The people dreaming up the seasteading plans imagine self-sustaining, seaworthy rafts populated by like-minded individuals. They are, typically, the sort of person who has a rather positive opinion of human nature, and imagine that most other people are at least a tiny bit rational and ethical.
They are not just ignoring, but never even considering, those people who already live "free" on the high seas: pirates, human traffickers, poachers of protected fisheries, smugglers, toxic waste dumpers, and the generally unsavory characters who are largely invisible to the rest of the world.
Any seastead will eventually encounter those people, who are already out there, on their reefers and other largely obsoleted vessels. They do not subscribe to the non-aggression principle (NAP), and are often very skilled at concealing their unethical behavior from observers. I have never seen this issue seriously addressed by any NAP-libertarian.
What do you do when a ship pulls up to your seastead's floating dock, and you see an unhappy man bolted to the deck with a neck chain? If the raft next door runs a brothel, how do you really know that none of the employees have been coerced into working there? If a factory-mothership offers to sell you its by-catch, should you worry about where it came from? Could a group of armed "guests" take control of your floating home? What do you do when your fish farm gets poached? Will you always know where the line between non-interference and complicity lies? If you make any wrong decisions, you may die, or attract the future ire of someone better armed than you.
The key concept is that people who have better reasons for evading the laws of nation-states--typically prison or execution--are already out there. Furthermore, you can't positively identify them or their motives, nor can you avoid dealing with them in the long run. And if you establish a system that deals with them (and naturally, the traditional seasteader's bogeyman of a state-owned navy vessel) acceptably, how do you prevent that from turning into a government? And if those guys are already out there thumbing their noses at the law, why bother with the complicated engineering projects? Just buy an old reefer and take it out beyond the territorial limit, and you're done.
It all makes me think that seasteading is a way to scam people afraid of losing some of their money into actually losing most of their money. If the promoters weren't out to sell speculative floating concrete boxes to credulous suckers, they could be actually operating one of those motherships, supplying and trading with people who live in international waters, on their existing convenience-flagged vessels. Why aren't they?
>The key concept is that people who have better reasons for evading the laws of nation-states--typically prison or execution--are already out there. Furthermore, you can't positively identify them or their motives, nor can you avoid dealing with them in the long run. And if you establish a system that deals with them (and naturally, the traditional seasteader's bogeyman of a state-owned navy vessel) acceptably, how do you prevent that from turning into a government?
Why not let it turn into a government? I'm not a libertarian, but I don't think libertarians are quite anarchists.
With regards to security, that just doesn't seem too hard of a problem, at least against non-state actors. Hopefully the place should easily throw off enough surplus to afford a security force that could take on pirates.
Now, I may be describing a more centralized authoritarian setup than a libertarian might be comfortable with. But Dubai and Singapore are real places not under threat by pirates, while I can't think of a libertarian society that actually exists anywhere.
They are not just ignoring, but never even considering, those people who already live "free" on the high seas: pirates, human traffickers, poachers of protected fisheries, smugglers, toxic waste dumpers, and the generally unsavory characters who are largely invisible to the rest of the world.
Any seastead will eventually encounter those people, who are already out there, on their reefers and other largely obsoleted vessels. They do not subscribe to the non-aggression principle (NAP), and are often very skilled at concealing their unethical behavior from observers. I have never seen this issue seriously addressed by any NAP-libertarian.
What do you do when a ship pulls up to your seastead's floating dock, and you see an unhappy man bolted to the deck with a neck chain? If the raft next door runs a brothel, how do you really know that none of the employees have been coerced into working there? If a factory-mothership offers to sell you its by-catch, should you worry about where it came from? Could a group of armed "guests" take control of your floating home? What do you do when your fish farm gets poached? Will you always know where the line between non-interference and complicity lies? If you make any wrong decisions, you may die, or attract the future ire of someone better armed than you.
The key concept is that people who have better reasons for evading the laws of nation-states--typically prison or execution--are already out there. Furthermore, you can't positively identify them or their motives, nor can you avoid dealing with them in the long run. And if you establish a system that deals with them (and naturally, the traditional seasteader's bogeyman of a state-owned navy vessel) acceptably, how do you prevent that from turning into a government? And if those guys are already out there thumbing their noses at the law, why bother with the complicated engineering projects? Just buy an old reefer and take it out beyond the territorial limit, and you're done.
It all makes me think that seasteading is a way to scam people afraid of losing some of their money into actually losing most of their money. If the promoters weren't out to sell speculative floating concrete boxes to credulous suckers, they could be actually operating one of those motherships, supplying and trading with people who live in international waters, on their existing convenience-flagged vessels. Why aren't they?