Seasteading Discussion

Here is a discussion on Seasteading.

1- The core aim is to escape meddling by any modern states – mostly advanced enlightenment democracies, with their heavy taxes and regulations, while seasteader owner members will still retain full, web-accessed control of their investment portfolios and dividend incomes from those societies.

2- This business plan has to compete with an older and more reliable one: when you want an “offshore” country of your own, simply buy one that already exists.

4- The ocean is a harsh and dangerous environment. Corrosive to metal and other parts… This is non-trivial in so many ways.

5. The daily details of running the place will be neither anarchic nor democratic.

Note: Patri Friedman who is major advocate of Seasteading is promoting the idea of experimenting with governance on the seasteads. Although if the Seastead is small with a population of a 1,000 or less then governance does not look like running a country but like running a village or a company.

6- Clearly there is a shortcut through all the red tape and other dangers. That trick is to forge alliances with already-existing small, island states. Places like Tonga, Vanuatu, etc are currently terrified of being literally wiped off the map by rising seas.

7. If you reject the democracies, then will you call them for help, when an armed gang comes to simply take over your sovereign land, by right of conquest?

This goes to whether the Seastead has chosen the high road or the low road. High road is where the Seastead maintains connection to an existing state using the flagging of an ocean liner as the legal model. The Seastead has the same option as an ocean liner to change flags. The low road is where a Seastead is trying to go fully independent. The low road is where there can be a lot more issues with defense. However, all of the tiny island countries also have issues of defense. Any new country can also try to join alliances that provide security.

The Real Reason for Seasteading according to David Brin

They’re are doing this not in order to escape government, but because we on Planet Earth appear to be heading, inexorably, toward a world government (WG).

The most blatant and visible parts of a WG are slow in coming, in part because American citizens would go into screaming heebie-jeebies if we saw executive and legislative branches coalescing at the same pace. But the other two branches – the bureaucracy and courts – are taking shape with startling speed.

It is a really surprising scenario and one that cannot conceivably be stopped. Because it falls into place trivially, even organically, over the next 30 years. No matter what Americans say. Emphasis- David Brin is predicting some kind of defacto world government developing over the next 30 years but not forming out of the UN

Because of the way that WG is forming on Planet Earth… with the judiciary and bureaucracy first and the legislature last… the chief effect is to ensure that individual humans have no legal standing before international agencies. Only sovereign nations have standing, can file suit, negotiate treaties, assert rights and privileges.

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