These strategies won't work. Not because they are bad ways to make a living, but because the supply will quickly outsize the demand, no matter how good each worker is at programming, or how amazing each oceanic hotel is. Somebody has to grow the food for all these service and knowledge workers.
In short, we need economic diversity.
Below are some seasteading-based economic opportunities,
arranged by their distinct advantages.
Goods and services needed by seasteaders.
These are sources of income that will improve with the
number of people seasteading, rather than worsen. Success at such enterprises
depends on the overall economic success of seasteads in general, but they also
tend to foster skills that are valuable on land as well, as a fallback.
Infrastructure,
...and the tradespeople necessary to maintain it. Every environment has its
challenges, and the world's oceans provide unique, and potentially labour-intensive
ones. Maintaining infrastructure is a question of survival, so it can't just be
neglected, and that maintenance includes a lot more plumbing and underwater
welding per capita than land dwellings.
Furthermore, the current crop of aspiring seasteaders is over-represented by computer programmers and others with work-at-home skills.
Either a lot of these people are going to need to learn a trade, or some major
incentives and recruitment are going to be needed to launch a serious long term
seastead.
Security
While the 21st century is not exactly an age of piracy, some form of private defense is valuable. Being independent of any one country (or using a flag of
convenience) means being free of both the rules AND the protection of that
country. As Hong Kong has recently taught us, it's not always enough to simply
be beneficial to your host nation.
Emergency services.
Say what you will about roads, but they are pretty
good at carrying people in a hurry. For smaller seasteads, getting to a
hospital in an emergency is a lot harder than getting there in an equivalent
land dwelling. Medivac helicopters are an expensive and fuel-intensive means of
reaching and moving patients, so there's an opportunity for ambulance boats.
Food.
More specifically, food security. Without a network of roads to carry large
amounts of food from one part of a continent to another in hours or days, a
loss of a local source can be much more problematic. That means food production
may be harder or impossible to scale or consolidate as it has been in many
places on land. That means many food sources will always be more expensive per
calorie than on land, but also that aquaculture can provide more long-term
employment per capita than land-based farms.
Computational resources.
Internet access via satellite is available for now, but it's not
a scalable solution. Most long-distance digital traffic is cable-based. Any
seastead that finds a way to provide a stable internet connection, either by
creating a branch to an existing transoceanic cable or by spooling their own
cable out from the mainland, could quickly find itself to be a major hub. This
is especially important considering the number of knowledge-based workers
looking to seastead; more on that later.
Furthermore, maintaining large servers poses additional
challenges because of the humidity, occasional movement, and electrical
demands. Power production is a different beast on the sea; clean production is
a lot easier than fossil-fuel or nuclear based because of its modularity.
Industries with advantages at sea.
These represent sources of income that have distinct
economic advantages over land-based competitors. These could be related to
ready access to the ocean, the flexibility of available space, the freedom from
being fixed in one location, or the freedom from government impediments.
Related to being on the water
Plastic
harvesting and related salvage. By anchoring something that skims the water
surface in place against a reliable ocean current, collection and salvage of
floating debris can be made very efficient. Using everything that is collected
is more challenging, but that could itself be an opportunity for knowledge
workers.
Aquaculture.
There is already massive overfishing without people living on the sea, so
aquaculture is going to be a must. Not just fishing and harvesting edible life
from the seas, but cultivating the food. There's a lot to say about aquaculture
and I'm not an expert by any means. However, one advantage of oceanic
aquaculture worth noting is that there are large sections of the seas in which
there is almost no life. These oceanic deserts could be re-seeded at minimal
detriment, or even a net benefit to the environment.
Fresh
water production. It's simple but energy-intensive to produce. Get yourself
a floating solar still, and let the cash condense out of the air. Production of
fresh water scales very well economically, because the surplus can be sold on
land in many places.
Related to an abundance of space.
Carbon
credits, and related geoengineering. Through an abundance of space and
sunlight, otherwise infeasible means of fixing and storing carbon are possible.
This includes cultivating carbon-hungry algae, but also energy-intensive
air-to-fuel technologies like those being developed by Carbon Engineering and
Global Thermostat.
Unlike many offset-based methods of claiming carbon credits
like the ECX in the European Union, this could be backed up by physical
delivery of the algae, fuel, or calcium carbonate pellets. One issue with this that fixing carbon and
then dumping it in the ocean could make things works by contributing to ocean
acidification. Proceed with caution.
Related to being independent of land-based nations
Biotech,
such as drug discovery and medical procedures. How's that stem-cell research
going? How about artificial meat? Is your local government holding back the
things that you or the planet need to survive? There's a lot of good reasons
why restrictions and regulations on these fields exist, but there's a lot of
reasons that are just lobbying and legacy.
Related to having flexibility of location.
Knowledge
work. A few of these were mentioned at the beginning of the article, but
these aren't the only types of knowledge work that could be done from anywhere
with an internet connection. There's also translation, writing, consulting, and
many forms of research and education.
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| Even on the sea, people will need vets and dog-walkers. |
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