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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlqKINHkygQ

Stateless sea steads already exist guys. All we need to do is start buying sailboats and heading out there to join them. We will bring them capital and wealth and in exchange they can teach us how to live off the sea. Both can benefit from the mixing of cultures. This is the path towards a sea seating future. Not some centralized top down approach with a giant cruise ship or oil platform. People just need to buy sail boats and get out there and start living it. These sea gypsies can help us realize that vision with a decentralized approach to sea steading.

I need to learn how to cook the pufferfish safely while checking my raspberry Pi bitcoin wallet at sea.

Thats the spirit!

Its strange to me that libertarians tend to be so committed to a centralized approach to seasteading. We just need to buy sailboats and pick a meeting place. ;D

But sadly that is not reality. According to the video, they have more and more difficulties fishing freely because of new laws, illegal fishing, and getting authorization to get the wood from private islands. they can barely buy enough gas for their boat. To be free in international waters one would need to be totally independent from any resources on land, or risking a power struggle from some "sponsors". That good soul, believer in "the cause" would end up being our only energy supply and ultimate tyrant.

Seasteading needs a game plan to attract the energy to them and not for them to beg and turning into sea gypsies with bitcoins.

My idea would be to recreate the Roman Colosseum + Las Vegas in the middle of the sea. People would come, pay, bet in bitcoin to see what Romans did best when almost no rules were applied. The world court would have no jurisdiction. 

oh i didnt know we had a trillionare who wanted to make a sea stead. well that solves everything.

no but seriously of course its going to be hard. its going to be hard as hell. This would only be a lunching point obviously. We would need to move out into open waters once our numbers became great enough. People could start opening businesses and we could begin to have an economy. Once our numbers became great enough to move out into open seas than we could get everything we needed through trade. let entrepreneurs figure out how to provide us with the things we need from land.

either way this is never going to start with some ridiculously wealthy guy with a grand plan. the only way to make seasteads happen is for people to get out there and start living it now.

In theory... Satoshi could make it happen hmm...

Would this technically be seasteading as international waters are 12 nautical miles away from a country?

I know a shallow place and a good method to seastead but nobody wanted to listen to me back in 2012.

maybe not de jure but i think its pretty much de facto sea steading.

atleast its almost certainly the closest thing to it and so a natural launching point. Mostly i just want to communicate the idea of a decentralized approach to seasteading.

To build off my last post, there's a place in the Caribbean, in international waters, that is shallow enough to create an artificial island on with the use of a dredger and concrete blocks for the perimeter.

Though it's too late for this idea to come to fruition imo.

In the Bermuda Triangle?  ;D

Neat video. There's definitely something cool about the way these people live. There is an undeniable air of freedom to it.

But as mentioned, they are not free from the state. It's not just that they're in the territorial waters of Malaysia. They are totally dependent on their interaction with land, and strongly affected by local legislation and state action. They are also dirt poor and their life seems really, really tough.

To me, this video embodies what I don't like about the idea of seasteading: it's a cop out. Nation states have all the land, so we should run off and live at sea. Well guess what? That's not even remotely practical, in addition to being ideologically irresponsible. People are naturally dependent on land to survive. And even if we could find a way to survive at sea (at great expense), it would still be running away. Land is ours, and we should fight for it instead of sailing off. We should all stay right here, on dry land, where most people will always live, where we can survive comfortably, where most natural resources are found, and we should fight the state. Right where we are now.

Yea like i said in an earlier comment. It definitely would have to be a stepping stone at best. Think of it as a nursery for a proper future sea-stead.

As for running away. I'm perfectly content to run away if thats what i have to do to get my freedom. But thats just a personal choice. I totally respect your mentality of fighting for what is yours.

Of course it would be expensive. But freedom would cause our society to be so unprecedentedly productive that it would more than make up for the cost.

Na it was a little below that I think.

I just wanted to inanely add how cool it is to be part of a community that has even heard of seasteading. Wub ya, bitcoiners  :-*

This is why Politics & Society board is best board.

thanks friend. i wish this idea was on more peoples radars. essentially instead of trying to plan a seastead libertarians need to just buy sailboats to live on instead of houses. every time a person decides to live on a boat instead of a house it cripples the power of the state because those individuals become mobile. it forces states to be more competitive in order to keep their chattel.

it can start out gradually, liberatarians just start selling their houses and buying sailboats. then once a year we have a big party out in international waters. each year a couple of people stay behind. each year more people stay behind than the year before. eventually this just evolves naturally into a seastead. no need for libertarian jesus to come down from on high to give us "a plan".

i need to dedicate more time to getting this idea out there.

Open source farming is trying to be a real concept. Bright minds should start on a open source Seasteading project, ie the building blocks of infrastructures and a society, just like the Romans did with their roads, no matter where their next invasion went. An open standard.

http://www.seasteading.org/

I don't think of seasteading as something that is going to be a practical way to get away from governments.  Ever.  By the time we can live out there without loss of all access to tools and modern necessities, we will have built so much there that we will need government as a way of preserving our infrastructure. 

But I do think that learning to live on water using technology is an essential stepping stone in the future of our species.   To put it gently, oceans are an environment a thousand times easier to maintain human life in than hard space, and if we can't live on oceans we will never even start to learn many of the things we need to know to make a viable jump off of this dirtball.

Right now there are a few groups of aboriginal and tribal people; Sea Gypsies, Bayau indians, the Tanka, and some of the further-flung "oceanic" polynesian groups.  All are dependent on land; all are socially and technically isolated to the same degree that they live off land; none have a technological/industrial base that exists on the water, and for most of them life is getting worse not better.  Living like that is not the goal, unless you want your children to die of what ought to be minor infections or become crippled by what ought to be treatable conditions, are fine with failing to give them a meaningful education or tools, you're okay with them being herded into "refugee camps" the minute they come into contact with people on shore, etc.

And there are stupid seasteading "megaprojects" like Freedom Ship:  A ridiculous boondoggle that cannot actually exist.  The damn thing would break up almost immediately on the ocean, because it is "designed" in complete defiance of the nautical requirements.  Also, it is not a viable colony in itself; it does not contain its own infrastructure nor the means of production necessary to feed, clothe, and provide for the people on board.  It is simple to say "it would work because the people we'd have here are already rich and don't need to use any local means of production to provide for themselves" but -- really?  You want to put a city on the ocean, when you have to supply it using a whole damn container ship every day and there are no significant exports to balance the trade issue?   That could work if you start with multimillionaires (and a sane design for the floating city, which Freedom Ship most assuredly is not), but there is no opportunity for a second generation. 

Finally, there is the OP's idea that you could just take sailboats and GO.  This is less insane than most of the ideas proposed so far, mainly because it is smaller-scale and needn't isolate you as much from the land which (let's face it) you're going to be dependent on whether you like it or not.  The game becomes maximizing the benefit of your contact with land while minimizing the dependency, and while it's a game I don't think you can "win" at any scale that doesn't include on-water factories, universities, chip fabs, and processing plants, it's certainly a worthy effort and a way to learn valuable things that we as a species need to know. 

Problem is the sailboats you can buy aren't designed for it.  Very few of them are tough enough to stay out in the ocean for a long time and deal with the weather.  Very few allow you to do things like cook food or purify water without using fuel (although solar cookers and prop/sail driven watermakers are not too difficult to build).   Electrical generation capabilities are mostly fuel-dependent (though solar panels and wind generators are becoming better and more common).  Most are built with materials in their frames, decks, or bulkheads that will eventually corrode, rust, or rot.  Virtually none can haul themselves out of the water (whether vertically or up a ramp or up a beach) without damage and using their own winches so that you don't need a highly-equipped yard to do bottom work.  Hardly any can maneuver independent of wind without fuel (although you could hook an electric motor/generator to the props for electrical power under sail and maneuvering independent of wind for electrical power).  Most aren't much good for fishing; sailboats these days are yachts, and built to different design specs.

Now, you could make a good and worthwhile movement of seasteading with sailboats that overcome these easy-to-overcome design flaws and seek to overcome more, and work to establish productive waterborne businesses from salvage companies to bakeries. But ultimately, without a revolutionary discovery or six, you cannot provide on the water all the things you need to continue living on the water for future generations.  You'll be buying your electric motors and photovoltaics and electronics and ropes and sails and so on from people who manufacture them on land.

I'm sorry I couldn't continue after this. This is liberty 101 stuff. This thread is not the place for discussions about the fundamentals of how, in theory, a free society could operate. It assumes that it could and is a discussion about means of getting there. Pm me though if you like and we can talk about how roads and bridges could, in theory, be maintained without the need for anyone to threaten to murder anyone else.

Hey, it's okay, that's just theory. You don't have to believe me and I don't have to believe you. Essentially there's nothing to talk about until there's a pragmatic test. 

I'm much more interested in a much less esoteric question.

How would you design a sailboat as a one family or extended-family dwelling to maximize freedom for its inhabitants by minimizing costs and requirements while leveraging benefits from all contacts with others?  I'd be emphasizing permanent construction (nothing that rots, rusts or corrodes in the structure of the boat), simplicity (minimizing points of failure and maintenance requirements),  renewable or free energy (winds, currents, thermoclines, tides, solar -- all can be harnessed) and self-sufficiency with regards to maintenance and mobility.

I'd also be doing a lot of research into edibles from the ocean -- not just fish/protein, but also edible seaweeds, vegetables, etc.  Finally I'd be looking for good boat-borne businesses and ways to take advantage of the marine environment for business purposes, with an eye to specialize the boat design for one (or possibly more than one) such business.

This comment I like.

Yes I definitely agree. I really don't know if my ideas would work. I definitely could be wrong. I do know that I'm personally willing to take the risk involved in testing them empirically and the only thing i ask of statists, is not to agree with me and start implementing my ideas themselves, but rather to simply not shoot me for trying to test them empirically myself. I think this is a very important point that is often overlooked. I have no interest in imposing freedom on anyone else, i have no interest in imposing any of my preferences on anyone else, (except for the preference that they not harm me) i only ask that they show me the same respect i show them by not trying to force freedom on them by not trying to force tyranny on me.

Honestly I think it would probably be best not to try to blaze new trails here. There are lots of used boats out there. As I understand it many people live on their boats full time for many years. So It would seem that sailboats are able to avoid corrosion reasonably well. I'll be honest though i dont know a whole lot about it. I just join sailnet forums today so that I could start learning more. Its been a lot of fun talking to these people and I've learned a lot but I haven't asked about energy yet.

I also ordered this book today http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071749578/sr=8-1/qid=1390425417/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1390425417&seller=&sr=8-1 it was recommended to me today by several of the members on the sailnet forums.

Probably it would be best to keep the boats spread pretty far apart and simply have small motor boats to go and visit neighbors. You wouldn't want to all try to dock near each other like in the pictures of centralized approaches to seasteading.

As for businesses this is a very important point and something i have been intensely interested in for some time now. The idea of businesses operating on large(er) boats that stayed at sea all the time and employed the seasteading community would be crucial. Certain industries would lend themselves to this sort of a model more than others. Software development is one that comes to mind, certain types of research, universities, arts.

I really would like to get this idea of a decentralized approach to seasteading out there. I just haven't seen any interest from the community on the several occasions i have brought it up. I wonder if im just missing something big and so everyone is just blowing me off. Or if there is genuinely not a lot of interest. Or if im just missing my target audience.

Here is one concrete solution for getting fresh water:

http://youtu.be/hMODuTBFpPo

heck the byproduct would probably even be marketable.

Wow, you can boil water and then re-condense it? That's the invention of the century  ;D

Too bad you can't actually drink distilled water, you have to re-salinate it first...

I'm still sticking with land-steading  ;)

So those kids on the video are dead then?

Sea-steading will never be for everyone.

Yes, they were sacrificed to make a promotional video for GE  :)

But seriously, drinking a bit of distilled water is fine. Drinking only distilled water will eventually kill you. First you will urinate all your salts, then your blood pressure will drop, and eventually your extracellular solution will become hypotonic and your cells will literally start to explode (but you'll probably die of heart failure long before that happens).

One caveat - I have no idea how this machine works, except for the obvious fact that the "novel" technology it's based on is centuries old.
Maybe it actually does re-salinate the water a bit before dispensing it...

if worst came to worse you could always throw a pinch of the byproduct back into the output.

Well yea, but if you want to get rid of specific contaminants, like pathogens or certain unwanted chemicals, that would be counter-productive.
This is why most water-purification schemes involve various forms of filtration rather than boiling.
Boiling is extremely wasteful in terms of energy, and it still requires filtration of the byproduct before re-salination.


Anyway, disregarding this rather odd device - if the general point was that seasteaders can produce drinking water by desalinating sea water, that is certainly true. But like all aspects of seasteading, it would be very expensive.

indeed. hopefully removing the burdens of taxation, inflation, and regulation would more than counteract that additional expense but this is something that will only be able to be discovered through testing.

Hopefully solar energy generation and battery tech will be advanced enough to eliminate the need for other fuels in propulsion and regular living on the water.  There's certainly enough sun energy out there to be able to live a semi modern lifestyle.

I do hope you're right. I still doubt seasteading could be viable in the long run, and I certainly doubt it's scalable, but at the very least, it's important as a model.
To achieve the more important goal, ridding ourselves of oppressive government right here on dry land, we need to demonstrate successful models of government-free societies that function well.
Low-level, decentralized seasteading models like the one you're suggesting, could go a long way as a demonstration.

I wouldn't count on that, since solar energy requires a lot of surface area, which is possibly the most constrained resource on a boat.

Personally, I think the only real energy source that could make seasteading viable in the long-term is miniaturized D-T fusion reactors. Of course this is always 50 years away, and it would require pretty big boats, which is exactly what OP is trying to avoid.

It requires a lot of surface area now.  I believe solar cell conversion rates are low single digits and battery tech isn't that good either but solar tech is growing fast.  There already exists a few big boats that are only solar powered.  5-10 years and smaller boats will be able to do the same.

Actually good PV cells already get to well over 10%. I doubt the efficiency will increase more than 3-fold in the foreseeable future. But maybe that will be enough for basic functions...

This doesn't look basic.
http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/6/22/4454980/ms-turanor-planetsolar-solar-powered-boat-photo-essay
And I think that boat has been around a few years already.

That's a very cool concept boat, but I don't think it's meant for a lot of people to live on for long periods of time... And look at all that surface area covered with PV cells. I bet it still delivers less energy than a normal diesel engine.
Not to mention reliability - what do you do on a cloudy day?

By the way, I wonder if you could get boats to extract energy from waves while they're anchored down?

I if I were smart I would invent a sailboat that would double as a flexible solar panel fabric... :)

I dont think any single approach would be right. You would probably want to use solar where you could but most of your power would have to come from a wind turbine. there is a ton of wind power at sea. i really dont think power would be a big issue as windy as it is out there. you would probably want to use these kind to keep your boat from capsizing. http://hacknmod.com/hack/next-gen-wind-energy-you-have-never-seen/

you dont see sailboats using wind power now because it would create too much drag while traveling. but if your boat spent a lot of time anchored at sea than it would become practical.

Not really.  Water makers already exist, and we use them on boats all the time.  They're only moderately expensive when you're buying one, and the filters are easy to clean, cheap to replace, and last a couple years in constant use assuming you don't try to filter oily water, polymers, or other artificial pollutants.  Here's a link:

http://www.spectrawatermakers.com/products/all_marine.html

These are filtration systems, not distillation systems.  Turns out that if you set up a reverse osmosis filter (they call them 'membranes' but they're rigid, about a quarter-inch thick, and look like fiberglass-reinforced plastic) and put 150 pounds of pressure or so behind it, you can keep saltwater on one side and make it ooze fresh water out the other side.  The nifty invention that allowed them to become practical was circulating seawater through the pressure chamber without loss of pressure - as opposed to having a pressure chamber that gets saltier and saltier as the filter works. 

Anyway, marine watermakers are mostly operated by electric motors.  But there are hand-cranked and hand-pumped versions sufficient for remaining hydrated for long durations on lifeboats (although you have to crank that damn thing six hours a day to get enough to drink) and several of my cruising buddies have put a belt pulley on their prop shaft to run them off the main motor or by sail power - if you're moving under sail and you don't have a feathering prop, the prop spins and you can get significant power from the prop shaft without running the motor.  Of course it slows down the boat, but these are cruisers, not racers.  If they can take a clean freshwater shower or two on the way,  and have plenty of freshwater to cook with, they don't much care if they get to Cabo a few hours later.

we could also intentionally create the community where there was a strong current. that way we could simply drop a tethered Marine Current Turbine from the bottom of our vessel and get a lot of power that way.

Nifty indeed, but not new. As a biologist, I would like to give credit where credit is due - reverse osmosis was invented by kidneys millions of years ago  :)


I suppose a combination of solar, wind and current, together with cheap filtration devices for water, could start making seasteading seem more sustainable...

How about tidal energy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Iq-h4ShZ8s

we would probably need something that could be dangled from the bottom of the vessel by a tether. idk if you could do that with the turbine from the video but maybe. What ever solution one comes up with it must be mobile. it can be rooted to the sea floor like what we see in the video.

Those big red snakes maybe?
http://youtu.be/fet4bCYvmLw

The thing is all of those are closed sourced patented solutions.

you would probably have to be a little bit too close to the shore. i bet the basic design of the wind turbine i linked up there could be applied to creating a marine turbine.

Uh, marine wind turbines: 

http://www.emarineinc.com/categories/Wind-Turbines/Marine-Wind-Turbines/

These are common and getting more common. Lots of cruisers use them. An alternator hooked up to a propeller blade, what's not to like?

Marine towed generators/turbines:

http://www.wire-wiz.com/id84.html

These provide electrical power from sail (if you're on the ocean) or from current (if you're anchored in a river) or from tides (if you're anchored at the mouth of a bay or tidal lagoon).  I don't use these, and In practical terms I don't like them;  deploying, recovering, and stowing these towed generators is a pain in the tush (especially if you want to recover it without stopping the boat).

I much prefer running a generator off the prop shaft in all of these situations; it's simple and easy and skips all the deploy/recover/stow hassle, and provides more power, if your boat is set up for it.  It's an even bigger win if your boat uses an electric motor; that way you don't even need a generator as a separate machine.  OTOH, with an electric motor you can't just buy fuel and then run the motor for hundreds of miles on a windless day the way you can with an internal combustion motor.

But most sailboats aren't built for that;  to make it practical you have to be getting enough power to overcome the friction where the prop shaft goes through your stuffing box, and there are bad logistical issues involved in getting belts on or off the prop shaft if one ever breaks because without unmounting the motor or unmounting the prop and shaft itself, you can't get a new belt over the shaft.  And in most sailboats you have to crawl around teeny spaces under the lazarette to even get at the part of the prop shaft where you could mount a pulley, so it's a real pain in the ass to install or maintain.  Finally you have to mount a prop that's a bit wider (and causes more drag) than would be necessary just to transmit motor power to the water, and that involves modifications to your skeg and rudder to accomodate the larger size prop.

So setting up your boat to easily and conveniently generate electrical power off the prop shaft involves major, expensive alterations, or a customized boat build.

But there are people who specialize in exactly that:  http://www.electricyacht.com/

You should post some pics of your vessel. ;D

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot:

http://www.emarineinc.com/categories/Solar-Panels/

Solar panels are the rule rather than the exception on modern boats.  At least 70% of the boats you find in any marina will have some of these new high-efficiency panels that are tough enough to walk on, usually either on the deck or on the doghouse.  They're handy, quiet, and very low-maintenance, and they provide enough power to run your critical electronics systems (or if you're rigged with the new LED running lights, can store enough in your batteries to keep your lights running all night). 

That said, they don't provide very much power.  If you want something power-hungry like refrigeration or, god forbid, air conditioning, then you need to have something else.  I sort of hate guys who make noise and stink by running diesel generators at anchor in an otherwise quiet harbor, but if they want to run a refrigerator or an airconditioner, and don't have a big wind generator, that's what they usually wind up doing.

Maybe worth talking battery tech, too. LiFePO4 has finally become widespread in manufacturing, and it's exceptionally well-suited to this kind of application. Costs are falling quickly (they're competitive with LiPO, though not LiCoO2 ["Li-ion"], which is fine given all its drawbacks), and you shouldn't, for years, have issue with going from frequent discharge and recharge. They're relatively safe and have a fairly constant discharge rate (with regards to voltage). They make for some excellent batteries which are relatively new and thus have a lot more room to fall in price.

Things have really advanced quite a bit in this space in the past 5-10 years.

nice addition to the conversation.

i think tidal power is probably not the way to go in open ocean. we are really looking at a combination of wind and solar. you know if you were mostly stationary than you could afford to use wind collection devises that add an amount of drag that would generally be unfeasible on a boat that spent most of its time underway.

i mean i think we all know that we would have to sacrifice some luxuries. it wouldn't be an easy life. it would be a life for freedom junkies who were willing to make some major sacrifices. but there are a couple of things that i dont think anyone would be willing to sacrifice. with a combination of these technologies and effective rationing do you think that you would be able to run some ac and a refrigerator and a couple of electronic devices?

also its important to note that it would be hardest for the forerunners and marginally easier for each additional migrant than the one before. eventually we would start to have a real economy with devision of labor. likely in time entrepreneurs would open power plant barges and sell electricity.

if you're sailing you've got plenty of power from the prop shaft or a towed generator, and no problem with ac or refrigeration.  Your sails generate more power than any windmill. 

When you want to sit still in a bay or a harbor though, and you would prefer not to be hooked up to shore power, the power requirements for either would be a problem.  There's where the big-ass windmill  generator (or a diesel genset) becomes necessary.  And even that is iffy because bays and harbors are subject to only the gentlest breezes, not the kind of wind that generates big power. 

You can bank enough in your battery bank to run a refrigerator for a couple days.  And that's even with old-fashioned lead batteries; I hear the new ones are a lot more power per pound.   Airconditioning draws more than three times as much power as refrigeration but it is, IMO, completely unnecessary because the water mediates the temperature.  Even in the middle of summer when it's breaking 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Fresno, the air out over the Pacific, or in San Francisco Bay, is rarely more than 75 degrees.  I guess it gets hotter in the tropics, but I've never been further south than Acapulco.  Anyway, I'm baffled when people run airconditioners in boats. But they do.

If you told me you wanted to keep a boat cool inside, and I were designing the boat, I would circulate fluid through a metal keel and a network of copper tubing mounted right under the deck.  That would effectively keep the interior of the boat not much warmer than the actual water, which is plenty cold enough for most people, and it would require a hell of a lot less power than an airconditioner.  But I've never heard of a boat that actually does that.  Hmmm, it might cause condensation, which is usually bad for the interior of boats - it can promote mold etc. if not captured.    Then again, condensation is free fresh water if you can capture it effectively.