The Seasteading Institute

I think the report is missing some measurable goals for the 3 strategic paths–housing, businesses, festivals. ‘A business has secured funding’ in Q409 is pretty vague, and if no progress has been made on it by Q3, now what?

I suggest that a goal be made of a deliverable in Q3, which contains:

For business:
* A list of considered businesses (i.e. ‘startup without visa problems’, ‘offshore medicine’, ‘organize water festivals’)
* A select subset (1-3) of these ideas that have been vetted for rough cost, workability and suitability to seasteading
* A list of potential partners to get these things going; people are harder to find than money. Because some business people want to be private, and TSI is open, this may be tricky, but I think we should be able to find a few people who would be willing to be ‘showcased’.

For festivals:
* A list of considered activities/events (i.e. think up some things we can do that burning man can’t)
* A select subset of these ideas (1-3) that have been vetted for rough cost, workability and suitability to seasteading
* A list of potential groups to assist in advertising these ‘features’ that makes an ephemerisle special

In addition to the benefits of simply having a list of things to focus on in 2010, I think that making these lists would end up creating a lot of excellent network effects. For example, I know that if there is a mailing list where people are talking about funding for seastead-based businesses, I want to be on it. I imagine there are lots of people here who would be equally interested in groups on housing, festivals, and even more specific groups. Right now, I don’t see TSI funneling these subsets of people together, or trying to match these sub-groups with the external resources they need to get going.

At any rate, good document–I still appreciate the open nature of TSI operations.

I’m actually working with our lawyers on this now. After that is done, the next step is to create a business strategy, and I think that will be something like you describe. I also think Q3 is a reasonable goal for having that level of detail.

Lawyers? WTH would you need a lawyer in a seastead for? It would actually be a good gauge of the success of a seastead:

1 single lawyer practicing on board = absolute failure

I’m talking internally of course. The solution to all problems is to reconfigure or move away, so why would you need lawyers, right? You make money on the seastead, an international company which the US has no jurisdiction over. If TSI accepts donations from it, the issue is whether or not TSI is non-profit, charitable or whatever. The solution would be to off shore TSI, unless you want it to be charitable in the US, now that’s a complication for TSI, not the seastead.