The seasteading idea makes me wonder how much it would cost to run an actual state (with a military/sufficient protection) based on distributed platforms/boats. Assuming said state could negotiate deals with ports around the world, it doesn’t seem that absurd. A few billion, maybe?
There is something of a historical basis for this, although of course without the tech and still based primarily on land. It’s called a thalassocracy.
The Hanseatic League was something of a similar phenomenon and actually not completely alien to what I’m proposing. As were a lot of pirate Freeport-type cities in the 1600s Caribbean. Medieval/Renaissance Venice probably counts too.
A better example would be the Phoenicians, who were a thalassocratic civilisation based around all edges of the Mediterranean Sea (North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe) who (IIRC, not a historian) were predominantly traders.
If I were to guess at how seasteaders would make money? Bringing things to you that you'd normally have to travel for (or are illegal) and pay a lot of money - medical and cosmetic tourism, gambling, that sort of thing.
Finance? Crypto? Just software in general? Development of technologies that are somehow hampered by regulations in larger states, but not ethically questionable enough to get invaded over. Or, said research could itself be funded by a larger state.
The last one is a plot point in a Ghost in the Shell episode, if I remember correctly.
> Development of technologies that are somehow hampered by regulations in larger states
What's actually on that list though? That you can't find somewhere with actual land that's will allow it so you don't have to build the entire infrastructure from the ground up where you could also put this lab.
I think genetically modifying human embryos (think “designer baby clinic”) could plausibly fall in this category. Rich people (and their surrogates?) show up, get baby IVF’d and then go back to their home countries. Potential clientele, small high tech industry, not quite distasteful enough to attract a cruise missile or two.
Maybe the initial experimentation where we have to figure out the actual genes to tweak for these things but once that's through I think it'll be quietly everywhere.
> Development of technologies that are somehow hampered by regulations in larger states, but not ethically questionable enough to get invaded over.
If its that consistently regulated, there's likely to be sufficient will to come up with an excuse to take action against a vulnerable violator. And a nation of boats doesn’t need to be invaded, they just need powerful nations to impose sanctions (including second-order ones on trade partners) on them.
Not if the larger states want to benefit from the research without legalizing it themselves.
E.g. Guantanamo for research. Or Project Paperclip.
The criticism that smaller states will just get invaded makes no geopolitical sense. If that were the case, the entire world would be divided into 3 countries.
> Not if the larger states want to benefit from the research without legalizing it themselves.
If the larger states wants to benefit from research without legalizing it...they’ll just do it covertly, without legalizing it. The reason to not want to legalize it is to prevent other people from exploiting it, which is definitely going to extend to anti-authoritsrian seasteaders and their other potential customers.
And if they did want to tolerate an external third-party for deniable benefit doing something the major state felt the need to keep illegal...well, historically (even when the minor partner has the resources of a traditional nation-state) that’s often a transitory relationship that ends poorly for the minor party. Ask Manuel Noriega—or Saddam Hussein—about it sometime.
> Guantanamo for research. Or Project Paperclip.
Yeah, Guatanamo-for-Anything and Operation Paperclip are the kinds of things states (even if they involve things the state wants to pretend to prohibit) really want to keep tight, direct control over.
You are labeling all SeaSteaders with the anti-authoritarian libertarian types. This is not what my comment stated.
Right now, states use each other to circumvent domestic laws. It really doesn’t seem far fetched that a larger state would allow a smaller one to exist if it were geopolitically/economically/etc. in its (the larger state) interest. If anything, it’s more likely, because they can be more easily controlled.
“Sure, we won’t invade your scientific seasteading research nation, as long as you share the results with us. “
Building the boats probably requires substantially more of a land presence than in former times. Relying on another party to supply the primary offensive and defensive weapon system, or most of the core components, might not work out.
> The seasteading idea makes me wonder how much it would cost to run an actual state (with a military/sufficient protection) based on distributed platforms/boats. Assuming said state could negotiate deals with ports around the world, it doesn’t seem that absurd. A few billion, maybe?
What's the budget of the US Navy? A seasteading "nation" would be eminently vulnerable to military attack unless it dominated the seas militarily to an absurd degree. It only takes a couple cruise missile or torpedo hits to sink a ship (and destroy a seastead), but you can't destroy a land based nation that easily.
Why would a seasteading nation be inherently more vulnerable than a preexisting tiny nation?
Couldn't the same bilateral relationships with large states be developed by the former that afford the same level of protection that's currently enjoyed by the latter? And if you think not, how is that not merely a failure of imagination?
These will not be anarchist communes, that's not what right-libertarians want. There will be a minimal government, funds for self defense, and so on.
> Why would a seasteading nation be inherently more vulnerable than a preexisting tiny nation?
Like I said, you can sink a ship with one or two missiles, but you can't sink even a small island with any number.
> Couldn't the same bilateral relationships with large states be developed by the former that afford the same level of protection that's currently enjoyed by the latter? And if you think not, how is that not merely a failure of imagination?
Because the whole point of seasteading is to not follow those nations' rules. Why would they offer military protection to a seastead that's trying to undermine them? The need for such protection also reveals the fundamentally contradictory and parasitic and nature of seasteading.
"Because the whole point of seasteading is to not follow those nations' rules."
There are many small tax havens out there with no self defence forces that don't get invaded. Why would a seastead necessarily not be able to enter into the same category as these?
Just with a little bit of imagination - the seastead island could be build next to a small/medium sized poorer country with some existing naval presence and come to some agreement with them to be a special economic zone of sorts, but with its own autonomous government. The agreement could be set up so as to be economically enticing to that country, while satisfying the seastead's need for self defence, and therefore be a win-win situation that goes ahead. The seastead could pay some tax money to this country for that purpose (right-libertarians usually believe in publicly funded defense).
This is not a perfect situation for the seastead. They're at the whims of that single country and whomever rises to power next. But it working out seems entirely plausible to me if the agreement is legitimately win-win. Especially in the context of having five distinct islands set up and allowing them to compete for citizens - even if one collapses, the ones that had better agreements with their neighbors will survive and grow.
It's not guaranteed to work, there are a number of failure modes I can think of (along with possible ways to remedy those) - such as the US pressuring the small country that's helping the seastead, but it's not as doomed to fail as others are making out, in my view.
> but you can't sink even a small island with any number.
Most countries on Earth could murder everyone on small inhabited islands perfectly fine with their current armaments while having zero casualties themselves.
It's frankly quite disturbing how many people dream of seasteaders being slaughtered without consequence while the world cheers it on, people simply trying to opt out of modern societies don't deserve this level of vitriol.
Pre-existing tiny nations are grandfathered into the international legal system thanks to, well, their pre-existence. Also, almost all of them are either (1) already bowing to the will of their bigger neighbors (e.g., all Caribbean micro-nations and the US, Georgia and Russia), or (2) in the middle of nowhere that nobody cares about (e.g., Nauru), or maybe both.
If any "seastead" gains traction and it becomes enough of a problem to, say, the US, nobody would even need any missiles. The US will simply declare it being illegal (for everyone) to do any business with these people. I hope the seasteaders have experience in subsistence fishing - they will need it.
There is something of a historical basis for this, although of course without the tech and still based primarily on land. It’s called a thalassocracy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassocracy
The Hanseatic League was something of a similar phenomenon and actually not completely alien to what I’m proposing. As were a lot of pirate Freeport-type cities in the 1600s Caribbean. Medieval/Renaissance Venice probably counts too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League
In any case, the idea is fascinating and I applaud them for even considering it.