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| Why They Belong On The Ocean | Why | Why Summary |
When Patri was at Google, the procedure for launching a new product involved a long checklist of things to check and watch out for. Engineers found this list onerous, but the experts explained it quite simply: “Behind every item on that checklist is the flaming wreckage of some past launch.” The items in this section may sometimes seem so commensensical that they aren’t worth repeating, but behind each one lies a failed project.
So while there is no single right approach to seasteading, there are certainly plenty of wrong ones. And 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 policies are just the application of realism to various areas. Important areas include incrementalism, politics, technology, and finances.
The most basic part of our realism is that we believe in an incremental approach to every area of seasteading. This means breaking our ambitious visions down into small steps, and taking things one step at a time. A cruise ship is not as exciting as a new platform design, diesel-powered generators are not as exciting as OTEC, and operating under a flag of convenience is not as exciting as being a member of the United Nations - but it can happen decades sooner.
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. Rome wasn’t built in a day and a successful 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. There were many two-story buildings built before the first three-story one, let alone the first skyscraper. 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. 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 the main focus should be on the current and immediate next stages, not on far-distant visions. Watch the path in front of you, not the sky, or you will trip.
We discuss many of the specific axes along which we can proceed incrementally under Making It Happen.
Engineering a cost-effective structure to survive in the harsh ocean environment is difficult enough. Counting on unproven technologies will only make things harder. For example, several potential ventures [Savage1992, Celestopea, Nexus] have focused on the combination of two problematic technologies: OTEC and seacrete, which we feel exemplify the unrealistic “science-fiction” approach to floating cities.
OTEC, or Ocean Thermal Electric Conversion, is a technique to generate energy from the temperature difference between warm surface water and the cold depths. Unfortunately there is little practical experience with the technology, and it scales down very poorly. It’s a promising technology for the future, perhaps for governments soon, but not at all applicable to small ventures now. Some projects have treated OTEC as practically free energy for ocean cities, when it is quite expensive indeed. We discuss it further in our Infrastructure - Power section.
If you dip a wire mesh in seawater and run electricity through it, a cement-like substance forms. Known as seacrete, many floating-city designs have been based on this wondrous source of free building materials. Unfortunately, there is a catch. The common cited figures for energy requirements are off by a factor of 40, and so the electricity costs far more than just buying concrete would, as we describe in more detail in the building materials section
Seasteaders will not make the mistake of counting on an impractical technology to make their vision happen. Our concept is a big enough jump already, and the fewer jumps we make along with it the better. So while necessity has prompted some novelty in our designs, they are firmly rooted in standard engineering techniques. You’ll see us examining a number of cutting-edge technologies, yet planning to use very few of them on early seasteads. Our power will come from solar panels, wind turbines, and fossil fuel backup generators, not OTEC plants. Reinforced concrete is an extremely cheap construction material, and we’ll buy it from standard terrestrial sources. In short, our philosophy is to plan our initial designs around mature technologies and save the innovation for later iterations.
New technologies will be important to the long-term development of seasteading, and so we will discuss some of the key areas where we hope to improve on standard methods. But we must not count on any breakthroughs.
A solid, realistic plan can stand criticism and review. It is the scams, the half-baked, the grandiose but insubstantial, which must hide behind a facade of mystery. In our experience, the less you see up front, the less there is behind. Sure, it’s possible that behind the curtain lies a complex and well-considered plan which is being hidden for some legitimate reason, but the odds are heavily against it. If it looks like the emperor has no clothes, he’s probably got goosebumps.
There is nothing wrong with playing the micronation game, imagining a country for fun. But the line between Micronation and genuine venture is a blurry one, in the minds of the principals as well as on their websites. Hinting at complex negotiations with mighty powers for far-off territory adds spice to projects on either side of the line. Yet the countless cycle of promises and failures cannot help but turn interested participants into weary cynics, exhausting the enthusiasm of each new generation. We’d much rather be open about what we have (now, a realistic plan, a rough design and a little financial commitment, later, we hope, a small but habitable prototype). We are trying hard to minimize the faith necessary, but there will be some, and we think honesty, not puffery, gives us the best chance to get it.
Related to transparency is openness - being public about our existence, goals, and methods.
A number of TSI community members have expressed concern about our policy of operating openly, stating our goal to create new governments on the internet and in public interviews. They worry that it could bring us to the attention of governments before we are ready, allowing them to quash our nascent movement, and suggest that it might be better to keep everything quiet until a large seastead community is operating. While attracting negative attention early is certainly a danger, we believe there are a number of significant advantages to openness:
It allows us to work with public figures, like successful businesspeople and scientists, who would not be associated with a secret project that might get them in trouble.
It allows us to raise investment from individuals and institutions who are likely to require the safety of us being part of the existing global regulatory environment.
It gives us the greatest possible audience for our ideas. Many of the community members, including those who are concerned about our openness, found out about seasteading through our public website or media mentions.
It gives us the best chance to negotiate with governments in good faith. “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned”, as Patri’s grandfather said.
It attracts people who want to openly create a new society which is part of the interdependent world, rather than those who want to make a hidden Galt’s Gulch, cut off. This is important, since we think an isolated society is much less attractive, less likely to succeed, and more likely to go horribly wrong (see The Beach, Bioshock, Lord of the Flies…). The whole point of seasteading is not to hide - so let’s be true to that principle from the beginning.
Let’s also not forget that this is a movement where diversity is a core value. Other groups are welcome to create similar projects in secret, hoping to grow large enough to be in a better negotiating position before they are noticed by the existing powers of the world. We wish them the best of luck, but that is not our path - we seek to be the public face of this movement.
On the other hand, we don’t want to take this too far and insist on radical honesty. We want to be open about our existence and long-term goals, but there may on occasion be specific elements of our strategy or predictions for the future that are better left unsaid for marketing purposes. However, we will be operating under a strong presumption of openness as a default. (Including being open about the degree to which we are open, as you can see!)
While our goal is to change the world, we believe that compromise is an important part of the process. We accept that seasteads will not have full freedom to choose their own laws. There will be substantial limitations on what the rest of the world will tolerate. Like it or not, the first seasteads will be tiny fish in huge ponds, and if they make the sharks angry, they’ll get eaten before they grow big enough to put up a fight.
For example, libertarian seasteads will probably be allowed to have low taxes and low regulation, but genuine bank secrecy may not be permitted because of worries about terrorist money laundering. We think it’s far better to get what freedom is possible than to fail because of a refusal to compromise. Environmental regulation offers another example where compromise will be necessary. Our political goals are a compromise as well in that we simply wish to be left alone by other states, we aren’t seeking recognition, embassies, passports, and a seat in the UN like some projects.
This willingness to compromise does not mean that our new way of life offers no improvements on the old. it’s just that focusing our efforts on a few changes at a time is the most effective way to succeed. Even with the limitations of reality, there are still plenty of incremental improvements that can be made to current social systems.
We specifically suggest drawing the line of compromise between local autonomy and actions that affect other governments. Zoning laws, legal system, drug use, health care, safety nets - all of these are areas that affect the local population. But there are some things that will impact the rest of the world. Pollution, money laundering, drug exportation, hiding fugitives, all of these harm other people or prevent existing sovereign countries from enforcing their own laws. While there will always be argument about where this line lies (is producing greenhouse gases at the same rate as other nations pollution?)