Seasteading Gets You Agorism (and whatever else you want to try)

Ineffabelle writes:

Thinking about seasteading and how it relates to agorism (I did a post that barely touched on this a while back, in response to Patri Friedman) again, I think what I see what my intuitive objection is to the current seasteading model. It seems to me that the current “seasteading” approach seems to be modeled on the currently existing nation state. And indeed, most seasteading proponents seem to be at least quasi-statist in their thinking. Certainly they don’t strike me as a bunch of hard core anarchists. A more anarchist/agorist approach to seasteading to me would be a colony of small ships, essentially houseboats but maybe with a bit more range, who trade goods and services amongst each other outside of the purview of any sort of governing body at all. One of the major advantages of this approach, to me, outside of the obvious one that you don’t need millions and millions of dollars to get started, is that you also don’t provide an obvious, centralized target for government reprisal.

There are several different threads here. One is about seasteading strategy. I posted my thoughts on the reasons I prefer large-scale capital-intensive seasteading to the approach above on the seasteading blog last year, and it generated a ton of discussion, as it’s an area of great disagreement. So while the “agorist” approach suggested is a good one, it is not new to the seasteading movement. Rather, it is one that many seasteaders believe in – see Vince’s great Seasteading Manifesto to start. It’s not my favored approach, but I would be delighted if agorists starting building single-family seasteads.

The next is about culture – are seasteaders quasi-statist? Actually, in my experience, proponents of private polycentric law[1] are the people who most often understand the political theory behind seasteading. I don’t know if they are a plurality of seasteaders, because such people are rare, but certainly many seasteaders believe in private polycentric law.

Lastly, if we’re going to compare seasteading and agorism, I think seasteading has two major advantages over agorism/polycentric law:

First, it is more meta. Whatever your preferred political system, seasteading lets you try it. If you are right that it’s a great system, it will be a great place to live and attract lots of people. Seasteading gives you agorism. And with a special extra bonus: if you find out that your favored political theory is actually not so great to live under, while you’ve been learning that, other people will have been testing other things – and maybe one of them will have found something that works.

Second, it has a realistic path to success. It bypasses the state by using technology to open a frontier, instead of hopelessly fight to beat the state on its own territory. The agorist idea that small grey markets will ever end the power of the state is sheer lunacy. While both are rebellions against the status quo, seasteading cleverly avoids a direct challenge. Dealing with waves may be hard, but beating the state at its own game – using violence to control territory – is much harder.

And these same two points apply to futarchy, Moldbuggian Monarchy, and much much more. Whatever weird political system you like, whatever clever incentives for efficiency you have found, unless you have a fabulously clever way to make it in the interests of politicians to enact a policy that renders them less powerful[2], seasteading is probably your best bet. It’s the meta-answer because it produces an ecosystem of competing governments, while each of these specific proposals is merely a hypothesis about a single form of government which might be superior if we could somehow enact it.

[1] For many reasons, I prefer this term to “anarchy”

[2] I’ve heard of exactly one such idea – Michael Strong’s Free Zones w/ equity for dictators “Georgist Endgame” strategy.