There has been a bit of a buzz in the internet and elsewhere about a new development off the US West Coast, known as Blueseed:
“More than 100 international tech companies have registered their interest in floating geek city Blueseed, to be launched next year in international waters outside of Silicon Valley. The visa-free, start-up-friendly concept launched late last year aims to create a fully commercial technology incubator where global entrepreneurs can live and work in close proximity to the Valley, accessing VC funding and talent as required. The bulk of registered demand germinated from the U.S. at 20.3%, Indian 10.5%, and Australians at 6%. Reasons: living and working in an “awesome” start-up- and technology-oriented space, proximity to Silicon Valley’s investors, and an alternative to having to get U.S. work visas for company founders or employees were key reasons. Cost:$1,200 to $3,000 per person per month.”
One of the bitter ironies of recent years has been how the US, a country that operates a worldwide system of taxes, as well as tightening its visa and other regulations, has made it not just harder for people, including the likes of software engineers, to enter the country, but also far less easy for expat Americans on short- or long-term trips abroad to do so and gain access to even basic financial services. (To view more on the latter point, see this entry of mine about the FATCA Act.) But as the Blueseed venture demonstrates, entrepreneurs and other liberty-loving people will try and find a way around the tentacles of Big Government. No doubt the Eyeores will say this is all futile, that the authorities will shut this sort of thing down, yadda-yadda, but the very fact that such ventures are being worked on at all is itself a kind of victory for certain ideas.
Reason magazine has a nice roundup on the Blueseed venture. And Patri Friedman’s Seasteading Institute is still going strong. Here is a great book on the subject, How To Start Your Own Country, covering the failed attempts and the mini-victories along the way.
Moving to a country that’s business friendly, gee what a concept. In Australia we have a Ministry of Innovation, we’re so lucky.
This “seasteading” can not be allowed – as it violates “global governance” and “international cooperation” – based on the “fair shares” (social justice) ideology.
Techology companies want to be seen as “with it” and “hip” for the young people – so they must draw back from this.
After all the Bavarian Illuminati would be against all this reactionary unequal private property and national independence (“fair shares” and “citizen of the world” – much more hip) stuff. And the B.I. were the peak of support for “freedom and justice”.
Wikipedia says so – so it must be true.
Seriously….
Seasteading is a good idea.
And it is comming not a moment too soon.
I love the naivete of these sorts of proposals. The blithe assumption that our project will somehow be magically free of all of the negative outcomes that have plagued every assemblage of humanity since Ug first walloped Thag over the head to steal his berries.
We’re Geeks! We’re Special! We Know Better! Bad Things won’t happen to us!
No doubt they will all have advanced degrees, but not a Street Degree among them. Haven’t any of them read ‘Lord of the Flies’?
The exact reason that they want to be offshore – to be free of laws they don’t like – will also place them in a place that is, by definition, free of all the other laws as well. When the Chinese Navy pulls up on the port bow and sends a boarding party – who you gonna call?
Besides, what’s the point of this being close offshore to the US West Coast, if it’s filled with people who can’t enter the US? Nowadays, one mile is indistinguishable from 10,000 miles. If I were a smart, tech-savvy person of the type that this thing is supposed to attract – why would I leave my home on dry land to live in what amounts to a floating labour camp, just so I can be a few miles closer to a place that I can’t actually enter? So the VCs can chopper out to see me? That’s a pretty-poor reason for building a multi-billion dollar vessel with sky-high operating costs and not-insignificant risks attached.
Pipe-dream.
llater,
llamas
So what would you do? Nothing probably, that’s my guess, just sit on the collapsing edifice of what we have and sneer at people actually trying to do something.
And Chinese navy has always been a joke. Maybe they remember Anson’s Bay when it was trashed by… a privately owned warship.
It is certainly an interesting project but is it much more than just a cruise that doesn’t go anywhere?
A moment of boredom leads me to do this:
You can click the thumbnail to open the full size image in a new window.
What I was thinking the same thing. If you live in any country with decent internet access, there is little or no point to this.
If the creation of the Internet means anything, it means “The Death of Distance”.
The US Government has chosen the path that it wishes to pursue, which is to ignore economic reality. This is akin to attempting to ignore gravity. You can convince yourself it is possible, but at some point gravity is going to pull you down to earth.
Economics is the same, the US Government can ignore the economic fundamentals that served it so well a century ago and pursue the failed dreams of the welfare states of Europe, but in so doing, it condemns every US Citizen to share the fate of the Greeks. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point.
Just because you can have geographical location doesn’t mean they have to deal with you. The US Government could kill this idea in a heartbeat by saying that the proposed Ferry into San Francisco harbour is not a valid entry-point to the US.
What are they going to do then?
Alternately, they could ‘find’ that the ship is a haven for drugs, prostitution and child pornography, the Holy Trinity of modern law enforcement. Just send the boys in on their black helicopters with their neo-Nazi uniforms (ala ATF, SWAT, etc.).
There is no way that the US Government would ignore a threat to their monopoly of force 12-miles off the US coastline.
Regardless of all international law, they will be punished as an example of the others.
If you want to start a new enterprise, do it from Hong Kong, Singapore or the Philippines. Forget Silicon Valley, that is just where American’s do their thing as they are now tied down to the mother country so that they can be milked for taxes like the good milche cows that they are.
If you want freedom, forget American. That dream was put to death in the shadow of the twin towers.
Instead of “sea-stead” (no pun intended), some loser country with too many laws & bureacracies etc to attract investors and rich citizens, should start a charter zone, like HONG KONG. It would be an area within their boundries with minimum regulations and taxes guaranteed for 100 years or whatever.
The politicians who did this would be lauded for “saving our nation!”
Foolishness.
I bet they don’t even sign any treaties with anyone.
They’ll be invaded and taken over by one of the Mexican drug cartels the day after they establish nationhood.
Google ‘Sealand’ to see what has happened in the past when others have tried this sort of thing.
When I took the old Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry on a regular basis, I’d always take a good long peek at Sealand on the way by. Even at that tender age, I knew that it was at once a lovely quixotic dream and a laughably-impractical reality.
So I know it’s actually a laughable example, but it points up the basic issue with any plan like this – no matter how much you claim to be independent and unbound by the laws of others – you ain’t. This floating Utopia is going to be dependent on a thousand different land-based sources of supply, and whoever controls your lifelines, controls you.
Any half-way intelligent techie would be absolutely insane to allow themselves to be installed on a thing like this. You’re in a place where you have nowhere to go and nobody to call upon to protect you. You’re at the entire mercy of whoever happens to control the ship (let’s call it a ship, for ease of discussion), and that may be a person or an agency that got control because they had a bigger gun. You may become a powerless pawn in the conflict between wheover happens to run the ship and whoever they managed to p*ss off this week. And – having cocked a snook at the major powers by deliberately trying to circumvent their economic systems – don’t expect the US Navy to come running to bail you out.
It would be like going on a cruise that doesn’t go anywhere, on a ship that has no flag and no rules, with no way to get off and no way for help to get on, even if help wanted to, which it won’t.
I could perfectly-well see a hundred-and-three different scenarios in which the innocent techies who populate this thing end up being lined up at the taffrail and shot in the back of the head before being kicked overboard.
Good luck with it.
llater,
llamas
Smittered agin.
llater,
llamas
Llamas,
I just sat through a talk by Blueseed President Dario Mutabdzija. The project is definitely go big or go home.
Your two issues
1. Visa – Dario envisions them getting tourist or business visitor visas. He’s also imagining a 30 minute ferry, 20 minute speedboat and a heli-pad.
2. Location – Dario believes that by far the best place to organize a start-up is in Silicon Valley, “due to a combination of culture, venture capital and human capital.”
(As a personal note, I am well aware that HK-Shenzhen has a small thriving start-up community. And I suspect that HK is better for manufacturing start-ups. Blueseed seems focused on internet start-ups. And the Bay Area is definitely the place for that.)
As for the government shutting it down. Well, that depends on how many billionaire VC’s are willing to go to bat for it. 50-50% I’d say.
Well, good luck to them, I hope you’re all wrong.
( That doesn’t mean I think you are, though. )
No one has mentioned where the ship would be registered. That might have an effect on how much trouble they will have with US authorities.
Laird: No one has mentioned where the ship would be registered.
The FAQ says
Most of the questions raised in the comments are answered in the FAQ’s at the Blueseed site. But there are two points that have not been covered.
1. Is the Exclusive Economic Zone as defined in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and codified by Presidential Directive in 1983 accounted for?
I think not, because the site itself says it will be 12 miles offshore.
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/csdl/mbound.htm
Unless the Blueseed is > 200 nm off the mean low water line, the US government has control over all economic activity. They define economic activity in the zone favorably now, but under section “(b)” of the Directive, below:
Things can changed by bureaucratic whim and decree. Since the Blueseed will not be “transiting” under international law; if they so desire the government can do as it pleases.
2. Even if seizure was in violation of US law; the current regime is not known for punctilious obedience to same. If the Coast Guard ferried a hoard of IRS lawyers with Administrative Court warrants to the Blueseed and seized it, all persons, and data files aboard; are the Bahamas or the US Marshall Islands whose flag they will be flying going to protest? And how?
Subotai Bahadur
Well if seizure or piracy is a concern, rent a couple of battalions of North Korean regulars, I’m sure Dear Leader would cut a reasonable deal. Source the hardware from China.
harryr
The influence that circumstances or events have is also important. Perhaps more important than the event/circumstances themselves.
Sealand may be a quaint joke but as part of the pirate radio flourishing of the 1960s it played a role in causing the UK broadcast authorities to establish Radio One, and subsequently to the regionalisation of broadcasting.
An unhappy compromise, perhaps, but certainly better than an exclusively monolithic organisation?
Blueseed may or may not achieve the aims of its creators but it will no doubt have a significant impact, probably towards liberty.
I just hope it works.
Good point, John – the seen and the unseen, as it were. Other than that though, I’m with the skeptics.
The point of the project is to be free of government taxes and regulations – I would have thought that was obvious.
And as Western nations go bankrupt (which will become obvious in 2013) then this will seem even more sensible.
Should the new places be more than 200 miles from existing countries?
Yes.
Should the new places spend resources on their defence from criminals?
Yes.
Would it be better to rely on the state?
No – because the naval forces of most Western nations are being butchered.
Like it or not – Naval forces are not going to be there “to call” if the Somali pirates (or whoever) attack a ship or an island.
They navy is going to be sacrificed (as the Royal Navy already has been) to try and preseve the Welfare State – this policy will fail, but the statists will try it anyway.
Is the international elite of government machines still a threat even if you are more than 200 miles away?
Of course it is – the statists are DESPERATE (they may try anything).
However, Seasteading is a lot better than (for example) waiting for the State of California to confiscate the assets of various internet companies in a desperate effort to deal with an “unforeseen” economic crises.
You know the “unforeseen” economic crises that is going to happen in 2013 – and the responses that are being planned right now.
The point of the project is to be free of government taxes and regulations – I would have thought that was obvious.
And as Western nations go bankrupt (which will become obvious in 2013) then this will seem even more sensible.
Should the new places be more than 200 miles from existing countries?
Yes.
Should the new places spend resources on their defence from criminals?
Yes.
Would it be better to rely on the state?
No – because the naval forces of most Western nations are being butchered.
Like it or not – Naval forces are not going to be there “to call” if the Somali pirates (or whoever) attack a ship or an island.
They navy is going to be sacrificed (as the Royal Navy already has been) to try and preseve the Welfare State – this policy will fail, but the statists will try it anyway.
Is the international elite of government machines still a threat even if you are more than 200 miles away?
Of course it is – the statists are DESPERATE (they may try anything).
However, Seasteading is a lot better than (for example) waiting for the State of California to confiscate the assets of various internet companies in a desperate effort to deal with an “unforeseen” economic crises.
You know the “unforeseen” economic crises that is going to happen in 2013 – and the responses that are being planned right now.
wrt defense, it might be a chance to see how a modern private military would fare. I’m still a bit skeptical at the (what appears to be) majority libertarian opinion that defense is the respsonsibility of the state.
I’m with llamas on this one. The problems that confront us can’t be avoided by hiding on Gilligan’s Island.
“The point of the project is to be free of government taxes and regulations – I would have thought that was obvious.
And as Western nations go bankrupt (which will become obvious in 2013) then this will seem even more sensible.”
When the nation that is closest to this “ship” goes bankrupt, where will they get their supplies? This isn’t a self-sustaining community…it’s just an off-shore tax haven. California will let it get off of the ground so they can figure out a way to tax it. 12 miles is just not enough…
How might they tax it? How about a huge docking/landing fee for the shuttles? Or a huge fee to “certify” the ships/helicopters for the 12 mile voyage. Or better yet…both.
As for the feds…”Oh, I see you have a visa for Blueseed. Please step through that door so we can examine everything you’re carrying…and don’t forget to strip.”
Or…”This is Coast Guard Cutter. We have concerns about the safety of this ship and will be boarding.” Later, “Here are $900,000 in fines for not meeting our safety requirements, which take precedence since you have US citizens aboard and your shuttles connect to the US. What’s that? You don’t think we have jurisdiction? Take us to court. Meanwhile, pay the fine or we stop all traffic to your vessel.”
This idea may work somewhere else. But NOT off of the coast of the USA…as sad as that is…
Yes LCB – I agree with you. 12 miles is an absurdly close distance – even under current edicts it should be more than that 200 miles away (to aboid American government claims of jurisdiction).
And as llamas and very retired would point out….
The forces of “global governance” (i.e. the power crazed “international cooperation”) might seek to control things even over 200 miles away from any nation.
Still it is better to try and fail, than not to try at all.