dynamic geography

Seasteading And The Wall Of Dirt

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-11-092022-05-19

I have a post up at Let A Thousand Nations Bloom about how seasteading is the opposite of the Berlin Wall:

The Wall thus represented the brute force attempt of the USSR, purveyor of an inferior product, to lock-in its customers. It was literally, directly, physically a means of increasing the cost of switching government.

Latest posts on Let A Thousand Nations Bloom

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-06-242022-05-19

Just a reminder that all our fascinating political theory and social commentary about diverse visions of a better society has moved to Let A Thousand Nations Bloom. Here are some recent posts:

Thinking Like a Dandelion – _”Let’s focus less on trying to perpetuate one copy of what we believe is the best society and instead work on ways to decrease the costs of producing societies. The results will be better than we can imagine.

US Navy working on seasteads

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-05-042022-05-19

We are not the only ones to recognize the opportunities offered by the ocean’s dynamic geography. From The Economist:

Foreign military bases have both political and practical difficulties. “Seabasing” may offer a solution

BASING troops and equipment on foreign soil is fraught with difficulty. Even friendly countries can cut up rough at crucial moments, as America found when Turkey restricted the use of its territory and airspace during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

How Rich Countries Die

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-03-172022-05-19

Phillip Greenspun has a long review of The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities, written by Mancur Olson in 1982. As you can see from this review excerpt, Olson’s model is quite relevant to seasteading.

Seasteads governed as joint-stock corporations?

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-01-312022-05-19

The strange, weird, red-pill world of political theorist Mencius Moldbug is not the world as I see it. It has far more extremes, more evil, more black-and-white judgments, and more overarching historical themes. But I find it fascinating because it overlaps with my world in places where few others seem to.

The Law Market

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-01-262022-05-19

Legal research volunteer Jorge Schmidt pointed me at this new book which describes a trend which seasteading will accelerate:

Today, a California resident can incorporate her shipping business in Delaware, register her ships in Panama, hire her employees from Hong Kong, place her earnings in an asset-protection trust formed in the Cayman Islands, and enter into a same-sex marriage in Massachusetts or Canada–all the while enjoying the California sunshine and potentially avoiding many facets of the state’s laws.

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Structural Libertarianism

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-01-102022-05-19

Some nice dialogue has developed around Jacob Lyles’ structuralism posts, which I mentioned in the recent Structure and Policy post.

Structure and Policy, Reform and Blank Slates

by The Seasteading Institute
2009-01-082022-05-19

Jacob Lyles has an excellent series of posts over at Distributed Republic about structural libertarianism and policy libertarianism – the question of whether people should advocate better governmental policies, or entirely different forms of government.

Ephemerisle without laws would be like Burning Man without art.

by The Seasteading Institute
2008-12-192022-05-19

I was recently asked: “Is the plan still to have no rules during Ephemerisle, or does having it in the SF bay mean that there will have to be some rules?”

I replied:

There will definitely have to be rules based on US safety laws / Coast Guard regulations. There may be other rules as well.