Seasteading: Homesteading for the 21st Century

The notion of pioneers creating nations on the sea, or seasteading, first gained attention in 2008 when Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel backed the project. Since then, plans to build a colony off the Marin County coast have been scrapped, as have plans to engineer projects on the open seas. But an agreement in the works to build a floating island off the coast of French Polynesia and a new book about the movement have brought the bold vision back into the public eye. For supporters, seasteads are a solution to bad governance and finite resources, but to critics they’re merely tax havens for the wealthy.