While communism might work best in small communities, libertarianism might need large communities to work (in a manner that seems fashionable)
The land is owned from the start. There is no homesteading. The fundamental principles of land acquisition do not hold. At best, this is support for minarchy, not AnCap. It’s nice as an experiment to show that people can indeed cooperate, but it fails because there ultimately is a legitimate entity (the owner) who decides whom to sell to. And while this certainly is libertarian, it doesn’t 100% model the natural unowned-land world.
The opposite actually. Small isolated communities don’t work period. That’s what communism is. Libertarian communities can plug in to existing markets, even if they are government/state dominated markets. You can trade with china/OPEC/etc.
Homesteading is not uhh… specific to land. And even if it were, homesteading of land is not a necessary prerequisite for anarcho capitalism. You also don’t even know if it will be a “monolithic” legal system because in principle purveyors of seasteads wouldn’t have to impose laws… unless you count user-fees as a form of legal system. AND EVEN THEN you’re only arriving at this conclusion because you are considering the individual unit of seasteads. Is anarcho-capitalism not really ancap just because there wind up being autonomous monarchs at the individual level? Patri and friends imagine many different seasteads plugging into each other in highly variable arrangements… one of the advantages of seasteads is the ability to move your house via a tugboat. Lego land.
I agree that it still is AnCap, but it’s a very specific scenario of what could happen in AnCap.
Also, when you build a floating, moveable island, the actual device is yours, but is the sea underneath it yours as well? If yes, then you can just move your island around in bigger and bigger circles and homestead a big area of sea that you have floated through because you are “utilizing” the sea for its floatation. So would the sea sort of not be homesteadable, or does the concept still apply? Seems like it still might apply (consider the sea as a railroad which is instantly built underneath you).
Interesting concept. So while the islands themselves at build time are homesteaded, the sea is not necessarily. This still allows for the AnCap idea of homesteading unowned territory, breaking out of the “specific AnCap” scenario where all the land is already owned by private entities. Intriguing.
I don’t really think it is a very specific scenario. To the extent it is different is the extent to which human beings are not salt water fish. The only functional difference between seasteading and land is that for all practical purposes, you need some kind of boat technology to really move. This is negligible in the long term and at the macro-scale.
The sea underneath you is not “yours”. You have the right to continue peaceful activities uninterrupted (i.e.floating), but you can’t stop submarines from passing under you or forbid wildlife researchers from collecting plankton samples. Similarly, forming a circle doesn’t mean you gain ownership of the middle. A reductio is to consider that otherwise hugging someone would allow you to functionally own them…
Territory will be virtually meaningless on the ocean. There are no real hot spots other than oil rigs, and even those could theoretically have been placed +/- 1000m in any direction. It’s just whatever physical networking you invest in that becomes important ad hoc.
Why would the sea not be yours? Boats on the sea are analogous to cars on land. Ok, fine, so many you have easements instead of actual property, but if you develop the sea floor itself or build something anchored to it, then it is your property. And on land we can certainly homestead land if we decide to make it into a parking lot. The need for attachment or extraction of a good is not necessary for homesteading.
I guess I’d say that libertarians don’t really believe in property. At least in the conventional “this land is mine” sense. You homestead the right to use resources in a way that does not abridge others’ prior use of said resources. So if you build a seastead on the ocean, fine. But if I can collect plankton samples without disturbing your seastead, you have NO grounds on which to stop me. You can’t claim that the spot is “yours” because you are only using it in a one dimensional capacity.
So might there be different dimensions of property? As in ownership of the topsoil and immediate building/cultivation rights, use of the soil/ground underneath the topsoil, possibly waterways which cross the land, the air above the soil (these are categories I am thinking of on the spot).
Or is property really more limited and absolute (as in this chunk of land along with 500 yard below it and 500 yards above)?
It is not about dimensions. It is about “use”. Use has no a priori time or space. It is action-specific. That’s why you homestead the path through the forest and gain only the right to continue doing so. You cannot stop others from using the path in ways that does not interfere with your claimed use. They can walk on it. They can tunnel under it. They can hold raucus parties over it if you go away for a weekend. They can do all that does not stop you from doing what you were doing.
But yeah. We currently have topsoil/mineral rights/airspace distinctions. To think that someone owns all the soil to the center of the earth, and all the airspace extending above them in an infinite cone is… insane.
Here are many alternative opinions. But the “use” theory of homesteading is the most consistent. It comes directly out of the non-aggression axiom because it focuses on rights to peaceful action. The rights to certain GPS coordinates do not come out of the NAP.
This does seem appealing, as it leads to logical conclusions about easements (you only have the right to keep using them, not to block them off or anything.
Hm, I’ll have to think on this. Because one could separate uses so much that you can say that simply because a man is living on land and nothing else we can homestead his yard and use it to grow vegetables.
And also “The Privatization of Roads And Highways” by Walter Block. Chapter 14 covers Ad Coelum, and building bridges over, and tunnels under property, and elsewhere in the book he covers the topic of easements:
I would also point towards Kinsella’s articles on criticizing the concept of “mixing your labor” meaning you own a given piece of property, and instead argues for first use has the best claim. Here is one I found quickly:
While there is no guarantee a libertarian island will suceed, nothing in this world is guaranteed, if this does it may at least puts this utopian nonsense to rest.
Too few details to ascertain just how “libertarian” the place will be let alone whether or not it is indeed An-Cap.
It’s more likely that these “sovereign nations” as they’re called by the Seasteading Institute are simply states in vitro. While that’s still libertarian, it’s not An-Cap.
That said, if this experiment is successful, then it could open up seasteading to those who would value An-Cap.
My problem with these seasteading fallacies is that it is just another state. The whole platform is private property. Therefore what freedom you have is limited to the whims of the property owner…
While even true in a libertopia, but the seastead has 1 owner. Which makes it a lot like a state…
I thought so too, Wibee, but as someone above explained, it sems like the island itself will not be the whole nation but different islands that people make/buy. So we won’t have a whole bunch of people just living on one island, but different islands connecting, which is in the spirit of AnCap.
Well what would an an-cap territory look like? Hundreds of property owners with their own rules. I don’t think that would differ much from Seasteaders dreams.
