
A pilot project for a new floating city will have 300 homes - dsr12
http://www.businessinsider.com/floating-city-plans-seasteading-institute-peter-thiel-blue-frontiers-2017-12
======
Waterluvian
I surely may be wrong in my prediction, but the thing I'm most fascinated
about by these libertarian settlement plans is when they organically
reintroduce all the government systems they wanted to escape in the first
place.

Child me was always excited for the day I could break away from the government
(parents) and spend all my money on vices like snacks and video games. College
me did that and learned the hard way what adult me now practices: a
responsible need for the restrictions my parents imposed upon me.

I really like some of the ideas of libertarianism. I think it's a valuable
counterpoint to strong government in a debate that should go on forever with
no real right answer. But I think these libertarianism to the extreme ideas
are, at their core, irresponsible fantasy.

~~~
defertoreptar
Think about the metaphor you've made. In it, citizens are the "children" and
need it's parents (government) to restrict their freedoms since they are not
able to decide for themselves what is in their best interests.

It's not about wanting to be like a child who spends all their allowance on
ice cream. It's about wanting to be an adult who is free to decide what is in
their best interests for themselves.

~~~
hitekker
He didn’t give a metaphor. He said that he once wanted absolute freedom and
then he grew up.

The notion of “heaven on earth” is a childish one, regardless of ideology.

~~~
defertoreptar
> He didn’t give a metaphor.

In that case, I'm finding it difficult to understand what Waterluvian meant by
saying:

> Child me was always excited for the day I could break away from the
> government (parents) and spend all my money on vices like snacks and video
> games. College me did that and learned the hard way what adult me now
> practices: a responsible need for the restrictions my parents imposed upon
> me.

Are you saying Waterluvian's parents are literally the government? Why is
Waterluvian talking about parental restrictions? If not relating it to
governments restrictions on its people, isn't that a non sequitur?

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DennisP
I just read a great book about seasteading:

[https://www.amazon.com/Seasteading-Floating-Environment-
Libe...](https://www.amazon.com/Seasteading-Floating-Environment-Liberate-
Politicians-ebook/dp/B0176M400A)

It will be expensive at first but long-term, the social, economic, and
environmental benefits could be enormous. It's not just about one little
island.

Socially, the idea isn't so much to promote one particular ideology, but to
allow experimentation with lots of different economic and governmental
structures, in an environment where people can easily move to the ones that
work the best. The book points out that similar conditions brought us the
advances of ancient Greece and renaissance Italy.

Aquaculture on the open seas looks very attractive; the economics work out
well and it's great for the environment. And small island nations with good
access to shipping and lots of economic freedom have tended to do very well in
general.

~~~
zerostar07
what makes you think they won't nuke those out of existence as soon as they
become successful?

~~~
dragonwriter
Why would you nuke them, that's (literally) overkill.

But I suspect its failure (to keep out international criminal orgs), not
economic success, that gets them raided by traditional nation-states.

~~~
DennisP
Nobody's raided the Cayman Islands yet. I don't know whether seasteads would
end up being offshore financial centers, but plenty of island nations are
providing all sorts of financial services to criminal organizations without
significant consequences.

~~~
cannonedhamster
The U.S. Government forced the Cayman Islands to expose people using the
Island Nation as a tax haven, thus negating the benefits of the islands and
large parts of the clientele have gone elsewhere. Since these are only
expected to be a half mile offshore they are going to end up being subject to
whatever nation-state they are offshore of. Were they to try this in the deep
ocean I suspect rogue waves would be an issue. Either way this isn't likely to
succeed politically, although I see no reason why technologically it wouldn't.
It's more likely going to end up being a playground for the ultra wealthy to
sometimes visit and say they have property on.

~~~
DennisP
It could end up being a wealthy playground, but the people doing this stuff
would consider it an utter failure if that's all they accomplish. What they
really want to do is sequester billions of tons of carbon, provide billions of
tons of food, and provide an economic opportunity for a billion of the world's
poor.

I think whether that's possible depends mostly on how cheaply these things can
be built at scale.

------
nrclark
Did anybody else catch the part where this group is already selling
cryptocurrency?

Looks like yet another ICO scam to me.

~~~
DennisP
I would assume it's a scam if I hadn't read the book. There's a fairly large
seasteading community, with a bunch of companies, real experiments,
conferences, etc. The people behind this project are a major part of that.

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nonbel
Why are there so many people posting in this thread who seemingly want this
project to fail? What do you have invested into it failing? To me this seems
like a cool experiment, why not try it out?

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ebikelaw
The best thing about a sovereign seastead is how any properly equipped Real
County(tm) will roll up in a boat and just blow it away. It’s like barbarian
cities in Civ, essentially.

~~~
marcosdumay
Unless they start doing stuff that is crime on the neighboring countries, I
don't see why any of them would bother.

But they better have some protection against piracy.

~~~
ebikelaw
Committing crimes is the basic activity of Libertarians. The point of getting
rid of the rules is you want to do the things that are against the rules. If
the other countries still have the rules then you have conflict. Especially
considering one outcome of the Libertarian philosophy is pollution of air and
water is to be prevented not by regulation but by the self-interest of the
person who owns the air and water. If that person takes leave of their self-
interest and starts dumping toxic waste into their personal water property,
Libertarians have no solution to that pollution. And the neighbors are going
to be mad.

~~~
DennisP
So an easy defense is to avoid dumping toxic waste on your neighbors. I don't
see why people assume seasteaders will be idiots.

Meanwhile coastal cities are dumping all sorts of waste into the oceans. Some
of the seasteaders want to build offshore of those, and use forms of
aquaculture which would clean up that waste.

~~~
ebikelaw
Unfortunately pollution is not easily reversed. It's easy to say that if
someone pollutes your water you'll sue them, but in reality it's unlikely that
you'll be able to recoup your damages; pollution is often irreversible and the
other guy doesn't have any assets anyway. Example: Libertarians love to hate
RoHS and other lead controls. But one standard bar of lead is enough to poison
tens of millions of people. Much better to prevent that, hence regulations.

You're right that coastal cities pollute. Large groups of people can make
decisions as badly as small groups and individuals. It's an unsolved problem.

~~~
DennisP
You just said upthread that rather than relying on lawsuits, nearby countries
would "roll up in a boat and just blow it away" if a seastead polluted. If
you're right then the seastead has a pretty good incentive not to pollute; if
you think now that you're wrong then we have nothing to argue about.

In any case, for a long time the main industry for seasteads will be open-
water aquaculture, which is completely nonpolluting in experiments so far, and
able to clean up the excess nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff
and coastal city waste.

------
Felz
Floating city projects seem to conceptualize themselves as "buildings, but on
water". Seems ineffective to me.

An armada of ships strikes me as the cheaper and far more practical approach.

~~~
PretzelPirate
Snowcrash describes pretty well how a set of boats/ships would work for
creating an independent society.

~~~
GW150914
Of course that society existed only to break up and emigrate, it was hell on
Earth, it requires an aircraft carrier as the center, and it was planned and
executed by a mad billionaire with ambitions of world domination.

~~~
cannonedhamster
While President Trump may not have billions, he does have multiple aircraft
carriers at his disposal and would love a place to put all the immigrants. I
would suggest keeping the book away from Fox News or they may give him the
idea.

------
motohagiography
Always found seasteading to be strange solution given the three poles of a)
taking over the government or emir-ship of an existing island, b) building a
geographically independent trading network not unlike a mafia or narco-
paramilitaries with some anarcho-hedonist themed cruise ships, and c) starting
a cult where converts do business with each other and resolve disputes using a
ritualized parallel legal and taxation system.

Given these obvious precedents, it's difficult to see the problem seasteading
solves.

~~~
dragonwriter
Seasteading solves the problem that (1) requires and (2) and (3) historically
have provoked conflict with the armed (military or law enforcement) forced of
existing nation-states they seek to displace or operate within.

Seasteading doesn't obviously share that problem yet (which may just be
because it's not been done enough and at large enough scale for have provoked
notable responses.)

------
mrhappyunhappy
I had to close the article when it claimed the floating city will solve one of
the worlds biggest problems - rising sea levels. Really?! Solve?! Is that
supposed to be a joke? Just another ICO scam in time for their presale. No
wonder Thiel has distanced himself from this garbage.

------
alvivi
The previous step to Rapture.

~~~
convery
TBH, I can imagine an Ayn Rand inspired city to be pretty interesting.

~~~
rainbowmverse
Would an Ayn Rand inspired city reject states and promote individualism for
decades, then finally accept help once it starts to fall apart?

------
apocalypstyx
[http://inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias/](http://inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias/)

------
21
Seems to me that they would be highly vulnerable to a hurricane (or tsunami).

There is no redundancy in such a concentrated piece of land.

Puerto Rico was (more or less) helped by the US government. Who will help
these people?

~~~
CyberDildonics
Why is it that something like this brings people to act like it has all sort
of unique problems that haven't been confronted dozens of times already?

How does French Polynesia deal with tsunamis? They have an alarm system and
advise people to get to high ground.

On something like this, since it is all construction, you could also build
barriers around it to minimize a tsunami.

~~~
21
I wasn't worry about the people, presumably in this day and age they would
have ample warnings.

But who will pay for the cleanup operation, if there is no nation state to
fall back to?

~~~
CyberDildonics
Why would it be devastated if it was designed for it in the first place? Why
is it that you think tsunamis destroy every country they hit? French Polynesia
has actually been hit by tsunamis before, you just don't hear about it because
it isn't eventful.

Also Puerto Rico was hit by a strong hurricane, not a tsunami. It was also
already 100 Billion dollars in debt and had recently defaulted.

Also how do you think neighborhoods of 300 houses already deal with natural
disasters? Do you think their only option is to rely on aid from a 'nation
state'? They get insurance.

It may be a far out idea with many problems that would have to be accounted
for but lets use our very best judgement.

------
kangnkodos
Where does the garbage and sewage go?

A few of the main functions a city provides is collecting garbage, and
treating sewage. I don't see a word about them in the Business Insider
article. Are there details elsewhere?

------
desireco42
I am not rich, but I can imagine living in such city and enjoying it. Amount
of $60M, or even $120M doesn't sound something that should be hard to collect.

I imagine this being organized like Singapore, but looks like Dubai. I also
don't think it is enough to just plop it somewhere, there should be thought on
how it will function, what are benefits. Can it be place where superstars go
to relax for example. Selling them 2M homes would be easy. It can be place for
startups and conferences. I feel like more thought should be placed into this.

I think crypto makes sense for such project, but obviously potential for abuse
are huge.

Obviously, one tsunami and this thing can be in serious trouble.

Again, given a chance to live there, or at least to spend some time and work
and live there, I would take the chance.

------
petraeus
Doesn't pass my sniff test ... sounds expensive and who will pay for it test

------
sammyo
Have never heard of a seasteader that had actually spent significant time out
on the open ocean.

------
arkitaip
It sounds like every nightmare City from Bioshock.

------
jnmandal
> Libertarian

> with its own government

What?

~~~
merpnderp
Libertarian governments are the bare minimum society finds acceptable. A
libertarian government would maximize freedom and autonomy and only create
laws to restrict directly infringing on other citizen's natural rights and
freedoms.

~~~
kzrdude
Are there any practical examples of this theory?

~~~
whatshisface
The Somali government, for one. They don't have enough money for social
programs or building inspectors, but have for the most part kept other
governments out.

~~~
hutzlibu
Not at all. Somali just has many different governemts fighting against each
other.

~~~
crimsonalucard
I would argue that tribal leaders and mini governments form organically under
systems with no or bare minimum government.

Make no mistake. Small Governments in somali fighting each other is the result
of the initial establishment of minimal government. There was no grand plan of
warring governments establishing checks and balances.

------
rboyd
I’mma go watch Waterworld again

------
geff82
I just want to mention that seafaring is the closest we can get to libertarian
lifestyle. Even when due to the flag of your ship you are bound to a nation
somehow, yet there is much more freedom than anywhere else. For example, your
ship can be build entirely up to your standards and wishes, while a car or
airplane is regulated down to the smallest part.

------
zerostar07
It's sad that libertarians / ancaps are bullied out of the real world to do
their experiment. These kind of experiments should be done on land.

~~~
mjburgess
> It's sad that libertarians / ancaps are bullied out of the real world

Uhuh. Though they just call that "thinking".

There is no "real world" form of utopianism. It's a dangerous adolescent form
of thinking which requires purifying one's environment until it is All Good
according to a single set of criteria.

All society-level attempts at this measure their results in millions of
deaths.

~~~
zerostar07
By that standard we should have stuck with absolute monarchy. (you might want
to think it over. I 'm sure the ancient romans said the same things, as did
imperial russia)

~~~
mjburgess
Every change which has occurred has never resulted in a single pure ideology
characterizing a civilization.

All change is plural and incremental, even so-called "revolutions" really just
exchange the set in power for another set. They leave the plurality of really-
existing power structures in place, whilst disturbing only a small number.

This is simply an incremental shift in power at the very top.

Utopian projects take pluralities of lifestyles and pragmatic political
systems and attempt to unify them under a single consistent set of criteria.

It's something for the mind of an adolescent, to which this mode of thinking
is common.

~~~
zerostar07
libertarians leave capitalism intact. You can say that government delegates is
"a small number".

~~~
mjburgess
There is no "capitalism".

Society cannot be characterized by a coherent set of ideological principles.
It is the behavior of human beings, which is highly plural and inconsistent
when formalized.

There is no ideology to "leave in tact". By destroying the government you do
not "uncover" some latent capitalism, you take the ways everyone is behaving
-- have them repeat that behaviour -- but now without a government.

You'd find that to be a catastrophe.

