Does seasteading have a future?

I was pleased to see their title for the column: “Go Wet, Young Man.”  Here is one of the claims:

Counterintuitively, I see the greatest promise for seasteading as a path toward more rather than less human companionship.

…some of the elderly have started living on cruise ships full-time. A good assisted-living facility might cost $80,000 a year in the U.S., more than many year-long cruises. (Cruising could also be cheaper than living in an expensive neighborhood.) Furthermore, the cruise offers regular contact with other passengers and also the crew, and the lower average age means that fewer of one’s friends and acquaintances are passing away. The weather may be better, and there is the option of going onshore to visit relatives and go shopping.

The cruise ship removes the elderly from full-service hospitals, but on the plus side, regular social contact is good for health, passengers are watched much of the time and there is a doctor minutes away. Better health and human companionship could be major motives for this form of seasteading. I could imagine many more of the elderly going this route in the future, and some cruise lines already are offering regular residences on board.

The goal of this seasteading enterprise is to pack people more tightly together rather than to open up broad new vistas for a Wild West kind of settlement. The proprietors make physical space more scarce, not less, to induce better clustering. So seasteading does have a future, but it is to join and build a new and crowded communitarian project, not to get away from one.

Do read the whole thing.

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