Anarchic Anchors Aweigh!
In my inbox this afternoon, from the Seasteading Institute:
Public registration is open for the first annual Ephemerisle Festival, being held October 2-4, 2009 in the Sacramento River Delta. Ephemerisle is a floating festival of politics, community, and art in celebration of political freedom and diversity. Opportunities to connect, learn, and play will abound: there will be music, dance, open mic performances, and even classes on how to build your own floating platform….
Back in 2001, tired of people talking about alternative social systems instead of trying them out, [The Seasteading Institute]'s founder Patri Friedman envisioned a floating festival in international waters. Participants would gather to temporarily live their own utopian visions, and return enriched and inspired to turn those dreams into real societies. In 2009, this dream will finally become a reality.
Ephemerisle will provide a fun and innovative venue for the public to get their first taste of seasteading. We intend to stretch Ephemerisle every year, growing it in size and duration, and also moving it further and further out towards international waters, until it becomes a de facto seastead city. We aren't content to simply dream of a freer world: we want to live it! This will be a long process—but it starts this October.
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A temporary autonomous zone. Should be fun.
and even classes on how to build your own floating platform....
Haven't the Dems and Reps taught us enough?
Open mic night on The Dork Boat is a commie recruiting tool.
This idea of starting with a festival and incrementally making it more ambitious seems pretty brilliant. I'm assuming, because of the libertarian nature, that unlike Burning Man participants will be allowed to use money. 😉 Anyway, I would much rather hang out on a boat on the water than sweat my balls off in the middle of a salt flat in the desert. Sounds like fun.
This sounds fun but I would suggest that they try to implement a bunch around the country, making it more convenient to get to the one close to you. Have them at different times so those who wish to attend more than one or all of them could do so if they wish. If they had one in Puget Sound I'd go, that's for sure. And there are a ton of boats here in Seattle.
Seasteading is something worth pursuing, if people want to pursue it.
Another idea could be tried-and-true method of simply gathering too many people together for the apparatus of the state to take it down without causing far too much immediate brouhaha and long-term blowback. The feds would love to bust places like Burning Man, Bonnaroo, AllGood, etc. (and they do - but they usually only go in with drug dogs and such into the areas closest to the entrances/exits for fear of finding surrounded by thousands of angry hippies/wooks between them and "civilization") but they don't because they know it would end badly for them.
Epi, OTOH, don't you have to get 3 miles out past US land to be in international waters? I doubt that anywhere in Puget Sound would qualify.
They should have one in the North Atlantic. "We're going to need a bigger boat."
Dagny, you start out in Puget Sound and then head out to sea. More fun than getting to the Pacific and then getting on the boats there.
OK, Cap'n Epi. Call you Ishmael, right?
Do you find youself growing grim about the mouth? Is it a damp, drizzly November in your soul? Find yourself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral you meet? Does it requires a strong moral principle to prevent you from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off? Then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as you can.
No! No Moby Dick quotes. If you have to quote anything, quote Khan quoting Moby Dick.
Awesome. If I have a few thousand to spare, I would definitely be there.
I thought it was 12 miles.
They could also hold one in great lakes.
sorry --skipped a word. "They could also hold one in the great lakes.
They think me mad--Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!
Closer to 200 miles, checking the Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_waters
The three, twelve and two hundred mile limits each cover different aspects of sovereignty but for all practical porpoises 🙂 the federal government claims to the two hundred mile limit. The states only have control to three miles out.
The Great Lakes are not International waters. They are completely controlled by the Governments of Canada and Ontario on one side and the USofA and the lake bordering states on the other.
Historical footnote: Twelve miles is about as far as you can see a ship from shore, or, conversely, about as far as you can see the shore from a ship, due to the curvature of the earth.
In case you were wondering where the twelve mile limit came from.