Seasteading

[rkbabang]

This is an excellent interview.  A little long, but worth listening to.  I obviously disagree with Michael Strong when he suggests the US should have universal basic income, but other than that the entire interview is phenomenal.

 

https://www.seasteading.org/2017/09/podcast-michael-strong-how-seasteading-will-enrich-the-poor/

 

You can also find this on iTunes or Overcast as well. Search for "Seasteading Today with Joe Quirk" and it is the latest episode with Michael Strong.

 

 

I read Joe Quirk's book "Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians" a few months ago and it is excellent as well.

 

[Gregmal]

Always thought this was a really fascinating idea. Saw a bit about it in a piece on Peter Thiel and conceptually I like it a lot.

[rkbabang]

Always thought this was a really fascinating idea. Saw a bit about it in a piece on Peter Thiel and conceptually I like it a lot.

 

I've always loved the idea as well.  The idea itself has been around for decades in one form or another (I remember "Freedom Ship" in the mid 1990s) and it looks like support for it and the technology to enable it may catch up to make this possible in the relatively near future.

 

I think the whole idea of the nation state is on its way out.  Decentralization, and freedom of movement is the future.  The first signs of this will be the re-emergence of the independent city-state in a big way.

 

Return of the city-state - Nation-states came late to history, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest they won't make it to the end of the century

 

[vox]

If I understand this correctly, the premise of seasteading is that freedom of mobility will allow for competition among forms of government and regulation, which allows for decentralized decision making, more freedom and optimal choices. Is there any mechanism to enforce that people can come and go from any 'city-state' as they please?

[rkbabang]

I guess the point is if there are thousands of these their main objective will be to attract people to them.  What good is living on a seastead if it is just you and 3 of your friends.  The most successful seasteads will be the ones which attract the most people to them.  This is where the competition will come from. Could established seasteads decide to limit immigration someday? Sure, but there is a lot of ocean on the planet, people will go somewhere else or start a new one. There are only a few hundred states on the planet right now and it is almost impossible to start a new one. What if there were thousands and it was easy to start a new one?

[vox]

There's a section in the podcast where they talk about how greed predates capitalism. Human instinct to war also predates nations. It seems hopelessly optimistic to assume that there wouldn't be seastead cities that engage in piracy, war, and military intimidation.

[rkbabang]

There's a section in the podcast where they talk about how greed predates capitalism. Human instinct to war also predates nations. It seems hopelessly optimistic to assume that there wouldn't be seastead cities that engage in piracy, war, and military intimidation.

 

There will certainly be the bad along with the good.  Such is the human condition.  More competition is better than less.  Hopefully when there are vastly more options most people will choose not to live in such places.  But yes, it is naive to think that piracy and war won't happen.  They both happen now as well.  I've said before that I don't think it is possible to get rid of crime within or between human societies.  Minimization strategies are the best we can ever hope for.  I find there are unrealistic utopians on all sides.  Thinking that you can create a government, outlaw some type of crime, and: Abracadabra! The problem is solved, is also a a naive utopian dream.

 

[CorpRaider]

Weird.  I think Peter Griffin, tried this on family guy and one of Saul Goodman's early clients.  Would prefer to see resources directed toward space.

[rkbabang]

Weird.  I think Peter Griffin, tried this on family guy and one of Saul Goodman's early clients.  Would prefer to see resources directed toward space.

 

There are resources already going toward space, which is a good thing, but there is a lot of room left on this planet left to settle as well.  Seasteading will happen much sooner than cities on Mars, just because it is an order of magnitude easier and cheaper.  Humanity expanding into the solar system will happen too, but that is going to take a while yet.

 

[vox]

I think most people in modern society view war as the result of a failure in diplomacy. When we analyze the potential conflict with North Korea, for example, we rue the past policy missteps, but few propose that we should have engaged in military intervention earlier. For most of human history, I think war was viewed as an inevitability and a natural state, punctuated by periods of peace. It seems to me that by doing away with nations and the coalitions that they have built through centuries of negotiation and treaties and the multi-national governance structures meant to constrain their worst impulses, you open up a very wide range of possibilities with many of them much worse than the status quo.

[rukawa]

Its cle

Always thought this was a really fascinating idea. Saw a bit about it in a piece on Peter Thiel and conceptually I like it a lot.

 

I've always loved the idea as well.  The idea itself has been around for decades in one form or another (I remember "Freedom Ship" in the mid 1990s) and it looks like support for it and the technology to enable it may catch up to make this possible in the relatively near future.

 

I think the whole idea of the nation state is on its way out.  Decentralization, and freedom of movement is the future.  The first signs of this will be the re-emergence of the independent city-state in a big way.

 

Return of the city-state - Nation-states came late to history, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest they won't make it to the end of the century

 

 

Its unclear to me why you would think any of this. I know you want it to be true but I don't think it is actually true. For the nation state to end you would need it to be weakened in some way...uneconomic, unable to deal with emerging competitors. The nation state system is in a very healthy condition. There are relatively few wars, borders are more less fixed, governments seem fairly stable and considered legitimate by their populations etc. I think right on the nation state is at the peak of its powers without anything to challenge it.

 

I would argue the exact opposite of what you wrote. I would say the city has been enormously weakened compared to the past. In the past cities where powerful because they were at trade hubs and these hubs almost always coincided with rivers or ocean access. Basically people used water ways to cheaply transport goods long distances. And cities where hubs for doing that.

 

But with the advent of the car, highways and the internet you don't really need cities anymore. THink Silicon Valley. Its a desert. There are no trade caravans through Silicon Valley. So why is it economically important? Its not close to any rivers. What the hell is going on there?

 

Las Vegas is another example of the same phenemonon. I submit that Silicon Valley would have been impossible without highways and cars.

 

What you really need to make capitalism work is a large market with roughly uniform rules/laws and great infrastructure for moving people, information and stuff. This implies some governance structure at a high level to make the rules uniform and to provide the infrastructure...a.k.a the Nation State. Nation states provide the structure needed for modern capitalism to flourish and capitalism provides the money to fund the nation state. The two go hand in hand.

 

Imagine that you were developing a startup. And you were doing a pitch. In a nation state system, a venture capitalist might ask "Do you have a patent"? How will you deal with regulation X. Or Law Y". But its not that bad because most laws are uniform across the country (California is the evil exception).

 

However in the world of city-states the whole thing would be a much longer conversation. You would have to figure out how to deal with the different laws and regs of each city-state. It would be a fucking nightmare. You would never be able to scale anything. Of course you could just ignore the law like Uber...but that only works for purely digital solutions...anyone operating with actual physical stuff (e.g. Amazon) won't have this luxury.

[Aberhound]

Almost everyone other than US citizens are free to leave and there is no requirement to become a tax resident in any high tax country. So you get the benefit of not paying tax but we still suffer the harm caused by the manipulators. Catherine Austin Fitts estimated the GDP would be 50x greater if the government simply stopped the stupid. Imagine a world where government acted to ensure that you simply had good food and good water and did not suppress technology and actually taught at the forefront of science instead of continuing to teach the mistakes of past generations.

 

We should look into the techniques used by the manipulators. For instance if everyone stopped using alcohol they would likely discover that their minds and power of intuition and spiritual energy slowly becomes far more powerful. After all we are the gods described in the myths. How we have been degraded.

 

We can also change are worldviews or at least stop adopting the worldview of the manipulators. The untouchables in India for instance are imprisoned by their worldview that their position is justified by the bad karma arising from current or past lives. We are equally imprisoned by countless worldviews which we have accepted and rarely questioned. Question everything as you will not escape the prison until you understand the construction and know yourself and try to develop an open mind and be humble as few can accept that they were wrong. You have to see the manipulation and understand why it works on you to stop it. Often you will find that your various worldviews were logically inconsistent and your brain power will increase once your unconscious doesn't have to waste so much energy trying to convince yourself that you are correct. It is the same as lying to yourself. Once you eliminate the many lies you tell yourself your brain power increases and you forget less as the brain no longer has to edit so many memories to keep the false illusion that you are correct and did not lie.

 

My estimate is that if we increase the number of such people to 20% of the population no one will need to Seastead.

[rkbabang]

From The NY Times

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/business/dealbook/seasteading-floating-cities.html

[Gregmal]

From The NY Times

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/business/dealbook/seasteading-floating-cities.html

 

Pretty cool. Can't help but think if successful that these won't simply be utopian vacation communities for the ultra wealthy.

 

Will be interesting nonetheless. A controversial project being funded through another new and controversial method(ICO).

[rkbabang]

From The NY Times

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/business/dealbook/seasteading-floating-cities.html

 

Pretty cool. Can't help but think if successful that these won't simply be utopian vacation communities for the ultra wealthy.

 

Will be interesting nonetheless. A controversial project being funded through another new and controversial method(ICO).

 

They will almost certainly be at first.  The hope is, like any technology, innovation will happen and costs will come down.  If they ever become fully functioning cities with tourism industries, bakeries, restaurants, and butcher shops, you need average people there too.  The wealthy aren't going to wait tables, tend bar, or clean hotel rooms.  The hope is that overly regulated industries move to these locations i.e. biotech, medical research, medical procedures, maybe even finance, etc...  You will need a lot of average joes.  So while at first it might be vacation homes for the super wealthy, unless the price comes way down from there it will never be real cities on the sea, which is the goal.