The Seasteading Institute

Reply To: cscoggin wrote: ok, taking

[quote=cscoggin]ok, taking the idea of a 'stub nation' (for want of a better term) as a base... Would every seastead needing to fly that country's flag be any different from any other already existing country? In the short term I assume the answer would be yes, because they (the stub nation) share the ideals and well really let you do what you like. But what about when (I'm a pessimist) they eventually don't? You are back in the same boat (so to speak).[/quote]

Yes, but since the stub nation would be extremely small, have no real place to expand, and be very limited in government so it should be hard for it to grab for more power. But government transition is always a possible issue. But the likelihood of this happening is small, and the benefits (getting seasteads) far outweigh the unlikely problems.

[quote=cscoggin]That said, how big does a country need to be to be an internationally recognized country? [/quote]

According to the Montevideo Convention all you need is land and defined borders...the size doesn't matter. I guess the ladies were right all along... ;) Monaco is less than a square mile.

[quote=cscoggin]might it not be easier to buy 100 acres (or a 100,000 or whatever the 'minimum' is) from an existing country and secede.[/quote]

That's exactly what I said in my original post. The secession would need to be organized ahead of time with the government, and they would of course be compensated heavily. The benefit of this plan is that we automatically get one of the things you need for statehood: recognition by other nations. Whatever nation we break off from would recognize us as a new, free nation.

I'm thinking either Nauru or Palau would be a good candidate. We could easily just get one of the small outlying islands....