Seasteading

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Seasteading

• Mission Possible Creating New Sovereign
  Territory in Ocean Waters
• By Patri Friedman

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What is Seasteading

• Definition To Homestead The Oceans
• Term coined by Wayne Gramlich
• (Also refers to our specific project/approach)

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Two-Part Talk

• Why to build seasteads
• Why build them at all
• Why build them our way
• How to build seasteads
• Environment, Structure, Infrastructure,
  Strategy/Business

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The Book

• Seasteading A Practical Guide to Homesteading
  the High Seas
• Currently in draft form
• Available online at http//seastead.org/
• Commenting system
• Will be self-published real soon now

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Why Build Seasteads?

• Open the next frontier - reduce overcrowding and
  the conflicts that result.
• Dry (?wet?) run for settling space.
• Make more of the earths surface productive -
  food, energy.
• Make governments more responsive and efficient.

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Exponential Growth of Wealth
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Why Is Govt. Inefficient?

• Public Choice Theory
• Rational Ignorance
• Concentrated vs. Dispersed Interests
• Alternate View Government as an industry
• People are people - so blame the system!
• Rhetoric is not enough

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The Governing Industry

• Citizens pay taxes in return for government
  services
• Each government has a monopoly over one
  geographic area
• Citizens can switch providers by moving to
  another country
• Two features make it horribly uncompetitive

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The Governing Industry
High Cost of Switching Providers

• In order to change service providers, you must
• Leave job (get another)
• Sell House (get another)
• Pack possessions (move them)
• Apply for citizenship
• Cost is ENORMOUS!
• Results
• Poor market feedback
• Exploitation, not innovation.

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The Governing Industry
Huge Barrier to Entry

• Consider cost/difficulty of Iraq regime change
• Cant start fresh because all land is claimed
• Need to win an election or a revolution
• Results
• Oligopolistic market with few firms
• Limited competition

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The Governing Industry
Is Not Very Competive!

• Hard for new competitors to enter the market
• Hard for customers to switch between few existing
  firms
• Imagine if it cost 25,000 to switch phone
  providers, and the FCC charged 100 billion for a
  new license
• Governments suck because of the industry structure

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Government on Floating Cities

• Low barrier to entry
• Buy Land, Theyve Stopped Making It becomes
  false.
• Build new territory.
• Dont have to win an election or fight a
  revolution to have a new country.
• Build piece by piece as necessary.

• Low cost to switch
• Territory can be dynamically re-arranged
• Entire buildings can move between political
  jurisdictions (the ultimate federalism)
• Easy to leave means hard to exploit
• Re-enable Federalism

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Result Government Becomes a Competitive Industry

• On land we have a small number of large, static
  service providers who poorly serve customers
• On the ocean, we will get a large number of
  small, dynamic, innovative firms competing
• Competition will make government more efficient
  and effectivesomehow
• Politically agnostic
• Incentives, not rhetoric
• Has the potential to revolutionize this key and
  backward area of human society

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Optimistic or Pessimistic?

• Raises serious doubts about how much freedom we
  can get on land
• Geography of space even more fluid than ocean.
• Necessary feature holds for 71 of the earths
  surface and 99.99999 of the universe.

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Why Do It Our Way?

• Lots of previous ideas, ventures, attempts
• Little success
• Visionary but not realistic
• Antarctic Homesteading

Or
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Our Philosophy

• Financial Realism
• Political Realism
• Incrementalism
• Technological Realism
• No OTEC
• No Seacrete

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How to Seastead

• Ocean Environment
• Structure
• Infrastructure (Power, Water, Food)
• Strategy How to get from here to there.

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The Ocean Environment

• The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the
  globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of
  monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities
  and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
  Serpents, bears, hyenas, tigers rapidly vanish as
  civilization advances, but the most populous and
  civilized city cannot scare a shark far from its
  wharves.
• - Henry DavidThoreau

• Waves
• Currents
• Wind
• Politics
• Pirates (Arr)

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Waves

• Tsunamis
• Rogue Waves
• Avoiding Waves
• Pillars
• Breakwaters
• Safe Locations
• Movement

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Currents
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Trade Winds
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Ill Winds - Dangerous?

• Wind - no
• Storm surge - no
• Windborne debris - no
• Waves - yes!

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Politics/Law

• Admiralty Law
• Flags
• Boarding
• Political Zones
• Territorial/Contiguous Sea
• EEZ/EFZ
• High Seas
• Approaches
• Flag of convenience
• Flag from hands-off country
• Flagless

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Pirates (Arrr!)

• Mostly small scale
• 73 of 335 attacks in 2001 involved guns
• 20 deaths in southeast asia, 1 elsewhere
• Seasteads are not an attractive target for
  organized pirates.

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Structure Designs

• Requirements
• Handle waves safely
• Provide living volume
• Provide solar area
• Possibilities
• Underwater
• On water
• Above water

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Structure Designs - Under/On

• Underwater
• On water
• Boats
• Simple platforms

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Structure Designs - Above

• Troll A gas platform
• 1500 feet tall
• Towed to operating location

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Structure Designs - Spar Platform

• Submerged flotation chamber, ballast
• Multi-level platform
• Long spar

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Design Features

• Spar presents low cross-sectional area to waves.
• Doesnt rock like a boat.
• Free-floating (can be anchored).
• Multiple platforms can be connected in a
  hexagonal grid.
• Ferrocement - cheap and durable.
• Cost 25-150/sq. ft. (labor, materials,
  infrastructure)

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No Bobbing
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Future - Breakwaters
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Infrastructure

• Already a solved problem (think cruise ships)
• Many things will be imported.
• Lots of options

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Water

• Rain
• Reverse Osmosis
• Future Solar Distillation?

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Food

• Import
• Grow in hydroponic greenhouses
• Future Aquaculture!

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Power

• Photovoltaic panels
• Wind turbines
• Good old diesel generators
• Future Wave power

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Transportation

• Anchoring - possible but expensive
• Drifting - slowly, or in doldrums
• Active positioning - motors
• Getting there and back again
• Boats
• Helicopters
• STOL aircraft

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How Not To Make It Happen

• Depend on nonexistent/undeveloped technologies
  (OTEC, seacrete).
• Depend on the appearance of a mysterious angel
  investor.
• Trying to get investment or donations with no
  proof of concept.
• Trying to tackle too big a problem at once.

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How To Make It Happen

• Stick to realistic and mature technologies.
• Have reasonable ideas for funding.
• Demonstrate the concept before expecting outside
  money.
• Incrementalism a series of small, reasonable
  stages.

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Business Ideas

• Floating platforms have a lot of disadvantages -
  remote, expensive utilities, few resource.
• So they can only make money when they have a
  large comparative advantage.
• CA 1 Stable land in the ocean
• CA 2 Political freedom/low regulation

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Business Ideas - Land at Sea

• Cargo transshipment
• Fishing base
• Tour base
• Marine science
• Aquaculture!

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The Aquaculture Revolution

• AquacultureFishing as FarmingGathering
• Solves tragedy of commons
• High demand
• Rapidly accelerating production?

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Business Ideas - Low Regulation

• Resort (amenities)
• World Library (Arrr)
• Medical Research/Treatment

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Phase I - Research

• Book
• Website
• Goals
• Learn enough to plan further steps
• Get some publicity
• Build interest in next stage

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Phase II - Baystead Prototype

• 2K - 10K sq. ft.
• Moored in San Francisco Bay
• Funded by 4-10 initial residents, cost 200K -
  500K.
• Goals
• Test design, infrastructure
• Publicity (give tours, get articles written about
  us)
• Proof of concept - we are serious! This is real!
• Build interest in next stage

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Phase IIIA - Seastead Resort

• 20K - 200K sq. ft.
• International waters (perhaps Med. Sea)
• Timeshare resort
• A few permanent residents, many vacationers
• Cost 3M - 15M, provided by residents
• Goals
• Demonstrate that its possible to build new,
  sovereign land
• Lots of publicity
• Become a growing community and business
• Build interest in next stage

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Phase IIIB - Aquaculture

• If the business model looks good and funding is
  available.
• Size, cost, location dictated by aquaculture
  needs
• Less politically risky
• Cost dependent on size, provided by investors
• Goals
• Make money doing something uniquely suited to the
  ocean.
• Get experience with the technology to build other
  types of floating structures later, and advance
  it.
• Establish some of the infrastructure for a
  larger, more residential city in same location.
• Start a local economy - related jobs, fish
  processing

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Phase IV - World Domination

• Getting started is the hardest part
• Economy will evolve beyond a resort
• Permanent residents will increase
• More platforms will be built

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• http//seastead.org/

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Acknowledgements

• Co-authors Wayne Gramlich and Andy House
• Jared and the Flatirons Review for bringing me.

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Questions?