The Future of Seasteading
Once a dream, seasteading has been gaining global momentum. Will we finally colonize the oceans?
“It is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
It's common knowledge that oceans cover the majority of our planet. However, the sea’s mysteriously dark waves masks its enormous energy from distracted observers. As one descends further into the oceanic abyss, as director James Cameron did, the hidden plurality of life both mesmerizes and confuses those accustomed to the Earth’s coarse surface. Still, that doesn't mean those surface-dwellers are entirely ignorant – the sea’s siren song, in it’s inherent beauty and largesse, has eternally hypnotized wanderers who have an everlasting itch for things remote.
It was Plato who originally posited the notion of Atlantis in his dialogues of Timaeus and Critias. The faraway civilization grew steadfast until it hit its peak of power in 9600 BC, whereupon Atlantis swiftly witnessed the decline and fall of its ethics. The great city, represented by the might of Poseidon, managed to spread into Africa by way of Egypt and Europe by way of Etruscan Italy until they were defeated by the Athenians, who made them repent for their unholy sins. Not unlike a Greek tragedy, Atlantis was punished by the Gods, barraged with earthquakes and tornadoes, until they sunk into the deepest depths of the sea.
Since the era of antiquity, the story of Atlantis has alternatively attracted and horrified those who dreamed of navigating the seas – it appears as though fear has won. Overall, we’ve been stuck in a stagnation with respect to marine biology (what’s killing the Great Barrier Reef?) or to oceanographic engineering, those who build the equipment to track the seas.
Indeed, we were born too late to discover the planet, but not too late to uncover the farthest reaches of the ocean: higher sea levels will soon submerge cities like Jakarta, ending their tale in the same brutal fashion as Atlantis. Is there a plausible way out of this conundrum?
Through seasteading – building oceanic cities – we can expand our horizons and ascertain how to coexist with our oceans symbiotically. Once we can fully utilize the ocean’s abundance, these seasteads would be antifragile and thus become better over time.
Conquering the Seas
It’s taken us about 6000 years to conquer the oceans. The history of shipbuilding begins with the creation of reed boats in Egypt all the way back to 4000 BCE. Later, the Phoenicians built smaller boats and galleys in their city of Canaan – the galley was the first ship to be used to both fight and trade with other tribes.
After about 2500 years, the vikings constructed the longboat, which housed over 60 people to then raid other nations. Around this time, 1100 AD, the Chinese added rudders for steering, watertight compartments, and battens on the sails – making these a staple of future boats. It was on such a boat that Zheng He conducted his seven great voyages from the South China Sea to Africa.
In 1450, western nations caught up and developed the masthead – agile, wooden ships with four masts – thereby launching the modern era of naval warfare. Yachts were invented shortly thereafter to carry royalty on their trips, but the next major phase was in steam ships – using a combination of wind and steam power to move – then oil, and then the current container boats we know today.
One form of thought might argue that we’ve exhausted all levels of progress in marine engineering – where do we go after submarines and supertankers; however, those people would be wrong. As I claimed in Video is Eating Software, the second-order effect of roads and the mass emigration to the suburbs were the creation of big-box stores like Walmart – a result nobody could have predicted a priori. Similarly, now that we can transport people thousands of miles by ship, what’s next?
When Patri Friedman, the founder of the Seasteading Institute, set out to build a city on the seas, he was sure to delineate the difference between boats and seasteads, arguing they were “as different as cars and houses.” For one, boats are inherently susceptible to corrosion because of their constituent materials. Secondly, ships are continuously moving – boats of any size aren’t powerful enough to withstand the force of the waves.
Additionally, these ships have enormous amounts of upkeep: boats attract a plethora of wildlife like barnacles which attach to the hull, costing the government hundreds of millions of dollars annually; the moral hazard of coating boats with toxic cleaning chemicals would add even more to the cost. This is a parasitic relationship, to say the least, and it perpetuates the degradation of our most beautiful resource. But because their purpose is different to that of ships, seasteads can be built with non-corrosive materials and generally be made to remain in one location all while acutely benefiting from their exchange with the sea, whether through seaweed farms or ocean thermal energy conversion.
Reimagining Atlantis
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena…Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
Carl Sagan, “Pale Blue Dot”
Located in the Andamen Sea 12 nautical miles off Thailand’s coast, the first seastead – a two-story octagonal house – arose last year because a couple wanted to live free from state interference. Why choose to do so? “With a seasteading government where you vote with your house, the government would always be limited,” as some supporters described, “and if the government ever got too big, you could take your house and you could leave…So from a parenting and family standpoint, seasteading is the freedom to raise your children the way you want to.”
The notion of exit is one that Balaji Srinivasan has discussed at length. One need not need look far to see how disastrous the combination of theory and politics has been. Through the example of Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or more recently Maduro’s Venezuela, it’s undeniable that our leaders follow the explicit example of insanity – doing the same action over and over again while miraculously expecting a different result.
Therefore, seasteading is a shining beacon of a different future. Don’t like what your community has to offer? You’re free to take your atomized abode and move to another, larger seastead or live by yourself. What bitcoin was to money, seasteading is to government; we should make data-driven decisions about what works best for the community as no two communities are alike. Indeed, the aforementioned couple was funded by an amalgamation of entrepreneurs, named the Ocean Builders, who had made their money in bitcoin – the decentralized movement always extends a helping hand.
So, where do we go from here?
Unsurprisingly, China is already building small islands in the South China Sea to solidify their claims in the region. But more drastically, many island nations are facing existential threats from rising sea levels, like Indonesia and Thailand which are receding underwater by more than 2 inches annually.
To this end, both of these south-east Asian governments see seasteading as a plausible reality. Due to the rapid uptick in global urban populations, Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, recently remarked that: “We live in a time when we cannot continue building cities the way New York or Nairobi were built…Floating cities can be part of our new arsenal of tools…So, today, we are looking at a different type of floating city — a different type of scale.”
The UN is well aware that the world is changing faster than many think. The ideas of natural selection and business have always been interlinked: corporations know they must evolve or be forced to slowly watch themselves perish. Yet, governments are now feeling the agonizing pressures of evolution too; if leaders prefer to live in the past, they might very well see their most valuable resource, human capital, move elsewhere whether it be to land or sea.
This was the case throughout history. Even the very hint of a New World compelled thousands in Europe to suddenly abandon their homes and livelihoods – at the very least, these emigrants knew they would have the chance to make a new and potentially glamorous life in America. But with no Newer World to discover, where can we go to build a better life away from the prying eyes and all-encompassing power of Orwellian governments and greedy corporations?
In mythology, Atlantis fell because of its hubris and its brutal subjugation of its foreign subjects. While its end is a Greek tragedy, I read the story differently: the Platonic tale is an invitation to those who, one day, hope to reconstruct the mythical utopia through the rigorous experimentation of science and incentives. Seasteading appears to be a sanguine fantasy, but the movement has certainly been six millennia in the making and I have no interest in waiting another six to watch it come to fruition.
To those who love reading about the history of ships and humanity’s journey to canvas the seas, here’s a reading list:
Until next time!
–Anirudh