Category Archives: Seasteading

Its not every day you find a Getty Images picture of the cruise ship youre writing a story about that also has an awesome paddleboarding dog in it. Photo: Brendon Thorne (Getty Images)

We here at The A.V. Club would never suggest that cryptocurrency as a whole is functionally a scam, one in which various participants take turns being con artists and dupes, all racing to be the next person to happily burn large portions of the planets resource in pursuit of a classic Get-Rich-Quick scheme barely obscured by a modern patina of memes and Reddit-friendly libertarianism. We would never suggest that.

Anyway: The Guardian has a fascinating piece this week about the Satoshi, the first hypothetically independent living community operated by a bunch of gullible get-rich dopes burning untold resources on a woefully optimistic scheme powered by their own purported genius who just happened to also be a bunch of cryptocurrency guys. That is, its the story of the efforts to operate a crypto-run cruise ship where people would live, forever, free from taxes, and also the burden of being allowed to cook their own food, because it was a cruise ship. It is, in case you were wondering,exactly as weird and circuitous and frankly dumb a story as all those words in the description make it sound

Written by Sophie Elmhirst, the article tracks the probably-inevitable collision between a trio of crypto dudes and the seasteading movement, the libertarian ethos that argues that the only possible freedom from all these dang governments that own all the dang land is to move out onto the ocean, and then, probably, drown. (Its the kind of theory floated by people who say stuff like Lets think of government as an industry, where countries are firms and citizens are customers! without snickering, to give you a mental picture.) Three such crypto-rich seasteaders ended up running one such venture off the coast of Panama, a few years ago and decided to goose things forward by buying a cruise ship on the cheap (COVID) in order to get some occupants on the books. (This, despite the fact that one of the tenets of the whole seasteading thing is that you can just pull anchor and float away if ad hoc governments start getting too restrictive, something typically seen as very difficult to do with an aft cabin thats two floors down from the lido deck.)

At the risk of venturing into spoiler territory, this was a terrible idea, with the Satoshinamed for the largely anonymous creator of Bitcointurning into a sort of elegantly crafted, floating metaphor for crypto itself: Kind of appealing from a distance, but ultimately disastrous to keep running, and financially ruinous for many involved. (There were also water slides.) At the same time, its a fascinating look at the kind of optimism that probably powers some version of the future, annoyinglyeven if, 99 times out of 100, its directed at trying to convince the Panamanian government that your cruise ship isnt actually a ship so that theyll let you dump your poop runoff without having to sail out into international waters.

You can read Elmhirsts whole story here.

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The story of the first "cryptocoin cruise ship" is exactly as weird and dumb as all those words imply - The A.V. Club

Good morning.

The federal government will take action to protect women in Texas trying to obtain an abortion in the wake of the strictest anti-abortion law in the US taking effect last week, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced on Monday.

The Department of Justice said it would not tolerate violence against anyone seeking abortion services in the state and that federal officials were exploring options to challenge the ban on almost all terminations, with the new state law also empowering the public to enforce it in a way critics decry as promoting vigilantism.

United Nations human rights monitors have strongly condemned the state of Texas, which they say violates international law by denying women control over their bodies and endangering their lives.

What did Garland say? He issued a statement that said the DoJ would protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services under a federal law known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (or Face) Act.

What did the UN say? Melissa Upreti, the chair of the UNs working group on discrimination against women and girls, condemned the Texas law, SB 8, as structural sex and gender-based discrimination at its worst.

The actor Michael K Williams, best known for his role as Omar Little in The Wire, has died at the age of 54.

Confirming his death to the Hollywood Reporter, Williamss representative said it was with deep sorrow that the family announces the passing of Emmy-nominated actor Michael Kenneth Williams. They ask for your privacy while grieving this unsurmountable loss.

Williams, who is believed to have been found dead at his home in New York, was also known for playing Albert Chalky White in the series Boardwalk Empire from 2010 to 2014. He received an Emmy nomination this year for the role of Montrose Freeman in the series Lovecraft Country, and had appeared in films including 12 Years a Slave and Inherent Vice.

David Simon, creator of The Wire, said on Twitter that he was Too gutted right now to say all that ought to be said. Michael was a fine man and a rare talent and on our journey together he always deserved the best words. And today those words wont come.

Actor John Cusack said Williams was an unbelievably talented artist and that his portrayal of Omar Little was among the greatest performances TV and film has ever seen.

Top Republicans under scrutiny for their role in the events of 6 January have embarked on a campaign of threats and intimidation to thwart a Democratic-controlled congressional panel that is scrutinizing the Capitol attack and opening an expanded investigation into Donald Trump.

Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee into the violent assault on the Capitol, in recent days demanded an array of Trump executive branch records related to the insurrection, as members and counsel prepared to examine what Trump knew of efforts to stop the certification of Joe Bidens election win.

House select committee investigators then asked a slew of technology companies to preserve the social media records of hundreds of people connected to the Capitol attack, including far-right House Republicans who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

What have the Republicans said? The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy decried the select committees investigation as a partisan exercise and said a Republican majority will not forget.

How did members of the committee react? Congressman Jamie Raskin said that he was appalled by McCarthys remarks, which he described as tantamount to obstruction of justice.

Joe Bidens administration is facing mounting pressure amid reports that several hundred people, including Americans, had been prevented for a week from flying out of an airport in northern Afghanistan.

Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of a small American NGO active in Afghanistan, said 600 to 1,300 people, including girls from her group, had been waiting near the Mazar-i-Sharif airport for as long as a week amid confusion involving the Taliban and US officials.

That number is understood to include 19 Americans, though none are with LeGrees group. Those waiting are being housed in various places in the city, she said.

Its been seven days and nothings moving, LeGree told AFP, adding that six chartered planes were waiting at the airport to evacuate what some officials are calling the NGO group.

The Taliban are simply not letting anything move, he said.

The education of hundreds of millions of children is hanging by a thread as a result of an unprecedented intensity of threats including Covid 19 and the climate crisis, says a report. As classrooms across much of the world prepare to reopen after the summer holidays, a quarter of countries most of them in sub-Saharan Africa have school systems that are at extreme or high risk of collapse, according to Save the Children.

In October 2020, three seasteading enthusiasts bought a 245-metre-long cruise ship called the Pacific Dawn. They planned to sail the ship to Panama, where they were based, and park it permanently off the coastline as the centrepiece of a new society trading only in cryptocurrencies. They hoped it would become home to people just like them: digital nomads, startup founders and early bitcoin adopters. It didnt work out.

In her 35-year career, Bassett seems to have done it all: stage, television, movies; drama, action, comedy, horror, sci-fi, documentaries, animation. She has played everything from civil rights icons and secret service bosses to triple-breasted circus freaks. I guess I am every woman, as Chaka [Khan] sings, its all in me, Bassett laughs. Coming from just about anyone else, this would seem like an immodest boast; with Bassett, it is almost a statement of fact.

Governments around the world gave 20% more in overseas aid funding to fossil fuel projects in 2019 and 2020 than to programmes to cut the air pollution they cause. Dirty air is the worlds biggest environmental killer, responsible for at least 4 million early deaths a year. But only 1% of global development aid is used to tackle this crisis, according to an analysis from the Clean Air Fund (CAF).

Want more environmental stories delivered to your inbox? Sign up to our Green Light newsletter to get the good, bad and essential news on the climate every week.

Nicolas Gentile, a 37-year-old Italian pastry chef, did not just want to pretend to be a hobbit he wanted to live like one. First, he bought a piece of land in the countryside of Bucchianico, near the town of Chieti in Abruzzo, where he and his wife started building their personal Shire from JRR Tolkiens fictional Middle-earth. Some time ago, I realised that books and films were no longer enough for me to satisfy my passion for the fantasy genre and, in particular, for the Lord of the Rings saga, Gentile said.

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First Thing: DoJ vows to protect women seeking abortions in Texas - The Guardian

Half a decade on, Brexit and Trump remain shorthand for the rise of right-wing populism and a profound unsettling of liberal democracies. One curious fact is rarely mentioned: the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Remain in 2016 had similar-sounding slogans, which spectacularly failed to resonate with large parts of the electorate: Stronger Together and Stronger in Europe. Evidently, a significant number of citizens felt that they might actually be stronger, or in some other sense better off, by separating. What does that tell us about the fault lines of politics today?

Conventional wisdom has it that cultural divisions now matter most, and that plenty of people feel they have nothing in common with liberal, supposedly globalist elites. Yet that idea is not only empirically dubious; it also uncritically adopts a cultural framing of political conflict that plays into the hands of the right, if not the far right. The divisions that threaten democracies are increasingly economically driven, a development that has been obscured by the rhetorical strategies of a right committed to plutocratic populism.

Democracies today face a double secession. One is that of the most privileged. They are often lumped together under the category of liberal cosmopolitan elites, which is an invective thrown around by populist leaders, but also a term employed by a growing number of pundits and social scientists. This designation is misleading in many ways. While it is true that certain elites are mobile, they are not necessarily cosmopolitan or liberal in any strong moral sense if by cosmopolitan we do not mean folks with the highest frequent flyer status but those committed to the idea that all humans stand in the same moral relation to each other, regardless of borders.

Value commitments are not necessarily related to travel patterns; the worlds most influential cosmopolitan philosopher, Immanuel Kant, never left his hometown Knigsberg. While plenty of wealthy people make a big show of international charity work, one would search in vain for advocates of what in political philosophy might possibly be called genuine global justice. And we should not forget that, in the 1990s and early 2000s, globalisation was justified not by emphasising its beneficial effects on the world but the advantages it would bestow on individual nations.

Economic and administrative elites still follow education and career paths that are distinctly national. My students at Princeton University might go to work for a multinational company and be posted overseas, but they cannot go anywhere they cannot simply decide, for instance, to join the French elite. It is of course flattering for academics and journalists to think that democracys fate is in their hands, and that if only liberal elites somehow cared more for white working-class men in the American Midwest or the north of England, all might be well.

The point is not that cultural elites are not important of course they are. The point is that simplistic divisions of society into anywheres and somewheres famously put forward by David Goodhart in The Road to Somewhere (2017) and endlessly repeated by liberals eager to flaunt their capacity for self-criticism systematically obscure that actual decision-making elites remain far more national and far less liberal than is commonly thought.

[See also:How Raymond Williams redefined culture]

Globalisation has not brought the end of nationalism but opportunities to retreat selectively from society something from which economic and financial elites (again, not particularly liberal in their views) have especially benefited. They appear to be able to dispense with any real dependence on the rest of society (though of course they still rely on police, halfway-usable roads, and so on). With the globalisation of supply chains and trade regimes, workers and consumers do not have to be in the same country, and, as a consequence of the shift away from mass conscript armies, one also does not depend on ones fellow citizens to serve as soldiers.

An openly avowed, though also quite cartoonish, version of this secession of the economically powerful is provided by the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel self-identifies as libertarian (and ended up not only as an adviser to Donald Trump but as one of the figures trying to adorn Trumpism with a philosophy). In a programmatic statement published in 2009, he wrote that in our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called social democracy. He put his hope in some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country. Since, alas, there appear to be few undiscovered countries, Thiel bet on cyberspace, outer space, and, in case none of those spaces work out, seasteading (as in: settling the oceans).

Thiels dismissive remarks about the demos provoked strong reactions in particular, his sentence that since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians have rendered the notion of capitalist democracy into an oxymoron. He later clarified that he did not advocate for disenfranchising citizens. Indeed, the whole point of his thinking was that the demos as such had to be written off as hopeless; the best one could do was to seek distance from ordinary folks or, put differently, secession.

Thiels pining for undiscovered countries corresponds with the sordid reality of transnational accounting tricks. As two distinguished economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman observe, US firms have in 2016 booked more than 20 per cent of their non-US profits in stateless entities shell companies that are incorporated nowhere, and nowhere taxed. In effect, they have found a way to make $100bn in profits on what is essentially another planet.

[See also:Penses by Bryan Magee]

These kinds of secessions are not undertaken by citizens of nowhere (the money does not really end up nowhere); nor does any of this have anything to do with cultural or moral cosmopolitanism, even if right-wing populists, ever ready to wage culture wars, portray things that way. But the populists critique does contain a kernel of truth: some citizens do take themselves out of anything resembling a decent social contract, for instance relying on private tutors and private security for their gated communities. In France, an astonishing 35 per cent of people claim that they have nothing in common with their fellow citizens.

Such a dynamic is not entirely new: writing about French aristocrats, the 18th-century political theorist the Abb Sieyes observed that the privileged actually come to see themselves as another species of man. In 1789, they discovered that they were not (just as some today will eventually discover that there are noundiscovered countries).

The other secession is even less visible. An increasing number of citizens at the lower end of the income spectrum no longer vote or participate in politics in any other way. In large German cities, for instance, the pattern is clear: poorer areas with high unemployment have much higher abstention rates in elections (in the centre of the old industrial metropolis of Essen it is as high as 90 per cent). This de facto self-separation is not based on a conscious programme in the way Thiels space (or spaced-out) fantasies are, and there is no undiscovered country for the worst-off. Tragically, such a secession becomes self-reinforcing: political parties, for the most part, have no reason to care for those who dont care to vote; this in turn strengthens the impression of the poor that theres nothing in it for them when it comes to politics.

***

How does all this relate to the rise of right-wing populism and todays threats to democracy? Like all parties, populist ones offer what the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu once called a vision of divisions: they provide, and promote, an interpretation of societys major political fault lines and then seek to mobilise citizens accordingly. That is not in itself dangerous. Democracy, after all, is about conflict, not consensus, or what James Mattis, Donald Trumps ill-fated secretary of defence, called fundamental friendliness (which, lamenting the lack of political unity in his country, he was sorely missing in the second decade of the 21st century).

The promise of democracy is not that we shall all agree, and it does not require uniformity of principles and habits, as Alexander Hamilton had it. Rather, it is the guarantee that we have a fair chance of fighting for our side politically and then can live with the outcome of the struggle, because we will have another chance in a future election. It is not enough to complain that populists are divisive, for democratic politics is divisive by definition.

The problem is that right-wing populists reduce all conflicts to questions of belonging, and then consider disagreement with their view automatically illegitimate (those who disagree must be traitors; Trumps critics were not so much wrong on merit as, according to his fans, un-American). Populism is not uniquely responsible for polarisation, but it is crucial to understand that its key strategy is polarisation. Right-wing populism seeks to divide polities into homogeneous groups and then insinuates that some groups do not truly belong or are fundamentally illegitimate.

In this world-view, instead of being characterised by cross-cutting identities and interests, politics is simplified and rendered as a picture of one central conflict of existential importance (along the lines of if the wrong side wins, we shall perish). Thus, disquiet about the double secession is channelled by right-wing populists into collective fear or even a moral panic that the country is being taken away from us. In the US in particular, that fear helps to distract from questions of material distribution; what the political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have called plutocratic populism combines relentless culture war with economic positions that are actually deeply unpopular even with conservative voters, but which are continuously obscured by conjuring up threats to the real that is, white, Christian America (or white Christian England, for that matter). While some Republicans speak out for a kind of working-class conservatism just as the Conservative Party has its advocates of red Toryism there is no way that the Republican Party in its present form will implement any such agenda. In this respect, Trump was typical: stoking the feelings of socio-economic-cum-cultural victimhood of his supporters, and then passing a tax cut of which 80 per cent went to the upper 1 per cent. While the jury is still out on Boris Johnsons levelling up agenda, the fact is that One Nation Toryism has also often remained mere talk.

***

Here, then, lies the gravest danger to democracy: in the face of what they perceive as an existential threat, citizens are more willing to condone breaches of democratic principles and the rule of law (it is easier, for instance, to portray judges as enemies of the people). The Yale political scientist Milan Svolik cites a revealing natural experiment in social science to make the point: on the eve of an election in Montana in 2017, the Republican candidate Greg Gianforte body-slammed a Guardian reporter. Plenty of people had already voted by absentee ballot; only those going to the polls on election day by which time three major Montana newspapers had withdrawn their endorsement of Gianforte could directly punish the GOP politician for his behaviour. And what happened? In highly partisan precincts, party loyalty trumped respect for democratic norms. Populists seek to deepen a central division in society and simplify it into a question of whether you are for or against the leader. Thus they make it more difficult for their supporters to put democracy and the rule of law above their partisan interests.

So how should liberals and the left fight back? For one thing, they should resist an uncritical adoption of the anywheres-versus-somewheres frame. Whats more, they should resist the mainstreaming of the far right, or racism lite, that some European social democrats think promises a revival of their electoral fortunes. Some point at Denmark and the mostly symbolic measures adopted by a nominally left-wing party to prove its toughness on immigration and Islamism. But, as the French economist Thomas Piketty and others have shown, most of those who abandoned social democratic parties did not defect to the far right. Instead, since the 1970s, they stopped going to the polls altogether.

Getting people to re-engage in politics is fiendishly difficult. But in their contrasting ways Boris Johnsons former chief advisor Dominic Cummings and the strategists of the Spanish left-wing upstart Podemos proved that it can be done. You can bring citizens to vote who appear to have checked out of the political system entirely, if you offer them an image of their interests and identities that they can recognise. There is Trumps talk of finding votes in the sense of election subversion, but there is also the genuinely democratic practice of finding votes by seeking out those who consider themselves abandoned. And, once again, there is nothing undemocratic about drawing clear lines of conflict: criticising other parties is not the same as calling them illegitimate, populist-style.

Any social democratic programme that seeks to re-engage voters must not be neoliberalism lite, in which deregulation is the default, along with low taxation and disciplining of workers through harsh incentives to accept more or less any job (all policies adopted by Gerhard Schrder, for instance). It must also involve a serious effort to explain which basic interests are shared by those who ceased participating altogether and those who abandoned social democratic parties for Green parties, or even the centre right (in some countries such as Germany).

It is not a mystery what these interests might be: most obviously, functioning national infrastructure and an education system that puts serious resources into helping the worst-off (the vast inequalities of existing systems, where wealthy parents can simply bring in more tutors, was cruelly demonstrated during the pandemic, when even affluent parents faced realities they had never confronted before).

It is not naive to think that Joe Biden might be providing the right model here. He has resisted getting mired in debates about cancelled childrens books, critical race theory, and other topics relentlessly promoted by right-wing culture warriors. Instead, he is making a surprisingly serious effort to address the secession at the top of society, going after tax avoidance. He is even trying to drag countries along which have made tax avoidance a national business model, and, for good measure, he might be able to drag the Thiels, Musks, Bezoses and Bransons of this world back down to earth.

It would be wrong, though, to conclude that liberals must disavow so-called identity politics and leave minorities to their fate (or at least their own devices). The most prominent movements of our time Black Lives Matter and #MeToo are not really about identity in any substantive sense; they are about claiming basic rights which others have long taken for granted. They are also not just about resentment at indignities, as Francis Fukuyama claims as if these were all emotional issues where narcissistic folks should simply pull themselves together. Nor are they just about abstract values, as Adrian Pabst recently charged in these pages. There is nothing abstract about not wanting to be shot by police or be harassed by powerful men.

***

Less obviously, it is also not true that claims by minorities are somehow more likely to lead to polarisation and irresolvable political conflicts. It is conventional wisdom that one can negotiate over material interests more easily than over identity, as trade unions and employers reliably did during the heyday of postwar European social democracy. For many there is also a seemingly self-evident lesson from recent years: if you dont want populist-authoritarian white identity politics, you should shut up about the identity of black and brown people, for otherwise you are simply providing more ammunition for populist race and culture warriors.

Yet identity and interests cannot be so neatly separated. That is true today, and, if we didnt suffer so badly from historical amnesia, we would not claim that things were all that different in the golden age of social democracy. Socialist parties never fought only for wage increases and better working conditions; they also struggled for dignity and collective respect. Think for instance of Red Vienna, made by socialists into a showcase for working-class culture and uplift during the interwar period.

[See also:The West isnt dying its ideas live on in China]

Even when conflicts are about identity, this does not mean that compromise and negotiation are automatically impossible. We do not necessarily all assume that there is an inner, true, unchanging self, as a romantic conception of identity would suggest. People are able to rethink their political commitments and what really matters in both private and collective life; what is regularly ridiculed by the right as woke today is only one example of how political self-perceptions and hence identities can change.

Conversely, it is far from obvious that conflicts over material interests can always be resolved in a rational, amiable manner. We have forgotten to what lengths the owners of concentrated wealth might go to defend themselves from claims to redistribution (and we are not fully aware of what they are already doing today: the political scientist Jeffrey Winters refers to expensive lawyers and accountants specialised in tax avoidance as a powerful wealth defence industry).

One reason why we have forgotten this is that no political leader has seriously tried to take anything from secessionists at the very top; Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Barack Obama were part of a long historical arc of neoliberalism in which some progressive change was possible but the basics of the Reagan-Thatcher revolutions were never seriously questioned. In the United States, the Republican Party has been radicalised in recent years and is bent on undermining democracy through voter suppression and election subversion even though, economically, there hasnt been much of a threat to its backers yet. That is an ominous sign of what reaction a genuine liberal commitment to addressing the double secession might provoke.

Jan-Werner Mller is professor of politics at Princeton University. His most recent book is Democracy Rules (Allen Lane)

Continued here:

Beyond the culture wars - New Statesman

In 2017, the Floating Island Project in French Polynesia gained a lot of momentum when The Seasteading Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of French Polynesia. Our partners in the seasteading community formed Blue Frontiers to develop the project.

During the election that year, a small minority of French Polynesians spread misinformation about the project to discredit the President, douard Fritch. Despite the apparent opposition, the President easily won re-election. The political fighting did cause the Floating Island Project to be postponed indefinitely. A major crash in cryptocurrency that year did not help. Remaining funds for the project were returned.

Seavangelesse Nathalie Mezza-Garcia gave a presentation about the lessons learned from the Floating Island Project. You can read a transcript of her presentation on the Seaphia website.

We at The Seasteading Institute certainly know how risky it is to place ones hope in the political process. While this particular project was not completed, we gained many supporters and connections who are working on related seasteading projects in other locations. Blue Frontiers, in particular, has been in contact with other nations interested in special governance frameworks.

Follow this link:

Active Projects | The Seasteading Institute

This energetic and enthusiastic book gives a fascinating glimpse of the blue revolution to come, as human beings experiment with more sustainable ways of managing the biology of the sea and experiment with more sustainable ways of living and governing ourselves as well, free from the constraints of land-based governments. -- Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything

Really disruptive, definitely visionary, and even more proof thattomorrowwill look nothing like today. Seasteading is a grand adventure in sustainability and possibility and its definitely a trip worth taking! -- Steven Kotler, author of The Rise of Superman, and coauthor of Bold and Abundance

"Seasteading provides some thought-provoking visions of the future. Messrs. Quirk and Friedman introduce us to some very interesting people experimenting with some very interesting technologies, all having to do with living and working on the sea. -- Shlomo Angel The Wall Street Journal

Seasteading is an enormous opportunity for humanity. Not only will these sea-based communities be able to try new sciences and technology . . . they will allow new forms of community with a fresh start, and an ability to experiment as to form. . . . Anyone willing to work for a living can come and go from a seastead. People can finally be citizens of the world. -- Timothy Draper, founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Passionate and convincing. The idea of individual sovereignty could finally come true with floating ocean cities. -- Titus Gebel, Founder & CEO of Free Private Cities Ltd.

Today a new set of futurists is envisioning the next iteration of the floating city. . . . Quirk and Friedmans book also serves as a manifesto for the movement. -- Rachel Riederer The New Republic

Patri Friedman founded The Seasteading Institute in 2008 with seed funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel. He also founded the annual Ephemerisle floating festival. Friedman, the grandson of economist Milton Friedman, currently works at Google, runs a micro-venture capital fund, and lives with his family in San Jose, California. Visit him at Seasteading.org.

See the rest here:

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the ...

The Gulf of Fonseca, bordering three Central American nations, was chosen as a test case for the suitability of the design for protected, territorial waters this location selected was based loosely on the criteria we used for selecting host nations, such as proximity to cities and existing infrastructure, and location within an attractive climate, outside the path of hurricanes. However, site selection for this study should not be interpreted as suggesting that we have an agreement to develop a floating city in the Gulf of Fonseca. In a location like this, DeltaSync reports that the platforms could be completely solar-powered, and that this would in fact be more cost-effective than diesel generation, even including the costs of battery storage and distribution via micro-grid. This concept also assesses a scalable method of financing a breakwater, which could eventually surround the city and allow it to move out to the open ocean. Mobility of the individual modules is key from the perspective of guaranteeing autonomy for the city in the event that the relationship with a particular host nation no longer suits either party, the platforms could detach from their moorings and float to a different location. Modularity and mobility also enable dynamic geography and empower citizens of the city to rearrange into more desirable configurations as the population grows and evolves. While more in-depth engineering research is required, the preliminary analysis suggests that concrete platforms in the 50 x 50 meter dimensions strike the best balance between cost, movability, and stability in the waves of the representative region. Future research includes verifying the findings in DeltaSyncs report and honing the assumptions off of which the design is based.

See original here:

Floating Island Project | The Seasteading Institute

BANGKOK Thai authorities have raided a floating home in the Andaman Sea belonging to an American man and his Thai partner who sought to be pioneers in the seasteading movement, which promotes living in international waters to be free of any nations laws.

Thailand's navy said Chad Elwartowski and Supranee Thepdet endangered national sovereignty, an offense punishable by life imprisonment or death.

It filed a complaint against them with police on the southern resort island of Phuket. Thai authorities said they have revoked Elwartowskis visa.

Elwartowski said in an email Thursday that he believes he and Supranee also known as Nadia Summergirl did nothing wrong.

"This is ridiculous," he said in an earlier statement posted online. "We lived on a floating house boat for a few weeks and now Thailand wants us killed."

The couple, who have gone into hiding, had been living part-time on a small structure they said was anchored outside Thailands territorial waters, just over 12 nautical miles from shore. They were not there when the navy carried out their raid on Saturday.

The Thai deputy naval commander responsible for the area said the project was a challenge to the country's authorities.

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"This affects our national security and cannot be allowed," Rear Adm. Wintharat Kotchaseni told Thai media on Tuesday. He said the floating house also posed a safety threat to navigation if it broke loose because the area is considered a shipping lane.

Seasteading has had a revival in recent years as libertarian ideas of living free from state interference such as by using crypto-currency including Bitcoin have become more popular, including among influential Silicon Valley figures such as entrepreneur Peter Thiel. Elwartowski, an IT specialist, has been involved in Bitcoin since 2010.

Several larger-scale projects are under development, but some in the seasteading community have credited the Andaman Sea house with being the first modern implementation of seasteading.

"The first thing to do is whatever I can to help Chad & Nadia, because living on a weird self-built structure and dreaming of future sovereignty should be considered harmless eccentricities, not major crimes," Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer who heads The Seasteading Institute, said on his Facebook page.

The floating two-story octagonal house at the center of the controversy had been profiled and promoted online by a group called Ocean Builders, which touted it as a pilot project and sought to sell additional units.

The group describes itself as "a team of engineering focused entrepreneurs who have a passion for seasteading and are willing to put the hard work and effort forward to see that it happens."

In online statements, both Elwartowski and Ocean Builders said the couple merely promoted and lived on the structure, and did not fund, design, build or set the location for it.

"I was volunteering for the project promoting it with the desire to be able to be the first seasteader and continue promoting it while living on the platform," Elwartowski told The Associated Press.

"Being a foreigner in a foreign land, seeing the news that they want to give me the death penalty for just living on a floating house had me quite scared," Elwartowski said. "We are still quite scared for our lives. We seriously did not think we were doing anything wrong and thought this would be a huge benefit for Thailand in so many ways."

Asked his next step, he was more optimistic.

"I believe my lawyer can come to an amicable agreement with the Thai government," he said.

Associated Press journalist Tassanee Vejpongsa contributed to this report.

Continued here:

This is why the Thai navy busted a seasteading American

A type of ocean claim

Ocean colonization is the theory of extending society territorially to the ocean by permanent settlements floating on the ocean surface and submerged below, employing offshore construction.[1]

Ocean Colonisation

The theory of developing permanent dwellings in the ocean, both floating and sunken, to allow permanent human settlement. This idea was first suggested by Friedman and Gramlich, and has been researched since the early 1990s.

The process of extending space available for humans to inhabit involves developing seasteads such as artificial islands, floating rigid structures, extreme-sized cruise ships or even submerged structures, to provide permanent living quarters for sections of the world's population.[1] Specifically catering for the growing issue of overpopulation, and need for extra housing as a result, the urban theorists that have pursued this idea also suggesting it as a sustainable form of living to help assist climate change [2] Colonies may form their own sovereign state of independence,[3] with these structures also being generally less impacted by natural disasters.[4]

However this theory for future urban planning has been critiqued by other scientists, suggesting that developing artificial structures in an aquatic environment will disrupt the natural marine ecosystem.[5] and may instead be impacted to aquatic natural disasters such as tsunamis. The debate against this theory further notes the threat of security of these colonies and the potential lack of protection without an overseeing government or body.[3]

The utopic theory of ocean colonisation has been explored and visually explained in many forms of entertainment such as in gaming, virtual realities and science-fiction movies, to show the potentially positive and negative changes on societies daily living.

Lessons learned from ocean colonization may prove applicable to space colonization. The ocean may prove simpler to colonize than space and thus occur first, providing a proving ground for the latter. In particular, the issue of sovereignty may bear many similarities between ocean and space colonization; adjustments to social life under harsher circumstances would apply similarly to the ocean and to space; and many technologies may have uses in both environments [6]

Underwater habitats are examples of underwater structures.

Submerged structures are sunken, air-tight vessels that either sit at an intermediate position or attached to the ocean floor that create an underwater metropolis for residences and businesses.[7]

H2ome is a project for building sea floor homes, along with high-end resorts and hotels.[8]

Ocean Spiral City is a $26 billion Japanese project,[6] with research and designing being underway to potentially house 5000 people and may be a reality by 2030.[9]

Offshore construction is one of the main forms of ocean colonization.

Land reclamation, or artificial islands, are the man-made process of relocating rock or placing cement in a sea, ocean or river bed, to extend or create a new area of liveable land in the ocean.[10] This process involves creating a solid base on the sea floor and further building upon it with materials such as clay, sand and soil to form a new island-like structure above the water surface.[5] It therefore expands the area for potential development space, supporting the erection of buildings or other necessary urban developments in response to support human activities, by utilising this otherwise untouched space for more productive uses.[5] This ocean colonisation technique is the most developed in terms of planning and implementation in the present day.

The Palm Jumeriah is the main of the three artificial islands in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to be developed. The name Palm resembles its palm-tree like design when viewed aerially, and is both culturally and symbolically relevant to the coastal city.[5] This land reclamation project began in 2001 and involved the movement of 94 million cubic metres of sand and 5.5 million cubic metres of rock off-shore in the Persian Gulf, to allow the development of luxury beachfront villas for both residential and commercial purposes.[5]

Kansai International Airport located in Osaka Bay, Japan was created in 1987, due to overcrowding at the nearby Osaka Airport.[11] Developers suggested Japan's mountain terrain [11] is not conducive to the development of necessary flat space required for an airport and thus developed an artificial island in the bay, with a connecting bridge to support both travel and freight arrivals and departures.

Portier Cove is a new eco-district extended off the coast of Monaco designed to reduce greenhouse emissions in the area.[12] The 125m long extension project re-began in 2011 and plans to provide a hectare of space for retail, parks, offices, apartments and private villas, to support their national issue of a growing population.[12]

Very Large Floating Structures (VLFS) [13] or Seasteads [4] are artificially man-made pontoons, designed to float on the surface of the ocean or sea to house permanent residents. They have a large surface area and are designed to not be bound to a certain government but instead form their own community through clusters of floating structures.[3] This type of technology has only be theorised and is yet to be developed, however a variety of companies have investment project plans underway.

Seasteading refers to building buoyant, permanent structures to float on the surface of the ocean to support human settlements and colonies.[2]

The idea constructed by Friedman and Gramlich, who founded the Seasteading Institute, and is now a recognised in the Oxford dictionary. The pair received $500k funding from PayPal Peter Thiel, to begin designing and constructing their idea in 2008 [14]

Architectural company BIG proposed their design of the Oceanix City, involving a series of inhabitable floating villages, clustered together to form an archipelago that could house 10,000 residents.[15] The proposed design was developed in response to the effects of climate change such as rising sea levels and an increase in hurricanes in the Polynesian region, that threaten many tropical island nations from being eradicated. The design also outlines its intentions to incorporate predominantly renewable energy sources such as wind and water.[15]

The idea of cruise ships as part of the theory of ocean colonisation, surpass the typical modern-day commercial cruise ships. This technology imagines a large scale vessel, supporting permanent residence on board that can freely move about the world's oceans and seas.[1] These ships include residential, retail, sport, commercial and entertainment quarters on board.[16]

The ideal size and style is outlined in the concept of the Freedom Ship design by US engineer Norman Nixon, proposing a 4000ft length vessel that has the capability to house 60,000 residents and 15,000 personnel [17] - with an estimated cost of $10 billion (USD).[14]

The World ship debuted in 2015, sitting at 644ft long and is the largest, residential cruise ship presently in the world.[16] This vessel is the closest, existent ship to the idealised Freedom Ship design that hopes to support permanent life on board a ship. Permanent residency on the ship costs between $3million (USD) to $15million (USD) per room.[16]

THE MEG: 2018 science-fiction movie, based in living in an underwater research facility [18]

It is predicted by 2100, sea levels will have risen by 13 meters as a result of global warming, to which by 2050 are estimated to impact 90% of the world's coastal cities.[15] Theorists who support ocean colonization theories hope to face the issue and provide a solution for groups and nations worldwide that are most at risk.[15]

For example, Polynesian island nations such as Tuvalu with a population of 10,000 are expected to be fully submerged by water in approximately 3050 years [19]

Entrepreneurs who have devised these technologies to support the colonization of the seas suggest their design will have an overall minimal carbon footprint.[2]

Recycled and environmentally-friendly materials such as recycled plastics and locally sourced coconut fibres will constitute a large proportion of building materials required for construction.[20][2]

To minimise the use of pollutant energy output in the environment contributing to this rapid global warming, designers suggest using predominantly renewable energy from sources such as water, wind [14] and solar power.[20]

Designers also intend to utilise bicycles, electric and hydrogen vehicles as the primary transport system on board to prevent extra CO2 emissions.[20]

Ultimately, project designers, entrepreneurs and scientists are aiming to collaborate to create a structure allowing the formation of an eco-sustainable production and consumption cycle in the future human habitat.[20]

The primary group impacted by the effects of climate change, the Pacific Island Nations, are the target demographic identified for the ocean colony projects to which they are still able to remain in their familiar and culturally significant island environment. In 2017, French Polynesia signed an agreement with the Seasteading Institute to utilise their land for testing of the world's first floating town [21]

Green Float is another example of a project hoping to develop a carbon negative city within the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, with it set to house 100,000 locals by joining multiple floating modules.[22] They hypothesise a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions through more environmentally friendly and energy efficient modes of transport and power [22]

The number of natural disasters occurring in the world has grown by 357 from 1919 to 2019, according to Our World in Data,[23] with 90,000 people killed annually as a result of this extreme weather.[6] According to this data, the main economic impacts have primarily come from extreme weather events, wildfires and flooding.[6] Due to these economic effects, cities such as Boston, Miami and San Francisco are exploring this idea of ocean colonization as they try to protect their coastlines from an increase in flooding, rising sea levels and earthquakes respectively.[15] Ocean colony technologies are said to be less impacted by common territorial natural disasters and even extreme aquatic weather such as damaging waves as they occupy more shallow waters.[21] For example, the world's first floating hotel, the Barrier Reef Floating Resort,[24] sat 70km off the coast of Townsville, Australia and in 1988 withheld against a cyclone.[21]

According to theorists and scientists at the Seasteading Institute who have begun conducting research into aquatic environments as liveable spaces, many of the technologies supporting ocean colonization are set to mainly impacted by rogue waves [4] and storms. However, other aquatic natural disasters such as Tsunamis, Friedman says would have little impact on the structures yet only raise water levels.[4]

Research in the 1990s emerged regarding the hydro-elasticity of rigid structures at the face of relentless and on-going wave movement [13] to which lead to modern scientists such as Suzuki (2006), voicing their concern of the potentially poor integrity of aquatic structures impacting by constant motion and vibration.[13]

Further modern research and design has also been situated around testing the computation fluid dynamics of resistance against vortex formations of water,[13] such as cyclones that form and therefore threaten ocean environments.

Spar platforms, artificial and natural breakwaters and active repositioning, if applicable, of ocean structures to avoid storms are some suggestions and technologies suggested by ocean colonization supporters and scientists to combat extreme aquatic weather events.[4] Entrepreneurs such as Friedman, have acknowledged and are aware of the care that must be taken in the engineering process of these designs.[4]

Biologists have identified the individualised negative impacts of the technologies that support the implementation of colonization, by their effect on the disruption to the local marine ecosystem.

According to scientists, the process of land reclamation can lead to the erosion of natural soil and land,[5] through this human-made and unnatural movement of sediment that consequently disrupts the natural geological cycle.

Scientists at Marine Insight, have conducted studies of the environmental impacts of commercial cruise ships,[25] with these impacts predicted to be similar to the technologies allowing ocean colonization. Currently, these vessels cause air pollution through the emission of toxic gases that increase in the acidification of the ocean.[25]

Their research also showed the noise pollution from these ships can disturb the hearing of marine animals and mammals.[25]

Furthermore, the leaking of chemicals, grey water and blackwater into the ocean can lead to the accumulation of harmful chemicals, increasing the water concentration,[25] that local flora and fauna are accustomed to. These studies of cruise ships and their impact of the marine environment have been incorporated by ocean colonization scientists and designers, as they are the closest, existent technology to their proposed projects.

Ocean colonization is said by theorist to be a potential solution to the world's growing population, with 7.78 billion people currently inhabiting earth as of May 2020.[26] The BBC claim that 11 billion people is our Earth's capacity even after adjusting our consumption behaviours,[6] with the UN predicting this number to be reached by 2100.[6] With the world's oceans covering 70% of the planet surface,[27] this space has been therefore seen as a viable, long-term solution to allow an expansion and extension of in-habitable space by 50%.[6] Pioneers of this colonization theory suggest the new spaces to also cater for new and more jobs, and may be a particular solution to the moral and political dilemma of housing as well as the consequential increased number of climate refugees.[28]

Central entrepreneurs to this theory have suggested that it hosts the potential for a degree of autonomy of residences, currently operating in more strict political systems.[3] As a result, ocean colonisation has been posed as a potential solution to poor governance,[29] in which sovereign states may begin formation of greater personal freedoms, little state regulation and clearly defined state intentions.[3] Despite critical theorists at the Seasteading Institute suggesting their design to allow people to experiment with new forms of government,[21] however socialists critique this idea, seeing it as a possibility bypass tax laws [13] in international waters. Projects such as the Freedom Ship and those by the Seasteading Institute,[13] have proposed the idea for the installation of their designs in Polynesian water however are exempt by unique governing framework permitting significant autonomy from Polynesian laws.[3]

Under Article 60 of the United Nations Convention on Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), artificial islands, installations and structures have the right to build in exclusive economic zones to coastal nations, however these coastal nations still hold sovereignty of the 12 nautical miles adjacent to that coast.[29]

Little has been vocalised on the development of essential services i.e. schools, hospitals etc., within these ocean colony structures yet theorists say it is likely host or closest nations will be relied upon until the initial population grows.[3] With intentions to build beyond territorial seas in exclusive economic zones,[29] the likelihood of the idea for pure sovereignty has been questioned by critics.

According entrepreneurs at the Seasteading Institute, their particular technology of floating modules is said to be high, with a predicted cost of $10,000 - $100,000 per 1 acre of a seastead, comprised purely by volunteers.[4] Similarly, Friedman, co-founder of the Seasteading Institute, has estimated the entire project to cost a few hundred million.[14] As mentioned earlier, other projects such as the Ocean Spiral City, are set to cost $26 billion [6]

Critics have responded to these future plans; labelling them as elitist, impractical and delusional,[21] with the number of people accommodated limited.[3]

These projects will therefore rely on investors, which is acknowledged by ocean colonization theorists who state the first people to benefit will be the privileged who can afford to invest in the project.[4] However skeptics criticize the idea suggesting it is ultimately designed for capitalist gain, rather than a potential solution for the future society.[3]

Without an overseeing government and lack of taxes, critics of ocean colonisation suggest there would be little security provided in the open waters,[14] in terms of economically and regarding human rights laws. Theorists are considered by threat of being prey to pirates,[21] with colonies on board therefore having minimal personal protection.

There has been resistance to this seemingly capital-intensive project, as critics of the idea suggest private law cannot be embraced if it challenges that of the public laws.[3] Ocean colonization theorists have acknowledged the necessary assignment of responsibility of land and resources into private hands,[3] to ensure at a party is liable. This assigned responsibility is suggested to rely upon existing legal frameworks regarding property, contract and commercial laws to protect colonies.[3] Ocean colonisation theorists are currently working to balance the idea of freedom with security [4]

Developing these technologies and strategies will ultimately require changes to daily living.

Many current day activities will remain relatively unchanged and un-impacted, such as many of the modern necessities i.e. heating, lighting, kitchen appliances, hot water systems.[4] They would require specially consideration and design, however most technologies would still be available says Friedman.[4]

With such proximity to water resources, there would be a reliance on hydroponics to account for the limited space on the surface,[4] that would generate energy and support the growth of crops.[20] Similarly, to conserve space, vertical gardens have been suggested by designers for growing and composting.[4]

Humans are more likely to accustom to this environment, as psychologically they are more comfortable with water,[6] with humanity gradually moving to reside to coast and have historically always operated close to water ways.[21]

On the other hand, humans are less likely to adapt to this possible solution as the ocean is an unfamiliar territory and they are familiar with their ways on land.[4] Life on the water would also be incredibly different, with limited personal living space and many more shared spaced instead.[4] There is also the threat of possible overfishing of nearby and local species to the colony,[20] and also the raised question of waste disposal.[20] With limited ability of fresh water availability, due to the inability to drill or stream it,[4] critics and theorists of the idea themselves suggest and acknowledge that ocean colonies are unable to ever be purely self-sufficient.[4]

Land reclamation, followed by Seasteading, are the two technologies leading the way in terms of development plans.

In 2017, the Seasteading Institute proposed to begin building the first project village by 2020 in a lagoon in Tahiti.[2] Investor in the project, John Quirk, stated in 2018, that we could conceivably see our first modest seastead for 300 people by 2022.[21]

In terms of law, in 2019, plans were passed allowing a nation to host the first seastead, to which it must adhere to the regulations of that host country but is also liable for its own tailored Special Economic Zone.[30] Economic freedom is likely to be sought after and granted, but more gradually through a staged approach called strategic incrementalism.[30]

As of May 2020, both the Seastead Institute and Blue Frontiers have completed their impact assessments and are waiting for updates on their proposal.[21]

Continued here:

Ocean colonization - Wikipedia

Its fun to imagine what the cities of the future will look like. Underwater bubble-homes? Sure. Cities that float? Why not? Houses that look like leafy trees? Were on board!

Weve got to give credit, then, to the artists, architects, and other creative voices whove dreamed up these futuristic urban visions. These city concepts span from garden bridges to self-contained biospheres andwhile they probably wont all make it past the drawing boardwere hoping that future urban planners take note. (Seriously, we definitely want to live in a floating city.)

Picture it: a self-contained community that floats on waterand exists entirely off-the-grid, thanks to its sustainability and reliance on clean energy sources. Meet Seasteading Institutes Floating City Project, which isnt just a hallucinatory oasis. Negotiations for this project are currently underway, and the very first floating city could be unveiled as early as 2020.

Water isnt just a one-time solution to urban over-crowding. Its an idea thats also driven innovator Phil Pauleys Sub-Biosphere 2, which is envisioned as a fully self-contained community that floats on the waters surface during good weatherand goes submarine when the waves get rough.

Envisioning what the worlds best-known cities will look like in 2050 is always a fun game, and this projection of Paris is, wellpretty impressive. Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut is behind the concept, which imagines antismog towers with de-polluting properties, photosynthesis towers covered in algae, and vertical farming oriented farmscrapers. Mmm, green.

Next up is Beijing, which gets the 2050 treatment courtesy of MAD Architects. Though the city is frequently in the news for its smog problems, the architects have reimagined the Chinese capital as a decidedly greener place. Were particularly obsessed with these gleaming, elevated gardens. Can we get some of those near us?

Its great to see how many of these futuristic city concepts are focused on bringing more greenery into the urban setting, and Londons Garden Bridge is no exception. A Thames-spanning walkwayfilled with pretty foliage, the proposed project has received planning permissions and is slated to open up as early as 2018. Fingers crossed for new, leafier commutes.

Ever wanted to live in a tree house? What about a house thats also a tree? From stage left, OAS1S: one of the coolest city concepts out there. The plan envisions abodes that are inspired by and effectively function as trees. Theyre oxygen-producing, sustainable, off-gridand pretty, too.

Created by illustrator Paul Chadeisson, this stunning vision of a futuristic Paris is awesome and spooky all at once. A cheery bistro is one of the only indications of the Paris we know; otherwise, industrial, high-tech design seems to have taken over. As this image was created for Dontnod Entertainments Remember Me video game, it probably wont be a reality soon. (Thats okay. We really like all those bistros as-is.)

Not to be confused with Seasteading Institutes Floating City, this one is the work of Chinese firm AT Design Office. And theyve really thought it out. From submarine transit to underwater entertainment centers, this is one city wed move to in a heartbeat. Too bad its not real (yet).

All right, youve caught us; this isnt an artist rendering but a grade-A photo. The Vertical Forest, proposed and created by Milanese architectural studio Stefano Boeri Architetti, is an example of a futuristic, super-green project that has actually made it into the real world. Let this be an inspiration, then. With any luck, the rest of these super-cool city concepts will soon become reality.

Excerpt from:

9 Breathtaking City Concepts That Could Be Your Future ...

MISTRUSTWhy Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform ThemBy Ethan Zuckerman

In his new book, Mistrust, Ethan Zuckerman takes us on a kaleidoscopic tour of everyone from Gandhi to Bitcoin enthusiasts, Brexit voters to Black Lives Matter activists people and groups whom he calls insurrectionists because they are trying to overthrow or work around what has been a worldwide decline in social trust. Fighting this erosion from another direction are the institutionalists, those who seek to bolster trust and prevent any further crumbling.

Zuckerman, the former director of the M.I.T. Center for Civic Media, writes with the tone of a sobered-up insurrectionist whos come to see in Donald Trump, QAnon and antimask activists the dark side of a society in which all trust is lost and anything goes. Rather than liberation, Zuckerman correctly explains, this systematic distrust has proved to be a blessing for authoritarians around the world who have only further undermined traditional arbiters of truth (say, journalists) in order to open the way to their own propaganda. He offers the particularly absurdist example that in Vladimir Putins Russia, so all-encompassing is the leaders control that many Russians see the mere fact that a dissident leader like Alexey Navalny hasnt been murdered (yet) as evidence that he doesnt represent a real opposition force.

Its clear Zuckerman hasnt abandoned his insurrectionist sympathies for those trying to work outside a system they see as irreparably broken. He writes sympathetically about plainly loopy ideas like seasteading (the libertarian fantasy of building floating communities outside the reach of established states) and using the same blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrency to establish new virtual nation-states.

But he seems to find most promising those activists with more conventionally progressive politics who embrace new tactics. He offers the fascinating story of the Association for the Empowerment of Workers and Peasants in India, along with the more familiar tales of Bryan Stevenson and the success of digital activists in reshaping coverage of law enforcement.

One of his big examples is the Black Lives Matter movement. Citing research from his former lab at M.I.T., he notes that after Michael Browns death and the protests in Ferguson, police killings of people of color were 11 times more likely to receive media coverage than deaths that preceded Browns. Media stories also became far more likely to cover a story not as an isolated incident but as part of a pattern of police violence against people of color.

Zuckermans heroes have what he calls strong internal efficacy (they believe they can do things) but low external efficacy (they think political leaders dont care about them). So they operate outside the system, pressuring retailers to change their approach to selling firearms, decentralizing institutions or shifting media coverage.

#MeToo is a different kind of movement, he writes. Sexual assault and harassment have been illegal for years, so its main demands are for changes not in law but in norms.

This feels like an unsatisfactory effort to rebrand failure as success. The social media phenomenon revealed that conduct short of assault but still deeply troubling to its victims is fairly widespread in American life. And nothing fundamentally changed no alteration to legal liability rules for employers, managers or bystanders, for example to redress that situation. I hope that norms have changed, but theres no clear evidence that they really have. Much-deserved Pulitzer Prizes were won, but crack investigative journalists exposing predators one by one is a not a viable fix.

This is where Zuckerman himself lands when considering the coronavirus pandemic and where he illustrates best the limits of the insurrectionists: Actual functioning institutions became indispensable, and couldnt simply be worked around with internal efficacy and digital savvy.

Recounting a conversation with the activist Eli Pariser, Zuckerman proclaims himself a resurrectionist who believes that we need institutions that deserve our passionate support and defense, and if the institutions we rely on now do not clear that bar, we need to demand new ones that take their place. That seems correct and sensible, though it perhaps raises the question of what the point was in introducing the dichotomy in the first place.

Zuckerman concludes his book by saying that we are likely to find that institutions fail when we no longer recognize ourselves as a single nation, when we no longer feel responsibility for or obligation to our fellow citizens.

Out of context, one could imagine that flowing from the pen of Stephen Miller as part of a denunciation of globalist preoccupation with asylum seekers and the perfidious work of the 1619 Project in tearing down our common culture. In the course of a book that praises the protests that halted Trumps zero tolerance immigration initiative and casually tosses off an endorsement of Ta-Nehisi Coatess case for reparations, Im quite sure thats not what he means. But in many respects the divide between a call for unity that can be read as nationalistic and one that can be understood as cosmopolitan is the real split in the world today.

Another way of thinking about institutional trust is precisely in terms of that divide.

Major institutions have long been led primarily by the members of an educated elite. But its only over the past generation or so that college graduates with cosmopolitan attitudes have become a large enough share of the population that educated peoples sensibilities could be a force in mass politics. Consequently, today institutional leaders face meaningful pressure often from some of the young, college-educated activists whom Zuckerman valorizes like David Hogg, fighting for gun control, and Alicia Garza of Black Lives Matter to use their power to reflect and act on those views. But when they yield, they face fierce backlash from a populist right rooted in the cultural sensibilities of older, whiter, generally less-educated people.

Meanwhile, there are those who feel caught between these worldviews: the working-class people of color who largely eschew left-wing radical chic and feel the pull of things like patriotism and traditional gender norms without wanting to hop on a right-wing bandwagon inflected with racism and indifference to the material needs of the lower class. These are precisely the people with the least direct access to media attention or the political process. They are the ones, more than the insurrectionists of left or right, that institutional leaders need to find a way to better serve if they want to preserve their power and restore their legitimacy.

Read the original post:

How Do We Regain Trust in Institutions? - The New York Times