Hilarious History of Seasteading Part I

Wanna laugh and learn about Seasteading at the same time?

Intro on Seasteading: seasteading is basically creating floating cities.

Excerpt from the book Seasteading, Chapter 1

Like a fish to Water

In the summer of 2009, the Seasteading Institute hosted the first annual floating festival of self-governance on the Sacramento Delta and called it Ephemerisle, which has since come to beknown as “Burning Man on the water.” (Burning man is a New Age festival and temporary city in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in the Western United States.) Every year, a few hundred people create a makeshift island by connecting a variety of boats, platforms, inner tubes, and floating art projects. Want to attend? Bring your own land.

The annual event has since blossomed without our help and with no central organizer. This kickvstart method is the essence ofour nonprofit role. The vision was that Ephemerisle could grow in size, duration, and frequency until a man-made island was floating year-round, and as ocean folk learned the tricks of ocean living, eventually Ephemerisle would move to international waters. Upon this dream a small bluetopia was born.

Given that people are people, conflicts emerged. The people who wanted to dance and party clashed with the people who wanted peace and quiet. The people who set up a floating disc jockey clashed with the people who organized a lecture series. The people who brought children clashed with the adults who acted like children. Three years of peace and harmony culminated in the Great Shouting Match of 2011. After exchanging threats of excommunication. partiers. parents, pranksters, and lecturers stared down one another, eyeball to eyeball. Nobody could agree on what the “real Ephemerisle" was all about! What should we do? Hold a vote? Let the majority enforce its will on the minority? Which group should we kick off the island? We had a realityTV show in the making.

Incredibly, the principles of seasteading emerged without anyone commanding it or even remarking upon it until this writing, as far as we know.

In 2012 Ephemerisle split off into three islands. People who wanted peace and quiet formed Titan, an orderly avenue of houseboats requiring life jackets, safety whistles, and a strict buddy system. The party people renamed it Uptightan. The loud twentysomethings who wanted their rave parties built a floating dance floor made of wood and nails. Titan residents named it Tetanus. A group of environmentalist artists known as Los Angelopes, an LA bicycle gang, improvised Blanket Fort Island, constructed mostly from recycled materials such as barrels, pallets, canoes, and anything else that could be lashed together to float. As it tilted and partially sank, it was christened the SS Shit Show. Anyone who glanced at Shit Show risked being mooned by a butt with the words “sell out" painted on it. Perhaps in response, a medical nurse crowdfunded Meditation Platform, a shaded “quiet space in which to recharge without any social pressures."

Once partiers, scholars, artists, and introverts formed their separate jurisdictions, do you think they each sat, sulked, and refused to interact? Not a chance. Separation made all hearts grow fonder. A taxi system of motorboats was organized among the islands. The “seatizens" of Tetanus allowed a freewheeling approach of boats to dock and launch at will, leading to some laugh-inducing fender benders. Horrified. the seatizens of uptightan instituted an immigration policy, enforcing an ordered approach of motorboats, especially those filled with suspect party people. Unfortunately, this policy involved bullhorns, leading to a policing innovation known as “the roving DoucheCam,” where people who lost their tempers were videoed and publicly humiliated on YouTube. What if no taxi was available? A flotilla of pool rafts was anchored to a spot between the three islands, sewing as both a remote getaway and a rest stop for swimmers between the islands.No boss planned any of it, and everybody participated in it. The emergence of these arrangements only increased the fluid rate at which people migrated and visited neighbors as the mood struck them. Want to be among children? Head to the family-friendly island. Want to stay up all night dancing with the under-thirty crowd? Go hang out with those people, if that's your bag. Want to enjoy peace and quiet with the fortysomethings who hold formal lectures about economics and political theory? Head to that island and maybe crash there amid the quiet. Sick and tired of all these rules, man? Blanket Fort, the recycler's paradise, tilts defiantly a short swim away. Patri (one of the pioneers and visionaries of Seasteading) has two kids, loves to dance, loves to lecture and attend lectures, and volunteers to drive motorboats between all three main islands. Joe is a proud seatizen of uptightan, where kids need to respect their elders’ need for naps.So far, conflicts are rare, but when they occur, they are policed by mockery, painful nicknames, and subversive performance art. Want to spite the libertarian consensus that prevails during the lecture series? Name your subisland Revenge of cuba. which is the most recent act of “seacession." Imagine a political science scholar carefully parsing the nuances of Federal Reserve policy, while just offshore, residents ofCuba make a big show of offering free first aid services to anyone who may one day be injured on Tetanus.

Sure, seasteading is supposed to be about breaking away, but what about merging? Stop reading for a moment and guess which islands are the least likely to join forces. How long do you think it took for enemy islands to marry?

By 2014, the rave dancers and Titan residents had become one. The party people admitted they needed the Titan residents to help them organize, and the Titaniers admitted they needed the party people to help them have fun. The orderly avenue ofTitan houseboats formed a neighborhood block, with front doors facing inward and decks facing outward. so boats could approach from any side, meaning they could nix the bullhorns. What do you think was built at the center? A magnificent dance floor free from nails, with a posted schedule for quiet times during lectures. Splitting in a huffin 2012, the Uptightans and Tetanusitians formed one island paradise by 2014. Hugs all around.

Is bluetopia finally at hand? Not exactly. The Cubans continue to give the public middle finger to every island that doesn't offer free health care to all Ephemerislians, flying their flag of socialist spite and spending most of their time on Titan’s dance floor and rnooching from Titan'salphabetically arranged snack tray, which offers vegan, paleo, vegetarian, gluten-free, and dairy-free vittles organized by spreadsheet.

On water, human nature does not change. What changes is the technology by which humans establish rules. Ephemerisle started as an experiment in getting along, and already several new start-up experiments have broken away and learned lessons. We'd venture to guess that every single year, every single Ephemerislian visits every single island, proving that good waters make good neighbors.

The success of the Ephemerisle community so far is evidenced by its rejection by a reality TV production company. In 2015 a seasoned TV production team contacted the Seasteading Institute curious to create a TV documentary. Once scouting Ephemerisle, they became discouraged byhow readily conflicts were quelled on a fluid medium. How to add drama? Get rid ofmobility and choice. They went back to the United Kingdom and elected to set up their own reality TV show on several fixed offshore military forts, to set up the traditional dynamics for land-based conflict. If you want people to fight, condemn them to a crowded space where they can't take their land and go elsewhere.

Ephemerisle began as a do-it~yourself seasteading start-up, and it has evolved in ways no one could have planned. Even the distributed Ephemerisle community is smarter than any centralized governor. The social mechanics of seasteading have emerged already.