“The concept is sound, the only reason it’s failed spectacularly in real-life settings is because of the flawed humans who tried to implement it” is a pretty sure sign the concept isn’t actually that sound.
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What I’m talking about is different than the libertarian bitcoin cruise ship concept. I’m talking about the concept of people living together on the sea, which is happening now. That is my definition of seasteading. Trying to make a go of it in a community on the sea. Not with a particular philosophy.
“Very smart” is knowing that there are a lot of areas where one isn’t so smart or informed. So yeah, he’s not very smart. I’m sure he’s smart in a very narrow domain, but that doesn’t make him a unique genius.
Out of curiosity (it was too early for financial speculation or “free”-market fanboi-ing) I put up a Bitcoin miner on a client’s spare server back in 2012 and promptly forgot about it and the wallet it was associated with about 9 months later. When I realised I might have made millions the miner and server it was chugging away on were long gone, but it might have gone the other way.
It was a punt, and the fact that I was minting the chips at the casino early on doesn’t change that (or the fact that the chips were nothing more than what someone called “Math Beanie Babies”).
It can work, but the projects run by Libertarian rugged individualists like this guy are doomed to fail because Libertarians.
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Isn’t that what mandatory service is in most countries that have that? Note saying it’s a cure-all… but I just see where the idea comes from with this.
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Yeah… Smart people have the worst hubris some times.
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But like with most things that libertarians say that something is “not about” (racism, classism, company stores, labor-busting) it’s only because they are ignoring (or ignorant of) any externality or implication of the decisions they are making
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I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I mean, that’s the whole point of this story: yes, the technology exists, these guys could’ve lived at sea. But they couldn’t get out of their own bubbles enough to realize even that they need fuel and a system…that’s the whole story. That’s the story. 
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Actual living communities that live on the water are not that unusual. They are very dependent on the interaction with terrestrial communities and communal organization to avoid fouling the waters they depend on for their living/livelihood.
But any kind of libertarian community is doomed to fail whether on land or sea. Libertarianism seeks the benefit of a communal infrastructure and regulatory system but none of the work to sustain it.
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Would have gone for urology myself. Not certain if that is more or less on topic.
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Fair point, but IIRC, his idea was that the average family unit could be self sufficient.
Of course this whole idea falls apart when the economy of scale for food production and literally everything else is so much greater now. One can still be self sufficient - and there are people out in some remote areas who basically are - but it is horribly inefficient.
The problem I have with a lot of libertarian rhetoric - as well as some other economic ideas - is it sounds interesting on paper, but completely fails to take into account the complex networks of human interactions, conflicting opinions on how one should lead their lives,and the basic concept that we are stronger together. For all of the libertarian-like mindedness and the drive to self rule, the leaders of the colonies decided the United States would be far more powerful and productive together than as individual states.
It is where we got this famous cartoon.
And why the eagle clutches 13 arrows, as they are much harder to break in half together, vs one at a time.
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Soylent Brown?
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Well that’s your problem right there. You can’t be both part of a country and have the benefits of that and not be part of the country.
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Engineer here. Most of engineering is gathering requirements and trying to understand the problem before trying to come up with a solution. These asshats listen to you for like two seconds at best, then try to palm off an old idea of theirs that nobody actually wants.
It’s shocking to me how many people I run into who have obviously, obviously never worked a day in the service industry. You can tell by the way they bully anyone who they think is below them in society.
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Hmm….rich oblivious people who don’t want to have to listen to anyone else?
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This is also why they think they’re so important, and how they keep selling the fantasy.
They are shielded from their own incompetence.
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Which is all fun and games until somebody decides to herd animals upriver from your farm and your source of drinking water is polluted with cholera-festering animal dung.
“Self-sustaining” is always more of an idealized vision when it comes to agriculture (or societies in general), never is the reality. The actions itself are inherently entropic. Requiring constant additions of energy and resources to keep everything going. Which is why pooling, sharing and keeping control of resources works for keeping a community going.
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Seasteading is dumb. Waste management without access to a system based on land is going to be a headache. Maintaining seaworthiness without relying on land-based support is going to be a headache. Getting sufficient food will be a headache.
If the plan is to mooch off of land-based services, then it isn’t much of a seastead… more like a bunch of waterworld fanboys living on their houseboats.
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