Moving Nations
It’s no coincidence that life originated from the oceans — and not land. The fluent medium water allows for more options than static land does. Some of the core features of Seasteading rely on this premise. But there are other effects two: here is a brief essay on the benefits of making nations move.
Seasteading nations will outperform current nations in a lot of things that current nations do, but are bad at. So a large chunk of the discussions about Seasteading that I encounter focus on how to improve an issue we already have. Examples are voting-, taxation- and welfare systems. An equally large portion of discussions is on why Seasteads are impossible or unfair. Examples for such thoughts are technical difficulties and nations based on expansion and so on.
What I find amazing is how easily one gets lost in those topics. Of course, I think Seasteads are great across these issues because I believe we can overcome the extra challenges the concept brings. Now, the one thing that finds little space in those debates is novel opportunities. There are things, that are not there currently but that emerge BECAUSE of the Seastead and its special properties. These topics require a bit more imagination than the plain discussion on e.g. victimless crimes because there is no equivalent in land-based countries.
One of the benefits of allowing for internal movement of buildings within a nation is already covered in my proposed system of spatial ownership. Now, I want to talk about what could happen if we moved entire nations. Sounds cool, but what about the energy required? That’s usually the first question.
What if we can use underwater currents to move our Seastead? These water streams span the entire globe and move tremendous amounts of water at up to 2.5m/s over thousands of kilometers. They are caused by a set of conditions like Earth rotation, warm/cold water differences, and salt saturation. We could deploy huge underwater sails whose swimming depth we adjust to harvest different streams. We could potentially have intelligent systems, that smoothly use different currents to achieve a gentle but continuous move. Maybe it is even possible to gain energy that way.
Now we have established a possibility to ‘ride’ on natural currents like an Eagle that uses different air streams to stay aloft, without using up much energy. The next step is to shift the conversation to: What should we do this for?
So far, 4 examples came to my mind:
- A floating mountain used for skiing could remain as close to e.g. Japan as possible while still being surrounded by freezing air. This would make it easy to have artificial snow all year round. But at the same time, one can minimize travel time (and costs). That way the ski resort would have increased utilization rates. Distance to Tokyo, for example, could be very short in the winter, but in the summer it just moves more North to keep the weather consistent.
- Keeping a warm climate of choice. We could have a Seastead that is in the Caribbean during wintertime and near New York in the summer — that way it is never too cold or too hot. We could be in the warm zone for 11 months in the year but go north enough for it to snow during Christmas time.
- We could explore different countries from our Seastead. If it were to move up and down the Atlantic ocean, we could have different cities in 2 flight hours distance to visit. It could make life much more interesting if there were seasons for flights. During winter and spring, New York is just a 100$ flight away. In summer and autumn, Rio de Janeiro is 100$ flight but New York is 800$.
- The above factor could be used by a Seastead focused on party tourism. Utilization rates could go up by being around Europe during summer vacation, but near the US for spring break.
Overall there are tons of ways to gain benefits from this feature. But you don’t have to do any of this. You could go build a Seastead with features like current countries. One that is always anchored at the same place. But you don’t have to — and that freedom makes Seasteading great!
