Seasteading: Competitive Governments on the Ocean
Date
2012
Authors
Friedman, Patri
Taylor, Brad
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag
Abstract
We argue that those advocating the reform of current political systems in order to promote jurisdictional competition are in a catch-22: jurisdictional competition has the potential to improve policy, but reforms to increase competition must be enacted by currently uncompetitive governments. If such governments could be relied upon to enact such reforms, they would likely not be necessary. Since existing governments are resistant to change, we argue that the only way to overcome the deep problem of reform is by focusing on the bare-metal layer of society - the technological environment in which governments are embedded. Developing the technology to create settlements in international waters, which we refer to as seasteading, changes the technological environment rather than attempting to push against the incentives of existing political systems. As such, it sidesteps the problem of reform and is more likely than more conventional approaches to significantly alter the policy equilibrium.
Description
Keywords
Keywords: advocacy; governance approach; policy approach; political relations; political theory; technological development
Citation
Collections
Source
Kyklos
Type
Journal article
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
License Rights
Restricted until
2037-12-31
Downloads
File
Description