so, like the British conscientious objectors in WW2 who preached pacifism from the safety of their fortified island

Great trolling dude, as of course there were careful measures in place to insure no pacifists were amongst those that dies on the home front.

I’m finding it hard to detect the liberalism in taking cheap pot-shots at crazy innovators.

Trolling: “someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion”

What were you saying about people dying on the home front?

“when one community fails, then you can just pull up anchor and join another.”

David Hume skewered this idiocy about 250 years ago in response to John Locke’s suggestion that people were free to push off and join another society if they didn’t like the one they were currently living in.

“Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artizan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master…” (On the Original Contract).

I’m assuming these communities of super-rich libertarians will also include servants, or maybe the rugged individualists will do their own cooking, cleaning, structural maintenance, etc.

controversial: There was that indeed, by quoting your double straw man point about those wishing to disassociate themselves from the war in Iraq being like a fictional picture of the WWII pacifist.
irrelevant or off-topic: not 100% sure that counts given I was question a directly quoted passage.
generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion: Definitely not, I hardly feel that highlighting your needlessly reactionary and inflammatory kiss of to an otherwise interesting post mocking the isolationists fits this bill. In fact I hope we are stimulating said discussion.
Lastly you have violated one of the golden rules of the internet, if you truly believe me to be a troll, you really shouldn’t feed my by replying to my comments, but ignore me and hope I go back to my little cupboard to plan the next flame ware with some n00b who has invoked Godwin on me.

Didn’t all this happen in Atlas Shrugged?

Chris – I had never heard of that book, but it does look really interesting. Apparently it’s being made into a film starring Angelina Jolie to be released next year.

Kennick – I take you at your word then, although I would never ignore anything you (or anoyone else here) has to say.

Adam, I suggest your condemnation of the two “parable”ists is a bit simplistic.

In market terms, what they’re doing is voting with their feet, opting out of one choice and into another. There is a good and a bad outcome from that. The bad outcome is the one you cite, that they no longer exist as operators in their own society to change things towards their own version of “better”. The good outcome is faster and purer experimentation with their chosen lifestyle. They now exist in numbers and strength in a self-governing sealed environment, and this will enable them in the longer term to build an independent voice for their priorities.

Arguably, building that voice is more important than trying to change the system from within as a collection of scattered individuals. An equivalent choice might be between staying in a political party that you think needs to move in a certain direction and trying to push it in that direction against mass resistance, or joining another party that *is* moving in that direction. Everyone’s individual tipping point will be different.

Of course, the choice the two have opted into is highly artificial, as the Hume quote above suggests. It’s not available to everybody – just like emigration to America wasn’t available to everybody in the 1620s. But Locke understood, as Hume didn’t (at least not here) that the abstract idea of *everybody* being able to choose the society they live in was a distant possibility. Nowadays, it is much easier to emigrate, it’s something a lot of “normal” (for want of a better word) people in the west do at some point in their lives.

When Locke was writing, the technology didn’t exist, the attitudes-underpinned-by-mass-education didn’t exist and the private resources didn’t exist to create these seastead things. But they do exist now, and this vindicates Locke’s viewpoint. If experimentation proves that seasteads a useful social construct, they’ll get more popular and going and living on one will become as normal as emigrating.

Hume’s objection stands, though. It’s all very well to say “you can go to another seastead if you don’t like this one”. How, for the underclass who will keep the things running?

The “technology” did exist in Locke’s day, by the way – it was called America. Locke’s argument is based on the supposition that there is enough uninhabited land for anyone who wants to set up their own competing society to go there and do so.

I have to agree with Andrew on this Alix. Emigration to America is not really a good comparison because it was originally wide open to many many more people than seasteading willl ever be.

For me, seasteading is the ultimate in gated communities without even the restraints and tax requirements that are placed on people there. America was the land of opportunity and freedom, whereas this seems to be the land of exclusivity and irresponsibilty.

In the manifesto I link to, they talk about this as the next step towards moving to other planets, which they will try and do presumably when even the oceans of this planet become a bit too unbearable for them.

America for all it’s faults has benefited people from all over the world. I can’t see seasteads benefiting anyone apart from a few tax exiles.

I’ll have to do a little more research before I can make an educated comment on this, but JG Ballard would have a field day with it.

Nothing new about this; do a quick Google on “Roy Bates” and “Sealand” for a start (and thereby hang more than a few tales)

Thanks Tez. I have often wondered what Sealand was as I looked at it on an OS map. This thread has thrown up a few good links so far.

@Andrew, by technology I meant literally the ability to create liveable space in the sea. I brought up the America parallel myself. America wasn’t an uninhabited blank canvas ready to receive the imprint of a new society, as the earliest settlers quickly discovered.

The underclass argument, however, is a good one – and one to put to the rugged individualists. If they’re not basically prepared to run these things by and for themselves, then yes, I entirely agree, they’re not playing their own game properly. However, the putative development of an underclass on seasteads is not, by itself, an argument powerful enough to counter the possible benefits that might come about from the experiment itself. It would merely be a proof of Hume’s thesis.

@Adam
“it [emigration to America] was originally wide open to many many more people than seasteading willl ever be.”

My point is that seasteading *might* become open to more people *if it works and is socially useful*. It doesn’t set out to remain exclusive any more than emigration did – look at your quotes of what the creators actually say about it. They talk in terms of Open Source software. The ideal endpoint of Open Source software is that everyone uses and improves it, and it becomes the platform for other endeavours. The focus comes off “Who can afford the tools?” and moves on to “Who can make the best use of the communally created tools?”

It’s you reading it as an exclusive tax-haven/playground for the rich. Basically, you don’t believe their account of what they’re doing. That’s a point of view, of course, but simply repeating it doesn’t necessarily make it true.

Given that these people don’t need to “sell” their product to anyone because they presumably have all the money any sane individual could desire, I am inclined to assume that they are actually trying to propagate an idea. One they have some reason to believe will be popular, possibly even socially important.

This idea is highly unlikely to be “everyone should want to live in a playground for the rich”. It’s a message with natural limitations. And if you’re right, the Open Source stuff is just a front and the playground for the rich is their secret agenda, then they’ll fail. The market triumphs once more 😉

Having said all that, I can entirely understand why we should be worried about people using these things cynically for tax avoidance purposes.

The Sealand story always makes me laugh. Has it been sold yet?

And that leads me to my point… would these communities have a militia? I would hope so, or they would be a prime target for pirates (who, I understand are doing roaring business on Africa’s east coast).

My friend and I once fantasised about buying an old trawler out of the ad-mag and becoming pirates. The trawler was £44k, which we could have easily raised selling our flats. And we would have had plenty of money left over for weapons, supplies, a rapscallion crew, and of course, a parrot.

Anyway, it all sounds thoroughly exciting and just a bit fabulous. :o)

I’m up for it. If you sort out the boat and the weapons then I’m happy to sort out the parrot.

Q: How many problems can be forseen in ‘seasteading’?
A: Lots.

Firstly, it is patently impossible to cede entirely from the established structure of global society. Whatever new territory you wish to colonise you’d still be dependant on certain productive means and resources to sustain yourself.

How would the seasteaders feed themselves when even the fish stocks are regulated by global convention?
How would the seasteaders maintain their stead without acknowledging the communion of peoples and existing power relationships among and between people and peoples?
How would the seateaders retain their wealth without acknowledging value resides in transferability?
How would seasteaders be able to defend themselves without first establishing their legitimate sovereignty?

Frankly the only people who have both an interest and the ability to move offshore are those in the responsible positions of power or those who wish to deny reality – it is a self-denying philosophy.

However great the barriers created to separate the echelons of social heirachy those at the top know their position depends on the fabric of the structure.

Anyone who promotes such a short-sighted idea can either be easily discounted for their vacuuousness or must be seriously scrutinised for any ulterior motives.

The idea strikes me as a bit impractical. The critique strikes me as rather illiberal.

The theme of the article seems confused: the author doesn’t like would-be ‘sea-steaders, but he doesn’t want them to leave; he denigrates conscientious objectors, but disagrees with the war in Iraq; his article was publised on Liberal Conspiracy, but doesn’t think people should exercise their freedom of movement.

Just another whinge about rich people.

Just another whinge about rich people.

No, I think you are missing the point, like Bishop Hill.

The point of this piece seems to be that liberty, as espoused by libertarians, is usually a pipe dream that doesn’t take into account the fact that its only a few rich people who can take advantage of that liberty. The rest are forced to deal with even worse situations.

It is the classic liberal v left antagonism, and I think the article does a good job of illustrating it.

Liberty without opportunity is a fantasy, and should be exposed as such at every opportunity, especially when rich people try and couch it as something ordinary people can attain.

And I have to keep repeating this every time because certain people haven’t yet read the about us page or understood it well: this site encompassed liberals and lefties, as well as liberal-lefties. There are certain tensions between the different positions and we want to explore that. This article is part of that. Other times we run something very anti-statist. Just coming here and assuming we’ll only take one position…. and highlighting our name is getting rather tedious. It’s a brand name – get over it.

That’s a good comment, Sunny, up until the final line.

Brands can only be trusted if they embody values and the confusion over the branding of this site is an important example of how this effects political campaigning.

How is it possible to build a coalition between people if one group of the proposed alliance feels unrepresented? How is it possible to remain a cohesive force if the philosophy promoted is at odds with the means of doing so?

I suggest either you expand your limited personal conception of what ‘liberal’ means or adjust the brand to more honestly reflect the fact you really want this to be a campaigning hub for left-liberalism.

The underclass argument is not a good one. You are imagining this thing as some kind of Kibbutz at sea where everybody would be equal and therefore have a large stake of capital tied into the infrastructure to platform itself, and therefore nobody could force them to leave if they where unwilling. More accurate would be to see a seastead, at this early point in its development, is as a country house with a 360 degree sea view.

What do the people that work in a country house do if they don’t agree with the people that own it? They put their notice in and leave. Exactly the same would happen here but with the added advantage that they could also change their neighbours (and to a limited extent weather) as well.

The same would happen on a seastead. If the cooks, cleaners, and marine engineers that would be needed to keep these things running decided that they did not want to work their anymore (a better offer on another seastead for example) they would just put their notice in and be landed with the next supply run. Somebody else would be hired to take their place and the lord of the watery manor probably would not even notice that the person tiding up the detritus of their non-stop orgying had changed.

If the cleaners refuse to clean anymore the Lords of the manor are not going to force them to stay on. This would only use up some of the extremely expensive and limited space on their platform which could be used for something more productive. A drugs factory for example.

If it works then these rich folk sinking their money into spar platforms will lead to smaller cheaper platforms that more ordinary people could afford. Just as with every technology, first it is for the rich and intrepid then prices fall as the numbers grow and the technology matures. Eventually you could see sea steads at a price that ordinary people could afford, and then things would get really interesting with fast evolving societies on archipelagoes out at sea which anybody is free to join simply by turning up with their own portable island.

I’m up for it. If you sort out the boat and the weapons then I’m happy to sort out the parrot. ~ Adam

Excellent. The parrot was the stumbling block on our last attempt.

I have a feeling that this time, it just might work…

Adam,

You might find this interesting, it’s an earlier critique of an earlier version of the same thing. China Mieville is a very good new wave fantasy author and a bit of a left winger too, so, an all round good guy:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias/

He had a bit of a vested interest in the idea, as his book ‘The Scar’ made use of the idea of a floating city, albeit run by pirates IIRC.

Thanks for the link Douglas. It is an excellent article. He seems to have come to many of the same conclusions as me on this albeit with much more historical background. It is interesting too to read about how the previous attempts at seasteading either failed or didn’t get going at all. I wonder if this one will be any different.

Mieville also highlights the comparison with pirate radio ships in the sixties. Friedman and Gramlich highlight this in their manifesto as well. However, as Mieville suggests, this comparison is a false one. Pirate radio disc jockeys didn’t take to the seas in order to exile themselves from their country but to provide a service to the people of that country that the state would not allow them.

Here was a genuine example of where a seastead did change society through positive example. The pirate radio djs didn’t want to escape their country but to improve it and to gain more liberty for it. This they managed to achieve because they remained a part of that society. The new generation of seasteaders have no such noble cause if their manifesto is anything to go by.

In fact as the parables I highlight above show, far from wanting to change society, they wish to exile themselves from it while still trying to portray themselves as righteous pioneers. Unlike the pirate radio djs, they want to take themselves and their taxes away from the country that has made them what they are. Far from changing their country, they will only impoverish it of their money, their talent and their political views. I see nothing especially liberal in that.

@Adam

“Here was a genuine example of where a seastead did change society through positive example. The pirate radio djs didn’t want to escape their country but to improve it and to gain more liberty for it. This they managed to achieve because they remained a part of that society. The new generation of seasteaders have no such noble cause if their manifesto is anything to go by.”

This quote appears to show that you are still not addressing two of my main points. Your thinking only appears to evolve when presented with an opinion that is congenial to your existing assumptions. This is worrying.

1. It is purely *your* reading of the manifesto that the seasteaders have no noble cause. Their manifesto, apparently, talks of “open source government”. That to them is a noble cause. It may not work (it probably won’t) and it may get hijacked by people who want to use said noble cause for their own ends (it probably will), but the stated intention is to create a social experiment – the idea of open source is that it can be copied by others who may want to do quite different things with it. Whether or not you believe the seasteaders’ account of themselves is entirely up to you – but you must understand that to disbelieve it is an *assumption* on your part.

2. You talk once more of segregation. You overlook what “open source” actually means (in computing terms). The intention of these people is that their idea should spread. The pirate DJs are a good analogy because they were doing, via literal instant communication, what (some of) the seasteaders hope to do via long-term market forces. The intention is to create an experimental society which *will* eventually inform the norm in a way that the individuals involved couldn’t separately. This is what the parables are intended to illustrate – their helplessness within society to change things. By voting with their feet, they both serve their own immediate selfish desire to live in their own ideal society, and add to the collective voice of that society so that its cultural influence grows. Selfishness and the evolution of the social form they favour are intertwined here.

Again, I don’t believe for one moment that it will work overnight, in ten years’ time, or possibly even at all. But you cannot simply misrepresent someone’s *intentions* and use it to “prove” that you are right and it’s all a terribly idea.

Adam: I have to restate my original objection: if a bunch of people want to do this, it’s really none of our business to try to stop them. Why not just let them get on with it and hope that some good comes from the whole thing? There seems to be something quite uncharitable in the assumption that these efforts at seasteading are automatically a bad thing. In particular, there seems to be an assumption that the seasteaders should be prevented from pursuing their aims, something which strikes me as fundamentally intolerant. If they want to have a go at doing something different, why not just let them?

If seasteading proves viable, the nature and character of the original pioneers will be rendered irrelevant. Ideas are public goods, and if the idea of seasteading is something that can have positive implications (something that you appear to acknowledge with reference to pirate radio stations) then it doesn’t really matter how it becomes popularised, but that someone does it. If these people are happy to pay for the research, testing, experimentation and so forth required to turn seasteading into a viable proposition, why on earth would we want to stop them? For my part, as someone who would like to see the field of human endeavour expanded, I’m cheering them on.

So these particular pioneers might not hold the exact same political views as yourself. But, for all that, there’s not a whole lot that’s terribly objectionable about their views. They want to create their own society, with their own rules and – unlike previous generations which have wanted the same thing – are not proposing to invade or displace anyone else in order to do it. Above all, your assumption that they should, in any way, have to conform to your notion of righteousness is intolerant in a way that I find hard to agree with. You’re entitled to your view, but I don’t think you’ll find much agreement from people whose primary concern is for liberty above conformity.

A good article in general, but to go back to the topic you brought up gratuitously in your penultimate paragraph and then called Tony Kennick “off topic” when he took you up on it: conscientious objectors were no safer than any other non-combatant, possibly less. Although (AFAIK) not persecuted in WW2 like they were in WW1, it was a stand that took moral courage to make, in speaking up against the dominant discourse, the way the libertarians you criticise are not doing.

Susan- my point about conscientious objectors should probably in hindsight have been left to another article or a follow on article where I had the space to explain it fully. However it was relevant and not ‘trolling’ as I was accused of. My own view on it is broadly in line with that of Orwell’s at the time – that pacifism during WW2 was a luxury that we couldn’t afford given the fact that fascism was very much at the door. I personally believe that when the world or a society comes to times of great crisis then it citizens should be willing to sacrifice political objections for the greater good. Not very liberal perhaps but sometimes vital for survival. Which comes to the central point:

Robert- Libertarianism in this extreme form is in my opinion an abjection of social responsibility. I believe that if you have benefited from a country or a society, then you have responsibilities to that society even if it is not wholly the kind of society or government that you would choose. Again, I am not saying anyone should be prevented from bailing out, but I personally don’t think that it is the right thing to do when the society needs your talent, your money and your political input. Changing a society is best done from within.

Alix – I am not sure that you have read the manifesto, but there is no suggestion in it that this will benefit the societies that have been left behind. The motive is to benefit the individual exiles and the people that come after that. The ‘open source’ term was my own summary term for an argument in the manifesto and is not explicitly used. However, my point is that it is open source is not really open at all. The intention (from which I can only go by the manifesto and the historical examples outlined in the article linked by Douglas above) is an individualistic one. It is selfishness. And that is my problem with seatsteading and with libertarianism.

I am personally liberal on many issues, but I understand that those liberties are only possible because I have the protection, education and wealth of the state around me. Libertarianism in this form is about putting those benefits in your pocket and sailing away with them. It is in my eyes, not facing up to the problems that exist, but hiding from them, and then cloaking what you do in high words about liberty and pioneers.

So this is not about misrepresenting anyone or trying to prove that I am right (if that is even possible). It is my political opinions based on the examples set out. These are complex issues and cannot really be satisfactorily dealt with in one blog post, but they are interesting questions for us to talk about as this thread has shown.

Unsurprisingly, I agree with Adam.

It is also instructive, well I think so anyway, to look at one example of just how messed up this sort of community can get:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

‘Treason!’, ‘Coups’, fun for all the family!

Adam wrote:

I believe that if you have benefited from a country or a society, then you have responsibilities to that society even if it is not wholly the kind of society or government that you would choose

This is true only up to a point. There is an argument that nobody asked to be born in, say, the US or Britain and expecting them to maintain a lifelong responsbility to the country of their birth/early life is not always reasonable. I agree that there is a moral responsibility, but I also believe that it’s not for me to impose my morals on others. I’m also (as I’ll come back to in a moment) not so sure that seasteading isn’t of some benefit to the ‘fatherland’ society from which one is departing.

Again, I am not saying anyone should be prevented from bailing out, but I personally don’t think that it is the right thing to do when the society needs your talent, your money and your political input. Changing a society is best done from within.

Again, that’s not always true. Should India have remained within the British Empire so as to have reformed the system from within? Sometimes striking out and creating something different can teach a lesson to the parent society, particularly when that society has become ossified by conservatism. The US constitution served as a catalyst for social change in Europe which has had broadly positive effects. We’re still yet to learn the lessons that India may teach us about mass democracy in the fullness of time. Diversity of governments and social structures may mean that sometimes people create ones that we don’t like, but the world as a whole benefits from having that diversity – better systems generally prevail, and if seasteading can help then that’s probably no bad thing.

The intention (from which I can only go by the manifesto and the historical examples outlined in the article linked by Douglas above) is an individualistic one. It is selfishness

This is a mistaken argument, in my view. One does not have to be a pure and good person for one’s actions to have good consequences. The long-term consequence of the seasteading experiment will be to prove whether or not seasteading works. If it does (and that’s a gigantic if), most of the benefit of seasteading will accrue to those who follow the pioneers – i.e. the general public inhabitants of seastead communities, who may be as likely to be creating a socialist, environmentalist, communist, liberal, religious or artistic community as the original seasteaders are to create a libertarian one. Ideas are public goods, and the plans, designs and experiences of seasteading will be available to all, for the benefit of all. This is the pattern that is followed by all innovation, a great amount of which has been carried out by individuals seeking personal benefit but has long since resulted in great improvements for the rest of society.

There was a time when the left was quite keen on the idea of people heading off to create what they considered to be a better society.

That said, I am skeptical of the economics of seasteading.

and highlighting our name is getting rather tedious. It’s a brand name – get over it.

The word ‘liberal’ has a meaning – it isn’t just a brand name. There seems to be some illiberal sentiment from time to time. Therefore some articles seem at odds with your brand.

That’s all some of us are pointing out.

I find it hard to detect the illiberal sentiment in Adam’s article. He has taken pains to point out that he is “not saying anyone should be prevented from bailing out”, he has merely given his opinion on the prospective merits of such a plan.

What’s more, not to put too fine a point on it, it seems to me that taking the piss out of the Howard Hughes types who would actually buy one of those ludicrous seaborne fortresses, is a thoroughly liberal thing to do.

What is liberal about this? Its time we all realize that decentralization is inevitable as natural forces will continue to divert unhappy people away from those who make them unhappy.
As far as taxes, we all need to stop depending on others to pay for our ridiculous social demands. (Income tax is illegal in the united states, object all you want.)
Let em go.

“As far as taxes, we all need to stop depending on others to pay for our ridiculous social demands. ”

Yeah, damn those fuckers that rely on benefits to have shelter, food and warmth. Ridiculous that they should even consider that they require that as a basic necessity in life