20,000 Nations Above the Sea

Is floating the last, best hope for liberty?

Brian Doherty from the July 2009 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

Other libertarians, largely in the 1970s, actually attempted to create free nations on the open ocean, sometimes using existing islands and reefs, sometimes using boats or artificial islands. The history of these attempts is equally comic and terrible. The one that most resembles the Seasteading Institute’s efforts was Operation Atlantis, in which Werner Stiefel, an upstate New York pharmaceutical manufacturer, convinced a small gang of eager young libertarians to help him build a ferro-cement boat called “Atlantis II” in 1969. This vessel was supposed to sail down to the Caribbean, where the crew might grab some land in disputed territories such as Anguilla or the Silver Shoals near Haiti, or just use the ship as a staging ground to build some artificial concrete land.

The schemers had their own silver coin, dubbed the “deca”; they got some press in Esquire; and they had their own homemade boat. But the ship sank in a hurricane, attention from the Haitian government forced the project into quiet mode (canceling the highly entertaining newsletter Atlantis News), and no new libertarian Atlantis ever arose in the Caribbean.

The king of the “take over existing land” plan was Mike Oliver, a Nevada-based real estate developer and coin dealer who had published a book called A New Constitution for a New Country in 1968. Oliver had a winning never-say-die approach to his dream. In 1972 he attempted to claim space for a Republic of Minerva on a series of reefs in the southwest Pacific, 260 miles from the tiny kingdom of Tonga. Perhaps create is a better verb than claim: Oliver had to pay dredging boats to build up usable land between a couple of sturdy reefs. Shortly afterward, the king of Tonga conquered the colony with one boat. The land Oliver paid to build eventually was reclaimed by the ocean.

For the rest of the 1970s, Oliver concentrated instead on islands that had the advantage of already existing but the disadvantage of already being governed. He made common cause with separatist groups on the Bahamian island of Abaco and the New Hebrides island of Espiritu Santo. Such conspiring failed to instigate any independent libertarian nations; it just resulted in the arrests of some rebellious natives.

I called Oliver to ask for an interview while researching my 2007 book Radicals for Capitalism. A weight of angry regret and failure seemed to block his throat as he testily informed me he had nothing to say about any past attempts to start a new libertarian nation.

So Why Expect Seasteading to Work?

Patri Friedman, who has been sailing around some of the very reefs on which earlier utopias capsized, is well aware of these past failures and says he has learned from them. The Seasteading Institute’s website is as thorough and thoughtful a guide as you’ll find to the foibles and follies of previous attempts to create new and/or floating nations. And there are some important points of departure that Friedman says will make the difference this time around.

First, seasteading does not require anyone to take over existing terrain. That was hopeless; the land’s all claimed by some government or another, even the parts barely above water. And an open rebellion against an existing regime is unlikely to succeed. Seasteaders therefore will make their own “land.”

Second, seasteading is modular. Unlike various floating nations that never got off the drawing board—the “Freedom Ship,” the “Aquarius Project,” and other pipe dreams—the institute’s plan doesn’t require an upfront multimillion-dollar buy-in. Seasteading can start small, and in fact Friedman is sure it will start small, with tiny family-sized platforms called “coaststeads” near the mainland serving both as proof of concept and a laboratory for working out the kinks before community-sized seasteads are ready to sprout in international waters. Friedman figures the cost of such starter sea homes won’t be too out of line with housing costs on land, especially if people are buying in a communal or time-share fashion. In fact, most recent cost estimates for a particular hotel/resort seasteading design came out to roughly $258 per square foot (without factoring in some assembly and deployment costs), which is quite a bit cheaper than the current price of many single family homes in the San Francisco Bay area.

Third, seasteading isn’t just based in libertarian theorizing and hopes. Friedman knows that seasteads will need to have some business hook, and he’s busy working those angles. There’s SurgiCruise, a nascent floating medical tourism company that is seeking venture funding. If Americans will fly to Mexico, India, or Thailand for cheaper medical care free of U.S. regulatory costs, the idea goes, why wouldn’t they sail 12 miles for it? Among the other first-tier business ideas being bruited about with varying levels of intensity are vacation resorts, sin industries, aquaculture, deep-sea marina services, and universal data libraries free of national copyright laws.

Fourth, because the open ocean plus “dynamic geography” allows for experimentation with governance in any form, seasteading shouldn’t appeal only to libertarians. Sure, any seastead that Friedman would want to live in would get as close to anarchism as can be managed. But he thinks a variety of ideologues should be willing to leap on board, from sustainability-oriented environmentalists to members of various intentional communities, religious or philosophical or whatever, that want to shape their own lives in peace without government interference. Such communities might not be individualist in their internal policies, but they fit within the libertarian framework of seasteading itself, which allows for a wide variety of freely chosen social structures.

In April 2008, Friedman’s vision received a tangible and encouraging business reward: a half-million-dollar stake from Peter Thiel, the libertarian co-founder of PayPal. Friedman’s high profile on the Internet, particularly on his always engaging and interesting LiveJournal blog, coupled with his personal history in the Silicon Valley, had won his project the attention of local programmers and money people. A job interview with Thiel’s venture capital management firm Clarium soon morphed into a meeting with Thiel himself.

Thiel supports many endeavors to create a future filled with wonderful science-fictional ideas, including the Methuselah Mouse Prize for life extension research and the Singularity Institute, which focuses on wild futuristic accomplishments of all sorts. He was a natural audience for Friedman’s vision, and he was sold. As Thiel’s colleague Joe Lonsdale tells me, “To Thiel and others involved in lots ofdifferent innovations in Silicon Valley, this seems like the coolest new thing you could create: a new government. That sounds really neat.”

Seasteading, Friedman insists, should be of interest to any philanthropist who wants to preserve and protect a wider and more secure human future. As he writes in his book-in-progress on seasteading, “The ability to experiment with a new system will produce both internal benefits to the pioneering seasteaders and external benefits to the world. Seasteaders will be able to choose a society which is in harmony with their values. And each society will serve as an experiment, to see how its system works in practice.”

A Seasteaders’ Convention

Comments

Bug|6.8.09 @ 3:22PM|#

An article from the Kochtopus - even about something as fantastic as floating freedom - wouldn't be complete without a dig on Ron Paul. Now those hundreds of millions are well spent!

Alan Vanneman|6.8.09 @ 3:24PM|#

I suggest that anyone seeking a libertarian paradise move to Dupont Circle, which is where I live. I'm not the first to observe that living on an overgrown houseboat combines all the inconveniences of prison with the additional hazard of being drowned.

phalkor|6.8.09 @ 3:25PM|#

There's an interesting case-study on this that needs be called to attention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock

I think it covers seasteading quite thoroughly.

Seitz|6.8.09 @ 3:51PM|#

I can't read about this stuff without thinking of "Sea Britain".

the innominate one|6.8.09 @ 3:57PM|#

Seitz - nice AD ref

|6.8.09 @ 4:01PM|#

Among other things, he was confident that he had been groomed to be a patsy of sorts in the John F. Kennedy assassination

If there is a constant in the radical libertarian quarter, is it an unwavering commitment to nuttery.

Jeff P|6.8.09 @ 4:06PM|#

If the inhabitants were exclusively regulars on this board, living there would be some strange cross between The Prisoner and Gilligan's Island.

|6.8.09 @ 4:06PM|#

Now, Brandybuck, you aren't paranoid if They really are out to get you.

And who can deny, any more, that They really are out to get all of us?

Matt|6.8.09 @ 4:08PM|#

Why not Antarctica? Yeah, I know some nations have claims on it, but most are disputed. Lay a claim on Norway's territory. I'm suuuuure they'll come and kick your ass.

|6.8.09 @ 4:09PM|#

Who is Number 1? Why, the Skipper, of course.

|6.8.09 @ 4:12PM|#

Gilligan is obviously Number 6.

|6.8.09 @ 4:15PM|#

It's pretty sad that will all the millions of square miles of land on Earth, people that are interested in freedom have to float on the friggin' ocean.
And if it ever got started, some nation (probably the USA) would show up with the gunboats in order to "protect the children".

|6.8.09 @ 4:17PM|#

R C, it's forty five years later, and they still haven't send Jack Ruby to blow away Thornley's ass. His hopes and dreams of being a conspiracist martyr have been dashed.

|6.8.09 @ 4:17PM|#

Of course if you could just get enough liberatians to move to one state you could get most of the benefits without having to live at sea. Sure you would still have to deal with the feds on occasion, but half the problems come from the state.

you could have things like
school vouchers
legalize (or at least decrminalize at the state level) drugs
little zoning regulation etc

Plus that would get you at least 2 libertarian senators, and 3 congressmen.

|6.8.09 @ 4:20PM|#

"And if it ever got started, some nation (probably the USA) would show up with the gunboats in order to "protect the children".


All it takes is one rumor of child abuse or one underage girl sending a topless picture of herself to her boyfriend and you get burned to death. If you don't beleive me, ask the Branch Dividians.

PantsFan|6.8.09 @ 4:21PM|#

This reminds me of "Armada" from China Mieville's _The Scar_, except it went around attaching other ships to it.

|6.8.09 @ 4:22PM|#

Of course if you could just get enough liberatians to move to one state you could get most of the benefits without having to live at sea.

The huge and encroaching national government would still be there, taxing and regulating you. Could you get a marginal improvement? Sure. Most of benefits? Nope.

|6.8.09 @ 4:29PM|#

I'd say that the idea is bad if seen from the point of view of logistics. But I suspect that some of the negative comments here are motivated by ideological reasons, not by practical ones.

|6.8.09 @ 4:33PM|#

How about this idea. Lets find an area that is not really a country but a protectorate under the UN and some old colonial power. An area that we have some historical ties to. Then, lets go there and take land that no one else wants, like swamps and desserts. We then take that land and improve it and eventually make our own country. It is perfect. It is not like any of the other loser countries around us will hate us for our success and blame all of their problems on us or anything. How about it?

zero|6.8.09 @ 4:34PM|#

Kroneborge, the free state project would like to have a word with you about an idea they already came up with. Of course, a floating prison may still be more habitable than New Hampshire come February.

Myron|6.8.09 @ 4:34PM|#

"It's pretty sad that will all the millions of square miles of land on Earth, people that are interested in freedom have to float on the friggin' ocean."

That's always bothered me too. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy a chunk of land from some country? (DRTA)

DADIODADDY|6.8.09 @ 4:36PM|#

The Obama
Where's your environmental imapct statement? Huh? Huh? you pathetic dupe...

|6.8.09 @ 4:41PM|#

There's always the Moon.

Citizen Nothing|6.8.09 @ 4:46PM|#

Neutral Moresnet, miaj amikoj!

|6.8.09 @ 4:51PM|#

The supporters of seasteading don't piss me off as much as 9/11 truthers, but they are just as delusional.

|6.8.09 @ 4:52PM|#

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy a chunk of land from some country?

Buying land does not a nation make. Having a monopoly on justifiable violence does.

|6.8.09 @ 4:52PM|#

I'd actually never heard of the free project, but it makes sense that I'm not the only one to have thought of it.

maybe something to look into. We for sure want to move out of CA.

|6.8.09 @ 4:53PM|#

"If you don't beleive me, ask the Branch Dividians."

They were sexting?

|6.8.09 @ 5:01PM|#

Seasteading is a great idea. There are admittedly a lot of problems, but a lot of the criticisms show a serious lack of imagination.

1. The cruise ship model shows that a quality lifestyle can be had on the ocean. With advancements in technology, I think this lifestyle could be affordable in a couple of decades.

2. Seasteaders don't care if you think they're fanatics.

3. I wish them the best of luck. They will have my financial support, such as it is.

|6.8.09 @ 5:06PM|#

@phalkor:

re: bioshock

Here is another case study you may want to peruse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_(cruise_ship)

|6.8.09 @ 5:13PM|#

I would imagine you could setup a number of exteremly profitable sin cities out there. Cruise out 12 miles for the weekend and not have to worry about cops cause you are doing a bit of drugs etc

I wonder if you would get hasseled by the coast guard though.

Myron|6.8.09 @ 5:14PM|#

"Buying land does not a nation make. Having a monopoly on justifiable violence does."

Implied in my comment about "buy a chunk of land from some country" is, you know, buying land. Buying as in "I own it now and not you."

|6.8.09 @ 5:18PM|#

"I wonder if you would get hasseled by the coast guard though."

Easy target for gangsters.

|6.8.09 @ 5:19PM|#

Then, lets go there and take land that no one else wants, like swamps and desserts.

But, but, everybody wants dessert!

|6.8.09 @ 5:19PM|#

i

Sean Scallon|6.8.09 @ 5:29PM|#

"For real change [electoral politics is] totally hopeless. Think how much more likely to succeed [libertarians would be] if that amount of resources were put into something that could actually work."

You Cosmos must really, really despise Ron Paul to actually give these whack jobs a platform when history had repeatedly shown the failure of "seasteading" and the millions of wasted dollars trying to create an ocean utopia.

Then you have the nerve to call the Paulians crazy.

Why don't endorse Mitt Romney now and get it over with?

NeonCat|6.8.09 @ 5:36PM|#

Re: The Obama 4:33 pm

I believe some people tried that about 62 years ago. Some of the neighbors are still pissy about it, to say the least.

But then I suspect you already knew that.

jpocali|6.8.09 @ 5:48PM|#

R C Dean | June 8, 2009, 5:19pm | #
Then, lets go there and take land that no one else wants, like swamps and desserts.

But, but, everybody wants dessert!


How else are you going to convince them to move to the swamps?

Andrew Ryan|6.8.09 @ 5:56PM|#

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.

|6.8.09 @ 6:15PM|#

Of course make sure to watch our for the splicers, lol

|6.8.09 @ 7:18PM|#

Pykrete: look it up!

With this stuff, you could make land out of water and sawdust (or some other binding agent) and float off the coast the Northern US and Canada.

Of course, you still have many of the same political, financial and resource issues. However, you now have a base that is more stable than 2 liter bottles of soda and plastic sheets.

Neu Mejican|6.8.09 @ 7:20PM|#

Just float it off the coast of Somalia and no government will bother you...

;^)

The tyranny of the condo board will make the federal government seem mild...no?

|6.8.09 @ 7:39PM|#

FWIW, I'm a cosmo. I am not a big fan of seasteading and I think Ron Paul is alright. I am also a radical anarchist. Figure it out. The cosmo/koctapussy stuff is lame.

BakedPenguin|6.8.09 @ 9:50PM|#

The tyranny of the condo board will make the federal government seem mild...no?

Unless condo boards are now sentencing people to five years of being caged, beaten, and raped for taking un-correct substances, then... no.

robc|6.8.09 @ 10:06PM|#

I can speak from personal experience - telling your condo association to go fuck themselves has no repercussions.

|6.8.09 @ 10:45PM|#

Oh ye of little faith... Year before last I was travelling in Mexico and had the good luck of running into Ritchie Zowa. This once upon a time carpenter has built himself an island! Google "isla mujeres, man made island".

There lingers hope! good luck,
ChrisL

Douglas Gray|6.8.09 @ 10:57PM|#

Awhile back, someone figured out that if you want to take care of your parents when they get old, the most economical alternative is to put them permanently on a cruise ship. They actually get better quality food, lodging, and medical care for your dollar than most land based senior care facilities.

Some of the same principles apply. When you are on the high seas, the relative absence of regulation, plus competition for the cruise ship dollar brings a certain efficiency to everything.

The King|6.8.09 @ 11:53PM|#

"How else are you going to convince them to move to the swamps?"

Some people thought I was daft to build a castle in the swamp, but I built it just the same, just to show them! Then it fell into the swamp. Then I built a second one, and it fell into the swamp...

Mike|6.8.09 @ 11:56PM|#

This is why I am a huge proponent of space colonization. People who want an alternative to governments currently in power should always have a place they can go. This is a big reason why America has been so free, and why we are in danger of losing our freedom now. There is no place to go.

Ebeneezer Scrooge|6.9.09 @ 12:57AM|#

Well gosh-darn-it no-how. Somebody beat me to my very first thought when I started reading this article. Douglas Grey says

the most economical alternative is to put them permanently on a cruise ship.

To hell with taking over a state. Why isn't there already The Anarchist Cruise Ship Line? You want a business model, here it is. Then you can start building re-supply platforms out on the open seas through this corporation and you've got legit cover for the operation, on top of a business model.

"Come sail a week with us, and for seven days you can do whatever you want. Because we're anarchists. Bring your wallet (to buy whatever services you may find yourself in need of) and you may want to bring your guns too."

Doesn't this just sound peachy?


Given the manifest inefficiencies of government, David argued, the healthiest and most efficient social and economic system requires no state at all.

Anything can be argued. It has, for example, been argued that Santa Clause -- a really big fat man in a red suit -- climbs down the chimney every December 25.

Now, if they'd only argue that Santa Clause is this really small, skinny guy all dressed in black sooty clothes, I'd much sooner buy the argument.


the fact remains that governments, however inefficient, control virtually every chunk of planet Earth. Winning control of a piece of land almost necessarily involves bloodshed

Here's one of your first clues that anarchism has some holes in it. I mean just in the theoretical sense, before we even put ourselves out there and shed some of our very own blood.

And while I really like this idea

Friedman called his theory "dynamic geography."

making it real is just a nice pipe dream.



it will start small, with tiny family-sized platforms called "coaststeads" near the mainland serving both as proof of concept and a laboratory for working out the kinks before community-sized seasteads are ready to sprout in international waters.

Yeah, and that will all be fine and good until

anything that suggests a challenge to existing wealth and authority could hobble the movement while it's still trying to find its sea legs.

If this whole idea ever does become technologically feasible, it's going to become a challenge to existing wealth and authority, one way or another. I'll let your imagination take it from there.

It's ultimately going to challenge existing power and wealth. Because that's the explicit goal.


The Anarchist Cruise Ship Line makes way more sense to me. First you build re-supply platforms at sea. Then you evolve them into little destinations in their own right, places where passangers can get off and stay. For as long as they want because after all we're anarchists and you can do whatever you want. It's total freedom, man. Make it up as you go along.


We just want to create a laboratory for experimenting with social contracts, and a world in which people are free to create societies with groups of like-minded compatriots. The details of those societies are up to you.

So if anarchism really does make sense, tell me how come the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Roman Empire ever came to an end?

Oh yeah, that's right. Post-Roman Europe, in all its anarchist bliss, got run over by Germans and Visigoths and Huns (white ones, black ones, and all other colors) and Muslims of various flavors tried, and I forget what else.

Somehow the necessary self-defense forces did not spontaneously rise to the occassion. Which is precisely why

governments, however inefficient, control virtually every chunk of planet Earth. Winning control of a piece of land almost necessarily involves bloodshed

Hate to rain on this happy-dreamy little parade but I don't see anarchism ever working. And I humbly submit that it has had it's chance to succeed more than once in history. Post-Roman Europe is one example. China has gone through five dynastic collapses over the past 2000 years leaving the nation effectively without government, and somehow it's never quite worked out there either.


In any case this is definitely an interesting article, Brian, kudos for that. I may not agree that anarchism makes any particular sense, but I have to admit that you anarchists come up with some interesting ideas at times.

Quiet Desperation|6.9.09 @ 1:31AM|#

Look, Bioshock was an awesome game, but, sorry, plasmids are eternally science fiction. An experimental Libertarian nation will not fall due to people being able to shoot lightning, or bees, or bees that crap lightning, or lightning made out of bees from their hand. Nor will it be destroyed by a crime boss because in the real world crime bosses *like* stable and healthy economies where disposable income exists to be spent on vices. Like I always say, you want Vegas to be fun again? Put the mob back in charge.

roy|6.9.09 @ 6:32AM|#

"If this whole idea ever does become technologically feasible, it's going to become a challenge to existing wealth and authority, one way or another."

...yeah, but the idea is to be initially unthreatening... and once there are 100 seasteads.. it might be too late for the states to react. Plus if one is attacked, the others can migrate... the sea is very large.

|6.9.09 @ 8:25AM|#

Independence, self-reliance, and seamanship need to be developed. Buy your family a sailboat before considering Seasteading. I read this and think that you would be trading one form of government for another.

phalkor|6.9.09 @ 10:10AM|#

on Bioshock

plasmids aside, Andrew Ryan failed because he was not 'libertarian enough'. Substitute splicers for speed-freaks with tommy guns and it's a very plausible scenario.

about the anarchy cruise line: I just don't think I trust people enough to get on a boat with a bunch of gunslingin', boozing, druggy anarchists. I think somebody is bound to get maimed or killed withing 24 hours of reaching international waters.

Anchors aweigh !|6.9.09 @ 10:24AM|#

These "libertarian" sea outposts will be easy pickings for states with navies.

LibSailer|6.9.09 @ 11:32AM|#

Read about the micronation Sealand at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

Scott Jensen|6.9.09 @ 12:41PM|#

On the Discovery Channel's show "Mega Engineering" (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mega-engineering/mega-engineering.html), they talked about making a floating ocean city. Their spin being this is what people in New Orleans should do. However, the show "Mega Engineering" is science-light to say the least.

Tristan |6.9.09 @ 6:53PM|#

Have you guys forgot about the pirates? Think commercial ships are an easy target? How about a bunch of retards floating on 2 litter soda bottles (or seasteads... whatever).

|6.11.09 @ 3:10PM|#

Hey, guys, I volunteer for TSI and am currently trying to get together a NYC meetup. If there are any NYC Reasonites out there interested in tossing some ideas around, let me know.

[e-mail]

Jim |6.16.09 @ 1:20AM|#

I'm surprised movements like this are not just more concentrated on relocating to less invasive government controlled countries. New Zealand and Costa Rica come to mind.