The Seasteading Institute
http://seasteading.org/mission/intro
“The world needs a place where those who wish to experiment with building new societies can go to test out their ideas. All land is already claimed – which makes the oceans humanity’s next frontier.”
I heard the devs say this place was one of their inspirations for the Ark in Brink.
Oh. Mah. Strogg.:eek: We must get ready. Stockpile weapons now to smuggle on our boats that we sail out on in 2025(ish).
:oppressor::stroggtapir::stroggbanana:
[QUOTE=Iur’Tae’Mont;262964]Oh. Mah. Strogg.:eek: We must get ready. Stockpile weapons now to smuggle on our boats that we sail out on in 2025(ish).
:oppressor::stroggtapir::stroggbanana:[/QUOTE]
no need to stockpile weapons, just ammo, plenty of weapons on the battlefield
meh, free running, I’m old and lazy, give me high capacity magazines and an accurate gun, I’ll walk and kill
Fine. Just ruin all of my dreams. 
On a more serious note though, Anyone know what happened to this? All I could find is a plan for setting sail on 2014 and that last October they planned to set out a prototype.
spend a couple million developing and marketing “Utopia” get a billion in investment, take money and run
I knew that they did research. I didn’t realize they had mentioned this site. No surprise, however. I came across it today from a completely different source.
Step 4: Profit.
Wow, that sounds like a horrible idea. Not the floating City, but the concept of using that city as a testing ground for new governments, which seems to their main concern.
[QUOTE=Herandar;263029]Step 4: Profit.
Wow, that sounds like a horrible idea. Not the floating City, but the concept of using that city as a testing ground for new governments, which seems to their main concern.[/QUOTE]
Um, why? It’s meant for people to voluntarily organize themselves around sets of ethics and laws that they feel will produce the most mutually beneficial societies. That’s the entire point of conducting the operation in international waters. What exactly do you have against people living the way they want to , and being more than free to leave if they don’t like the society they’re in?
It’s a shame we need these cities to be floating for such experiments to happen. The fact that they’re on a sea is only symbolic, even just a gimmick.
islands are easier to defend than inland, 100 miles off shore tends to keep the riff-raff out, plus it looks cool
It’s the only place it could really happen. Almost every existing bit of land falls under the jurisdiction of either an established nation-state or international law.
There’s also practical environmental reasons for it. Some believe that if the sea levels actually rise as much as the alarmists predict, land will be all the more valuable and necessary for agriculture.
I saw Patri Friedman (grandson of Milton Friedman, son of David Friedman) speak about the Seatsteading movement a few years back. If it was actually mechanically feasible, a good deal of it makes sense.
it’s mechanically feasible, they build 1000 square meter oil platforms anywhere, it becomes a central support and everything hangs off it. Financially is a whole other question
True, but there are logistic differences between a solitary oil platform and a semi-self sustaining city in the sea. oil platforms are for-profit and the workers are paid to live and work on them, so the risks are assumed and they’re compensated for dealing with fewer amenities than shore life. Seasteading communities would have to prove that life on them is no more naturally dangerous than life on the shore- and also similarly comfortable- in order to be successful.
Also, the cities are supposed to be somewhat modular; Floating cores that people who are interested in gathering to will be able to take their “houseboat” type vessels and attach them to the infrastructure while they live there. The movement would have to get pretty organized to work out that kind of standardization.
I was thinking more in Ark terms, but either way you’d need a large breakwater surrounding the site, but that also supplies a place to put wave powered generators which could along with bio gas from waste, power quite a large community
A new government every month? “Hey everybody! This month we’re going to be religious fundamentalists and try out a theocracy!” Until one or two residents decide they don’t like it, and try one of the tried and true governments–a military dictatorship, say. And seriously, how many more governments are there? Total democracy (everybody votes on every proposal) and Technocracy (computer AI makes the rules) are the only things that really haven’t been tried before, and there is no way that total democracy would work on a large scale. And true AI doesn’t exist except in science fiction.
I suppose peaceful anarchy hasn’t really been tried in modern times really either. But as I realized in junior high, anarchy inevitably leads to someone gaining power either through force or economics, and you’re back to one of the ancient classics. And that I guess, is the basis of my arguments. The problem is people. Sure, 499 residents might want to go along with the floavor of the month scheme, but it’s the one person that doesn’t want to who can bring the entire thing down.
Communism actually works on the small scale. There are self-sustaining communist villages in Israel. When applied to a larger scale, however, human greed and lust for power inevitably messes up the system, and you are left with Bolshevism or Maoism, both of which relied on miltary strength to keep the power within the political elite.
Ahh, international waters. Which means that any country that has a navy can influence the Ark… Unless the Ark has Security forces of a sizable force. Which opens the door to dictatorship, of course, because you can’t have an army where everyone is a general, and a navy where all the sailors are admirals. Someone has to be in command.
Alternatively, this project gets backed the United Nations, and naval protection is provided for by agreed upon countries, which means those particular countries then have more direct influence upon the Ark. Even if they want to seal off all contact with the outside world, the Ark really can not do that.
I have nothing against people living the way they want to, and I think that option is actually available to most people living in most democratic countries already. I know I have already acheived many of my life goals already. I am also free to leave the United States currently, if I wanted to. And it is probably much easier for me to leave the United States that it would be for a hypothetical member of the Ark to leave, since I don’t have to swim a minimum of 200 nautical miles (or is it regular miles? I forget.) to reach another country. Not even going to consider the difficulties that would come up if residents are forced to give up their prior citizenship. There are many scenarios in which it would become nigh-impossible to leave, even if one wanted to. And what of children born on the Ark?
I have nothing against people choosing to live on the Ark. I hope that they are carefully screened, and the whole doesn’t end up failing miserably. I think that there are much better primary functions for such a venture than being a testing ground for governments.
