Michael Eliot is the founder of Ventive Floathouse. He is working on a ⅛ scale prototype of his uniquely designed floating home. Michael tells us about learning how to build the very home he grew up in. Then he read Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson and was inspired by the floating community described in that novel. When he heard about the Blueseed project to create a startup community located on a cruise ship near the coast of Silicon Valley, he started thinking seriously about how to build comfortable floating homes to support a growing seastead community. Michael takes us through his thought processes in designing his floating home and his goal of making a floating house that makes no compromises. He designed for worst case scenarios and maximum comfort. He references an article listing the 10 things people hate about living on a boat. He shares some of the valuable lessons he learned from exploring different manufacturing methods and materials. Michael tells about his experiences as a startup business founder trying to get funding to develop his project. We also discuss the many applications for the Ventive Floathouse and market potential. You can follow updates from Ventive Floathouse on their website and their subReddit. Listen to Joe Quirk's interview with Michael Eliot about geopolymer concrete on a previous episode of the Seasteading Today podcast. As an Amazon Associate The Seasteading Institute earns from qualifying purchases. Please subscribe on Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Android | Google | YouTube | RSS For feedback and questions, email [email protected]  

Freedom Haven is an open-design, freedom-based seasteading micronation founded by Tony Olsen.  Tony was inspired to launch Freedom Haven while researching the Tiny Home movement and using shipping containers to build new kinds of homes. He started planning a crowd-funding project to build a seastead micronation on a structure modeled after a container ship. You can connect with Tony’s team on Facebook, nearly 300 people interested in building seasteads at Creating a Libertarian Seasteading Micronation. He describes some of the decision-making processes for a dispersed group of visionaries, tackling design problems and the rules they want to have in place for their micronation. Freedom Haven has a Constitution and Tony explains why it was important to establish the laws and rules for their community before it has been physically built. They wanted to avoid a “might makes right” tradition. They had discussions on what constitutes force and how much control each individual in the seastead will have. Tony explains why one of the goals for Freedom Haven is to eventually qualify as a state under the Montevideo Convention. Requirements include: * The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:* a permanent population;* a defined territory;* government; and* capacity to enter into relations with the other states. They plan to sell living space at $316/square-foot paid as a 5-year lease. Tony mentions plans to take a scale model of his platform to Ephermerisle in 2021. Please subscribe on Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Android | Google | YouTube | RSS For feedback and questions, email [email protected]

Nathalie Mezza-Garcia is a complexity scientist and founder and CEO of Seaphia, a consulting firm for floating architecture projects. She is also the former Seavangelesse for Blue Frontiers and their Floating Island Project in French Polynesia. She recently launched the Journal of Special Jurisdictions offering a balanced analysis of ideas around new governance structures. In this episode, Nathalie explains how she came to study seasteading after thinking about human societies as complex systems and concluding that current governance systems are failing to do what they’re supposed to do. She explains that in order to improve the way decisions get made in complex human societies, we must change our perspective, and seasteading provides the flexibility to do that. Nathalie shares the lessons she learned from her experience as the international spokesperson for the Floating Island Project in French Polynesia. She talks about the importance of forming relationships with the local residents and policy makers. One of her guiding principles for Seaphia is to build strong relationships with local residents, institutions and governments.  She advises seasteaders to do thorough research of the partners who get involved in seasteading companies, just like dating someone before deciding to marry that person. Nathalie explains that it’s easy to find locations where it is technically possible to place a seastead platform, but the complicated part is finding a location where the local partners are enthusiastic about your project. Seaphia is a consulting service to do market testing for potential seastead projects. They determine how a seasteading business can get to a point that serves the local community as well as business investors. She recommends working with local governments and existing institutions, not working against them.  Recommendations: * Nathalie said her favorite project in the U.S. is Alta Sea which focuses on business around floating technologies. * She also has published the Journal of Special Jurisdictions with the Center for Competitive Governance.* The Startup Societies Foundation held a virtual summit and are releasing videos from that summit on their YouTube channel You can contact Nathalie Mezza-Garcia at [email protected]. Please subscribe on Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Android | Google | YouTube | RSS For feedback and questions, email [email protected]

Grant Romundt is the CEO of Ocean Builders, the company that built the first affordable, single-family seastead off the coast of Thailand. You can follow the story of the couple, Chad and Nadia, who lived on the first seastead home, in our documentary series called The First Seasteaders. Ocean Builders is now building their new floating home design, the SeaPod, in Panama. This interview took place at the Anarchapulco conference. Grant talks about Freedom Ship, a project to build a mile-long ship. Ocean Builders is planning to re-open their Incubator once travel restrictions are lifted. You can sign up on their website. Grant also talks about Panama’s Friendly Nations VISA: “As a response to the growing popularity of Panama among expats and digital nomads, the Panamanian government launched the Panama-Friendly Nations Visa program in 2012 to expedite the immigration process leading to citizenship and attract foreign investment to the country.”- How To Get A Panama Friendly Nations Visa Grant says in this interview that he’s designing something that he wants to live in. Pictured above is a rendering of the luxurious bathroom in Ocean Builders' SeaPod. Contact Grant at [email protected]. Please subscribe on Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Android | Google | YouTube | RSS For feedback and questions, email [email protected]

Commander Dale Brown of Threat Management Centers in Detroit began training people on Detroit’s east side to protect their families and businesses from violent drug gangs in 1994. His organization specializes in nonviolent strategies and tactics designed to create a nonviolent outcome. This interview was recorded in February of 2020, before the death of George Floyd in police custody ignited protests around the nation. You can listen to Dale Brown comment on the culture of policing on the The Liam McCollum Show, “Ep. 23 Commander Dale Brown on His Private and Non-Violent Solution to Reduce Violent Crime” In this interview Dale Brown explains how his training system incorporates psychology, law, and tactics to create non-adversarial interactions to produce nonviolent outcomes. He has trained his private security teams, members of the public and police officers.  Our natural instincts are to use violence when we feel fear, so Dale teaches his clients to understand body language and psychology to overcome fear to de-escalate a situation. Brown applies experience managing security in private communities and Michigan marinas to explain how to identify threats to safety in a seasteading community. He recommends that we manage threats to safety and comfort (like fear of water and noise level expectations), and then create a community culture that embodies the overall objective of the community. He answers the common questions like, how to protect seasteads from pirates? How do you make sure each seastead home is as safe as possible? He describes how a seasteading community can create multiple levels of protection. Check out Detroit Management Center on YouTube, to watch police testimonials on using their methods to prevent injuring someone. Please subscribe on Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Android | Google | YouTube | RSS For feedback and questions, email [email protected]

Dr. Mary Ruwart is a research scientist, ethicist, and a libertarian author and activist. She has a Ph.D. in Biophysics and worked as a senior research scientist developing new therapies for a variety of diseases. She serves as Chair for Liberty International and Secretary of the Foundation for a Free Society. She is the author of Healing our World and Death by Regulation. Visit her website: www.ruwart.com. Dr. Ruwart worked for the Upjohn Company, researching medicine and developing pharmaceutical drugs. Her book, Death by Regulation, explains how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has harmed Americans by adding regulations to drug approval, though safety and effectiveness in drugs has not improved. She has calculated that the FDA has shaved five years off the lives of Americans. The cost of FDA approval rises every year, making it harder for drug companies to research new treatments. Dr. Ruwart explains why the marketplace was an effective system for eliminating drugs that were not effective before the FDA dramatically increased their influence in the 1960s. The FDA has shifted the medical paradigm from prevention to treatment, and away from more nutritional or holistic methods. We also discuss potential medical businesses for seasteads, for example, offering third-party testing for new drugs, medical tourism, and treatments that are approved in countries other than the United States, like adult stem-cell treatment. Dr. Ruwart also explains how the FDA prohibited the development of COVID-19 tests, delaying the response to the pandemic in the U.S. Watch an April 25, 2020 Webinar, Dr. Mary J Ruwart: Healthcare vs Pandemics, hosted by Students for Liberty. As an Amazon Associate The Seasteading Institute earns from qualifying purchases. This episode of the Seasteading Today podcast is sponsored by Atlantis Sea Colony. The purpose of Atlantis Sea Colony is to bring the undersea world to the masses, through hotels, habitats, private homes, and industrial and corporate facilities. A big thank you to Brendon Traxler and Adam Jewell of the Atlantis Sea Colony for supporting this podcast and for having me on their podcast, which is called Colonize the Ocean. You can listen to the Colonize the Ocean podcast on Spotify and YouTube. To learn more about Atlantis Sea Colony, visit atlantisseacolony.com. If you would like to sponsor a future episode of the Seasteading Today podcast, visit: give.seasteading.org/podcastsponsor Please subscribe on Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Android | Google | YouTube | RSS For feedback and questions,

Michael Strong is the author of The Habit of Thought and Be the Solution (paid links), the founder of The Academy of Thought and Industry, a co-founder of Conscious Capitalism and a former board member of The Seasteading Institute. Strong believes in entrepreneurial solutions to world problems. The biggest problem is inept, incompetent, dysfunctional government. It’s the least innovative industry in the entire world and the result of that is mass poverty. Most businesses are volatile, especially rapidly growing businesses. To succeed, businesses must be able to hire and fire people to respond to that volatility. Regulations, like permits and employment restrictions slow down an entrepreneur’s ability to respond to demand. The legal system must allow for volatility, because that allows entrepreneurs to create wealth. If we have fewer choices in government, then the future is grim. If we have thousands of choices, we will innovate in governance and grow in prosperity rapidly. Shenzhen as a successful Special Economic Zone. We have to remember these are long term projects. Shenzhen was declared a failure in 1986, but shortly after that investors came to develop. Hundreds of millions of people have escaped poverty in special economic zones. There is a startup culture in every nation. Small niches of startup entrepreneurs are able to take advantage of the internet to create opportunity and wealth in Russia and Guatemala. These entrepreneurs do not have the freedom to create jobs in their home countries because of the laws in those countries. Seasteads have to potential to create new jobs, free from the obsolete laws of land nations. New jurisdictions will be one of the leading industries in the 21st century. Once people realize seasteading is a path to prosperity, we’ll see a boom.Michael Strong In this discussion, Strong refers to Hans Rosling, co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation and his TED talk on “How not to be ignorant about the world.” Honduras ZEDEs * Honduras Prospera: https://www.hondurasprospera.com* Michael Strong’s article on Austrian Economics Center, “How ZEDEs Can Make Honduras Prosperous.” Read the Let a Thousand Nations Bloom blog. Please subscribe to the Seasteading Today podcast on Apple | Carly Jackson 33:37 Clean, Renewable Energy with Dr. Patrick Takahashi https://www.seasteading.org/clean-renewable-energy/ Thu, 17 Oct 2019 12:11:56 +0000 http://www.seasteading.org/?p=32482 Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference between cooler deep water and warmer surface-level water to run a heat engine to produce useful work, usually in the form of electricity. Fresh water is a byproduct of this process. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference between cooler deep water and warmer surface-level water to run a heat engine to produce useful work, usually in the form of electricity. Fresh water is a byproduct of this process. Dr. Patrick Takahashi is a retired engineering professor who has been advocating for the Blue Revolution for a third of a century.&nbsp; In 1979 he wrote the original legislation for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) when he worked in the U.S. Senate. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference between cooler deep water and warmer surface-level water to run a heat engine to produce useful work, usually in the form of electricity. Fresh water is a byproduct of this process. Photo source: Blue Revolution Hawaii You can also bring nutrients that have sunk to the deeper waters closer to the surface where they become pre-fertilizer for a seaweed farm. Photo source: Blue Revolution Hawaii This one technology can produce food, energy, fresh water, and hydrogen fuel-- everything a floating city in the ocean needs. And OTEC plants will improve the quality of the ocean, and potentially lower the temperature of the water, which prevents hurricanes. It’s almost like magic.Dr. Patrick Takahashi Photo by: Øystein Paulsen, Wikimedia Cultivating food that is lower on the trophic level requires fewer resources and preserves the environment. Dr. Takahashi recommends farming whale sharks because they provide plentiful meat, reproduce quickly, and are lower on the trophic chain than more popular fish like tuna. Read Ocean Thermal: Energy Conversion 1st Edition by Patrick Takahashi and&nbsp; Andrew Trenka Read Dr. Takahashi’s blog, Planet Earth and Humanity. Watch Patrick Takahashi on Blue Revolution at the Seasteading Conference 2012. Read The Dawn of the Blue Revolution on Huffington Post. OTEC International has been working with Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) to develop a 100-megawatt OTEC plant offshore of O‘ahu’s leeward industrial area. Please subscribe to the Seasteading Today podcast on Apple | Android | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (open...

Neil Sims and his colleagues at Kampachi Farms are refining methods for producing sustainable, scalable, and (most importantly) delicious fish. Sims believes that the best way to improve the environment is to use market tools; to provide economic incentives to achieve the ecological imperatives. Sims began as a fisheries biologist, managing commercial fisheries and working to educate fishermen on how to keep fish populations healthy for multiple generations. He quickly learned that the incentives in commercial fisheries are to catch as many fish as possible, as quickly as possible. So now he works to create a fish farming model that provides sustainable and scalable sources of seafood that have a minimal environmental footprint.&nbsp; Sims has run multiple research projects to test different technologies for fish farms, which he called the Velella Projects. Fishermen in Hawaii learned that the Velella’s floating fish pens were a boon for the local fishing industry. Boats fishing around the Velella Gamma array with feed barge and buoy in foreground.© Kampachi Farms, Photo credit: Neil Anthony Sims The Velella fish cages attracted tuna, mahi-mahi, and marlin. The next one (Velella Project Epsilon) will be deployed off the coast of Sarasota, Florida in 2020.&nbsp; Wild fish surround the Kampachi fish cage.© Kampachi Farms, Photo credit: Rick Decker These farms have used a species known locally as Kahala-- a fish that was thrown back if caught in the wild-- and raised them into tasty Kampachi. Lockheed Martin supported the early research. Some of the Lockheed engineers launched Forever Oceans to continue to revolutionize mariculture. Macro-algae (aka seaweed) cultivation has huge potential to provide feed for fish and animals because it doesn’t require land, fresh water, or fertilizer, unlike crops grown on land. Seaweed farms can absorb the excess nutrients in the water that cause dead zones and pull carbon dioxide out of the water. Ocean acidification has a catastrophic impact on ocean ecosystems. “Off-shore macro-algae culture is the only way that we can harness entrepreneurial incentive (the profit motive) to counter ocean acidification,” Sims says. “If someone else has to pay for it, it’s not scalable.'' Please subscribe on Apple | Android | Google | Spotify | Carly Jackson clean 35:47 The Seaweed Solution with Dr. Ricardo Radulovich https://www.seasteading.org/the-seaweed-solution-with-dr-ricardo-radulovich/ Thu, 03 Oct 2019 11:38:21 +0000 http://www.seasteading.org/?p=32452 Agriculture on land may not be able to keep up with the demand for food. We need alternative choices of food and animal feed. The solution can be found in cultivating seaweed. Agriculture on land may not be able to keep up with the demand for food. We need alternative choices of food and animal feed. The solution can be found in cultivating seaweed. Dr. Ricardo Radulovich is a professor at the University of Costa Rica and founder of Aquafarms+. He is working to ensure food security for future generations. Agriculture on land may not be able to keep up with the demand for food. We need alternative choices of food and animal feed. The solution can be found in cultivating seaweed. Starting a seaweed farm can help clean the water of excess nutrients that usually comes from runoff from land-based agriculture. Seaweeds are used in numerous products including bread, ice cream, toothpaste, tortilla chips and beer. Fishermen in traditional fishing communities can incorporate seaweed cultivation to help diversify their income. Some seaweeds are rich in iron, fiber, magnesium and vitamins. Preparing bread with 5% seaweed meal. Bread baked with 5% seaweed meal. “There is no seaweed market because there is no production and there is no production because there is no market,” Dr. Radulovich says in this episode. The challenge is to work on both sides, increase supply and demand. A good summary of Dr. Radulovich’s work is available in this article by Radical Social Entrepreneurs. Dr. Radulovich’s presentation at the 2012 Seasteading Conference is available here. We also discuss how seaweed is one component of a closed-loop system that also includes bi-valves like mussels to improve biodiversity in the ecosystem. Read the study, “Tropical seaweeds for human food, their cultivation and its effect on biodiversity enrichment.” Please subscribe on Apple | Android | Google | Spotify | YouTube | RSS For feedback and questions, email [email protected] To sponsor future episodes, visit Podcast Sponsorship.