You're listening to the reversing climate change podcast
by Nori. The world's first carbon removal
Marketplace, here are your hosts Ross, Kenyon and Christoph
jospeh. Hello.
Welcome to the reversing climate change podcast.
I'm Christoph just by sitting here with my co-host, Ross,
Kenyon, and producer, Paul a really exciting episode that we
have usually Ross introduces, but today, we're going to Let
Ross introduce the guests because he knows him personally.
So Ross, why don't you start us off here?
Yeah, we're here with joke work in Oakland.
I've worked a little bit insulting wise with blueprint
ears, which is Jose company and among his co-founders.
And they do see setting, which is this wacky idea of building
floating Platforms in the ocean. That retains some degree of
autonomy to determine their own rules, depending on where they
are. Don't want to put too many words
in your mouth, though. I want to use evangelize a
little bit. That's That's your title, right?
Yes, I am a sieve Angeles Times. Great hydrate portmanteau.
Yeah, that's trying to figure it out.
Is it s EA or SCA? Okay.
So it's a play on evangelist and see and it is in fact wacky.
It's very nearly as wacky as trying to change the world by
clicking little levers in private booths for special
politicians and hoping the world does.
If you want purple ously utopian view of the world makes a lot
more sense and it's much more realistic to go build your own
little miniature. Action.
Yeah, I wish it was a little bit easier to try that.
When you when you described it as Dan Carlin has this way of
approaching politics is like the view from Mars or if you're
explaining it. So I like to a Marcin.
Yeah. You be like, yeah, you're just,
you're just pulling little levers and then lie.
I people do things off of that, that you don't really have any
control of after that point. If you like, this doesn't sound
always like the greatest of ways to do things, right?
And then the Martian would say so I assume you call this planet
ocean, you say no no we call it planet Earth.
He's like well. More than two-thirds of it is
planet ocean. What are you doing with all
that? It's like no, we just stay on
land and then we fight amongst each other about who gets to
control everybody else through the political process.
Yeah, I'd suppose. That is one way of looking at
it. So blue Frontiers and you've
also been involved in see sitting before blue Frontiers
was a thing. Why don't you tell us a little
bit about why you're here and why you are about the things
that you care about? Well, I'm an author I, right?
I tell stories, basically, that's what I've been doing and
the main thing I do is listen. In to really smart people and
force them to explain it. 20 times until a dumb person
understands it. And then, once I can explain it,
that I can explain it like a guy in the bar.
So I have written novels, I've written science books.
I wrote a book about Evolution called, it's not you, it's
biology. The science of love sex and
relationships, which is basically, I take academic
papers about evolutionary psychology.
I put it in English whereupon, it becomes automatically funny,
and then I make all the money off the scientists work.
But I came to but I kind of translation in a nutshell, right
there is. Yeah, they couldn't say that
without using obscure words you that you don't understand.
So but I came to understand the power of variation and
selection. It's the the secret recipe that
drives forward progress. So the microphones were using
right now, many different forms have been proposed and they
survive by people selecting them and whatever it.
Is the selecting it ends up getting better and better just
for them so it works in life. It works in technology.
It works in consumer goods that works in language, doesn't
really occur in governance itself, the most important
service in the world. And because, you know, if you
want to vary and select among your governments, you need as
Pottery Friedman, points out a revolution or a war or an
economic collapse and who has time for that.
Let's just stick with what we got.
So I always thought that was sort of an intractable problem
and then I was on a cruise ship and I noticed that the cruise
ship was a floating city and it was the highest standard of
living I'd ever had. And it was cheaper than the
coastal Hotel. I'd stayed in the night before I
went as on the cruise ship. I also noticed a lot of the
people working on the cruise ship or from the developing
world and they were living a much better life on the cruise
ship than they would live elsewhere and I couldn't figure
out why is this? In City better.
I didn't really have an example. I didn't really have an
understanding but I could see that it was somehow a floating
city and it was flying the flag of like Panama or Liberia.
So I said, well, this is interesting in some way, it's
like self-governing then about six weeks later, I was at my
10th Burning Man. And anybody who goes to Burning,
Man, 10 times notices that rules evolve in ways that are not
predictable given their initial parameters.
So I watched it, develop over it.
Decade. And you start to discover
interesting things about the way people can live together that
you wouldn't have thought were possible and invariably you
start thinking, wouldn't it be cool if we had more of these,
wouldn't be cool. If we had hundreds all over the
world blank slates everywhere, where people could from the
bottom up experiment, with their own societies.
People want to laugh at Burning Man, but you look at the
challenges, they face especially environmental ones.
If you proposed to people, let's have a temporary city of 60,000.
People set itself up in the middle of a flat featureless
desert. In their own food, through own
water, and their own porta-potties and then they're
committed to leaving, no Trace. They all have to move out and
take everything with them such that, you know, people who come
and scan the desert for the most part.
Can't tell. The people were there, is this
even possible. I would say it's not possible
but by developing techniques for this over time, they can solve
amazing, social environmental problems.
So you start thinking well what if there were more experiments
with Badr nups Society formation and more Places.
I'm not the only person to think that way and it will just leave
and start your own country or there's you can't do anything
like that, right. Right.
You can't leave and start your own country because all land is
claimed by existing government's.
It was at Burning Man, where someone introduced me to Pottery
Friedman. Pottery made explained with
seasteading was, and I didn't understand.
I thought, he said, see, scaping and my wife is an esthetician.
So I thought this had something to do with escapes Brazilians or
something. And he describe very briefly
this Be floating cities in the ocean and because I just been on
a cruise ship I said yeah technologically I think Humanity
could go in that situation. Seems a little weird that
someone would start a non-profit to make this happen sooner than
would otherwise occur and I walked away and then after
burning man I noticed that the seasteading logo was based on
the Burning Man logo and that really caught my eye.
Why would propose cities on the ocean?
Be modeled after a temporary City in the desert?
Kurt, I'm vaguely remembered the name, Patrick freshman or
something, and I sort of Googling and I found his blog
and that's when I had my conversion moment.
As so pottery, elucidated that you could solve this problem of
monopolies governments that don't evolve that aren't subject
to variation and selection, if you weren't on land, but if
you're on water and the very ground Beneath Your Feet could
disassemble, according to the choices of residents, and you
can essentially vote with your house as possible.
We put it usually modular, right?
You could fully modular. Yeah, you could disassociate go
somewhere else. You can join a new group, right?
Yeah. And as long as people could
choose societies, you wouldn't need a monopoly on governments.
You would have variation by societies and selection by
citizens, which to me in principle, would unleash
evolution in governance itself. The most important service that
exists all social problems flow Downstream from governance.
It's and I also understood that this is technologically
feasible. I don't understand the the
fundamentals of a II, don't understand the fundamentals of
all sorts of Technologies. I definitely understand cruise
ships platforms. Governance disassembling.
I'm like this is this needs to happen as soon as possible
because it could solve a very deep problem simply by setting
better examples, that show something to Old governments,
and we little appreciate how small Nimble government set
examples. End up changing the policies of
old big Continental governments. I can give you many examples of
that differ fintech. I always look to Luxembourg
Liechtenstein that came in Jersey.
Guernsey a little tiny, tiny, little islands and little
political entities, right. Great examples, great examples
and even something like just simple things like East, onea
experiments with the flat tax. So, he Stony was one of the
countries that was suddenly independent after the USSR
disassembled into small, little It's so Estonia, initiated this
crazy idea called the flat tax which was Unthinkable.
Everyone thought it was crazy. And then they immediately grew
at more than twice the rate of other Eastern European countries
and Western European countries which were all growing at the
time this started a debate among other countries about the flat
tax and now something like 20% of countries have initiated a
flat tax. Many American states, have a
flat tax. We would not have that
Innovation if this small little country.
Hadn't tried this. So the more countries you can
proliferate, the more examples they can set the more bigger
Nations change their policies. So we're talking about this is
sort of an abstraction, it's sort of like at the root of
society, how it could you redo things and allow people to
experiment with their own ideas? But once I talked to seasteading
Institute into letting me co-wrote the book with Pottery,
I kind of panicked because I realize, I can't just make this
about ideas and it wasn't until I went to the 2012.
Seasteading conference, And met the people.
I would later call aquaporin, oars, who are actually working
on the solutions that that Nori cares about like, you know,
seaweed that can absorb, you know, carbonic acid from the
ocean and you could have restorative foods and algae
farms and fish farms. And once you have actual
innovators coming to seasteading with their solution, you realize
this is a story about people and the solutions they can bring it
attracts people like you guys and Buddy with a new idea for
how Society can be done better. That needs a startup Society
comes to the seasteading institute at is now getting
involved with the startup company blue Frontiers.
So I want to interject here Joe. This is actually we never talked
about how exactly we came up with no worry.
We went through this whole brainstorming process but
reading your book and your sections on aquaculture and
seaweed cultivation and its potential for not only just good
business sense and feeding the world but also decarbonizing the
oceans, it made me quite an impact on me.
Would you guys agree? With that, I think it was one of
my primary Inspirations for the name.
Yeah, yeah. On top of that.
It's one of those. Very simple things that humans
can do, that allows something to proliferate rapidly and like you
say, from the ground up, or in this case, from the sea up.
So, I read your book. I loved it already, we've all
read it and I book, Paul gave it to me.
Paul actually gave it to me when he was off to Tahiti, to go on a
trip. That was organized by Blue
Frontiers. But a number of the things you
just said really. Resonate that I want to pick up
on one of them is volunteers, can do something quickly and
don't need to wait and they can experiment and when those
experiments actually take a foothold that can influence the
rest of the world and actually create something, that's a
better system for society. And I really feel like we live
at this moment. When all of these things are
coming together, we have a population that is growing and
you have people who quite frankly, don't have a place to
go, you have land which is being used up, you have governments,
which are oppressive or Holding down on people, you have
environmentalists who are For Better or Worse.
Want to innovate, but don't have the space to innovate or to try
new ideas. You have a number of health
problems. You have all of these cures that
when you bring them together and under a large umbrella, which it
seems like his decease upsetting Institute and the company that's
advancing this blue Frontiers you could really Drive some real
change in. What is maybe just a dream at
Burning Man starts to become a reality.
Is that about, right? Can we see that?
This isn't just some crazy idea, but it's actually taking
foothold in. There's actually a plan to start
scaling these. Yes, it's a, it's a necessary
idea. Like Humanity doesn't realize
their, it's pushing towards the oceans and innovators are trying
to get Beyond existing jurisdictions.
The same way Europeans were coming to the New World to try
something new because the rules don't adapt and all these these
aquaporin ores I met at the seasteading.
Houses and another, you know, reaching out to The seasteading
Institute that a feature in the book, all of them, have these
great ideas that they can't push forward.
You know the seaweed farmer Ricardo do levitch, the
aquaculture regulations are written in a previous century
and they're not adaptable to the new technologies that are coming
online. And I've talked to many seaweed
farmers in California and Mexico, and all sorts of places
that are trying to get outside existing system.
So they so they can do the new. Things they need regulatory
startups, fish Farmers. It's really tragic, you know,
Neil Sims who I also feature in the book.
And there's many more like him who have scaled up these mobile
sustainable, Buckminster Fuller fish cages that swim with the
schooling fish and completely defy all the problems with
traditional fish farming. Still have to cope with the laws
and regulations written for those old fish farms in the
1980s. You know, people are dying for
regulatory startups, where they can push.
Word new Innovations. And everyone is trying to get
out there. Trying to get Beyond these
crusty old rules and start the, you know, the new century and a
lot of them reach out to sea stating, and a lot of them have
are now volunteering at Blue Frontiers.
Yeah, I guess maybe this would be a good point to explain.
What is blue Frontiers? And I also want to bring Paul
into this and hear about his little jaunt over there.
So blue Frontier is the result of French Polynesia the
president. Polynesia.
In fact, writing a letter to the seasteading Institute inviting
us to come check out French Polynesia as a potential host
site for the first see studs. And when you want to actually
it's one thing to promote an idea through a non-profit.
But if you want to actually build c-stands, you're going to
need an actual startup company. And so blue, Frontiers is the
startup company that is putting together all the experts under
one umbrella. One company and a large group of
like 70 to 90 active volunteers at this point in various areas
of expertise. And today is the day we
launched. See coin.
You guys are here the day. We launched out.
You want the launched? I feel like we all miss this.
Yeah. I think it just happened today.
I think I can say launch or how about an ounce, I think the sale
will be in May, but the Public Announcement and the thing on
the website and and the existence of see go Is now
public as of today. Well congratulations.
The Theta here. We will continue to need your
guidance. The regulations around launching
new tokens is quite onerous and sometimes changing and various
agencies claim it and are duking it out.
Amongst themselves to figure out who will have the privilege and
authority of having the final say.
So, it has been an intellectually stimulating
question, though, at times quite frustrating.
I'm sure you probably feel similarly, yes.
But you can also So imagine the situation that these various
agencies are in. We're you know, they have
protocols, they have setups, they have definitions of things.
And now there's a new innovation that doesn't fit any of those
rules. So they can even decide who's in
charge, what's position? We're going to take on this and
they're trying to figure it out. It's much better.
If we could have rules emerge from the bottom up in that space
rather than using old paradigms. So, as long as people get pretty
caught up into that precautionary principle way of
thinking, Regulation where there have been explicit cases of
Fraud and scams that have happened in the cryptocurrency
space, but those people have been prosecuted often, they've
been subpoenaed when things have happened, but I don't
necessarily want to just apply the old rules or make rules up
out of nowhere. Just based on ideas we'd have I
I much prefer the regulatory sandbox approach that you're
describing. Let it mature a little bit.
One of the great analogies I've heard for this is Imagine like
the internet starting and you had to come up with all the
rules for the internet before it had even mature.
Richard Wright would that have the late it would ever have
become the thing that it is now right?
What did I don't even know? It's probably terrible.
Yeah, it would be terrible. If they had tried to regulate it
with rules from the 1950s, they wouldn't be able to imagine what
it's going to be like. But if you know, no one wants to
work in an industry with no rules.
But if you establish the rules from the, from the bottom up
within the industries, among the experts actually involved,
creating rules is also a discovery process.
It's not The discovery of innovation, its discovery of the
rules that go along with it and I don't cite as an example.
The rules that operate on the ocean and I'd kind of like to
write a book about this, that I'd kind of like to call the
stateless half of the earth about.
There's regulatory bodies, there's food safety bodies,
there's all sorts of decentralized, there's safety
and for sirs that there's like 50 ship classification Societies
in the world that all compete to be the one to regulate the
Adding of ships. And it's not state-controlled at
all, it's completely free market.
And there's all sorts of complex rules that have developed on the
ocean that in a sort of decentralized way, which is what
we'd like to unleash on see studs.
Yeah. Whenever I think of maritime
law, I'm sure. Paul, you're the same to you.
Immediately think of Michael Bluth and Arrested Development.
Yeah, they can't prosecute you for treason out there.
That's right. Well, when you talk about
maritime law emerging, I know a decent amount about it.
Not too much, but I know the Hans Like league and the Baltic
was quite big. You'll like German trading
cities there, but this whole Corpus of law just emerged
through people having judges, make decisions and using those
as precedence, and it just sort of had a tendency to work rather
than legislators sitting around in the building and trying to
figure out the best way to do that and being lobbied and said
you had judges being like, no, this is the way that it works
and it's best. If we do it this way, is that
broadly how it works? Yes, it was created by judges
over time and also even will the Han Giada klieg.
That's certainly true. But also created among
Merchants, where we need some means of getting along with as
an accepted set of rules that we can all agree on so we can all
do business together and when the people making the rules are
incentivized to have the disputes be resolved as quickly
as possible. You often end up with like this
term, the fluidity of rulemaking and Rapid Evolution where bad
rules go away. But rules that people like tend
to stay and there's a whole complex way of describing that,
you know, once you kind of garokk Seasteading blue Frontier
as idea, you can kind of drill down into all the ways.
This is really great. You know, then it becomes well
why should French Polynesia other island nations be
interested in this Palace Joe. Well well so the problem of the
lack of innovation in governance is a deep problem in the world
but the other big problem in the world is sea level.
Change threatening Coastal nations in the specially island
nations around the world. French Polynesia is worried.
They're going to lose a third of their Islands by the end of this
century. At least have their water table,
severely threatened. So if you can go to Coastal and
island nations and proposed a way that they can organically
adapt to sea level. Rise affordably in exchange for
baby step experiments with C stands.
Where each step the risk of failure is absorbed by the
people building. The see, stead's not the country
itself and each success. The prosperity is shared
locally, then you can start this.
Scaling up of platforms that allow people to adjust to sea
level change that experiment with new ways of governing
ourselves. And we kind of step-by-step
affordably solve two of the biggest problems in the world,
which is the change in sea level, and the need for start-up
innovation in society. We always love every startup
that they combine two fields that are already complicated and
misunderstood we do Climate Change Plus blockchain.
You're like, uh, or you can do yours, is that pretty much the
same but if you can add Ai and machine learning and everything
else to do, and I always, we are a are, ya know, oftentimes,
you'll see like three or four appendages on to startups like
that and scary. Like, there's no way you're good
at probably even one of these. Maybe maybe two.
Yes, I always get it to where you say something fall.
But yeah, why don't you tell the listeners about your trip out to
French Polynesia and what you're up to it?
Blu Frontiers yeah. So last Our Ross came to me,
Rasta been working the blue Frontiers.
And he told me about this week that we Frontiers is hosting
where they were inviting people out to come, see Tahiti and
French Polynesia. And learn more about the project
and share ideas and kind of generally try to contribute to
the growth of seasteading and I was super fascinated.
I first came across seasteading in I want to say 2010 or 2011 or
so that event at ASU that Patrizio Oh cat?
No, no. I, I think I think somebody at
ASU might have told me about that and that's how I heard
about it. So I was interested in it from
the governance perspective. So as someone who sees the same
sort of issues with slow movement and policy change, and
Ill adaptations to the modern world, the idea of having a
sovereign floating cities that can experiment with different
ways of governing people, is really appealing to me, but
then, it wasn't until Ross told me about this.
So, A got your book Joe and I read it and everything clicked
into place for me. Because what I really liked
about your book was the way that you focused on all of these
people who were trying to make Innovations in the way of doing
things that would support seasteading that are trying to
solve environmental problems and so it wasn't, it wasn't
presented as like this is a crazy utopian fantasy of
Libertarians who just want to secede from their big
centralized countries. It's about this is technology
that can help solve major. All's we can clean up the
oceans. We can clean up the Earth while
providing all these other benefits, everything that you've
been talking about so far. So that was really appealing to
me and I applied for the week. I got it later that day.
I got on the phone with Randy hanken and we talked about it
for a little bit. He was like, all right I told
him about what we were doing with Nori.
He said okay this is great. You should come.
So in October last year, I went out with I think there were
seven eight or nine people can change throughout the week.
There about eight to ten of us participating in this and the
blue frontieres team took us On tours are in Tahiti.
We did several different cultural Explorations with
locals learning a lot about Polynesian culture which was
super fascinating. And we went to Maria and to
Anatole TT Aurora and I got to see different areas.
We didn't go too much further away just because the French
Polynesian Islands are like so so spread apart.
Is it something like the Polynesia occupies the same area
of land that like the landmass of Europe does its enormous
about the same size as Western Europe?
Yeah, it's huge. So, we only went to the the
local Islands, something that you pointed out to me.
Joe. When we were there that I had
not occurred to me before. Was that Polynesians were?
We're always explorers and Tahiti was really like the
center of their exploration, how they moved around to the
different islands of Polynesia. The last island group, that last
archipelago that they got, to was the islands of Hawaii and
the idea of exploring and going, not knowing what they're going
to find and going out there and looking for.
Some new land where there is some opportunity for them.
It seasteading makes perfect sense.
It just extends, this is just like the next phase of
exploration in trying to find the new opportunity.
And so now we're making new islands and that really like
stuck with me and I found a super interesting on a more
personal like selfish level and how Nori can benefit from this,
the idea of harvesting kelp and growing kelp and then just
basically dumping it over the side of the ocean, letting that
sink to the bottom as a carbon Sink is that would sort of
collectively fall under the name of blue carbon.
There's a lot of research being done to this and we could see
that as a methodology that we would support to do and that
could be a beneficial thing for inhabitants to see says to do
that. Like we could provide this sort
of financial mechanism for them to grow kelp, you know, take
some of it for food and nutrition and take some of it
and just throw it over the side of the island and let it sink.
And you doing multiple things at once.
That was kind of the Start of the trip and how interesting it
was. So this is like a dream come
true for me because I you know, when I was discovering this
you're putting in the book with a sense of why don't people know
about this. I have to write about this so
the actual entrepreneurs can go out there and do it.
But yes that that vision of how aquaculture whether it's seaweed
or its fish that you could actually, you know, chop it up
and drop it to the ocean floor. If you're looking to remove
carbon from the ocean and the atmosphere you can get carbon
credits for this or whatever. But It would essentially be out
of the biosphere for 100 million years.
I mean, it would drop down below where photosynthesis can reach
and this would be a way of you know, restorative fuel.
Restorative eating a whole restore of environmentally
restorative industry. My other favorite thing about
growing kelp is that if you do it in coastal areas, where large
amounts of Agriculture have taken place growing, the kelp
can help clean up the excess phosphorus and nitrogen runoff
that's come into this coastal areas.
That's choking the life out of the coasts.
It's you've got fertilizer built into the water for free to grow
this color and it's cleaning up this thing that these chemicals
that are sort of toxic. Yes.
And this is the actual vision of our actual Engineers who will be
building the floating islands in French Polynesia.
And or in countries around the world which is to absorb the
nutrient runoff that you know, comes off of Agriculture and
absorbing it with seaweed and different kinds of algae and
seaweed that would take out the heavy metals.
And there's a, there's a whole Discovery process around that
and you could actually restore Coastal environments.
And this really resonates for me, I wrote a whole book
designed for adults and children about the Marine Mammal Center
here in California. It's called call to the rescue.
And it's all about how marine mammals are affected negatively
by nutrient pollution and how that gives rise to mass die-offs
and the negative environmental effects.
And so we always think like, oh, we have to prevent people from
doing. This we have to stop fertilizer
from running into the Seas. I don't know how we're going to
do that but if you think of that all that nutrient, what's called
nutrient pollution is a resource.
You know Buckminster Fuller said that pollution is simply
resources. We're not using and you can
completely restore all those Coastal environments by
absorbing all that. Nutrient, runoff and carbonic
acid and turning it back into food and fuel.
If blue 21 has their Vision fulfilled, we're actually at the
buck minute, Sarah, Fuller Institute, yesterday and did a
podcast over there. Well, you with Amanda?
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. You know her.
I'm a fan. Your fan?
Yeah. I met her once or twice.
Yeah. Hmm.
You Tech burners and involved in environmental Pursuits.
I feel like it probably isn't the biggest Community or maybe
it is. Maybe it is that everyone.
Is that all 60,000. There's a lot.
Yeah, it's a sizeable community. Yeah, well very nice.
That's there's a lot to be excited about their from
multiple angles to and there's any time you can take a waste
product and turn it into You an economic input.
I've never heard that Buckminster Fuller quote, but I
love it because I had this one of the themes that I come back
to you constantly here, or you can check that, take that
problem. And then all of a sudden, it
becomes a solution and it's economically viable.
There's no reason for anyone to fight over.
It's not like you need to like no longer pollute or no longer
fertilize your crop. So I gotta, you can still do
that. We just found a way where we can
make it all work together. Yeah, that's the best kind of
solution, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, Fuller literally
said pollution, our resources were letting use because we're
ignorant of their value. And, you know, blue 21 working
through blue Frontiers has this concept of cyclical metabolism
that we could create the Societies in harmony with how
the nature itself works, and it's just like an extension of
nature itself, which is what it should be.
Are they the the ones growing the fish and then using the oil
from the fish to convert that into fuels, or is that a
different group? So, in the book, they were
called Delta sink. Uh-huh.
The first Aqua Pura is you meet our Curry.
Should Pesce Andrew to graph who are the co-founders of Delta
sink. Their first language is Dutch
and I think after a while, they didn't realize that having sink
in the thing for your floating city supposed to be S YN C.
So they change themselves to Blue 21.
It's sort of like a different entity and those very people
featured in the book are now the people that are going to be
building the First floating islands, almost definitely.
Well we're throwing out Buckminster Fuller quotes.
I have this sticker. That Amanda gave us yesterday
just like to say it again. Then you never change things by
fighting the existing reality to change something build.
A new model that makes the existing model Obsolete.
And I think that really resonates, not only for what
Nori is doing. But what for blue, Frontiers has
trying to do because there's an entirely new model that we can
build here. And just want to take this back
a little bit to the theme of this podcast which is the
reversing climate change podcast.
And I know we're also the floating architecture,
engineering and design series of the blue Frontiers podcast.
And those Things together. Okay, we can definitely play a
role in reversing climate change and on the one hand, you're
helping islands that are most affected by sea level rise
adapt. But you're also enabling that
adaptation to be regenerative to the health of the planet.
And so, when we think about climate change, being a function
of too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and excess in the
ocean where now oceans are acidifying and coral, reefs are
dying and all sorts of fish populations or just having weird
trends that we never saw before. Because Of how the planet is out
of kilter. We now can see a movement that
doesn't just say. Okay, we're going to go live and
kind of save ourselves by floating at sea, but let's,
let's float it. See, let's live in a way that
restores the health of this planet and let's play a role in
innovating to get that health of the planet.
There more quickly in a way that makes the system's today kind of
obsolete, right? So yeah, because it's not just
that these Floating islands are being built to serve, the needs
of people in places that are going to be impacted by sea
level rise. Like the technologies that are
developed part of this like, are going to be beneficial to all of
humanity and it's just a matter of figuring out the business
model that can enable the growth of this.
There has to be some sort of value created for some people
willing to pay for that value. But the Technologies and things
we learn from that like that can be applied in so many more ways.
Yes. And seasteading is not an
escape. It's a solution to the problems
that land people. Are about and that's why most
people are pursuing it. I'll and people landlubbers we
preferred Terrence yes land folk.
But yes that quote Buckminster Fuller, build a new model that
makes the existing model obsolete.
That's one of the first things route go to graph said to me
co-founder of Delta sinking blue 21 when I first met him to talk
to him. I mean it's like they were
independently conceiving of seasteading over there in the
Netherlands without calling it that in every dimension.
And they actually built a floating Pavilion in Rotterdam,
and it's like, oh my God, they're like really getting
started. So we partnered with them, to
take the next step, and what's next, what's coming for blue?
Frontiers what's coming for blue?
Frontiers is, hopefully, we'll get lots of attention for the
see coin. Hopefully, we will, we've
fulfilled all our obligations to French Polynesia and we hope
that they approve of our legislation for the see Zone,
which takes the best practices of the 4000, special economic
zones around the world. The world and instantiates them
on one. Can you explain his own?
What a special economic zone is special economic zone.
I think of, as legal Islands, created within countries with
special exemptions from certain regulations and certain taxes in
order to create Prosperity. I think of the first one is
being Hong Kong. The next one is being Shenzhen
and, you know, over the last 50 or 60 years, these have been so
successful little miniature modest governance startups with
Some different rules and some exemptions created within
countries have been so successful that more than 4,000
have proliferated across the world in like 70% of the world's
countries at this point. This is the most momentous
political revolution in the world and nobody knows about it
because it's completely peaceful and it's from the inside out and
Tom W Bell writes about it in depth in his book.
Your next government question, mark from nation states to
stateless Nations and he is one of the Key legal, advisers at
Blue Frontiers and he sort of designed the see Zone, which is
The Next Step Beyond the special economic zone.
So it's kind of like taking the best, the greatest hits of
regulations and rules from various countries and implying
them on the sea zone and basically it's strongly inclined
towards personal and business Freedom.
This, we're going to choose a peer group of countries among
the most peaceful and prosperous countries on Earth.
They're going to decide which rules and regulations are going
to be on the sea zone. If they all agree that rule is
necessary, then that will be on the sea zone.
If even one of those countries prospers without that rule then
you can veto that rule. So you only have, you know, the
rules that are demonstrated to work and be necessary in the
most prosperous Nations on Earth.
So again we're also on a legal Frontier, so it's not a willy
nilly we're going out there and just starting all over.
We're taking best practices that already exists strongly inclined
towards Freedom. We're only going to use the Ones
that have been demonstrated to work and we're going to throw
out the ones that aren't. And we're going to let these
societies emerge from the bottom up developing their own rules.
We're going to something called the Seas own authority, that
administrates these rules. It's going to be under the
protection of one of the most peaceful and prosperous.
Although one of the most peaceful countries on Earth,
which is French Polynesia, which in turn will be a part of
France. So there's going to be these
little concentric circles going down to the seed zone.
So it's all very just a perfect little minimal viable product
for the See said that will be able to scale up and become the
C stands on the high seas in the future.
Now, when is that when one can or you relocate 2021?
I expect you guys on piracy stead.
Well, at least come visit because we need to I really like
Dory. I start drooling if I hear it.
Who knows? I mean, I think this could scale
up if the we have the first few examples that our people can
point at it and look at it and it's beautiful and they gasp but
it's made of something that's different and its International
Unity. And it's a an incubation Hub,
showing all these blue Technologies, wave Technologies
and people get a view of what the future of sustainable
floating societies is like, I think that will have such an
effect that other countries worried about sea level rise
will reach out to us. And I think getting these first
few examples is really important and then we can scale up really
fast and proliferate. Thousands of them all over the
world in the decades ahead. I hope it's pretty exciting and
will keep watching this too. See what happens.
It's there's a lot of moving parts to it to, I working on the
team. There's people that are working
on the Food Systems or people who are working on the
architecture. Clearly, you can't have
something that would not be seaworthy.
And then also, there's a huge legal component to it too.
And then there's a blockchain component to.
It seems like you're innovating or trying to in multiple areas
and keeping things real Lively. Yeah, it turns out, that
founding a totally new civilization from the ground up
or the water up is even more complicated than it sounds.
Yes, but fortunately, you could have said the same thing about,
you know, my iPhone like the people creating the iPhone.
For instance, couldn't imagine the apps that were going to be
on it and which ones would go out of business which ones would
work? I don't know, I'm just providing
the platform and then all the innovators can Rush In And
compete to serve people the best.
And that's how I end up with all these marvelous little apps that
I hope in the future will be governance apps and I think the
the Innovations are in principle on Detectable that will emerge
from floating societies. I think we share that in common
with you. We see ourselves the same way
that we build this platform where people can pay for carbon
removal and all sorts of different methodologies, people
can show up with and test out and try to prove that these are
valid and are removing carbon dioxide and other people will be
willing to pay for them. And who knows what are the
different ways that people could do that but they aren't doing it
right now? Yeah, Joe McKinney the one of
the cofounders of the startup Society Institute, he convinced
me Live on his podcast to refer to myself as he refers them to
himself as an exit. Aryan.
So if you have to choose an ideology like the inside someone
who only eats eggs, all right, we need to rethink that name the
principle of exit that the fundamental mechanism that works
is that if people don't like something, they can leave.
And so the people providing the service have to please them.
So, as long as you can choose voluntarily among all these
different Services than the best options, Emerge because the
innovators will have to compete with you and we just we don't
have that with our societies. Now I can't just quit the United
States and leave if I it's not that easy.
Now you have to pay them a ton of money to do so and they keep
raising the exit text. If people want to renounce their
citizenship it gets more and more expensive and more onerous.
Yeah. There's a very good book that I
read. It's very short, you probably
read exit voice and loyalty, right?
No all my friends have read it and they've all argued about it
with me so much. I feel like I don't need to read
it. Yeah, yeah.
It's a pretty quick read, but you probably just know these
ideas. Anyways, the general point of it
is that there's two main ways to change a system.
You can either have voice in which case you get to vote or
complain to the manager at a restaurant.
The alternative is exit, in which case, you never go to the
restaurant again or you just leave the country and you
emigrate somewhere. And there are there are
trade-offs, both of these approaches but the sea setting
in general seems like a very strong exit potential.
Which in turn might actually encourage voice that they know
that you can't really believe very easily.
Wouldn't they be more likely to resort to voice?
Rather than exit. Yes.
I mean I my wife is exercising her voice at the IRS right now
and not getting much of a response.
I have registered complaints at the post office and so I have a
voice at the post office. It's somehow it just doesn't
work because I can't just take my business and go somewhere
else in the people providing the service don't care.
But at other services I use, if I express a complaint to just
about anybody at Starbucks or something.
They're so worried about a Yelp review, my voice has no power
Our because I hold in my hand the threat of switching to
Pete's. That's all it takes.
What I love about this is that if you're trying to change the
world in the marketplace, the market of providing a service
compels bad people to behave. Well and if you're trying to
change the world through Politics, the political process,
compels good people to became more corrupt in order to
succeed. And, you know, a great example
of this was in between writing the C.
Book proposal for Publishers and waiting for it to sell at a
publisher. I took a job at a lamp store
where the boss was one of the most, bitter meanest, guys I've
ever met. Just very, really bitter me.
No, man, you really had problems, but when he was in the
presence of his customers, he was so serviceable and so
knowledgeable. And so helpful and always
customers just thought he was the greatest guy, but then to
everyone else, who was just such a mean guy, but because it was
in his interest to be a good guy in.
ER, to sell his products, he was compelled to become a better
person because all his customers had the power of exit, they can
go to the other lamp store. Do you want to say her line,
Ross? No, no, I love that.
Not all. I want to do it.
I always I always say it. I just got faded into doing it.
When you have when you can appeal to people selfish desires
and the system turns that into pro-social ends that's like the
ultimate outcome of policy. So, you have this guy who
doesn't really care about these people but he's getting paid to.
So he's going to behave. Himself.
Yes, we're all better off as a result and if we didn't have
that he'd probably just be a cranky old guy, get off my lawn.
Yeah, young at the mailman. Yeah, that's that's who he was
actually. He was the mailman.
Yeah, it was really. Yeah, I mean, if we can agree
that human nature exists, you don't even need to say whether
we're selfish or not selfish. We can just say that I care
about myself and my family and my friends, more than I care
about my allies. And then I care about My allies
more than I care about my general tribe and then I care
about my try more than I care about strangers.
So if you give me power, I'm always going to choose my family
and friends and the people who got me in this position over
strangers because that's just my priority.
That's the way we're built. So what compels people to devote
themselves to serving strangers? It's when they're only Power.
If I can pursue my self-interest, through providing
things for them. This is the classic I associated
with high. But it's been all over the place
that there's a, there's a micro order, that's the family and
your friends, you don't need market, economics, working in
there. We can treat each other.
Well, just by being altruistic, but when it comes to the
extended order, you can't really hold people accountable through
social norms that you only see once like it is coming to your
shop, you have to use the discipline of the market of
profit and loss of someone actually paying you for a
service. That's just the one of the one
of the better ways to organize a giant mass Society.
Yes, and governance itself should be like This a politician
shouldn't just be afraid that I might vote for the only other
option and the politicians should be afraid that.
I'm just going to take my taxes and go to another place or
choose another form of governance.
And that's, you know, credit cards are from a governance and
they hustled to please me and we can go on and on, with this,
which California was better at this.
But the big States like California and New York,
especially they treat demand for living.
There is inelastic, that doesn't really change branded people are
leaving California on. Her places like Texas that have
a booming economy and lower taxes.
But I don't feel like they respond very well to attracting
people. It's like everything's expensive
here. There's high taxes, and it isn't
that well-governed. We have the fifth biggest
economy in the world. We have Hollywood and Silicon
Valley yet, half the time, like the, the books aren't balanced
at all, and it seems like we fight over everything.
It's kind of a kooky place to live, but they treat you a sort
of like you want to be here. You want the beach Right?
Alright, too bad, right? What you got the deal with.
So if I have a monopoly over this This section of the one of
the largest economies in the world I can just grow and
provide more services and tax people worse than worse.
But notice how it's like, people are starting to leave
California. It used to be the place where
people go and now it's a place where people are leaving largely
because it's poorly governed and we already have towns.
Deading and City stating people can switch among towns and
cities in the more choice. You have the better service
gets. This is great.
I think we should probably end it, but I could see why your
podcast with blue. Frontieres went for two and a
half hour. Is because I think that we could
probably do the same. Just, yes, dripping.
Rappin hanging out. Adequately, Savannah July's,
though. I got the full, you know,
wololo, well of won't allow from H Empires.
When you would convert enemy units with a priest.
They just go. Whoa, little.
Well, I got this evangelized. Yes.
Well, holy city and realized you guys, that was just an
appetizer. I think I think my conversation
with this evangelist, Natalie Mesa Garcia.
I think we went for seven hours. I did it down and Then.
So she just took the first two and a half hours and made that a
podcast. But we thought about you make a
whole audio book out of that. Yeah, we're interested in the
same things so we just kept going deeper and deeper, do all
this stuff and sort of. And you know, it's just all
sorts of interesting ideas about spontaneous order and systems
developing from parts that don't communicate with each other.
And so on, it's really interesting.
Yeah, there are certain people where I find out what they're
interested in and then I say they should be cease titters and
then they become cease dinners. One of them was Natalie.
Another one was Tom Bell. You can just tell by How they
talk about things that they will be interested in seasteading?
So yeah. Well thanks for being here, Joe.
Thanks for having us in your home.
Yes. Thanks for being here in my
home. How long can we stay?
Depends on what you say about my home, live on the air?
It's beautiful. Okay, you can stay.
Thanks Joe.