Man I love frontiering! whether its the oceans or space, i can't wait to see what man will do next to escape the clutches of governments. then again, The Old West was a great move away from centralization, and it ended up centralized over time...I just hope Friedman et al can withstand a U.S. navy blockade and pirates.

Really the only anarcho-utopia that the government will be hard pressed to control is the internet.
 

Oh and side note, Has anyone here ever played the game Bioshock? It is based off of Ayn rand's The Fountainhead. The seasteading is eerily similar to that premise: A rich scientist builds an ocean city to escape the clutches of laws and governments, only to have everything go horribly wrong in the city (dystopia type thing.). Moral: Human nature is what it is. If you play video games, i higly recommend it.
 

There is an interview of Patri Friedman over econtalk.org where he addresses and weights potential challenges.
 

I don't think I've ever quite understood what Bioshock is supposed to prove in terms of refuting Rand's philosophy. (Not that I defend it in toto, just saying Bioshock's not a strong argument against it.)

I read the plot of Bioshock, and it's like this: the rich scientist builds a place where people can live out of the clutches of the world's governments. But then, if the governments knew about this place, and it became successful enough, they would deploy a military against him, against which he doesn't stand a chance.

But if the scientist's base trade with the outside world, information about the place will leak out, so he's stuck between a rock and a hard place: restrict trade, or get blown to pieces.

And obviously, restricting trade turns out to bring all kinds of problem.

So congratulations, Michael, you've done it. You've proved the error of libertarian philosophy. It's flawed because ... the continued threat of libertarian persecution forces libertarian societies to take costly measures that threaten their existence.

Sorry, but that's really just an elaborate version of "Might makes right." Or, "You libertarians are wrong, because we can blow you up."

Persuasive? Not really.
 

Silas - I don't think Michael is criticizing libertarianism at all, at least, that's not how his comments read to me.

The sea-steading project is exciting, but to really succeed, they will need to be capable of some serious self defense. Just like Michael mentioned, if some pirates (or a navy) surround your floating island and demand regular tribute, you're back to square one, and you may as well have never left land at all.
 

Just like Michael mentioned, if some pirates (or a navy) surround your floating island and demand regular tribute, you're back to square one, and you may as well have never left land at all.

Sadly, this is why seasteading is a neat idea rather than a practical solution. As soon as these floating cities are viable, governments will demand their piece of the action.
 

I don't know that I could live on a floating anarchist utopia that was propped up by IP laws.

I don't know why they got a patent, but I can guess, and hope, that they did it to put it in the public domain so that no one else can patent it, and in the process make it inordinately expensive to build a seastead.

Just a thought.
 

Our IP policy is to patent defensively. From our FAQ:

"The patent that we filed for the Clubstead design - along with any patents we will file going forward - are intended as defensive patents only. It's not our goal to use patents to prevent others from building seasteads based on our designs, or to extort money from those who wish to. We intend to make our patented material available freely (or for a nominal fee if this better suits the legal and business requirements of the organizations who wish to make use of the patents), and our maintenance of patents is intended to protect the seasteading community as a whole. For more thoughts on patent philosophy, see the book."