Seasteading: Homesteading the High Seas

It seems fair to say that most of us here at The Fr33 Agents Network don’t see much scope for creating a free society through existing political channels. The domination of the many over the few is the very essence of democracy, and the insignificance of any single vote means political behavior is based on unquestioned biases and is used to signal disapproval of those things they find objectionable. Trying to get our guy into office seems tempting, but the system is rigged against us.

The overall winner of TSI's recent design contest

Most reasonable people will admit to the flaws of democracy, but fall back on Churchill’s quip that it is the worst system except for all those others that have been tried. Unless we propose something better, they say, we have no place complaining. Many of us favor the abolition of government altogether. This is certainly a noble goal, but the road from here to there is not clearly marked and is bound to contain some pretty serious obstacles.

Some of us want to delegitimize government in order to make its coercive power more difficult to exercise. Others seek to create institutions to compete with the state, either black and gray markets or nonmarket institutions formed to voluntarily provide public goods. Others see privacy-enhancing communication technology as a way of flying under the state’s radar.

Activities like this certainly have the potential to make significant gains in real freedom, but do not change the underlying structure which gives rise to coercive government.

The obvious but seemingly impossible solution: if we don’t like the way our country works, let’s pack up and start our own. Patri Friedman – son of David, son of Milton – and the other fine folks at the Seasteading Institute are working on the technical means of making this a reality. Their mission: “To further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems.”

Seasteaders recognize the futility of complaining about policy without considering the underlying institutions from which political outcomes emerge. Given that we have an essentially unbounded democratic system in which any sphere of life can potentially to be regulated by the state, the outcomes we see should not surprise us. Minimal government is pretty much impossible: as long as we have a coercive state, we will never be free.

When we consider the problem more carefully, though, it becomes clear that we need to think about the environment from which political institutions themselves emerge. Complaining about the political system we have without considering the “ecosystem” in which governments exist, seasteaders argue, is just as pointless as complaining about policies and ignoring political institutions.

While opposing coercive government entirely may seem like striking at the root rather than hacking at the branches, the ecosystem approach of the seasteaders suggests that it the lack of competition in government which is the real root at which we must strike. As Patri put it in his recent Cato Unbound essay:

Government is just another industry, where countries offer services to citizens, but it has some unfortunate features. It is a geographically segmented monopoly, and since all land is taken, the industry has an enormous barrier to entry. To start a new government you have to beat an old one, which means winning a war, an election, or a revolution. And it has very high customer lock-in: there are barriers to emigration and immigration, and switching countries involves both high financial and emotional costs. These characteristics result in a horribly uncompetitive industry, so it is no surprise that existing firms tend to exploit customers instead of innovating to attract them.

Seasteading aims to change the underlying ecosystem by making it easy for anyone to move away from bad government and start their own country. Low-cost entry and exit would effectively make government voluntary, approximating Nozick’s Framework for Utopia. In a world of “dynamic geography” – where we can pack up move away from governance structures we find oppressive – consumers would be able to choose which set of rules to submit themselves to, and governments would be funded through market competition rather than plunder.

Seasteading is my proposal to open the oceans as a new frontier, where we can build new city-states to experiment with new institutions. This dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for forming a new government, because expensive though ocean platforms are, they are still cheap compared to winning a war, an election, or a revolution. A lower barrier to entry means more small-scale experimentation. Also, the unique nature of the fluid ocean surface means that cities can be built in a modular fashion where entire buildings can be detached and floated away. This unprecedented physical mobility will give us the ability to leave a country without leaving our home, increasing competition between governments.

This plan is one of immediate action, not hope or debate. It makes use of the people we have now rather than trying to convert the masses, and avoids entrenched interests by moving to the frontier. Most importantly, it increases jurisdictional competition. It will not just create one new country, but rather an entire ecosystem of countries competing and innovating to attract citizens. Like any market, the process of trial and error will generate solutions we can’t even imagine — but that we know will be better for customers.

The prospect of creating floating cities to escape government sounds science-fictional upon first encounter, especially when we consider the list of past failures. What makes The Seasteading Institute different from earlier attempts, though, is its hard-headed commitment to a more realistic, incremental approach in which trial and error in small, low-risk endeavours will provide the knowledge needed to avoid large-scale failure.

There are obviously many hurdles seasteaders will need to overcome before being able to live free in the ocean. Nevertheless, I personally see homesteading the high seas as the most realistic way to radically increase liberty in our lifetimes. The most serious threat to the success of the project, it seems to me, is potential interference from existing land-based governments. This is why I think Patri is wrong to dismiss “folk activism” as a way of advancing freedom. While libertarians are never likely to have much success in electoral politics, convincing land-lubbers that we have a right to be left alone remains crucial to the autonomy of the ocean-bound.

Anything we can do to increase freedom on land will also remain crucial, since it’s hard to imagine more than a small fraction of the world’s population moving onto the ocean to escape government in the medium term. As Mike points out, we should let a thousand tactics bloom.

For more information on seasteading, visit the Seasteading Institute’s website (where you’ll find forums, an online book-in-progress, and blogs), or the blog Let a Thousand Nations Bloom. Recent articles in Wired and Reason on the project, as well as the discussion at Cato Unbound are also well worth a read.

To support the Institute, you can become a member (you’ll get a rubber duckie!) or volunteer. For a zero-cost way to help spread the word, become a fan of the Seasteading Institute on Facebook (and also of Fr33 Agents, while you’re at it!).