Bill Nye the Sneasel Guy
Well-Known Member
Where would the money for this huge project come from, again..? Modern cities aren't cheap, especially not if you're expecting them to float.
Not really.
One. Food. A little difficult to come by on a floating city.
Two. Water. Yes, you would be surrounded by it, but the salt water would have to be purified, (by evaporation and re-condensation) and that's energy consuming and highly impractical.
Those could be imported, but that would be tricky, and I don't know how ready countries would be to do it, especially with the economy like it*is.
Three. Haven't various forms of government already been experimented with? When people revolt, they often establish a different form of government.
I've got to run, so I'll just spit out my last concern for now: what impacts will it have on the ocean?
I'll be back later. (hopefully)
It's really not necessary. There's plenty of undeveloped and vacant land. And really, the excuse of just wanting to get away from government is silly, as there will always be some kind of government and administration in action. Society can't thrive for long under anarchy.
I honestly just see seasteading as more of a novelty. One that's probably too expensive for what it's worth.
Where would the money for this huge project come from, again..? Modern cities aren't cheap, especially not if you're expecting them to float.
Okay, so the thing about importing food is, wouldn't that mean outside influence? The countries where the food is coming from could impact the city a lot. They'd have the control! And the imports would have to be consistent. If the country giving the food was having hard times, well, then the city's out of luck!
And with water in underground tubes ... is it just me, or is that a little too far down? It's possible, but it would be hard and costly.
Even if these two were possible, the city would still be dependent on the outside world, which seems ironic.
And as many people have pointed out, if there's a storm, the people there would be stuck. Get a bad enough storm, and no planes or boats can get in, and people go hungry. Yes, they city would stock up food, but still, it's a risk.
And even in good weather, the city's still pretty isolated.
Many people are currently investing in floating cities and the best way to build them. Amsterdam is actively working on constructing a floating city, which surprisingly is only expected to be 2 billion dollars.And if someone, just one someone, manages to take an axe to whatever's supporting the city, keeping it from sinking, then everyone goes down.
What would the city be made of? Wood? That could flip easily enough, with a bunch of people bustling around. Styrafoam? It would break off bit by bit, and a whole city would dump a lot of styrafoam pretty fast.
How would it be stable? An anchor on any kind of rope, metal or regular, could wear out, rust or be eaten through. Posts? Well, you'd need some seriously thick posts to be able to go that far down and withstand the current without breaking. Just floating? It could tip, and if it's a city, you'll have a bunch of people too young, too old or otherwise unable to swim and tip the whole city back up. Not to mention the damage and pollution done if everything not secured was lost in the ocean.
How far is too far? Becuase, if the original idea is to work, they'd have to be far enough to not have any influence from that coastal city. There's also the chance of the city later being incorporated into the country it's near by. And if say the city's right off the coast of San Francisco. Well, that would mean that mostly, if not only, Americans would move there, right? So the point is lost.
Fair enough.Yes, I know, for something as big as this, there is always going to be a risk, especially on the first try. I personally just don't think it's worth the risk.
^I know that my second post was quite long and you probably didn't read all of it, because I talked about those things, especially the food, but I'll add that we as humans shouldn't be supporting these long routes that food takes if we want to protect the environment.
Your point about water and alternate energy coming from the waves is very good. That is definitely worth investing in, and if the energy was enough to actually make enough ocean water drinkable to sustain an entire city, well that would be amazing. But ... I can't help but think of other things that energy could go to, the things we currently use coal and such for. And I don't like the idea of dumping all that salt back into the ocean. At least in the area of the seastead, people would change the salinity of the water, given time.
As for where the money would come from, you're right. I think this debate is supposed to be about whether we (Sppf users) think that seasteading is worth investing
So? Why should a privately owned seastead care about America's problems?America (and other countries) have enough problems on land due to * economy, a Dwindling Infrastructure and pollution.
Please, elaborate.We need to put or money in solving those things instead of something that is not neccessary.
According to your first point about America and other countries having tons of problems of their own, the more sensible thing to do would be looking for solutions that work. Not "sucking it up". You can only suck up so much **** before vomiting everywhere.Hurricanes/Typhoons would entirly destroy everything since on sea almost nothing would be grounded. It's not the sensible thing to do. It's better to just suck it up on land.
but probably won't pan out.
#1 food. Most of the seastead must be built under the water to grow algae and small fish
#2 Water. Harder but remeber it does rain as much in the ocean as on land. We just need a way to store it.
#4 impact on ocean. If done right it can slowly heal the oceans by producing more algea then needed.
They also thought the idea of connecting computers together through networks was crazy, let alone use it for anything else other than military or academic purposes.
In this world there are always masses of ignorant people voicing antagonism for what they can't comprehend due to their limited knowledge and thinking on a subject, and just the overall natural repulsion for anything that's too different for them.
Since you obviously have a vast breadth of knowledge that poor intellectual peasants such as myself lack, convince me. What makes seasteading such a breathtakingly important idea that we need to get on board with right now, up there with the Internet? Why should money be thrown into this?
The solution is to stop giving aid to countries to those countries with eternal problems, and invest it in new forms of habitation. Even though to us it doesn't seem like a necessity now. You never know its true use until its developed and experimented upon.
Once again, you are trying to bash something you don't comprehend. Uneconomical, unsustainable? According to what evidence, or only your guess?