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Nearly 150 Companies Show Interest in the Tech Love Boat
New submitter dandv writes with a story from VentureBeat about another entry in the race to escape national jurisdiction by offshoring work — literally offshoring, that is : "Blueseed is a Silicon Valley company that plans on launching a cruise ship 30 minutes from the coast of California, housing startup entrepreneurs from around the world. These startuppers won't need to bother with U.S. visas, because the ship will be in international waters. They'll have to pay tax to whatever country they're incorporated in, though. So far, 146 startups said they'd like to come to the ship."
None. The "Tech Love Boat" exists solely as a tax and immigration dodge, and its founders are proud of it. May real pirates raid this libertarian haven; may real storms smash its bow. Let me hazard a guess that they'll incorporate in Antigua, and pay no taxes, and that they'll import slave labor from India to work in the bowels of the ship.
Blueseed wants the benefits of proximity with Silicon Valley, and none of the costs. Why should we give a damn about them?
I'd also like to know who these "entrepreneurs" are. Let them live in their cabins and bar them from the shore. They don't want to pay for civilization, due to their brilliant and stunning gifts. They choose to leave civilization to live in their Brave New Race to the Bottom, _stay there_.
When a crime occurs on the "Love Boat", who will settle that crime? Blueseed? So they'll be a government, too. Hmm, maybe an invasion sounds good..
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
The advantage of these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction. The problem with these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction - and for almost every company out there, they benefit from the protection of a country's laws more than they suffer from them.
Sealand failed because anyone who hosted data there was wide open to the whim of Roy Bates - and if you didn't like his whim, you had no recourse. This will be no different.
A good article on Sealand: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/28/2909303/sealand-havenco-doomed-data-haven-history
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In order to be in international waters, the ship would be what, 200 miles out from shore?
I've looked into cruising and the myriad of laws. First of all you just described the EEZ limit which controls "traditional money making activities and environmental laws" but expressly does not include loitering. So its a fuzzy zone. The coast guard can order you to not discharge your blackwater tanks, cannot tell you not to just sit/anchor there, can tell you not to fish there, and running an office is somewhat vague.
The contiguous zone is 24 miles and you must follow customs laws presumably including visas. This is a recent "American Empire" turn of the century thing and the whole world used to (still does?) respect only 12 miles. In the REALLY olden days before the previous turn of the century it was defined as a cannon shots length, or so I'm told, like a mile or two.
This is very important to cruisers... more than 200 miles away you can technically tell all authorities other than your flag nation to F-off, but you need to stay at least 24 miles away or else have to go thru customs, and in that range from 24 to 200 miles you sorta have to listen to them. Customs is not necessarily the end of the world, but its nice to not even have to think about it. For example, say you were sailing from California to Alaska, it would be extremely advisable to stay at least 24 miles away from the Canadian shore.
Disclaimer, I've done hundreds of hours of sailing on little craft, mostly inland, but never across an ocean.
30 miles in a 150 knot helicopter for the VCs to visit you is what, 12 minutes of flight? I'm not seeing this as a serious issue. Also I can see a pleasure cruise on a well appointed yacht when making visits rather than flying, if they're in the mood for some fun.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Am I the only one who read this as "VCs will found a way to get cheap offshore talent under their collective wings by purchasing a cruise ship on which to enslave, err, house their startup 'incubators'"?
Sweatship
Nice reference, great game, but here in reality the man did not toil alone. He was not able to produce without the poor being kept away from his warehouse at night, he was not able to risk only his investment by nature but by laws governing incorporation, nor was he able to get it to market without roads. I love how those who have never done a day of physical labor like to talk about sweat, blood and tears though.
Let me summarize an entire articles worth of weird and ignorant /.er opinions:
1) this is the first boat that is not US flagged to ever sail either in or nearby the USA, and if it docks for repairs it'll be the first time a foreign vessel has ever entered a US port, so no one will have any idea what to do.
2) there exists a single line in the sandy sea bottom, on one side its complete and total utter US control and the other side is all pirates.
3) magically, because this platform has servers instead of oil drilling equipment, decades of regulation and case law from the oil biz could not possibly apply to this biz, just because it makes for a nice sounding argument.
4) no one has ever lived on a boat for an extended length of time, nor is it even theoretically possible, much less comfortable.
5) the relationship must be binary, either a ship and its flag nation must be US lapdogs and hard core statists, or it must be a libertarian paradise, and only one of those possibilities is unrealistic therefore it Must be the other far extreme possibility (laughably goes for both sides arguments)
6) Foreigners and foreign sailors have never been present on a ship entering a us port, so no one will have any idea what to do.
7) Closely tied to #5, There are only binary governments, the hard core statist fascist western govts like the us and our european lapdogs, and pure capitalist anarchy, therefore since its probably going to be flagged out of panama or something, and panama isn't quite the usa, therefore slavery and polygamy will rule the ship. Uh, no. I don't think very many flag nations allow that on their ships. As a wild guess, I've been on cruise ships that are panama registered, if this tub's panama registered it'll be about as wild as a cruise ship... probably a nude tanning deck, a casino to gamble in, no secret police checking to see if couples in bed together are married (to each other) and are of the correct gender, and generally anyone looking "old enough" gets to drink alcohol and smoke tobacco although technically you have to be 18 in Panama (I think). That's probably about as wild as Panama is going to let it get.
8) A crime has never before happened on board a ship, therefore no one will have any idea how to handle a criminal activity if one happens.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Exactly. The grandparent is complete bullshit and should be modded down.
The US is the world's largest manufacturing nation in terms of economic output. People seem to forget giant companies like Intel, Caterpillar, Boeing, Cisco, ADM etc. not to mention the pharmaceuticals and the farming industry which are world leading. Not only that but the US does it with a mere 8% of its workforce. The economic output of the average US worker is more than 10 times that of his Chinese equivalent because he's more technically skilled and produces far more valuable products in a highly automated setting.
The Boeing main aircraft assembly building in the Seattle area is the largest manufacturing facility in the world.
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/facilities/
It was Boeing who discovered the Y2K problem because they are such a large consumer of aluminum they have to project consumption of aluminum a decade in advance so the aluminum industry can scale their capacity to match their consumption.
I don't know where people get the idea the US isn't competitive in manufacturing. It is a huge force on a global scale in manufacturing, and factors like low energy costs because of the vast natural gas reserves being developed are likely to keep it that way. Anyone writing that the US has no manufacturing capability is full of bullshit.
http://www.shopfloor.org/2011/03/u-s-manufacturing-remains-worlds-largest/18756
http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/
Realisticly it doesn't actually bring much, but it draws on a rather heavy Ayn Rand mythology that they are hoping to capitalize on. The theory is supposed to be that if you take away all those pesky regulations then 'real entrepreneurs '.. some kind of the 'the best rise in power when not being kept down by other people in power, except each other since that is dog eat dog, but because people who already have power are bad we need to stop them, but not new power which should be unchecked'. So beyond just taxes and visas they can suspend things like workers rights, wages, etc... so all those pesky things like stopping child labor, taking sexual advantage of your subordinates, firing injured people, making them work 140 hour weeks but still in debt to the company store, all those things are perfectly legal again... and part of the mythology is whitewashing how badly those went the first time around.
Oh, and of course the ship will probably have its own company store.. so everyone there will have to pay whatever prices the Blueseed charges for things like food, power, internet access, etc.
Which is why sane companies will probably stay away, but gullible startups who have read more fiction then done research might find the place appealing.
Yep. That is the idea. Reap the benefits they want directly want, get the advantages of benefits that effect them indirectly (like the education system), but not have to pay for any of it and claim with a strait face that they are dong the capitalist thing of paying only for services they use.
This is mostly true, and can bite them in the butt.
If they intend to operate out of US ports, and provide anything that even looks remotely like passenger service (I.E. hosting staff for their clients) then they can't exit and re-enter the United States without visiting a "distant foreign port". Back in the day when there was tons of coastwise passenger transport, this protected US firms from foreign competition. Today it mostly means that Alaska cruises have to port at Victoria and Maratimes/East Coast cruises usually in Halifax. For Blueseed this is going to mean visiting Mexico between port visits to the US. (And they *will* either have to visit the US or sail across the Pacific Ocean for servicing - a ship can't stay at sea forever.)
Also, pretty much every nation subscribes to SOLAS and even the flag-of-convenience nations have safety requirements. Not to mention, that if they ever port, they'll be subject to safety inspections by the Coast Guard of the nation they're porting in. These are non-trivial to comply with and are deadly serious - the can be at a minimum refused entry, or at worst impounded for failing to comply. On top of these inspections, if they hope to carry insurance, the ship will have to regularly be inspected and certified on a regular basis by a legitimate classification society...
These "tech Love Boat" companies all sound to me to have based their plans on urban legends about how the law of the sea and related conventions work, and not on any real world legal and business research.
Wrong. In a truly dog-eat-dog world, any dog that gets too far ahead gets eaten by the pack.
Yeah, except it has never once worked out that way in reality. In lawless regions or other areas where the government is weak, what inevitably happens is that you end up with a handful of powerful warlords who basically terrorize and dominate the populace. They build up their own private armies to not only protect themselves from the "pack" but to do whatever the fuck else they want too, including showing up at your home periodically to take anything they want and rape your wife. Life is great if you happen to be one of those warlords (or one of their family or close friends). Life is complete shit if you're anyone else.
And you're not escaping the leash. You're just trading in the democratic government leash for the much tighter and shorter leash that the rich and powerful will have you on in your libertarian paradise.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?