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Philosophy/Legal/Sociology section
Thu, 04/17/2008 - 14:13 — DanB
I think there should be a forum section for discussion of philosophical, legal, and sociological issues that arise in connection to the Seastead.
I think that while the engineering difficulties may now seem very substantial from our current perspective, ultimately they are resolvable.
The fate of the Seastead will be decided by our ability to answer less tangible questions. Will the Big Countries try to shut us down? Do we really want to allow guns? How can we convince people to join? Will we allow *anyone* to join? How will decisions actually get made?
Dan
Re; Philosophy/Legal/Sociology Section
I agree that philosophical challenges will ultimately be more critical than technical ones. I second the need for a specific forum section regarding Philosophy/Legal/Sociology.
Stop asking for a subject
While philosophical questions are undoubtably important, one of the stumbling blocks in developing ideas like seastead is that people mostly want to discuss the philosophy and people forget to actually do anything.
Regarding the rules on the seastead (ie do we really want guns?), ultimately that should be determined by the owners of each seastead. Presumably the question is directed towards the rules on the first seastead... but even that is a long way off. I don't think we need to have such details finalised yet.
The more important part of the question is about the viability of having functioning sovereignty while in international waters. Patri has answered that a bit in previous Q&As and points out that even if the seastead fell under national jurisdiction it would still be possible to increase autonomy. My answer is that the only way will find out if this idea can float (pun intended) is to try it and see. Even if seasteading has only a 10% chance of success, that is well worth my time & effort.
You may not want guns, thats
You may not want guns, thats your right. However, I don't think that many people will participate in a project that plans on keeping individuals from making those choices. Aside from the denial of the human right of self-defense that disarmament causes (which has such a long track record of 'successes' like the Holocaust, the Turkish/Armenian genocide, Cambodia, Rwananda, Darfur, Sri Lanka, the Soviet Union genocide in Ukraine, the Chinese genocide against the educated.....) there is the consideration of just how will a SeaStead be defended.
Even assuming that various nations are completely ambivalent towards the SeaSteads (and with most of the nations of the world thats a stretch) there are places and people in the world like the Horn of Africa, the Sunda passage, and a few others where good old fashioned piracy is alive and well. Just a few weeks ago Somali pirates captured a French-flagged cruise ship , French commandos were required to free it. Just last week a Spanish ship met a similar fate, , after most likely paying ransom (dane-geld).
In biblical terms, those that beat their swords into plowshares will soon be plowing for those who didn't.
If you build it - they wont come
I just posted the recommendation to look at some of the social aspects under the DRP forum.
If this is a purely technical engineering project then I would agree with you. No need to ask why, just do it.
However, if the goal of this project spans outside of the realm of just proving a seastead can be built and expands into the governmental, social, infrastructure etc... related areas that go into the culture of seastead and seastead environments, then we are talking about social engineering and cultural change. If the non-technical engineering aspects are not at least considered and addressed then the result is just another big boat to sell.
I agree that we do not need to finalize any details yet but there is value in scenarion building and impact assessments and I think they do not have to impact the technical engineering aspects.
Ok
I'm happy to add the forum section. I have mixed feelings on this topic - on the one hand, I agree with Temujin that what matters is action not debate. Also, the beauty of the idea of seasteading is that it's a meta-system for generating legal systems, not tied to any specific set of laws.
That said, at some point we need a specific legal system to start out with, so it is worth talking about some.
International Law
It seems to me that the most important questions we need to be figuring out right now are the laws as they relate to current national governments. Will seasteads turn over fugitives from other countries? If so for what crimes will it do so? Murder? Theft? Drug trafficing? Will seasteads have full autonomy or will U.N.-like bodies develop some kind of international laws that make creating micronations illegal. Could a seastead be the 51st state in the U.S.? I would think that these questions would be harder than the legal structure of the seastead itself (after all we have all kinds of models to copy from like Hong Kong/Switzerland/etc...). We need experts in law and political science to be working on this stuff. Hell I think even I could come up with a barebones constitution and small body of legislation from just picking and choosing the best of what is already available.
The real test is if we can make this happen without all going to jail for treason or tax evasion.
Will we allow *anyone* to
Will we allow *anyone* to join?
The answer to that question sums up all i think needs to be said about the subject of philosophy at this stage.
There is only asmuch of a 'we' as any group of individual agrees on.
So id say: yes, the institute should not try to exclude anyone. Everybody contributing to an economy of scale is a plus. Wether or not all seasteads that set sail will be interconnected, physical or otherwise, i dont think so. It would imply a failure either way around: either we failed to generate as much interest as was hoped and things could have been cheaper/faster, or worse, it means the idea of explicit social contracts is stillborn.