Topic: stateless seasteaders existed for hundreds of years, we just need to join them - page 2. (Read 2996 times)

I wouldn't count on that, since solar energy requires a lot of surface area, which is possibly the most constrained resource on a boat.

Personally, I think the only real energy source that could make seasteading viable in the long-term is miniaturized D-T fusion reactors. Of course this is always 50 years away, and it would require pretty big boats, which is exactly what OP is trying to avoid.

I do hope you're right. I still doubt seasteading could be viable in the long run, and I certainly doubt it's scalable, but at the very least, it's important as a model.
To achieve the more important goal, ridding ourselves of oppressive government right here on dry land, we need to demonstrate successful models of government-free societies that function well.
Low-level, decentralized seasteading models like the one you're suggesting, could go a long way as a demonstration.

Hopefully solar energy generation and battery tech will be advanced enough to eliminate the need for other fuels in propulsion and regular living on the water.  There's certainly enough sun energy out there to be able to live a semi modern lifestyle.

indeed. hopefully removing the burdens of taxation, inflation, and regulation would more than counteract that additional expense but this is something that will only be able to be discovered through testing.

Well yea, but if you want to get rid of specific contaminants, like pathogens or certain unwanted chemicals, that would be counter-productive.
This is why most water-purification schemes involve various forms of filtration rather than boiling.
Boiling is extremely wasteful in terms of energy, and it still requires filtration of the byproduct before re-salination.


Anyway, disregarding this rather odd device - if the general point was that seasteaders can produce drinking water by desalinating sea water, that is certainly true. But like all aspects of seasteading, it would be very expensive.

if worst came to worse you could always throw a pinch of the byproduct back into the output.

Yes, they were sacrificed to make a promotional video for GE 

But seriously, drinking a bit of distilled water is fine. Drinking only distilled water will eventually kill you. First you will urinate all your salts, then your blood pressure will drop, and eventually your extracellular solution will become hypotonic and your cells will literally start to explode (but you'll probably die of heart failure long before that happens).

One caveat - I have no idea how this machine works, except for the obvious fact that the "novel" technology it's based on is centuries old.
Maybe it actually does re-salinate the water a bit before dispensing it...

Sea-steading will never be for everyone.

So those kids on the video are dead then?

Wow, you can boil water and then re-condense it? That's the invention of the century  

Too bad you can't actually drink distilled water, you have to re-salinate it first...

I'm still sticking with land-steading  

heck the byproduct would probably even be marketable.

Here is one concrete solution for getting fresh water:

http://youtu.be/hMODuTBFpPo

This comment I like.

Yes I definitely agree. I really don't know if my ideas would work. I definitely could be wrong. I do know that I'm personally willing to take the risk involved in testing them empirically and the only thing i ask of statists, is not to agree with me and start implementing my ideas themselves, but rather to simply not shoot me for trying to test them empirically myself. I think this is a very important point that is often overlooked. I have no interest in imposing freedom on anyone else, i have no interest in imposing any of my preferences on anyone else, (except for the preference that they not harm me) i only ask that they show me the same respect i show them by not trying to force freedom on them by not trying to force tyranny on me.

Honestly I think it would probably be best not to try to blaze new trails here. There are lots of used boats out there. As I understand it many people live on their boats full time for many years. So It would seem that sailboats are able to avoid corrosion reasonably well. I'll be honest though i dont know a whole lot about it. I just join sailnet forums today so that I could start learning more. Its been a lot of fun talking to these people and I've learned a lot but I haven't asked about energy yet.

I also ordered this book today http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071749578/sr=8-1/qid=1390425417/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1390425417&seller=&sr=8-1 it was recommended to me today by several of the members on the sailnet forums.

Probably it would be best to keep the boats spread pretty far apart and simply have small motor boats to go and visit neighbors. You wouldn't want to all try to dock near each other like in the pictures of centralized approaches to seasteading.

As for businesses this is a very important point and something i have been intensely interested in for some time now. The idea of businesses operating on large(er) boats that stayed at sea all the time and employed the seasteading community would be crucial. Certain industries would lend themselves to this sort of a model more than others. Software development is one that comes to mind, certain types of research, universities, arts.

I really would like to get this idea of a decentralized approach to seasteading out there. I just haven't seen any interest from the community on the several occasions i have brought it up. I wonder if im just missing something big and so everyone is just blowing me off. Or if there is genuinely not a lot of interest. Or if im just missing my target audience.

Hey, it's okay, that's just theory. You don't have to believe me and I don't have to believe you. Essentially there's nothing to talk about until there's a pragmatic test. 

I'm much more interested in a much less esoteric question.

How would you design a sailboat as a one family or extended-family dwelling to maximize freedom for its inhabitants by minimizing costs and requirements while leveraging benefits from all contacts with others?  I'd be emphasizing permanent construction (nothing that rots, rusts or corrodes in the structure of the boat), simplicity (minimizing points of failure and maintenance requirements),  renewable or free energy (winds, currents, thermoclines, tides, solar -- all can be harnessed) and self-sufficiency with regards to maintenance and mobility.

I'd also be doing a lot of research into edibles from the ocean -- not just fish/protein, but also edible seaweeds, vegetables, etc.  Finally I'd be looking for good boat-borne businesses and ways to take advantage of the marine environment for business purposes, with an eye to specialize the boat design for one (or possibly more than one) such business.

I'm sorry I couldn't continue after this. This is liberty 101 stuff. This thread is not the place for discussions about the fundamentals of how, in theory, a free society could operate. It assumes that it could and is a discussion about means of getting there. Pm me though if you like and we can talk about how roads and bridges could, in theory, be maintained without the need for anyone to threaten to murder anyone else.

I don't think of seasteading as something that is going to be a practical way to get away from governments.  Ever.  By the time we can live out there without loss of all access to tools and modern necessities, we will have built so much there that we will need government as a way of preserving our infrastructure. 

But I do think that learning to live on water using technology is an essential stepping stone in the future of our species.   To put it gently, oceans are an environment a thousand times easier to maintain human life in than hard space, and if we can't live on oceans we will never even start to learn many of the things we need to know to make a viable jump off of this dirtball.

Right now there are a few groups of aboriginal and tribal people; Sea Gypsies, Bayau indians, the Tanka, and some of the further-flung "oceanic" polynesian groups.  All are dependent on land; all are socially and technically isolated to the same degree that they live off land; none have a technological/industrial base that exists on the water, and for most of them life is getting worse not better.  Living like that is not the goal, unless you want your children to die of what ought to be minor infections or become crippled by what ought to be treatable conditions, are fine with failing to give them a meaningful education or tools, you're okay with them being herded into "refugee camps" the minute they come into contact with people on shore, etc.

And there are stupid seasteading "megaprojects" like Freedom Ship:  A ridiculous boondoggle that cannot actually exist.  The damn thing would break up almost immediately on the ocean, because it is "designed" in complete defiance of the nautical requirements.  Also, it is not a viable colony in itself; it does not contain its own infrastructure nor the means of production necessary to feed, clothe, and provide for the people on board.  It is simple to say "it would work because the people we'd have here are already rich and don't need to use any local means of production to provide for themselves" but -- really?  You want to put a city on the ocean, when you have to supply it using a whole damn container ship every day and there are no significant exports to balance the trade issue?   That could work if you start with multimillionaires (and a sane design for the floating city, which Freedom Ship most assuredly is not), but there is no opportunity for a second generation. 

Finally, there is the OP's idea that you could just take sailboats and GO.  This is less insane than most of the ideas proposed so far, mainly because it is smaller-scale and needn't isolate you as much from the land which (let's face it) you're going to be dependent on whether you like it or not.  The game becomes maximizing the benefit of your contact with land while minimizing the dependency, and while it's a game I don't think you can "win" at any scale that doesn't include on-water factories, universities, chip fabs, and processing plants, it's certainly a worthy effort and a way to learn valuable things that we as a species need to know. 

Problem is the sailboats you can buy aren't designed for it.  Very few of them are tough enough to stay out in the ocean for a long time and deal with the weather.  Very few allow you to do things like cook food or purify water without using fuel (although solar cookers and prop/sail driven watermakers are not too difficult to build).   Electrical generation capabilities are mostly fuel-dependent (though solar panels and wind generators are becoming better and more common).  Most are built with materials in their frames, decks, or bulkheads that will eventually corrode, rust, or rot.  Virtually none can haul themselves out of the water (whether vertically or up a ramp or up a beach) without damage and using their own winches so that you don't need a highly-equipped yard to do bottom work.  Hardly any can maneuver independent of wind without fuel (although you could hook an electric motor/generator to the props for electrical power under sail and maneuvering independent of wind for electrical power).  Most aren't much good for fishing; sailboats these days are yachts, and built to different design specs.

Now, you could make a good and worthwhile movement of seasteading with sailboats that overcome these easy-to-overcome design flaws and seek to overcome more, and work to establish productive waterborne businesses from salvage companies to bakeries. But ultimately, without a revolutionary discovery or six, you cannot provide on the water all the things you need to continue living on the water for future generations.  You'll be buying your electric motors and photovoltaics and electronics and ropes and sails and so on from people who manufacture them on land.

http://www.seasteading.org/

Open source farming is trying to be a real concept. Bright minds should start on a open source Seasteading project, ie the building blocks of infrastructures and a society, just like the Romans did with their roads, no matter where their next invasion went. An open standard.

thanks friend. i wish this idea was on more peoples radars. essentially instead of trying to plan a seastead libertarians need to just buy sailboats to live on instead of houses. every time a person decides to live on a boat instead of a house it cripples the power of the state because those individuals become mobile. it forces states to be more competitive in order to keep their chattel.

it can start out gradually, liberatarians just start selling their houses and buying sailboats. then once a year we have a big party out in international waters. each year a couple of people stay behind. each year more people stay behind than the year before. eventually this just evolves naturally into a seastead. no need for libertarian jesus to come down from on high to give us "a plan".

i need to dedicate more time to getting this idea out there.

This is why Politics & Society board is best board.