stateless seasteaders existed for hundreds of years, we just need to join them

[Anon136]

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.

[Wilikon]

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

[Anon136]

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.

[Wilikon]

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.

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. 

[Anon136]

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.

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.

[Wilikon]

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.

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...

[dank]

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.

[Anon136]

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.

[dank]

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.

[Wilikon]

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? 

[MaxwellsDemon]

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.

[Anon136]

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.

[dank]

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? 

Na it was a little below that I think.

[uranian]

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 

[TheRandomGuy]

This is why Politics & Society board is best board.

[Anon136]

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.

[Wilikon]

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.

[uranian]

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/

About The Institute

The Seasteading Institute is a nonprofit 501(c)(3), working to enable seasteading communities - floating cities - which will allow the next generation of pioneers to test new ideas for government. The most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world.

[Cryddit]

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.

[Anon136]

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. 

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.