Libertarian business idea contest ($2,500 first prize)

[Elwar]

http://seasteading.org/community/contests/sinkorswim-2010

The Seasteading Institute aims to found startup countries in international waters, which will attract citizens and businesses by offering superior government compared to current countries, such as more business-friendly laws. Seasteads are floating platforms that allow people to permanently settle the ocean as they do land and will be located near large cities, but outside of the territorial waters of any country. Seasteads will be free to experiment with new policies and regulation, customizing the environment to the needs of their commercial & residential customers.

The Seasteading Institute is hosting a business model contest with $5,000 in prizes. We believe there are huge profit opportunities to be had by businesses that choose to locate aboard commercial real estate on the water. For the purposes of this contest, entrants will assume that their business will exist on a platform 25 miles off the coast of a large first-world city, such as Miami or Shanghai. Furthermore, assume the legal and regulatory environment is exactly what is necessary for you to do business as efficiently as possible.

[johngr]

Like the NWO is just going to up and say, "oh, well, they're in international waters. Guess there's nothing we can do." LOLOL.

[newbitech]

http://seasteading.org/community/contests/sinkorswim-2010

The Seasteading Institute aims to found startup countries in international waters, which will attract citizens and businesses by offering superior government compared to current countries, such as more business-friendly laws. Seasteads are floating platforms that allow people to permanently settle the ocean as they do land and will be located near large cities, but outside of the territorial waters of any country. Seasteads will be free to experiment with new policies and regulation, customizing the environment to the needs of their commercial & residential customers.

The Seasteading Institute is hosting a business model contest with $5,000 in prizes. We believe there are huge profit opportunities to be had by businesses that choose to locate aboard commercial real estate on the water. For the purposes of this contest, entrants will assume that their business will exist on a platform 25 miles off the coast of a large first-world city, such as Miami or Shanghai. Furthermore, assume the legal and regulatory environment is exactly what is necessary for you to do business as efficiently as possible.

interesting, I might try and claim that prize. A bunch of us have been talking about water world scenarios on the gulf coast of FL for years now.

[brandon]

How are they going to defend against piracy? Will they have a navy?

[Elwar]

How are they going to defend against piracy? Will they have a navy?

From their FAQ "Pirates will get you!"

Piracy is still a problem on the high seas, but does not seem particularly worrisome for a seastead. It seems to mainly consist of two types.

Much piracy is small-scale theft - for example, of the 335 attacks reported in 2001, only 73 involved guns. 16 ships were hijacked, and 21 people killed (all but one in asian waters) [ICC2001]. A sea-city will be much too large for this kind of criminal. Even an individual seastead - a concrete tower - will be a much tougher target than a luxury yacht. This type of piracy is mainly notable for being vivid and exciting - it is rare enough that oceans are still full of private pleasure craft. Still, we recommend that small seasteads avoid the few pirate hotspots (Southeast Asia and Somalia).

Some piracy is done by large organized groups who capture entire ships and their goods (often tens of millions of dollars worth) to be fenced. They use forged documents to obtain a new load of cargo from legitimate shippers, and then steal it too. It is worth noting that these groups specifically target container ships, not cruise ships, which is not at all surprising. After all, a container ship has only a few crew and vast amounts of cargo, nicely boxed and ready to be fenced. A cruise ship has far less saleable stuff, and far more people to deal with. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if there was 100 times the “crew per $ of movable cargo” for a cruise ship vs. a container ship, so it’s no wonder that thieves focus on the latter! The cost/benefit analysis just doesn’t work out for this kind of crime:

Seasteads would stand out in port, so they can’t be sold or used to obtain new cargo.
Seasteaders will be defending their homes, not their employer’s trade goods, so they’ll fight harder.
Crew / $ of cargo: Since seasteads are residential, they are much more like the cruise ship than the container ship. This means far more danger for the criminals, and far less profit.
The seastead shape makes it very defensible against small arms - it’s like a concrete castle. (Against weapons large enough to destroy the spar, it’s more vulnerable, but now we’re talking about navies, not pirates).
In other words, why attack a platform of people who would be defending their homes when you could attack a cargo boat with a few lightly armed sailors who would much rather not die to protect some corporation’s cargo?

One response to this is to worry about ransom. Well, there are plenty of high-end cruise ships with multimillionaires on board, and we’ve never heard about one being hijacked for ransom. Just like us, these cruise ships use low-tax, low-regulation flags, so it isn’t like they have special protection.

As of 2008, Somalian pirates have been in the news quite a bit, most recently capturing an oil tanker. This does not change our analysis in the slightest. An oil tanker has few crew and an incredibly valuable, easy to fence cargo. This is very different from a seastead. Furthermore, the Somalian pirates have small boats and operate out of Somalia as a base - in a CNN article they brag about operating as far as 80 miles from Somalia. It turns out, amazingly, that very little of the ocean is within 80 miles of Somalia. As long as seasteads avoid Somalia and mount some small arms, we have nothing to worry about from pirates.

If you’d like to see data, I encourage you to check out A map of 2008 pirate attacks. You can click through to the details, and notice that, for example, most occur while anchored and involve no weapons (ie robbers sneak onto the ship to steal things). These banal attacks are the equivalent of someone stealing your car stereo - not pleasant, but not the sort of life-threatening horror that would render the seas uninhabitable. Also notice the complete lack of pirates in the North Atlantic and North Pacific.

The armed and organized groups which seasteads should be the most worried about are the navies of traditional governments, as you can see in the Politics section. Seastead defense is discussed in the infrastructure section. If you compare the size, scope, and sophistication of pirates to that of government navies, it’s just ludicrous. Like a guy selling watches on a street corner vs. Microsoft!