I have long fantasized about an artificial island nation state adopting BTC as its national currency - perhaps complete with solar powered next gen ASIC miners, BTC funded space exploration program, researching into the cutting edge of human endeavor such as renewable energy, space exploration, 3D printing, supporting itself economically as a tax haven and entrepreneurial incubator, refusing to acknowledge or ally with the current corrupt nation states which drag us into pointless wars, using BTC funding to mine Helium 3 on the moon (generating even more wealth for our country as well as helping humanity as whole), building a space elevator, the list goes on...

Replying to watch this topic closely  

I am totally for it though.

I hope that one day Texas can be something like this The WORD Texas comes from the Caddo language, and literally translates into "Friends" or "Allies". Yet it is a state that capitalizes on putting its own citizens in cages.

If your successful the US will bomb you and make it sound like your some kind of terrorists.

The discussion you linked to is closed.

In my personal experience being able to dive deeper than 400 feet for a period of a week is essential if you plan to avoid the worst of a hurricane or similar storm.

Living in a submarine requires an entirely different mindset with regard to personal space.  Not many people handle that well.

The complexity of what is required to make a submarine work should not be underestimated.  The systems on a modern submarine are equal in number and complexity to a surface ship with four times the crew and space.  Everyone on a submarine is an expert in multiple systems and is qualified to operate _any_ system.  That is not a trivial level of training.

To be honest, the whole discussion of platforms for seasteading is rather premature.  I would start with energy budgets, economic models, business plans and social engineering before even worrying about the configuration of the platform.

A bit of a pessimistic view.

If you were bombed I would suspect the grammar police first.  Nothing pisses them off more than confusing "your" with "you're".

They don't submerge.  They are evacuated.
http://www.weather.com/news/oil-companies-pull-back-isaac-20120826

I doubt that is a reasonable model for an autonomous nation built on a seastead.  "Excuse me mister land dweller, but hurricane season has arrived so we are going to evacuate all of our women and children to your cities."


Bluntly, anyone can make a chart with lots of tasks and little yellow boxes.  Attempting to harvest energy from the ocean in useful quantities, store it and then have it available when desired at a useful power level is not trivial.  Just to make the challenge more interesting, do it without depending on importing lots of manufactured goods or raw materials.  If the seastead is depending on PV panels with an effective life time of 10 years, it needs to have an intrinsic ability to build them or the ability to stock pile a significant quantity of replacements so it can deal with an embargo.  All of a sudden wind mills made from woven seaweed and whale bone that lift water to a reservoir to run a turbine to make electricity seems like state of the art technology...

Don't get me wrong.  There are very clever devices out there.  I personally like this one: 
http://liquidr.com/technology/wave-glider.html

There are also really cool efforts to convert wave energy to stored energy like this one:
http://scitechdaily.com/floating-power-buoy-creates-electricity-from-ocean-waves/

Notice that they are at the bleeding edge of engineering and dependent on a pretty massive shore based infrastructure.



Why would any of those business models not be more successful on land?  Cuba already does the "offshore medical treatment" for anyone looking for an alternative to western medicine.  Fish farming or aquaculture either require expensive structures (remember everything on a seastead will cost more than similar structures on dry land) or require control over the surrounding ocean.  Does the seastead intend to claim a 200 nm EEZ around whereever it happens to be?  Will it have the military muscle to be able to even symbolically enforce such a claim?  Even the "offshore tech center" and "offshore data haven" concepts are better served by Greenland, Sri Lanka or Tasmania

A successful economic model for a seastead has to be built on what a seastead provides for less than any other reasonable competitor, without becoming a target for those bent on "law enforcement".  Pirate havens attract negative attention.  Ones that sink will be sunk. These means a seastead has to be a model of "good society" to those who control the sea and produce something of value for less than the same item in the homelands of those who control the sea.  Attempting to be an outpost for extra-legal operations is just inviting the folks who enforce the laws to come pay a visit.


Not quite what I mean by "social engineering".  Successful organizations don't happen by accident.  Either they evolved in a forgiving environment (not seastead land) or they were planned by really smart people.  How a seastead deals with the need for an executive power to keep the infrastructure working with out either becoming subjects of that power or making the executive so weak it is unable to attract the people needed to keep the thing afloat is a huge challenge.  The age old ship captain concept works because eventually the voyage is over.  Anything less than a ship captain concept can be very risky.  A legislative discussion about the merits of expending energy to avoid a storm may still be in the planning stages as the category 5 hurricane starts ripping parts off the seastead.  Finding the balance between these levels of societal control can be tricky.

If we toss in the idea of "family unit" seastead conglomerates, it gets even more challenging.  If the Minnowites don't get along with the followers of Sharkaria, how does the seastead maintain a critical mass of people?


Finally, the idea of what it takes to make a nation is pretty clear in the eyes of the world.  A shared language, a shared heritage, a shared living space (land or seastead) are all starting points.  These are necessary but not sufficient.  What is really necessary is generational self sufficiency.  If your state is not self sufficient in the long run, you fail.  The long run this means a minimum viable breeding population.  I would look at Nauru as a minimum population size.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru

Nauru might also be an example of the challenges faced by a seastead except their island is not in daily danger of sinking.  BTW, it seems a bit ironic that the only thing Nauru seems to be able to offer on the world market today is a detention facility.  Perhaps the seastead community should approach the Naura government about setting up a seastead in ocean around Naura.  They seem to be willing to cut a deal on just about anything that will keep their children from starving.

But what if you just avoid such dangerous places? Hurricanes don't happen everywhere. The South Atlantic for example is calmer. The Mediterranean too.
How deep would you need to go to avoid the most dangerous waves a sea like the Mediterranean may hit you with?
Obviously by avoid I don't mean 100% ignore it, but just resist it without having your "house" rolling/turning strongly (or breaking apart!) and without getting seasick.


The supporters of the idea claim that most of the time the ocean is calm enough so that you can leave your submarine afloat. The top of the submarine would be like a balcony. It wouldn't be much different from an apartment after all.
Once in a while you'd have to sink for protection though.  I wonder how sudden would that happen. I mean, if you left your home floating and went to work nearby, do you have enough time to come back to it and sink before things get serious?


That's part of the argument of the seasteading institute (which is against submersible designs).
Those for it claim that such complexity is not necessary in a seastead use case. They say, for example, that you'd never need to sink deeper than what a snorkel can reach, so no need for fancy equipment to get oxygen from the sea water. Most of the military grade equipment available in modern submarines would also not be necessary either, according to them.

If I remember well, they claimed that you'd be able to have a concrete submarine with available inner space comparable to that of a 60m² apartment for something like 200k€, what would make it comparable to the costs of a house in the French Riviera for example. Do you agree with this assessment?

The main supporter of this idea has already produced private concrete submarines: http://concretesubmarine.com/


TSI has already published many research papers on these topics. See: http://www.seasteading.org/overview/


Because they would not be crippled by regulations and taxation. That's the whole point: the freer the economy, the more potential it has. A seastead based on libertarian principles would likely be freer than any other economy in this world.


Most american nations didn't have a shared heritage or shared language when they started. Same goes for Australia and other 'new world' nations.

I would go twice the depth of the longest period wave known to have happened in the region and in water at least 10 times as deep as that period.  Anything less and life could get interesting.  I remember a storm where at 200 feet down, the low pressure area between the wave crests pulled our submarine up to the surface.  It was interesting getting back down.  Luckily there were no broken bones and all the gear was repairable.

If your goal is to avoid seasickness, I recommend staying on dry land.  IF that is a dominant concern in your design for a seastead, you really should not be going to sea.  Not everyone should go to sea.


You would contemplate commuting from your seastead to where???  You would allow the systems you depend on to protect your family and all you possess to be in anything less than perfect working order?  Please don't seastead and if you must, please don't do it near me.


A 400 foot snorkel?

That "military grade" equipment is actually SUBSAFE grade.  Go read about SUBSAFE and the USS Thresher for a better understanding of why SUBSAFE is not cheap.  Those CO2 scrubbers and O2 generators are not military luxuries, they are what allow you to live long enough that you can fix the crap that put you at the bottom of the sea.  Besides, what is so fancy about purifying water and splitting it to get O2?  If that is not a simple process you can sketch out on a napkin over beers with your neighbor, you might not want to be going to sea in a submarine.


I will not go to sea in a concrete vessel ever again.  Please never mention that idea again.



They appear to be worth every dollar that was paid for them.

How does that freedom from non-libertarian regulations and taxes compare to the increased taxes and regulations that will be part of keeping the seastead floating?  We _know_ there will be an increase in cost to do anything at sea.  You _hope_ that libertarian regulations and taxes will be more efficient and effective in an at sea environment than _any_ current system anywhere on land and that the increase in efficiency will offset the increase in cost.

Even if you are correct that libertarian regulations and taxes are dramatically better than anything we have today, as soon as Nauru decides to emulate you, your competitive advantage is gone.


The organizing force of most new world nations shared a heritage and language.  The individual national histories are how they consolidated the people around them to that heritage and language.  That process (and conflict) continues today.  Ideally your seastead won't have to deal with a civil war over debt based labor slavery or "Indian wars" over land use or religious wars between the Minnowites and the Sharkafians.  Of course, if you are not careful about making sure you have "common ground" with your neighbors you may find they will take your ground and leave you "treading water".