy, a special interest group can easily coordinate to influence legislation which benefits them, but costs everyone a little bit. If every consumer loses a dollar a year from a policy, it just isn’t worth anyone’s time to fight it. Hence we expect democracies to frequently produce policies which steal small amounts from many and give them to a few. And indeed, tariffs, farm subsidies, and bailouts, just to name a few, fit this model quite well. This type of argument is at a level of generality above any specific policy, and it can offer enormous insight at consistent errors made by current governments. But to fix those problems, we need to rise further yet.
Meta-system. At the level we want, we think about the entire industry of government. What types of systems does it produce? How can it be changed to produce better systems (that is, systems which produce better policies)? What influences how well the governments of the world serve their citizens? How can we increase competition between governments? This level is the most abstract and the most complex, which can make it difficult to get a handle on, but if we can grasp that handle, it gives us the most leverage to change the world.
Now you can see why those who ask us which policies we want, or what type of political system we’d start, are missing the point. I mean, if you want to buy me a drink, I’ll be happy to spout off about my personal theories for an ideal government, but that’s not what this is about. We don’t want to start a government or change a policy - we want to create a world with a diverse ecosystem of governments of different sizes, values, and cultures, trying different methods of social organization. To use the metaphor of a business, these levels are products, firms, and industries. People are asking about what company we’ll start and what product we’ll offer, when we want to create an entire industry.
As philosopher Robert Nozick wrote in Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join voluntarily to pursue or attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision on others.
That’s what we’re talking about.
This industry will have many different firms offering different services to different markets. In fact, it already does - they are the countries of the world - but the variety in systems, sizes, and methods is currently quite low, because of the barrier to entry mentioned earlier.
After all, there is no single answer to the question: “What is the best government?”, for many reasons:
Different people have different values, which mean they want to live in a society with different goals.
Making a good government is a very hard problem - even if a group agrees on goals, there is no sample way to construct a set of laws or institutions to meet those goals. Like any hard problem, it requires experimentation by many different groups trying many approaches.
There is no perfect form of social organization, which means the search for a better system will never end. There will always be something new to try. This is especially true because technological change will mean new tradeoffs and options for government. This is especially true if, as seems likely, technology starts to change human nature itself.
One of the problems of government is that it tends to slowly grow power structures which become entrenched and cannot be removed. When a government agency makes progress on its mandate, it asks for the same budget so it can continue. When it fails to make progress, obviously it needs more money. The result is what some economists have called a ratchet effect which results in government continually growing in size and scope. It is no accident that most political innovation has happened on the frontier, where brand-new societies were being formed.
The economist Mancur Olson argues that this is a big part of how democracies function, and points to evidence that older countries, which have had time to grow the most special interest sludge, have the slowest economic growth, while those whose powers were shattered, such as postwar Germany and Japan, have the most economic growth. Similarly, newer industries grow faster than older ones, because they haven’t accumulated these power structures which hamper change.
The modularity of seasteads provides a reset without a frontier (or, if you like, a permanent and omnipresent frontier). An entire government can be scrapped and started anew for any subgroup of its citizens, without them even needing to pack their bags - let alone shed blood. This will allow for much more frequent and less painful innovation, with new ideas constantly building on old ones, and the technology of social organization will advance much more rapidly.
While the disassembly that we discuss will be painful and expensive, it should not often be necessary. In chess there is a saying “The threat is greater than the execution”. The same applies to seasteads. The ability of a module to leave will enable it to win better terms for itself, even without exercising that right. It may be important for seasteads to actually leave on occasion, to prove that they can, but they should not have to bear the cost of leaving every time they want a political change.
One of the great things about this idea is that it’s a technological solution to a political problem. Humans are no good at changing human nature, and human nature, plus the nature of political systems, is why governments function poorly. Yet we are fabulous at solving engineering problems. Well, dynamic geography shows us that we can dramatically improve government merely by solving the engineering problems posed by seasteading. As cryptography makes it almost impossible to censor free speech and communication, seasteading will make it very difficult to exploit a trapped citizenry.
Let’s not forget that laws are information, just like code! The governing industry, like most modern industries, is built on ideas. Can you imagine if each of you had the same flexibility you do when programming to roll a new government out of pieces copied from old ones, plus a few new twists? Let’s just copy our corporate law from Delaware - or the Bahamas. If we want the right to revolution in our seastead Constitution, I hear we can copy Article 10 from the Constitution of this fine state.
And we’re going to do it without proselytizing, without having to argue people around to our way of thinking, without needing to win any elections. We’re going to do it by building an alternative and using it ourselves, and showing, through our lives, why everyone else should do the same. It’s a put up or shut up approach to philosophy - kind of like the Free State Project.
The ocean tax is the extra cost of living in the harsh, corrosive ocean. The government tax is extra cost of regulation and wasted taxes. At the beginning, our ocean tax will be pretty high, and only the sectors with the highest government tax will be worth moving offshore - like medicine. But if we can, through economies of scale, get the ocean tax to be lower than the government tax for most things that most people do, then we get a world where everyone lives on seasteads, and we use the continents as farms and nature preserves.
It’s worth noting here that the ocean tax is basically constant (decreasing), while the government tax is proportional to wealth, so over time, the balance tilts more and more in our favor. Maybe seasteads aren’t cost-effective now - by the time Obama leaves office…
As history shows us, revolutions are bloody. It is difficult for power to change hands without a period of uncertainty in who has the power, and such periods can be extremely violent. This is a big problem for those of us who want to radically change existing political systems. As Arthur B writes:
This is a pointless thought experiment, but I think it gives interesting results. Assume that you gain political power in a country, and - before you become absolutely corrupted - try to turn it into a happy anarcho-capitalistic society. How would you do it?
The first approach is to dissolve the State. Tear apart the whole structure, leave your office and throw the key. Unfortunately, should you do that, the State will be recreated instantly, election held etc. Society is sensitive to hysteresis, it’s not just the institutions that define how it works, it’s also where you come from. By shutting down the State, you will just have quit your job not destroyed it. The second approach is to gradually transform the State by reforming it until it completely disappears. Unfortunately, this second approach has drawbacks. First, it is unethical, it makes you a criminal. Second, you are very susceptible to become corrupted by the power on the way, to encounter obstacles etc.
Fortunately, there is a way to combine gradualism and radicalism all in an ethical way (hooray).
The way to do it is to grant secession rights to every landowner. Most likely, few people will use that right at first, because the services provided by the states are needed, therefore they will voluntarily chose to stay in the State. Once this right is granted, you are not a criminal anymore! You can then engage in extensive gradual reforms with the ultimate check and balance that people can secede.
At first, secession would probably be used to create free trade zones, that require little protection. Later on it could be used for gated communities. Meanwhile, you’d try to do the best job you can to provide something efficient people want to stay in, with very little budget due to easy tax avoidance.
The key idea here, is that market will provide the best balance between incremental changes and radical transformation of society by letting people chose. Pragmatism dictates that people won’t probably secede en masse, but their right to ensures efficient policies and satisfies any ethical concerns.
One of the downsides to seasteading is that it requires a relocation of civilization, building brand new countries on the currently empty oceans. While in many ways this is unfortunate, it also has its advantages - in a way, it implements Arthur’s solution. If you work with existing countries, not only do you have to somehow convince those currently entrenched in power to give it up, but you have a transition that is complicated and messy. People really don’t like power transitions, because of the potential for bloodshed.
But seasteading offers another way. There is no transition of power over any existing land or physical structure. Instead, we get an incremental movement as seastead cities grow and develop. People secede from traditional governments one at a time, and by physically moving to a new location.
If the above was too new or abstract or confusing to make sense, don’t worry about it. The key thing to take away is that we aren’t just heading for a new frontier with the vague hope of finding a better way to live. We actually have good reason to think that ocean societies will actually work better than terrestrial ones.
Which is not to say that life on the ocean will be perfect - far from it. Most of the problems of life on land will come right along with us - how to find love, making money without selling your soul, the tricky balance between security and freedom, and how best to raise your children. But the problem of being part of a system so huge that you don’t feel you can have any impact, with nowhere better to go, no way to get more autonomy for yourself or your community, no way to put into practice your ideas about better ways for people to live - that we can address.
Bad government is a big problem, it calls for a big solution. The bad news is, I’m proposing we rebuild our entire civilization someplace new! The good news is, if we do it right, in a modular way, we only have to do it once - dynamic geography will then ensure that it then stays a permanent frontier. We can have repeated bloodless revolutions where we reconfigure existing nations. And there’s plenty of room, since the theory suggests that 70% of the planet and most of the rest of the universe (space too) have the properties for better government.
It may be the last frontier, but it turns out that the ocean is not a booby prize.
When Patri was at Google, the procedure for launching a new product involved a long checklist of things to check and watch out for. Engineers found this list onerous, but the experts explained it quite simply: “Behind every item on that checklist is the flaming wreckage of some past launch.” The items in this section may sometimes seem so commensensical that they aren’t worth repeating, but behind each one lies a failed project.
So while there is no single right approach to seasteading, there are certainly plenty of wrong ones. And what we’ve learned from the movement’s (admittedly dismal) history has to a large degree shaped our philosophy. Because of this, explaining our approach goes hand-in-hand with identifying common points of failure and indicating how we think they can be overcome.
The root cause of most of these failures seems to have been lack of realism. So our solution is simply to be as pragmatic as possible about our vision. Realism is our philosophy’s foundation, and more specific policies are just the application of realism to various areas. Important areas include incrementalism, politics, technology, and finances.
The most basic part of our realism is that we believe in an incremental approach to every area of seasteading. This means breaking our ambitious visions down into small steps, and taking things one step at a time. A cruise ship is not as exciting as a new platform design, diesel-powered generators are not as exciting as OTEC, and operating under a flag of convenience is not as exciting as being a member of the United Nations - but it can happen decades sooner.
We believe that a realistic approch to the difficult problem of nation-founding must be incremental. Large, successful things usually start out small and expand organically. Rome wasn’t built in a day and a successful business leverages each stage into the next. Big things (cruise ships, skyscrapers, factories) do get built all at once at times, but they are almost always proven concepts that were first demonstrated successfully on a smaller scale. There were many two-story buildings built before the first three-story one, let alone the first skyscraper. If there was a nation-founder with the financial resources to jump the intermediate stages and create a vast floating city, it would already exist. After all, there are plenty of people ready to design and build one as soon as the multi-billion dollar check gets cut. Since no such deus ex machina appears to be forthcoming, we recommend humbler methods.
There are plenty of grand conceptual ideas out there, but we see a key link between being grand and staying conceptual. If you make the first step too high, you will never even get started, as the many participants who became frustrated with and dropped out of new-country projects can attest. Instead, we believe that the main focus should be on the current and immediate next stages, not on far-distant visions. Watch the path in front of you, not the sky, or you will trip.
We discuss many of the specific axes along which we can proceed incrementally under Making It Happen.
Engineering a cost-effective structure to survive in the harsh ocean environment is difficult enough. Counting on unproven technologies will only make things harder. For example, several potential ventures [Savage1992, Celestopea, Nexus] have focused on the combination of two problematic technologies: OTEC and seacrete, which we feel exemplify the unrealistic “science-fiction” approach to floating cities.
OTEC, or Ocean Thermal Electric Conversion, is a technique to generate energy from the temperature difference between warm surface water and the cold depths. Unfortunately there is little practical experience with the technology, and it scales down very poorly. It’s a promising technology for the future, perhaps for governments soon, but not at all applicable to small ventures now. Some projects have treated OTEC as practically free energy for ocean cities, when it is quite expensive indeed. We discuss it further in our Infrastructure - Power section.
If you dip a wire mesh in seawater and run electricity through it, a cement-like substance forms. Known as seacrete, many floating-city designs have been based on this wondrous source of free building materials. Unfortunately, there is a catch. The common cited figures for energy requirements are off by a factor of 40, and so the electricity costs far more than just buying concrete would, as we describe in more detail in the building materials section
Seasteaders will not make the mistake of counting on an impractical technology to make their vision happen. Our concept is a big enough jump already, and the fewer jumps we make along with it the better. So while necessity has prompted some novelty in our designs, they are firmly rooted in standard engineering techniques. You’ll see us examining a number of cutting-edge technologies, yet planning to use very few of them on early seasteads. Our power will come from solar panels, wind turbines, and fossil fuel backup generators, not OTEC plants. Reinforced concrete is an extremely cheap construction material, and we’ll buy it from standard terrestrial sources. In short, our philosophy is to plan our initial designs around mature technologies and save the innovation for later iterations.
New technologies will be important to the long-term development of seasteading, and so we will discuss some of the key areas where we hope to improve on standard methods. But we must not count on any breakthroughs.
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. If it looks like the emperor has no clothes, he’s probably got goosebumps.
There is nothing wrong with playing the micronation game, imagining a country for fun. But the line between Micronation and genuine venture is a blurry one, in the minds of the principals as well as on their websites. Hinting at complex negotiations with mighty powers for far-off territory adds spice to projects on either side of the line. Yet the countless cycle of promises and failures cannot help but turn interested participants into weary cynics, exhausting the enthusiasm of each new generation. We’d much rather be open about what we have (now, a realistic plan, a rough design and a little financial commitment, later, we hope, a small but habitable prototype). We are trying hard to minimize the faith necessary, but there will be some, and we think honesty, not puffery, gives us the best chance to get it.
Related to transparency is openness - being public about our existence, goals, and methods.
A number of TSI community members have expressed concern about our policy of operating openly, stating our goal to create new governments on the internet and in public interviews. They worry that it could bring us to the attention of governments before we are ready, allowing them to quash our nascent movement, and suggest that it might be better to keep everything quiet until a large seastead community is operating. While attracting negative attention early is certainly a danger, we believe there are a number of significant advantages to openness:
It allows us to work with public figures, like successful businesspeople and scientists, who would not be associated with a secret project that might get them in trouble.
It allows us to raise investment from individuals and institutions who are likely to require the safety of us being part of the existing global regulatory environment.
It gives us the greatest possible audience for our ideas. Many of the community members, including those who are concerned about our openness, found out about seasteading through our public website or media mentions.
It gives us the best chance to negotiate with governments in good faith. “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned”, as Patri’s grandfather said.
It attracts people who want to openly create a new society which is part of the interdependent world, rather than those who want to make a hidden Galt’s Gulch, cut off. This is important, since we think an isolated society is much less attractive, less likely to succeed, and more likely to go horribly wrong (see The Beach, Bioshock, Lord of the Flies…). The whole point of seasteading is not to hide - so let’s be true to that principle from the beginning.
Let’s also not forget that this is a movement where diversity is a core value. Other groups are welcome to create similar projects in secret, hoping to grow large enough to be in a better negotiating position before they are noticed by the existing powers of the world. We wish them the best of luck, but that is not our path - we seek to be the public face of this movement.
On the other hand, we don’t want to take this too far and insist on radical honesty. We want to be open about our existence and long-term goals, but there may on occasion be specific elements of our strategy or predictions for the future that are better left unsaid for marketing purposes. However, we will be operating under a strong presumption of openness as a default. (Including being open about the degree to which we are open, as you can see!)
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. Like it or not, the first seasteads will be tiny fish in huge ponds, and if they make the sharks angry, they’ll get eaten before they grow big enough to put up a fight.
For example, libertarian seasteads will probably be allowed to have low taxes and low regulation, but genuine bank secrecy may not be permitted because of worries about terrorist money laundering. We think it’s far better to get what freedom is possible than to fail because of a refusal to compromise. Environmental regulation offers another example where compromise will be necessary. Our political goals are a compromise as well in that we simply wish to be left alone by other states, we aren’t seeking recognition, embassies, passports, and a seat in the UN like some projects.
This willingness to compromise does not mean that our new way of life offers no improvements on the old. it’s just that focusing our efforts on a few changes at a time is the most effective way to succeed. Even with the limitations of reality, there are still plenty of incremental improvements that can be made to current social systems.
We specifically suggest drawing the line of compromise between local autonomy and actions that affect other governments. Zoning laws, legal system, drug use, health care, safety nets - all of these are areas that affect the local population. But there are some things that will impact the rest of the world. Pollution, money laundering, drug exportation, hiding fugitives, all of these harm other people or prevent existing sovereign countries from enforcing their own laws. While there will always be argument about where this line lies (is producing greenhouse gases at the same rate as other nations pollution?)
The problems facing prospective nation-founders are undoubtedly difficult, as evinced by the movement’s historical lack of success. They can be overcome if and only if we rationally consider our options, then produce a design which is politically, technologically, and financially feasible. For the reasons which we will outline in this paper, we believe that seasteading meets these criteria. While there is a lot of planning and hard work ahead, there are no substantial leaps of faith required. We think that this makes our vision unique.
We cannot over-emphasize the importance of the economic analysis about the governing industry. It would be a great shame to boldly homestead the oceans and have them turn into the same quagmire we are trying to escape. The other parts of our philosophy, and the rest of this book, all deal with implementation, with the how of seasteading. It is Dynamic Geography that tells us why this new way of life will be different than the old. We are realists, and we expect that living with the same humans will result in many of the same human problems. But different systems can result in quite different results with the same people. While we will never reach utopia, we think we can make some fundamental improvements to current social systems, and in the real world, that is plenty to strive for.
Now: on to the details.
In order to set the stage, we’ll discuss some of the previous projects and schemes for living on the ocean. These will range from the real to the attempted and the merely imagined. We’ll also explore some of the previous precedents for people using the high seas for freedom.
Here are some of the current aquatic lifestyles from which seasteading can draw inspiration. They are a varied group, none quite like what we are imagining, but each with enough overlap to be worth studying.
A floating home is exactly what its name implies – a house built on a floating platform. Typically these structures don’t have any on-board propulsion, they consist of a home built on a hollow concrete box. There are many floating home communities in the USA, like Sausalito’s Richardson Bay FloatingHomes. Patri attended one of their annual tours, and has a report with pictures [FloatingHomesTour]. The Netherlands, a country which is 50% below sea level, also has a large number of floating homes. We were unable to find market statistics on how many floating homes there are worldwide.
This lifestyle typically start out as a clever technique for avoiding the high cost and restrictive codes of some housing markets, but inevitably the various government agencies figure out what is going on and start to enforce building codes, property taxes and the like. Eventually, the floating homes cost just as much as any other form of real estate in the area, although they remain much more picturesque.
Floating homes are designed for sheltered waters, so they don’t need to worry about big waves. You might think this makes their design unsuitable for the ocean, but we will see later that there are some circumstances where this model is appropriate. Also, while many floating homes are built in conventional fashion by companies like [IMF], there are some unique and interesting exceptions.
In his original seasteading paper, Wayne Gramlich suggested building floating homes using two-liter bottles for flotation [Gramlich1999]. This would provide a very cheap foundation, although it is suitable only for calm waters. It turns out that Rich Sowa had already used this method to build a small island off the coast of Mexico which he operates as a tourist attraction [MotherEarth2001], [Sowa].
Artist Andrea Zittel built a concrete island home called the Pocket Property, and anchored it off the coast of Denmark. She describes the experiment in an interview:
I guess when I was working in New York I found that I was mostly drawn to these very small, contained capsules that would go inside of preexisting architecture. Moving to L.A. completely changed the scale of my thinking, and I started to become much more interested in creating environments, and much more sensitized to exterior spaces. So although it’s kind of a leap, this piece really came out of the entire experience of moving back into suburbia. I started to think about how important it is, when you’re living in that kind of an area, or when you live outside of the city - your land is so important to you. When I was looking for a house, it was much more important - the plot of land, and how big it was, and how it was situated - than the actual house itself. And I’ve also been really interested in how we create these little private universes.
When I drive down the street in my neighborhood, every single person’s yard is landscaped to represent some fantasy of where they live, whether it be an alpine fantasy or a tropical fantasy or a desert fantasy. And they’re all these totally separate little universes or environments that are completely honed in. So I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and how I could actually create a design for a feasible living environment that reflects the most important things that people look for. I guess the other thing, too, that I’ve been thinking about a lot is this whole sort of capsule living, and how especially out there it’s more and more about creating your own bubble, your own capsule. You’re in your house, on your property, and then you get in your car and you drive. And I go for the drive-through; I don’t even want to get out of my car to eat or to go to the bank. Everything’s drive-through, and it makes me feel very, very safe. But I also think that there’s a certain sort of sadness to that too, a certain loss of civic life. It’s a prototype for a particular type of lifestyle. But if I were to extend that vision I would say that it’s possible that some day something like this might exist, and that people would live in these community spreads. I’ve been doing drawings of these, all lined up, almost like cars in parking lots. Almost like a suburbia floating out in the ocean, so you’re completely alone, you’re completely autonomous, but you have also this sense of community within that. [PBSZittel]
Sailboats
An ocean worthy sailboat is defintely large enough to live in. Rather than buy a house on land, some people choose to purchase a sailboat and live onboard. Thus, when you go to a marina, there is a good chance that some of the boats in there are being used as full time residences [Moeller1977]. In many US marinas, live-aboards are limited to ten percent of all berths.
When the boat owner has the time and resources, they can undock from the marina and go sailing. Indeed, with enough savings, they can live on the interest and spend all their time traveling [Hill1993].
By carefully managing energy needs and using the right mix of solar cells, trolling generators, batteries, and a backup generator, is possible for a sailboat to be completely energy self sufficient [Rose1979].
The next step, of self sufficiency for food, is much more difficult for most sailboats due to limited solar area. However, using a combination of growing small amounts of food and scavenging local seaweed it is possible to reduce the amount of food you need to buy Neumeyer1982.
While a carefully outfitted sailboat is capable of surviving months at a time on the open ocean, eventually some consumable resource will near depletion, and the sailboat will have to return to land. Also the cramped spaces and human need for social contact make most people desire periodic visits to port. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of this method in more detail later when considering designs.
In this category we also include [HouseBoats]. While they may not have sails, they are (unlike floating homes) designed to be mobile, although they are usually operated in sheltered waters so that they do not have to cope with significant waves. Most houseboats have all of the amenities of a modest sized recreational vehicle – kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, etc. They are in fact the aquatic equivalent of RV’s.
While most houseboats are used for recreational purposes, some people have moved into them on a permanent basis. For example, there is a small houseboat community called Knight’s Landing on the Sacramento River. Discovery Bay and Redwood Shores, both in Redwood City, are two more marinas where houseboats moor in the San Francisco Bay. Europe, with its large network of navigable waterways, is home to many houseboats as well.
Cruise Ships
The cruise ship industry has been growing rapidly for decades. There are a number of different companies that provide vacation packages for people to board a cruise ship for a week or two. While the budget accomodations are pretty spartan, the deluxe accomodations are luxurious. Extensive food and entertainment are provided. Many cruise ships have on-board casinos so that patrons may gamble, an example of profiting from the freedom of international waters.
While cruise ships are large, ocean-worthy vehicles that can stand some serious weather, most customers do not like rough seas. Thus, a cruise ship will typically change its itinerary to visit alternate ports of call in order to sail around or entirely avoid a bad ocean storm.
Although a cruise ship can rightfully considered to be a floating city, they are far from self-sufficient. The modern cruise ship is typically only capable of cruising for a week or two before its consumables need to be replenished. So while cruise ships support a significantly larger population than a typical sailboat, they can do so only for a limited time before they must return to port and replenish water, food, and fuel.
Cruise Condos
A new development in the cruise ship industry is the idea of full time residency onboard. While only one ship is currently operating, several more are planned. While these ships aren’t doing any innovation in government, they definitely bear watching as an example of a full-time residential lifestyle on the ocean, and we are cheering for their success.
The ResidenSea Corporation has built a $265M cruise ship with 110 residences and 88 guest suites that allows wealthy patrons to live on the ship full time as it cruises around the world ResidenSea. It began cruising in March of 2002. Their waste policies are mentioned later. All residents were required to also have residences elsewhere - these cabins could not be used as a primary residence.
Unfortunately they targeted the ultra-luxury market just as the global recession hit, and for several years had troubles selling units. In late 2003 the residents bought the ship from the operating company to run it themselves. They report that sales have been increasing (although there are still many empty units). Still, it sounds as though the original financial backers did not get good results. Given that it’s already difficult to get funding for a new type of venture which requires substantial capital, the ResidenSea result makes it even harder. Despite ResidenSea’s failure, the idea has enough merit that several more cruise ship condos are being constructed.
The Four Seasons hotel chain is building Four Seasons Ocean Residences. From the promotional material:
With Four Seasons Ocean Residences, you’ll discover extraordinary places you never might have ventured, – or never even knew existed – always with Four Seasons finesse guiding your way. Anchored nearly 250 days a year – in ports from Antwerp to Zanzibar – you’re free to spend your days exploring exotic, exciting locations. Then return to the familiar comfort of home.
On her maiden voyage, the Four Seasons will depart from the historic port of Helsinki and set forth on a two-year itinerary, painstakingly designed through in-depth research. Following the sun for optimal climates, the itinerary aligns with major world celebrations, giving you the most convenient home base for the 2012 London Olympics, Carnival in Rio and the Cannes Film Festival. Extended stays in key destinations provide you with ample time for inland excursions – whether African safaris or Antarctic penguin-watching.
After the initial two-year schedule, the itinerary will be determined in part by Four Seasons residents themselves and confirmed two years in advance.
Statistics:
Gross Tonnage: 48,600 Overall Length: 720 feet (220 metres) Number of Decks: 12 plus Sky Deck Cruising Speed: 18.5 knots Residences: 112 Owner Guest Suites: 18 Butler/Staff Suites: 11 Maximum Capacity: 550 residents Typical Capacity: 120 to 250 residents Crew: 220 Builder: Aker Yards Projected Delivery: 2010 Public Space: 70,000 ft^2 Cost: $3.7M (796 ft^2) - $39M (7,860 ft^2) per residence.
Besides permanent residences, the ship offers timeshares starting at $400K for 1 month/year for 50 years.
The “Orphalese” plans to launch in 2008. They are offering 200 permanent residences ranging from the 1,000-square-feet, 2-bedroom Pegasus Estate to the 3,700-square-feet, 5-bedroom Penthouse, which are available for full ownership. The 2-bedrooms start at $1.8 million with $30,000 in annual fees, while penthouses start at $10 million with $78,000 in annual fees.
Oil Platforms
Since an oil platform is towed into its final location, it is more like an artificial island than a boat. Oil platforms are currently quite expensive, sometimes costing as much as a billion dollars. This expense is reasonable since a single oil well can generate millions of dollars of revenue in a single day [Helvarg2001].
Since oil platforms are not permitted to move from their location, they must be designed to withstand some incredibly severe ocean weather. While they prove that it can be done, cost reduction by several orders of magnitude is required to make ocean living practical.
Islands
While not technically floating, private islands are often considered as a potential location for founding new societies. There is a substantial market for private islands [PrivateIslands], which can be found throughout the world. However, all of them are claimed by traditional jurisdictions, which have historically been loathe to part with their political control. As island real estate specialist Vladi Private Islands says:
_ There’s something special about a private island. An isolated piece of paradise, its beaches and forests yours alone to enjoy. A virtual private kingdom under the sun. While this is enough for most of us, for some, only a real kingdom (or republic, or principality, or ?) will suffice. For these folks, a private island is but a means to an end - the establishment of a new, independent country. But is such a thing really possible?
The short answer is a pretty conclusive ’ no’. Since the early 20th century, every square foot of dry land on Earth has been claimed by at least one country or another, which pretty much rules out discovering an unmapped tropical paradise, planting your flag, and setting yourself up as the local sovereign. Similarly, existing countries are more than a little reluctant to part with pieces of their national territory, no matter the financial incentives offered._
[PrivateIslands]
Sealand
The Principality of Sealand is arguably the most (perhaps the only) successful new-country project in recent history. It was founded in 1967, when Roy Bates, a pirate radio operator, moved into an abandoned WWII anti-aircraft platform called Rough’s Tower. The platform was located about 7 miles off the British coast, which was then in international waters.
Several incidents have supported the Principality’s claims of independence. Sealand fired warning shots at a nearby repair boat, who took King Roy to court over the matter. The ruling was that the tower was outside of the court’s jurisdiction. Later, some German men briefly seized the platform by force, and were captured in a helicopter raid. One was kept as a prisoner for several weeks, during which period the German government appealed to the British government for help. However, the British Foreign Office said that the tower was beyond their jurisdiction [Strauss1984, p. 132-138].
More recently, Prince Roy has retired, and Sealand was leased to a company called HavenCo for several years as a data haven. For various reasons, this venture failed.
Reader Bob Green writes:
Sean Hastings, one of the people behind Havenco, lived here in Anguilla for several years. we worked on a cryptopgraphy software project together. Although it may be true that terrorist concerns after 9/11 contributed to the shut down of HavenCo, i heard informally that other factors may have been more important: 1) not as much demand for government-free web hosting as they expected. 2) they partnered with the son of the original sealand founder and put him in charge of security. 3) the partner had all the guns and as the project hit problems, he just turfed the founders out. An interesting legal question is where do you go for contract enforcement when you are a micro-nation. Can you sign the contracts for your seasteaed in the UK/US where they are enforceable?
And reader Julian Egelstaff says:
I found your web pages while doing some reading on Freedom Ship. I noticed that you mention Sealand and Havenco on part of your site, and you mention that Havenco shut down over worries about terrorism. I read a recent presentation by one of the former principals of Havenco that suggests it had more to do with the people and organization not really being up to the task. I thought you would be interested….
Referring to Ryan Lackey’s presentation at DefCon 11.
There have been suggestions of expanding Sealand by damming off and then draining an area around it. It will be interesting to see if this upstart country can continue to maintain its independence, and whether it can turn sovereignty into business opportunities. Sealand was put up for sale in 2007, and so far has had no takers [ABCNews200708].
Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them, and so we have studied what little material exists about attempts at seastead-like ventures. We find some of the following quite illustrative. Note that the distinction between “attempted” and “proposed” (the next category) is somewhat arbitrary. Since most nation-founding attempts don’t get past the drawing board, our standards for what constitutes an attempt are fairly low. Also, some of these attempts are still ongoing.
The Freedom Ship
The Freedom Ship [FreedomShip] is a proposal for a mile long “City At Sea” for 40,000 people. The chief architect is an engineer named Norman Nixon. The folks working on this one have managed to generate an extensive amount of press coverage (including Popular Mechanics and the Discovery Channel) and enlist dozens of volunteers. Construction cost, unfortunately, is in the neighborhood of ten billion dollars. While the large size makes the idea newsworthy, it also makes financing extremely difficult. This is especially true when ResidenSea, which was approximately 1/40th the cost, could not sell all its units. It seems fantastically unlikely to us that anyone will finance such a large project until smaller ones have demonstrated that the floating condo concept is viable.
Indeed, no signs have yet been seen of this staggering sum, although the company has built an 11-foot long, 400 pound model, which puts them well ahead of the average project. A lack of transparency has been notable from the beginning, with interested but skeptical people complaining that their criticisms have all been deflected or ignored [Patri_FS]. However, rumour has it that they’ll soon be selling copies of the huge amount of design work they’ve done. Only time will tell whether they can raise the funds for this gigantic project. While we are rather skeptical that it reach fruition in its current form, we would be delighted to be proven wrong.
Aquarius Project
Another well-publicized venture during the 1990’s was the Aquarius Project, based on the book The Millenial Project by Mashall Savage [Savage1992]. An organization was created called the First Millenial Foundation, which later changed its name to the Living Universe Foundation. Savage proposes building many large floating cities out of hexagonal cells made from a material called Sea-crete or alternatively Seament. They would be powered by OTEC generators, which operate on the temperature differential between surface and deep water. Income comes from mariculture, hydrogen, magnesium, and several other sources. Actually, only the first 100 pages of TMP are about Aquarius, and the remainder discusses the remaining 7 stages necessary to begin colonizing the galaxy. This is an excellent example of the viewpoint that ocean cities are a stepping stone to space colonies.
Unfortunately, while the book is stuffed full of technical information, the basic ideas behind Aquarius are at the very least ahead of their time. They may even be inaccurate. We discuss the flawed calculations behind seacrete and the currently nascent state of OTEC in more detail later, when explaining why those technologies are not currently part of our plan. In addition, Savage is overly ambitious, focusing on huge cities without any plan for starting with small ones. Unsurprisingly, without prototypes to demonstrate that the ideas were sound, there was not enough interest to build an initial Aquarius settlement.
Minerva Reef
A seamount is a not-quite island, an underwater mountain without enough oomph to make it to sea level. Like land, seamounts are geographically stable but politically problematic. They can act as breakwaters if they’re close enough to the surface, which is quite useful since waves are one of the major dangers of the ocean. Also they can function as anchoring points or pillar foundations. However if they are raised above sea level, they are vulnerable to claim by land-based jurisdictions, as happened with the Minerva Reef. Since this incident exemplifies the reasons why free-floating sea structures are better politically, we will recount it here.
Michael Oliver, a Las Vegas real estate millionaire, made several nation founding attempts. At one point he focused on the Minerva Reefs, 260 miles southwest of Tonga, which were conveniently outside the territorial waters of any nation and below water at high tide. Quite large, they seemed perfect as a foundation for a new, sovereign territory. His plan was to build them up with sand and create a new island and a new country, and he hired dredges from Australia in 1971. After six months, he proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Minerva, which issued coins.
The only reaction he got was from the Kingdom of Tonga, Minerva’s closest neighbor. A box of supplies was dropped on the new land which said “supplied and maintained by the government of Tonga”, an action said to be supported by other nations in the area. His Majesty then ventured to Minerva with a gang of convicts and a four-member band. They planted the Tongan flag, played the Tongan national anthem, and claimed the sandy patch for Tonga. After they left, the forces of nature did their work, and the sand of Minerva returned slowly to the ocean from whence it had sprung. [Strauss1984 pp. 115-117].
This is a classic example of the lengths to which nations will go to preserve their cartel status - even a worthless patch of sand is seen as competition. If a new nation is created on land (no matter how small or undesirable), it is likely that the nearest traditional nations will claim jurisdiction. It may be possible to negotiate a treaty, but that is likely to be expensive and prospective nation founders are unlikely to have much to bargain with.
The Isle of Roses
The short-lived Isle of Roses offers another excellent example of the antipathy with which countries view nearby nation-founding attempts. As Strauss explains:
_ _
Giorgio Rosa was (or is) a professor of engineering in Bologna, Italy. In the early 1960’s, he built a tower in the Adriatic Sea, in water less than 20 feet deep, about 8 miles off the coast of the Italian city of Rimini. This first tower was wrecked by a storm on February 13, 1965. A new one was built, with an area of about 4,000 square feet. It had a bar, a restaurant, a post office, a bank and a store, all surrounded by a promenade. The Italian authorities took no notice (since they only claimed 3 miles from shore as their territorial waters) until May 1, 1968, when the platform was declared to be an independent republic, whose official language was the artificial one Esperanto. The Italians invaded 55 days later, speaking vaguely of such things as “national security, illegality, tax avoidance, maritime obstruction and pornography.” In the spring of 1969, Italian Navy frogmen dynamited the structure. At last report, Rosa did not plan to try again, saying darkly that “This country is all Mafia.”
_Mafia or not, this illustrates the extent to which existing countries are willing to brush aside written law if they think a new-country project has the potential to seriously inconvenience them.
_[Strauss1984, p 129-130]
Cortes Bank
Another brief example of the greed of traditional nations relates to the Cortes Bank, which lies off the coast of San Diego:
The USS Abalonia was a concrete cargo ship, constructed for the purpose of becoming an independent nation. The company which built it hoped to anchor it in rich shellfish beds on the Cortes Bank, 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, and claim jurisdiction over the area. Shortly after the Abalonia’s launch in 1969, it foundered and sank, nearly killing the crew. In the wake of the Abalonia fiasco, a second company began plans to build a platform on the Cortes Bank and declare it the nation of Taluga. The US government quickly gave notice that the Cortes Bank, as part of the continental shelf, fell within its jurisdiction.
[FootnotesToHistory]
This Ayn Rand-inspired project began as an attempt to found a modern-day Galt’s Gulch. The organizers placed a declaration of sovereignty and request for a host nation in several high-profile publications, including The Economist (6/10/95, 8/12/95). Media such as the London Times and BBC World Radio covered the story, and 3000 people from 108 different countries contacted the founding Trust.
Unfortunately, the response from potential sites was less enthusiastic. The principals followed several leads without finding an acceptable locations (although their standards may have been a bit high - the shallow shoals which LFC turned down would be more than sufficient for our purposes). With no land in sight, LFC transitioned to seeking freedom in cyberspace, developing tools for digital freedom.
Eventually, due to personality problems and poor business practices stemming from one of the founders and major financers of the project, LFC was dissolved. A long, detailed, fabulous review can be found in ScamDog2002 Their early experiences exemplify two of our claims about nation founding: that there is a large potential market, and that it is extraordinarily difficult to get sovereignty from existing nations.
Celestopia
Their webpage states:
_ Dedicated to creating ecologically balanced, floating ocean communities and terra-formed, permacultured islands, grown from the mineral-rich waters of the tropical oceans. We wish to share our creations and technologies to help expand the unity, prosperity and quality of life, of all the people of Earth. _
This currently active project is based in Costa Rica, and the fact that its principals were willing to relocate there suggests that they are serious. Their website contains a timeline, including the steps they have completed. They are currently in the stage where they are beginning to need financing, which is a very difficult time for any project. While they pitch the seacrete + OTEC combination which we later debunk, they also acknowledge that seacrete is not ready for prime time yet and plan to start with ferrocement. Their designs are partly based on the Monolithic Dome Institute [MDI], which is another good sign, as the MDI has helped construct hundreds of concrete domes. They believe, as do we, in teaching by example rather than rhetoric. Unfortunately they seem to be looking mainly to donations for initial funding. It seems to be the most mature environmentally motivated project.
Now that we have covered the existing strategies for living in the middle of the ocean, as well as some methods that have been attempted, it is time to visit some ideas that so far remain merely visions. Some of the designs listed below are more practical than others. This list could be quite long, and is merely a selection of some of our favorites:
Here is a comment on a floating city post somewhere on the internet that represents, to me, exactly what is not needed to advance the movement:
Floating city is very feasible. I am a naval architect designed a whole city that can float in very deepwater and do not heave for severe storms. I have a USA patent. My original design has eight wings each 100m x 600 m and it has a center of attraction at the middle with school, auditorium, police, hospital, city hall, court, what not. One wing is dedicated for aircraft landing. Wave energy is utilized for power; all cars are electrical with public transport system. There is fishing, water purification, gardens, agriculture what not. There is a Disney land and there is a Las Vegas on board. It is a cool place for vacation, stay, live and work. Micro Soft, Bill Gate, can keep their employee there and develop software industry there. All the best expert would be on board and live in a place of solitude and peace and enjoy and more productive. No crime and well balanced place. It is completely shelf sustained. Any one seriously interested can contact me at..
Now, his city may be very nice. It may even be a good design of an artificial island city. But our (very rough, very preliminary) cost estimates are $250/ft^2, which is about a hundred million bucks an acre, which puts a price tag on his 120 acre dream of twelve billion dollars. Even MSFT or Bill Gates is going to flinch at that number. A design like this is solving an irrelevant problem: that of designing a 120 acre city.
This problem is irrelevant, because at the point where there is enough money to build and enough people to fill a 120 acre city, the naval architects of the world will be lining up outside the door of whoever is organizing the project, ready to present their qualifications. Since the design cost is only a tiny fraction of the building cost, it is pretty much irrelevant whether the design exists already or not - it can easily be commissioned. It’s as if I said “I have designed the world’s largest aircraft carrier! It will have dozens of high-tech fighters and bombers, a crew of ten thousand, redundant nuclear reactors, and many other great features. Anyone want to build it?”
Now, I’m glad that there are people out there who are so excited about floating cities that they work on designs for fun. I want people to be excited and inspired, and I think that it’s great that the idea of a floating city is so appealing. I’d love to see a 3D model of this guy’s city, for inspirational purposes, a vision to work towards. But it is important not to get distracted and mistake such visions for progress. Progress is getting funding and building working prototypes, it’s functioning business models (pirate radio stations), it’s people starting a data haven on Sealand. Sure, pirate radio and Havenco both failed. But when floating cities happen, they will happen from a start like that, not from a thousand people drawing a thousand designs of a city that will never be.
As of 2004, this was one of the most recent new country projects. Created by Kevin Alexander (hence the name), it is a haven for non-believers, where faith-based promotion is considered fraudulent. It has an unusual government structure: there are no taxes during an individuals lifetime, but upon death, no more than $200,000 can be left to any one heir (excepting spouse(s)). The remainder must be given to charitable organizations which perform all social services normally adminstered by modern governments. Anyone can found a new charity if they are unsatisfied with current ones. The founder believes that this prohibition on inheritance will appeal to independent, self-made individuals.
While we have serious doubts about the appeal and viability of this system, the strength of the small-nation approach is that people can experiment with many ideas and see which work. Thus we wish them the best of luck. Additionally, Mr. Alexander is writing an upcoming book Ten Thousand Nations, which suggests “that humanity is much better off with lots of small governments, rather than a few large ones” [AlexanderUnp]. As we wholeheartedly agree with this idea, we look forward to this contribution to the tiny niche of nation-founding books.
As of 2008, little had been heard about this project for several years. It appears to have gone the way of most such projects: a burst of initial enthusiasm which fades as the enormous difficulty of such an undertaking is realized. It is our job as seasteaders to lower those costs and create a framework in which groups can more easily organize around shared visions of a better society.
Pelagic: Adj. Free swimming, living in open ocean.
While Wavyhill’s time limitations have restricted this to a small (but informative) website [Pelagic] and a small scale model, we are still quite impressed with what we’ve seen. His philosophy is extremely realistic:
“This is a geopolitical experiment on life in a floating oceanic habitat with no mandated societal structure beyond that of a loose, employee owned and operated enterprise. … Many of these projects have been initiated by idealists, with no or vague business plan, expecting the rest of the idealists to rally to the cause and donate the required capital and effort. The pelagic project is not a utopian scheme, they never work. It’s based on profitable enterprise, gradual growth, and being prepared for the worst from people and political organizations
He has a well-thought out timeline based on an incremental approach, and discusses the problems of building, operating, and financing such a project. The basic structure is a large (50ft) ferrocement hexagon, divided into small interior hexagons using cellular concrete. We discuss this lightweight concrete in the design section. Since it floats on the surface, his structure is exposed to wave action, and without a breakwater we don’t think it would be suitable for the open ocean.
In 2003, Wavyhill actually made a 1/12th scale model of his design using a cheap homebuilt foammaker. This may not sound like much, but experimentation and a willingness to start with small prototypes is rare among nation-founders. This is unfortunate since we think it’s crucial to success. While this project is no longer active, we definitely recommend checking it out to see someone else’s version of the incremental, realistic sort of approach which we are convinced is the most promising.
The New Utopia project is a proposal to build a new country on an unused sea mount in the Carribean. Like the Freedom Ship, this project has been able to garner a significant amount of press coverage, especially at the beginning when it seemed viable. Former insiders report that there was significant business interest. Unfortunately, the leadership was not interested in tackling the hard problems that came up, preferring to sell a fantasy. Given what happened with Minerva Reef, we are very doubtful that any sea mount raised above surface level will remain unclaimed by the existing sovereign nations for very long. More importantly, a number of more recent reports have suggested that the project has become little more than a scam [Patri_NU].
Floating Cities are one part of Jacque Fresco’s The Venus Project [VenusProject], which aims to redesign world civilization to be more in line with human and environmental concerns. This includes switching to a resource-based world economy. While we are a bit suspicious of their economic theories, Mr. Fresco has quite an impressive resume. He’s also designed and built a research center for the project, which puts it well ahead of the plethora of similar-sounding visions. Unfortunately, they said we could not use any pictures from their site in this entry because our description was too negative, which is a bad sign.
The Spar Buoy concept [Piolenc2001] is the brain child of F. Marc De Piolenc. The concept is to build a livable structure that is basically a long cylinder that is ballasted on one end to cause the cylinder (i.e. spar) to float vertically. Since the center of gravity is significantly below the center of buoyancy, it basically impossible to tip the structure over. In severe ocean storms, the cylinder bobs up and down with the waves and the cylinder occupants may get quite motion sick, but they should survive.
More recently, Dr. Robert D. Ballard (of finding the Titanic fame) has proposed building a modest ocean habitat that has many similarities to F. Marc De Piolenc’s spar buoy idea. The idea is to start with a ballasted spar and then place a somewhat larger habitat on top. Thus, the difference is that the living quarters are on top of the spar rather than on the inside of the spar. This proposal has the advantage of being quite modest and Dr. Ballard’s obvious oceanagraphic experience would provide a great deal of credence to any investors.
Enrique Perez has come up with a novel idea based on ancient reed ships [Perez2001]. The basic idea is to make the whole flotation system flexible enough that it just bends and sways in severe ocean storms. He has come up with scripts that allow you to compute the costs and buoyancies.
Another project out there for awhile was the Atlantis project. This project has an above average number of pretty pictures, created by architect Jim Albea [ShadowMasons]. Indeed, it was this site that got Wayne Gramlich interested in the concept of seasteading.
Many nation-founding projects and websites focus on pictures instead of planning. The Seascape site takes this to an extreme, as it consists almost entirely of pretty 3D rendered pictures and animations (along with a little flavortext). The result is to showcase artistic skills rather than present a practical proposal. As reader Glen Raphael comments:
_They never quite make it clear why having drink-dispensing robots following guests around the complex is an improvement over the usual alternatives. Sure, it could be cool in a sci-fi sort of way, but it’s ludicrously inefficient. Wouldn’t some combination of drink vending machines, water fountains and human waitpersons delivering your drink order to human bartenders work just about as well and be a lot cheaper, more energy efficient, and more reliable? … One really does get the sense this is more about creating an interesting science-fictiony fantasy environment than it is about making something practical. _
When asked for permission to use a picture with the text above, the project authors commented:
_The site you saw is only an inter-office overview. Seascape endeavors to provide an environment that is responsive to the individual- it makes no attempt to be practical (or impractical for that matter). Does your city know you? Is your city