9 ms·

Seasteading: Cities on the ocean

100 points by llambda 15y ago

njloof 15y ago
Dear Somalian Pirates, You're never going to believe this.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Dear Internet Guy who's clearly never sailed, Have we mentioned our rubber dinghy's and fishing boats can only sail a few hundred kilometers?
  - viscanti 15y ago
    I think the idea of security still exists, regardless of the viability of one particular group of pirates. Given a big enough target, someone will be motivated to come see what they can get. The question really is, what level of protection/security is necessary to defend a sea-stead?
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - arethuza 15y ago
    It's actually a pretty big area where they have been operating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map_2010.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map... [NB I actually did some sailing in 2010 right on the edge of the area on that map, just north of Mombasa - I did wonder about pirates at the time, but I assumed I was being silly!]
    - tryitnow 15y ago
      I think the answer to that would be: "Don't set up a seastead near where pirates have been hanging out" Now that can change, but piracy is usually related to failed states (hence Somalia). Seasteads would have to be built relatively close to peaceful stable countries. Honestly, I just don't see how priacy can be an issue, if the seastead is outside of government jurisdiction they can use high tech weaponry to counteract pirates. Of course, this increases the cost of the seastead, which tilt the scales against it.
      - rdl 15y ago
        Actually a government or PMC seastead near Somalia (to operate UAVs for monitoring and response) would be a great way to police to sea lanes at lower cost than a naval task force with ships.
  - njloof 15y ago
    What's Peter Thiel worth in ransom? We're going to need a bigger boat.
  - urbanjunkie 15y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_York http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_York The MV York is a liquified gas tanker that was captured in 2010 and is/was used a mothership. The use of larger and more robust vessels as support / launch platforms greatly increases the operational range of piracy.
  - cturner 15y ago
    Somali pirates vs seasteaders has potential as as a Neal Stephenson plot.
- ams6110 15y ago
  ... stay away from those "seasteads", they have Exocet anti-ship missiles and Aegis missile defense systems, as well as conventional artillery and gun defenses and an army employed from Blackwater.
  - Czarnian 15y ago
    In other words, Blackwater got there first. Maybe they'll leave some scraps we can salvage after the mercenaries bleed them dry.
    - arethuza 15y ago
      What would there be to stop the mercenaries from simply taking over the "country" they were hired to protect? It's not like this hasn't happened before....
      - Czarnian 15y ago
        Off the top of my head, the only things of value on a seastead are the salvageable materials, which would be a hassle to collect and sell, and the net worth of the various residents. They have no strategic value, it would cost a lot to keep them supplied, and you're in the middle of the ocean. To me, it would be much easier to to just bill them 10 mil a month for protection against a low-risk to non-existent threat until they can't afford it anymore.
        arethuza 15y ago
        "To me, it would be much easier to to just bill them 10 mil a month for protection against a low-risk to non-existent threat" The protection racket business model? "Nice seastead you have there, real shame if it was to have a revolution".
        Czarnian 15y ago
        Wouldn't even have to go that far. Seasteaders are already paranoid enough that you can just play on the fears they already have. "Nice seastead you have here. It'd be a real shame if some country decided to come out and take your strategically worthless, resource barren, unstable platform from you." Then sit back and collect a paycheck.
bradleyland 15y ago
This is one of the more outlandish ideas I've seen show up in The Economist. There are a mountain of hurdles to cross before you get to any kind of autonomous "state". Still, I hope someone tries it. Some casual observations: * Would this be Bitcoins first big opportunity? For a Seastead to make the leap to true statehood, they'll need some kind of currency that isn't controlled by a foreign government. Bitcoin, with it's entirely decentralized design, would seem to fit the bill. * The artricle makes some statements that these Seasteads could be used to prove the utopian Libertarian ideology. The notion that a small colony of a few hundred people are going to prove that any ideology would work in a state the size of the US, France, U.K., etc is patently absurd. They'll ignore it, dismiss it, or find good reasons why mechanisms that work on a micro scale don't scale to larger nations. * The article talks a lot about the need to be outside the jurisdiction of large nations like the US, and even mentions the willingness of the US to extend its jurisdiction pretty much anywhere in the world. The author seems to believe that if they stay away from the big-naughties, they'll be ok. I think he's wrong. If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes, large, tax-dependent governments will find ways to replace the revenue. So you want statehood? You got it. Time to negotiate a trade agreement. How does a 60% tariff on all goods imported to our nation sound? Don't want to play ball? Embargo. Good luck with your 700 person economy. * The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally. Say this idea eventually scales to $10,000 people. What is an acceptable level of safety for an entire population of that size? Lifeboats for everyone? Will the platform be sold as "unsinkable"? We know how that goes. Even land-based settlements face the risk of natural disaster, but it would seem the probabilities are greatly in favor of dry land.
- T-hawk 15y ago
  > If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes I think we can be reasonably confident that somebody in these large corporations has done that math. What this argument misses is that the comparison isn't seasteading vs US taxes, it's seasteading vs existing tax havens like Bermuda and the Channel Islands and Caymans. Those probably get you 90% of the way there on avoiding US and EU taxation, and would seem to be good enough that corps haven't had the need for seasteading or they'd already be doing it.
oceanician 15y ago
Just been watching a documentry on floating homes in Amsterdam. Could be worth checking it out. Look for 'Amsterdam's Futuristic Floating City'. It's one of the Extreme Engineering series. Episode 7. I saw it on Discovery Science. Hth.
jotm 15y ago
I really don't see the point of seasteads - escaping the law is not really feasible (you'll need supplies from a country, and if you do anything the US or other nearby countries don't like, you'll be cut off or heck, even torpedoed). There's plenty of land to build a small city on, much cheaper. Even if you want a private island for your getaways, you can buy a big yacht for cheaper, anyway. Heck, even if you want to create a criminal haven, it's cheaper and easier to do it in some third world country by bribing everyone (Pablo Escobar and Cuba is a great example)...
- todsul 15y ago
  "you'll need supplies from a country" It's called importing. Most countries do it these days.
  - jotm 15y ago
    Yes, and when you decide to create your own country with your own laws, you'll either be importing at exorbitant fees or be embargoed by everyone...
    - a3camero 15y ago
      This has happened before. Check out the history of pirate radio in Europe. The European countries responded by creating national laws that embargoed the pirate radio stations. The Spanish were never apart of it and British citizens just ignored and resupplied illegally. Decades after the embargo was passed there were still radio stations opening. Still annoying and likely if you're successful, but probably not killer.
    - tryitnow 15y ago
      Why would you be importing at exorbitant fees (relative to what an island nation would be paying anyways)? And why would they be embargoed by everyone? Not even Cuba is embargoed by everyone. Why would everyone embargo a seastead inhabited by upper income individuals? In general the market is pretty responsive to wherever the money is.
LukeHoersten 15y ago
"THE Pilgrims who set out from England on the Mayflower to escape an intolerant, over-mighty government and build a new society were lucky to find plenty of land in the New World on which to build it." -- I love how the English think of the American colonial settlers versus how Americans do.
- philwelch 15y ago
  That, by the way, is a popular myth. It's closer to the truth to say that the Pilgrims sailed to America to establish an intolerant, over-mighty government.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    True, but they abandoned communism quite quickly when it's failures became obvious. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_thanksgiving_.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_t...
    - philwelch 15y ago
      I was speaking more to the lack of religious tolerance, but okay.
ramanujan 15y ago
Much of the commentary on seasteading is underinformed. It doesn't have to be "libertarian", as the concept can just as equally be used to build states for progressives, or North Korean refugees, or any displaced or oppressed people. The engineering issues exist, but cruise ships are a pretty good proof-of-concept. Cruise ships show that we can get stable, luxurious accomodations at a per-day cost that is on par with an expensive hotel (2-3X SF Bay Area daily rent). The only question is the extent to which we can improve on that. Hacker News will get a lot out of the full Seasteading book, which anticipates most arguments and goes through many interesting details, from structural engineering through power, water, food, and cost. http://seasteading.org/book_beta/full_book_beta.html http://seasteading.org/book_beta/full_book_beta.html
- jotm 15y ago
  But WHY not build it on land? Find a remote piece of land and build your progressive city or refugee center at a quarter of the cost, with much easier access to food, building materials and other stuff. There are thousands of acres of land around the world that are perfect for establishing a new settlement, far away from any civilization, if that's your thing. It'd be easier to create a sort of enclave state (like Lesotho, but smaller, for example) than a seastead...
  - ArtemZ 15y ago
    because there is no land which is not under some state control
  - throwaway64 15y ago
    all land on earth is claimed by a state in some fashion, its much easier to sea stead than to deal with the politics of claiming political independence.
    - jotm 15y ago
      But that's exactly it - if you build a seastead, you will also have to abide by some country's laws. Otherwise you'll most likely find it very difficult to do business and acquire anything from anywhere, and if you do anything illegal in say, the United States or Spain, they'll send a vessel to take you into custody... so what's the point of spending a ton of money on a ship that is always in the same location?
Mz 15y ago
Until seasteaders are able to bank their money with independent, ocean-going financial institutions, they may not be able to escape the taxman’s clutches. You probably can't really escape the taxman's clutches anyway. It is mostly a matter of whom you pay, not if. Taxes exist to cover the costs of governing the people, providing infrastructure and services for the citizens and so on. Even if you can get unplugged from existing governments, someone has to pay for the infrastructure of the seastead and essential services. You can give it a different name, but charging your people to help pay these costs is basically the same thing as taxes. Not charging your people to help pay these costs would mean eventually sinking to the bottom of the ocean. These costs are likely to be relatively high, higher than what it takes to maintain roads and sewage and the like on land. Unless a seastead were the size of Manhattan its citizens would have to forgo the cultural life, the parks and the wide choice of shopping and restaurants offered by large cities. They might have to forego a lot of that anyway. I briefly considered applying for a job in Hawaii and I asked around regarding things like food in Hawaii (because I have special dietary needs). I was told basically that spam is a staple food, good luck getting meat and milk on a consistent/reliable basis as it sometimes isn't very available, things get flown in from far away so a lot of it is frozen not fresh, and what is available is quite pricey. There is plenty of sea food available, but I am allergic to shell fish and don't tolerate large quantities of fish well. In fact, I rarely eat fish. A few years ago, I stayed in Port Aransas, Texas for a few days. I loved the place and have toyed with the idea of going back (as in living there). But I struggled to feed myself while there. There is a great deal of sea food and some very expensive restaurants and some real dives and a very limited grocery store. Given my dietary restrictions, these details made it a daily challenge to try to eat properly for my needs and I don't feel it really did an adequate job. So if an island a short drive off the coast of Texas has challenges in offering "a wide choice of restaurants" and Hawaii has challenges with making sure food (in terms of variety and affordability) is consistently available, what on earth makes them think a floating platform will do better merely based on population size?
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Taxes exist to cover the costs of governing the people, providing infrastructure and services for the citizens and so on. Even if you can get unplugged from existing governments, someone has to pay for the infrastructure of the seastead and essential services. Suppose a seasteading nation provided the same transportation, protection, defensive and other public goods as the US government. An eyeball estimate [1] suggests the cost would be 35% of what the US govt spends, and that's assuming the sea-based nation still pays for things like military adventurism and the war on drugs. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total So while it's true that you have to pay some taxes, they could easily be far lower than most first world nations. You are correct that ocean dwellers should be comprised of people who enjoy seafood or people willing to pay $8/avocado. [1] I'm including defense, protection (police+fire), transportation and "other spending" (e.g., water treatment, community development).
a3camero 15y ago
Although this post is rather off the HN path, people might appreciate a draft of a law paper I've coincidentally just written on the legal issues with doing these sort of things: http://private.summerhilldesign.com/SeaLawPaper.pdf http://private.summerhilldesign.com/SeaLawPaper.pdf (3rd year law student). If this is too long, pg. 17 has a chart that shows how far out the different boundaries on the ocean. Starting at pg. 12 you'll see what things you can't do and pg. 24 has some conclusions. Might help take some of the "but that's illegal!" and "I don't think you can't do that" out of this discussion. Cheers!
dctoedt 15y ago
Defense costs for a seastead would be ruinous. A seastead is just another form of island. An island that's close to a land power will almost certainly need the deterrent effect of a strong navy --- its own or that of a friendly power --- if it wants to retain its independence. Strong navies are really, really expensive to build and maintain; a seastead probably would not be able to do either. Example: Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, mainland China probably would have invaded and conquered Taiwan in 1949 or 1950, or on any of a number of "crisis" occasions since then. It's no accident that whenever China rattles its saber about Taiwan, one or more U.S. aircraft carrier task forces moves into the Taiwan Strait. Example: Had it not been for the presence of the Royal Navy, the Germans probably would have invaded and conquered England in 1940. The same is true of Napoleon in 1803, for that matter. Economically, a seastead probably couldn't maintain the kind of navy needed for this task. England was able to maintain the Royal Navy in the 17th through 19th centuries, but it could draw on the resources of a growing empire. Today's Britannia doesn't come close to ruling the waves; it can't afford to. Could a seastead get a strong, friendly power to extend its own navy's umbrella of protection, the way the U.S. has done with Taiwan? Possibly, but the friendly power would have to perceive a benefit to itself before it'd be willing to do so.
- todsul 15y ago
  So you think the Germans or Chinese would want to invade the seastead? Do you think it's because the Germans/Chinese would want the seastead's land to extend their own borders?
  - ams6110 15y ago
    I'd think it's typically not the land itself that they really want, it's the resources. If a Seastead were to become established and wealthy, you can bet it would eventually come under threat of attack.
    - tryitnow 15y ago
      My guess is that the wealth the Seastead generated would be more of the bits/bytes kind (i.e. financial wealth, wealth represented in contracts). I can't imagine a bunch of libertarians sitting in their seastead with big warehouses full of diamonds and gold. There are more effective places to store physical assets. A seastead is not a perfect solution to freedom. There simply is no perfect solution. It simply creates another option. It's still possible for states to seize the assets of seasteaders, but being on a seastead makes it a bit more difficult.
nradov 15y ago
These clowns will be crying for the US Coast Guard to come and rescue them the moment their "seastead" springs a leak.
101001010101 15y ago
This just screams: Economist staff writers reading HN looking for story ideas. Click on the link and maybe we can keep some hapless journalist employed. Of course in the grander scheme, if we make a habit of such mindless reading selections, it may only hasten the inevitable downfall of serious journalism and the print publications we once associated with it.
christkv 15y ago
I could not help it I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well. Share this quote
- eftpotrm 15y ago
  The man in Moscow I won't attempt to defend. The Vatican will say that, as a Catholic, 10% of the bounty which God has enabled you earn should be donated to God in thanks. The man in Washington will tell you that, in exchange for security and protection from outside threats, you will be required to contribute in proportion to your ability to pay (which is where far, far more of your money goes than to the bogeyman of the undeserving, lazy, workshy poor). Frankly I like to think of it as insurance against Red October. Now, I don't for one minute think that the seasteaders would be able to provide infrastructure and security for the rich any cheaper than existing national governments, but I have to say that I consider going to such lengths to try and dodge them spectacularly miserly.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 15y ago
I think the urge to seastead comes from the same place as the urge to refactor code. "Let's just start over, it's bound to be way better because of all we've learned." But as well know, there is no guarantee that refactoring from scratch is going to produce a better product. Modern states are like old codebases. They are a huge pain in the ass to maintain, BUT they also contain bug fixes and tweaks from 1,000+ solved problems. In fact all those fixes are probably why it is such a pain in the ass to maintain. That doesn't mean they aren't good fixes that are still relevant and necessary.
- adrianscott 15y ago
  Uh, what you describe is rewriting, not refactoring... Refactoring is often a great investment, and is not done 'from scratch'. I would question your assertion that modern states have 1,000+ solved problems. They have no unit testing, shoddy QA if any, etc. It's a bad analogy, imho. When they do generate a 'tweak' it is often not solving a problem, but generating more problems than it solves.
hristov 15y ago
It is funny how deftly libertarians turn "freedom" into slavery. Note this passage in the end of the article: "Indeed, as Mr Keenan notes, the most viable political model for a seastead may not be a libertarian democracy but an enlightened corporate dictatorship." Yes it will probably be a dictatorship of some type, but I would not go so far as to assume it would be "enlightened." What will most likely happen is these will turn into floating work camps for poor desperate immigrants that have been promised a lot of money and then find themselves in a floating prison with no legal system to protect their rights.
- getsat 15y ago
  Dictatorship does not imply slavery, and democracy does not imply freedom.
  - henrikschroder 15y ago
    "...I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."
tedsuo 15y ago
China Mieville wrote a great piece ripping apart this concept: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/ http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/
vacri 15y ago
Libertarians don't need to build fake islands (and all the safe waters in which to do so long-term are already claimed). No, there is Vanuatu, the libertarian dream state. Forget the usual cry of 'Somalia!' for libertarians. Vanuatu gives them what they want - miniscule government with few services offered, small police which doubles as the military. There is no income tax unless you own rental property. Defense is sorted as it's not strategically located against other countries. It's a tropical paradise and the people rate as the happiest in the world. If libertarians really were going to spend resources on an island, why not save themselves some dosh and go to Vanuatu? I mean, apart from libertarians pretty much all having income reliant on high-tech skills that won't get much demand in an agrarian society. There are places for libertarians to go in this world to experience what they claim they want, that aren't war-torn Somalia. They won't do it, because deep down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with complex government. If libertarians won't move to one of these countries, there's no way this fake island is anything but a pipe dream.
- arethuza 15y ago
  What about Monaco, which is already full of the very wealthy, has no income tax and is a bit more conveniently located: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco
  - david927 15y ago
    I live next to Monaco and the word on the street is that it has only a few years left of tax haven status.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  ..deep down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with complex government. Which goodies, specifically? Also, since most government programs are excludible (e.g., don't pay SS taxes, you don't get SS when you are old), do you feel libertarians would choose not to exit if given the option?
  - vacri 15y ago
mmaro 15y ago
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/seasteading-without-that-warm-glow.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/seastea...
jmj4 15y ago
You can seen Peter Thiel's homage to Atlas Shrugged with funding this thing, but I think logistically its a little bit too much. I'm firmly in the libertarian camp, but things in this country would have to be pretty bad to move full time to a place like this. Another cool idea is the possibility of creating self governing city's, with minimal regulation, inside of existing countries. Ex-Stanford economist Paul Romer is proposing ideas along these lines. If you partner with a country (Honduras is considering this) who give you land to set up an independent city, you could have the type of self-governing, anti-tax/regulation environment that libertarians yearn for. I can't see the US ever agreeing to something like this, but some countries would.
- luriel 15y ago
  The "self governing city" concept you are talking about is called "Charter Cities", it is quite interesting and one can find more information about it at: http://chartercities.org/ http://chartercities.org/
rdl 15y ago
I think the key for Seasteading to be successful is to try to separate the engineering challenges, organizational challenges, economic/business model challenges, and political challenges. Oil platforms and cruise ships do a great job of solving engineering, in a benign environment otherwise. As the article points out, large corporations are the best at this kind of megaproject. I predict the first successful consumer seastead will be set up by a cruise line as a 2-3 week timeshare vacation/diving/excursion in a remote area, possibly with a jet airstrip. Somewhere too far from ports for cruises to comfortably visit, but with local interest. Before that, we'll see natural gas fields in the middle of nowhere with either LNG facilities or downstream chemical production on a seastead nearby, and large labor force (relative to an extraction platform); thousands of people, possibly. Increasing resource/energy costs will support this. We'll possibly also see temporary structures for disaster recovery, supply staging, etc. for military or relief work. The huge hospital ships (e.g. USNS Comfort) serve a role like this, as do aircraft carriers and LPDs; scaling up wouldn't be hard.
VladRussian 15y ago
Despite being on land, Guantanamo is a nice preview of non-"libertarian" implementation of seasteading.
6ren 15y ago
> Nobody anticipated the immense variety of uses that would be dreamed up for the internet, Mr Keenan observes, and the same may apply to... ...any idea you can think of. It's always possible there are upsides to an idea that could not have been imagined beforehand. Technology is littered with them. But it's useful to have some sense of the probability of such upsides, and we can get some idea by looking at those from the past, such as the internet. The internet has been so successful because it provides communication, better than others in many respects. That's the benefit that makes it valuable to people; the specific technical features that produce it are secondary. There's a long history of improvements in communications technology that have been successful. There's even been the idea that the benefit of airline travel is communication (e.g. for business travel, a large segment). We can ask if seasteading provides communication - and also if any new idea we might have provides communication. If it does, it will likely enable many unanticipated uses that require communication, and could be as wildly successful as the internet.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
The arguments here and elsewhere are all pretty much spot on. Lots of people like the 'concept' of being able to start fresh but few really internalize the challenges. One person I know feels it would be easier to privately colonize the Moon than to build a viable seastead. That being said, there has been some interesting work in seawater chemistry that suggests you might precipitate out of seawater a form of concrete [1]. Of course it would be hard to precipitate out a floating island but one might imagine building a 'reef equivalent' by growing it from the seafloor up. I personally don't think it is practical but I find the exploratory engineering entertaining and thought provoking. [1] http://www.build.new-atlantis.org/seacrete.htm http://www.build.new-atlantis.org/seacrete.htm
brc 15y ago
I've had this discussion with other people before, and I like to remind people of the first seasteading city : Venice. It was built specifically to get away from people on the mainland, and thrived based on a platform of trade. I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect example, but it is pretty interesting how one of the most powerful cities in the world at one stage was developed by deciding to build a settlement in the middle of the water, which was pretty high-tech for the time. Of course the true power of Venice wasn't achieved until it acquired some mainland territory to shore up it's supply lines, so perhaps the lesson is that a seastead needs to be setup adjacent to a relatively weak nation state that can be reverse absorbed at some time (assuming a peaceful treaty rather than by force). There are plenty of caribbean + pacific islands that could fall into this task. It may not mean taking a whole country but simply signing a century-long lease over a portion, maybe like British Hong Kong or modern Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure plenty of poor nations would gladly accept rental revenues for a mostly unwanted piece of land. As for revenue streams - if a settlement could be located somewhere climatically agreeable, and out of jurisdiction of sovereign states, simply having cheap alcohol + food, and gambling would be more than enough to get the cash rolling in. An off-shore casino could simply run tighter odds and more drinks and make it worthwhile for people to go to. After all, Monaco and Las Vegas used this to their advantage for a long time just by being places where gambling could exist. I think it's a very novel idea and I hope someone tries it one day. If it's the same site I've seen before (TLDR) they posit the idea that the first attempt would likely be a re-purposed cruise ship. And don't forget, there is already a cruise ship ('The World') that is doing something like this but mobile instead of stationary. Bascially, instead of predicting what would or wouldn't work, someone should try it out and see what happens. Predictions of larger governments squashing it may turn out to be incorrect if the politicians of said governments find it to be convenient for their purposes.
CapitalistCartr 15y ago
We have enormous land still readily available far cheaper than ocean living. Barring a major breakthrough, this isn't going to change soon. As for the political reasons, we have plenty of liberal governments here on land. If you can escape a lousy government to get to a "Sea-Land", you can get to a normal country easier, and they're more likely to accept you. There just isn't a compelling reason for these, aside from frustrated libertarian fantasies.
bane 15y ago
Coming soon, Rife's Raft http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/Snow+Crash http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/Snow+Crash

100 points by llambda 15y ago

njloof 15y ago

Dear Somalian Pirates, You're never going to believe this.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
Dear Internet Guy who's clearly never sailed, Have we mentioned our rubber dinghy's and fishing boats can only sail a few hundred kilometers?
- viscanti 15y ago
  I think the idea of security still exists, regardless of the viability of one particular group of pirates. Given a big enough target, someone will be motivated to come see what they can get. The question really is, what level of protection/security is necessary to defend a sea-stead?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- arethuza 15y ago
  It's actually a pretty big area where they have been operating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map_2010.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map... [NB I actually did some sailing in 2010 right on the edge of the area on that map, just north of Mombasa - I did wonder about pirates at the time, but I assumed I was being silly!]
  - tryitnow 15y ago
    I think the answer to that would be: "Don't set up a seastead near where pirates have been hanging out" Now that can change, but piracy is usually related to failed states (hence Somalia). Seasteads would have to be built relatively close to peaceful stable countries. Honestly, I just don't see how priacy can be an issue, if the seastead is outside of government jurisdiction they can use high tech weaponry to counteract pirates. Of course, this increases the cost of the seastead, which tilt the scales against it.
    - rdl 15y ago
      Actually a government or PMC seastead near Somalia (to operate UAVs for monitoring and response) would be a great way to police to sea lanes at lower cost than a naval task force with ships.
- njloof 15y ago
  What's Peter Thiel worth in ransom? We're going to need a bigger boat.
- urbanjunkie 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_York http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_York The MV York is a liquified gas tanker that was captured in 2010 and is/was used a mothership. The use of larger and more robust vessels as support / launch platforms greatly increases the operational range of piracy.
- cturner 15y ago
  Somali pirates vs seasteaders has potential as as a Neal Stephenson plot.
ams6110 15y ago
... stay away from those "seasteads", they have Exocet anti-ship missiles and Aegis missile defense systems, as well as conventional artillery and gun defenses and an army employed from Blackwater.
- Czarnian 15y ago
  In other words, Blackwater got there first. Maybe they'll leave some scraps we can salvage after the mercenaries bleed them dry.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    What would there be to stop the mercenaries from simply taking over the "country" they were hired to protect? It's not like this hasn't happened before....
    - Czarnian 15y ago
      Off the top of my head, the only things of value on a seastead are the salvageable materials, which would be a hassle to collect and sell, and the net worth of the various residents. They have no strategic value, it would cost a lot to keep them supplied, and you're in the middle of the ocean. To me, it would be much easier to to just bill them 10 mil a month for protection against a low-risk to non-existent threat until they can't afford it anymore.
      - arethuza 15y ago
        "To me, it would be much easier to to just bill them 10 mil a month for protection against a low-risk to non-existent threat" The protection racket business model? "Nice seastead you have there, real shame if it was to have a revolution".
        Czarnian 15y ago
        Wouldn't even have to go that far. Seasteaders are already paranoid enough that you can just play on the fears they already have. "Nice seastead you have here. It'd be a real shame if some country decided to come out and take your strategically worthless, resource barren, unstable platform from you." Then sit back and collect a paycheck.

bradleyland 15y ago

This is one of the more outlandish ideas I've seen show up in The Economist. There are a mountain of hurdles to cross before you get to any kind of autonomous "state". Still, I hope someone tries it. Some casual observations: * Would this be Bitcoins first big opportunity? For a Seastead to make the leap to true statehood, they'll need some kind of currency that isn't controlled by a foreign government. Bitcoin, with it's entirely decentralized design, would seem to fit the bill. * The artricle makes some statements that these Seasteads could be used to prove the utopian Libertarian ideology. The notion that a small colony of a few hundred people are going to prove that any ideology would work in a state the size of the US, France, U.K., etc is patently absurd. They'll ignore it, dismiss it, or find good reasons why mechanisms that work on a micro scale don't scale to larger nations. * The article talks a lot about the need to be outside the jurisdiction of large nations like the US, and even mentions the willingness of the US to extend its jurisdiction pretty much anywhere in the world. The author seems to believe that if they stay away from the big-naughties, they'll be ok. I think he's wrong. If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes, large, tax-dependent governments will find ways to replace the revenue. So you want statehood? You got it. Time to negotiate a trade agreement. How does a 60% tariff on all goods imported to our nation sound? Don't want to play ball? Embargo. Good luck with your 700 person economy. * The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally. Say this idea eventually scales to $10,000 people. What is an acceptable level of safety for an entire population of that size? Lifeboats for everyone? Will the platform be sold as "unsinkable"? We know how that goes. Even land-based settlements face the risk of natural disaster, but it would seem the probabilities are greatly in favor of dry land.

T-hawk 15y ago
> If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes I think we can be reasonably confident that somebody in these large corporations has done that math. What this argument misses is that the comparison isn't seasteading vs US taxes, it's seasteading vs existing tax havens like Bermuda and the Channel Islands and Caymans. Those probably get you 90% of the way there on avoiding US and EU taxation, and would seem to be good enough that corps haven't had the need for seasteading or they'd already be doing it.

oceanician 15y ago

Just been watching a documentry on floating homes in Amsterdam. Could be worth checking it out. Look for 'Amsterdam's Futuristic Floating City'. It's one of the Extreme Engineering series. Episode 7. I saw it on Discovery Science. Hth.

jotm 15y ago

I really don't see the point of seasteads - escaping the law is not really feasible (you'll need supplies from a country, and if you do anything the US or other nearby countries don't like, you'll be cut off or heck, even torpedoed). There's plenty of land to build a small city on, much cheaper. Even if you want a private island for your getaways, you can buy a big yacht for cheaper, anyway. Heck, even if you want to create a criminal haven, it's cheaper and easier to do it in some third world country by bribing everyone (Pablo Escobar and Cuba is a great example)...

todsul 15y ago
"you'll need supplies from a country" It's called importing. Most countries do it these days.
- jotm 15y ago
  Yes, and when you decide to create your own country with your own laws, you'll either be importing at exorbitant fees or be embargoed by everyone...
  - a3camero 15y ago
    This has happened before. Check out the history of pirate radio in Europe. The European countries responded by creating national laws that embargoed the pirate radio stations. The Spanish were never apart of it and British citizens just ignored and resupplied illegally. Decades after the embargo was passed there were still radio stations opening. Still annoying and likely if you're successful, but probably not killer.
  - tryitnow 15y ago
    Why would you be importing at exorbitant fees (relative to what an island nation would be paying anyways)? And why would they be embargoed by everyone? Not even Cuba is embargoed by everyone. Why would everyone embargo a seastead inhabited by upper income individuals? In general the market is pretty responsive to wherever the money is.

LukeHoersten 15y ago

"THE Pilgrims who set out from England on the Mayflower to escape an intolerant, over-mighty government and build a new society were lucky to find plenty of land in the New World on which to build it." -- I love how the English think of the American colonial settlers versus how Americans do.

philwelch 15y ago
That, by the way, is a popular myth. It's closer to the truth to say that the Pilgrims sailed to America to establish an intolerant, over-mighty government.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  True, but they abandoned communism quite quickly when it's failures became obvious. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_thanksgiving_.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_t...
  - philwelch 15y ago
    I was speaking more to the lack of religious tolerance, but okay.

ramanujan 15y ago

Much of the commentary on seasteading is underinformed. It doesn't have to be "libertarian", as the concept can just as equally be used to build states for progressives, or North Korean refugees, or any displaced or oppressed people. The engineering issues exist, but cruise ships are a pretty good proof-of-concept. Cruise ships show that we can get stable, luxurious accomodations at a per-day cost that is on par with an expensive hotel (2-3X SF Bay Area daily rent). The only question is the extent to which we can improve on that. Hacker News will get a lot out of the full Seasteading book, which anticipates most arguments and goes through many interesting details, from structural engineering through power, water, food, and cost. http://seasteading.org/book_beta/full_book_beta.html http://seasteading.org/book_beta/full_book_beta.html

jotm 15y ago
But WHY not build it on land? Find a remote piece of land and build your progressive city or refugee center at a quarter of the cost, with much easier access to food, building materials and other stuff. There are thousands of acres of land around the world that are perfect for establishing a new settlement, far away from any civilization, if that's your thing. It'd be easier to create a sort of enclave state (like Lesotho, but smaller, for example) than a seastead...
- ArtemZ 15y ago
  because there is no land which is not under some state control
- throwaway64 15y ago
  all land on earth is claimed by a state in some fashion, its much easier to sea stead than to deal with the politics of claiming political independence.
  - jotm 15y ago
    But that's exactly it - if you build a seastead, you will also have to abide by some country's laws. Otherwise you'll most likely find it very difficult to do business and acquire anything from anywhere, and if you do anything illegal in say, the United States or Spain, they'll send a vessel to take you into custody... so what's the point of spending a ton of money on a ship that is always in the same location?

Mz 15y ago

Until seasteaders are able to bank their money with independent, ocean-going financial institutions, they may not be able to escape the taxman’s clutches. You probably can't really escape the taxman's clutches anyway. It is mostly a matter of whom you pay, not if. Taxes exist to cover the costs of governing the people, providing infrastructure and services for the citizens and so on. Even if you can get unplugged from existing governments, someone has to pay for the infrastructure of the seastead and essential services. You can give it a different name, but charging your people to help pay these costs is basically the same thing as taxes. Not charging your people to help pay these costs would mean eventually sinking to the bottom of the ocean. These costs are likely to be relatively high, higher than what it takes to maintain roads and sewage and the like on land. Unless a seastead were the size of Manhattan its citizens would have to forgo the cultural life, the parks and the wide choice of shopping and restaurants offered by large cities. They might have to forego a lot of that anyway. I briefly considered applying for a job in Hawaii and I asked around regarding things like food in Hawaii (because I have special dietary needs). I was told basically that spam is a staple food, good luck getting meat and milk on a consistent/reliable basis as it sometimes isn't very available, things get flown in from far away so a lot of it is frozen not fresh, and what is available is quite pricey. There is plenty of sea food available, but I am allergic to shell fish and don't tolerate large quantities of fish well. In fact, I rarely eat fish. A few years ago, I stayed in Port Aransas, Texas for a few days. I loved the place and have toyed with the idea of going back (as in living there). But I struggled to feed myself while there. There is a great deal of sea food and some very expensive restaurants and some real dives and a very limited grocery store. Given my dietary restrictions, these details made it a daily challenge to try to eat properly for my needs and I don't feel it really did an adequate job. So if an island a short drive off the coast of Texas has challenges in offering "a wide choice of restaurants" and Hawaii has challenges with making sure food (in terms of variety and affordability) is consistently available, what on earth makes them think a floating platform will do better merely based on population size?

yummyfajitas 15y ago
Taxes exist to cover the costs of governing the people, providing infrastructure and services for the citizens and so on. Even if you can get unplugged from existing governments, someone has to pay for the infrastructure of the seastead and essential services. Suppose a seasteading nation provided the same transportation, protection, defensive and other public goods as the US government. An eyeball estimate [1] suggests the cost would be 35% of what the US govt spends, and that's assuming the sea-based nation still pays for things like military adventurism and the war on drugs. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total So while it's true that you have to pay some taxes, they could easily be far lower than most first world nations. You are correct that ocean dwellers should be comprised of people who enjoy seafood or people willing to pay $8/avocado. [1] I'm including defense, protection (police+fire), transportation and "other spending" (e.g., water treatment, community development).

a3camero 15y ago

Although this post is rather off the HN path, people might appreciate a draft of a law paper I've coincidentally just written on the legal issues with doing these sort of things: http://private.summerhilldesign.com/SeaLawPaper.pdf http://private.summerhilldesign.com/SeaLawPaper.pdf (3rd year law student). If this is too long, pg. 17 has a chart that shows how far out the different boundaries on the ocean. Starting at pg. 12 you'll see what things you can't do and pg. 24 has some conclusions. Might help take some of the "but that's illegal!" and "I don't think you can't do that" out of this discussion. Cheers!

dctoedt 15y ago

Defense costs for a seastead would be ruinous. A seastead is just another form of island. An island that's close to a land power will almost certainly need the deterrent effect of a strong navy --- its own or that of a friendly power --- if it wants to retain its independence. Strong navies are really, really expensive to build and maintain; a seastead probably would not be able to do either. Example: Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, mainland China probably would have invaded and conquered Taiwan in 1949 or 1950, or on any of a number of "crisis" occasions since then. It's no accident that whenever China rattles its saber about Taiwan, one or more U.S. aircraft carrier task forces moves into the Taiwan Strait. Example: Had it not been for the presence of the Royal Navy, the Germans probably would have invaded and conquered England in 1940. The same is true of Napoleon in 1803, for that matter. Economically, a seastead probably couldn't maintain the kind of navy needed for this task. England was able to maintain the Royal Navy in the 17th through 19th centuries, but it could draw on the resources of a growing empire. Today's Britannia doesn't come close to ruling the waves; it can't afford to. Could a seastead get a strong, friendly power to extend its own navy's umbrella of protection, the way the U.S. has done with Taiwan? Possibly, but the friendly power would have to perceive a benefit to itself before it'd be willing to do so.

todsul 15y ago
So you think the Germans or Chinese would want to invade the seastead? Do you think it's because the Germans/Chinese would want the seastead's land to extend their own borders?
- ams6110 15y ago
  I'd think it's typically not the land itself that they really want, it's the resources. If a Seastead were to become established and wealthy, you can bet it would eventually come under threat of attack.
  - tryitnow 15y ago
    My guess is that the wealth the Seastead generated would be more of the bits/bytes kind (i.e. financial wealth, wealth represented in contracts). I can't imagine a bunch of libertarians sitting in their seastead with big warehouses full of diamonds and gold. There are more effective places to store physical assets. A seastead is not a perfect solution to freedom. There simply is no perfect solution. It simply creates another option. It's still possible for states to seize the assets of seasteaders, but being on a seastead makes it a bit more difficult.

nradov 15y ago

These clowns will be crying for the US Coast Guard to come and rescue them the moment their "seastead" springs a leak.

101001010101 15y ago

This just screams: Economist staff writers reading HN looking for story ideas. Click on the link and maybe we can keep some hapless journalist employed. Of course in the grander scheme, if we make a habit of such mindless reading selections, it may only hasten the inevitable downfall of serious journalism and the print publications we once associated with it.

christkv 15y ago

I could not help it I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well. Share this quote

eftpotrm 15y ago
The man in Moscow I won't attempt to defend. The Vatican will say that, as a Catholic, 10% of the bounty which God has enabled you earn should be donated to God in thanks. The man in Washington will tell you that, in exchange for security and protection from outside threats, you will be required to contribute in proportion to your ability to pay (which is where far, far more of your money goes than to the bogeyman of the undeserving, lazy, workshy poor). Frankly I like to think of it as insurance against Red October. Now, I don't for one minute think that the seasteaders would be able to provide infrastructure and security for the rich any cheaper than existing national governments, but I have to say that I consider going to such lengths to try and dodge them spectacularly miserly.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

snowwrestler 15y ago

I think the urge to seastead comes from the same place as the urge to refactor code. "Let's just start over, it's bound to be way better because of all we've learned." But as well know, there is no guarantee that refactoring from scratch is going to produce a better product. Modern states are like old codebases. They are a huge pain in the ass to maintain, BUT they also contain bug fixes and tweaks from 1,000+ solved problems. In fact all those fixes are probably why it is such a pain in the ass to maintain. That doesn't mean they aren't good fixes that are still relevant and necessary.

adrianscott 15y ago
Uh, what you describe is rewriting, not refactoring... Refactoring is often a great investment, and is not done 'from scratch'. I would question your assertion that modern states have 1,000+ solved problems. They have no unit testing, shoddy QA if any, etc. It's a bad analogy, imho. When they do generate a 'tweak' it is often not solving a problem, but generating more problems than it solves.

hristov 15y ago

It is funny how deftly libertarians turn "freedom" into slavery. Note this passage in the end of the article: "Indeed, as Mr Keenan notes, the most viable political model for a seastead may not be a libertarian democracy but an enlightened corporate dictatorship." Yes it will probably be a dictatorship of some type, but I would not go so far as to assume it would be "enlightened." What will most likely happen is these will turn into floating work camps for poor desperate immigrants that have been promised a lot of money and then find themselves in a floating prison with no legal system to protect their rights.

getsat 15y ago
Dictatorship does not imply slavery, and democracy does not imply freedom.
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  "...I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

tedsuo 15y ago

China Mieville wrote a great piece ripping apart this concept: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/ http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/

vacri 15y ago

Libertarians don't need to build fake islands (and all the safe waters in which to do so long-term are already claimed). No, there is Vanuatu, the libertarian dream state. Forget the usual cry of 'Somalia!' for libertarians. Vanuatu gives them what they want - miniscule government with few services offered, small police which doubles as the military. There is no income tax unless you own rental property. Defense is sorted as it's not strategically located against other countries. It's a tropical paradise and the people rate as the happiest in the world. If libertarians really were going to spend resources on an island, why not save themselves some dosh and go to Vanuatu? I mean, apart from libertarians pretty much all having income reliant on high-tech skills that won't get much demand in an agrarian society. There are places for libertarians to go in this world to experience what they claim they want, that aren't war-torn Somalia. They won't do it, because deep down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with complex government. If libertarians won't move to one of these countries, there's no way this fake island is anything but a pipe dream.

arethuza 15y ago
What about Monaco, which is already full of the very wealthy, has no income tax and is a bit more conveniently located: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco
- david927 15y ago
  I live next to Monaco and the word on the street is that it has only a few years left of tax haven status.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
..deep down they really want the goodies that come along with a society with complex government. Which goodies, specifically? Also, since most government programs are excludible (e.g., don't pay SS taxes, you don't get SS when you are old), do you feel libertarians would choose not to exit if given the option?
- vacri 15y ago

mmaro 15y ago

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/seasteading-without-that-warm-glow.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/seastea...

jmj4 15y ago

You can seen Peter Thiel's homage to Atlas Shrugged with funding this thing, but I think logistically its a little bit too much. I'm firmly in the libertarian camp, but things in this country would have to be pretty bad to move full time to a place like this. Another cool idea is the possibility of creating self governing city's, with minimal regulation, inside of existing countries. Ex-Stanford economist Paul Romer is proposing ideas along these lines. If you partner with a country (Honduras is considering this) who give you land to set up an independent city, you could have the type of self-governing, anti-tax/regulation environment that libertarians yearn for. I can't see the US ever agreeing to something like this, but some countries would.

luriel 15y ago
The "self governing city" concept you are talking about is called "Charter Cities", it is quite interesting and one can find more information about it at: http://chartercities.org/ http://chartercities.org/

rdl 15y ago

I think the key for Seasteading to be successful is to try to separate the engineering challenges, organizational challenges, economic/business model challenges, and political challenges. Oil platforms and cruise ships do a great job of solving engineering, in a benign environment otherwise. As the article points out, large corporations are the best at this kind of megaproject. I predict the first successful consumer seastead will be set up by a cruise line as a 2-3 week timeshare vacation/diving/excursion in a remote area, possibly with a jet airstrip. Somewhere too far from ports for cruises to comfortably visit, but with local interest. Before that, we'll see natural gas fields in the middle of nowhere with either LNG facilities or downstream chemical production on a seastead nearby, and large labor force (relative to an extraction platform); thousands of people, possibly. Increasing resource/energy costs will support this. We'll possibly also see temporary structures for disaster recovery, supply staging, etc. for military or relief work. The huge hospital ships (e.g. USNS Comfort) serve a role like this, as do aircraft carriers and LPDs; scaling up wouldn't be hard.

VladRussian 15y ago

Despite being on land, Guantanamo is a nice preview of non-"libertarian" implementation of seasteading.

6ren 15y ago

> Nobody anticipated the immense variety of uses that would be dreamed up for the internet, Mr Keenan observes, and the same may apply to... ...any idea you can think of. It's always possible there are upsides to an idea that could not have been imagined beforehand. Technology is littered with them. But it's useful to have some sense of the probability of such upsides, and we can get some idea by looking at those from the past, such as the internet. The internet has been so successful because it provides communication, better than others in many respects. That's the benefit that makes it valuable to people; the specific technical features that produce it are secondary. There's a long history of improvements in communications technology that have been successful. There's even been the idea that the benefit of airline travel is communication (e.g. for business travel, a large segment). We can ask if seasteading provides communication - and also if any new idea we might have provides communication. If it does, it will likely enable many unanticipated uses that require communication, and could be as wildly successful as the internet.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

The arguments here and elsewhere are all pretty much spot on. Lots of people like the 'concept' of being able to start fresh but few really internalize the challenges. One person I know feels it would be easier to privately colonize the Moon than to build a viable seastead. That being said, there has been some interesting work in seawater chemistry that suggests you might precipitate out of seawater a form of concrete [1]. Of course it would be hard to precipitate out a floating island but one might imagine building a 'reef equivalent' by growing it from the seafloor up. I personally don't think it is practical but I find the exploratory engineering entertaining and thought provoking. [1] http://www.build.new-atlantis.org/seacrete.htm http://www.build.new-atlantis.org/seacrete.htm

brc 15y ago

I've had this discussion with other people before, and I like to remind people of the first seasteading city : Venice. It was built specifically to get away from people on the mainland, and thrived based on a platform of trade. I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect example, but it is pretty interesting how one of the most powerful cities in the world at one stage was developed by deciding to build a settlement in the middle of the water, which was pretty high-tech for the time. Of course the true power of Venice wasn't achieved until it acquired some mainland territory to shore up it's supply lines, so perhaps the lesson is that a seastead needs to be setup adjacent to a relatively weak nation state that can be reverse absorbed at some time (assuming a peaceful treaty rather than by force). There are plenty of caribbean + pacific islands that could fall into this task. It may not mean taking a whole country but simply signing a century-long lease over a portion, maybe like British Hong Kong or modern Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure plenty of poor nations would gladly accept rental revenues for a mostly unwanted piece of land. As for revenue streams - if a settlement could be located somewhere climatically agreeable, and out of jurisdiction of sovereign states, simply having cheap alcohol + food, and gambling would be more than enough to get the cash rolling in. An off-shore casino could simply run tighter odds and more drinks and make it worthwhile for people to go to. After all, Monaco and Las Vegas used this to their advantage for a long time just by being places where gambling could exist. I think it's a very novel idea and I hope someone tries it one day. If it's the same site I've seen before (TLDR) they posit the idea that the first attempt would likely be a re-purposed cruise ship. And don't forget, there is already a cruise ship ('The World') that is doing something like this but mobile instead of stationary. Bascially, instead of predicting what would or wouldn't work, someone should try it out and see what happens. Predictions of larger governments squashing it may turn out to be incorrect if the politicians of said governments find it to be convenient for their purposes.

CapitalistCartr 15y ago

We have enormous land still readily available far cheaper than ocean living. Barring a major breakthrough, this isn't going to change soon. As for the political reasons, we have plenty of liberal governments here on land. If you can escape a lousy government to get to a "Sea-Land", you can get to a normal country easier, and they're more likely to accept you. There just isn't a compelling reason for these, aside from frustrated libertarian fantasies.

bane 15y ago

Coming soon, Rife's Raft http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/Snow+Crash http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/Snow+Crash