

Floating Cities: The ocean as humanity's next frontier - danboarder
http://www.factor-tech.com/future-cities/floating-cities-is-the-ocean-humanitys-next-frontier/

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olefoo
Here are some practical elements that mean that seasteading is not going to
work the way it's current proponents want it to.

1\. Seasteads will require enormous amounts of hard, barely rewarding work to
be even marginally functional at first.

2\. Much of that work will be farming, and much of the rest will be weather-
related; preparing the vessel to deal with storms and dealing with the damage
wrought by weather.

3\. Speaking of weather, the volume and intensity of open ocean storms has
been increasing for the past three decades and will continue doing so for the
forseeable future.

4\. Ocean aquaculture can be quite a difficult proposition, particularly if
you're in an area that lacks an existing nutrient cycle.

5\. Political autonomy doesn't work the way people think it does. Sure you can
give yourself some breathing room, maybe a new set of building codes; some
structures that will let you run business a bit more freely; and those tend to
be beneficial. But what about human rights? What if a group wants to
experiment with allowing human slavery? Or post natal birth-control where only
worthy warriors are allowed to become people? You can generate a whole
menagerie of horror stories, but for the most part the upshot is "Autonomy
within limits." And then you have to have an open debate about what the limits
are. Or not, maybe the seasteasds will be a giant set of floating Dubai's
without Islamic temperance to limit the abuses. Either way seasteads are
likely to be fragile enough in the first few years that cohesive social
structures will be a requirement for survival. Which argues against the
Spencerian libertarianism that seems to be the default position of many
interested in the topic. I rather suspect that successful seasteads will have
social structures that look more like Kibbutzim than libertarian autonomies.

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knowtheory
1) i love how credulous this article is. Even people who have only ever played
the Bioshock games, and have never thought about anything else can see beyond
the 9th grade level ethics/civics necessary to see what the problems with sea-
steading are.

2) Are we seriously citing the _freedom ship_ of all things as an example of
what the future of sea steading might be like?
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2514936/The-i...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2514936/The-
incredible-mile-long-floating-CITY--complete-schools-hospital-parks-
airport-50-000-residents.html)

Cities are complicated. Cruise ships are complicated. (Anybody remember
[http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/11/travel/cruise-ship-
fire/](http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/11/travel/cruise-ship-fire/) ?) I would
looooove to hear someone explain what the logistics and supply chain
management necessary to run a city-sized cruise ship would have to look like
(note, none of these sea-steading articles ever discuss this question). And,
sorry just to harp on the Bioshock thing again, but seriously:
[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/28/article-2514936-19...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/28/article-2514936-19B234F700000578-699_964x632.jpg)
and
[http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130412063520/bioshock/i...](http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130412063520/bioshock/images/e/e4/BSI_Lighthouse_Map.png)

3) If you have enough money to sea-stead, or get yourself onto a hypothetical
freedom ship... is paying your taxes and following a country's laws really _so
onerous_ that you would abandon your family and social network in order to
move out onto the ocean onto platforms with experimental levels of quality &
sustainability? (I mean, maybe you're an engineering nerd and you think it'd
be awesome to live out on the water. But in what way does that dove-tail with
the political aspirations of sea-steading? Why not just get yourself a boat if
you've got that much money?)

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

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BorisMelnik
"...creating communities that have political autonomy whilst existing under
the sovereignty of a host state."

That is the part that is going to get interesting, IMO. I am imagining a weed
smoking, hip hop loving, skinny jean wearing, cell phone using society just 5
miles outside of North Korea.

~~~
visakanv
How do you protect against pirates? Honest question.

~~~
teddyh
The same way you defend ports against vikings – by having coastal defenses and
a navy.

