Evolution is variation and selection. If you can vary alternatives, and select among them, improvement emerges. It works in technology, in apps, and in life itself. What stunned me about seasteading is that it's a technology for variation and selection in governance itself. The reason some two hundred nation-states do a poor job of governing seven billion people is that they don't vary, and people don't select.
Joe QuirkOnce you provide people with a platform to start their own country, every conceivable type of innovator reaches out to you with their own idea.
Joe QuirkThinking about seasteading requires us to free ourselves of these broad political categories we're stuck with on land. People can make whatever community system they want on a seastead. What emerges will totally defy the broad categories we debate about now.
Joe QuirkIf seasteads advance blue-energy technologies, they'll create blue jobs. Millions of poor people living under exploitive governments are looking for a better choice. Seasteads won't attract them without offering them better options.
Joe QuirkNearly half the earth's surface is unclaimed by any country, so seasteads would be startup countries on the blue frontier. Patri Friedman is a Google engineer and theorist of political economy who realized that if society floated, it would completely change the nature of governance itself. If seasteads are modular and can be moved about, allowing people to choose new societies, we'd create a market of governance providers, competing to attract residents.
Joe Quirk