I think there are at least two different questions being subsumed here. One is whether seasteading could ever work in general, and the other is whether it would actually produce something a libertarian like Peter Thiel would ultimately approve of. The first question I take to be the more complicated. David Brin offers up a number of practical difficulties here.
The answer to second question seems less difficult to foresee. Life aboard ship is always a highly communal enterprise and typically a highly hierarchical one. The odds of the end result actually being in line with the initial vision seem rather long.
Patri does not use the ideal of individual liberty much in his descriptions of his plans: he uses the notion of competitive government, that is, increasing competition by increasing the number of sovereign states.
He does admit that many of the people interested in seasteading are libertarians though.
“Personally, your author’s views definitely match the “libertarian” label. But don’t be deceived into thinking that seasteading is just a means to libertarian ends. While we began exploring it as part of trying to achieve our own vision of an ideal society, it turned out to be a much, much bigger idea.”
The most important point in Brin’s piece is to point out that this is something of an attempt at feudalism: the wealthy escape their obligations to others but can enforce against them using the state those others yet inhabit. It’s a parasitic plan, really.
I think there are at least two different questions being subsumed here. One is whether seasteading could ever work in general, and the other is whether it would actually produce something a libertarian like Peter Thiel would ultimately approve of. The first question I take to be the more complicated. David Brin offers up a number of practical difficulties here.
The answer to second question seems less difficult to foresee. Life aboard ship is always a highly communal enterprise and typically a highly hierarchical one. The odds of the end result actually being in line with the initial vision seem rather long.
Patri does not use the ideal of individual liberty much in his descriptions of his plans: he uses the notion of competitive government, that is, increasing competition by increasing the number of sovereign states.
He does admit that many of the people interested in seasteading are libertarians though.
“Personally, your author’s views definitely match the “libertarian” label. But don’t be deceived into thinking that seasteading is just a means to libertarian ends. While we began exploring it as part of trying to achieve our own vision of an ideal society, it turned out to be a much, much bigger idea.”
http://seasteading.org/book_beta/Why%20we%20need%20new%20societies.html
Libertarian doesn’t mean atomistic, it means voluntary.
By this definition, the world is already libertarian because this order exists at the state level.
The most important point in Brin’s piece is to point out that this is something of an attempt at feudalism: the wealthy escape their obligations to others but can enforce against them using the state those others yet inhabit. It’s a parasitic plan, really.