SEASTEADING is a portmanteau of sea & homesteading: to create permanent, floating societies domiciled in unclaimed ocean territories. According to Seasteading Institute communication’s dir., Joe Quirk, the long-term vision is ‘to provide the technology for thousands of people to start their own nano-nation on the high seas.’ Ultra-liberatarian, the ethos of Seasteading is: “give people the freedom to choose the government they want, not the government they get.” Notable Seasteading attempts include the 2020 Statoshi ship, named after the founder of Bitcoin. It failed.
LANDSTEAD = Seasteading + Patchwork + New regionalism.
Daniel Keller: People are all moving to Utah, or Reno. There's a little Silicon Valley diaspora happening. Same with Manhattan, right?
Carly Busta: Post-COVID second cities are gonna proliferate.
LIL INTERNET: De-urbanization for the wealthiest.
DK: There’s a lot of talk about that for sure.
LI: Freelancers, especially the suburban or rural freelancer...
DK: Any kind of knowledge work stuff, absolutely, is being decentralized really quickly. I guess those trends are happening in the real estate market already.
LI: Anyone who's not actively trying to get laid a lot is going to move out of a city. That's really the only reason people are in cities.
DK: I don't think you need it for the job opportunities. I think that's a kind of a myth at this point. Cultural institutions, I mean, yes, sure, but obviously less so now. Then there's people, like Justin Murphy [who] laid out his utopian plan to go buy a mountain village with some other like minded people and make a commune, but it's not a commune where, like, you all have your own houses.
CB: Sounds like Switzerland.
LI: Startup suburbs. This is the Snowcrashification.
DK: This is absolutely happening. This is also explicitly what seasteading has turned into. We're gonna pull together and buy land.
CB: Landsteading.
DK: It was funny being in Croatia for this show. It was called “The Sea is Glowing,” and it was all about international supply chains and liquid citizenship and what seemed like inevitable developments up until a year ago, even. It's kind of incredible how much that's been dated. All of that has been replaced with like, just get our money and buy a country and avoid any of these things, and embrace the border. It's not about erasing borders.