
Live Free or Drown: Floating Utopias on the Cheap - makimaki
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/17-02/mf_seasteading?currentPage=all
======
Prrometheus
No, not utopia. Just government with the incentive to govern well because its
citizens' exit costs are dramatically reduced. See Patri's original post on
the theory of Dynamic Geography here:

[http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/new_pages/dynamic_geogra...](http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/new_pages/dynamic_geography.html)

Patri also blogs and puts in frequent appearances on the Distributed Republic
blog, where I also write.

It should be noted that Dynamic Geography is not explicitly libertarian.
Rather, it is meant to align the interest of government more closely with
those of its people. Since libertarians started the Dynamic Geography
movement, they believe that most seasteads will be libertarian since those
policies are believed to be best for the welfare of its residents. But if
there were a large demand for non-libertarian societies, the market would meet
this demand.

If you think Dynamic Geography is interesting, you also might be interested in
Moldbug's Neocameralism, which seeks to replace land governments with for-
profit corporations:

[http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2008/11/patchwo...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2008/11/patchwork-2-profit-strategies-for-our.html)

A few weeks ago, I explored several of these ideas on the Distributed
Republic, which I dubbed as "structural libertarian" ideas:

[http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2008/12/24/down-
with...](http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2008/12/24/down-with-policy-
libertarianism)

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numair
Someone needs to do a parody of Wired Magazine. Here's my attempt at an
article that would be contained therein:

A solar powered sea colony, built entirely out of carbon nanotubes, whose
building plans are open source, Creative Commons share-alike licensed. The
construction was crowd-sourced, and the colony profits from the issuance of
virtual currency used in transactions involving a Long Tail of virtual goods.
It is scheduled to go IPO next year in China.

~~~
Rod
Congrats for squeezing all that hype Wired has published recently in one
single paragraph. Am I the only one who thinks that the average quality of
Wired's content has decreased abruptly in recent years?

~~~
mattmaroon
I think it's always been that way and people are just now noticing.

------
rw
> "The interesting issues are social and legal," says Mikolaj Habryn, a site
> reliability engineer at Google. "You'll get slavery. You'll get drug
> dealing. Maybe there'll be polygamous Mormons. The first people involved
> will inevitably be those who want to do things they can't do on land, and we
> have to deal with that."

Is total laissez-faire at all desirable?

~~~
shiny
I don't see how there would be slavery. The only people living on a seastead
would be those who wanted to. I don't know how they would get slaves to come
with them.

And yeah, if you don't like laissez-faire, you don't have to join a seastead
that practices it. That's the whole point -- choosing your system of
government.

~~~
gravitycop
_I don't see how there would be slavery. The only people living on a seastead
would be those who wanted to. I don't know how they would get slaves to come
with them._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Trafficking>

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dazzawazza
Given that it's difficult to ship oil without pirates appearing on the horizon
I think it will be difficult to create a floating state without weapons,
standing armies, police, judges... and before you know it your in the mess we
are in. am I being too pessimistic?

~~~
jimbokun
"Minerva was soon invaded by the nearby kingdom of Tonga..."

No, you're not.

~~~
randallsquared
I think conflating pirates and governmental invasion misses the point. If
pirates attack, you can shoot them (and modern-day pirates, at least, seem
easily deterred by bigger guns). If a state attacks, such as what happened
with Tonga, you're likely to be attacked by _other_ states if you successfully
defend yourself.

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vaksel
Why would a regular person want to go to a floating utopia? There are no jobs,
no agriculture, no manufacturing. Whats the point for a common citizen?

As far as the 10 billion "freedomship"? Whats the point? Why not use that
money to hire some mercenaries and go take over some 3rd world country that
actually has natural resources you can exploit?

Or better yet buy an election. Lets say it costs you 10 million in funding to
win a senate seat. And 2 million to win a seat in the house of
representatives. Thats 2 billion for the congress. Which leaves you 8 billion
to win the presidency. Even Obama spent less than a billion and his ads were
everywhere, surely you could win with 8.

Then for 4-8 years you'll have a carte blanche to change policy to whatever it
is you wish.

The problem is that all these "freedom" type ventures, are usually a hobby of
the fringe, and they don't have the money to actually do anything they dream
about. If the Liberterian party had a 10 billion dollar pocket book, we'd have
more than the handful of Liberterians in congress. And these fringers wouldn't
have to go looking offshore to try their pipe dreams.

And thats coming from someone who donated money to Ron Paul. Sure I knew he
couldn't win...but it doesn't hurt to have an extra point of view in the
limelight

~~~
ksvs
Why would there be any fewer jobs than in any urban area?

~~~
vaksel
urban areas aren't all white collar, there are plenty of other jobs around.

But thats just part of the problem. Why would a company want to build an
office building in the middle of an ocean at the huge premium....when they can
just build one on land? I mean if a company wants to put its offices in the
middle of nowhere there are plenty of cheaper alternatives.

You have to remember, that the cost of living on something like this would be
huge, since they'll need to import all their food, and living space would be
at a premium.

~~~
gravitycop
_the cost of living on something like this would be huge, since they'll need
to import all their food_

Don't terrestrial cities import their food?

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streety
I've pointed out one of the brainstorming boards in reply to rw talking about
whether, "laissez-faire [is] at all desirable?"

There are some other interesting nuggets.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/9742300@N06/2946731651/> For prisons and mental
health you're going to want all but the very worst individuals to be
eventually re-integrated into the community. For me that means they really
need to be close to the communities they serve. A spaceport is a potentially
interesting idea with a proven track record. That track record works both
ways. What advantage would a seasteading community have?

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/9742300@N06/2946734321/> A patent-free zone may
work well for the community but presumably if they want to sell the goods they
produce to countries that respect patents they're going to have problems.
Data/document storage sounds a little unlikely. I would expect the risks with
a seastead to be higher than a building on dry land. They can't compete on
security and I doubt they could compete on price either. We may have trouble
making new land but in terms of acreage it is still significantly cheaper than
seasteads are expected to cost.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/9742300@N06/2947590204/>
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/9742300@N06/2946733673/> Nothing too crazy here
though I see no real advantage for seasteading.

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jwb119
its only briefly mentioned in the graphic to the article, but Sealand has a
fascinating history.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand>

~~~
Rod
The Principality of Sealand even has its own website!
<http://www.sealandgov.org>

In 2000, Wired wrote a cool article on Sealand:
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html>

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sanj
Does anyone want to take a bet that at the first sign of trouble they'll come
running to nearby countries asking for (wait for it...) a government bailout?

~~~
anamax
So what if they ask a neighboring govt for help?

Of course, if you think that one must respond positively to such requests, I
could use $100.

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sanj
Is this anything more than a _really_ fancy gated community for rich people to
hide in?

It just seems so brutally selfish.

~~~
Prrometheus
You should read Patri's post on Dynamic Geography, which I linked to in a post
above.

The point is not to be "selfish", but to create higher quality government.
Currently the government industry suffers from a high barrier to entry and
high consumer lock in. The result has been burgeoning costs and deteriorating
quality.

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DanielBMarkham
Instead of talking about building these things, they should be talking about a
_factory_ to build these things. The factory, with associated reduction in
cost as production scales, is the trick.

I'm sure that's what they are doing, but it wasn't clear from the article.

I think it's a great idea. I'd like to see it at about 10% of the current
cost, but the idea of competitive voluntary governmental structures is
supposed to be what we have now (and we don't). It is in desperate need of re-
factoring.

~~~
jimbokun
"Instead of talking about building these things, they should be talking about
a factory to build these things."

You sound like a Java programmer. :)

(Actually, it sounds like a good idea, but I couldn't resist a bit of Reddit
level humor.)

