TSI Chairman Joe Lonsdale was on CNN Headlne News' Glenn Beck Show last night to talk about our work:

You can also download the video directly.

• GTGs
  • The first Bay Area Seasteading Social will be on 9/15, sign up here.
  • October 10th conference - Online registration/payment are now set up!  Press releases coming soon.  Spread the word!
  • Whether or not you can make the conference, feel free to sign up for our post-conference social events on Saturday October 11th:
    

Scott Adams writes:

 I've written about this before, but it's interesting to see the technology coming together to make it feasible. The idea is that people will start living on barge-like boats and slowly motor or sail around the ocean to stay in the best weather.

He favors an incremental approach:

We're going to start having seasteading socials around the bay area, about once a month, to talk / network / brainstorm / etc w/ like-minded people. I've created a meetup group, the first one will be in SF on Wed 8/27. These will be much smaller & less organized than the conference in October.  Go to the meetup for more info.

 Arnold Kling writes about profit-maximizing governments on Creative Capitalism:

Assume that the leader of a territory, whether the United States or Zimbabwe, is elected by shareholders, each of whom may or may not be a resident of the territory.  In each territory, the leader would control fiscal policy, monetary policy, and regulations.  She could set tax rates at whatever level she liked.  Some of the tax revenues would be used to fund internal investments.  However, the remainder would be disbursed as dividends to shareholders. 

Shareholders would be looking to maximize their returns.  If the leader engages in arbitrary confiscation, she may be able to pay a nice short-term dividend.  However, such a policy will lower the society’s wealth and reduce future dividends.  Shareholders would prefer a more farsighted policy.  A leader who protects property rights and invests in public goods probably will generate a higher share price.

A poorly-run country, such as Zimbabwe, probably would be taken over by investors seeking to profit from a turnaround.  These investors would buy up shares and install new management.

I made a wiki signup page for the conference (October 10th in Burlingame, CA, USA).  So far it's just me on there, so please add yourselves :).  Also, we could use a couple more people to help organize and run the conference, if you are interested please email conference@seasteading.org.

This is not a "sit around and listen to a few presenters" sort of conference. Instead, we're going to have a bunch of small workshops where groups brainstorm about solutions to some of the challenges we face, research those solutions, and come up w/ recommendations.  Examples include: Geographic location, Business plan for seastead resort, Transportation to/from seastead, Marketing/PR (making our ideas sticky), etc.  You can suggest more workshop topics on the wiki.

The cost for the conference will be $195, including food (but not a hotel room).  This is our cost for the space, food, and equipment (projectors, internet access).

We'll be posting a discount code for rooms at Embassy Suites, as well as information about cheaper hotels within walking distance.

July was a bit of a slow month as I was wrapping things up at Google, but we now have some key initiatives underway:

I'd like to use this blog partly for feedback on our ideas, but posts don't seem to get a lot of comments.  If anyone is out there, can you comment on why that is?  :).  What changes would make you comment more?  Is it the subject matter, the interface, or something else?

Thanks.

• Community
  • I will probably attend / speak at the Convergence 2008 Unconference in Mountain View on November 15th-16th.  Bay Area futurists may want to check it out, it looks to be interesting.
  • Website stats.  June was a fair bit under May but better than April.  Averaged 1900 visits/day and 7500 pages/day (this doesn't include the wiki).

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.