Topic: We should build a seastead (Read 16563 times)

I looked into what it takes to actually buy a country.

What it basically boils down to is buying up the nation's debt or as much of it as possible, funding certain candidates and then leveraging that debt to get what you want from the politicians in charge. A big part of it being the relief of some debt in exchange for some policy changes you may want.

So some small country like Nicaragua could be bought, then you have them pass pro-liberty policies in exchange for restructuring their debt. Pass enough pro-liberty policies and the whole system goes toward freedom and they have no way of stopping it.

Similar to how China is making countries become communist through similar means.

"The bitcoin price is amazingly high"

And so am i...

Seriously though,  you think it's high now wait until December

Everything in the real world costs money/assets, security included, one way or another.


Gambling ships are a thing, seems like the ideal business for a seastead.

I did not find any information that the area was mined at all, but given that some activities have taken place there in recent years, I would say that there are no mines, or no one has had the misfortune to land on one of them. When you look at what exactly it is about, then the only ones that benefit from that land are actually mosquitoes🦟


Source

A defence mechanism based on drones and remotes sounds at theses times as most viable

1 to have swarms of disposable drones controlled remotely or with  preprogrammed friend or foe algorithms
2 command centre secure under ground
?dead man switch deterrent mechanisms

Security of the seastead does seem concerning but in the long run, we can make this problem go away by making the seasteads a profitable economic hotspots for many countries and then we can bargain a deal that they will have some degree of privileges if they in turn protect the seastead from the possibility of attacks from pirates or other hostile forces. Small countries, don't need an army to protect itself let alone a seastead.

Better to invest in non-lethal weapons and a decentralized city that can be easily moved anywhere really fast to avoid destructive/violent war or conflict. Besides, I think such City/Nation will need to guarantee strong transparency in order to be allowed to operate. In my opinion, that should be part of her contract with host/neighboring nations.

The UK viewpoint on British Virgin Islands part with sovereignty don't count since they Virgin Island government are perform through representative democracy, parliamentary system and constitutional monarchy.
I'm aware of what you said about Zimbabwe, that's a cruel habit that will affect their future international relations.

Hmm, quite the infidel  How would a crypto nation be anything other than prosperous?


Buying your freedom and not really be free at all does not sound too good from my point of view.
It's like living as an expat in a foreign country, all is nice and well until that nation decides you're not welcomed anymore there since your former country wants you back for god knows what legal matter or cuts your pension. As for a professional army, times have changed, a real army that would have the capabilities of defending against one superior in numbers by factors of 5 or 10 would cost you more than bribing the entire congress.

Plus I don't know why but I can't picture a lot of the guys here would agree with paying taxes for a private army and even a lot less of them actually joining one, I've done my military service, no way in hell I'm going to a battlefield. Having an 417 under the bed in case some somali pirate thinks he's Long John Silver is one thing, open war is different.

A community near a somewhat stable and peaceful country is one thing, building and running a country in a hostile location is something else, but who knows, maybe I'm just growing to old for it.

If it actually grew to be rich and attractive... that's a 'problem' that it would be nice to have. Don't put the cart before the horse. At that stage some sort diplomatic manoeuvring and/or buying protection or starting a professional army would probably become necessary.

Yeah, the British Virgin Island would immediately part with soverignity, I wonder what the UK thinks of this, I remember something about Falklands..
Zimbabwe? The country that turned a blind eye on white farmers getting killed and robbed just because they had more money and they were white? Imagine putting a town full of rich white guys next to this one, what will be the outcome?
Liberland, just lol!


Was that area (Liberland) even cleared of the mines that were laid during the war?
Anyhow, really bad spot, probably only something in Kosovo or Nagorno-Karabakh is worse than this.


What do you think will happen once a poor country which is used to wars (like both Egypt and Sudan are) sees that the territory they've sold has become rich and attractive and is rolling in money? First, there will be harassment, with the borders, with the shipping, with the trade then more and more demands and then what are you going to do if they decide to simply invade peacefully with 1 million civilians?
No, trying to create a nation near or inside an area that was part of a dispute that ended with war is suicide.

I find the idea of creating an independent community feasible and interesting, that of a nation, not so much.
There is no place for utopian dreams of independence in this world, at least not yet.

Wondered if that can run really fast on water without tumbling. I'm more interested on design that allows proper air flow around a streamlined body. Pyramid doesn't look really streamline.
Saw your sea project. I salute your courage!

I like this concept as well. They get it right with the shape. Anything above water needs more weight at the bottom than the top. When we calculate the width of our platform on top of the spar we have to take into account someone at the highest story walking to the edge, then factor in the tilt factor. For us we consider a dinner party where 4-5 people of average weight goes to one side of the highest point. We figure a tilt of less than 5% is probably reasonable.

If it is shaped like a pyramid or a cone then you can have wider bottom floors. I have proposed a design that looks sort of like a wedding cake which would allow you to go stand on the balcony which is the size of the floor below you.

They are expensive to maintain. As Elon Musk showed, you can buy one for about $3-4 million which is fairly cheap. Oil companies are fine with using them because they're pulling millions of dollars up from the ground every day so flying a helicopter to the rig or other expensive ways of getting on there and taking care of provisions, etc. are covered. As I learned by owning a cruise ship, you need a lot of income to maintain these huge beasts. The oil industry and cruise industry have a lot of money flowing in to keep these things on the water.

Someone actually bought one and turned it into a hotel. At least they tried to. Turned out to not be very popular and now they're looking for donations and volunteers to keep things going. https://fptower.org/


That's the ideal. Fish farms, etc. We're working on putting hydroponics in our homes, theoretically you can live off of microgreens but it takes a lot of time and they're not that tasty.

There's no need to give up on the international market just because you live a little further from the store than you used to.


Here's our speech at Anarchapulco last year on what we're working on here in Panama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxrsSI90OBA

While you're here if you don't mind , is it feasible to live entirely off of fish, crustaceans and maybe algae, without having to leave the sea?


Aren't they pretty expensive to run? And afaik people can only get on them via cranes or helicopters.

One of my favorite concept so far:


You can watch it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DIRTTWVa_9A&feature=youtu.be

Looks decentralized. Though im not very sure about design and how well it will work on difficult water without too much problems

Thank you for your detailed response, but I just have a few more questions.

Would it not be better to buy old oil rigs and then convert that to living spaces? The oil rigs can withstand high seas and they can be moved and no research and development would be necessary... reducing the funds needed for this.  

The oil rigs can also be retrofitted to serve as energy generators at the bottom of the pylons? (Hydro electricity) to provide energy for the small households on top?

These platforms can definitely operate in International waters ... but as you have experienced.. that does not matter to authorities. (Also... distance is not practical if you live that far away from civilization)    (Boats can be lifted out of the water and Helicopters can be used for traveling)

 

According to what I have read a well was once dug inside the Bir Tawil which I believe the well name was the reason why the place is called Bir Tawil but no one seems to currently know where the well is or what happened to it probably the well was filled by sand through simoom since the area is mostly sand or dry mountains and there's no actual road.

The key is that it's really difficult to estimate the price of one of the super megastructure seasteads. I will give a word of advice if you ever consider investing in a seastead project. Only put money in if it's going directly to pay construction workers building the actual thing. Everything else is just paying a bunch of guys to sit around in meetings, paying for marketing, paying for trips to various sunny locations, etc. I put way too much money into seastead projects where this was all that was done.

At Ocean Builders I keep pushing the founders to not spend money on marketing or people just sitting around theorising (the founders are not paid salaries, we put almost every bit of our investment into the factory, the materials and the workers). Everything we spend money on, I remind them how much that will push the price of the individual home up for the final buyer. And we are trying to make these affordable.

I know of 4 projects right now. One is a super megastructure that has been burning through millions of dollars over the past 5 years coming up with designs, lawyers, negotiations, meetings, etc. They appear to be hoping that someone will be willing to pay over a billion dollars for one of their units. They are not trying to do anything political, just sell luxury homes. I will not endorse this project as it does not seem viable.

Another is focusing on floating wave breakers that create energy from the waves. They're approaching it practically, working with a government under the premise of protecting the shores of that country while creating energy. They are self funded with a couple of guys out on a big research vessel trying out their technology. I hope they do well.

Another is a small scale floating home like Ocean Builders but theirs can take some rough waves, built so waves could go over them and they'd still be ok: https://ventivefloathouse.com/

Ocean Builders https://oceanbuilders.com is focusing right now on manufacturing and sales. We're a bunch of engineers that haven't manufactured anything before so it wouldn't make sense for us to start building and selling seasteads in middle of the ocean. Instead we're taking a phased approach, starting with just what is essentially a "houseboat" that will be like a luxury floating home in a beautiful anchorage in Panama, anchored right next to dozens of other anchored boats near a marina so there's really no legal or new lifestyle we need to create from scratch, there are already people there living in the water. This will allow us to get the process of building floating homes down before expanding into deep water versions. The deep water versions will just put the living portion of the home on a new spar built for different seas. But we're likely a few years from being anywhere other than the small anchorage we're at right now, and most people are not willing to move to Panama just to live in a floating house so we'll be focusing mainly on local investors. We already have plenty of demand, now we need to get production up to meet the demand.

Just as a matter of interest, how has the funding requirements changed since 2017... because I doubt that those prices would still be applicable after 4 years? (Also with the actual building experience done by Elwar)

Normally the cost estimation is way different from the actual cost, once you start a project like this. (Lots of things pop up, that was never thought of when it was done on paper)  

It is a pity that the Thai government crashed the project, because it would have been a dream come true to see something like that. What about a seastead without the  libertarian independence, but rather a seastead for libertarians to live. (based on a Bitcoin economy where most commerce are done with bitcoins) - People can still offer fiat payment for visitors, but the people living there will mostly use Crypto currencies.