This is one of the more outlandish ideas I've seen show up in The Economist. There are a mountain of hurdles to cross before you get to any kind of autonomous "state". Still, I hope someone tries it. Some casual observations:
* Would this be Bitcoins first big opportunity? For a Seastead to make the leap to true statehood, they'll need some kind of currency that isn't controlled by a foreign government. Bitcoin, with it's entirely decentralized design, would seem to fit the bill.
* The artricle makes some statements that these Seasteads could be used to prove the utopian Libertarian ideology. The notion that a small colony of a few hundred people are going to prove that any ideology would work in a state the size of the US, France, U.K., etc is patently absurd. They'll ignore it, dismiss it, or find good reasons why mechanisms that work on a micro scale don't scale to larger nations.
* The article talks a lot about the need to be outside the jurisdiction of large nations like the US, and even mentions the willingness of the US to extend its jurisdiction pretty much anywhere in the world. The author seems to believe that if they stay away from the big-naughties, they'll be ok. I think he's wrong. If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes, large, tax-dependent governments will find ways to replace the revenue. So you want statehood? You got it. Time to negotiate a trade agreement. How does a 60% tariff on all goods imported to our nation sound? Don't want to play ball? Embargo. Good luck with your 700 person economy.
* The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally. Say this idea eventually scales to $10,000 people. What is an acceptable level of safety for an entire population of that size? Lifeboats for everyone? Will the platform be sold as "unsinkable"? We know how that goes. Even land-based settlements face the risk of natural disaster, but it would seem the probabilities are greatly in favor of dry land.
> If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes
I think we can be reasonably confident that somebody in these large corporations has done that math. What this argument misses is that the comparison isn't seasteading vs US taxes, it's seasteading vs existing tax havens like Bermuda and the Channel Islands and Caymans. Those probably get you 90% of the way there on avoiding US and EU taxation, and would seem to be good enough that corps haven't had the need for seasteading or they'd already be doing it.
Yes, that's a good point. The advantage of seasteads is you can control the geography.
Another advantage is that you don't have a large native citizen population that you have to deal with. For example, on Bermuda the big reinsurers have to comply with local laws around hiring citizens (really how many genius level actuaries can an island nation produce - answer not many, you're going to have to bring in outside talent).
Yet another advantage is that it provides you choice. This is the biggest advantage of all. Even if all the current tax havens change their laws, groups of entrepreneurs can always create another one.
You're confusing incorporating with operating. Corporations are incorporated out of places like Bermuda, but they operate on the "mainlands" (US, Europe, Asia, India, etc.) Their physical presence in the country they incorporate in is usually limited to somewhere between a mailbox and a couple of hundred square feet of unoccupied office space. Their operating costs are the same as if they were incorporated in the country they actually operate in. The only thing they are avoiding is the taxes that would otherwise go to pay for the infrastructures they are operating on. The geography is of no concern to them and the risk of the large native citizen population doing anything to them is nearly indistinguishable from nil. The risk lies almost entirely in the political vicissitudes of the country they operate in that allows an essentially foreign company to operate within it's borders. A seastead does nothing to mitigate that risk. It just adds a whole bunch of extra operating costs to build and maintain a mailbox on the seastead.
> The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally.
This. I wouldn't want to live somewhere where a rogue wave[1] could come and take out everything. Given its unpredictability, you wouldn't even have time to evacuate.
As for your last point, we already have oil rigs and the like far out at sea, don't we? I don't know exactly how they work, but they show that it is at least plausible.
Evacuating 50-100 highly trained rig personnel is different than several hundred rank-and-file knowledge workers. Rig workers are paid high salaries because of the risks associated with working on oil rigs. We lost a close family friend to an explosion that occurred during a "routine" welding operation. Routine is quoted because nothing on an oil rig is truly "routine".
A fire alarm in an office building means everyone saunters outside. A fire alarm on a oil platform elevates everyone's heartrate. There is a not-insignificant chance that you're going to die. Mitigating these risks to the point that it would make sense for companies to utilize them for operational duties will be very difficult, not to mention expensive.
* Would this be Bitcoins first big opportunity? For a Seastead to make the leap to true statehood, they'll need some kind of currency that isn't controlled by a foreign government. Bitcoin, with it's entirely decentralized design, would seem to fit the bill.
* The artricle makes some statements that these Seasteads could be used to prove the utopian Libertarian ideology. The notion that a small colony of a few hundred people are going to prove that any ideology would work in a state the size of the US, France, U.K., etc is patently absurd. They'll ignore it, dismiss it, or find good reasons why mechanisms that work on a micro scale don't scale to larger nations.
* The article talks a lot about the need to be outside the jurisdiction of large nations like the US, and even mentions the willingness of the US to extend its jurisdiction pretty much anywhere in the world. The author seems to believe that if they stay away from the big-naughties, they'll be ok. I think he's wrong. If enough large corporations do the math and find that moving to an off-shore platform is a positive value proposition when compared to continuing to pay taxes, large, tax-dependent governments will find ways to replace the revenue. So you want statehood? You got it. Time to negotiate a trade agreement. How does a 60% tariff on all goods imported to our nation sound? Don't want to play ball? Embargo. Good luck with your 700 person economy.
* The last thing that strikes me is the monumental risk associated with building your entire nation on something that can sink. Literally. Say this idea eventually scales to $10,000 people. What is an acceptable level of safety for an entire population of that size? Lifeboats for everyone? Will the platform be sold as "unsinkable"? We know how that goes. Even land-based settlements face the risk of natural disaster, but it would seem the probabilities are greatly in favor of dry land.