Lifeboats
This whole topic began because I was talking with Dan about the autonomy of ships. Especially with nuclear power, naval vessels rarely need to see port; in fact, one class of naval ship- missile subs- are designed to outlast their country of origin in a nuclear war. They hide deep where they can't be found, then surface to launch thermonuclear revenge in the ultimate Mutually Assured Destruction scenario.
We started wondering when was the last time a ship survived the dissolution of its home government while at sea, became if you will a heavily armed autonomous player. We figured the French Navy probably had a few battleships at sea when the Nazis overran the border, and while they presumably fell under the control of Vichy France, there was probably a momentary opening when the captains considered remaining sea-borne rogues, at war with Germany but unaccountable except to themselves and to the appetites of the engine room and the gun room.
As it turns out, we didn't have to look back so far. Meet the Kuwaiti patrol boat Istiqlal.
Along with the Jalboot (which "escaped to Bahrain") the Istiqlal avoided capture and destruction during the Iraqi invasion. It survived the war, and unlike its captured sister ships which were scuttled, it remains a part of the Kuwaiti blue-water Navy today. Interesting, no?
Of course, it doesn't take a collapsing government for a ship to find a measure of autonomy on the ocean, and under normal conditions even commercial freighters operate as de facto autonomous "floating islands." International maritime law strictly limits the authority of any military to act against or even board a ship on international waters, especially if the ship is flagged from a different country. Under some circumstances, interference constitutes an act of war against the flagging nation.
And flagging nations are cheap and easy to come by. The number-one flag flown by deep-water vessels is Liberian, but in reality, the Liberian Ship Registry is a for-profit company based in Vienna Virginia, founded by a former US secretary of state, with contracts but no offices in the nation of Liberia. Lberia itself is something of a failed state. The chance of a Liberian-flagged tanker being inspected in international waters by the Liberian navy is basically zero. Liberian-flagged ships are effectively corporate freeholds, and there are a lot of them.
There have been many literary attempts to propose a seaborne anarchist utopia. Before we figured out that pirates are actually starving dudes who machine-gun civilians, there were Peter "Hakim Bey" Wilson's weirdly erotic prosposals and more recently Dmitry Orlov has put forward the saner essay The New Age of Sail which you can at least read online. A modest attempt at a brownwater flotilla of home-made anarcho-craft was sent down the Mississippi in 2006.
However acquiring, let alone fueling or living on an ocean ship is cost prohibitive for most anarchists. I suppose, then, that it would be inevitable that the libertarian rich would seek to offshore themselves and claim a floating island as a Galt's Gulch; several months ago I found the SeaSteading Institute proposing just such a project. The website is thick with beautifully rendered architecture, business models, and quasi-liberatory talk about opting out of political and economic modernity for a newer, freer market. The undercurrent of antisocial isolationism is as stinky here as in every other libertarian utopia, but the hesitancy, the tentative dreaminess of it strikes a far fouler note. Why? Because they... ahem... seem to have missed the boat. This boat:
In the mid-90's, a cruise ship magnate named Knut Kloster announced a plan to build a residential ship. In addition to traditional cruise services, wealthy people could actually buy cabins and suites on board. The initial design was humongous, and the cabins pre-sold much more slowly than the parent company had expected. Before construction had even begun, the ship had to be considerably downsized and when the downturn hit in late 2000, Kloster's other company was acquired by a Malaysian company that is now itself part owned by a US investor group. When The World as the ship was christened, was finally launched in 2002, it was the sole floating property of Florida-based ResidenSea Inc. Early reports describe a "Type-A Heavy" group of residents and perhaps it should be no surprise what happened next.
When The World set sail it hosted a number of unbelievably wealthy Americans, Europeans, and South Africans, but it was also the income property of a faltering cruise dynasty. Exactly how and why everything came to pass is unclear (though a Falmouth Harbour (UK) Newsletter suggests the presence of hoi polloi cruise customers became irksome) but in October 2003, the tenants bought the entire boat. From the cruiseline.
They set up a "residents committee" to determine the course of the ship, raised rates for "renters" exorbitantly, and contracted with ResidenSea, their former landlords, to provide services onboard. Today, six and a half years later, The World continues to sail the world with its population of fantastically wealthy passengers, stopping wherever they feel like. The residents have done exactly what Seasteading proposed, only six years before the website was born and at income levels even the fairly genteel libertarians can only dream of. You can, it seems, still purchase "freedom," it only costs more than even the rich want to believe. You can follow The World on their website.
It seems that no more farce or hubris could possible be compressed into this saga, but I'm afraid there is one final appendix. Two of the original partners from the World project are putting forward another residential cruise liner proposal (actually a third- the second was a four-seasons hotel that collapsed before the keel was laid.) This time, they assure us, there will be none of this funny business with residents buying out investors- they're gonna do it right! Make some money!
This one they're calling Utopia.
Best,
A
[Addendum: Its interesting to notice that The World has not, apparently, attempted any of the projects theorists of the floating-island utopia have proposed: they are not a data haven (though they do have onboard internet) nor an autonomous broadcaster nor are they seeking to be an offshore bank. Instead, they seem to be content with the oldest of aristocratic fantasies: with their services contract, they have created a hermetic world in which everyone is rich or takes orders.]
We started wondering when was the last time a ship survived the dissolution of its home government while at sea, became if you will a heavily armed autonomous player. We figured the French Navy probably had a few battleships at sea when the Nazis overran the border, and while they presumably fell under the control of Vichy France, there was probably a momentary opening when the captains considered remaining sea-borne rogues, at war with Germany but unaccountable except to themselves and to the appetites of the engine room and the gun room.
As it turns out, we didn't have to look back so far. Meet the Kuwaiti patrol boat Istiqlal.
Along with the Jalboot (which "escaped to Bahrain") the Istiqlal avoided capture and destruction during the Iraqi invasion. It survived the war, and unlike its captured sister ships which were scuttled, it remains a part of the Kuwaiti blue-water Navy today. Interesting, no?
Of course, it doesn't take a collapsing government for a ship to find a measure of autonomy on the ocean, and under normal conditions even commercial freighters operate as de facto autonomous "floating islands." International maritime law strictly limits the authority of any military to act against or even board a ship on international waters, especially if the ship is flagged from a different country. Under some circumstances, interference constitutes an act of war against the flagging nation.
And flagging nations are cheap and easy to come by. The number-one flag flown by deep-water vessels is Liberian, but in reality, the Liberian Ship Registry is a for-profit company based in Vienna Virginia, founded by a former US secretary of state, with contracts but no offices in the nation of Liberia. Lberia itself is something of a failed state. The chance of a Liberian-flagged tanker being inspected in international waters by the Liberian navy is basically zero. Liberian-flagged ships are effectively corporate freeholds, and there are a lot of them.
There have been many literary attempts to propose a seaborne anarchist utopia. Before we figured out that pirates are actually starving dudes who machine-gun civilians, there were Peter "Hakim Bey" Wilson's weirdly erotic prosposals and more recently Dmitry Orlov has put forward the saner essay The New Age of Sail which you can at least read online. A modest attempt at a brownwater flotilla of home-made anarcho-craft was sent down the Mississippi in 2006.
However acquiring, let alone fueling or living on an ocean ship is cost prohibitive for most anarchists. I suppose, then, that it would be inevitable that the libertarian rich would seek to offshore themselves and claim a floating island as a Galt's Gulch; several months ago I found the SeaSteading Institute proposing just such a project. The website is thick with beautifully rendered architecture, business models, and quasi-liberatory talk about opting out of political and economic modernity for a newer, freer market. The undercurrent of antisocial isolationism is as stinky here as in every other libertarian utopia, but the hesitancy, the tentative dreaminess of it strikes a far fouler note. Why? Because they... ahem... seem to have missed the boat. This boat:
In the mid-90's, a cruise ship magnate named Knut Kloster announced a plan to build a residential ship. In addition to traditional cruise services, wealthy people could actually buy cabins and suites on board. The initial design was humongous, and the cabins pre-sold much more slowly than the parent company had expected. Before construction had even begun, the ship had to be considerably downsized and when the downturn hit in late 2000, Kloster's other company was acquired by a Malaysian company that is now itself part owned by a US investor group. When The World as the ship was christened, was finally launched in 2002, it was the sole floating property of Florida-based ResidenSea Inc. Early reports describe a "Type-A Heavy" group of residents and perhaps it should be no surprise what happened next.
When The World set sail it hosted a number of unbelievably wealthy Americans, Europeans, and South Africans, but it was also the income property of a faltering cruise dynasty. Exactly how and why everything came to pass is unclear (though a Falmouth Harbour (UK) Newsletter suggests the presence of hoi polloi cruise customers became irksome) but in October 2003, the tenants bought the entire boat. From the cruiseline.
They set up a "residents committee" to determine the course of the ship, raised rates for "renters" exorbitantly, and contracted with ResidenSea, their former landlords, to provide services onboard. Today, six and a half years later, The World continues to sail the world with its population of fantastically wealthy passengers, stopping wherever they feel like. The residents have done exactly what Seasteading proposed, only six years before the website was born and at income levels even the fairly genteel libertarians can only dream of. You can, it seems, still purchase "freedom," it only costs more than even the rich want to believe. You can follow The World on their website.
It seems that no more farce or hubris could possible be compressed into this saga, but I'm afraid there is one final appendix. Two of the original partners from the World project are putting forward another residential cruise liner proposal (actually a third- the second was a four-seasons hotel that collapsed before the keel was laid.) This time, they assure us, there will be none of this funny business with residents buying out investors- they're gonna do it right! Make some money!
This one they're calling Utopia.
Best,
A
[Addendum: Its interesting to notice that The World has not, apparently, attempted any of the projects theorists of the floating-island utopia have proposed: they are not a data haven (though they do have onboard internet) nor an autonomous broadcaster nor are they seeking to be an offshore bank. Instead, they seem to be content with the oldest of aristocratic fantasies: with their services contract, they have created a hermetic world in which everyone is rich or takes orders.]