[HN Gopher] Seasteading Creates RPG
___________________________________________________________________
Seasteading Creates RPG
Author : keiferski
Score : 40 points
Date : 2021-06-08 17:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seasteading.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seasteading.org)
| cardanome wrote:
| Seems like this is some kind of political movement to create
| autonomous floating mini states.
|
| Have these people never played BioShock? This is basically the
| same naive libertarian ideas going wild.
|
| For such an project to be successful you need to have some
| serious funding. Why should anyone fund this?
|
| Any legitimate industry will have a hard time on the ocean where
| you have horrible logistics, nearly no access to resources and
| are miles away from potential clients.At best I could maybe see a
| niche for some gimmicky tourism.
|
| So what would it be used for? Let's be honest: Tax evasion, human
| trafficking and gambling.
|
| It would be way too expensive to live there for normal people.
| Plus it would more oppressive. You can at least flee from a
| tyrannical government on land. If you are in the middle of the
| ocean? Good luck.
|
| Though I dig the futurism. As long a they keep larping, good for
| them. Just hope they don't think it is a good idea in real life.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| You ever notice how "libertarian gone wild" examples are always
| fiction? Movies, video games, etc... while collectivism gone
| wild's real-world failures are everywhere to be seen in even
| recent history? USSR, China, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, ...
|
| Not that all libertarian ideas are perfect, but when you start
| building on top of the non-aggression principle, other problems
| seem so much more manageable.
| pochamago wrote:
| There are other laws libertarians would like to circumvent.
| Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs, civil asset
| forfeiture spring to mind. Starting a new country on the ocean
| is a pretty drastic way to fight back, but i can't deny the
| impulse to opt out when change appears impossible.
| cardanome wrote:
| > Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs, civil
| asset forfeiture spring to mind.
|
| Just out of interest: What kind of problem do you,
| personally, have with these that you are considering starting
| a new country?
|
| And isn't it the issue that the rich can already circumvent
| laws just fine? How is all this going to help the poor who
| have to stem the main bulk of the tax burden while the rich
| use loop holes and tax havens? They ware not the ones that
| are going to live on the ocean.
| cldellow wrote:
| I'm not the OP, but the three listed things are fairly
| bland issues by libertarian standards.
|
| Occupational licensing: it's gatekeeping that drives up the
| cost of services, reduces competition and quality. For
| example, when I dislocated my shoulder, the offsite
| radiologist who read the X-ray declared that it wasn't
| dislocated. He was wrong. Luckily for me, the staff at the
| clinic ignored his diagnosis and reduced it anyway.
|
| Over scheduling of drugs: In the US, cannabis is a Schedule
| I drug at the federal level. This is the same bucket as
| heroin and the date rape drug. Prosecutors can use (or
| abuse) prosecutorial discretion to decide who to pursue for
| cannabis offenses, resulting in unequal outcomes based on
| your socioeconomic status. As a Canadian, I can be denied
| entry to the US if I admit having used cannabis. This seems
| wasteful, and impairs useful things like economic migration
| or families visiting each other.
|
| Civil asset forfeiture: there are perverse incentives here
| where: (1) the agency seizing the money gets to use it for
| their operating expenses and (2) the burden of proof rests
| on the person whose property is seized. There are
| documented cases of police targeting travellers with out of
| state plates, knowing that they are unlikely to return to
| fight their case in court. As someone who takes road trips
| through the US, this affects me.
|
| If you want to stir the libertarian pot, you should talk
| about child labour, consensual slavery and selling body
| parts. Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs and
| civil asset forfeiture aren't that out there, IMO.
| golergka wrote:
| > How is all this going to help the poor who have to stem
| the main bulk of the tax burden
|
| Are you not aware of libertarian views on said tax burden?
| klipt wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the libertarian idea of not paying any
| property taxes would just lead to rich feudal lords
| owning everything and everyone else paying them rent.
| Which is probably worse for everyone else than paying
| taxes which are at least nominally used for the public
| good.
| golergka wrote:
| I really don't know how not to violate HN's guideline to
| maintain a kind and openminded discussion when presented
| with such a straw-man. There's just no way to react to
| this that would be in any way sincere and not offensive.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Property taxes are viewed as among the least bad types of
| tax among right-libertarians. And since libertarians
| believe in some minimal level of taxation to fund the
| army etc, your comment is inaccurate.
| Natsu wrote:
| > civil asset forfeiture
|
| It seems odd to me to trade a small but real risk of this
| should I decide to carry around large quantities of cash
| (and/or drugs) for the risk of being robbed by literal
| pirates with no real recourse unless you're able to fight
| them off personally.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| > So what would it be used for? Let's be honest: Tax evasion,
| human trafficking and gambling.
|
| I can think of a lot of uses besides those. Prostitution
| between consenting adults, fun drugs, medical drugs which are
| tied up by the FDA etc, testing of drones and driverless
| vehicles, playing lawn darts, and avoiding obsolete regulations
| come to mind.
| cardanome wrote:
| > Prostitution between consenting adults
|
| There are real world countries that you can visit for this.
|
| For some reason, people that promote legalization are never
| willing to look at countries that have done so.
|
| We have this here in Germany and I have to tell you, it is
| not a success story to say the the least. There is a huge
| problem with human trafficking. Yes, people always say it
| will go away if you legalize it. The data says otherwise, it
| gets in fact worse. All the red light district are also
| controlled by criminal gangs. They are mostly ignored by the
| state as long a they "help" with collecting the taxes. And
| this is what is happening in a strong state with a relative
| low level of corruption.
|
| > fun drugs
|
| Again there are enough states that allow them and the list if
| growing.
|
| > medical drugs which are tied up by the FDA
|
| Same here.
|
| > testing of drones and driverless vehicles
|
| Sure you can test them. How else a companies developing them?
| Sure public roads are regulated, thank god for that. I don't
| want to die because someone wanted to test his driverless car
| in production.
|
| > playing lawn darts
|
| Why can't you in your country?
|
| > avoiding obsolete regulations
|
| Eh sounds minor and again lot's of countries to choose from
| already.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| A strong benefit of seasteading is that a small group of
| people can pick and choose which things they want to be
| legal. For example, you cite a couple things which are
| legal in Germany, but homeschooling isn't legal there, nor
| is vacuuming on Sunday.
| cardanome wrote:
| Wanting to homeschool you kids but not being willing to
| give up easy access to legal prostitution is a very
| strange hill to die on.
|
| I get what you are saying but Libertarians seem to ignore
| elementary freedoms in favor of picking really weird
| fights.
|
| What elementary freedoms? Not having to starve to death.
| Not being bankrupted by health care costs. Not having to
| fear for my live. No having to live in a society where
| people lack basic education. Enjoying well maintained
| public roads. Being taking care of when getting old.
|
| They have some weird ultra-naive definitions of freedom
| that only seems to include absence of rules. Like they
| see not being able to vacuum on a Sunday, not the freedom
| to enjoy a quiet Sunday. (Well at least I can dream
| about, it is not as enforced as people here probably
| believe.)
|
| Everything is give and take. Societies thrive when people
| are willing to compromise.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| The "elementary freedoms" you list should more properly
| be considered entitlements.
|
| The advantage of the seasteading scheme is that different
| groups can pick different hills to die on.
|
| There are probably people who would like the worst of
| both the US and Germany: no shopping on Sunday, alcohol
| only to be bought at state liquor stores, no noise at
| certain hours, no driving over 55 miles per hour. I think
| it would be great if they had a floating* island all to
| themselves.
|
| * if it didn't float, that would be fine too
| mwcremer wrote:
| > Why can't you [play lawn darts] in your country?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_darts#Safety_and_bans_in
| _...
| grawprog wrote:
| To be fair, you can still play lawn darts if you have a
| set. I remember playing with a set of lawn darts, like
| the real ones with the spikes, with my cousins back in
| like 2004-2005, nobody came to arrest us.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Also Nerf has multiple options for lawn darts on sale
| that don't have spikes. And no one ever banned horseshoes
| or bocci which are also the exact same game/sport.
|
| They just stopped selling the one particular variant, and
| not really because they were "banned", but because of the
| market realities of the low margins for selling only a
| somewhat fun toy versus the litigation costs and
| settlement costs from its injuries. If they thought there
| was big enough demand they'd slap a ton of warnings on
| it, include an arbitration clause in a jurisdiction
| friendly to them, and put it back in stores in a
| heartbeat.
| munk-a wrote:
| I imagine it'd be easier to build an indoor simulated
| lawn then trying to do that on a ship. And, well before
| the point where a gigantic ocean liner becomes economical
| - you could always get a custom set of lawn darts crafted
| for you by any sort of metal working shop or factory.
|
| Heck, you can probably get them on Etsy from China.
| jeffbee wrote:
| People who seriously propose seasteading do not believe that
| a central authority has the right to establish the
| definitions of either "consenting" or "adult".
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| At least some of them just want to be able to choose a
| better central (or decentralized) authority.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| >For such an project to be successful you need to have some
| serious funding. Why should anyone fund this?
|
| <del>Not to support it, but Peter Thiel is a founder of the
| Seasteading institute[0], so funding shouldn't be a
| concern.</del>
|
| >The Seasteading Institute is a nonprofit organization, based
| in California. It was founded in 2008 by activist, software
| engineer and political economic theorist Patri Friedman,
| grandson of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, and
| technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist Peter
| Thiel.
|
| Looks like he gave up on it though[1]:
|
| >In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Thiel said
| seasteads are "not quite feasible from an engineering
| perspective" and "still very far in the future"
|
| [0]:https://www.seasteading.org/about/
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.in/facebooks-mysterious-
| hardware...
| d_burfoot wrote:
| As someone who supports seasteading, I want to emphasize that it
| is NOT about libertarianism or any other political belief system.
| It is about competitive governance. If your political system,
| implemented on a seastead cluster, provides a better quality of
| life to its members, it will attract more citizens; if not, it
| will lose people, money, and influence. If you want to implement
| a religion-based society, you can do that; if you want to
| implement Marxism, you can do that; if you want to build Hong
| Kong 2.0, you can do that.
| Jolter wrote:
| You don't think the idea of competition as the dominant force
| in society has an inkling of libertarianism to it?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I'd argue it's more of a right-wing idea than a lowercase-l
| libertarian idea.
|
| Libertarianism (left or right) argues for reducing coercion
| in society; right-libertarianism wants to focus on property
| rights as the basis of that liberty (even though we already
| know where that leads). Hence why they have this idea of
| creating closed-off separate societies based on property
| rights that can internally structure their economies how they
| wish.
|
| The cruel irony of right-libertarianism (at least, the
| stateless-capitalist kind) is that it's not terribly
| difficult to imagine a sequence of events by which one could
| construct the same arrangement of coercive governments
| through property rights rather than conquest. In other words,
| the ancap argument against sovereign nations is that the US
| didn't get clean title to it's land, not that it's inherently
| illegitimate or coercive to have one person control the land
| that another lives upon. After all, what's the difference
| between a government charging taxes and a landlord charging
| rent?
|
| Likewise, the only reason why we don't have competition
| between governments to provide services to citizens is
| because sovereign nations collectively decided to not play
| such games. If you want to switch governments, you need to
| make an immigration case for yourself to another government,
| which involves fitting into a small number of restrictive
| visa categories with yearly quotas on how many new migrants
| come in. You are not allowed to "just leave" without having
| somewhere to move _to_ , which is where most of the
| restriction comes into play.
|
| This is, again, not materially different from a landlord who
| refuses to provide housing to people who don't make a certain
| amount of money. Something that, again, is very much up
| right-wingers alley. Hell, you can do this the other way
| around, too - high housing costs are effectively a small-
| scale shadow immigration system. If I want to move to
| California, I have to be fantastically wealthy, while long-
| term residents have the advantage of rent control.
| Jolter wrote:
| Well whether it's Right-wing or Libertarian, it's still a
| political and ideological standpoint.
| munk-a wrote:
| Considering that living an aquatic life necessarily raises the
| cost of absolutely everything you use or consume - do you think
| that SeaSteading is actually a fair way to evaluate a
| competition. It seems to me that absolutely anything
| terrestrially based has a long list of natural advantages
| including: soil, a lack of being constantly exposed to salt
| water, potential access to natural resources.
| camgunz wrote:
| Aside from all the focus on the politics of seasteading, I think
| this actually sounds fun, very much like a D&D campaign. Maybe
| it's a little euphemistic about libertarian ideas but like, isn't
| that kind of the point of games?
| neilk wrote:
| Given the wide range of styles, I would guess the artwork for
| these cards was lifted from various places around the internet.
|
| I see no artwork credits, and found the source for at least one
| image: the character "Feng Bai" is an image of Esther Quek that's
| been put through some filters.
|
| http://www.artofwore.com/blog/2012/11/19/girl-crush-esther-q...
| munk-a wrote:
| There isn't anything quite as true to the seasteading ideal as
| stealing someone's artwork and refusing to attribute or pay
| them for it.
|
| Don't you dare tax me - but when it benefits me I'm happy to
| view all property as communal.
| homarp wrote:
| Veronica Marianna Yavin is from Warren Louw:
| https://www.deviantart.com/warrenlouw/art/Jinny-258350800
|
| Izabel Hashimoto Belluci is from Maaria Laurinen
| https://imgur.com/ozlewix
| petermcneeley wrote:
| "The Co-op" scenario sounds a bit like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town.
| rtkwe wrote:
| A lot of libertarian paradise pitches wind up looking a lot
| like a company town yeah.
| golergka wrote:
| The "libertarian paradise pitch" is the other one.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| I refer to this every time seasteading is mentioned:
|
| https://inthesetimes.com/article/floating-utopias
| learn_more wrote:
| Where can I read comments/discussion about interesting topics
| like this without all the naysaying and snark? (honest question)
| crummy wrote:
| there's a discord linked on their site:
| https://discord.com/invite/bwHJm7QNnK
| joemi wrote:
| Sadly this used to be a fairly good place for mostly-snark-free
| discussions, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. At
| least for some topics of discussion.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Seasteading is the ultimate display of how moronic a Libertarian
| can be. If you're flying some made-up flag on the high seas there
| is no reason that the navy of some actual county can't just roll
| up and sink your stupid dinghy. The long-wished-for Libertarian
| paradise where barbers don't have licenses and you can marry an
| 8-year-old is going to have to be brought about on dry land.
| voldacar wrote:
| I flagged this comment because it is hysterical and does not
| contribute to the high-quality discourse this site is known for
|
| >Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't
| cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer,
| including at the rest of the community.
| the-dude wrote:
| Why does a barber need a license?
| golergka wrote:
| > If you're flying some made-up flag on the high seas there is
| no reason that the navy of some actual county can't just roll
| up and sink your stupid dinghy.
|
| There are two. On the level of rights and legality, there's
| non-agression principle. On the level of realpolitik, there's
| you being prepared to sink them first.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The NAP is a fiction made up by American libertarians. It is
| not a doctrine adhered to by the Russian navy.
|
| The reality of the matter is that any vessel not flying a
| real flag enjoys no standing whatsoever in the laws or
| treaties of the seas. Freedom of navigation is a right of
| states, not individuals. If you are not a state or under the
| protection of a state (a real one, not a comic book one) then
| you do not have the right to navigate the high seas.
| laverya wrote:
| Which is why so many ships sail under the flags of states
| with the ability to protect them, like the USA, Great
| Britain, Russia or China, and not Panama, Liberia or
| Bolivia.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If you sink a ship registered in Panama, you have made
| war against Panama and transitively against the United
| States of America and all other signatories of the Inter-
| American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance.
| simonh wrote:
| If say Russia sinks a Bolivian boat, there are plenty of
| other major nations with navies that will get upset about
| it just because they want to keep the Russians in check.
| Not because they care about Bolivia. If the Russian navy
| sinks some stateless seasteading anarchists, nobody is
| going to give a crap.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > There are two. On the level of rights and legality, there's
| non-agression principle. On the level of realpolitik, there's
| you being prepared to sink them first.
|
| LOL. I'm pretty sure that even possessing anything _close_ to
| the capability to sink a modern warship (let alone using it)
| will doom any seasteading fantasy through a concentrated
| application of unwanted attention.
| laverya wrote:
| Depends on how that capability is setup, I imagine. "We
| have remotely operated mines at a 5nm radius and HMGs for
| close-in anti-boat defence" would be enough to deter anyone
| without anti-ship missiles, but still more than enough to
| kill a modern warship that comes too close. (Modern
| warships are generally not stupid enough to sail into
| hostile mines, however)
|
| I've got no idea how you'd be able to maintain a perimeter
| of mines in the open ocean, though.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > If you're flying some made-up flag on the high seas there is
| no reason that the navy of some actual county can't just roll
| up and sink your stupid dinghy.
|
| No, thats silly.
|
| There are lots of tiny nations, with no ability to defend
| themselves, but we don't see them getting nuked for no reason.
|
| The idea that just because some people decided to go live on a
| boat somewhere, that this means that nation states are just
| going to start murdering people, is just a made up story, in
| the minds of people who just want to fantasize about killing
| people who they disagree with politically.
|
| Nation states would be harmed very significantly, on the
| political side, if they just started blowing up ships, for no
| reason, lived in by people who just want to live in the ocean
| somewhere.
|
| The world is not some RPG civilizations game, where an
| unclaimed NPC boat, is going to be "taken over" for its
| resources. There are serious political ramifications, to this
| military fantasy that people have, about houseboats getting
| invaded.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > The long-wished-for Libertarian paradise where barbers don't
| have licenses and you can marry an 8-year-old is going to have
| to be brought about on dry land.
|
| This barb has me chuckling.
| dang wrote:
| Past seasteading threads, in case anyone's curious. Others?
|
| _The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21866017 - Dec 2019 (255
| comments)
|
| _Seasteading_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20082483 -
| June 2019 (222 comments)
|
| _A pilot project for a new floating city will have 300 homes_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17478300 - July 2018 (90
| comments)
|
| _Floating city project_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519863 - May 2015 (76
| comments)
|
| _Charter the Seasteader I_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435994 - Aug 2012 (37
| comments)
|
| _Seasteading: Cities on the ocean_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310873 - Dec 2011 (112
| comments)
|
| _Building a new society on a free floating platform in the high
| seas_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1088570 - Jan 2010
| (25 comments)
|
| _City floating on the sea could be just 3 years away_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510984 - March 2009 (16
| comments)
|
| _The next frontier: 'Seasteading' the oceans_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=462278 - Feb 2009 (26
| comments)
|
| _Live Free or Drown: Floating Utopias on the Cheap_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=441310 - Jan 2009 (36
| comments)
|
| _Peter Thiel Makes Down Payment on Libertarian Ocean Colonies_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=194028 - May 2008 (29
| comments)
| beerandt wrote:
| The number of people that laugh at even the idea of seasteading,
| yet can't wait to colonize Mars is confounding.
| jordanpg wrote:
| The inability of seasteaders to see how the scope and might of
| modern Naval power is going to get in the way of this little
| fantasy is breathtaking.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Do you think that governments are just going to start killing
| people just because they decided to live on a boat somewhere?
|
| There are lots of things that many governments could do right
| now. But there is really very little reason for most
| governments to just start sinking ships, at random, even ships
| that aren't affiliated with a country that could protect them.
|
| In practice, I would expect a sea steading "nation" to work out
| similar to any other tiny nation.
|
| There are lots of tiny nations, around the world, but we don't
| see them getting nuked by the rest of the world, for no reason.
| smolder wrote:
| Right, nuking a small country would be pretty wasteful and
| politically expensive compared to a more usual tactic like
| propping up an oppressive regime who supports cheap export of
| natural resources, or in the case of a country with few
| resources, mostly ignoring them.
| smogcutter wrote:
| The issue is that the answer to the question of how the
| "nation" will support itself is inevitably some
| version/combination of:
|
| A) tax shelter for money earned in the real world
|
| B) doing crimes on the internet
|
| ...neither of which real states are generally a big fan of.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are plenty of island states and micronations in the world
| today. Some of them, make money be letting corrupt people from
| other countries deposit money in their hidden bank accounts, or
| create shell companies to get around tax and finance laws etc.
|
| These countries continue to flourish, even though any of the
| top 50 armies in the world could clean them up in half a week
| without breaking a sweat.
|
| Why do you think a few thousand people floating out into open
| seas will be invaded, if they are not threatening physical
| violence against any other state in any way?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| 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?
|
| I do agree however that a venture like this would be much, much
| more likely to succeed on land. I just don't see your retort as
| a foregone conclusion.
| nradov wrote:
| The inability of seasteaders to see how storms and corrosion
| are going to get in the way of this little fantasy is
| breathtaking. I doubt any of them have ever personally sailed a
| boat through bad weather. The moment conditions get a little
| rough they'll be begging the Coast Guard for rescue.
| munk-a wrote:
| This, I think, is the true defeat of SeaSteading - most of
| the original proposals came around in an era of booming
| economies when Strong Towns wasn't even a consideration and
| maintenance cost for infrastructure was written off as
| inconsequential.
|
| Maintaining a city partially submerged in sea water is going
| to cost far more than maintaining a boring one built on land.
| You'll be paying Hawaii prices for meat, and likely need to
| import either soil or nutrients (if going hydroponic) to grow
| any fresh fruit - otherwise you'll need to hover near large
| ports of entry to leech off the existing supply lines for
| produce. Shipping companies will happily deliver container on
| container of fresh diverse fruit to LA, Seattle or Vancouver
| to sate the known demand of millions of residents - it'd be
| far less appealing to supply the one seasteader who has a
| hankering for dragon fruit with his weekly fix of... like
| three dragon fruits.
|
| Absolutely everything about SeaSteading is predicated on the
| idea that everything would be cheaper without taxes... while
| also marking up the price of everything. I too would love not
| to pay for the military, but that's about the only service of
| significant cost you're effectively dodging while accepting
| so many other fees and expenditures.
| klipt wrote:
| > Absolutely everything about SeaSteading is predicated on
| the idea that everything would be cheaper without taxes...
|
| Just wait until they find out US citizens have to file
| income taxes no matter where they live.
| Taniwha wrote:
| And that they have to pay thousands to renounce their
| citizenships
| amalcon wrote:
| Somewhat telling how none of the characters they offer have
| jobs that would actually be important here. You really need
| things like "general contractor", "boat mechanic", or
| "welder". Instead, they have things like "maritime lawyer",
| "encryption" (whatever that means), "zoologist", which would
| be almost useless.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Hard to become the megacapitalist most libertarians want to
| be (and assume they'd be) selling just your labor. There's
| only so much of you to go around, much better to be the
| capital class and push around ideas and people to make
| money.
| variaga wrote:
| The fact that most people interested in Seasteading are the
| kind of libertarians who think things like "building codes",
| "safety inspections", "occupational licensing of marine
| engineers" and "paying taxes to fund a water rescue service"
| are all unconscionable restrictions on their personal freedom
| is just the icing on the cake. You couldn't pay me to set
| foot on whatever floating death traps they might manage to
| cobble together.
| yongjik wrote:
| Well that does sound like it will make the game more
| interesting, though... Maybe all they need is a
| psychedelic-mushroom-inhaling plumber experienced in
| dealing with death traps?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| They could use their flexibility on scientific ethics
| from their libertarian values on hypnosis drugs and
| steroids (and weirder super power drugs) to maintain an
| (at first) easily controlled slave labor force to keep
| themselves safe (at least until the inevitable rebellion
| and/or disintegration of the society). Such a drug-based
| culture might be quite the shock to the bio-logy.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| I'm only vaguely familiar with the seasteading idea in general,
| but this page was a whole other level of confusing. Is it some
| sort of role playing scenario to test the viability of different
| forms of governance at sea? Is it for fun? Science? Profit?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Promotion mostly would be my guess.
| zero_deg_kevin wrote:
| Are Seasteaders fleeing specific laws or do they intend to just
| sit around contemplating their on-paper freedom?
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's a libertarian movement at the heart of it so most laws
| really. Taxes (especially taxes), drug regulations, finance,
| etc are the classics that get brought up.
| david_shaw wrote:
| As someone not familiar with "Seasteading," this was a _very_
| confusing site visit.
|
| I couldn't understand if the "game" took place on a cruise ship,
| or what the objective of the game was. At first, I thought this
| might have been an in-person LARP-style event at sea (which
| sounded interesting), but after reading the commentary here, I
| think it's just a way to promote their actual Seasteading
| fantasy.
| munk-a wrote:
| Are you saying that it'd be rude of me to show up to their
| event as a level 13 half-orc cleric of pelor with a pouch full
| of foam balls to properly target my spell effects?
|
| That actually sounds like a lot more fun and gosh I've missed
| LARPing over the past year.
| zarakshR wrote:
| Under the description of The Co-Op it says "Players pay a
| membership fee to access resources like food, lodging, clean
| water, etc."
|
| Did anybody think this through more than once?
| echelon wrote:
| Really dumb idea here.
|
| > Seasteading is building floating societies with significant
| political autonomy. Nearly half the world's surface is unclaimed
| by any nation-state, and many coastal nations can legislate
| seasteads in their territorial waters.
|
| > The Seasteading Institute is a nonprofit think-tank promoting
| the creation of floating ocean cities as a revolutionary solution
| to some of the world's most pressing problems: rising sea levels,
| overpopulation, poor governance, and more...
|
| Seasteading is not a solution to any real problem. It's like
| colonizing Mars or the moon - human bodies aren't evolved for
| either of those environments, and it won't make sense until we're
| post-biology to inhabit those places at any appreciable
| population volume.
|
| Seasteading actually makes less sense than visiting Mars. Beyond
| living on an oil rig or research platform, there's only downside
| to life at sea: upkeep of the rig, importing resources, lack of
| fresh water, medical, and sanitary supplies. What you do have are
| rusting, corrosion, barnacles, bad weather, sea sickness, etc.
| There's nowhere to go and nothing to do. Just ask oil rig
| personnel how much fun their lives are.
|
| What about trash and refuse? I imagine that's dumped right back
| into the ocean. Or damaged, partially submerged rigs that serve
| as shipping hazards? There are so many negative externalities.
|
| Humans are terrestrial, and we're suited to live on land. All of
| our advantages are here.
|
| It's like the 70s returned and they want people to live in
| biodomes. There's no point! No rationale worth any of the
| innumerable downsides.
|
| We're not facing overpopulation. If anything, population growth
| in the 1st world needs to accelerate to match declining
| replacement rates. The earth has a much larger carrying capacity,
| and we're not even close to hitting it.
|
| Sea level changes aren't stopping people from moving to Miami and
| investing in real estate there.
|
| We're not going to see millions of people living "Principality of
| Sealand" style. It's as obtuse an idea as NFTs.
| tdy721 wrote:
| It's a game! What is not fun about the scenario?
| echelon wrote:
| Look at the main website.
|
| They built a game to support and draw interest to their
| ideological cause.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Games are great because they are terrible propaganda tools.
| With a game it's no longer enough to write a compelling
| story: it must be self-consistent.
|
| It may be a model that doesn't represent important parts of
| the world, but that's still better than a narrative.
| ludamad wrote:
| That's an interesting thought. However, inconsistency in
| propaganda is real if you consider embellishments can
| differ greatly. The key is to control the conversation.
| You can easily censor an RPG chat, for example, to the
| same effect
| ska wrote:
| > Games are great because they are terrible propaganda
| tools.
|
| c.f. "Monopoly" (originally Georgist propaganda iirc)
| smolder wrote:
| Yes, the grandparent was implying games didn't make good
| propaganda because the flaws in their model are exposed
| by playing with it, as if propaganda needs to be
| dishonest or false, but it doesn't. Following their
| reasoning, and your example, games could be effective
| propaganda tools for a specific category of ideas; those
| that have the self consistency needed to be made into a
| compelling game.
| munk-a wrote:
| Just in case Georgism is unfamiliar to folks here's a
| pretty good historical run down of the game[1]. I wanted
| to highlight that monopoly was very much intended to
| highlight the capricious and arbitrary nature of
| capitalism - rather than being an endorsement of using
| cut throat tactics to race to the top. I feel like the
| meaning the game has has undergone a significant shift
| societally.
|
| 1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/monopoly-
| was-des...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| _This_ is a game, however the Seasteading movement itself is
| earnest in their desires /efforts to accomplish one or more
| of these scenarios or some variation of them.
| nscalf wrote:
| Uhh, we also weren't evolved to read books. We're post-
| evolution, even if we're not post-biology. There are plenty of
| people thinking through how we could have a sustainable society
| on Mars, not really sure why people couldn't do the same thing
| here. You're assuming negative externalities without seeing
| what people could think up. Also, as far as the Earth's
| carrying capacity goes, the footprint per-individual is much
| larger than it used to be. The traditional statement of
| carrying capacity seems to need some reassessment, because
| there's a really good argument to make that global climate
| change is evidence that we are past our current carrying
| capacity.
|
| I personally don't find the idea of Seasteading compelling.
| echelon wrote:
| > Uhh, we also weren't evolved to read books. We're post-
| evolution, even if we're not post-biology.
|
| Reading doesn't pose a challenge to our basic needs (food,
| water, shelter, clothing, sanitation), whereas Mars and
| seasteading do. The hill climbing barrier was considerably
| lower for our species.
|
| Outside of the accomplishments for science and engineering,
| there is likely little benefit in building up Mars as a
| habitable destination for humans to live at scale. Unless the
| economies of space mining can support it, there's really no
| reason to be there beyond a thousand or so individuals.
|
| I don't buy the astroid survival argument either. In the near
| term, putting humans on Mars does not de-risk the potential
| for an asteroid to cause human extinction. Mars colonies will
| likely still be reliant upon Earth for survival for a hundred
| years to come as they will not have adequate resources,
| support, or manufacturing capabilities for self-sustenance
| let alone growth. It's unlikely that a small colony could
| _Matt Damon_ themselves back from the brink without a large
| industrial civilization backing them.
|
| Research into enhancing human lives here on earth and
| protecting our environment will pay greater dividends. I'd
| even wager that advances in AI/ML, BCI, and biology outpace
| space colonization tech due to their immediate applications
| and inherent venture capital fundability. (SpaceX will be
| funded because of the DoD, NASA, and terrestrial
| communications. Mars not so much.)
|
| > global climate change is evidence that we are past our
| current carrying capacity.
|
| The current economic and political regime doesn't curtail
| dumping carbon into the atmosphere. The correlation with
| population is complicated. China and the United States, two
| of the largest contributors to CO2 emissions, have slowing
| population growth if you discount immigration.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I'm convinced he biggest benefit to colonizing Mars if we
| have the technology is that there won't be as many people
| there. If you can make Mars livable you can make anywhere
| on Earth livable even post climate crisis. The real thing
| that goes away is there won't be 7ish billion other people
| who also want to keep living trying to copy the tech and
| competing for those resources.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Mars colonies will likely still be reliant upon Earth
| for survival for a hundred years to come as they will not
| have adequate resources, support, or manufacturing
| capabilities for self-sustenance let alone growth._
|
| It'll take a hundred years after we start for the asteroid
| survival argument to be valid. A hundred years is too long,
| so let's never start.
| echelon wrote:
| Indeed. There are better things to spend the money on
| right here and now.
|
| In a hundred years, we may be able to solve the problem
| with far less cost and effort.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| But if not, it's two hundred years until Mars has a self-
| sustaining human population.
| golergka wrote:
| > Reading doesn't pose a challenge to our basic needs
|
| Having had developed a -7 vision by 12 years old, I'd beg
| to differ. Because of books, I'm completely useless without
| contacts or glasses in human "natural habitat".
| ska wrote:
| There is some limited evidence that a lot of close
| focusing (e.g. reading) may contribute to myopia, but
| it's hardly conclusive, and certainly at that magnitude
| is unlikely to be a single cause.
| handrous wrote:
| Last I read, researchers had pretty convincingly isolated
| the primary cause as insufficient intense UV-bearing
| light (so, sunlight) exposure during a handful of
| critical early childhood years, followed by genes as a
| distant second major risk-factor for near-sightedness.
| "Too much TV" or "too much reading" had been ruled out as
| meaningfully affecting anything, once isolated from the
| "too little bright light during certain ages" factor. The
| supposed mechanism is that intense light plays a role in
| getting the eye to stop developing and changing shape at
| the right time.
| klipt wrote:
| > We're post-evolution
|
| Definitely not.
| echelon wrote:
| We're post "natural" (for some definitions) selection.
| C-sections, pre- and post-natal care, life-saving medical
| advances, glasses/contacts, artificial limbs, ... Not to
| mention most people don't actually hunt or grow their own
| food, build their own shelters, or sew their own clothing.
|
| But evolution is still happening.
|
| (nit: I had this comment sitting in a buffer because
| downvotes on this thread and elsewhere subject me to the HN
| bad commentor rate limit.)
| WesleyHale wrote:
| There are still incurable diseases and cancers some are
| immune to and some are not due to genetics.
| NortySpock wrote:
| I don't think your parent poster would disagree with that
| statement. If different things kill you, natural
| selection shifts slightly.
| falcor84 wrote:
| What do you mean by "definitely"? Other than some evidence
| of evolving protection against HIV in Africa, I'm not
| familiar with any good evidence of modern day selective
| pressure.
| klipt wrote:
| Consider Tinder profiles saying they'll only date someone
| over 6'. Sexual selection is one of the most powerful
| selective pressures.
| munk-a wrote:
| Evolution is insanely slow and it will take a while for
| our bodies to catch up to us but it is a constant force
| that you're never "beyond". The only thing that might
| count as an end is detaching ourselves from the phsyical
| bodies that facilitate natural evolution (i.e. ascending
| to beings of pure energy or whatever) - and even in that
| case, we'd probably still constantly tweak and improve
| our existence, we just will have moved beyond natural
| evolution.
|
| I think there's a thought that eugenics was a natural
| evolution of evolution[1] - and, as a society, we
| generally find that rather repulsive and don't do it...
| But just because we're aware of ways we can artificially
| speed up the process doesn't mean the process isn't
| continuing.
|
| 1. It's a thought, or conception - this isn't me
| endorsing eugenics in any way. I just believe that,
| mechanically, it could achieve a similar result just
| accelerated and with a lot of really important moral
| questions.
| btilly wrote:
| I agree. They literally want to create floating cities spewing
| pollution wherever they drift under the excuse that nobody else
| can legislate what they do.
| keiferski wrote:
| 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_.
|
| 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.
| Jolter wrote:
| The Hansa of the Baltic sea had their income from monopolizing
| trade routes across the sea.
|
| Freeport-type cities in the 1600s Carribean were parasitical on
| surrounding societies by enabling and profiting from piracy.
|
| What are the citizens of your modern distributed platform
| society going to live off?
| keiferski wrote:
| 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.
| rtkwe wrote:
| > 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.
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| 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.
| janee wrote:
| Haha given the sea aspect of this, your post makes me
| think of BioShock
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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
| parasitic nature of a seastead.
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