Nearly 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.

The 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.

A lot of Pacific island nations are sinking below sea level; they could easily transition slowly into becoming floating nations.

People can leave seasteads, or people can choose them, and people can create new seasteads if they want. This fluidity will engage an evolutionary market process that'll allow a diversity of societies to emerge that will in principle be superior, simply because people chose them. Governments on land don't allow this fluid dynamic of choice.

Seasteads 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.

Nearly 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.

Seasteaders bring a Silicon Valley sensibility to the problem of governments not innovating sufficiently. Innovators are held back and stymied by existing regulations, and we want to give them 21st century regulations on start-up governments.