
Seasteading - sanqui
https://www.seasteading.org/
======
sandworm101
These guys are just like every other group that wants to setup their own
society "free" of government. But look closely at their plans. They don't want
to get rid of nation states. They just want to setup their own nation states
under their own legal structure, one that sees them atop everyone else too
poor to build their own floating palace.

Ask them their opinions on the big crimes (murder/rape/arson etc). Will they
allow me to keep slaves on my seastead? Of course not. May I operate an
industrial smelter and dump the waste overboard? May I buys some guns, capture
other seasteads and setup my own dictatorship? These people don't want to
escape the real laws, just the handful of minor regulations with which they
disagree. These are nothing more than rich randians complaining about their
tax bracket.

~~~
olalonde
I have some questions for you. Is it possible to distinguish between someone
who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who's unhappy
about their tax bracket? Between someone who believes regulations do more harm
than good from someone who is pissed off at a couple of minor regulations?
Between someone who believes in experimenting with new forms of governance and
someone who wants to dominate the poor?

Surely some of those ideas attract selfish people, but is it that unreasonable
to think that a lot of them actually believe in the stated mission?

~~~
joe_the_user
_I have some questions for you. Is it possible to distinguish between someone
who believes taxes are bad for society, or immoral, from someone who 's
unhappy about their tax bracket?_

If that is a problem, it is a problem for those advocating these policies. If
you selflessly advocate policies benefiting the wealthy, low and behold, many
of those seeking to benefit will appear. If these types generate corruption or
exploitation, how do you filter them out?

In general, a lot of low-regulation, low-tax advocates claim that selfishness
isn't a problem, that these approaches can benefit everyone even when everyone
looks out for themselves.

The problem with such approach is they don't consider that those attracted to
these approaches for selfish reasons aren't going to be satisfied with simply
an efficient, meritocratic system that turns selfishness to a universal
benefit and that instead the truly selfish cheat, take any resource they can
get access to and essentially spoil many idealized "general benefit through
individual benefit" systems, turning them into just "the strong prey on the
weak" approaches.

And those on the sidelines looking at the situation can say, "Oh, looks a few
people actually believed this stuff, too bad for them that the overall process
was swamped by those just aiming for a buck." But this situation doesn't raise
our overall admiration for any of them.

~~~
chr1
With high taxes, governments must have huge amount of power to be able to
collect and spend all the money. So then, this same people you talk about, go
into the government. And usually they manage to do much more harm this way
than in low tax case where power is distributed to more people.

~~~
boh
Feel free to give us a historical example where the "low tax case" distributed
power to "more" people.

~~~
chr1
This year Russia introduced new taxes and that worsened the already bad
economic situation. Europe doesn't produce nearly the same amount of
innovation and startups as US, most likely because of higher taxes on
business. Because taxes in US are not higher, people like Bill Gates, Jeff
Bezos, Elon Musk can spend their money on things they find important instead
of all that money being handled by the few people in the government.

I am not saying that the tax should be 0% as governments provide some useful
services, but 50% is way too much to buy a bundle of services you can't pick
from. The only way to find a better balance is to be able to experiment with
different ways of organizing government, and seasteading could help with this.

~~~
boh
So your example of a "low tax case" distributing power to "more" people is
Russia.

I think whatever point there is to this argument has been made.

~~~
chr1
No, please read the rest of the comment. My main example was USA vs Europe,
where lower US taxes make possible things like SpaceX.

~~~
boh
Space X relies on government contracts and government funded research not the
tax savings of tech billionaires. And yes I read the rest.

~~~
chr1
ESA also relies on government funding, but its chief was saying that
reusability is not needed because with reusable rockets workers would have
nothing to do half of the year. And other NASA contractors didn't get much
done either. So a particular millionaire keeping his millions was crucial for
the whole thing to succeed. Could someone working at NASA accomplish the same?
Yes if there was a good way to measure good and bad decisions made by
different people, so that multiple routes are explored, and failing route is
discarded despite its proponent being a respected person, but unfortunately we
do not have a working way for that other than money.

I hope you agree that so far in all places where state tried to take all the
money and redistribute everyone ended up worse off (USSR, North Korea, Cuba,
Maoist China, Venezuela). You may not agree, but as far as i can tell Europe
is lagging behind USA in terms of innovation because of higher taxes. And
Singapore's economy is growing faster than US because of lower tax rate.

I am not suggesting that all taxes should be eliminated or even that they
should be returned to their pre WW1 levels, but based on this i think it is a
reasonable hypothesis that lower tax could be more beneficial for society, and
if some people want to test that out on a seastead they should not be met with
hostility for trying to destroy the social state and not pay taxes.

------
amalcon
This is one of those concepts that seems to come out of thinking of the law as
similar to software. It's not, because software is run by computers while law
is run by humans.

If you find a straightforward loophole in software, the computer running it
will e.g. happily hand you information you're not supposed to have[1]. If you
find that kind of loophole in the law, then the humans running it will usually
just tell you to go home. They know that you know what they meant.

Laws can still have loopholes, but they are generally more subtle and
complicated. Fixing them often has obvious unintended consequences. They're
more like speculative execution bugs[2] than buffer overruns.

[1]-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed)

[2]-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabilit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_\(security_vulnerability\))

~~~
buboard
You believe that the existence of government-free land is a "loophole in the
law" ?

~~~
M2Ys4U
There is always a government.

It might be two guys with guns, or it might be a huge bureaucracy that runs on
the rule of law or anywhere in between.

But it's always there.

~~~
buboard
That's just false.

~~~
lostphilosopher
Disagree.

As soon as one person's actions can affect another person a system arises for
resolving their inevitable conflicts and facilitating cooperation if required.
What do you call that system? Many would call that "government." That does
seem appropriate if the definition of government is:

> the political system by which a country or a community is administered and
> regulated.

Of course, "government" as manifested in multi-million person nations is
significantly evolved from it's abstract underpinnings both etymologically and
philosophically. Same is true of the notions of political, community,
administered, and regulated. But all that evolution (both its pros and cons)
falls out logically from the foundational relationship of two beings with
agency trying to figure out how and if to restrain that agency when it
conflicts with the other's.

EDIT: I see from a sibling you're referring to "Anarchism." That doesn't free
anyone for the reality of government it just changes where the restraining
lines get drawn. In practice, the lines predictably get drawn in favor of the
powerful just as they do in more mainstream systems of government.

------
Traster
I wanted to actually dig into this, and see if there's anything that's
underlying the ideas that are worth really considering but I've got to say,
this really turned me off:

"When an Island or Peninsula breaks free from a larger country and creates its
own legal structure, dramatic increases in prosperity often occur within 1
generation.

Under British rule Hong Kong habour was little more than a dockyard for the
Royal Navy. Now thanks to modern trade rules and numerous land reclamation
projects, the skyline features an abundance of skyscrapers."

That's just dishonest. Firstly, Hong Kong was not just a dockyard for the
British Navy in 1997, it was already an incredibly rich place, with many
skyscrapers and huge amounts of autonomy. Try googling a photo of Hong Kong in
1997. Secondly, it is has not broken free from a larger country, it was
returned from the British Empire to Chinese control.

"Before World War 2, rickshaws were the primary form of transport in
Singapore. Now there is a vast public transport infrastructure, including high
speed rail networks and expressways."

Okay, what a funky timeline. Before WW2 Singapore was very poor! Along with
basically everyone else in that region. It gained independence in 1959, but
let's not talk about what happened in between!

None of the examples they give seem to offer anything other than "Pro tip: Be
a tax haven". Singapore, Mauritius, Hong Kong? Notice what these places have
in common? Like Jesus Christ guys could you not find a single example of a
country whose independence made it wealthy without being a straight up tax
haven for the surrounding larger countries?

------
fredley
Less than two weeks after a 'Seastead' got dismantled and towed away by the
Thai navy:

[https://www.theepochtimes.com/thai-navy-dismantles-
floating-...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/thai-navy-dismantles-floating-
seastead-home-of-fugitive-bitcoin-couple_2890832.html)

~~~
noonespecial
A good illustration of why it might not be such a great idea to fly no flag
and claim no nation: anybody who floats up with a gun bigger than yours can go
right ahead and subject you to whatever "law" they feel like.

~~~
ryacko
If you fly the US flag, but claim no subdivision, one would have the benefits
of citizenship without having to pay state and local taxes. As far as I can
tell, registering a ship only requires citizenship, but it would make any
dispute complex.

Not a lawyer, but there was an era where citizens lived in US territories.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> If you fly the US flag, but claim no subdivision, one would have the
> benefits of citizenship without having to pay state and local taxes.

That doesn't seem right - why don't refugees, who appear to already be
attempting to boat across large swaths of water, simply fly the US flag then?

~~~
joosters
For a start, they aren't trying to live in those large swathes of water,
they're trying to reach somewhere else to live. Turning up at a border waving
a US flag but having no valid US passport won't get you in...

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> one would have the benefits of citizenship without having to pay state and
> local taxes.

I assume you'd need to be a citizen beforehand, right?

------
DennisP
I read the seasteading book, and thought it made a fairly convincing case that
seasteads could produce vast amounts of food, biofuel, and carbon
sequestration.

I do think that setting out to build a "city" is not the way forward. Early
experiments in deep-water aquaculture have been very profitable. Expand on
that, and settlement will happen organically.

~~~
carapace
Your comment reminds me of GreenWave: [https://www.greenwave.org/our-
work](https://www.greenwave.org/our-work)

Ecologically and economically sustainable underwater 3D farms.

~~~
DennisP
Yep, exactly the sort of thing I mean.

Another good book on the topic is Tim Flannery's _Sunlight and Seaweed._

------
sbt
Something tells me these guys are more motivated by tax evasion than by saving
the environment.

~~~
rufusroflpunch
The founder of the Seasteading Institute, Patri Friedman (son David Friedman
and grandson of Milton Friedman), is a libertarian anarchist. So yeah,
undermining the concept of the nation-state is really built into the DNA of
the whole venture. It goes beyond tax avoidance.

~~~
jtms
Sorry to detract from your main point, but how is it possible to be an
anarchist and a libertarian at the same time? Those are fairly mutually
exclusive based on my understanding.

~~~
felipeko
The libertarian type of anarchism is called anarcho-capitalism.

It's based on property rights and the non aggression principle.

~~~
orthoxerox
How do they deal with the unquestionable fact that aggression exists?

~~~
Avshalom
I think they propose voluntarily subscribed-to private cops/legal
jurisdictions with either voluntarily subscribed-to arbitration contracts for
inter-jurisdictional conflicts _or_ insurance payouts for when some one who
subscribes to no jurisdiction (or one with no arbitration agreement with
yours) stabs/robs/whatevers you.

Basically as it is now but instead of the law and tax being collected based on
location, you get to freely choose what law(s)-enforcement you want to be
under.

~~~
treis
>you get to freely choose what law(s)-enforcement you want to be under

Until someone under a different LE company accuses of a crime. Then you'll be
subject to their process (unless, of course, your LE company has more guns).

~~~
Avshalom
Well the hardcore version is that the different LE company can't subject you
to their process unless you consent and if you didn't the restitution for
whatever crime they say you committed would be paid for by their own insurance
company.

why would you ever agree then? Well maybe because they have an agreement with
your LE company and you'd find yourself dropped as a client if you didn't or
you both use the same insurance company and they'd jack up your rates if you
didn't. More extremely you might be fired and become unhireable as a liability
and unless you already have sufficient arable land to subsistence farm you
will die of starvation or be shot for trespassing (initiating force) on the
sidewalk that you can no longer pay for the use of.

Don't take this as me thinking it is at all a workable scheme also I'm
definitely not AnCap and I don't hang out in their circles so this kinda just
the low-nuance version that I've picked up via osmosis.

~~~
logfromblammo
It's a lot of mental gymnastics that serve as a "reductio ad absurdam"
argument, proving that the fundamental organizing axiom of human societies is
still "might makes right" rather than "right is derived from mutually-agreed-
upon moral principles".

The last arguments of kings are still guns.

The end state of all theoretical non-aggressive libertarian societies is that
they are conquered through force by some form of cartel. In my opinion,
seasteading, which is predicated on mutual non-aggression for prosperity, is
strictly inferior to hiring a bunch of ex-CIA and ex-GRU contractors to
destabilize and take over a pre-existing dictatorial country, and then rewrite
its laws from scratch. The moral high ground loses to boots on the ground,
every time.

If you can't or won't preemptively attack and annex another country's
territory, you're better off trying to colonize space, where nation-states
can't reach you as easily, or start by building the nuclear warheads, and then
build the floating cities. The veneer of civilization is thin, and one gun is
no longer sufficient for one man to defend his castle.

------
ckastner
It's a simple and frequent mistake to believe that sovereign autonomy is
wholly self-determined, and seasteading is the prime example for this.

Sovereign autonomy is not determined by oneself. It is determined by _others_
, specifically by recognizing the sovereignty. Without recognition, it's
basically impossible to conduct any type of transaction with the outer world,
for lack of jurisdiction.

~~~
buboard
And how do you solve this chicken and egg problem? Declare autonomy peacefully
-> get drowned with nukes. Declare autonomy with war -> be labeled a terrorist
and get drowned with nukes. So, geopolitics have reached their final,
permanent stage forever?

~~~
bubblewrap
What country would nuke another country for declaring autonomy???

~~~
buboard
palestine, tibet, kurdistan, taiwan etc etc

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes)

~~~
antientropic
Nukes have been used in anger only twice in history and it wasn't over a
declaration of independence. They're really not very useful as an offensive
weapon.

If (say) Tibet declared independence, there is absolutely no chance that China
would nuke it. They would simply send in a whole lot of tanks and people with
guns.

------
ceejayoz
A cautionary tale on how this is likely to turn out:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Foundation)

> Part of a reef, normally a metre below sea level at high tide, was piled
> high with sand and a small stone platform was erected carrying the flag of
> the Republic of Minerva—a white torch on a blue background. The 'President
> of Minerva,' Morris Davis, declared at the time: "People will be free to do
> as they damn well please. Nothing will be illegal so long it does not
> infringe on the rights of others. If a citizen wishes to open a tavern, set
> up gambling or make pornographic films, the government will not interfere."
> Tonga’s claim to the reef was recognized by the South Pacific Forum in
> September 1972. A Tongan expedition was sent to enforce the claim, arriving
> on 18 June 1972. The Flag of the Tonga was raised on 19 June 1972 on North
> Minerva and on South Minerva on 21 June 1972.

~~~
Macha
For a more recent example: [https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-trader-
chad-elwartow...](https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-trader-chad-
elwartowski-thai-navy-destroys-floating-house-2019-4?r=US&IR=T)

> Elwartowski and Thepdet's seastead was part of an experiment led by the
> Seasteading Institute, a group backed by Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley
> billionaire behind PayPal.

> The floating home of Chad Elwartowski and his girlfriend, Supranee Thepdet,
> was towed ashore by Thai authorities on Monday to be taken apart, and the
> couple have been accused of violating Thailand's sovereignty, an offense
> that can carry the death penalty or life in prison, Sky News reported.

~~~
imglorp
Also that story about what happens when you claim an abandoned WWII platform,
call it a sovereign country, attempt to web host some sketchy material, and
fend off the British Navy.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20050602082455/http://www.havenco...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050602082455/http://www.havenco.com/)

[https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/the-curious-
case...](https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/the-curious-case-of-
sealand-the-hacker-friendly-offshore-micronation)

[https://www.sealandgov.org/](https://www.sealandgov.org/)

~~~
jacquesm
RDL is on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rdl](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rdl)

------
saalweachter
There's a certain parallel to "a solution in search of a problem".

I haven't thought of a witty way to phrase the problem; "a utopia in search of
a social movement", maybe?

It's really fun to design your new utopian community: the principles, the
laws, the layout of the streets in the city (or the ships, in this case). But
this is precisely backwards. You aren't playing SimCity, or SimSeastead. You
can't just build (or make blueprints for) your ideal city, then summon a hoard
of obedient minion-citizens to build it and inhabit it and behave in the way
you have dictated.

The social movement has to come first: you need a large group of people, with
similar aims and goals, working together, making decisions and plans a group.
Then maybe you build a city. Or a commune. Or a co-op. Or who knows; the group
may end up with other needs that you didn't anticipate.

Hypothetically you could build your community around your utopian vision, but
why should they flock to you? All you've got is an idea. I've got some ideas,
and so has every other person who might hypothetically be interested in
joining your community. Why should I join you on your seastead instead of you
joining me in my mountain enclave, or my seastead in a different ocean, or
exactly like your seastead started out, except it's my seastead, I make the
decisions?

Start by building a community, a movement. Or stick to writing fiction and
playing the Sims.

------
dang
A thread from 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519863)

2012:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435994)

2011:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310873)

2010:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1088570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1088570)

2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=441310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=441310)

Others?

------
gunn
"On January 13, 2017 we signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with French
Polynesia [...] agreeing to cooperate on developing legislation for The
Floating Island Project by the end of 2017"

Is there any more news on this?

~~~
return1
polynesia pulled out of the agreement

> On March 3, 2018, a mayor from French Polynesia said the agreement was "not
> a legal document" and had expired at the end of 2017 in response to a
> challenger trying to make it an issue for the May, 2018 elections.

------
Tepix
Let's ignore the contentious legal aspects and focus on the general idea:
Create a floating structure that offers space for living, working or
agriculture. Has this been done with areas that are much larger than a typical
house boat?

What kind of waves/storms can these structures deal with?

~~~
pp19dd
Large ships do very poorly in waves.

The last thing you want happening in a storm is to lose power. Without power
you can't angle yourself perpendicular to the waves. When that happens,
broadside waves make the ship bob like a corkscrew. If you don't capsize, this
makes the situation beyond recovery.

Waves tend to make large ships lose power easily because the engine oil
sloshes in the pan, or the sump pit. The oil pump or inlet is located in a
fixed place and can't be moved around. We're talking large engines here.
Anyhow, the pump can't keep up with the flow due to this sloshing effectively
cycling its flow rate and the engine starts overheating and it has to be
throttled down then later shut off so it doesn't seize up. Once the engine is
shut off and the vessel is no longer under command, the sloshing gets worse.
Emergency battery power drains quickly. Meanwhile the fuel - bunker oil -
cools off and turns into asphalt - it needs to be heated up to 120+ degrees F
to be usable.

Even if you don't shut the engine off, in stormy weather the fuel filters get
clogged up faster and have to be constantly cleaned. The fuel itself, bunker
oil, is chunky to begin with and the additional sloshing somehow gunks up the
filters faster. In one famous case, the engineers had to do it every few
minutes in a storm and that required complete enclosure disassembly and
reassembly. That particular ship survived that storm, but not another.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The ship that didn't survive- was that the El Faro?

I didn't realise this kind of malfunction of the oil pump was common. I
thought it was particular to the design of the pump on that vessel.

~~~
pp19dd
Aye, El Faro.

Remember few months ago when the Norwegian Cruise ship lost power and 1,300
passengers had to be evacuated by helicopter? That wasn't the only disabled
ship in the area due to the storm. Once NTSB releases a report, you might see
this as a cause, fuel sloshing. Large ships are just not designed or meant to
be in waves and it's not economical to design them to be. So you check weather
far in advance and steer clear of it.

El Faro's master looked at an old weather report regularly delayed by 12-18
hours or some such due to additional processing from BVS (his preferred
software for checking weather) and didn't cross-check it with another source
like NWS throughout the days, despite being challenged by the crew. He ended
up steering the ship right into the eye of a hurricane.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Oh, yes- I remember the Norwegian ship. I don't remember the details- I'll
keep an eye out for the report. Thanks.

>> He ended up steering the ship right into the eye of a hurricane.

I know. I've read the NTSB report. And the bridge transcript. Most harrowing
thing I've ever read.

I got the feeling though that there was fault with the land crew who tied down
the cars in the holds inappropriately. If I remember correctly, first there
was water in the holds, possibly from a burst pipe hit by a car moving about
freely; then the cars started slipping around on the wet floor; then they
started listing to port; then the oil pump gave up; then the captain turned
his port to the wind to counter the list; then they lost power; and by that
time they were in the eye wall of the hurricane and they were lost. Perhaps,
if it hadn't been an old ship and if the cargo had been secured properly, we
wouldn't know there ever was a ship with that name. Despite the captain's
mistakes.

~~~
pp19dd
It really was terrible. The audio transcription puts you right there and just
wow.

Like you said think it was a number of factors, but I think the other ones
only compounded the situation after the master committed the ship to the float
plan. He looked at an outdated weather report, didn't know the software
options to plot the up-to-date hurricane overlay, company didn't permit any of
the crew to have access to the ship's satellite phone (and presumably internet
access that came with it) for a double check, then he dismissed a
confrontation about the conflicting NWS report from the 2nd mate, then delayed
pulling up updated information from his lagging weather report and went to
sleep.

The design of the ship played a factor too. It was a retrofitted RO/RO ship
with waived safeties, and had ventilation hatches that apparently lowered the
de-facto lowest-point-of-water-ingress (forgot the actual parameter name)
underneath the unsecured hatches, which were - unsecured. Or unreliable. New
engineer started doing maintenance mid-storm, lowering the engine's power
output, and I think the loose cargo became a factor afterwards.

------
october_sky
The images here are charming, but there's not nearly enough population density
in those to make them viable. The images display floating luxury homes
complete with a yard.

------
phkahler
Most home owners associations are political messes. This seems like a slightly
larger version of that but with far more responsibility in more areas.

------
ifdefdebug
I read: "Seasteading is building floating societies with significant political
autonomy".

So when they go outside the jurisdiction (and protection) of a nation-state
and their law enforcement, the first question that comes to my mind is: what
about piracy?

And as a matter of fact, they have a youtube channel "tough questions" talking
about that
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PLUZ9bzUGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PLUZ9bzUGY))
- tldr: it's gonna be private security firms, so it's not gonna be cheap ...
and they claim only 2% of world's oceans are even considered piracy waters,
but I think that's going to change as soon as there are wealthy communities
floating in unprotected waters ...

~~~
pitaj
> it's gonna be private security firms, so it's not gonna be cheap

One could say that police and military are not cheap either

~~~
Areading314
Maybe they'll just have to go around and collect donations from residents to
pay the security. And just require them to pay if they don't raise enough

...

~~~
mkohlmyr
While I'm very much on-side with you on this one, I suppose their argument
would be that it would be a voluntary association.

~~~
InitialLastName
Sure, right until they start applying it to people who are born and raised
there and don't have the resources to travel and start lives somewhere else.

------
nradov
These clowns have no clue what it takes to live on the sea. None of them have
any serious experience in marine engineering, or in operating large ships or
offshore platforms. They'll be begging the Coast Guard for rescue when the
first big storm comes through.

~~~
buboard
I don't think they plan to build those megastructures with their bare hands.

~~~
village-idiot
I don’t think that GP was implying that they would. Even a structure built by
machines can fail catastrophically if poorly designed or operated. The ocean
floor is littered with ships that weren’t “built with their bare hands”.

~~~
buboard
I assume they will hire qualified people to operate them

------
ivanhoe
Sounds very similar to Sealand
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand)

------
wrongly
Every July in the California Delta near Rio Vista I go to a weeklong festival
called Ephemerisle, created 15 years ago to promote interest in seasteading.
It’s full of Burners, SV people, and seasteading investors hanging out on
yachts, barges, tugboats, and lots of DIY crafts: DeLorean hovercraft, flame
boat with 100kW sound system, etc.

------
dwighttk
Odd that, unless I missed it, their blog mentions nothing about the Thai Navy
destroying a seastead...

[https://fee.org/articles/the-world-s-first-seasteaders-
are-n...](https://fee.org/articles/the-world-s-first-seasteaders-are-now-on-
the-run-for-their-lives/)

------
madhadron
Does it seem odd to anyone else that French Polynesia is their testbed for "a
floating legal entity designed to maximize personal and economic freedom,"
given that personal liberty and pursuit of happiness were not at all
underlying principles of Tahitian society?

------
fareesh
How does sewage treatment and trash disposal work in this kind of setup?

~~~
driverdan
It's legal to dump human waste in the ocean once you're in international
waters.

~~~
CaptainZapp
Can you provide more detail on that?

I don't think, for example, that cruise ships are allowed to dump their shit
(and other refuse) into the sea, provided they're in international waters.

~~~
ceejayoz
Depends where they're registered. The vast majority of countries have signed
on to the conventions forbidding dumping, and can enforce it on ships flagged
in their countries, but a seastead intending to dump would presumably _not_
sign on.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPOL_73/78](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPOL_73/78)

~~~
CaptainZapp
Interesting.

Thank you

------
tuxxy
I've always been curious about initiatives like this.

What happens if there becomes resource exhaustion and similar problems? How
would the safety of the inhabitants be ensured in events like that?

------
komali2
Seems like Peter thiel was tired of not getting libertarians elected in the
USA so he went and made his own country.

> Obsolete political systems conceived in previous centuries are ill-equipped
> to unleash the enormous opportunities in twenty-first century innovation.

I wonder if woman's suffrage is included in his thoughts on obsolete political
systems?

> The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be
> genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in
> welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two
> constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered
> the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron

------
morkfromork
Reminds me of the movie Waterworld.

~~~
ShamelessC
Also "Outer Heaven" from the Metal Gear Solid games.

------
crikli
These folks take the Bluthton concept a bit too seriously.

------
MaupitiBlue
Just buy a sailboat.

~~~
return1
more like , a big ship or something like a retired oil rig. It needs to go in
deep waters (>200 miles off the coast) and stay there for extended periods of
time (and weather). A cruise ship would be ideal as it can be relatively self-
sustaining. A bunch of cruise ships would be enough to start a big city.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
People sail around the world all the time. As in: retirees in 30-feet yachts.

------
hkt
Libertarian wet dream if ever there was one. They'll learn by tragedy how
international diplomacy works.

------
lucisferre
Rogue waves will be fun.

------
christoph-heiss
Off-Topic: The site horrible "jitters" when scrolling around, pretty much
unreadable/unuseable. At least for me with Chrome 74 on Fedora. Firefox 67 is
fine.

