Below is a letter from the coordinator of the Future of Free Cities conference. The Seasteading Institute Executive Director Patri Friedman collaborated on the conference and gave a presentation there on April 4, 2011.
To all speakers and participants of the Future of Free Cities conference, Roatán, Honduras, April 3-5, 2011
From April 3-5, 2011, The Seasteading Institute Executive Director Patri Friedman was at The Future of Free Cities Conference in Honduras. Patri’s presentation, “Theory of Free Cities and Seasteading” is online to view. In his talk Patri discusses the urgent need to create innovative, competitive governments.
Patri Friedman and Brad Taylor are presenting what we consider among our most important research papers at the Association of Private Enterprise Education Conference Nassau, The Bahamas, April 10-12, 2011. These updated papers explain why seasteading is a powerful lever to improve government and thus make the world better.
The oceans are not only the source of life on Earth, they still host over half of all life on our blue planet. Unfortunately, that half does not include humans. Right now, we only use the oceans to extract resources, transport goods, and have the occasional awesome party with 1,000 entrepreneurs. As Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, pointed out in his TED Talk, it’s crazy that we have better maps of Mars than we do of our own oceans – which are 55,000,000 kilometers closer.
To combine a profitable business model and a platform suitable to survive in international waters is one of the challenges of the seasteading movement. We have seen in the Sink or Swim Business Plan Contest, that aquaculture (fish farming) is one of the most promising business in international waters.
The Seasteading Institute is hiring a staff writer. The writer will be a critical member of our team, crafting highly visible publications that are key to our research and movement-building programs. Most of our organization’s current output is in written form, so it’s essential that the writing be of stellar quality for our work to be most effective.
When considering the economic flexibility and “freedom” created by mobile settlements, we might look to the avante-garde Walking City concept from architect Ron Herron of the Archigram group as an example. Ron’s concept is something that has been in the mind of the architects for a long time.
Join Patri Friedman, Brad Taylor, and The Freeman, March 8 at 2 pm eastern for a 45-minute online chat about the market for governance and seasteading. Patri’s and Brad’s article, “Seasteading: Striking at the Root of Bad Government,” appeared in the March issue of The Freeman. The article alleges that the current market for governance is dominated by a group of large geographical monopolies not subject to competition.
If you can make it out to Berkeley on March 24th, Patri is giving a short talk at the Economist sponsored conference, “Ideas Economy: Innovation for a Disruptive World.”
http://ideas.economist.com/event/innovation
According to their website:
The Seasteading Institute’s Executive Director Patri Friedman, and Research Associate Brad Taylor had an article published in The Freeman, “Seasteading: Striking at the Root of Bad Government.”
