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Do you think that governments are just going to start killing people just because they decided to live on a boat somewhere? There are lots of things that many

by stale2002 5y ago

Do you think that governments are just going to start killing people just because they decided to live on a boat somewhere? There are lots of things that many governments could do right now. But there is really very little reason for most governments to just start sinking ships, at random, even ships that aren't affiliated with a country that could protect them. In practice, I would expect a sea steading "nation" to work out similar to any other tiny nation. There are lots of tiny nations, around the world, but we don't see them getting nuked by the rest of the world, for no reason.

smogcutter 5y ago
The issue is that the answer to the question of how the “nation” will support itself is inevitably some version/combination of: A) tax shelter for money earned in the real world B) doing crimes on the internet …neither of which real states are generally a big fan of.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  There is plenty of legal remote enterprises that could be done from a small nation (seasteading or not). Think a bunch of engineers, creatives, managers, traders working remotely.
smolder 5y ago
Right, nuking a small country would be pretty wasteful and politically expensive compared to a more usual tactic like propping up an oppressive regime who supports cheap export of natural resources, or in the case of a country with few resources, mostly ignoring them.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > mostly ignoring them. Exactly. That is what would happen. Small nations exist all over the world. And the reality is that they mostly just get ignored. We don't really see these video game plots being acted out in real life. Seasteading would result in the same situation, as what happens to modern day, tiny nations. It would be ignored, beyond, of course, arm chair internet comments that fantasizing about the horrible things that people want to do against their political opponents (as usually happens, in threads about this stuff). But the actual consequences would not amount to much.

smogcutter 5y ago

The issue is that the answer to the question of how the “nation” will support itself is inevitably some version/combination of: A) tax shelter for money earned in the real world B) doing crimes on the internet …neither of which real states are generally a big fan of.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
There is plenty of legal remote enterprises that could be done from a small nation (seasteading or not). Think a bunch of engineers, creatives, managers, traders working remotely.

smolder 5y ago

Right, nuking a small country would be pretty wasteful and politically expensive compared to a more usual tactic like propping up an oppressive regime who supports cheap export of natural resources, or in the case of a country with few resources, mostly ignoring them.

stale2002 5y ago
> mostly ignoring them. Exactly. That is what would happen. Small nations exist all over the world. And the reality is that they mostly just get ignored. We don't really see these video game plots being acted out in real life. Seasteading would result in the same situation, as what happens to modern day, tiny nations. It would be ignored, beyond, of course, arm chair internet comments that fantasizing about the horrible things that people want to do against their political opponents (as usually happens, in threads about this stuff). But the actual consequences would not amount to much.