We're going to draw a new map of the world, with French Polynesia as the centre of the Aquatic Age.
Joe QuirkSeavilization will be better than civilization, and we have nearly half the world's surface to discover it.
Joe QuirkThe first seastead happened fifteen centuries ago. The result was the most beautiful city in the world, Venice. People who were sick of their violent governments fled to the water, where they built civilization on stilts. That startup society - a free city-state on the water - became so successful it dominated the Mediterranean for a thousand years.
Joe QuirkThat's the marvellous thing about seasteads; if a government fails, there's nothing much the people who live there can do about it. But if seasteads fail, they simply disassemble and go away.
Joe QuirkSeasteads cost money, and if you want to succeed as a Seastead you have to find ways to attract people to move there. If I was a billionaire I wouldn't want to move to a seastead, but if I was a member of the bottom billion, most of whom want to leave their dysfunctional governments, I might want to move to a seastead.
Joe Quirk