Seasteading...

[RandyFolds]

I personally believe that 7 billion is well above the carrying capacity of earth, and the first to innovate and shed complete dependence on farmland will prosper immensely in the end. I could give a rat's ass about the government in the big picture, really.

The counter examples provided are all retarded:

* The moon - is the fucking moon.
* Space in general - might as well be the fucking moon.
* Under the ocean -
* In the middle of the Sahara (yes part of nations, but I don't think anyone would care) - inhospitable
* North or south pole - inhospitable
* Somalia - I like both food and not having my family raped and mutilated in front of me.

This 'absurd logistical nightmare' is the life that millions of people lead already. I don't think you know much about sailing, yachting or boating in general.

[1713307983]

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[PrintCoins]

My suggestions for alternatives were supposed to all not be good ones. I was showing a basket of similar ideas as far as the trouble you would have to go through to exist in them.

Sorry I made the assumption about the independence from the government thing. I thought that was the point. I am interested in how you could effectively use the ocean for food production that would be more effective than lets say in a desert climate.

By the way, I am not too shabby for a novice sailor, thank you very much.

[RandyFolds]

My suggestions for alternatives were supposed to all not be good ones. I was showing a basket of similar ideas as far as the trouble you would have to go through to exist in them.

Sorry I made the assumption about the independence from the government thing. I thought that was the point. I am interested in how you could effectively use the ocean for food production that would be more effective than lets say in a desert climate.

By the way, I am not too shabby for a novice sailor, thank you very much.

Aquaculture.

Seriously though, there are millions of people already who just sail around aimlessly, and plenty of them are flat broke. You know how much it costs to throw an anchor down? Nothin'. We're talking about creating a cooperative doing the same, which would be a lot easier than soloing it.

[Rassah]

Wow, every week the community comes up with some new way to implement or use the technology for more Sci-Fi type things, and seemingly pushes us closer and close to the world of Snowcrash.
Some thoughts:

In another discussion, some people were complaining about lack of government leading to ownership of nukes. I think this idea would be greatly helped by private ownership of such, if not for a privately owned nuclear generator like those on military ships, at least as a source of heat to quickly boil, evaporate, and desalinate sea water. So, another good use for privately owned nukes, but sadly too illegal.

Regarding storing things like meat, why not salt and dry it? Plenty of salt and sunny wind around, usually. Is there a reason that isn't done often on ships? Requires too much drinking water to wash down maybe?

If this is a flotilla community similar to occupy movements, are these boats stable enough to set up stationary bikes hooked up to generators, like they had at the NY protest? It's not much power, but it will keep your electronics charged.

If such a flotilla does happen, do you think there would be much use in "mining" the great garbage patch in the Pacific for raw materials, burnable fuels, or whatever?

As for sat phones, yeah, cheapest option would be to just get satellite broadband for $40 to $60 a month, share over wifi, and use VOIP.

Only major question: where will money come from? Teleworking? Fishing? Harvesting and recycling floating garbage? Rich investor types only? (buying up lots of Bitcoin and making money on skyrocketing deflation?)

[cbeast]

I personally believe that 7 billion is well above the carrying capacity of earth, and the first to innovate and shed complete dependence on farmland will prosper immensely in the end. I could give a rat's ass about the government in the big picture, really.

The counter examples provided are all retarded:

* The moon - is the fucking moon.
* Space in general - might as well be the fucking moon.
* Under the ocean -
* In the middle of the Sahara (yes part of nations, but I don't think anyone would care) - inhospitable
* North or south pole - inhospitable
* Somalia - I like both food and not having my family raped and mutilated in front of me.

This 'absurd logistical nightmare' is the life that millions of people lead already. I don't think you know much about sailing, yachting or boating in general.

Talk about inhospitable. How do you explain New Jersey? It also might as well be the moon.

[Rassah]

Talk about inhospitable. How do you explain New Jersey? It also might as well be the moon.

New Jersey can be forgiven for producing such rough and tumble individuals as Jon Stewart. All we ever got from the moon is some rocks and dim light (and werewolves).

[MoonShadow]

Regarding storing things like meat, why not salt and dry it? Plenty of salt and sunny wind around, usually. Is there a reason that isn't done often on ships? Requires too much drinking water to wash down maybe?

Although salt as a preservative is useful, it's not nearly as reliable as refrigeration and all that salt is a health issue. 

If this is a flotilla community similar to occupy movements, are these boats stable enough to set up stationary bikes hooked up to generators, like they had at the NY protest? It's not much power, but it will keep your electronics charged.

I was using those links as an example as to how I got to my idea, don't let them limit the concept.  Cats are pretty stable, but there are better ways to generate power on a boat.  Solar cells are obvious, but there are also little turbines that you can get for a sailboat that generate charging power from the passing flow while underway, at the cost of some extra drag.  There are also little wind turbines.

If such a flotilla does happen, do you think there would be much use in "mining" the great garbage patch in the Pacific for raw materials, burnable fuels, or whatever?

No, because most of that is very dispersed, and would require huge fishing nets to get.  And all that you would be left with is plastic.  Everything else eventually rots.

As for sat phones, yeah, cheapest option would be to just get satellite broadband for $40 to $60 a month, share over wifi, and use VOIP.

Only major question: where will money come from? Teleworking? Fishing? Harvesting and recycling floating garbage? Rich investor types only? (buying up lots of Bitcoin and making money on skyrocketing deflation?)

Obviously you didn't read the thread.  Money comes from selling infrastructure services to some yacht owners on the move, many of whom are pensioners trying to save living money while seeing the world in retirement; among other sources.

[PrintCoins]

I personally believe that 7 billion is well above the carrying capacity of earth, and the first to innovate and shed complete dependence on farmland will prosper immensely in the end. I could give a rat's ass about the government in the big picture, really.

The counter examples provided are all retarded:

* The moon - is the fucking moon.
* Space in general - might as well be the fucking moon.
* Under the ocean -
* In the middle of the Sahara (yes part of nations, but I don't think anyone would care) - inhospitable
* North or south pole - inhospitable
* Somalia - I like both food and not having my family raped and mutilated in front of me.

This 'absurd logistical nightmare' is the life that millions of people lead already. I don't think you know much about sailing, yachting or boating in general.

Talk about inhospitable. How do you explain New Jersey? It also might as well be the moon.

(New Jersey native)
New Jersey has a bad reputation, but it has a wide variety of wilderness, farmland and mountains outside of the areas that most people tend to see (unfortunately most just see Newark airport, which is as bad as can be found in NJ). Don't just accept the general accepted limited view of NJ. You will miss out on a lot.

[Rassah]

Only major question: where will money come from? Teleworking? Fishing? Harvesting and recycling floating garbage? Rich investor types only? (buying up lots of Bitcoin and making money on skyrocketing deflation?)

Obviously you didn't read the thread.  Money comes from selling infrastructure services to some yacht owners on the move, many of whom are pensioners trying to save living money while seeing the world in retirement; among other sources.

Sorry, I was thinking more ahead as a means for people to permanently exist as part of this flotilla, not as just a business venture for a "mother ship"

[RandyFolds]

Only major question: where will money come from? Teleworking? Fishing? Harvesting and recycling floating garbage? Rich investor types only? (buying up lots of Bitcoin and making money on skyrocketing deflation?)

Obviously you didn't read the thread.  Money comes from selling infrastructure services to some yacht owners on the move, many of whom are pensioners trying to save living money while seeing the world in retirement; among other sources.

Sorry, I was thinking more ahead as a means for people to permanently exist as part of this flotilla, not as just a business venture for a "mother ship"

Gotta start somewhere

One misconception about the ocean is that there is stuff in it. That really isn't the case once you are away from the coast, save for migratory species and huge pelagic predators which are only there because they are on their way to a coast.

Places like the Sargasso Sea are damn near devoid of higher life, and are so far from anything that it is impractical to think of them as a garbage dump you can pick through.

[SistaS0uljah]

I'm delighted to find this topic being discussed here, and surprised that no one has yet posted any links to http://seasteading.org.  A group of seasteading enthusiasts has for the past three years built a flotilla of boats and improvised floating art projects as http://ephemerisle.org.  We simply put together a prototype seastead in the middle of the Sacramento River Delta and live on it for the better part of a week.  Not all of us are experienced mariners, so it is helpful to have seasoned sailors on the crew, but every year we learn more about properly anchoring in the location, checking tide tables so we're not caught unprepared, and learning how best to tie up a bunch of boats into a floating "village."  The next Ephemerisle will be born on June 6, 2012 and dismantled on June 10, 2012, and everyone is welcome to attend.  It is an experiment in radical self-reliance and, like Burning Man, you pretty much have to fend for yourself, so be prepared to exercise your freedom AND take responsibility for yourself.  A French television crew joined us for a few days last year, and the final program has been posted online at http://vimeo.com/32372015.  The Ephemerisle segment is the last part of the program.

Of course, practical seasteading, as envisioned by TSI, goes far beyond putting together a flotilla of boats on the ocean.  The Seasteading Institute does research into the technology of establishing floating platforms that could become self-sustaining communities that would be able to weather storms, produce marketable goods and services and experiment with novel forms of social organization. 

Getting to that level will require a lot of hard work, trial and error and small incremental projects building upon one another.  The first step is "shipsteading," taking existing technology and adapting it to a semi-permanent floating community or business enterprise.  The first commercial shipsteading venture has just been launched this year in the form of http://blueseed.co. This project has generated a huge amount of press in the past two months since they began raising venture capital, and the core founders of BlueSeed were all at last month's Bitcoin meetup at Google, so bitcoin is definitely on the table as a business opportunity they are interested in pursuing.

Ultimately, marine engineers advise building semi-submersible structures on the template of offshore oil platforms, which are proven to be durable and reliable under the most challenging of conditions, albeit an astonishingly expensive endeavor.  But this is not a short-term project.  Those of us invested in the seasteading concept are in it for the long term.  This is a vision that we believe is not only possible, but inevitable.  As governments become increasingly repressive of human liberty, it has become clear that land-based governments are sinking, and the only practical alternative is for humans to return to the sea from which our species originated.

[racerguy]

there's plenty of 'islands' out there that are just a few metres below sea level, I wonder how much it would cost to build your own island on top of one such 'island'.

[MoonShadow]

there's plenty of 'islands' out there that are just a few metres below sea level, I wonder how much it would cost to build your own island on top of one such 'island'.

Well, most of those are either within the coastal space of an existing nation, too unstable to form a foundation, or both.

[RandyFolds]

there's plenty of 'islands' out there that are just a few metres below sea level, I wonder how much it would cost to build your own island on top of one such 'island'.

Well, most of those are either within the coastal space of an existing nation, too unstable to form a foundation, or both.

There are a fair amount of US controlled uninhabited islands (read: bird shit covered rocks in the middle of nowhere), many of which you could probably squat on without ramification. No one has really cared about them since WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Guano_Island_claims

side note about submerged islands: look up Cortez Bank off of San Diego...you don't want to live where 120ft swells pile up...

[bb113]

As governments become increasingly repressive of human liberty, it has become clear that land-based governments are sinking, and the only practical alternative is for humans to return to the sea from which our species originated.

Awesome. What about farming?

[silverfuture]

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678720/former-seasteaders-come-ashore-to-start-libertarian-utopias-in-honduran-jungle

I'm a bit of a landlubber myself although I do appreciate the idea of seasteading.

[Rassah]

As governments become increasingly repressive of human liberty, it has become clear that land-based governments are sinking, and the only practical alternative is for humans to return to the sea from which our species originated.

Awesome. What about farming?

How much farming does Japan do?  (hint, not much)

[SistaS0uljah]

As governments become increasingly repressive of human liberty, it has become clear that land-based governments are sinking, and the only practical alternative is for humans to return to the sea from which our species originated.

Awesome. What about farming?

Aquaculture is a major area of study for TSI.  In fact, one of the architects of an aquaculture business plan will be presenting a detailed talk at the next Seasteading meetup in Millbrae, California on Tuesday, December 20, 2011.  See http://www.meetup.com/sfbay-seasteading/ for details.

[bb113]

I see, seems like you guys have it together. A fascinating idea.

[MoonShadow]

I see, seems like you guys have it together. A fascinating idea.

Actually, the Lifeboats idea doesn't even use aquaculture.  They intend to use hydoponics.