Waterworlds
‘Welcome to seavilization’, says the website of the Seasteading Institute (‘SI’). Founded in 2008 by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Theil and Milton Friedman’s grandson Patri Friedman, the SI is raising investments for the creation of – what they hope will be – mini ocean-floating republics. They describe the aims of their project in terms of ‘making land’ to ease the pressure on crowded urban centres; and fostering ‘societal innovation’, by liberating the residents of these republics from ‘obsolete’ political systems (read welfare and taxes):
‘Currently, it is very difficult to experiment with alternative social systems on a small scale; countries are so enormous that it is hard for an individual to make much difference. The world needs a place where those who wish to experiment with building new societies can go to test out their ideas. All land on Earth is already claimed, making the oceans humanity’s next frontier.’
SI’s pilot project, announced in January 2017, was to be a floating city built in Polynesian waters, off the coast of Tahiti. The city was intended to be composed of several detachable housing units and to accommodate a few hundred people. SI claimed that French Polynesia had agreed to grant autonomy to this city: its residents would choose their legal and political arrangements; Polynesian laws would not apply. This pilot would serve as a ‘proof-of-concept’ and inspire other experiments, including further offshore. In time, the ocean would be occupied by several such sea-steads, that would be hubs for commerce and petri dishes for various experiments in social organization; unhappy residents from one could then move to another, carrying their homes as they might a trailer.
By SI’s own estimation, this is a visionary project. And indeed, there is a form of inventive genius at work here. But in what does it consist? Not so much SI’s architectural plans, which after all recall older blueprints, such as those by Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao, or Kiyonori Kikutake. Not so much also the stupendous feats of engineering entailed, for we have already witnessed the construction of oil platforms, deep sea drilling ships, and artificial islands such as Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah. Jacques Costeau (Conshelf) and the US Government (Sealab and Tektite), even built experimental structures for underwater living. Nor is the SI’s vision of autonomy – a rehearsal of libertarian ideas – a manifestation of inventive genius. Many less literal ‘off-shores’ exist already to protect individuals and businesses from the reach of taxes, labour regulations, and various social and penal laws.
In an online story, Hettie O’Brien examines what may be the actual intent underlying SI’s grand claims: changing on-shore US tax policy, by drawing attention to the threat of capital flight, as well as alternative imaginations of freedom and government. And here is where we might concede SI’s inventive genius: in the account it constructs of seasteading’s legitimacy. Its narrative transforms a plan for socially-insulated, ultra-exclusive, gated communities to a claim of creating new polities. It describes a luxury construction requiring heavy input of natural resources in terms of adapting to climate change. And it turns the idea of the free sea into a suggestion that on the ocean, unlike on land, anything goes.
But the ‘freedom of the sea’ is a legal institution, and private conduct is subject to national and international laws. These can be subverted, but they do not disappear merely because one moves a few miles off land. Ironically enough, the SI’s initial plans rest on the guarantee of a waiver of territorial jurisdiction by host states, not any anterior liberty-granting property of the ocean. Such a waiver may not be easily forthcoming in any case: a year after it reportedly concluded a deal with SI, French Polynesia announced it would no longer proceed.
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