So, I’m surfing around the net looking for “news” or whatever and come across the Seasteading Institute. I haven’t read every word yet but the gist is that it is a plan to build a community out on the ocean on some sort of platform and live there. Just give the big middle finger to the rest of the land-based world and start their own community. Of course the inevitable comparisons to Bioshock and Atlas Shrugged have already surfaced.

Now, let’s think about this. A floating platform outside of any country’s territory or laws. This allows them to make their own rules about… well… everything. Is this a good idea? Well, I suppose that has more to do with how unhappy you are with the current government/laws than anything else. I can’t help thinking that this is going to end up in the hands of a cat loving megalomaniacal, gray suit wearing, super genius with plans to take over the world.

Honestly, they sound like they have an interesting plan and, to a certain extent, I’m interested. Living on a floating platform without a whole bunch of governmental interference (and taxes) would be pretty great. But really, how long do they have before someone comes over an annexes them? If it really works, how long before someone blows them out of the water? Especially in the US, where class envy is one of the few acceptable forms of bigotry and discrimination, it wouldn’t take much for you to convince the public that those “richies” out there are up to no good and that we need to bomb them back into the stone age. Plus, if it really starts working and taking off with multiple colonies, what’s to stop governments from saying, “Oh, yeah, well all that water is ours too. Now start paying taxes.”

The real problem here is not governments or envy or any of that – it is the basic premise. The premise is that people (at least the ones on these platforms) are inherently good and will act accordingly. But their plan is to have a few permanent residents with most of the space rented out as time shares. While that sounds good in principal (and a much more viable plan then hoping for a few hundred people to completely give up their lives to support this thing), if rental cars have taught us anything it is that people don’t act the same with stuff that is theirs versus stuff that isn’t. They tend to be messier, to be less careful, and, unfortunately, to be more likely to do things like maim, pillage, and destroy. Add in a place where it is perfectly OK to get a prostitute or do your drug du jour, and you’ve got the makings for some very bad scenes.

The Seasteading people are trying to keep this process as open as possible (probably to help with the envy/declare war against you thing). But in order for it to really work IMO, there would have to be some sort of screening process in place. And as soon as you do that, you’ve sown the seeds of resentment and jealousy. So it is either let in the riff-raff and have the colony torn apart from the inside or screen people and have it destroyed from the out. Sorry, guys, I just don’t see how this is going to work.

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