An auction usually "starts from". Out of 100 rooms for sale during the auction only 10 were sold. So in every category of cabin you could have purchased at the lowest price. We wanted the auction to catch any problems where someone wants two rooms right next to each other or in front of each other but someone else wants that room. Let the highest bidder have it.
I see your point and I do not doubt your honesty. I just meant the prices quoted are the basis for the auction, so just a lower bound. Had there been more prospective buyers, the final price would have been higher. Possibly much higher.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hard rules about living onboard". You think there would be more rules on a ship run by anarchists than the island that was .5 miles from the ship or on land that was 6 miles from the ship?
It's a ship at any rate. The captain makes the rules, not me (or Elwar, for that matter). And it's not a cruise, where it's important to make the customers happy so they bring more. It's a residential community, and the officials are unelected politicians.
The fact that it's just .5 miles from the shore makes the prospects much milder, but can it stay there? We've seen it can't be taken for granted. And even if it could, then it's Panama (or wherever) laws.
Did people truly think we were putting the ship 200 miles out in middle of international waters with no way to escape?
It could become necessary to do so, at least for some stretch of time. I'm not implying it would be done on purpose, cause it ain't no fun for sure.
If this is what people believed it may have been our marketing that did us in.
Might well be. The idea of living in a monopoly where drinking water has a price determined by scarcity, surrounded by bigger fish (onboard and offboard!
) is scary. If the only money is bitcoin, it's scarier enough for the small fish. One thing bitcoiners understand is the price dynamics of scarcity.
We believed people wanted to test out seasteading even if it was just the first step at a much cheaper price than any seastead in the future will ever ever be again (we paid less than scrap prices for what was essentially a ready made seastead, just the cost of the raw material). All future seasteads will need to pay for not only the raw material but the labor, shipyard costs, government interference, and likely a company that actually wants to make a profit instead of a couple of guys that want to make something happen so much that they're willing to break even as long as we can make something great happen.
That's why I am sympathetic with this project and I always had respect for you. I support you and wish you the best of luck for your next endeavor, should you ever feel like taking on a new one. I couldn't get myself to buy a cabin, though. I was entertaining the thought "I'll have a cruise when the thing takes off"
(if it's not a sausage fest).
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