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Paypal Founder Puts a Half Million Dollars Into Seasteading
eldavojohn writes "Wired is running an informative article on Paypal Founder Peter Thiel's investment in seasteading. There's a great graphic indicating how the spar design helps platforms weather rough seas with a ballast. There's a lot more than just Thiel throwing the half million towards this and they hope to pitch this to San Fransisco for a bay pilot. Ocean colonies can be both liberating and also downright human-rights-lacking scary."
It is clear by now that we will not have the possibility for independent space colonization anytime soon. Seasteading is the best bet for those of us who feel that the status quo of society is not good enough.
what about piracy = home invasions? and storms (hurricanes) dry land can be dangerous enough, seasteading is just over the top (over the top of an abyss that can drown you that is)...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Here's a crazy idea...
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Word is there exists the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is the accumulation of seaborne trash into a blob somewhere on par with Texas in size.
Now work with me here
That's a whole lotta floating stuff already in a relatively stable position (occupying a major ocean current vortex); surely an inventive aspiring frontiersman could turn that mass of materials into an inhabitable floating island. Material acquisition & relocation is already mostly taken care of, as there's a Texas-sized mass of it already there. Much of it is plastic, which should be easily (for the "news for nerds" crowd) reformed on-site into more suitable structures. It's already in a stable vortex, so it's not going to be unmanagably mobile, and remains well outside any nation's claimable waters. There may already be sufficiently compacted sections to stand on & start work from.
Thoughts?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
The first thing that came to my mind was this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Peterbus_Unum
While he article touches on a lot of the obvious issues (piracy, sovereignty, etc), they seem to have missed this episode of Family Guy.
For the purpose of discussion, here's a short list of other issues that don't seem that trivial to me:
1) No natural resources. Or in other words, there's nothing there that anyone wants. You might be able to grow your own food and harvest the necessities from the sea, but you can basically forget about having any exports. This would be a deficit economy just about any way you shake it.
2) Environment is fatal to humans. Should the platform sink, everybody dies. Few of the places on earth with this level of lethality house humans for any real length of time without some really compelling reason to be there (see above...)
3) 'Nation problems'. Without any allies, any nation can declare war on you and sink you. You're a nation now, so you're expected to play at that level. Likewise, your neighbor on his own platform can declare war on you - he's running a nation, too. PirateBay platform, meet the RIAA platform... Do you plan to appeal to the United Nations? Can you even do that if you're not a member? What about trade agreements? There's really a LOT to consider here.
4) 'Hot button' nations. Can Osama float a platform and no longer be considered a terrorist, rather a dictator? What about those pedo-polygamists? Can't they just float a platform and go right on forcing marriage and sex on pre-teens? And if this is possible, wouldn't others want desperately to sink them? Or, if not sink you could they not simply blockade you, or otherwise apply pressure to cut you off from the outside world?
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Nations are nations because of where they are and what they have, not merely because of their desire to be independent.
Peter eventually caved. He didn't even manage to get an ink-pen for his trouble...
Its bad enough living on small islands, where the energy cost of transportation is so inefficient compared to mainland cities.
Where would you go if you wanted to walk on a hill? Frankly I'd rather be part of a "Red Mars" mission than this.
It's kind of a sad reflection on the kind of society we would live in if Ayn Rand inspired techno-geeks ruled the world. Do none of them appreciate the social infrastructure than allowed them to spend their time inventing stuff, instead of living the life of a frontiersman foraging for food and dying of disease. Private 737 anyone?
Spend the research money on tech to save the environment we have. If we were meant to live ON the sea, god would have given us gills and a taste for our urine...
I think what is worse is that they are painting these spar platforms as something completely new. Oil platforms in deep water have been doing this for years. They're somewhat rare but are one of the best solutions in very deep water. The great downside is that to move them, you generally have to lift the topsides (living areas, oil production and working areas) off of the spar with an enormous crane and then tow the cylinder section lying down.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Also wondering about food, waste disposal and power.
The ocean is full of tasty critters.
The critters dump their organic waste into the water, where it is recycled by other critters. Why shouldn't the humans? (They already do it on ocean-going vessels. Blackwater is an issue on land and enclosed waterways, not in mid ocean.)
For non-biodegradable waste: Jetsam dumped overboard in deep water won't be an issue for geologic time. That leaves flotsam, which would have to be dealt with in more ordinary ways. (Fortunately, that's a small amount of the waste and mostly imported anyhow. So it can be shipped out to some place that can handle it.)
At most latitudes there's lots of wind available, with no mountains, trees, and buildings to slow it down. (Sometimes there's a bit more wind than you'd like.)
If you want to settle the "horse latitudes" (where there's rarely wind), there's plenty of solar power. And a handy way to tap it is to pump up cold water from deeper down and run a heat engine on the temperature difference between it and the upper-level water. Then you dump the nutrient-rich deep water locally and farm the resulting massive explosion of plants and critters.
The idea that purchasing a flag of convenience will providing meaningful protection seems a bit naive..
Flags of convenience are a protection against GOVERNMENT predation. (Which is essentially the point of this whole exercise.)
Will every citizen be a trained firefighter? Who will provide emergency medical services?
The same sort of people who provide such services on ocean-going vessels or in houses in very rural areas. These are already solved problems - with solutions that vary depending on the size of the community and the degree of its location's isolation.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Pirates? Sex? Hell, the cabin boys are already trembling in fear.
The real scary proposition represented in these platforms is the further breakdown of human society. The haves and have-nots of existing bad urban planning will be magnified. "Haves" on clean, platforms with exploited labour imported sans regulation and protection from the Philippines. "Have-nots" on the toxic-waste dumps of continental land - allowed to degrade and suffer.
This is a vision from H.G. Wells "The Time Machine". The moral problem with "Transhumanists" is that they regard human beings as expendable - in much the same way that 19th-century industrialists viewed drayage horses.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
More isn't better, and there is a point at which you will cause algae/cyanobacteria to kill off the stuff you plan to eat. As that stuff dies and decomposes, it causes even more harm by ruining the water's dissolved oxygen content, killing more of your fish.
No offense intended, but any talk of just dumping nutrients into the ocean to bring edible fish sounds naive to me. Also wondering about food, waste disposal and power. The ocean is full of tasty critters. And other people want them too. Fish populations have been in serious decline. How long do you think it would take for a political dispute to be formed over fishing rights of regions where fish are (relatively) abundant?
I know if I've been making a living fishing an area for all my life, and some rich tax-dodgers planted a city over it, I'd be pissed as hell. The libertarian colony would be sustaining itself at the expense of people to whom they don't ever have to answer to.
And what happens if this libertarian colony plants itself atop of rich fishing grounds for the sole purpose of using it to sell to a nearby nation?
Another potential problem would be what happens when a land-nation's nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus runoff from agriculture causes eutrophication in the area they use for food. It hurts the colony.
What happens if eutrophication hurts a nation or colony, and they both try to blame eachother? In the time it takes them to sort stuff out, people are starving on the colony.
There are potential problems posed for both sides. Simply stating that there are lots of fish in the sea (IMHO) is a gross oversimplification of an extremely important aspect of manufacturing a nation (food supply). Not to mention manufacturing a nation in a place which is inherently hostile to humans.
Don't forget, relying exclusively upon seafood could be a health risk. The mercury content in fish isn't exactly a good thing these days, especially for women. Will every citizen be a trained firefighter? Who will provide emergency medical services? The same sort of people who provide such services on ocean-going vessels or in houses in very rural areas. These are already solved problems - with solutions that vary depending on the size of the community and the degree of its location's isolation. I think you underestimate the differences between performing such emergency services on land versus open-ocean. It's significantly more difficult. There's a reason why have agencies like coast-guards (as opposed to just local police departments with some boats). In terms of emergency services mitigating disaster, a small explosion on land causing a fire is one thing. A small explosion causing a house to sink is is on a whole other level of difficulty.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
The ocean is full of tasty critters.
Not any more
Fortunately you, sir, are in a 17% minority. I am very happy the right to express ones opinion applies to everyone in the USA including presidential candidates. Even if that opinion is that flag lapel pins are pseudo patriotism and shouldn't be worn by politicians as a "look at me I'm patriotic" empty gesture. McCain loves his lapel pin, but wouldn't support a new GI bill because it might give troops "incentive" to return from duty. That is the most backward logic I have ever heard in my life and was extremely surprised to hear it coming from a former POW. I'm pretty sure troop recruitment will improve as soon as the average american sees we actually support our troops in the US (assuming the good GI Bill is passed). McCain should be ashamed of himself for buying into Bush's arguments against the new GI Bill and introducing his own watered down version to avoid looking like the war-mongering troop-ignoring politician he has become.
One of my favorite scifi books, The Great Explosion, has societal rejects being sent to different planets, and they create their own societies. The book has people with ideas that are rejected by the mainstream (such as libertarianism) making societies that work based on these ideas.
My point is that it can be the other way around - a haven for groups that are not well tolerated by society.
China Mieville Doesn't Believe in Floating Libertarian Utopias
Split the property into two separate concepts and re-assess your statements.
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I think the land and natural resources need to be divvied up differently.
Ever hear of the Tragedy of the Commons?
Google Henry George for one practical and tested method of doing this.
Wiki's article on him says he was anti Chinese immigrant. Besides newspapers, that's some he shared with William Randolph Hearst. During WWII besides the Japanese Hearst wanted to put the Chinese and all other Asian into internment camps. He pressed his "yellow peril".
From wiki "George preferred taxing unimproved land value". That misses all the services land offers. For instance wetlands purify water and recharge aquifers. By taxing those lands he'd encourage people to build on that land thus depriving people of fresh water.
It is the land ownership that **created** the poverty in the first place.
Cite please. Actually land ownership allows people to improve their economic lot in life. Even those immigrants Henry George opposed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I understand that this is your viewpoint. But you should know that it is not a tolerant one. It's more of a "either you're with us or you're against us" attitude.
I feel like you're saying that since this is a democracy, the majority viewpoint should dictate all behaviors. While agree that some standards must be set, I don't agree that anyone should expected to submit to governmental authority. Especially not when it comes to personal issues such as drug-use or sex (ironically, I don't use drugs or have permiscuous sex)or how I spend and earn my money (I think I know how how much my time is worth and how I will spend the money I earn, thank you very much). As far as I'm concerned the government is just there to support my personal boundries (I want to be secure in my body and my possessions, and if someone infringes on that I want to be able to take them to court to get due compensation and/or justice, but only as a last resort).