A Life on the Sea--Seasteading: The Book

Through the years, a lot of people have looked to the sea for a type of freedom they imagined was not possible on the land, locked in by traditions hundreds or thousands of years old. The thought of starting one's own country at sea, or under the sea, and making up the rules for oneself, has occurred to a large number of people. Finally, someone has thought to write a book, free on the internet, describing many of the failed approaches, and many more possible approaches that might possibly work.

The sea is is an ever changing environment, sometimes placid, sometimes hellish and unforgiving. It is up to the persons who plan the sea-going human environment to plan for the possibilities, to ensure freedom, survival, and hopefully prosperity.

A small but passionate minority is deeply dissatisifed with current political systems. These people seek the autonomy to live under and experiment with different political, social, and economic systems than currently exist. It is this search for sovereingty, for the freedom of self-government, which is the fundamental motivation for seasteading. Utopia is different for everyone, and so there are a wide variety of theoretical new systems and gripes with the old ones. We'll present only broad outlines of the most common schools, leaving the explanations of what the Problems are and how each philosophy is the Answer to the partisans themselves:

* Many people are interested in sustainable, environmentally friendly ways of living [Celestopia], which are well-suited for seasteading, where renewable energy generation and closed-loop gardening will be facts of life.

The residents of these future cities, throughout the world, will show by exemplary actions that people of different races and divergent political, religious, cultural and social beliefs can live and prosper together while also being good stewards of the earth, respecting, and thereby benefiting all inhabitants and ecosystems of the planet.[Celestopia]

* Capitalists want low taxes and regulatory freedom [Atlantis1994].

There are tax benefits: no federal tax on coroporate profits, no state corporation tax, no social security tax. And any open sea facility is a free port. You can bring in any raw materials and ship out any finished products, without paying tariff duties. Outside government jurisdiction on the open sea, there are no regulatory agencies to contend with. You can dispense with the expense and bother of excessive paperwork, forms, and reports. You won't be ordered to waste your time appearing before government bodies. Licenses and permits will be things of the past. Government litigation and harassment, and the uncertainty caused by changing laws, regulations, and interpretations will be eliminated.
[Fisher1985, pp. 48-49]

* Few opportunities remain for pioneers, and the oceans are the obvious next frontier for civilization.
* It seems likely that the next major frontier, after the oceans, will be space. We can look at seasteads as a dry (er...wet) run for spacesteading:

If we are going to colonize space, it is best to colonize the easiest space first...Living in colonies at sea will teach us many crucial lessons about life in space. The isolation, self-sufficiency, and political autonomy of sea colonies are the same as those of space colonies. Both types will impose many of the same requirements on their inhabitants...The Moon is a harsh mistress; we would be wise to learn these early lessons while still in Earth's gentle lap.
[Savage1992 pp. 23-24]

If humankind is to survive, I see no alternative to expanding outward into space. And this doesn't just mean settling on other planets and moons. They will be just as vulnerable to doomsday weapons as the Earth, and there aren't enough of them to insure that some will survive an Armageddon. Only a large number of communities well dispersed in the volume of space seems likely to have a chance...The establishment of such communities space would constitute a Golden Age of new-country formation in the next few centuris. Those who gain experience in the new-country field now are the most likely to be ready to seize the new opportunities when they arise -- or to see their children and their children's children in a position to do so.
[Strauss1984 p. 47]

* Devoted proponents of peace seek places where they can live without being taxed to fund violence.
* Drug users care deeply about the freedom to ingest whatever chemicals they desire [Island]. In many current societies, they are subject to arrest, jail, and the confiscation of their property.
* Individuals who are Environmentally Intolerant (EI), such as those suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, seek environments with minimal contamination from human chemicals:

Waterfront property offers some of the cleanest air anywhere by virtue of the high rate of ambient air exchange afforded by ocean or lake breezes. Even regions with relatively bad general pollution levels enjoy orders of magnitude cleaner air along the shore, as long as there are regular breezes. Unfortunately, few people can now afford such property -especially those who need it most. A floating home offers a potentially unlimited amount of waterfront real estate with no land cost. You can have as much as you can afford to build. There are no surrounding lawns and trees to generate pollen, no roads with cars to generate pollution -though, of course, boats are still a pollution issue albeit far less than automobiles.
[Hunting]

Our personal motivation is the belief that monolithic, land-based societies are too big and too politically static. We think political flexibility and experimentation with many different political systems is the right way to find new and better ways to live. Seasteads would allow for a rich diversity in forms of governance because they lower the barrier of entry to the market of government. When it takes a revolution or millions of votes to take over a country, small groups have no opportunity for self-government. But if, for the cost of their houses, they can band together and create new sovereign territory, many will do so. While living their own ideal lifestyle, they will also be researching innovations in the basic institutions of society, which will increase our collective wisdom and benefit all humankind. These ideas are explored more under dynamic geography below.

Whatever the specific motivations, the popularity of new country projects make it clear that there is a great deal of interest in this topic [Alexandisle, Atlantis1994, Celestopea, FloatingCities, FreedomShip, Freedonia, Island, LFC, NewUtopia, NewAtlantis, Nexus, Pelagic, ResidenSea, Salsbury1992, Savage1992, Sealand, Seascape, Strauss1984, VenusProject].

While few people are devoted enough to drop everything and go found a new society, we think that everyone is, to some degree, a revolutionary. After all, who was the last person you met who was completely happy with everything about their society? While utopia is not an option, we do believe there are some fundamental reasons why seastead societies are likely to work better than terrestrial ones. As experimenting with new social systems becomes cheaper and easier, it will be a viable alternative for an increasingly large segment of humanity. Seasteading is a realistic way to make a significant leap forward.

The authors then go on to discuss the philosophy of seasteading and the approaches most likely to achieve success.

There is no single "right" approach to seasteading. Thus we will present you with many ideas, exploring those we think are the most viable in the most detail. However, it does seem like there are some "wrong" approaches, as we can see from the many failures of projects with the same goal. What we've learned from the movement's (admittedly dismal) history has to a large degree shaped our philosophy. Because of this, explaining our approach goes hand-in-hand with identifying common points of failure and indicating how we think they can be overcome.

The root cause of most of these failures seems to have been lack of realism. So our solution is simply to be as pragmatic as possible about our vision. Realism is our philosophy's foundation, and more specific polices are just the application of realism to various areas. Important areas include incrementalism, politics, technology, and finances.

Incrementalism

We believe that a realistic approch to the difficult problem of nation-founding must be incremental. Large, successful things usually start out small and expand organically, rather than springing forth full-formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus. Rome wasn't built in a day and a succesful business leverages each stage into the next. Big things (cruise ships, skyscrapers, factories) do get built all at once at times, but they are almost always proven concepts that were first demonstrated successfully on a smaller scale. For example, we bet that the first multistory building had exactly 2 stories. In our case, if there was a nation-founder with the financial resources to jump the intermediate stages and create a vast floating city, it would already exist. After all, there are plenty of people ready to design and build one as soon as the multi-billion dollar check gets cut. Since no such deus ex machina appears to be forthcoming, we recommend humbler methods.

There are plenty of grand conceptual ideas out there, but we see a key link between being grand and staying conceptual. We find the notion that the first sea-city will be for ten thousand people is ludicrous. If you make the first step too high, you will never even get started, as the many participants who became frustrated with and dropped out of new-country projects can attest. Instead, we believe that almost all the focus should be on the current and immediate next stage, not on far-distant visions. Watch the path in front of you, not the sky.

There is an inherent difficulty in getting people involved in something that has value only if people are involved in it. How do you start? Contingent contracts help, ie all participants sign something which says "I will pay for my share and move onboard if 99 other people also sign this contract". This approach is working for the Free State Project in its quest to get 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire. In our case, however, there are difficulties. We think that its best to try out this new way of life with fewer people at first. Also it appears difficult to get enough interest for even contingent signatures on floating-cities without demonstrating viability. For these reasons, our plan includes a series of distinct stages, each involving a greater number of people.

First we complete a design, and build an aquarium-sized model. Then a pool-sized version. Next we build a habitable Baystead prototype for 5-10 people, anchored in sheltered waters within US boundaries, to demonstrate our seriousness and our design. This is the first point at which we need other people's participation. We just need to find 5-10 people who are willing to live together, and don't mind the level of creature comforts that can be achieved on a fairly small platform. While it will require a rare level of dedication to the concept to join this group of aquatic pioneers, we don't have to find very many such people.

Next we need to find 25-100 people (or the equivalent in timeshares) who weren't quite sure if seasteading was legit before, but seeing the demonstration by the first group, find it worthwhile to participate. They build the first deep-water, self-sufficient seastead. Next we find the 100 people who weren't quite convinced by the small group ... and so on. Smaller steps can be added if necessary.

There is plenty of historical precedent for this strategy of zealots seeding settlements. North America, for instance, was colonized mainly by members of minority religions such as the Puritans seeking to escape persecution. These dedicated folk were willing to put up with the discomfort of pioneering in exchange for religious freedom. The result of this passionate committment to a cause was, eventually, an increased level of civilization, and a beachhead for the less dedicated to follow.

At every step in incremental development, the standard of living increases due to economies of scale, refinement of techniques, and the network effects of the larger community. Rather than convincing 10,000 people from the beginning, you just keep bringing in those at the margin, who needed things to be just a little bit better to get involved. As interest in seasteading steadily grows, more units are steadily built. Each may cater to a slightly different audience, or experiment with different engineering designs and social systems. They will be modular and eventually cluster together into the grand vision many have proposed [Atlantis1994, Nexus, NewUtopia, VenusProject].

With advanced technology, the pioneering cycle is much shorter nowadays. It doesn't take centuries to go from Conestoga wagons to skyscrapers, and we'll get to start out with electricity, hot running water, and satellite telephones. But at the beginning, we still must be pioneers. We aren't focusing on these humble first steps because we lack imagination, or don't think a huge luxurious floating city would be amazingly cool. That sea city is our ultimate goal, but it is our firm belief that a sea village must come first - and a single sea house before that.

This is just a short excerpt from the second chapter of the book. Here is the Table of Contents for the entire book. I will revisit this book in future posts.

Every child learns to dream about other worlds, worlds of possibilities beyond the present. The facility to dream is too easily lost in the dystopian atmosphere created by much of popular media, and the smothering academic world of postmodern emasculating political correctitude. That is society's loss. Fortunately a small number of people refuse to give up the ability to dream of what they might achieve under their own power, given the freedom. The future depends, to a large extent, on these few being able to hold out a little longer.