Seasteading

Let’s create our own country!

We can make all our own rules! We can take drugs, own machine guns, issue postage stamps, print money, avoid taxes and play the ukulele all day by the edge of the sea while not getting vaccinated and eschewing those damn masks. All while dancing in a conga line with Marjory Taylor Green and Mitch McConnell. Qs are welcome (but not the gay kind).

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Here’s the story. Some folks with a lot of money like Peter Thiel and other folks who fall somewhere in the libertarian orbit are fed up with rules, civil standards and laws preventing the above delights from taking place so they want to create floating independent countries.

This will fail for so many reasons. One is that the sea is a harsh task master and if you build one of these fake countries the sea will simply sink you. And if the sea doesn’t get you the nearest country will. Some guy put up the above seashed just outside the 12 mile limit off Thailand and the Thai’s were not pleased.

They did let the couple go and now they are back in business off Costa Rica which has no navy.

Another reason the whole idea is not practical is that the costs will be so far out of scale to the amenities that no one will do it. Plus, and here’s the big killer, the potential customers already have guns and drugs and money and own yachts as well so where is the gain? It can’t be that much fun to live with the perpetually glum Peter Thiel. Oh, I almost forgot; no one collects stamps any more.

There are also folks who are building elaborate underground bunkers so they can survive for years underground as the looming social upheavals unfold. At least that’s doable even if you emerge from your bunker to a divested world with a few ravenous gun fanatics roasting a skinny rat over a tire fire.

I think the truth behind the seasteading is that it’s really a make work project for graphic illustrators.

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The leading promoters have a nifty website explaining how they will basically be free people and save the world too. Seasteading.org

Now the fellow in the following video has a workable winterbourne world. Step one— salvage a mammoth pile of junk and build a moneyless (an apparently dentist free) tiny society.

The man’s name is Shadow and I have big respect for him. He is a dreamer and a schemer and a doer. This guy has it going on. Props, Shadow.

There is another way to go to sea. For instance, you can buy a condo on a cruise ship called The World. Pretty snazzy.

Units start at about 1.5 million plus a big bite for upkeep. But The World is for normal millionaires. There are 165 units and it’s really just a 20 year old cruise ship with bigger rooms.

One full time resident made his fortune selling toys and pipes fashioned out of corncobs. Probably has some great stories to tell at dinner about the corncob business.

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But slipping down the ways soon will be the yacht Somnio which means to dream in Latin. It’s the biggest yacht/apartment complex to date and really is under construction. There will be only 39 units and no corn cobs guys. Just folks like Jared and Ivanka. Units start at around 11 million and go to about 30 million and more if you want to add avocado. Heck, for 30 mill you could afford your own mega yacht. Both of these vessels stop at about 100 ports a year and are constantly on the move.

Me, I’m sticking with my own mega yacht because I have a postage stamp printing press on board so I can mail a letter from pretty much anywhere. If I could only find a mailbox…

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