r/TrueReddit • u/theindependentonline • 3d ago
Energy + Environment Silicon Valley wanted to build floating libertarian paradises on the ocean. The plan failed — but now seasteading is back
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/seasteading-peter-thiel-silicon-valley-oceanix-b2803936.html80
u/glitchycat39 3d ago
I'm actually for funding this on the condition that they all renounce their respective citizenships and fuck off to international waters.
Thin the heard.
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u/Korrocks 2d ago
That would be so amazing. Can you imagine how much society would improve if people like this were on their on island somewhere?
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u/funtervention 2d ago
That’s all fun and games until they build nukes.
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u/youarebritish 2d ago
I'm pretty sure I've played that game. What wound up happening to Mother Base in the end?
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u/LurkingWeirdo88 2d ago
They are going to need them, otherwise they are going to get raided by some governments.
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u/theindependentonline 3d ago
They promised utopian paradises, unshackled by governments and buoyed by tech. What they built instead was a costly illusion. Holly Baxter reports on how seasteading started, unraveled and is now rising again in popularity.
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u/Expert-Fig-5590 2d ago
Behind every libertarian is just an asshole who won’t pay taxes.
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u/jaxspider 2d ago
Exactly, and the first second things go WRONG wrong, they press the eject button and fly off on their helicopters leaving behind the slave labor.
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u/Cybtroll 2d ago
Are they too young to have played Bioshock?
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u/SoMuchMoreEagle 2d ago
"That's your solution to everything: move under the sea. It's not going to happen."
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u/Snarky_McSnarkleton 3d ago
There are a ton of little islands that are US territories. Give a couple of them to the libertarians, and let them do their thing. Send them there on a navy transport. One way to the Jesus Republic Of Dipshittistan. Then let them figure out how bootstraps will sustain a society.
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u/nobadhotdog 2d ago
Somehow even if you put them on a tropical island I bet they have a bear problem.
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u/Melodic-Beach-5411 3d ago
What happens to a sea-steading platform in a storm or hurricanes, high waves, rogue waves?
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u/vorpal_potato 2d ago
What happens to a cruise ship? What happens to an oil rig? What happens to a cargo ship? These are non-trivial engineering problems, and a pain in the butt to deal with, but they have known solutions that have been shown to work well in practice if you design things right and are careful about following the usual safety guidelines.
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u/ATXoxoxo 2d ago
Safety guidelines are a solution accepted by libertarians.
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u/vorpal_potato 2d ago
By the seasteading ones, yes. This is an explicit part of their ideology, which is a subset of libertarianism; they tend to roll their eyes at the silly ones who scoff at the very concept of rules.
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u/Melodic-Beach-5411 2d ago
Sure, tell that to hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis that can lay waste to real island's
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u/vorpal_potato 2d ago
Islands aren’t designed by engineers, they can’t tilt with the waves, they can’t move when harsh weather is predicted, and in many of those places, building construction is flimsy. Again, none of this is a new problem; it’s just an expensive one to deal with.
(I’ve actually been in a typhoon on an island, about fifteen years ago. It was frightening – but the buildings were hardened against high winds, most of the trees were secured with guylines, and the underground infrastructure had very high-flow bilge pumps. Society carried on as usual the next day. With proper precautions and careful engineering, a lot of the things nature can throw at us stop being deadly and start being merely inconvenient.)
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u/Melodic-Beach-5411 2d ago
I'm from Miami. I've been in 5 hurricanes including less than a mile from landfall during Andrew. Also been through the Drake Passage. Of course there may be a day when sea stead islands are engineered to withstand the natural world but it's not now and it's not soon if ever.
These are the same yahoos talking about colonizing Mars yet they can't even get an astronaut on the moon despite taking $billions of taxpayer dollars for years for empty promises.
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u/imahuman3445 11h ago
Okay, so I actually read the book on Seasteading (literally called "Seasteading") and it turns out that the deeper you go, the more stable the seagoing structure.
Then, you just build on the equator to avoid the hurricanes.
Then you pay your taxes and don't mistreat people (hired help or children).
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u/HomoColossusHumbled 2d ago
It's kind of comforting to know that the elites are just as dumb as everyone else.
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u/midgaze 2d ago
Any community that requires constant upkeep and has to import everything is absolutely doomed from conception and it's hilarious that people are taking this seriously.
Only explanation is that someone stands to make some money and there are way too many suckers with money in capitalist end times.
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u/protipnumerouno 2d ago
Think it's because the current regime is about to start a civil war of conquest?
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u/jazzcomputer 13h ago
Like any crypto coins outside of bitcoin + one or two others, these are that similar idea that they promise a lot but the facilitators are either scammers, or can't help dipping their beaks once they see the money, once, twice, "hell three times", "hell, see you in court suckers!".
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u/m0llusk 3d ago
This attempts to play up the political side and just ends up silly.
Seasteading has been around as a concept for a while. People who want to use it for political ends have always been just a subset of those interested in living on the sea. The general appeal should be obvious. Large ships like navy carriers and commercial ocean cruise lines demonstrate the concept works, it is just a question how to scale it properly to make it work for ordinary people instead of only large governments and corporate concerns.
Peter Thiel does not represent Silicon Valley and his contributions mostly only amounted to some hype and an ocean gathering that demonstrated just how difficult the logistics are for groups of ordinary people.
And no one ever promised anything. The whole idea is still at the stage of maybe working together we can do this.
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u/retrojoe 2d ago
it is just a question how to scale it properly to make it work for ordinary people instead of only large governments and corporate concerns.
But the resource expenditure is only plausible, let alone possible, for large organizations. Boats are inherently expensive/require an incredible amount of upkeep. Larger vessels require larger and more expensive inputs. Large boats basically burn crude oil because it's too expensive/practically impossible to haul enough diesel. Aircraft carriers are nuclear, and the US will probably never build a new hull for those.
These ships don't produce things, they're pure consumers - like an all inclusive hotel. So they're completely dependent on supply services when they dock in ports. This is only possible when you're sitting on large piles of liquid cash to purchase needed supplies. And this is before we get to the fact that these large ships are all dumping sewage and trash everywhere that it's not heavily prohibited.
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u/travistravis 2d ago
The only way I could see something like seasteading being not a huge loss for people would be to live very minimally (not the 'libertarian' style), and on something more akin to a raft than a boat. They'd probably need solar and maybe wind, or some kind of wave generation for electricity, and likely collecting rainwater, or some kind of passive desalination. It would also need to be pretty massive, since the scale would need to be big enough to be stable and be able to sustain itself while likely moving around to avoid overfishing (or maybe have some giant underwater aquaculture that travels with them?)
In any case, the tech bro billionaires would not be okay with actually having to work with a community, and would be even less okay with not being able to just jet away whenever they felt like it.
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