| Prev | Table of Contents | Next |
| Miscellaneous | Recent comments: day, week, month (about commenting) | Summary |
This is a basic Frequently Asked Questions file for
seasteading. Most sections originated from email responses to
questions. If you have additional questions, feel free to enter
them in comments in the rest of the text, or on this paragraph.
We'll enter the frequently asked ones here. This material serves
only to supplement the remainder of the
text, which contains much more information.
"Seasteading" means to create permanent
dwellings on oceans. Homesteading the high seas. A seastead is
a structure specifically designed for the purpose of long-term
living in the marine environment. On the right you can see our
conception of what such a structure looks like. More detailed
pictures are in the section on our design.
See the book section Why -
Motivation. The main reason is for political freedom, which
many people desire for many reasons. Additionally, we have reasons to expect the governments of
seastead societies to function much better than on land.
Some people think our cost estimates are surprisingly cheap,
others that they are tremendously expensive and we are
restricting our nation to the very rich. Clearly there are some
different viewpoints on the subject! Our basic view is that we
want the lowest cost which is compatible with our goals,
including safety and realism.
One thing to keep in mind is that the ocean is a brutal
environment. And we are not just building buildings, we are
building real estate, we want it to last. Another
important point is that this is the first-generation. Just like
with any other product, earlier runs are more expensive.
Eventually, as volume increases, costs come down, and more people
can participate. Seasteads are no different. The early adopters
help pay the research costs.
The costs that we are talking about (say $50 - $200 /
ft2 final cost to residents) are not drastically out
of line with first world house prices. Its not New Hampshire,
but its still less than Silicon Valley. If these estimates are
right, we can build brand-new sovereign territory for a cost
similar to the housing of many upper-class americans. To us,
this seems incredibly encouraging!
We think there will still be some room for people with lower
incomes to participate by renting space onboard, just as in
normal housing markets. This is more difficult because seasteads
can't be built with low-interest bank mortgages like houses. But
this stems from the unique nature of the project and will be
difficult to avoid. We are not ignoring those with less money,
and we believe that in the long-run, they will benefit from
seasteading also. But it takes cash to start the ball
rolling.
Also see the related question: How will you pay for seasteads?
People often ask whether a seastead will bob uncomfortably in
the waves. Because our design has little cross-section and
little flotation at water-level, it will actually be quite
steady. See Designs - Bobbing
for a more detailed explanation.
The short answer is "A little, but not very much",
and the basic reason is that seastead's are very, very heavy.
For the more technically inclined, they have a very high weight
to surface area ratio, and their righting force increases with
angle of deflection (it gets leverage). A free-floating seastead
will list even less, as it will get pushed instead.
Ah, a healthy skepticism - excellent. The answer is that
ferrocement has a bad strength:weight ratio, hence is poorly
suited to mobile applications like ships. Most marine structures
are mobile and care about weight. While there was a ferrocement
boat movement, and quite a number of ferrocement hulls have been
built, stronger, lighter materials like steel (for larger boats)
and fiberglass (for smaller ones) are much more common.
However, non-mobile marine structures, like piers and docks,
often *are* made out of concrete. So are some oil rigs, like the
mammoth Troll A { link }. Its not that its perfect for
everything, just for large, non-mobile marine structures.
This is a good question, and there are certainly some
advantages to the boat approach. It makes fitting into
international law easier. Transportation is cheaper, so a
boatstead could move much more often. It would be easy to start
out, because you just buy a boat, rather than having to design a
whole new type of structure. And then people can join you just
by buying additional boats of their own. Cruise ships
demonstrate that big boats can be floating cities.
However, there are substantial disadvantages to using boats
rather than platforms.
Weighing these factors, we think our seastead design is a
better approach. However, boatsteading is a pretty reasonable
strategy as well.
If mere isolation is your goal, buying an island will work
just fine. For political sovereignty, however, it is useless.
Strauss gives some of the reasons why countries don't sell
sovereignty:
There are reasons for existing countries to be reluctant to sell sovereignty over pieces of their territories. The closest thing to sale of sovereignty that is conducted routinely is the sale of corporation charters and ship registrations...but any number of those can be sold without reducing the size of the country doing the selling. In addition, such sales produce revenue year after year, in the form of renewal fees. And in the case of emergency (e.g. embarrassing activities by the buyer), the seller can decline to renew the1 charter of registration. But there is only so much land a nation has to which to sell sovereignty...and once it's sold, there is no further income to be had.
There is also the great-power factor...These great powers tend to want to see the status quo maintained...the fewer the players there are in the international game, the easier it is for the great powers to manage things to their own advantage. A country selling sovereignty would face being cut of from the aid, trade, etc. that the great powers can offer. Thus they are only interested in doing such things if there's a large, ongoing profit to be realized...The small countries really aren't interested in taking the grief that would be involved in selling sovereignty just for a few, one-shot payments from buyers. [Strauss1984, pp. 12-13]
An important piece of data is that there is pretty much no
such thing as an "unclaimed" island. Even if an island
is unoccupied, it extends the owning country's EEZ, including fishing and mineral
rights, which are always of potential value.
While its theoretically possible that a country could be
convinced to sell sovereign title to some of its land, this path
is difficult, uncertain, and extremely expensive. Hence it does
not seem like a good way to proceed.
One person wrote in email: "For the investment
required to build 100 acres of floating condo, you could take
over three Third World hellholes, complete with workforce and
low-quality army."
This seems like a rather poor idea to us, for these reasons:
Potential seasteaders don't dislike people, they dislike the
currently available systems. They don't want isolation, they
want to be part of a community, but one which operates under
rules which are currently unavailable. Seasteading is not just
about freedom, its about freedom, infrastructure, and
community united in one place.
Many people see separatist movements like seasteading as a cop
out, running away from problems instead of confronting them.
While we think it is noble to try to change a system, we believe
its important to be honest about how much you can accomplish.
For example, a minority viewpoint such as libertarianism is
unlikely to ever be accepted by a large country. In a democracy,
this means the minority view will not prevail. Some people's
solution is to proselytize. While winning more converts always
helps a philosophy, we think a successful example helps it even
more. And it seems far easier to create a small society with the
already-converted than to convert a hundred million to a minority
view.
In addition, we think there are serious structural problems
with current systems. Activism cannot change the static nature
of land's geography, and we think this greatly limits how well
any political system can work. Moving to the oceans is not
simply running away, since we believe that dynamic geography addresses one of
the root causes for bad government.
The system is hard to change, and many people do not want to
change. There are many minority philosophies, and they cannot
all rule a country. We think that leading by example, living
one's own philosophy rather than just talking about it, is a
great form of activism.
We think this is a great question. The answer is that our
approach is very different, partly because we've learned from
other's mistakes. The essential difference is that we are
dedicated to finding a realistic way of achieving success, rather
than simply dreaming. You can learn the details under Why - Philosophy.
We think this is a great question, and we've often asked it
ourselves. The keys to our answer are timesharing and incrementalism.
Incrementalism is an answer because we never need to find
10,000 people willing to take the plunge. We only need to find
the core of enthusiasts to start, say 10 people. Then the 40 people
who are willing to move now that there are 10 people. Then the
100 that will move because there are 40, and so on. Its not that
there is no one willing to be the first, just that there aren't
very many. But that's ok because we don't need very many to
bootstrap.
Having many residents be timesharers or hotel guests, by
letting people participate part-time, is crucial as well. Rather
than moving to this floating platform, people can just visit,
which many more will be willing to do. There is a huge
difference in the level of committment. This is especially
valuable in getting the skeptics and realists, who will have
reasonable doubts about such an ambitious venture. While there
are 52 weeks in a year, our experience suggests that the ratio of
people willing to do a new country full-time vs. 1 week a year is
at least 1,000:1, possibly much higher.
This is certainly an important question. Our first response
is "the same things anyone else does", but then again we don't
get out much :). As long as there's internet, it might take us
quite awhile to notice that we were on a small, isolated
platform.
The simplest answer is to point out other similar lifestyles.
For exampe, vacationers will be able to do pretty much anything
they could do on a cruise ship. There won't be as many locations
visited, but there may be some extra activities due to the unique
legal situation. Working as a resort employee on a seastead will
be much like working on a cruise ship. Another parallel is to
the many people who live in isolated, rural areas, or to the
live-aboard boaters. While such a life does not appeal to
everyone, those who like it rarely seem to be bored.
Vacationers can focus on the unique activities offered
onboard, since anything else they need to do can be done at home.
Permanent residents can always take a vacation elsewhere if they
need to be surrounded by masses of people. Note that the closer
a seastead is to land, the more it becomes possible to just go to
a major city for the day or the weekend. This makes seasteading
even more like just living in the outback, and is one of many
reasons we'd think the initial location should not be too
remote.
Pioneers have traded comfort for freedom many times in the
past. Those who find this tradeoff unattractive won't
participate, which is fine since we don't need to appeal to
everyone. A niche is just fine. Over time, comfort will
increase and the market will broaden.
Its not that the rough life is our goal, its just that we see
it as the necessary first step. Focusing on luxurious cities at
this stage would be like the first settlers of New York City
thinking about the Empire State Building instead of planning
their village. Our development cycle is much shorter than theirs
was - we get to start with running water and satellite dishes.
But we still need to take it step by step.
"What would make this seastead more attractive to potential investors/buyers/renters than a beautiful piece of pristine oceanfront property in a cheap Caribbean paradise"
"this project will have to compete in the marketplace. And since there are lots of pristine paradises left in the world at cheap prices, why would one choose a flimsy little artificial floating platform...with dubious politico-legal status, if one can have a romantic piece of paradise with real solid ground under one's feet. "
Seasteads and islands have different kinds of romance, and
will appeal to different people. As long as we can find enough
people who think seasteads are romantic, it doesn't matter if
many prefer islands. Niche markets are not necessarily a bad
thing for a business, if they aren't served well by other
options, and they are big enoug niches. There are people who
will find the unique legal status of a seastead appealing,
especially because this status will let a seastead have some
unique attractions onboard. There are likely to be other similar
niches. For example, a seastead's water and electricity are
generated sustainably, which will appeal to eco-tourists.
There is also the "wow" factor, which the Freedom Ship is appealing to.
Seasteads aren't quite as wowie as a mile-long ship, but they can
make up for it by actually getting built. In general, the answer
is to leverage the uniqueness of seasteads. And if that only
appeals to a tiny fraction of the world, that's still plenty.
We need some good discussion on this. Reference
politics-interference.
Many similar ventures failed because they expected billions to
materialize from thin air. Our ideas for seastead financing are
more realistic, and they can be found in Making it Happen - Our
Proposal.
The basic summary is to proceed in self-financing, incremental
steps. First, a small group will build a prototype seastead in
US waters and live onboard. They will pay for it as a
replacement for their houses. With this demonstration of
practicality, they will begin taking deposits for both full and
part-time shares in a larger, sovereign seastead. While only a
few true enthusiasts will buy full-time shares, we expect wide
interest in part-time shares. When enough people have signed up,
the rest of the money will be collected and construction can
start. Future seasteads can be built the same way, although they
are more likely to be funded by investors once the demand and
practicality has been shown by the first platform.
Variations on this theme are quite common from libertarians
who are sympathetic with our goals but pessimisstic about our
chances. And we are certainly worried about interference. We
believe, however, that only by holding up unrealistic goals can
one prove that this project is doomed to failure. Our favorite
argument goes something like this:
We are not seeking a perfect libertarian paradise where we can
do whatever we want without any interference. We are simply
looking for a significant improvement. Look at current states
and consider the union of available freedoms. For example, there
are countries in Europe (Switzerland, The Netherlands) with
fairly lax drug laws and enforcement (social freedom). There are
tax havens (Luxembourg, Bahamas) with very low tax rates
(economic freedom). Unfortunately, the drug-tolerant countries
tend to be left-wing and have high taxes, while tax havens are
more right-wing, socially conservative, and generally restricted
to tiny countries. As libertarians, we feel that the combination
of these two types of freedoms is worth striving for, even if
both are restricted to the levels currently being tolerated by
the powers-that-be. Such a state would be more libertarian
than any currently in existence, without pushing the legal
envelope.
Countries really do have a great deal of leeway in their
internal affairs. A libertarian seastead nation should easily be
able to have no zoning laws or building codes, low or no taxes,
no import/export tariffs, few restrictions on weapons, local
consumption of marijuana, no minimum wage, no legislated work
week, no coerced welfare system, no eminent domain and many other
items from the laundy list of libertarian demands. Its true
there may be some limitations. For example, true bank secrecy,
weapons research, and generally-illegal drugs produced for export
may be out of reach. So what? Libertopia is not an option.
Overpopulation occurs when there are too many people
struggling for too few resources. Seasteads allow us to use more
of the space we have, and harvest more of the renewable energy
resources. Thus they add to the carrying capacity of the earth.
This means that while they add population, they are not adding
overpopulation.
And when you can support it, we think a greater population is
a good thing. It allows for more potential geniuses, more
sharing of ideas, and more activities for the common good.
Additionally, as countries become better off and technology like
birth control becomes more widely available, population growth is
fixing itself. Growth is decellerating, and world population is
expected to peak this century at levels less than twice
today's [Nature082001].
We admit that some rogue seasteads will probably pollute. But we'd
also like to point out that most of the technologies seasteaders
depend on will be much less polluting than what is used on land.
So the net result may well be positive. And its not like
seasteads are completely unaccountable - we see pollution as one
of the areas most likely
to provoke interference from traditional nations (and with
good reason).
Seasteads enable all marginalized belief systems to experiment with their own societies. We think the net result of this will be extraordinarly positive, but we do admit that there may be negatives along the way. Some belief systems are marginalized because they are harmful. In addition to enabling pacifists to live without paying taxes to support murderous wars, seasteads will enable cults to brainwash their members far from watchful eyes. This may lead to some tragedies. But we see far more pacifists than cultists in the world, and so we believe that seasteads will enable far more people to live their ideal lives than to harm others.
| Prev | Table of Contents | Next |
| Miscellaneous | Summary |