Results for “seasteading” 24 found
Seasteading is Making Progress
Seasteading, the once quixotic idea of Patri Friedman and early funder Peter Thiel, is now taking shape in French Polynesia writes David Gelles in the New York Times:
Long the stuff of science fiction, so-called “seasteading” has in recent years matured from pure fantasy into something approaching reality, and there are now companies, academics, architects and even a government working together on a prototype by 2020.
…Earlier this year, the government of French Polynesia agreed to let the Seasteading Institute begin testing in its waters. Construction could begin soon, and the first floating buildings — the nucleus of a city — might be inhabitable in just a few years.
“If you could have a floating city, it would essentially be a start-up country,” said Joe Quirk, president of the Seasteading Institute. “We can create a huge diversity of governments for a huge diversity of people.”
The future is hard to predict but I am eager to see greater experimentation in city governing rules.
Addendum: I have been a minor adviser.
Update on seasteading in French Polynesia
From Emma Harris:
But the Seasteading Institute and the new for-profit spin-off, Blue Frontiers, have racked up some real-world achievements in the past year. They signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of French Polynesia in January that lays the groundwork for the construction of their prototype. And they gained momentum from a conference of interested parties in Tahiti in May, which hundreds of people attended. The project’s focus has shifted from building a libertarian oasis to hosting experiments in governance styles and showcasing a smorgasbord of sustainable technologies for, among other things, desalination, renewable energy and floating food-production. The shift has brought some gravitas to the undertaking, and some ecologists have taken interest in the possibilities of full-time floating laboratories.
…The next step in making the island a reality will be the passage of a law defining the ‘special economic zone’ that will cover the synthetic island. Blue Frontiers isn’t asking French Polynesia for any subsidies to build the island, but it is asking for a 0% tax rate, among other regulatory exceptions. It has hired French firm GB2A, based in Paris, to prepare legal research and a set of requests, which Blue Frontiers presented to the government at the end of September. The team hopes to see a bill emerge before the end of the year.
In the meantime, the Seasteading Institute is building excitement and courting potential investors with a series of gatherings. In May, it held talks, networking events and tours in Tahiti. Speakers included Fritch; Tony Hsieh, chief executive of online retailer Zappos in Las Vegas, Nevada; Tua Pittman, a master canoe navigator from the Cook Islands; and engineers, nanotechnologists and a ‘blockchain strategist’, a specialist in the distributed information systems behind cryptocurrencies. The seasteaders hope to use such systems to handle their financials, as well as any scientific data that they generate. But the event wasn’t all work. An announcement for a party on outrigger canoes cheerfully suggested: “Do not wear heels. Bring a swimsuit for an optional moonlight swim.”
On 22–29 October, Blue Frontiers will hold an Insiders Access Week for supporters and potential investors, a mix of tours, discussion and morning yoga with Hencken. Always ambitious, the team hopes to have draft legislation from the Polynesian government by then, and some detailed architectural plans. The goal is to break ground — or rather, sea — in 2018.
In the Nature article there is much, much more.
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
Seasteading Deal with French Polynesia
The Seasteading Institute has signed an MOU with French Polynesia.
[French Polynesian and the Seasteading Institute will].. pool their efforts for the implementation of a pilot project
for floating islands in French Polynesia. The development of this project involves various studies addressing the technical and legal feasibility of the project in French Polynesia as well as the preparation of the special governing framework allowing the creation of the Floating Island Project located in an innovative special economic zone…..
The Floating Island Project will develop innovative and sustainable floating platforms. It will promote the development of new technologies in the terrestrial Anchor Zone and in the Floating Islands Zone. The Floating Island Project will respect the environmental standards defined by French Polynesia. It will use renewable energies. It will welcome the development of innovative technologies for the protection of the environment. It will not be interested in any land or ocean mineral resource. The platforms aim to attract direct and indirect investments in French Polynesia and host numerous businesses and research projects. The project will allow international experts to collaborate in French Polynesia to develop platforms capable of minimizing the effects of rising sea levels. It will have to have a favorable and significant impact on the local economy with the establishment of a special economic zone that will facilitate the creation and management of companies.
The focus of the project is on building new communities to deal with rising sea levels but will also include a special governing framework to allow for greater experimentation with the rules of social organization. The technology, of course, my also scale.
Peter Thiel was an early backer of the Seasteading idea, although he is no longer involved. More than one of his unlikely bets has paid off recently.
Here are previous MR posts on Seasteading from both Tyler and myself.
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.
Seasteading
First, I agree with Will Wilkinson that a seasteading community would likely evolve back to non-libertarian political visions.
Second and more fundamentally, I am for the seasteading idea. There are today many oil derricks, owned and run by energyl companies. There are many cruise ships, with more or less autonomous legal governance. More and bigger cruise ships would be better and if some of them moved more slowly that would be fine too. But when I step on to a cruise ship (well, actually that's the sort of thing I don't do; personally I hate cruise ships), I don't feel I am moving from an inferior political order to a superior political order.
I've wondered whether I should retire on to a cruise ship of the future, but I'm not attracted per se by the "politics" I would get there. I would expect more freedom in the Lockean sense but less of the positive freedom that comes from living in a larger, more diverse, and yes also a more stupid society. I wouldn't live on the Mensa cruise ship either. I'll take some of the stupidity of modern society (the landlubbing version) to get the diversity and the greater number of open niche spaces and free possibilities.
On a smaller scale, I live under different kinds of corporate, non-profit and university governance all the time. That's great, but I don't view their totalized extension as my preferred utopian path.
I'd like people to be smarter, more thoughtful, more tolerant, and more loving of liberty, yet in ways which do not drain away the diversity of the United States, which I feel is the best available foundation to build upon. No matter how good a seasteading charter may sound, any given venture just can't be that credible until it has succeeded for a very long time. History and precedent matter and by the way have you checked in on Estonia lately?
Addendum: Here is Alex on seasteading.
Seasteading
A small but passionate minority is deeply dissatisfied
with current political systems. These people seek the autonomy to live
under and experiment with different political, social, and economic systems
than currently exist. It is this search for sovereignty, for the freedom of
self-government, which is the fundamental motivation for seasteading.
That’s Patri Friedman (son of David, son of Milton) and Wayne Gramlich in their seasteading manifesto. In interesting news, The Seasteading Institute has secured funding of $500,000 from PayPal founder Peter Thiel to help make the idea a reality.
Long-term trends are somewhat favorable for seasteading because with a cell phone and internet access more and more people could live on a seastead and make a living. Cruise ships are already floating cities with few regulations or taxes. Harold Berman argues that the rise of the West was due to competitive law. Homeowner’s organizations, hotels and condos are private governments (for more see my edited book The Voluntary City.).
Competitive law appears to increase efficiency but it’s less clear that competition among governments gives rise to a libertarian world. Homeowner associations, for example, often impose stricter zoning regulations than cities. You could say that the system as a whole is more libertarian, but no one lives in the system as a whole.
Maybe liberty comes not from choice of government but from forcing people who are unlike to live together. Isn’t the real reason the First Amendment has any force not that people agree on the value of freedom of speech but rather that they disagree on who they want to shut up? Is religious freedom a product of agreement on the value of religious freedom or is it a product of disagreement on who is going to hell?
Still I hope for the best and congratulate Patri. Seasteading has come a long way.
Which countries will win the AI race?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and I mean this above and beyond whichever countries make and sell AI services. Here is one bit:
Broadly speaking, most economic endeavors fall into one of two categories: those with known routines, and new projects. AI will favor nations that excel at the latter and hurt those which rely on the former.
Most activity falls into the routinized category — it describes a lot of bureaucracies, attempts at medical diagnosis, back-office work, and so on. To be clear, this is not a criticism: Routinizing activities lowers their costs. New projects — startups, attempts to build new towns or cities, trying to establish a colony on Mars, founding a new university — are different…
So to the extent a country specializes in providing routine activities, such as the call centers and back-office support provided by firms in India and the Philippines, AI presents a risk. It could take away many of those jobs and shift the associated profits to foreign firms…
In contrast, consider new projects. Current AI models are not anywhere close to being able to conceptualize a new idea, communicate the new vision, assemble and inspire the necessary talent, raise money and deal with the corporate politics — to name just a few important components of new projects. So AI cannot substitute for the essential creative forces of entrepreneurs.
That said, AI makes many new projects easier to pull off by aiding with the routine work along the way. Say you have a brilliant new idea for a fintech firm, but need help with the slide deck and marketing copy and all the email inquiries. AI will be of use to you.
So countries and regions that are good at executing new projects are the most likely to benefit from the AI revolution. Which countries might those be?
One possible candidate is China, which has successfully carried out a large number of infrastructure projects. But there is a tension between free-flowing commercial AI and the Chinese government’s policy of censorship. What if someone asks the AI some political questions that the regime is not so keen to see discussed? Exactly how much will the Chinese government allow or encourage decentralized access to quality AI models?
India is another possible winner, even though it is vulnerable in the area of back-office support. Indian infrastructure has improved by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, a sign the nation now has greater ability to pull off new projects. The Indian Aadhaar program, which has done bio-scans of well over 1 billion Indians and helped them make and receive payments, was a major new project that largely succeeded. India has some censorship issues as well, although they are not as serious as China’s.
Saudi Arabia is planning some major projects, such as the ambitious desert city of Neom. Perhaps the Saudis will need yet further technological advances to pull off those plans, but at least they are trying to make some significant changes. They are possibly a big winner from AI advances.
Recommended, I consider other countries as well.
*Crack-Up Capitalism*
That is the new book by Quinn Slobodian. Slobodian is very smart, and knows a lot, but…I don’t know. I fear he is continuing to move in the Nancy McLean direction with this work.
This is a tale of how libertarian and libertarian-adjacent movements have embraced various anti-democratic and non-democratic positions. So you can read about seasteading, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Hong Kong as a charter city, and “decentralization” plans for Ciskei, South Africa.
You won’t hear about the highly successful SEZ reforms for the Dominican Republic, or how the European Union was partly rooted in Hayek’s postwar piece on interstate federalism. In that essay, Hayek was explicit about how much would be done by treaty, rather than direct vote, and that is (mostly) how the European Union has turned out. With reasonable success, I might add. Do only the nuttier episodes of “less democracy” count?
Question one: Is the word “plutocratic” ever illuminating?
Question two: Is this a useful descriptive sentence for Milton Friedman? “He [Patri] had a famous grandfather, perhaps the century’s most notorious economist, both lionized and reviled for his role in offering intellectual scaffolding for ever more radical forms of capitalism and his sideline in advising dictators: Milton Friedman. The two shared a basic lack of commitment to democracy.”
Here is a YouTube clip of Friedman on democracy. Or I asked davinci-003 and received:
Yes, Milton Friedman did believe in democracy. He was an advocate of democracy and free markets, believing that economic freedom would advance both economic and political freedom. He argued that government should be limited in size and scope and that the free market should be allowed to operate with minimal interference.
Or how about engaging with the academic literature on Friedman’s visit to Chile? And more here. Was Friedman, who was elected president of the American Economic Association and won an early Nobel Prize, really “notorious”?
There is valuable content in this book, but it needs to cut way back on the mood affiliation.
Thursday assorted links
1. Most common dream by country (speculative).
2. Atif Mian on Pakistan’s desperate economic situation.
3. David Wallace-Wells on where we stand with Covid (NYT).
4. Officials to reorganize the federal health department, currently hard to assess but surely no response to pandemic failures was a mistake. CDC to lose some power.
5. Thomas Edsall on the feminization of U.S. politics (NYT). Important, recommended.
6. Thailand not happy about seasteading.
7. Russ Roberts on marriage, rationality, and Darwin, and also his new book (NYT).
*Adventure Capitalism*
The author is Raymond B. Craib and the subtitle is A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age. This is really two books in one. The first is a quite useful and well-researched history of various libertarian attempts to ease the costs of political exit, or sometimes to obtain exit altogether. He is well-informed about the 1972 Michael Oliver attempt to set up the libertarian “Isle of Minerva,” nearby to Tonga. The King of Tonga nixed it, but even Rothbard and Tuccille mocked it. And remember Jimmy Stevens and the Phoenix Foundation and their plans near New Caledonia? This stuff was never the libertarian mainstream, or close to it, but it dominates this book (that said it is a fascinating story and well-researched).
Nonetheless these odd goings-on are treated as “the history of libertarian exit” when in fact plenty of other plans were afoot, how about say free movement within the European Union? The dismantling of capital controls? Fighting to have the Berlin Wall come down?
The narrative then continues through seasteading, charter cities, Balaji, and so on.
The second book contained herein is simply a use of smear terms and sneering, Nancy MacLean style, to indicate that these various ventures are bad, playthings of the evil wealthy, anti-democratic, even loose affiliates of these ventures were bad people, and so on. Usually there is not even an argument, rather it is assumed that somehow the reader is on board with an anti-exit perspective. In this regard the author is simply a defective thinker.
I’ll leave the final evaluation up to you.
Friday assorted links
1. The rate of draws is not going up in chess, even though play is improving and likely the perfectly played game is a forced draw (model this). And Noah Feldman on game theory in the Middle East, the Saudis and Kushner too.
3. A claim that India is becoming a minoritarian dystopia.
4. Diamonds embedded in the human being are the new trend in engagement rings.
5. The academic who defended colonialism. Good piece.
6. I did a short podcast with the new Institute for Innovative Governance Research about…innovative governance, starting with charter cities and seasteading but also going beyond that. Here is an associated essay by Mark Lutter.
My Conversation with Andy Weir
Andy was great, here is the text and audio, here is the introductory summary:
Before writing a single word of his new book Artemis, Andy Weir worked out the economics of a lunar colony. Without the economics, how could the story hew to the hard sci-fi style Weir cornered the market on with The Martian? And, more importantly, how else can Tyler find out much a Cantonese meal would run him on the moon?
In addition to these important questions of lunar economics, Andy and Tyler talk about the technophobic trend in science fiction, private space efforts, seasteading, cryptocurrencies, the value of a human life, the outdated Outer Space Treaty, stories based on rebellion vs. cooperation, Heinlein, Asimov, Weir’s favorite episode of Star Trek, and the formula for finding someone else when stranded on a lonely planet.
My favorite part was this, which Andy answered with no hesitation:
COWEN: What if there were two immortal people, let’s say it’s the two of us, placed on opposite sides of the Earth, an Earth-like planet, and we can wander freely with no constraints but just foot speed. How long does it take us to find each other?
WEIR: Can we collude in advance in any way?
COWEN: No, we cannot.
WEIR: OK.
COWEN: But we know we’re trying to find each other.
WEIR: We know we’re trying to find each other. Well, we should both — but can we have a — are we both rational actors and we —
COWEN: We’re as rational as you and I are; take that as you wish.
WEIR: So, no?
[laughter]
COWEN: No.
WEIR: I think the best thing to do would be for both of us to pick an arbitrary great circle to walk, around the planet, and leave markings along the way denoting what direction you’re walking. So I would arbitrarily pick a direction to go and I would just go that direction with the intention of circumnavigating the entire globe, and I would walk at maybe half what is a comfortable speed for me. And you would do the same thing. Now, somewhere, our two — in fact, in two points — our great circles will intersect.
COWEN: Right.
WEIR: And when one of us reaches the other one’s, then they start following the markers at full speed, and then you get the guy. Right?
COWEN: And what’s your best guess as to how long that would take?
WEIR: Well, if you pick two points, I’m guessing one of us would have to walk probably about a quarter of the way around the planet before we found the other one’s great circle. And then you’d have to walk again. So in terms of circumnavigation times, it would take you 2x to get all the way around the planet, because my initial plan was you’d walk half-speed. So I’m guessing it would be a quarter of that, so one-half x to get to your great circle, and then a quarter x to find you along your great circle, on average, I’m guessing. So one-half plus a quarter, so .75x. So three-quarters of the time that it would take to circumnavigate the planet.
COWEN: OK, great answer.
WEIR: That’s my guess.
Do read/listen to the whole thing…
Your Next Government
Google is building a small city within Toronto:
Toronto has about 800 acres of waterfront property awaiting redevelopment, a huge and prime stretch of land that amounts to one of the best opportunities in North America to rethink at scale how housing, streets and infrastructure are built. On Tuesday the government and the group overseeing the land announced that they were partnering with an Alphabet subsidiary, Sidewalk Labs, to develop the site.
Not to be outdone, Bill Gates is thinking even bigger, a 25,000 acre site for a new city near Phoenix that might take advantage of Arizona’s forward thinking rules on self-driving cars.
All over the world, we can see the beginnings of a move from nation-states to smaller, more decentralized and agile communities such as common interest developments, special economic zones and proprietary cities. Your Next Govenment is Tom W. Bell’s primer on this coming revolution. If you want to find out the latest on the Honduran Zede or the Polynesian seasteading project, both of which Bell has been involved with, YNG is your first stop. Bell also covers the history of these movements from Henry Ford’s failed Brazilian city, Fordlandia, to the use of special economic zones and foreign trade zones in the United States.
For anyone starting such a community, Bell has up-to-date recommendations on the principles of governance including how to adopt an appropriate legal code.
Recommended.
Monday assorted links
Thursday assorted links
1. Good short essay on Prince and Nikki.
3. Interviewing some guy about music none of you like.
4. More on seasteading and French Polynesia.
5. Will the underhand free throw make a comeback? Why the stickiness on that one?