User:Patri/SeasteadingOutposts

Motivation

Currently, seasteaders live all over the world. This works fine during the research and evangelism stage of the project, but it has severe disadvantages for building incremental steps towards seasteading. As we are already seeing w/ the SF Bay Area community, there are big advantages in having a group in one location:

Big advantages to having a group in one physical location,

• Energy levels are kept up by social contact. We are tribal creatures, after all.
• Share skills (The Bay Area chapter is starting to take sailing classes and study marine engineering).
• Share facilities and resources (own boats together, tools, workshop space).
• Volunteers can get together easily
• Of course, when it eventually comes time to actually build and launch seasteads, even small ones, it will be very beneficial to be in one place.

This idea is closely related to (and was partly inspired by) User:DanB/BaseStead_Strategy, which contains a much more detailed justification of why gathering together in an outpost to work on seasteading is a good strategy.

Considering how few people moved for the Free State Project (700 so far), it may be that very few people will move for what is just a step on the way to seasteading. But it would be a powerful thing for the movement, so we should try. The primary criterion for location should probably be an existing concentration of people interested in seasteading, since they only need to coordinate, not move. I hope this page can serve to coordinate chapter formation to some degree.

Chapter Activities

• Get together socially to bond / brainstorm.
• Learn skills
  • Sailing
  • Marine Engineering
  • Wilderness First Aid
  • Professions that can be done remotely.
• Design / Build / Test seastead models
• Hang out and do research or volunteer work that advances seasteading
• Start businesses that can be operated remotely, or moved to a seastead

Outpost Locations

Discuss on this forum thread

Existing Outposts

• San Francisco Bay Area - Has a concentration of people and a local chapter which meets monthly. Lots of techies, which is a good target population for seasteading. High taxes (but lots of jobs), lots of water (but big waves). Local events are planned via this meetup group. Also see sailing club mailing list.

Potential Outposts

Please add suggestions, and add detail to your favored candidates!

• All over the world
  • Cruise Ship Condominium - certainly more difficult than moving to an existing place, and with less infrastructure, but you get to travel the world in the company of like-minded people. Seems like it would be a great concentration of seasteaders. This could be an awesome adventure as well as a path to freedom. We need more information about the costs involved in this option. Note that ships have recently become especially cheap because of the economic crisis.
• USA
  • New Hampshire - Free State Project is there, nice way to participate in two efforts at once. Low taxes/regulation.
  • Florida - Strong sailing/ship culture, lots of places to cruise to with a seastead (access to Caribbean).
  • NYC - Large, wealthy population. (But would NYC-type people really be very likely to leave for the frontier?)
• Rest of the Americas
  • Anguilla - Vince is already there. Small, nice weather, no income-tax or sales-tax, pretty, expat-friendly. Close to many jurisdictions, good place to sail from. Disadvantage: not a lot of jobs, expensive imports.
  • Belize has been suggested on the forums - lots of freedom, English speaking, expat-friendly, lots of islands.
  • Panama / Costa Rica - lots of expats, good tax laws, lots of coastline.
• Europe - UK, Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark all come to mind. Many countries with strong shipping traditions, not really sure which is best. I will go out on a limb based on my recent European speaking tour, and say:
  • Copenhagen, Denmark: Strong sailing culture, low waves, and a large concentration of interested seasteaders.
• Asia
  • Singapore - High economic freedom, lots of shipping, low waves, low taxes, lots of jobs. (Low social freedoms, unfortunately). Lots of pirates around (dangerous waters).
  •  ? Australia ?
  • Guam or Saipan may offer a good combination of low legal barriers (they are US territory and thus any US citizen can enter freely) with low taxes and regulation.
  •  ? Small south pacific islands ?

One thing to take into account when evaluating outpost locations is the Seasteading timeline. It may be ten years or more before fully operational seasteads are available. Thus, it is important that people be able to live happily at the outpost for a long time. Since many seasteaders are libertarians, it may be important to choose a location which has a minimal level of government interference.

Outpost Examples / Models

Admiral Doty posts:

Windward is an intentional community which has been developing self sufficiency for quite a few years. There is a lot of good information on techniques which would be applicable to Seastead Outpost. Their members spend an average of two hours per day on work for Windward, which supplies the group with its basic needs and expands their infrastructure. They are free to pursue their own businesses and interests the rest of the time. One of their members, Walt, posted to the Nation Builders list. Interestingly enough, they started out with the intent of eventually building a floating colony. They have recently started intern and apprentice programs, who spend an extra 2 hours on group projects and 4 hours on personal projects. The apprentice program charges $400-$500 per month depending on time of year. This leads to a Steward position in the community. Overall, they look like a proven model to use as a reference for Outpost.

http://www.windward.org/

Patri adds: I have emailed a fair bit with Walt, and can attest that he is a reasonable and interesting guy.

Walt responds:

Thanks for the kind comments. I'd like to think that one of Windward's key contributions to the move to the sea is our set of by-laws based on the concept of representative consensus. They've kept us operational for more than thirty years in spite of the inevitable coming and goings, and the challenge of moving our operation a thousand miles north.

We're a couple of years into the process of bringing on board our next generation, and part of that has involved revisiting our bylaws to ensure that they're consistent with our current practice. They're currently in the process of being ratified, a process that takes at least two months and requires the support of at least 75% of our Board. If you're interested in the social mechanics involved in building a viable base, you're welcome to check them out at http://www.windward.org/windward/bylaws090520.pdf