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A pilot project for a new floating city will have 300 homes
- alvivi 8y agoThe previous step to Rapture.
- convery 8y agoTBH, I can imagine an Ayn Rand inspired city to be pretty interesting.
- rainbowmverse 8y agoWould an Ayn Rand inspired city reject states and promote individualism for decades, then finally accept help once it starts to fall apart?
- jnmandal 8y ago> Libertarian > with its own government What?
- extra88 8y agoYou’re confusing libertarianism and anarchy.
- crimsonalucard 8y agoPractically similar. Bare minimum government is just one step above no government... aka anarchy. Be careful when interpreting vocabulary. Connotations and wording can serve to obfuscate concepts that are practically the same thing. Libertarianism and anarchy sound dramatically different, but logically the concepts are similar.
- extra88 8y agoLibertarianism can be a pretty big tent, lots of room for different opinions about what's minimal and what to keep or jettison. Sticking with the Peter Theil-ish variety, having enough government to preserve personal property rights is still a giant step apart from anarchy.
- merpnderp 8y agoLibertarian 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 8y agoAre there any practical examples of this theory?
- whatshisface 8y agoThe 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 8y agoNot at all. Somali just has many different governemts fighting against each other.
- crimsonalucard 8y agoI 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.
- GW150914 8y agoAnd by “new” they mean “planned, but in no way extant.” It seems to me like a few practical hurdles exist, not the least of which being resilience in the face of bad weather. You’d also have to really like your neighbors, and enjoy aquaculture and agriculture. If this even gets so far as construction, I’d expect massive cost overruns and delays, followed by insolvency and cessation. So this is what they mean when they say “Libertarian wet dream.” Like the dream, I suspect that waking up to reality is going to be a sticky disappointment.
- maxerickson 8y agoMake sure to like your neighbors enough that you'd have them for dinner!
- CyberDildonics 8y agoYou realize it is an island and not biodome right? They don't have to make their own food or create a closed system.
- GW150914 8y agoThe article talks about the plan to rely heavily on aquaculture and greenhouses for food. Presumably if you’re not into that, you’re not the ideal resident.
- CyberDildonics 8y agoWould that make the ideal land resident a farmer? I have a hard time believing that even if they have sophisticated farming that everyone will be involved in making their own food.
- tytytytytytytyt 8y agoSo 10% farming, 90% cyber-dildonics?
- Waterluvian 8y agoI 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.
- nonbel 8y ago>"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." Is this a prediction or are you referring to examples of this happening?
- Waterluvian 8y agoMy prediction. Are there examples? Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe we really don't need social security and everything just works out.
- nonbel 8y agoI don't know of any examples. I was hoping you did.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mmt 8y ago> Maybe we really don't need social security I think the libertarian idea is that we really don't need social security through threat of violence. There's a notion of the role of "private" charity. Libertarians aren't necessarily selfish or unempathetic. Contributing to something for the common benefit can also be borderline-coerced through social pressure. This is explored somewhat in P K Dick's short story "Foster, You're Dead!" (one of the ones adapted into something rather different in the Electric Dreams TV Series) http://www.sffaudio.com/podcasts/FosterYoureDeadByPhilipK.DickSSF3.pdf http://www.sffaudio.com/podcasts/FosterYoureDeadByPhilipK.Di... Although I found the story to somewhat muddy the waters by the world having both individual/private bomb shelters and a pay-per-use public one, as well as having a subscription-based communal shelter in the school. The town's defense was community paid but optional (through social pressure). Of course that's fiction, and we're all aware of real life examples of "tragedy of the commons", but human nature isn't entirely one-sided, either. Aren't there examples of "pay what you want" or "pay what you think is fair" schemes that work?
- pressurefree 8y agoi love Sbarro's Pizza! try the loxless Bialys! & fresh qeezed rica horchata!
- rboyd 8y agoI’mma go watch Waterworld again
- Felz 8y agoFloating 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.
- madaxe_again 8y agoIndeed - I always liked Neal Stephenson’s concept for “The Raft” in Snow Crash - take a bunch of vessels due for the breaker’s yard, lash em together, job done.
- PretzelPirate 8y agoSnowcrash describes pretty well how a set of boats/ships would work for creating an independent society.
- GW150914 8y agoOf 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 8y agoWhile 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.
- apocalypstyx 8y agohttp://inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias/ http://inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias/
- zerostar07 8y agoIt'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 8y ago> 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.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zerostar07 8y agoBy 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 8y agoEvery 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 8y agolibertarians leave capitalism intact. You can say that government delegates is "a small number".
- 21 8y agoSeems 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?
- scotty79 8y agoWhy tsunami?
- 21 8y agoWhat do you mean? A low lying island is vulnerable to a possible tsunami, like an earthquake-generated one.
- whatshisface 8y agoIt's not really an island, it's a boat. It would rise and fall with the sea unless the waves got too choppy.
- scotty79 8y agoI think this article is a bit confusing. They talk about floating cities but then they mention building 300 houses on an island in French Polinesia.
- CyberDildonics 8y agoWhy 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 8y agoI 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?
- DennisP 8y agoI just read a great book about seasteading: https://www.amazon.com/Seasteading-Floating-Environment-Liberate-Politicians-ebook/dp/B0176M400A https://www.amazon.com/Seasteading-Floating-Environment-Libe... 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 8y agowhat makes you think they won't nuke those out of existence as soon as they become successful?
- convery 8y agoThe geopolitical equivalent of 'protection-money'?
- hutzlibu 8y agotechnological advancements for defence, like Laserturrets. And the fact, that nuking is considered a crime against humanity even when you target libertarians. Does not mean that it will not be tried, though, as soon as they will be seen as a threat to any big player established. But there are lots of easier options, than plain nuking - "terrorists" for example. "A previous unknown generic terrorist group just has hit Seastate X, how tragic"
- zerostar07 8y agoOr they could just declare them terrorists, easier imho.
- geff82 8y agoI 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.
- nrclark 8y agoDid anybody else catch the part where this group is already selling cryptocurrency? Looks like yet another ICO scam to me.
- DennisP 8y agoI 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.
- ebikelaw 8y agoThe 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.
- hitekker 8y agoOr will tear themselves to pieces. Like all the libertarian camps in South America, particularly “Galt’s Gulch” of Peru. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v...
- marcosdumay 8y agoUnless 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 8y agoCommitting 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 8y agoSo 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.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoI 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.
- arkitaip 8y agoIt sounds like every nightmare City from Bioshock.
- desireco42 8y agoI 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.
- motohagiography 8y agoAlways 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 8y agoSeasteading 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.)
- DennisP 8y agoAt scale, it solves more basic physical problems, by providing massive amounts of seafood and biofuel while also sequestering large amounts of carbon. Being able to experiment with new forms of government, and having the economic boost from a few hundred new Hong Kongs would be nice bonuses.
- nonbel 8y agoWhy 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?
- sammyo 8y agoHave never heard of a seasteader that had actually spent significant time out on the open ocean.
- kangnkodos 8y agoWhere 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?
- petraeus 8y agoDoesn't pass my sniff test ... sounds expensive and who will pay for it test