| Seasteading: The Second to Last Frontier |
|
|
|
| August 2005 | |
| Written by Ben Darrington | |
|
Reclaiming Freedom on the High Seas
Unsettled frontier lands have served throughout history as an outlet for those unsatisfied with present society or their place in it. For enduring the harsh conditions beyond the edges of development, pioneers gained virtually limitless space and freedom to live their lives as they wished. The frontiers were invaluable to the progress of civilization: a source of opportunity, a testing ground for new and unpopular opinions and beliefs, and a check on the oppressive powers of government. True frontiers, however, are all but gone. The unsettled land left on earth is under the thumb of jealous governments that do not take kindly to Puritans or Pilgrims pitching camp on empty plots and governing themselves. Private space travel is still not ready to carry colonists out into the solar system. People set on starting a new life away from the interference of their neighbors are out of luck. Where can political radicals, cultists, and hard-core environmentalists—the modern day equivalents of the persecuted religious groups, dissatisfied poor, and wastrel sons of aristocrats that settled this country—go to find a new home? The answer, according to seasteaders, may be to look beyond land. The oceans are ripe for homesteading. Three quarters of the earth surface is covered by water and is yet unsettled. The opportunities for aquaculture and industry are vast, and government control is limited in international waters. Space may be the final frontier, but right now the oceans are the next one. There have been many attempts to colonize the sea, but very few get beyond the daydreams of potential settlers. Almost all potential ocean colonists suffer from a lack of a carefully crafted business plan and an ignorance of the engineering and law necessary for autonomous life at sea. Hundreds of books and articles have been written with proposals that use technology that does not yet exist and unlikely sources of funding, e.g. the proceeds from John Lennon concerts (who did not know about the project) and using the new settlements, which they planned to build in Antarctica, as a site for international conferences. Most proposals for ocean settlements demand an enormous initial capital investment for an uncertain venture requiring impractical or unproven technology. Who is going to front the 10 billion dollars for a city-sized cruise ship proposed by Freedom Ship International? The few that have actually started construction have found themselves chased off their submerged mountain by the King of Tonga or have had their artificial islands blown up by Italian frogmen. So far sea colonization has been a weak movement, but new plans are in the works from an outfit called the Seasteading Project that may well provide the first effective solution to the problems of living at sea. The project calls its approach to building on water the “birds and fish” approach. Nothing lives right on the surface of the water, it either lives above the water or below it. Eschewing anchored platforms and gigantic ships for their design, the Seasteaders have settled on living platforms suspended above the water on spars that are floated upon and ballasted by underwater floatation hulls. This design avoids the problem of waves by placing the occupied part of the structure above even the tallest waves and presenting very little area for waves to run into. The design also eliminates the problem of bobbing because the structure has little cross-section and little flotation at the level of the water. The plan is ingenious and has many clever features, but so have many other proposals for sea settlements. What may yet distinguish the Seasteading Project from its failed predecessors is its dedication to progress in small steps: working from pool-sized models and supporting background research to create a habitable protected-water module that will be located in the San Francisco Bay area. This may not seem like much, but it is the most advanced program of its kind. Also in contrast to many others that have come before, the project has relatively modest goals for the initial autonomy and extent of participation in the project and calls only for the use of readily available and inexpensive materials and technology. If the project accomplishes its goals, the possibilities are immense: Seasteading has the potential to change the world by drastically lowering the barriers to peacefully creating and dissolving nations. Governments are like businesses in that they provide services to consumers (i.e. the citizens of the nation.) The difference is that existing providers (i.e. the countries of the world) have a monopoly on the industry and the cost of changing providers is prohibitively high. To change credit card companies you have to make some phone calls and maybe fill out a few forms but to change the government you live under you have to leave the home where you grew up, your family, friends, find a new job, sell your old home, and find a new one. It is no wonder few people choose to switch the government they live under. As a result existing governments are inefficient,corrupt, expensive, and apt to occasionally send large numbers of young people to die in foreign countries. Seasteading would provide an easier way for people who do not like their governments to set up new countries at sea where they could make new rules. Mobile ocean settlements would allow these new states to locate in more useful or less contested waters. This means more experimentation and innovation with different social, political, and economic systems and more competition to create efficient government. Certain businesses are perfectly suited to platforms: material industries such as oil and aquaculture can be self-governed and tax-free, and service industries such as casinos, offshore banking, and data havens avoid some of the existing domestic problems with vice laws, copyright restrictions, and government intrusion or revenue-seeking. Just as pariah individuals and groups seek the freedom of the frontier, pariah industries can ply their trade there, taking the benefits as well as the consequences upon themselves. The goals are noble, the means are feasible, and the opportunities immense. Seasteading will not mean utopia but it will mean a distinct improvement over the way things are now. The flexibility, freedom, and opportunity of life at sea and the impact it will no doubt have on terrestrial institutions will mean better technology, better government, and better lives for everyone, not just the few who choose to live on the water. More information on the Seasteading Project, including a draft of their book, is available online at www.seastead.org. Benjamin Darrington is a sophomore in Pierson College. |
|
