Difference between revisions of "Seasteading (RationalWiki)"

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{{DES | des = "Seasteading is the libertarian fantasy of attempting to establish a society on (or under) the sea. Given that a large swath of the oceans are international waters, outside the jurisdiction of any one country, some people see seasteading as the most viable possibility for creating new, autonomous states with their own pet political systems in place." | show=}}
 
{{DES | des = "Seasteading is the libertarian fantasy of attempting to establish a society on (or under) the sea. Given that a large swath of the oceans are international waters, outside the jurisdiction of any one country, some people see seasteading as the most viable possibility for creating new, autonomous states with their own pet political systems in place." | show=}}
 
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{{Quotations|title=Seasteading (RationalWiki)|quotes=true}}
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{{Text |
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Seasteading is the libertarian fantasy of attempting to establish a society on (or under) the sea. Given that a large swath of the oceans are international waters, outside the jurisdiction of any one country, some people see seasteading as the most viable possibility for creating new, autonomous states with their own pet political systems in place.
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Given that international maritime law doesn't, as such, recognize ginormous boats or artificial islands as stateless enclaves or independent nations, diplomatic recognition, if the owners actually need them, is somewhat problematic.
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Seasteading is inspired by real life examples of boat-based provision of services not legal in certain countries. Examples include casino boats (ships that, upon reaching international waters, open up their gambling facilities to passengers) and the organization Women on Waves,[wp] which provides abortion services in countries (such as Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain) where abortion is illegal or in which the rules are stricter than they would prefer. Another example is pirate radio stations, which got their name from the fact that many of them operated from boats in international waters.
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Several seasteading projects have been started; only two have ever been completed (three if you count Sealand and its 'Prince'), and the vast majority have never even really begun. It is quite possible that herding libertarians is difficult.
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Some cryonicists are seasteaders, which implies truly remarkably compartmentalised thinking about the value of large, stable social structures.
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Contents [hide]
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1 "Successful" examples
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1.1 Republic of Minerva
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1.2 Rose Island
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1.3 Operation Atlantis
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2 In popular culture
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2.1 BioShock
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3 Sea also
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4 External links
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5 Footnotes
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[edit]"Successful" examples
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With the exception of Sealand, there have been three seasteading projects that could be considered "successful" in any sense of the word.
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[edit]Republic of Minerva
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The longest-lived and most successful was the "Republic of Minerva," an artificial island in the South Pacific constructed by using dredged sand to expand the tiny Minerva Reef. The intention was to establish an agrarian anarcho-capitalist utopia; presumably the libertarian supermen would evolve past the need to drink, as there was no source of fresh water on the island. Minerva formally declared independence in 1972 and attempted to establish diplomatic relations with the surrounding nations, though it was mostly ignored. The small settlement lasted for approximately five months, until the government of Tonga sent a military expedition to claim the island (or rather, re-claim it; the original reef had been considered Tongan territory). The project collapsed, the founder made off with huge amounts of money, and the island has since been mostly reclaimed by the sea.
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[edit]Rose Island
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Rose Island (officially the "Respubliko de la Insulo de la Rozoj") was a 400-square-meter artificial platform in the Mediterranean founded by an Italian casino entrepreneur in 1968. It styled itself as a libertarian capitalist state with Esperanto as its official language, but was in fact little more than a tourist resort complex, and had virtually no space for permanent residents. The Italian government, seeing the project as nothing more than a ploy to avoid having to pay taxes on revenue from the resort, seized the platform with police a few weeks after it opened and destroyed it with explosives.
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[edit]Operation Atlantis
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Operation Atlantis was an American attempt to create an anarcho-capitalist utopia (noticing a trend here?) in the Bahamas by building a large ferro-concrete boat, sailing it to its destination, anchoring it there and living on it. The boat was built, launched from New York in 1971, and taken to its final position in the Caribbean, where it was secured in place. Preparations were made for the residents to immigrate to their new floating city-state, but unfortunately for them it sank almost immediately.[1] The project subsequently collapsed.
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[edit]In popular culture
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[edit]BioShock
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The video game BioShock[2] features what is probably the best-known example of a seastead in popular culture. Its setting, known as Rapture, is an undersea city in the Atlantic Ocean built by a billionaire industrialist along Objectivist principles, acting as a place where the general elite of society can live free from the heavy hands of big gummint, organized religion, and the scornful untermenschen that want to restrict them.
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It goes about as well as any sane human being would expect it to, as society grows heavily stratified between the elites and the workers that they brought in to maintain their utopia, and said elites cynically abandon their original ideals in their quest to stay in power. Mad artists murder and mutilate people in the name of their horrifying "art," and take "freedom from censorship" to mean "freedom from any and all criticism." Critics of those in power find themselves unable to get their message out because all of the media and "public" venues are owned by those very leaders. A New York gangster infiltrates the place and starts a civil war in his pursuit of getting rich, ironically living up to the principles of Objectivism far better than the self-serving leadership. He finances unscrupulous, uncontrolled biotech research that is more concerned with money than with scientific ethics, and unintentionally replaces the city's money-based power structure with one based on lethal force gained by genetic augmentation. Finally, nearly everyone is either killed or mutated into bloodthirsty freaks due to long-term effects of the gene splicing. By the second game, the place has turned to extreme collectivism of a sort that would leave Pol Pot with a mix of disbelief and admiration after the survivors, in a mix of anger and desperation, overthrew the "captains of industry."[3]
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[edit]Sea also
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Going Galt
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The Citadel
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[edit]External links
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China Mieville's profile of the Freedom Ship project
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The "Seasteading Institute" and their forums
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Reddit Island
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[edit]Footnotes
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↑ Really, what else were they expecting? Naming your floating city project after a fictional city famous primarily for sinking is just asking for trouble.
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↑ A comprehensive wiki for the series. (Spoiler warning, obviously, for those looking to play them.)
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↑ And for good measure, fundamentalism and dominionism gets both barrels too in BioShock Infinite, to the point where... well, that would be spoilers. Trust us, there's a reason Jesus Christ's name is almost always replaced with that of the main villain. Also features skysteading!
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Latest revision as of 20:03, 12 October 2014

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