Floating Castles on the Sea: Seastead living

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Nope, Bioshock. The game's exact starting premise was a group of uber-rich Galt-esque figures building themselves a Libertarian utopia far offshore (called Rapture). It doesn't work out too well for them.

DING DING DING DING!! We have a winner here folks!! ! Guess what you won? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!! !! Are you excited?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq9DG5E_wdo[/youtube]

That is an amazing movie!! !

I've been poking a little deeper into hobo culture (aka tramping culture), with the intent of maybe becoming a wanderer myself, and it seems to me that those who live on yachts in the Caribbean are simply a version of "rubber tramp", except with a yacht and oodles of cash instead of a broken down old motorhome and a hand-to-mouth existence. Maybe we could call it "sea tramping". Now, this micronation on the sea here has been talked about for ages, and it has a great appeal to anybody who has a yen for Ayn Rand. This is different from sea tramping though. A sea tramp has his family, his crew, and his yacht. Sweet freedom. This idea reminds me of the saying that hell is other people-especially when those people are all alpha males with craploads of cash, all squeezed together on a single boat in the middle of nowhere. I'm taking bets on the start date of the Sea War.

I SO want to be a fly on the wall of this castle thing in my next life (after my current one is ended by the coming war to end humanity) at around the time that the elites entombed therein discover they're out of food, out of medicine (at the time that a plague is ripping through the populace), and they can't dock anywhere since the planet is contaminated with radioactivity and smallpox from the war they caused. Floating tomb, indeed. OTOH, it would make an absolutely terrific horror movie, much better than the crap that's on a redbox machine now. There's a video game out there where that's the premise? I'm curious. I can't play video games, so you guys will have to tell me what happens in the game.

I know. I've played both. The second was a bit of a let down...didn't even finish it.

Exactly. It will be like the kings of Europe. When all the money in the world wont buy you more goodies than your neighbor, so you start gauging status by testicle drop. Once the surgeons onboard have everyones nuts scraping the deck, they'll go on to bouffant hairdos or whatever. Once all the reasonable(reasonable to billionaires) status measures are gone, it will devolve to murder and feud.

But my money is still on the pirates getting them.

I'll be in the armored Crow's Nest with a Barrett 95 then.

Missiles. Remote guided jet skis. Mini subs. All at once.

The problem with this billionaire boat is that their reluctance to play fully with society(pay taxes) makes them persona non grata in 1st world countries. Replacing their food, fuel, mercenaries and medicine as well as having safe repair docks becomes problematic, and a prolonged campaign by piratical types(who have little to lose) will erode their resource base.

Thus, my money is on the pirates, Barrett 95 notwithstanding.

I'm not saying that I'd be on the Utopia. I'd rather be with the pirates.

We all know how bad pirates are off the coast of Somalia. So what happens after the collapse of the world economy, when everybody is trying to rob everybody else for the remnants of civilization, and the billionaire castle boat needs food? Sorry, we don't have any food, the fields are burning you morons! Sorry, no medicine, the hospitals were looted. Sorry, no fuel, the oilwells are burning, and the fuel depots have been looted. After a while, the billionaires trapped on this thing turn on each other, and the motivation of the crew to ditch the billionaires in the ocean and return to their decaying homelands just soared.

It just goes to show you that people capable of looting the planet-and planning ahead to the extent that they realize that they just screwed the planet-don't necessarily have the answers to EVERYTHING. Like, where do the looters go once civilization collapses, and all their money and stuff is just worthless paperweights? It reminds me of the desperate Roman nobles who buried their gold during their Big Collapse, but never got around to digging it up, and the successor civilization had no need for it. It remained hidden for a thousand years or more.

Maybe the billionaire boat will be the subject of legends after the fall of civilization: Somewhere out there the people who caused this still live in glory with self-powered lights and portrait frames that broadcast moving pictures, and they have all the food and liquor one could dream of.

you want to shoot rich people because.........?



i think seasteading is a good thing, on the whole. we have the technology to keep entire fleets of large ships at sea for very long periods of time. i see no reason why a sovereign state or semi-autonomous territory of a sovereign state couldn't exist, largely, as a transient fleet. treaties and business contracts can ensure safe harbor and needed supplies.

the way our global society is set up, only the super rich can get something like this rolling.

then maybe we'll get lucky and they'll decide they want to live in huge yachts in orbit and we'll finally get to work on developing the needed technology and business models to GTFO THIS DEATHTRAP PLANET.

seasteading is good practice. the tax loopholes the super rich use could be closed by a global central government and a uniform code of laws could apply to everyone, regardless of the flag they fly.

Hes just making a joke.

Yepperoni, that's indeed the case.