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Aug. 31, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

20:54

1988 Seasteading - The Next Wave of Freedom?

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, interviews Charles Peralo, an ambassador for the Seasteading project at http://www.seasteading.org

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	Hi, everybody. It's Devan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	This is our first ambassador interview, ladies and gentlemen, and it is not ambassadors from Paul Krugman's invading alien race of fiscal renewers from the planet Keynes.
	It is Charles Perrello, who is an ambassador from Seasteading.
	Now, first, Charles, I'm a little disappointed that your video is not gently rocking back and forth.
	Is there a reason for that?
	Well, the Seasteads have not been built yet.
	We're looking to move forward.
	We have ideas of when they were built.
	The first one, Blue Seed, is on its way and it should be up with much hope in 20 months.
	Alright, so let's get the big picture view of seasteading.
	And of course, like most people, I was first introduced to seasteading by Kevin Costner, who I think made a documentary about it in the 90s called Waterworld.
	But perhaps you can tell people a little bit about seasteading, the idea behind it, the purpose behind it, and why they should head west rather than to New Hampshire.
	Well, the Seastin Institute was created by Petrie Friedman, Milton Friedman's grandson, who we all know.
	The idea behind it is to create choice in society where people can design their own governments, not just to form libertarian governments, but to form their own societies in itself.
	The point being is that you can have a choice whether you are anarchist, communist, libertarian, canes, whatever you are, you can have that power to choose what government, what society you want to be in.
	So in a way, we could say that Patrick Friedman is creating a petri dish.
	So in fact, if he were to just change one letter in his name, it would become much more accurate.
	That's good to know. So the idea is that you're going to have these giant communities, cities, and I want to forestall this by people saying, well, why don't you people use boats?
	It's because boats, you can't lash them together in a storm.
	You can't create a city out of them.
	The goal is, of course, to create a sort of A floating Hong Kong or something like that where a multifarious series of experiments in social organization can occur with almost no barrier to entry between them.
	So if you're at some anarcho-syndicalist communist place and you don't really like the way it's working, you can jump on over to So that's the general idea, to have this Petri dish of competing and hopefully customer-inducing social systems.
	Yes, and we're doing what I feel technology is doing within itself.
	If you look at Bitcoin, Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, science is just leading us to this way of where we can get anarcho-capitalism, where we can get choice in society, and we won't have to be burdened by the force and the gunpoint of government.
	Right. So the one thing that I've noticed that, you know, looking at, I think the benefits are clear, but the objections are probably a little alarming for some people.
	And one of them, of course, is I think that the moment you're talking about a couple of hundred dollars per square foot of cost to even begin building some sort of abode.
	On these islands, on these floating cities, what should I call them?
	I just want to make sure I get the right word.
	Seasteads. Seasteads, okay.
	So, can you tell us a little bit about the costs and how economically you expect it to work?
	The costs are surprisingly not that much, varying on what kind of seastead you're talking about.
	It could be anywhere from 15 million dollars to 300 million dollars to a billion dollars.
	But what I like to think about is, you mentioned Hong Kong a few moments ago.
	If you look at Hong Kong, they went from absolutely nothing to an enormous amount of growth in a very short period of time to a point they're above Italian level standards of living.
	So what we're trying to accomplish is unlocking that human potential and innovation where we can have people from some of the poorest areas in the world, give them freedom, give them this ideal government, and from that we can have enormous amounts of innovation where we can produce trillions of dollars a year in capital due to this innovation.
	All right. Now, some of the obvious ones, of course, come to mind would be fishing because you are, of course, out there in the sea.
	I imagine there would be some tourism.
	It's almost like there would be like you have ecotourism.
	This would almost be like liberty tourism.
	I would. I mean, the moment they're up, I'm hoping to come down and check it out because I think it's just completely fascinating six ways from Sunday.
	And you're more than welcome to do a show there.
	Thank you very much.
	And I will, of course, come garbed in the most futuristic fish aquatic kind of gear.
	In fact, I'm just thinking of showing up as Aquaman.
	If I even show up on boat, I might just swim, but we're still working on the logistics of all of that.
	Obviously, financial services would be, I think, a value where they'd be free of some kind of regulations, or at least the more onerous or negative kinds of regulations.
	I would assume that there would be some sort of internet access out there, so anybody who's got any kind of web job might have some opportunity to do stuff out there.
	Well, we're not looking to accomplish seasteads totally out there in the middle of the ocean.
	The first one should develop the one Blue Seeds plan and will only be 24 miles outside of San Francisco.
	So these are very idealistic and you can get internet, you can trade and we're a huge benefit to whatever nation wants to have them near us because we're just going to produce more, we're going to trade more and we'll be a value to them.
	Well, and of course, as long as 24 miles is right on the edge of, as long as the wind is in the right place, you don't get the socialist stench of Nancy Pelosi.
	So it's not too, too bad as far as that goes.
	I think you're outside the...
	Well, stench might be a little too big for anyone to avoid, but we'll try.
	Off planet, perhaps. So, at the moment, you guys are in the fundraising area of things.
	Seasteading.org is the place to go, and you have openings, I think, for people who are looking for funding.
	How's all of that going? Obviously, you got a big hit from the PayPal founder.
	How's all of that fundraising going?
	Well, we'd like to thank Mr.
	Thiel for what he's done to us.
	He's donated Millions of dollars of his own money.
	As for how the donations are going great, really what we'd love to see is that this is actually trying to accomplish something, and we notice billions of dollars going to political campaigns, billions of hours worth of time, whether it's media, volunteer work, or just casual discussion during dinner.
	What we're looking to do and what I'm looking to do It's trying to make it so that those people right out there are spending this time focused more on cease-dead so they can actually accomplish something and not just get more of the same, more 14 trillion dollars in debt, more regulations, more war.
	So that's what we're trying to do and get that energy focused on something real.
	Something achievable within our lifetimes, which is obviously an admirable goal.
	Now, am I right in understanding it that this is a stateless seasteading approach?
	In other words, there's not going to be a sort of central constitutionally limited government, but there is going to be the true experimentation options for people that are going to come, and there's not going to be a sort of set of regulations, there's not going to be governments, constitutions, jails, police, and all that kind of stuff, but it is an experiment in social self-organization, is that correct?
	That's true, but if someone came along with $10 billion saying, you know what, I'm going to open up a totally communistic seastead, I don't know who would want to live there, he could do so.
	We're not against that. As long as the science is being built, it's just going to move us forward to our stateless society.
	And our goals. And, you know, maybe there are some benefits to a state.
	I don't personally think so.
	But if there are some benefits, then maybe we should have that tested out and maybe that can happen.
	Also, another advantage is if the state gets bad, if it gets rotted, they'll just go bankrupt like a normal business and the seasteads can sink and a new one will be built.
	Well, yeah, I mean, if somebody wants to come and build a communist worker's paradise, then they would obviously, like anybody in a free society, they would buy the land, or in this case, they would buy the ocean cover, and then they would build that, and then they would see if they could sustain it.
	And I think we would all know, based upon things like the calculation problem and other issues, it simply wouldn't last very long.
	And they would have to, unlike governments, because they wouldn't be able to, oh yeah, that brings me to, how do you think a currency is going to work in this environment?
	Are we going to be trading fish eyes, or how's that going to work?
	Well, you see, I oftentimes think to Erwin Schiff's book, How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't, How the Fish Economy.
	That would not happen. What I would love to see is a free market currency.
	Perhaps Bitcoin can find a home at the Seastead.
	Perhaps the gold standard could be here.
	Really, we just have to go with what Seasteads are being built and what's the best in the market for it.
	Right, right. Now, the timeframe for 20 months, so tell me what's going to be happening in 20 months and what sort of options are available for people who want to explore this further, like from a really practical standpoint?
	Alright, right now what's happening with Blue Seed is we're trying to earn the funding, and the funding is, I believe, $10 million to build this Seastead, which is not that expensive at all.
	Right now we have plans.
	I've seen some of the designs.
	They're very good and everything, but basically we want to move forward to the actual construction.
	That's all going to vary on how we get funding, and that is very possible, so 20 months, I'd say, is very likely.
	And I can assume, of course, that Jacque Fresco's circular Marxist robot cities are going to be basically how this is all planned, because I believe that has been the wave of the future for the last 40 years.
	Well, there have been multiple people trying to build the sea standards.
	You can go online, look up Cities on Water.
	You'll find Freedom Boat.
	You'll find multiple things.
	The Sea Stand Institute is by far the best right now.
	Also, Blue Seed is very good, which Blue Seed people who have found it that used to work for the Sea Stand Institute.
	So really, it's very good and the progress is going great.
	Now, what about issues like cost of living because you have to have a lot of stuff shipped in and out?
	Have there been economic workups about what the average standard of living might be there with that overhead?
	Well, the people that we're trying to attract really are the immigrants, maybe not from the U.S., but perhaps people in Africa, in these starving countries who could move over there.
	And anything that they get would be a significant boost in standard living.
	And from that, we'll have innovations that come along the way that can increase that.
	They'll have their own innovations.
	So that's really the plan.
	Now, I heard a discussion with Patri on Free Talk Live where there seemed to be quite a bit of energy devoted to possibilities of invasion and things like that.
	I mean, I don't really want to spend much time on it because I think it's sort of a non-issue.
	I mean, if the government wants to take your stuff, it really doesn't matter where you are in the world.
	In fact, I'm sure that they would just send laser IRS agents to the dark side of the moon to pluck out your kidneys if they needed to.
	So I don't consider invasion, but I wanted to give you a sense of, or at least a chance to respond to that kind of stuff.
	I mean, there's nothing really anyone can do against a full-on naval assault.
	Piracy is very rare.
	It's not really going to be an issue.
	Certainly offshore of the U.S. is not going to be an issue.
	But for those who do have that sort of concern, that somehow they think that some seasteading island is more dangerous than, say, being in New Hampshire, would you like to respond to that kind of stuff?
	Well, there's always one thing we could do if someone were to invade us and they were just going to enslave us, take everything from us and invade us.
	We could always just sink the boat, make it so that they just wasted billions of dollars in missiles, in ships, in men for nothing.
	So there we go. We can sink the boat.
	Yeah, and again, if it gets to the point where the government is invading semi-sovereign islands off its shore, I think that the domestic population is still going to be in a worse position than anybody out on a seastead.
	So, you know, I think the invasion thing is a bit of hyperbole and not really something that we should worry about, because if it ever gets to that point, the domestic...
	Well, it wouldn't shock me if a government were to invade a seastead.
	I mean, they can get that desperate where they have to attack better governments because of competition.
	So that would not shock me if they were to just get jealous, I mean, knowing how bad government is, but I highly doubt in a realistic society they would because there's no economic incentive for them.
	Yeah, I mean, the arguments against invasion would be that they may demand some relatively small tax, and of course the inhabitants may choose to, quote, pay that voluntarily, right?
	I mean, that would be one option.
	Governments would usually rather tax than invade.
	The second is that...
	A lot of people who are high up on the political and economic food chain in the current status system probably want a place to park their money or their gold where it's a bit more secure.
	They may want to vacation there.
	This may become the Black Sea where the Dachars were for the Russian premiers and so on under the Soviet system.
	So they may actually kind of like it being out there.
	All we're looking to do is provide good services for everyone.
	We don't want anyone to lose out on this.
	So trade, travel, whatever you want to do, you can do in our ideal society.
	For more information, of course, people can go to seasteading.org and there's, you know, quite a comprehensive FAQ and all of this kind of stuff.
	But I was a bit surprised when you said 20 months because the earlier estimates that I'd heard seemed to be that it was half a decade to a decade and a half away.
	Was it the donation from Teal that moved it up so much further or how is it that this schedule has been moved up so much?
	Well, you must realize that there are so many different types of Seasteads looking to be built.
	There are some people saying, oh, 2019 is the date.
	Blue Seed is very simple.
	It's mainly going to be an office building for people who couldn't get visas for the U.S. who want to do business in San Francisco.
	So that would be the first real step.
	So it's not a very difficult process.
	Now I've heard 20 months from talking to the CEO of Blue Seed himself, Max Marty.
	So that's pretty much proof right there talking to and there we go.
	Well, that's fantastic. Now, I was wondering if you'd like to make a pitch, as an ambassador, I'm sure that you're quite good at snaky-fingered sales, would you like to make a pitch for how people can get involved in donating time or money or other resources to helping make this watery dream become a reality?
	Well, I would advise just signing up for the ambassadorship.
	I signed up, I was accepted, and I've been on Russia Today with Adam Kokesh before he was unfortunately taken off the air.
	I'm on your show and I've done some other stuff.
	So I would say get involved in the Ambassadorship program.
	If not, and if you don't have the time to get involved, stop dedicating your time to talking about politics at the kitchen table at dinner time.
	Start talking about Seastead and then try to spread the idea out to something real.
	Put those $10 you would have given to Ron Paul's campaign, give them to Seasteading.
	That's my advice, and that's not to go against Ron Paul.
	I mean, if it's Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, whoever it is, put that money in, put that time in, and you're going to get something for your buck instead of just getting more of the same.
	Yeah, I mean, it certainly does seem to be a way of experimenting or showing how this kind of stuff can work.
	Because, of course, as you know, there's no place on Earth where you can reliably get that kind of independence.
	Because if you buy land, you're still subject to whatever rulers are around.
	So this does seem to be the only way that you could put A knowledgeable, non-accidental anarchic society together because, of course, the problem with Somalia is not that it was philosophically enlightened and decided to reject centralized violence in the form of the state.
	The government just collapsed and that's not quite the same as philosophical anarchism.
	I mean, if churches collapse, that doesn't mean everyone's become a philosophical atheist.
	It's just a sort of accident of infrastructure.
	And so this is, I think, the only way that we can have a look at how a sort of laboratory of self-organizing societies can work.
	And I think from that standpoint, it's very exciting and very encouraging to see what's going on.
	Exactly. I mean, really we are looking for total choice, total volunteerism in society.
	We want people to have the kind of ideal society they want to live in.
	We don't want to tell people they have to live in an anarchist society.
	We don't want to tell people they have to live in a libertarian society.
	We don't want to tell people they have to live in a communist society.
	We want people to look at the data, to look at the research, and say to themselves, you know what, I want to live in this society.
	There's no one size fits all to my life.
	And the best way to unlock my human potential is through this society.
	And I think that you can certainly be relatively guaranteed of, it's sort of a gulch far out at sea insofar as just about everyone who goes out there is, it's sort of like the Silicon Valley Ayn Rand types in the 80s and 90s.
	Just about everyone who goes out there is going to be quite knowledgeable about voluntarism and libertarianism and so on.
	So you won't get into quite as many awkward conversations at the dinner table, so to speak.
	Well, I mean, yeah. The point of having a totally libertarian society is it could save you a lot of time on debate.
	And you said before on your shows that wasting time on politics, you could learn so many more better things in your life.
	We have people that go to college for this.
	We have people that study this.
	We have people that spend their entire lives focused on politics and researching it, finding out who's the best candidate, saying, oh, this candidate's hair looks good.
	Instead of that time, they could be building things.
	They could be constructing things.
	They could be curing diseases.
	All of which they're not doing and they're doing it because of this system where we don't have any rewards in it and all we do is get them further and further into debt, further and further into taxes and we have no promise that anything is going to happen and nothing ever does happen.
	Right, except that we move further away from our intended goal.
	I mean, one of the things that, to me, voting for freedom is like playing the lottery for your retirement.
	I guess it could work, but the odds against it are particularly high.
	And what it does do is it avoids you putting a dollar or two in the bank every day, which is the slow and steady wins the race kind of thing that I'm much more keen on.
	I'm much more about measurable progress rather than rolling the dice and crossing my fingers.
	So what you're doing is creating that kind of thing.
	I would like to use the Reagan movement.
	He's the king of the Republican Party.
	He is the king of conservatives.
	He's oftentimes seen as the best person.
	So what do we get? We got $400 billion a year deficits.
	We had massive amounts of debt through him, and he's considered the inspiration to conservatives who claim to be, yes, we're going to end the deficits.
	I mean, that's the big problem here.
	The closest we've ever gotten to a conservative society is Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Well, I think that's a good point.
	I think that's a good point.
	And carbon emissions went up 11% under Al Gore's vice presidency.
	So it's all too ridiculous for words.
	So yeah, I mean, I really think it's interesting and exciting to see the potential for self-organization in this kind of society.
	It is going to be something tangible, something that people can point to.
	Lord, wouldn't we all love an anarchic window through time to open up into the future where we could stick people's heads and say, look, this is how it looks in a free society.
	So that when people say, you show me one example of a free society working, We can point to this floating paradise.
	And so I think from that standpoint, it's very, very exciting.
	The challenge, of course, is enticing people out.
	And I think that like any entrepreneurial activity, the first 10 customers are hell on earth.
	And after that, it gets a lot faster and a lot better.
	Well, the thing that brought me to libertarianism actually was the success of Hong Kong, the success of the U.S. under freedom and doing that research.
	So really what I would have to say is that if we had a living example of a totally anarchist society and it's working and functioning properly, nobody can say anymore, oh, look at Somalia, oh, look, anarchy is chaos, anarchy is evil, it's people putting bombs themselves blowing up the Federal Reserve.
	That's not anarchy.
	Anarchy is choice, anarchy is freedom.
	And that's what Seasteading looks to accomplish in this stateless society.
	Well, I think that's fantastic.
	And I certainly do applaud your efforts.
	If there's anything else that I can do to help promote, please, please let me know.
	And if people want to get in touch with you, if they have more questions, so they go through the Seasteading site, you have a Facebook page as well, right?
	My Facebook is Charles Parallo.
	My email is charlesparallo7 at yahoo.com.
	Feel free to get in touch with me or just go directly to the Institute.
	Get in contact. There's some great people there and they'd love to get back to you.
	And if you speak whale, I think that works very well with you as well.
	So listen, thanks so much, Charles.
	I really do appreciate it. I'll put links to all of this stuff below.
	And again, if there's anything else I can do, I think it's a fantastic and exciting experiment.
	And please pass my best regards along to Patry.
	And he's always welcome on the show, as you're you, at any time to keep us updated on the progress.
	Thank you, Stefan. Thank you for having me on.

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