Seasteading
2009-09-12 · Guest: Patri Friedman (Co-founder of the Seasteading Institute) · 59:59
Autonomous floating micro-nations and competitive governance
Bob Zadek interviews Patri Friedman, co-founder of the Seasteading Institute, about the movement to create autonomous, floating micro-nations on the high seas. They discuss the political philosophy of “exit” over “voice,” the practicalities of citizenship and construction, and why the ocean represents the next frontier for human governance and innovation.
Topics: Seasteading, Libertarianism, Exit vs. Voice, Competitive Governance, The Seasteading Institute, Patri Friedman, Peter Thiel, International Waters, Micro-nations
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek - Host
- Patri Friedman - Co-founder of the Seasteading Institute
- Caller (Griffin) - Listener
Introduction to Seasteading [03:01]
Bob Zadek: Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show. I am your host, Bob Zadek, here on Talk 910, More Stimulating Talk. Today’s show is a travelogue of sorts. We are talking about hitting the sea. We’re going to be talking about the Seasteading Institute and the doctrine of seasteading. What is seasteading? You don’t know? You’ll learn. To help me explain seasteading and an alternative to being an American, to help me is Patri Friedman. Patri Friedman is one of the co-founders of the Seasteading Institute. The Seasteading Institute is promoting the activity of seasteading. What is seasteading? Seasteading promotes building dwellings offshore in the ocean, outside of the territorial limits of any country. Build your own country from scratch. What an inspiring idea. Or is it? Is it patriotic? Is it not patriotic? We’ll examine all of these issues and more with Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute. I’m your host, Bob Zadek. We’re here at More Stimulating Talk, KNEW 800-345-5639. Outside of the Bay Area, bob@bobzadek.com. Patri, welcome to the show.
Patri Friedman: Thank you.
Bob Zadek: Patri, tell us a bit about the Seasteading Institute. First, what is seasteading?
Patri Friedman: Seasteading is homesteading the high seas. Like in the early history of America, the pioneers headed west to homestead the new open land. But now there is no new open land. Every bit of land has already been claimed by some government. So if you want to go start a new social movement, try out new social systems, get to work on a blank canvas that hasn’t already been taken over by corrupt politicians, there’s no place left to go. Which is why we want to open the oceans as the next frontier for human advancement.
Bob Zadek: Patri, “corrupt politicians”—is that a hyphenated word?
Patri Friedman: Well, it’s almost redundant, I would say.
Bob Zadek: But isn’t—so you propose forming micro-countries offshore, outside of the territorial limits of any other country?
Patri Friedman: Exactly. Right now, the industry of government just has a few large firms, the current 150 countries or so, that are huge, much too big to innovate. We want to let people start lots of small countries that will be much more experimental, try out a lot of different things, so that we can sort of have government startups and really see what works and what doesn’t by trying things out instead of arguing about it.
Bob Zadek: So this is going to be a sea-based Silicon Valley incubator for new countries.
Patri Friedman: Yeah, exactly. We want it to be like Silicon Valley where lots of people try out lots of different websites, for example, and customers can easily switch from one to the other. And as a result, you get this incredibly innovative, diverse, competitive industry, which is what we need for government.
The Difficulty of Starting a Country [06:14]
Bob Zadek: So you’re going to be forming a new country in the ocean where one has not existed before. I don’t imagine that’s a very simple task. I don’t imagine you could call some corporate service company and get the formation of a new country kit the way you form a new corporation. It’s probably a pretty daunting challenge, I would imagine.
Patri Friedman: That’s absolutely right. But we’re trying to make that kit, basically. We’re trying to do the engineering research and the political research and go out there and form one. But our goal is not to form one; it’s to make it so that we supply that service so that any group of people with an idea about a better way to run a society can come to us—maybe it’s 100 people, maybe it’s 1,000 people, maybe it’s 10,000 people—and we can help them go actually do it.
Bob Zadek: And you would provide the kit, and I’d imagine you would sell them the floating platform, financing terms readily available. How would they go about building this floating or anchored country in the middle of the ocean?
Patri Friedman: Well, as you say, it’s a really difficult, complicated problem. You know, it’s far from easy. And there’s the financing, there’s the engineering, there’s the politics and the diplomacy. So there are different answers for each of those areas.
Competition in Governance [07:45]
Bob Zadek: Now, the Seasteading Institute has some pretty impressive backers, doesn’t it?
Patri Friedman: That’s right. Our initial funding is from Peter Thiel, who founded PayPal, was the first investor in Facebook, and an early investor in LinkedIn.
Bob Zadek: And he’s a supporter of seasteading.
Patri Friedman: That’s right. Well, he’s a free-market kind of guy, and he’s basically given up on conventional politics as a way of changing or fixing things. And as a technological entrepreneur, he sees the possibilities for fixing the problems with human society through new technology. And that’s exactly what seasteading is. Seasteading says, “Hey, politicians are corrupt because they don’t have any competition, because you can’t start new countries. Current countries don’t compete for citizens.” And if we can produce the technology to let people do country startups, then not only will those startups learn new innovative ways of running a country, but existing countries will have to get better in order to compete.
The Question of Exit [08:12]
Bob Zadek: My question for you folks out there, as well as for Patri: is seasteading the answer? Have we come to a point as Americans that we cannot fix America from within and we have to—I don’t mean to seem harsh—but are we at a point when the only viable option is to, frankly, cut and run? Is America so far gone that the only alternative for those who are seeking a—I’ll call it a libertarian way of life—so that those seeking that way of life, seasteading is the only way to go?
A Floating Vegas? [09:06]
Bob Zadek: Now, Griffin in San Pablo. You’re interested in setting up your own country, huh, Griffin?
Caller (Griffin): Yeah, it was funny. My friends and I were talking. We were looking at a decommissioned aircraft carrier from Russia that was up for sale for $3 million. And we thought, “Wow, we could actually take this, tow it out to international waters right out outside of, like, Florida or Texas or somewhere near the US border, and basically start up a country that offered anything you could ever imagine: prostitution, gambling, drug use.” And all the funds would basically go to help—all the taxes or funds that were being used for that to fund our project.
Bob Zadek: I hope that your healthcare plan would cover Dramamine.
Caller (Griffin): You never know, you know? You have to be sure to have a healthcare plan that covers stuff like that. Think of how much money Vegas brought in every year from all the illicit activity going on there. So why not form a country that would do it?
Patri Friedman: It was the fastest-growing city in the country for about 20 years, Las Vegas, with no resources, in the middle of the desert, purely on the basis of low regulation.
Caller (Griffin): Oh, they do it every year at Burning Man, so why not? There’s no reason why we couldn’t do it out there in the middle of the ocean.
Bob Zadek: Don’t get Patri started talking about Burning Man. Patri, you like Burning Man, don’t you?
Patri Friedman: That’s right. I just got back, and we’re actually throwing a festival that we call Ephemerisle that’s coming up October 2nd to 4th. And it’s meant to be sort of like Burning Man on the water, but focused on this idea of political self-expression. So it’s going to move farther out every year until it’s a festival in international waters where you can actually experience for a weekend self-government.
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. Thank you very much for calling, Griffin.
Caller (Griffin): I’d like to get in touch with you, sir. I’d like to get in touch with him.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot. You can—before we go to break, the website for seasteading?
Patri Friedman: It’s seasteading.org, S-E-A-S-T-E-A-D-I-N-G dot org. And for the festival, it’s ephemerisle.org, E-P-H-E-M-E-R-I-S-L-E dot org.
Bob Zadek: My question for Patri when we come back from our short break, so you have a chance to prepare, Patri. Here’s my question: does starting a new country offshore, does that assume the renunciation of US citizenship, and what’s involved there? So we’ll discuss abandoning ship for a ship when we come back. This is Bob Zadek, Libertarian Talk Radio in the Bay Area and around the country. 800-345-5639, bob@bobzadek.com. We’ll be right back.
Citizenship and the Exit Tax [16:15]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back, everybody. This is Bob Zadek, host of the Bob Zadek Show on Talk 910, More Stimulating Talk. Today’s topic is seasteading, forming your own country offshore. To help us with this somewhat radical but perhaps ideal solution is Patri Friedman. Patri Friedman is representing the Seasteading Institute, an institute which is promoting the building of mini-countries offshore. This subject is, of course, very appealing to me, Patri. I don’t know if you know this, but I live on a boat. It’s not quite offshore, and I am an American citizen and I do pay American taxes. I live in Sausalito on a boat, but I would be an ideal citizen for your country. I could just sail my boat, which happens to be called the Laissez Faire, out to join your country if you would have me, if your form of government appeals to me. So this does have special appeal to me besides the libertarian appeal. Now, Patri, you were careful to say in your website that this is not designed especially to build a libertarian form of government, but rather to build whatever form of government the citizens of these micro-nations wish. It might be socialist, it might be libertarian, but the important point is you can find a government that appeals to you, whatever that form of government might be. Is that a fair summary, Patri?
Patri Friedman: My personal political passion is for free markets and free countries, but I love that this is an idea that will work even if libertarianism turns out to be wrong. If we can make it easier for people to try out different political systems, then even if I’m totally wrong about what kinds of political systems will work best, it’ll still make the world better because we’ll try out libertarianism and it’ll fail, and we’ll try out other things and they’ll work, and we’ll go live in the countries that are nice places to live. So it’s an innately humble idea in that it says if we just try out lots of different things, then we’ll really learn what works best instead of arguing about it based on our own political biases.
Bob Zadek: Patri, you said, “Even if you’re wrong that libertarianism is the way to go.” If I am wrong and if you are wrong about libertarianism, I’m going to set myself on fire. I couldn’t stand the thought. So I hope you’re not wrong, but I respect the fact that the concept of seasteading is that people are free to form from scratch their own form of government, picking and choosing from experience whatever works best for them. Now, Patri, the key question, the very interesting question, and a question that I think is quite provocative is: does seasteading presuppose that those who undertake seasteading surrender US citizenship?
Patri Friedman: That’s a great question because our answers for that are very different at short, medium, and long-range time scales.
Bob Zadek: By the way, I couldn’t see the answer on the website, so I had to ask you in this discussion.
Patri Friedman: Right. Well, one thing that’s different about seasteading versus other floating city or utopian projects that have existed in the past is that we’re all about—this is a big long-term vision, but we have to tie it to the present in realistic small steps. So there have been other places that said, “We’re going to start a new country. We’ll just start issuing passports and we’ll join the United Nations and, you know, people will just give up their citizenships and everything will be great.” And it’s just ridiculous. I mean, a passport is worthless unless countries accept it. You don’t get a seat in the United Nations by putting up a website. So our answer to the question of citizenship is: in the short term, people will keep their US citizenships, and you get, if you live and work outside the United States, you get the first $90,000 in income tax-free. After that, you have to pay taxes to the US. So that’s the short term; people will keep their existing citizenships. In the medium term, we anticipate that people will, especially those who are wealthier, will get citizenships from countries that offer what they call economic citizenships. Basically, you pay a fee or make an investment in a country and you get a citizenship there. And there are not as many of these now as there were before 9/11, but there are still some. Then in the very long term—this is like 40, 50 years—at that point we’ll be big enough to actually issue our own passports, have them be recognized by other countries, and people will be able to give up their citizenships. But that’s 40 or 50 years away and, you know, it’s not something you can do early on. One last thing is that US tax law has recently changed. It used to be that if you had more than a certain amount of money, the IRS claimed the right to keep taxing you for 10 years after you gave up your citizenship. But they’ve changed that now to a one-time exit tax where you basically pay capital gains tax as if you’d sold all of your things, which, strangely for US tax policy, actually kind of makes sense.
Bob Zadek: So one-shot fee and you’re out of here. You’re truly out of here in so far as the IRS is concerned.
Patri Friedman: Exactly. And that’s a recent change.
Is Seasteading Un-American? [18:47]
Bob Zadek: Now, I’m going to ask you a somewhat cerebral question, Patri. And it’s somewhat—it may be personal to you, but you can either speak personally or theoretically. Someone who is engaged in phase one of seasteading and they have moved, they’re living in this micro-country, this—perhaps I think of like an oil rig platform type organization, that’s what I envision in my head as I try to picture this. The question is, would you consider yourself—you or you, independent third person—would you consider yourself still an American who is just somewhat temporarily living somewhere else, or would you in your head, in your head—I don’t care about your passport—think of yourself as no longer being an American?
Patri Friedman: You know, it’s funny how much I think of myself as being an American right now, because I feel like our country has moved so far from the principles it was founded on, principles that I really agree with. I don’t feel like I have a voice nowadays. I don’t feel like—I mean, part of the reason I’m doing this whole project is that I don’t feel like our country operates on the principles of justice that I believe in, and I’m not okay with that. I really, really want to live somewhere that operates according to what I find to be moral. So I think I would not consider myself an American. I would consider myself to be operating in the American tradition of going to the frontier and finding freedom. But I think that America’s lost its way in that tradition, and we would be a new venture taking that same idea to the next level.
Bob Zadek: My question is—the really intriguing question is—is it unpatriotic? Is it unvirtuous to say, “I’m not happy with how America is existing at present. I’m not happy with the system of government. I’m not happy with the court system. I’m not happy with the degree of control of my personal life”? And therefore, once you’re unhappy, you have two choices: you can cut and run, which is sort of what seasteading is, or you can stay and do the best you can to improve from within through whatever democracy is left. Now, is it un-American?
Patri Friedman: If cutting and running is un-American, then America is un-American. America was founded by people who left Europe because they didn’t think they could get the freedom they wanted there. I mean, America was founded by people who came over here because they thought they could find more freedom on the frontier. And then even once the 13 colonies were established, every other state in America was founded by people going west for a better way of life. So I don’t see how anyone can call it un-American. We’re truly operating in that American frontier tradition.
Bob Zadek: Well, I’ll throw it out to my listeners. Is it not virtuous to seek—say, “Okay, I’m out of here. I will build if I have to, or find if I can’t build, a better place to live because America is so far gone”? Now, Patri, I’m not being antagonistic because I go through the same thought process myself, and I’m stumped on the morality of it all. I feel sometimes pretty darn hopeless. And I don’t know whether the higher moral ground is to just fight till I die to make it better, or to say it’s hopeless.
Modular Cities and the Power of Exit [31:36]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back, everybody. This is Bob Zadek, host of the Bob Zadek Show on 910 AM, More Stimulating Talk. Today I’m joined by Patri Friedman, representing the Seasteading Institute. The Seasteading Institute is actively, fervently promoting the building of offshore—that is, in the ocean—offshore micro-countries where residents can form and select the type of government they want. Implicit in that approach, Patri, is a total disaffection with America as it now exists. And it is, pardon the pun, abandoning ship. It is—implicit in that, Patri, is a conclusion that it is utterly hopeless here and the only thing to do is to bail. Is that a fair assumption?
Patri Friedman: It is, but it’s not a conclusion that we make lightly or without reason. There’s a lot of political theory behind the idea. And it’s not just about America, but about what happens in general in an industry where no one can start new firms and it’s really expensive to move between existing firms. You know, it’s—the decline of countries is something that happens really robustly across a wide variety of different empires and countries. And there are economists who have some idea about the reasons, and there are reasons to think that seasteading actually changes some of those principles. Let me tell you the really crazy thing about what happens if you build countries on the ocean. I mean, you probably thought it was crazy already, but a big cruise ship is about as big as a skyscraper. Like, the Freedom of the Seas is about as big as the Empire State Building. And cruise ships, of course, move around on the ocean regularly all the time. So that means that these cities on the ocean can actually be modular and rearrangeable. You can take a building from one ocean city and move it to another one. So you could actually leave your city-state, leave your country, without leaving your home. So this crazy factor of the sea where you can actually reshuffle city blocks, buildings, skyscrapers, homes, means that it’s much, much cheaper to move from one floating city-state to another, which means that these city-states will have to do a good job of serving their residents as customers. Otherwise, people will just pick up their offices and homes and leave to some place that serves them better. So this has the potential to actually change things and make them different on the ocean. So it’s not just running away; it’s going to a place whose fundamental physical nature makes it really hard for a group to grab onto territory and hold it and secure it and exploit the people in it, because you can actually take your land and leave.
Why New Hampshire Isn’t Enough [34:42]
Bob Zadek: My question is—and my question for my audience is—is it unvirtuous—and I’m not trying to be harsh, I’m just exploring this theory—is it unvirtuous, unpatriotic if you will, to say, “I’m an American, I have written off this country, it cannot be fixed from within, therefore I’m abandoning it”? In our Judeo-Christian system, whether we’re talking about a marriage or whatever other relationship you have, the first impulse should be to work at it, fix it, and make it better. One doesn’t abandon. Now, I know that this decision to abandon, as you said earlier, was not taken lightly. It’s not whimsical. It was born out of—it must be deep frustration. But my question for the audience and for you: is it unpatriotic, or is that even the wrong question? Patri, is it unpatriotic?
Patri Friedman: Well, I don’t—maybe in another country you could say that, but it seems awfully hard to say it in America given that the founding principle of the country was—let’s see, I can probably find you a good quote: “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station,” and so forth. So that’s the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, which explains how when you’ve tried to redress things from within and you haven’t been listened to and things aren’t working, it is not only your right but your duty to go start something new.
Bob Zadek: Your moral duty. I agree. Those are the words, and that is the principle, and I subscribe to that principle. And the question is: so have we gotten—so have things gotten that bad that it cannot be fixed from within?
Patri Friedman: It’s a good question. I look at the last decade as being pretty bad. We had a Republican president who did things that a lot of Republicans don’t agree with, and now we have a Democrat president who’s doing things that a lot of Democrats don’t agree with. I think we have a country ruled by elites for their own benefit and not ruled by the people for the people.
The Need for a Political Reset [39:47]
Bob Zadek: So it’s—well, granted, and I share your disaffection. Granted, things have been pretty dismal ever since the end of Reagan’s second term. Pretty gosh darn dismal. But does that mean—the fact that it’s been dismal for a couple of presidencies—mean that, okay, it’s time to abandon, to get a divorce from our country, that the relationship is not salvageable? And that’s a personal question and very, very difficult.
Patri Friedman: Absolutely. It’s a personal question, and it depends on what you want, too. I mean, I don’t think that the country is going to fall apart, but I think that we are going to see levels of growth and levels of government spending more like Europe. I mean, we’ve just crossed Canada. Canada’s government spending as a percent of GDP has gone down and ours has gone up, and we’ve crossed them. If you’re okay with that, then the relationship is salvageable. If you’re okay with how things are going, that’s a decision that every individual needs to make. But if what you love is the principles our country was founded on—the principles of small government and non-interference and federalism where different regions compete to see who can attract people who vote with their feet—rather than the current system where power is centralized into the federal government, most recently with education funding mainly moving to the federal government under Obama’s new budget—if you’re not happy with that, then why not start something new? And you can benefit the people who stay, because more competition from other countries will force the US to be a better place to live.
Bob Zadek: What I found so intriguing, Patri, when I studied the Seasteading Institute and, more importantly, thought about it—because I found it to be very provocative—just the issue we talked about earlier of patriotism, it raises for me all kinds of really hard issues. And one of my thoughts went in one interesting direction, is that you envision a series of micro-countries competing with somewhat different, maybe dramatically different, forms of government, competing for customers, citizens. And those with the most appealing form of government would prosper, and those with the least appealing would fail. Now, we’ve experienced that already. It’s called states. And as this country was founded, the Founders envisioned the federal government existing with this very light velvet glove, performing, as it says in the Constitution, enumerated powers—discrete and special powers, very limited—with all of the action being done at the state level. And so we had at one time a system in this country, a political system where we had the competition between various political units called states where they would compete. Now, we have that a little bit today. And Patri, as you and I discussed when we spoke, what I thought about was the Free State Project, which for the benefit of the audience who may not be familiar with the Free State Project, the Free State Project was a concept started by a professor in Buffalo named Jason Sorens. And Jason Sorens has identified New Hampshire as the target state, and I’ll explain why he picked New Hampshire. And he has suggested and promoted that 20,000 people, libertarians, commit that once we hit the 20,000 threshold, 20,000 people move to New Hampshire. And I’ll tell you why after the break why he picked New Hampshire. But 20,000 people move to New Hampshire where with 20,000 active libertarians, libertarians can assume political control over the state and live under a truly libertarian form of government. Now, granted, you still have the federal government there in a very strong presence. But that would be an example of experimenting with somewhat different lifestyles. After the break, I’ll explain why and Patri will help me, no doubt, why Professor Sorens has picked New Hampshire. And when I tell you, you may be packing up and moving to New Hampshire with all of your belongings before, as an intermediate step, before you buy a boat and move out to a seasteading pod or module. This is Bob Zadek, bob@bobzadek.com. We are talking about patriotism, bailing, making America better if we can. I’m talking with Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute. 800-345-5639. I’ll be back in a few seconds.
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, at 910 AM, More Stimulating Talk. I’m joined today with by Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute. We’re talking about leaving the United States, forming your own country. The Seasteading Institute will help you do it. Form your own country offshore. You don’t like our system of government, and if you think you can do a better job, take your best shot. That’s what the Seasteading Institute says. They are promoting offshore micro-governments outside the territorial waters of any existing state. And the reason is, as I understand it, Patri, is that there’s no more land available to form a country on land, so you’re left to, as they said in Star Trek, the last frontier, which is the sea.
Patri Friedman: Well, space is the last frontier. The ocean is the penultimate frontier.
Bob Zadek: Right, I guess I wasn’t a very, very true Trekkie if I referred to the water as the last frontier rather than space. Of course, attempts were tried to form independent governments. Ayn Rand had a concept. She was hoping to form something which she called Laissez Faire City. And she was serious about it. She tried to find a government who would cede to her and her group some land in which she could form an independent city-state, which she called Laissez Faire City, which of course got my attention since Laissez Faire is the name of my boat. But that effort failed; she couldn’t find a country who would give her the city. No country wanted to just cut a city out of its body politic. Well, there was another attempt—there were lots of attempts. Another attempt was made—there was an attempt you might be aware of, Patri, in 1972, a guy named Michael Oliver, who was a Nevada businessman. He had an idea: he built an island on a reef 260 miles off of the coast of Tonga, this small macro-nation. He hired a dredge, he put up some sand, and he piled some sand on this reef and finally had enough landmass to declare it an independent country, which he called the Republic of Minerva. Unfortunately, they were invaded by a Tongan force, which included a bunch of prisoners, a brass band, and Tonga’s 350-pound king. And they recaptured the land, and so much for the Republic of Minerva. So there just plain isn’t any land available, so the only sensible shot is the sea. Before the break, I talked about states becoming incubators, and I mentioned New Hampshire. Now, Jason Sorens, who was a college professor in Buffalo, who is encouraging libertarians to commit to move to New Hampshire once they have 20,000 people, the reasons he picked New Hampshire—man, do they appeal to me. Listen to these statistics on New Hampshire: New Hampshire has the lowest state and local taxes in the country, the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending. It has a citizen legislature where statehouse representatives have not raised their $100-a-year salary since 1889. It has the lowest crime level in the US. It has a fabulous economy. It has a culture of individual responsibility and no seatbelt laws and no helmet laws. And they have a great license plate: “Live Free or Die.” So Professor Sorens says you don’t have to move offshore, just move to New Hampshire, us libertarians, take over New Hampshire, make it a libertarian paradise, and citizens will vote with their feet and leave New York and leave Connecticut and leave California and leave Ohio, all these high-tax states, and prove that libertarian gets the votes because they’ll all move to New Hampshire. So my question for Patri is: why don’t we use the states to be, in the words of Justice Brandeis, the true laboratories of democracy? Why can’t it work at the state level? It doesn’t solve everything—we still have a federal government—but why doesn’t that work?
Patri Friedman: Well, it works to some degree, but the benefits it can get are very limited because most of the spending and most of the regulation are at the federal level. So New Hampshire, for example, your tax burden is lower because you don’t have the state income tax, but most of our taxes are federal taxes. And the states—I mean, the states are right now competing jurisdictions. There’s a famous study that people move from high-tax states to low-tax states, I think it’s two or three times more often than the other way around. So there is competition and it works. And as I mentioned earlier, Las Vegas was the fastest-growing city in the country for 20 years. But because so much power in the US is centralized at the federal level, the amount of freedom that the Free State Project will be able to get, even if they get 20,000 people in New Hampshire, will be very limited. And I think most of the benefit of moving to New Hampshire is in the freedoms that you get right away by doing that and in getting to be part of a community of like-minded people, as opposed to extra freedoms that they’ll be able to win with their activists. I mean, the Supreme Court cases have not been very good for federalism, for state autonomy.
Bob Zadek: So, Patri, you made reference to the pilgrims—you didn’t mention the pilgrims by name—but those people who came to America fleeing a country where they couldn’t survive in the way they wanted. And they came to America as the shining city on the hill, in Reagan’s words.
Patri Friedman: That’s right. And I think there’s another thing which is really important, and that’s the way that in democracies you tend to get sort of a sclerosis over time, an accumulation of special interests that slow everything down and seize control of the systems. And this seems to be a really robust feature of democracies. And there’s this economist, Mancur Olson, who studied this, and he’s looked at how Germany and Japan’s economy did after they lost World War II, and they actually did really, really well because losing the war meant that all the special interests and unions and everyone who had seized control of bits of the government to entrench themselves and feed off everyone else, they all got wiped out by losing the war, and it took a long time for them to re-establish themselves. And the same thing happens when you get a country integrated into a larger group. In the EU, when the countries integrated, it took a while for the cartels and unions that had captured, say, France, it took a while for them to capture the whole European Union, and for a while growth was better. And this seems to happen just all over the place in democracy. Unless you have a reset that wipes the slate clean, you just get more and more buildup of this kind of incrustation of special interests, which we’ve seen in the recent financial crisis. What happened was bailing out Wall Street, bailing out the car companies, all these groups that had captured the government got to cash in on it. And seasteading, going to the frontier in general, provides a reset because it’s a blank canvas where there’s no government, no special interests. But seasteading actually offers the chance to solve the problem because we have this crazy feature of rearranging, where a city-state could break in half or break in more pieces and rearrange if people didn’t like the government. So you could have this kind of continuous reset, this ability to wipe the slate clean and start a totally new government without having to fight a war or revolution or go to a new place.
Engineering the Frontier [42:52]
Bob Zadek: Patri, we have a minute and a half. How do these floating—if they are floating—islands get built in 60 seconds? I know you’re not an engineer, but a lot of the listeners are very curious about how this stuff gets built. In a minute, how do you do it?
Patri Friedman: Well, it’s pretty difficult, but oil rigs show that it can be done. They’re built out of steel, they rise up on tall pillars over the ocean. Cruise ships show that every aspect of infrastructure that we’re used to on land—water, power, food, internet—can all be delivered on the ocean pretty cheaply. Our challenge is to use our advantages, which are that we don’t have to be anchored to one specific oil well like an oil rig, we don’t have to move really quickly like a cruise ship. So our challenge is to build something that’s free-floating and a lot bigger and more comfortable but slower-moving. And we’re going to use steel, we’re going to use concrete, we’re going to use proven engineering techniques whenever we can. And people should check out our website and come to our upcoming conference in San Francisco, September 28th to 30th. You can find all the info on the website and learn a lot more.
Bob Zadek: As somebody who lives on a boat, my advice, Patri, is stay away from balsa. Balsa is not going to work. This is Bob Zadek. I’ve had an enjoyable hour talking with Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute. Form your own micro-country, a very intriguing concept with issues of virtue that I haven’t yet resolved and patriotism. I’ll be back next week. This is Bob Zadek, host of the Bob Zadek Show on Talk 910. Thanks for listening.