Part Two: The Not-At-All-Sad History of Libertarian Sea Nations

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Oh my god, Part two. Man, of all the parts
that you can have, a second is easily the best.
It's always the best, just too, that's the best jobs Aliens. Yeah,
the Lost World story three. Yeah, the Lost World. All
the best ones of the series, all the best ones
of this Hall to be Oh my god, would stock Yeah,

(00:33):
halloways the sequel is always the best. Super super is Dave.
I'm Dave. Dave. Yeah, Hey, Hey, how are you doing.
I'm good. I got lunchables. I got lunchables getting delivered.
This is this is the country we live in, and
I'm excited to eat those lunchables. Get some lunchables. That's

(00:54):
that's the only person I know who eats lunchables. But
well I never got him as a kid. So this
is how I rebel skocking adorable. Yeah, um so uh yeah,
obviously we we ended last episode talking about the freedom
Ship UM, which was the mile long super boat that

(01:14):
was going to everyone was going to live in total liberty,
but also under Irish law with the FBI running everything. Right,
So how did that work out? Well, they never built it. Um.
Every three or four years from the mid nineties on,
the freedom Ship would like creep back into the media
when like some new backer, because like I think the people,

(01:35):
the old people would just kind of hand it off
to someone knew who would try to raise money off it. Again,
like it was just this grift that wouldn't quite die
just inheriting the grift. They're just kind of like passing
it on, like do you want to build the freedom ship? Kid?
By two thousand seven, the project was no closer to
starting the construction, which should have concluded. In two thousand three.

(01:57):
A writer for in These Times noted of is it
to the news section of Freedomship dot Com reveals a
more sluggish pace. The most recent message messages date from
more than two years ago, for learnely explaining how scam
operations are slowing things down, but that things are happening
and they are moving fast. Meanwhile, the ship is not
yet finished, indeed, it has not yet started. Despite this,

(02:19):
Freedomship International Incorporated has been startlingly successful in raising publicity
for this floating city, much credulous journalistic cooping over the
biggest vessel in history with its hospitals, bunks, hospitals, banks,
sports centers, parks, theaters, and nightclubs, not to mention its
airport has ignored the vessel's stubborn non existence. That's very funny.

(02:41):
And this, this Dave. The failure of the freedom boat
brings me to the final but longest portion of our episode,
which has to start with the c steading movement. Have
you heard of c steading? C steading? Yeah? No, it
doesn't sound good, but maybe I'm willing to be wrong.
It's I think it's a cool idea. It's the idea that, like,

(03:02):
people could take to the sea and like as the
pioneers of old did, build their own homes in the
middle of the wilderness and live off of them. But
because it's the sea, you wouldn't be stealing anybody's ship. Um, Like,
it's a neat idea. I would say the fictional analog
that's closest to sea stetting is the incredible roy Shier

(03:23):
vehicle se quest. Oh yeah, Royce Shier, just incredible. Um
star of Jaws too exactly? Um well, I would say
the star of Just two is alcohol. Yes, I mean,
and the antagonist of like There's you know, you could
argue that most of the reason that Jazz was that

(03:44):
Shark was formidable is because they were just so drunk
because everyone was hammered the entire time. Yeah, that's fair.
So in SeaQuest, did you ever actually watch SeaQuest? I
remember there was a guy with gills. Yeah, yeah, they
shot it, I know briefly at Epcot Center did Yeah.

(04:04):
I would say probably the high point of SeaQuest the
series is the episode in which William Shatner plays Sloba
Doon Melosovic. This party was born to play incredible move
include an accent because it's yeah, he does an accent.
Like the episode. It's an episode where like they have
to there's this dictator who's like taken to the sea

(04:26):
after getting like forced out having committed a genocide. And
the episode was filmed during the Bosnian genocides. It's very
clearly who who Shatner is supposed to be. This is perfect,
it's incredible. So in SeaQuest, incredible show this this big
ship travels around all these little like sea habitats people
have built a right, like the ocean has just been colonized.

(04:47):
There these little towns and villages and independent homesteads in
the middle of the wild ocean. That's the idea the
sea steads doing. They're doing a sea Quest, but without
the giant boat, right, that's that's the people who wanted
to do the freedom ship. They want to make the
little bitty sea communities that eventually just I think necessitate
the giant boat. They want floating homes just a little
further out there, Just a little further out there. Um. Yeah.

(05:10):
Sea steading got its official start in two thousand and
eight when the Sea Steading Institute was founded in San
Francisco by Patrie Friedman. Friedman and an archo capitalist and
grandson of economist Milton Friedman, had been a Google engineer
and was thus connected to Peter Teal. He convinced Teal
to throw them some cash to found an institute. So
Peter Teal throws a bunch of money into the Sea

(05:31):
Steading Institute, and in their founding a statement, they promised
to establish a permanent autonomous ocean community to enable experimentation
and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems. The
experimentation I love that idea because it's like, what experiment
is best done on the ocean? Um only the illegal kind?

(05:53):
Can we fuck the dolphins? Yeah, it's actually the worst
place to do any other experiments. Like the movie Deep
Blue Sea. They should have done that in a tank.
Are you in the ocean? How did that help things? Yeah?
In fact, it hurt things. Like all experiments don't get
better if you're in the ocean. It just gets more complicated.

(06:16):
As a general rule, very few things get better when
you're in the ocean. Jurassic Park, the problem was there
in an island like that was part of the problem. Yeah, yeah,
just don't do it. Stay on the ocean, Stay the
funk out of the ocean. If I had, if I
could have one message for my listeners, it's stay out

(06:36):
of the ocean. You know, it's weird if I could
have two messages. It's that. I think maybe dolphins could
consent to sex with human beings. We don't know, I mean,
like they understand the concept, right, Like, so I think
who's to say, Yeah, I think the general rule for
having sex with an animal, and you can all quote
me on this and write it down, is uh, if

(06:57):
the animal is doing the sex on you, like, that's consent, right,
And it's that controversial now that I like that I
don't agree with. If you heard of Mr Hands Dave,
I have. But the horse was all right right, the
horse was okay. I think there's some argument that it
was psychologically hurt. Yeah, that it was traumatized a bit.

(07:17):
I don't know. I'm not a horse psychologist. I think
that's unethical, No, I I yeah, I think if a
horse knew, Like I feel like a horse should be
proud if they've killed somebody, because well, I was about
to say so few of them do, but actually, now
I think about it. The Yeah, so that's not special.
There's nothing special, but Mr Hands, now that I think

(07:38):
about it, no, no, no. But meanwhile, dolphins attempt to
sexually assault people all the time, all the time. It
happens constantly, and they do to other dolphins. So clearly,
if you could communicate with a dolphin, I think it
wouldn't necessarily be unethical as long as the dolphin gives consent.
That's what I'm saying, Dave, we need an animal consent system. Absolutely,

(07:58):
you're right. Yeah, I I think I just think dolphins
it should be the same rules as people. Okay, that's
that's that's that's that's my rant about dolphins. Sex. In
the middle of this episode, we had to talk about
sex with some kind of thing that you're not supposed
to have sex within an episode about libertarian politics, it's inevitable.
It's inevitable. Yes, that's we knew. We knew where all

(08:19):
these roads were heading. Arguing about dolphins sex. If you're
if you're building a society on the ocean, you're thinking
about fucking dolphins, we know it. It's on the table.
It's on the table, all right. I don't I don't
want to fuck an animal. I would say they're the
most fuckable animals. I think, yeah that I'm now I'm

(08:42):
like racking my brain and I'm trying to think about it.
You're thinking about the blowhole, aren't you. Of course. I
love a very smooth so excited this week, so exciting.
We're gonna get a lot of John c. Lily and
hitting us up. So Peter Teal was really bullish about

(09:05):
the future of c steading right, this this uh, this
idea of like little independent autonomous ocean communities that you
can experiment with different political ideas and innovative. He loves
this um and he promised ominously in a press statement
at the time that quote, the nature of government is
about to change at a very fundamental level, which it was,
and Peter Teal had a lot to do with it.

(09:27):
But it was not through c steading. Not something I
want to hear from Peter Teal. Yeah. I don't really
want to hear much from Peter deal. No, although I
do want to know what he's up to. Yeah what
eyes on the man, But I don't want to hear
from him. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It sounds like an amber
alert with that. Yeah, Peters heels up to some ship.
It's just always flashing in the background. Get up in

(09:50):
the morning. God damn it, Peter Tal he's out. He's
out there from Peter Teal. It's only quiet when he's asleep.
Um So, Peter invests a bunch of startup cash to
help make c stetting into like a name within kind
of the libertarian community. But he doesn't put up a
lot of cash, and by when The Guardian profiled the

(10:13):
c stetting movement, his donations had dried up. By then,
Freedman was billing c stetting. Freedman is the guy who
founded and convinced Till to give him the money, was
billing c stetting is the perfect solution to the problem
of finding yourself trapped in a government that doesn't sell,
that doesn't like have the same values that you have,
which I agree, that's a problem. I think everyone listening

(10:34):
to this right now knows what it's like to live
under a government that does not, uh embrace your values.
But um, yeah, I don't see. Well they think that
c stetting is a perfect solution to that problem because
you can move right, Like it's like what if, what if,
you know, we wouldn't have a lot of the conflicts
we have in society. There would be no need for
protests to riots. If oh I'm not happy with what

(10:55):
my government's doing, I'll just pick up and drive away.
You know. It's modular, like I'll just move my house
to another government. And it's the kind of thing. They're
all engineers, libertarians and and the people are in these
projects like both like libertarians and like the people who
get most into c studding and similar sort of projects.
They're all engineers, and it's a very engineer answer to

(11:16):
the problem of like, oh, yeah, well, if you're not
happy with your government, you just pick up and move,
which is technically perfect and also completely insane when you're
talking about people. It's nonsense, like it's always okay, so
everyone's supposed to leave their family behind, Like what if
they have debts somewhere. What if they have student loans
um what about like health care situations? What if you

(11:36):
know they have what what if it's not feasible for
the vehicle that they are able to afford for them
to actually get to another place. There's all these what
if they don't want to leave, they want to do
something else? Yeah, what if they want to change it
because there's people they love there and because like they've
put a lot of sweat equity in it and they
just don't like what one faction of people are doing,
Like it doesn't it's the tech bro problem where it's

(11:58):
like figure out text. They're very good at what they don't.
They didn't go to school for it. They didn't have
an upbringing for understanding human beings. It's always the X
factor that they leave out of their equation because they
just don't consider it. And it's it seems to be
everyone has, like dunning Krueger is a thing we all all,

(12:18):
I certainly do talk sometimes on things that like we
don't actually understand it's a human thing, Like nobody escapes this.
There's probably like an expert on having sex with animals,
who's who's like, no, they all wrong. Let me tell
you about how dolphins. Fine, that's not the most fuckable animal?
Are you kidding me? It's the giraffe. Just a man

(12:38):
with a giraffe portrait in the background of his house
screaming at us. Was through said, folks, I've thought about
this for years. God damnit. Um. But for whatever reason,
engineers are that I think the group of people most
likely to be like And I think it's because what
they do is so difficult and so in demand and
so impressive. Like a good engineer is like a wizard,
like some of the people like I've knew. I known

(13:00):
a dude once we were camping with him and like
he forgot to bring a headlamp, so he took apart.
He turned the headlight of his car into a functional
headlamp that lasted an entire weekend. It took him like
thirty seconds. Um. Like, it's amazing when you can see
people with that kind of like mechanical talent. The problem
with that is that, like you said, they think that
they understand everything that way and then everything works that way,

(13:22):
and I think they don't. Yeah, I think it's the
same with like doctors and stuff like that. Like you
look at what's his name, Ben Carson. Yes, where it's
like you can be really smart about one thing, and
if that thing feels very important, you get a lot
of people who are like, oh my god, thank you
so much. You think, well, I must be smart about
all the things. And that's when things get really wrong.

(13:43):
I thinks get really wrong. Yeah, we're people like us.
We're really good at things that don't matter. So like
it's I guess again, you're right, we're probably over confident
and talking. This is why podcasters keep giving people medical
advice about what to do with accident. It's the Joe
Rogan phenomenon. I'm very successful, So you're really good at

(14:05):
talking into a microphone and wrestling. Um. That doesn't really
have anything to do with medicine, but by god, you
think it does. Um. And yeah, everybody does it to
some extent. But for whatever reason, I don't know. This
is a particularly white dude, especially white engineers who are
fans of Peter Teal. Uh So yeah, this they cook

(14:25):
up this idea, um, this very dumbmighty that also ignores
like is every individual sea staid self sufficient in terms
of food? Um? Which often they'll say that like, well, yeah,
of course they'll make their own food. You'll you'll be
able to you know, hydroponically farm and you'll do this,
and you'll do that, and it and again. It's it's
always when you read them like explaining how you'll grow
all of your food that you need to survive in
your individual seapod um, it's like, okay, so you've never

(14:49):
grown food, Like right, you've never ever grown anything because
like I am not an expert farmer. I'm not an
expert gardener, but I've spent a lot of my life
on farm. It takes a lot of space in infrastructure.
You hand keep like a family alive on a half
acre if you're really good and really and that's a
half acre of space that's fully utilized under like good conditions.

(15:10):
You're talking about growing food in the ocean. Yeah, my
migrant in this world would be I go to the
whatever mainlands there, go to the supermarket, buy food, go
out in the boat, and charge them triple for it
because you make a killing doing that. Just think you
want some real food. I got lunchables, all lunchables here.
You go like that, still got plankton? Yeah, it's sick

(15:33):
of eating of a bunch of fucking fish. Here, have
some goddamn fruit and vegetables. Yeah, it's it's it's all
just like never thought out beyond I'll finally be able
to mine bitcoin and masturbate to illegal pornography. Um, like
that's the that's the end of most of the people,
most people, most not all people's thinking who get into this. Yeah,

(15:54):
it always it feels ultimately self serving, That's what it is.
It's always just they want to do the things they
want to do, and then they're like they get a
big head about it, and they think, like, man, this
is how people should live. And it's like and as
critics at the time noted, like the worst case scenario
for if this actually became a thing is a lot
of people drown, right. The best case scenario is like

(16:14):
aquatic apartheid where rich people build their like artificial islands
to hide from poor people where they can't be beaten
and murdered during riots over climate change and inequality like
that that is the actual Like and also if we're
talking about like a potentially realistic outcome of something like this, Yeah,
we've gotten better at like ships that can turn salt

(16:35):
seawater into drinkable water, and can grow food if you
have if you have Jeff Bezos's resources, He's building a
very large boat right now. He could build a boat
that could keep he and a number of other people
alive with minimal supply for indefinitely. He has those resources,
but he wants like a boat with like an arcade
and stuff. Yeah, I mean he's building a very nice boat.

(16:56):
He's building the boat all these people dream about having. Um,
I'm sure it's going to be rad but also yeah,
it's going to be a rich Man water fortress while
he watches the world die. Um. Yeah, Freedman got as
far and this is the only cool thing Freedman did.
He started a Burning Man style nautical camping event called

(17:16):
Femalile outside of a Sacramento I want to go. Um,
it's not actually connected to Burning Man, but it's the
same premise. And if you don't know Bernie Man, it's
like there's nobody in charge. There's no like talent and guests.
Everybody's a participant and participates in making the event together
and handling things like safety and a Femalile is like
all aquatic, so people build platforms and attach them together

(17:39):
and like every platform is like a camp or a
set of camps and stuff. So they have bars and
restaurants and and different kinds of like art projects that
are all connected to living spaces in this gigantic floating
raft they make in the middle of a river together.
Um and uh yeah, it actually sounds rad as hell. First, Yeah,
they know what they're doing. We've on to community communities

(18:02):
that separated themselves Jesus World, and what they tend to
be is very serious about it and what Yeah, yeah,
they tend to and they tend to be like, look,
someone has to do the the shitty stuff too, and
we all take turns. And that's what it feels like
these people are missing is the very serious like regard
of how how to actually do this stuff and the

(18:24):
fact that it comes down to like you're always going
to have to work period. You're gonna have to work it.
You're always going to be responsible to other people. Other
people are going to limit your behavior because that's just
life around people. It doesn't have to be like a
police state. But like there will be times when you're like,
well I would do this, but that will affect this

(18:46):
other person in a negative way, and so I won't
and it makes these guys really pissed that that would
ever be the case. But normal people, especially normal people
who do difficult things like build communities out of unhewn
wilderness together, are like, well, yeah, we all give up
a little bit of freedom in order to get to
benefit from having the of their people around, right, Yeah,
exactly if you live in alone in a cabin in

(19:08):
the woods, like like your Tommy Lee Jones in the
movie Wanted, That's right, No hunted everybody. I'm so sorry. Um,
you have to like you have to get food, and
you have to you have to do you have to
earn that through work. It's just what kind of work
do you want to do? Yeah, there's there's And I

(19:29):
think actually the cool version of this you see in
a femalile, which is um. I think it would be
rad if like people were building autonomous communities in the
sea that weren't just tax dodges. But we're like experiments
to see if like, are there lower impact ways of
keeping people alive? Is this perhaps the way we could
do it that emits less or that that is is

(19:50):
toxic that uses less land, Like is this an option
for refugee communities for stateless people? Like there's another and
and burners are kind of the perfect people to iterate that.
It so like the guy, one of the people that
comes into the very first effemal ile is this dude
who helped who has been a long time person at
the Big Burning Man, and he's like a ranger and
his specialty was like safety. Um, and he he wasn't

(20:14):
I don't think he was even particularly into C setting.
He was just like, Oh, you guys are going to
do an event on water where everyone's on water all
the time. I don't want anyone to drown. I will
help figure out how to make sure nobody drowns. And
they've kept doing it. So the first year they do
this event, the C Setting Institute like is the official host,
and then after that their lawyers are like, hey, no

(20:34):
organization can get insured to hold an event like this.
It's way too dangerous. Um, you can never do this again.
But it keeps happening because they just didn't need the
C Setting Institute. Just a bunch of people show up
every year and lash a bunch of elaborate rafts together
and have kept doing it for like a decade now,
and no one's ever died it's like the drinking age

(20:56):
in Canada. Just be cool, Yeah, just be cool, take
care of each other. Um they have I've googled this
a little bit and like half of what they have
written that's out on the internet. It's just like different
guides to what to do with someone's drowning and how
to avoid drowning. Like that's their number one rule is
don't die again. It's it's that that's what bothers me.
I guess about these libertarian see plans is that I

(21:19):
understand the want to break free of the government. We
all do. Uh you know. I grew up really into
punk rock and an anarchy and all that crap, and
so it's like the neat the the idea of making
a commune or community and living away from the government
is very appealing. And so say these people start from
the top down. They're so bad at it. They're like

(21:41):
casinos and malls, yeah this stuff. And it's like, no,
just get plumbing right, yeah, right, a better way. Yeah
there's And again it's this freedman like gives up on
sea setting. He abandons the idea as soon as like
the money starts to dry up. And um, I think

(22:02):
the c setting in student. I don't know if they
still have a presence at a Femaleile, but they don't
host it anymore and it doesn't seem to be a
big part of the project. And it's kind of like,
if you were actually serious about it, all you would
want to do is create more events like this so
that people can in real time beta test different pieces
of equipment and figure out the best way to build
like durable, permanent Like that's really the ideal way to

(22:22):
do this. It's not raise a bunch of money to
like build your idea. It's spend ten years hosting events
like this all over the world and have a couple
of hundred thousand people experiment with shit. There's so much
cool ship here. And if you're if you attend a
female aile, like hit me up, it sounds rad I
want to go um, But this it's just it. It
shows you what a difference is between Like, if there

(22:44):
ever is a colonization of the CE, it's gonna be
like the people who do a Femaleile, it's gonna be
like a bunch of people who already on their own
are just making ship, living out in the sea for
a couple of days or weeks at a time, figuring
out better ways to do it, and just keep doing
that more and more and more. It's going to be
some VC firm, crowdfunds a c city, you know, because

(23:04):
that's a dumb idea, or it's a government or some
but yeah, the idea of a grassroots colonization, like, yeah,
that is what it would start with. And these the
it's they're like expos, you know, like these little events
where it's like we're just it's proof of concepts and
it's very realistic and practical because like obviously, if someone

(23:26):
can put it together for like a week long campout, um,
then it's probably actually accessible. Yeah anyway, whatever, you know
what else is accessible? David Um, I'm out of the
virtues of capitalism which you can access by buying these
products right now, don't think. Just get out your credit

(23:50):
card and start paying. Ah we are back and way howdy,
Dave Um. It has just been a fun time. So
pat Patrie Friedman, who founds the c Stetting Institute, he
bounces uh and he co founds a corporation called Future

(24:10):
Cities Development, which ceased operating in two thousand and twelve
without making any cities in two thousand nineteen, he started
another Peter Teel backed project, a venture capital firm named
prominos Um, whose mission was to make enough money to
pay to build an experimental city somewhere, but on land,
this time. A Wikipedia entry on this subject adds, hilariously,

(24:31):
most of the cities will be aimed at foreign businesses
seeking friendly at tax treatment. He's again this thing like
we're talking a lot of ship on libertarians. I was
a libertarian most of my life. I would still be
one if I hadn't realized that a sizeable chunk of
people who call themselves libertarians just want a corporation to
be their boss instead of the gun. They just want
to do a fraud. Uh Like in this I feel less.

(24:53):
So this is all Peter Teel money. Yeah, yeah, there's
all the ones that Patrie is involved. I feel better
about that because that's you're not scamming a bunch of people.
You're scamming one person, and that person is Peter Teal
And it's like, all right, that's fine. Like if it look,
if you can scam a rich person out of a
bunch of money, uh, you know, go for it. You know,
you can write that down along with the animal fucking

(25:16):
like it's it's yeah, it's uh, I get it, like
it's it's better than uh scamming, like you know, the
little person. Yeah, I mean I would agree with you
if you're going to steal from someone. I think Peter
Teal is an incredible person to steal from. There's a
lot of teal from. Fine with you stealing from, but
Peter Teal is like, I will, I will buy you
a drink if you successfully steal from Peter Teal happily, happily,

(25:41):
legally binding. So if you can, we make a T
shirt that says, I will buy you a drink if
you if you rob Peter Teal. We can't, but I
love steal the Teal. There's a rhyme there. Yeah. Yeah,
he's rather litigious, so this is legally a joke. Oh yeah,

(26:06):
so um. The C Steading Institute, though, did not go
away when Patrie Friedman moved on to other grifts. It
just picked up a new leader, the c evangelist. And
that's a word that this guy created, Joe Quirk. No,
I mean you don't trust see evangel evangelist quirk. No,
I don't. I don't trust any part of that. Yeah,

(26:28):
I certainly don't trust the last name Quirk. Quirk. Yeah,
it sounds kind of like Quirk from It does sound
a little bit like from d S nine, but also
his favorite Frangie. It also just sounds made up. It
sounds like someone had to make up a name real quick. Yeah,
and they were like looking at like a cork in
a bottle or something like, yeah, you know, I'm thinking

(26:48):
of the Farrangie now, Dave. And just as quick aside,
why do you think Star Trek didn't just like like
they were supposed to be the new bad guys in
in T and G and then everyone clearly real eased
after the first episode. Oh my god, we made an
anti semitic caricature race, right, we made space to choose?
Why did why didn't they just stop? Like, why didn't
they just give up like they Clint? They replaced them

(27:09):
with the board. Why did we keep getting FRENGI what
was the I can I have? I have an explanation?
I mean not for the space choose part. That just
seems like in all fantasy, when like j K Rally
was like, what if there's a banker race and it
was like that seems like a bad idea. J k
Um no Star Trek. This is my problem with new

(27:30):
Star Trek, and I'll only talk about this for maybe minutes.
Tops uh No, they the whole thing was Star Trek
is like the Klingons were the enemy in the original series,
then they're working with them in Next Generation. So it
does make sense for the Farrangi to then be allies.
Like it's all about not defeating your enemies but joining them,

(27:52):
and I think that's a very cool positive message in
Star Trek. It's why I don't like Discovery, because they're
back to the Klingon stuff, and I'm like, no, I
like progress Progressive of nine. They had like good Borg
people to agree with you about what's good about Star Trek.
I just don't see why the people making Star Trek
were like, well, we can't just pretend we never made

(28:13):
an anti Semitism species and make another capitalist species that
don't look like a Nazi cartoon. Yes, I mean early
Star Trek. We were just talking about in this last
episode where it's like progressive for the time you got
us some season one Star Trek. There is a flat
out very racist episode in the Next Generation. I think
it's called Code of honor. Uh oh yeah, the planet

(28:36):
where everybody's um. All of the people on the planet
are black and it's very, very uncomfortable. Yes, yeah, they
kidnapped Tosha Yard, like my goodness, Yeah we didn't look.
They're all just white dude sci fi or they're trying
to be progressive, but like they are being progressive, they're
just not perfect there, you know, they're they're flawed human

(28:59):
beings with bigotry that they didn't recognize was there, and
they made something really cringe e. That happens, happens. Yeah,
so uh, speaking of cringe e, let's keep talking about
the c Stetting Institute. Joe Quirk, the c evangelist. Now,
I haven't found a lot out about this guy's life
before sea stetting. He must be he's got to be
somewhere in his like mid to late forties, maybe early fifties.

(29:23):
His first recorded accomplishment of any note is the publication
of a novel called The Ultimate Rush. In The Ultimate
Rush was about quote, a rollerblading messenger caught in an
illegal insider trading ring. According to Wikipedia, that's not what
I thought it was gonna be. The rollerblading messenger is
named Chet Griffin and he quote spins his nights hacking

(29:44):
for fun, so he's a he's a hacker roller skating messenger.
I wonder how much of this was a rip off
of snow Crash. I don't know this now that I
read this sounds like it like this sounds like Gleaming
the Cube. Did you ever see that movie where it's
like you, it's a skateboarding Christian Slater movie and You're like, oh, cool,
maybe it will be about like the big, the big
skateboarding competitions. You say skateboarding Christian Slater movie, and I think,

(30:08):
I why am I not watching this it right this second?
The movie actually is like fucking Chinatown. Like it's like
this weird noir where he's like doing terrorism against a
corporation that killed his brother and it's like, come on, man,
just skateboard to rock music, which also happens in the movie.
But it's it's what That's what this sounds like. It
is like it's too many hats on a hat is

(30:30):
what I'm getting it here, Dave. I have a Christian
Slater story to tell you, but remind me to save
it for the end because I don't want to break
up the flow too much here. Joe wrote this skateboarding hacker,
Messenger insider trading book in nineteen and it made very
little impact, although Joe claims two d and fifty thousand
paperbacks were printed, which is key. That's a little thing

(30:52):
you can tell about it. Aither printed? Huh? And where
are they? Where they go? They perhaps in your attict
right now. The most noteworthy thing about this book is
that in two thousand eleven, Joe sued Sony Pictures for
their upcoming feature film Premium Rush, alleging that it was
based on his screenplay. A judge said, no, it was not. Um.

(31:15):
He did not win this lawsuit just had the word
rush in it. Yeah, similar than that, but okay. Yeah.
In two thousand eight he wrote a book about love,
sex and relationships, from which we get an author bio
that tells us slightly more about him. And this this
really gets a lot of this man's character. Joe Quirk
comes across in this paragraph. Dave I studied literature and

(31:38):
minored in development of Western civilization at Providence College, taught
partially by Dominican priests who had no sense of humor.
When it came to my biological observations about celibacy. I
graduated at the top of the bottom, at the top
of the bottom tenth of my class. I attended one
year of law school, so only lost one third of
my soul, which is just enough to function in American society.
I invested the last seven in the years of my

(32:00):
novel Royalties and reading evolutionary biology studies full time. Now
I finally feel ready to ask a woman on a date.
Oh no, that's hard bringing what a way to end that? Yeah, Joe, buddy,
So that's the basics of joke quirk. You have a
picture of him now in two Yeah, we've all met

(32:23):
a joke quirk. In two thousand fourteen, he becomes the
c evangelist for c Stetting, which I think is the head,
but I'm not really certain and I don't care to
find out. Um. The next year he founds an organization
dedicated to building a floating city with unprecedented political autonomy
and the waters of a host nation. The Guardian goes

(32:45):
on to describe the start of Joe's contributions to the
magical world of libertarian Bode cons quote. Nearly half of
the world's surfaces unclaimed, says Quirk, who published a book
on c stetting in two thousand seventeen with the ambitious
subtitle how Floating Nations will restore the environment, enriched the poor,
cure the sick, and liberate humanity from politicians. In an
introductory video, he describes the planets oceans as a sort

(33:08):
of research and development zone where we could discover better
means of governance, and says that c steading could provide
the technology for thousands of people to start their own
nano nation on the high seas, giving people opportunities to
to peacefully test new ideas about living together. The most
successful c steads, he says, will become thriving new societies,
inspiring change around the world. There's a lot in there

(33:30):
that's very funny, Dave um. I. I like the fact
that this is going to be a research and development zone, uh,
but also a way for people to to live together,
even though like the whole basis of it is, you
can escape if you find yourself in a around people
you don't like, um, which it actually seems like you're

(33:52):
not learning to live together, you're just learning to like
flee a series of communities as they collapse in interpersonal conflicts.
Um it feels more Mad Max, where yeah, if everything
falls apart, everybody scatters and they go do their other
experimental communities. It's it's one of those like if you
were utopian, and I am, you have to grapple with

(34:14):
the fact that, like there's a lot of times people
have tried to separate from society and make their own
new society and it usually collapses and like and not
for because the government cracks down, but because like if
the wrong people fuck each other, like right, like the
most utopian projects in the way most punk houses end, yes,

(34:36):
where everybody hating each other. Yeah, yeah, and none of
them dishes done and a lot of new std spread, right,
someone gets their foot broken or something like that, and
it's a whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, a good punk house
only lass maybe a couple of years. Yeah, maybe that's
the I mean, I guess I could, I could. I
would say maybe some interesting ideas would come out of

(34:58):
a bunch of like seaborn punk houses floating around and
breaking apart and reforming. UM. I don't also maybe, but
maybe not. Yeah, some other things could occur to UM,
I'll admit to being intrigued by the idea somewhat, although
I don't think their their pitch for how it would
actually look is particularly interesting. So again I get it

(35:19):
when they're like, look at that whole ocean that we got,
and it's like, yeah, no, that's true. That's a whole
lot of land, well not really land, but it's a
whole lot of space that like, if someone figured out
something to do with it, it's a good It's like,
oh that's a that's cool. But then again it's like, again,
the ocean doesn't want us there. Let's not sunk up

(35:40):
another area. Although we are fucking up the ocean, let's
not more. Yeah. Yeah, And that's one of the things
about like we'll get on this, but like I don't.
They always talk about how ecologically friendly it will be,
but like they're also the people who think the the
e p A is like the an illegal organization and
we should like there should be no environmental rules about

(36:02):
where you can and can't dump poison. It's the one yeah,
it's the one case for like colonies on Mars. This
is like yeah, go there, go yeah. I never get
that mad about anything people say about colonizing Mars because
it's like, well, the worst case scenario is you die
and I don't know you, so it's fine. Yeah, that's

(36:26):
got hurt much, go fill it with your trash. I
don't give a shit about Mars. Yeah, Mars is already dead.
You're very welcome there. So yeah again, so far, this
guy Joe Quirk's attempts UM to establish a floating utopia
do not bode well for the future of utopian sea cities.

(36:46):
In January of two thousand seventeen, after years of technical
feasibility studies and political negotiations, the Sea Steading Institute signed
a memorandum of Understanding with the Government of French Polynesia
to build the first sea steads in its territorial waters.
The designs were developed by Dutch architects named Blue twenty
one UM, and it was kind of looked like a

(37:06):
big resort UM. There was a bunch of villas and yeah,
all sorts of like there's this idea there's gonna be
big parks and ship like the other ones we're talking about. UM.
And they planned to fund it through an initial coin offering,
which is like a crowdfunding thing. UM. Like, we're we're
going not a crowdfunding, it's it's UM. There they were
planning to launch a new cryptocurrency and have the value

(37:28):
of that cryptocurrency and like the money people put into
it buying the initial coins fund the start of the
of the island that they're going to build for the
community they're going to build in French Polynesia. Um. Yeah,
Joe Quirk told reporters were going to draw a new
map of the world with French Polynesia at the center
of the aquatic age. So that's I mean, it's a

(37:48):
step further than anyone else has really gotten. Yeah, cryptocurrency
is a good way to get this crypto. Yeah, and
it's and here's the thing that they didn't prove over
the Republic of Minerva. They actually like a down with
the government and we're like we want to do this,
which is, you know, they've gotten farther than anybody else before,
further than anybody else before them. Um. Now, I there's

(38:12):
a lot of this that I find frustrating, um, including
the fact that like I I find I'm particularly kind
of like, as we just joked about it, but there's
something really gross about quirks line that like, we're going
to draw a new map of the world with with
French Polynesia at the center in this community, we're building
at the center of the aquatic age because the ocean.
One of his the best things about the ocean is

(38:34):
that there's like, there's not a bunch of countries in
it murdering each other all the time and doing other
horrible things. It's mostly just ocean um. And there's something
disgusting about a person who would look at this, this
like vast incomprehensible expanse of water with no no borders
or walls around most of it and be like, well,
what have we just made it more like the places

(38:55):
where we're murdering each other exactly. It's just for the purpose. Yeah,
it's like Jeff Bezos looking at space and being like,
we should move industry here, And it's really really anyway,
My dislike of Quirk is kind of furthered by the
fact that he chose French Polynesia for the site of this,
and he chose it because it's the world's largest exclusive
economic zone now an exclusive economic zones basically it's a

(39:18):
zone that can stretch, i think up to two miles
from the coastline of a nation, where you have kind
of a control of what like you can levy taxes
and ship right like, it's it's your territory in terms
of like what what ship passes through um and French
Polynesia because it's this, it's there's like up shipload of
islands in French Polynesia and it's spread over a wide

(39:39):
geographic area. They have the largest exclusive economic zone in
the world. So potentially you could monetize a lot of
this more than it is currently being monetized. And that
was kind of the goal these people had right um
So Tom Bell, a professor of law in Orange County,
drafted a contract for an agreement with the government of
French Polynesia. He told reporters, we explained to the Polynesians

(40:01):
how having a quasi autonomous area nearby was a good thing.
Look at Monaco or Hong Kong or Singapore. Special jurisdictions
create a lot of growth outside their borders, like Quirk.
Bell also has a book about how people are going
to start making their own sea cities for reasons besides
tax haven. He theorizes that the first sea stead state
will grow like a coral polyp and be so economically

(40:22):
successful that it will enrich the whole area until it
breaks free to live on the open ocean. So again
he's saying that, like, we're gonna start this thing in
French Polynesia. It's going to be a huge economic hit.
It's gonna make a bunch of money and grow larger
and larger, and eventually we'll just sail away from French
Polynesia and abandon them because we'll be big enough that
we won't have to have the protection of a state anymore,

(40:43):
which is kind of shitty to French Polynesia because French
Polynesia is one of the country's most threatened by climate change.
Huge chunks of French Polynesia will cease to exist in
the not distant future as a result of rising sea levels,
and Quirk and Bell are basically saying, Hey, we want
to come into your country, pollute the water, spew carbon

(41:03):
into the atmosphere, speed up the rate at which your
islands sink, and do that in order to power our
bitcoin mining rigs. And then once we get rich and
have a big island, we're gonna sail it away and
you guys can deal with it. Right. It's like it's
pretty cool. Yeah, It's like Tony Soprando giving someone alone,
where it's like I'm gonna We're gonna take as much
as we can from you, and then we're gonna toss

(41:25):
you out. That's it. We we we got what we
needed and now yeah, and now we're gonna bounce. And
so it's like it's a short term solution for that
country probably, or at least that's how they view it.
And then it's they're just gonna get used up. Yeah,
it's really shitty. Again, it defeats the entire purpose because
it's like, look, if you're gonna be shitty and use

(41:45):
up resources and and and just ruin the world, just
do that here in the US. Like what's the point. Yeah,
Like you already have the ability to do most of
these shitty You can funk over French Polynesia without traveling there.
Every day Americans funk over French Polynesia. Likely you're you
there's you have a variety of options for for harming

(42:06):
the nation of French Polynesia without leaving your home. I
hurt French Polynesia this morning when I opened a can
of soda. Yeah, that's true. It was so easy. It's
so incredibly easy to harm French Polynesia. And then you
also got some soda out of it. And I got
some soda out of it. Yeah. Um anyway, so uh
as is probably obvious by the fact that it was

(42:28):
obvious to us what a bad deal this was. It
was obvious to French Polynesia. The government like agreed to
sit down and talk to them a little bit. And
the government agreed because the former Minister of Tourism for
French Polynesia, Mark Collins co founded a company called Blue
Frontiers with Joke wirk Um in order to like create
the project. Um. So that's that's I think why there

(42:51):
was some initial buy in that the government had, but
that quickly ended. And I'm going to read from the
Guardian here. The government was looking for something to address
sea level rise in environment all degradation, whereas the c
Setting Steading Institute was more about autonomy. Mark Collins says.
He says that the prospect of a tax free enclave
held little appeal for the locals, given that Polynesians don't
pay income tax anyway. One Tahitian TV host compared the

(43:14):
situation to the evil Galactic Empire in Star Wars, imposing
on the innocent Ewoks while secretly building the Death Star.
The libertarian position didn't help either, As Collins Chin put it,
it's very difficult to ask for government support when your
narrative is that you want to get rid of politicians.
In retrospect, Bell agrees they already had a beautiful paradise
in French Polynesia. The local community wasn't very enthused about

(43:36):
the project, and I get it. They don't need strangers
coming in and ruining their view, which you got that eventually, buddy. Um.
It sounds like for the most part they weren't they
weren't buying what they were selling. Well, we'll sit down
with you. I think there may have been some money
that changed hands, because there were people in the government
who were initially kind of bullish on this, and then

(43:58):
there were protests in the streets over it, like yeah,
people being like what about our fishing areas, like what
like this is such a bad like people like this
is obviously a terrible idea, and the government quickly backed off.
They were like, no, it's not it's and then they
thought for a second, They're like, okay, never mind this time,
everybody sorry. So with Blue Frontiers, the company that they

(44:18):
were going to colonize the ocean around the French Polynesia
with Um, when that fails, Colin's chin goes off to
set start yet another C city project. Um and he
claims to have given up and Collin again like the
guy from the government who had been working with him. Um. Yeah,

(44:38):
uh so Colin's chin starts another C city project. Um
and he this one is a lot savvier, And I
think he might actually succeed to an extent because he
claims to have given up on the idea that libertarian
tax dodge is a good basis for a civilization, and
he instead founded an organization with the goal of making
floating cities that are extensions of existing cities and thus

(45:00):
pay taxes as normal. Basically like, hey, real estate is
expensive in San Francisco. What if we build a floating
city right right in the right outside of the Bay.
What if we build a floating city on the side
of New York And like that's that's the thing he's
trying to sell, which is like, yeah, ship that might
work someday, something like that might exist one of these
days to deal with a variety of things. Yeah, that's
gonna say. It might have to exist, so it may

(45:21):
be inevitable. Yeah. It's just very funny that this whole
this it feels like one long negotiation this history that
has reduced to like, okay, it's extension of city outside.
Yeah what if what if it is the same laws
as San Francisco, California, But we have waves. You know, Honestly,
if they if they do it and then they're like
we won, it's like good for you man, Yeah, good

(45:44):
for you guys. Good work. Yeah. And yeah that that
doesn't feel like a new type of government or something revolutionary.
It just seems like a neat thing we could do
the city. And also it's a it's a mix of
neat thing we could do and thing we may have
to do because of how badly we fucked up other things. Yeah,
you know what if more people are living in the ocean,

(46:06):
maybe those are people who'd be like, hey, stop throwing
stuff in here. Yeah. I just checked the ocean and
it turns out it's not good here. Along with all
the monsters that's filled with there's a lot of garbage.
Like that's the thing is if if any of them
came on it from sustainable living and cleaning up because

(46:30):
we've were you know, there's all these prototypes and stuff
of like ways to clean up the ocean and stuff.
I feel like everybody would be like way more into this.
If they're like, if we're gonna look out there, we're
gonna do some online gambling, but also we're going to
pick up all your trash and if and that's also
a good way to make money or to be sustainable,

(46:53):
where like the you can get help from other countries
because they're like they're cleaning up our trash, we should
support them. But again, it all starts from this very
selfish place. Yeah, it's extremely selfish. Um, it's silly, and
it's a bummer because again, as we keep coming back to,
there's cool ideas. So Chin's idea for for these cities

(47:16):
that are extensions of regular cities but in the waters
to create a series of interlocking hexagonal islands which harvest
power from waves in sunlight and regenerate marine life through
an artificial reef system. And a lot of these different
sea stetting plants today will say like and we'll grow
back the reefs. It will provide a habitat for the animals.
If they actually do it, that would be cool. Yeah.

(47:37):
He calls his idea oceanic city. Um, and he claims
that the hexagonal design allows for dragon drop city designing
just like in sim city, so you can like flow
to city, block it away and stick it in a
new place, or just like drop a hospital or a university,
you know, in the middle of a thing. Um And yeah,
I I think aspects of this dream uh might be

(47:59):
real listic. And I think in general, one of the
things that's changed from now to the earlier days and
like the seventies and then the nineties of this is
that better technology stuff like three D printers means like
you could do this, Like this isn't like the Mars colony,
where we're like, well, Ellen, it may not actually be
possible to do what you're talking about. At our current
level of technology any in any reasonable capacity, we could

(48:21):
absolutely build like semi autonomous sea habitats that people lived
on and were modular, Like that's not physically impossible. Um.
And as a result, the kind of libertarian dreams of
c stetting have gone from The first ones were all grifts, right,
There were attempts to raise money in order to like
get money, and nobody actually wanted to build anything. Um. Well,

(48:45):
now that's kind of changed, and you're starting to get
the first libertarian c setting advocates who believe in something
and are actually willing to risk everything they have to
try and set up a life at sea. That's fantastic. Yeah,
because the grift that the thing that they were promising
in the grift not a bad idea, but they were
just doing a grift. So it does make sense for

(49:07):
someone to come along and be like, but what if
we actually did it? What if we tried? Yeah, these
new things you're talking about, it's just so much more realistic.
It reminds me of playing like Minecraft or Valheim or
any survival game where it's like you build a base
and then if you want to funk off and make
a new base in the ocean, for example, you can't

(49:27):
just like start again, you move your resources. Um, you
you build it as part of it. And that's what
they're getting at here, which is like they the first
ideas was like clean break, we're doing our own thing,
and it's like you kind of can't do that, like
don't print your own money immediately, Like like this, the
idea of building a city off of an existing city

(49:50):
is a good compromise. If they actually do the things
that they're saying they can do, it's it's realistic. Yeah,
and it's um, that's kind of why you're you've seen
so far just one, well, no three now, But the
first people who have actually done the opposite of a
grift lost huge amounts of money trying to create societies

(50:10):
at sea um. And the first of these guys, and
the one who put the most skin in the game,
is Chad l Wartowski. Chad is a lifelong libertarian. From
the information available, at least, it seems like he got
his start as a student at Michigan State University in ninet.
His first election was Bill Clinton's re election, and Chad
attended his speech by the president and found himself disturbed

(50:32):
not by any of the sex crime stuff, but by
Bill Clintons spending quote. He's talking about investing in this,
investing in that, investing in that. I knew investing was
code word for we're going to be spending money on this.
Chad believed that the country needed to spend less and
tax its people less. He spent time briefly agitating for
the Free State Project and the Ron Paul campaign. In

(50:54):
two thousand and two, after graduation, he got a job
as a software engineer in Georgia. Chad made a stab
at starting political life there, running for Congress once as
a libertarian, but he couldn't get enough signatures to get
on the ballot. During these years, most of Chad's political
activism was complaining about the failure of libertarian politics to
take off nationwide. He was just kind of like, why
isn't this happened yet? Um. After years of this, he

(51:16):
decided that fucket, he just go out and start his
own settlement and live free. He spent years experimenting with
different constructions methods. In his off time, he would work
seventeen hour days as a software contractor and then like
spend time trying to develop ways to build a sea
habitat and whatnot. In his off time, UM, he did
a lot of like government contracting. He was in Afghanistan

(51:36):
for a while, like coding for the Department of Defense,
and he made a shipload of money UM which he
put into bitcoin. And in two thousand fifteen he got
briefly involved with a couple of people uh in a
project to sell c notes to try and raise fifteen
million dollars to make a village at sea. Only five
people invested, so the project was canceled and Chad was
adamant to invest or to reporters that he refunded all

(51:59):
of their money. Um, see notes sounds like a scam,
but maybe it wasn't. Based on what comes next, I
don't think it was. I think Chad's pretty earnest. My
note to Chad. If Chad's listening is it sounds like
he's he has some ideas. Uh, he's just not finding
people who are interested. He is not popular, it's not

(52:22):
getting enough signatures. That seems like the story of his
life with this stuff so far. Yes, um, and that yeah,
And I think that's that is about to change because
in two thou sixteen, Chad retires and he's got a
bunch of money, um, mostly in crypto, enough that he
doesn't have to work anymore. So he's been some time
bumming around trying to find other people who will try

(52:42):
to start a society with him. Um. And he meets
a tour guide when he's in Thailand and they fall
in love and get married. Now, good for Chad. When
you talk about a white rich guy who travels to
Thailand and meets a tour guide and gets married, that
is often a problematic story. Um, it's often horrible of
the time. I don't think it is this time because

(53:04):
number one, she's thirty three when they get married, so
it's not nothing questionable about it. She's got like a
thirteen year old kids. So like, I think he just
actually found someone and they fell in love and it's fine. Um. So,
Chad l Wartowski, you get the official behind the bastard
seal of married a Thai woman while on vacation, but
not like in a predatory way. Award nice, are you

(53:26):
gonna mail that to him? Yeah? It's forty five pounds
and made of solid bronze. Um. Yeah, as it should be.
You know who also doesn't get married in a predatory way.
But I said didn't. I said didn't If it's accidentally
a Washington state Yeah, if it's the Washington State Patrol,
they definitely at least of the time. Am I Right? Okay,

(53:51):
here's the ads. We're back and we're talking about robbing
insured banks and Peter teal Um. Yeah, the American dream,
the American dream. Ah, I love America. So this lady
Chad Jad marries a lady her name, she calls herself Nadia,

(54:13):
a summer girl. Um, she picked a last name for
herself when she left. She picked summer girl. Whatever. People
make names. Yeah, no, it's it's fine. It's fine. They
get married and they actually moved to French Polynesia briefly
to help Blue Frontiers and their sea setting of it.
So like when they're courting the government of French Polynesia,

(54:33):
Chad hears about this and he just moves there right away.
Like again, he's incredibly earnest. He's like, oh my god,
this government's actually agreed, Like I'll just I'll be I
need to move there so that when things start happening,
I'm right in the middle of it. Um. Up until
the end here, he's pretty endearing in some ways. Um.
But yeah, the whole thing falls apart, as we just discussed,
and so l Wartowski flees back to Thailand with his

(54:56):
new bride. Uh. Next he gets in contact with a
German engineer and Aimed Rudiger Kulch like Chad, libertarian Like Chad,
Rudiger is a libertarian. Um, and he's a libertarian who
made all of his money in like the defense industry.
He designed weapons systems before getting really into cryptocurrency and
retiring to Thailand. Um. He had a dream, which he

(55:17):
discussed in the c Setting Institute Forum of creating a
launch loop, which is a huge sling shot that can
throw things into space. And Rudiger Coke didn't like come
up with the idea of a launch loop. People have
talked for a while about like, well, you wouldn't actually
need like all the fuel and stuff that you need
if you could build a big enough slingshot type thing
to just like launch stuff into the into the atmosphere.

(55:39):
And this is like just like throwing like cows, and like,
I think spaceships mostly, Dave. I think they're really shooting
for spaceships. I think that's a waste. What would you
flick into space? It's just whatever I want space to have,
you know, like confused some aliens and throwing he pop
out there, give him to space. Start things off on

(56:00):
a good footing with space. That way, when space is
like should we kill this planet with the media, they'll
be like, not the guys that gave us Iggy right.
I want the first contact aliens have with our species
to be their UFO slamming into Iggy Pop. Yeah. Like
that's when I'm like, oh my god, we hit something
pull over and then it's Iggy Pop yeah and Frozen yeah,

(56:22):
and and a single copy of one of the Stooges
albums that'll set things off right honestly, Yeah, yeah, that's
perfect idea, perfect idea. So Coke wants to build a
launch loop, um, which a thing. I think it's a
thing that could potentially work. Like, I think it's a
thing where like astronautical engineers were like, well, yeah, tech,

(56:42):
you could make something technically that would work this way
and it might be a good idea, um, but no
one had ever built it because it requires an enormous
amount of space, so much that you could only really
do it in the ocean. Um. Sorry, it's a catapult. Yeah,
it's like it's like cotes, so just like fling shit
into the stars. Incredible. Yeah, it's a cool idea. I

(57:04):
don't I don't know how actually practical it is, but
a bunch of people think it is. And yeah, honestly
it's more sustainable right than you're doing now. If you
could do it, it seems like it would be a
good idea potentially. Um. Coke is like, well, we have
to do it in the ocean, and so he makes
a deal with Chad that they'll they'll pick a spot
and they're gonna have to for this launch loop. Build

(57:25):
a watch tower, right, so you can watch the launches.
And so Coke is like, hey, you go and you
help me fund this. You just live in the watch tower,
you get your thing, you get to start c setting
and I can use that as a base to make
my my loop. Right. Um, So both men get get
on board a project together and again most promising, they
have a goal other than just like avoid taxes. And

(57:45):
it's a little maybe outside of their means, but at
least it's a goal. At least it's a dream beyond
avoid taxes. Um. No, I just had a realization of
all of this. All these guys because we've been talking
about the idea of like they keep framing it as
we should start a society, but ultimately it's just that
they want to live a certain way. Yeah. Um, and

(58:05):
that's part of the problem. I think it's an issue
with libertarian in general, which is like you need to
show how this would benefit people in general. Know what,
it's just occurred to me. They all just want to
be lighthouse keepers. That's it. That's the answer. Just be
a lighthouse keeper and you're all set enough lighthouses, Dave,

(58:27):
I know we need to bring back or lighthouses. Uh,
and then we'll solve libertarians. That's that's Joe Biden's next
big spending Billy trillion dollars for lighthouses. Yeah, that's it.
That's all we need. So Chad and Uh and Coke
like decided to form a company in order to build
this launch loop and a community around it. They name

(58:47):
their company Ocean Builders, and their plan is to sell
twenty or so pods at least and kind of build
a community around this launch loop. And I think the
idea is, like, Hey, if we actually build like a
space launch facility, you're gonna want to live around that.
There's going to be a bunch of money around that.
There's a whole lot of businesses that like people could do.
And you know, it's not the worst of the ideas
people have had in this episode, it's the best. So

(59:10):
they build a prototype and they tow it into international waters, unflagged,
transmitting nothing off the coast of Thailand. Edwardtowski had eventually
had initially tried to keep a low profile, and he
wanted to He didn't want to make a big deal
about it until things got established, but he also wanted
to work with the c Steading Institute on the project,
and once they heard a guy had actually made a

(59:31):
c stead, like there's a dude living in the ocean
off of a platform and international waters, they sent their
president out to film a documentary about him. As The
Guardian rites, it was not a stirring success, but also
not a failure. More importantly, it was real, making chad
Our first not a grifter of the episode. Due to
a construction snaphoo, the pod listed ten degrees on stormy nights,

(59:54):
Elwartowski in Summer Girl abandoned the tiny bedroom and slept
in the kitchen as close as possible to the central
spar A grocery run was a four day affair, and
since there was nothing outside the c stead to park
a boat, Coke had to pick them up. They sometimes
stayed on shore instead, in an apartment in Fouquet that
el Wartowski had rented for Summer Girls mother and fourteen
year old son. So this is not easy. They're they're

(01:00:17):
really committed to this, like you have to give it
to him. These are believers. This is not a grift.
You would not live that way for a grift. That's
a that's a nightmare. That that sounds fucking miserable. Yeah. Um,
I found an article on news BTC, which is a
bitcoin in crypto news website, about Chad and Summer Girls
establishment of the first actual libertarian c stead. It was

(01:00:37):
published in the spring of two thousand nineteen, after the
first episodes of the documentary about the effort came out.
This article mostly celebrates that Chad used bitcoin profits to
build his new home. It includes this line. El Wartowski
states that the couple has made no effort to seek
approval from the Thai government for their new home. He commented,
We've just been keeping under the radar so far, but

(01:00:58):
we follow all the laws of Thailand, so it's as
if we're just living on a boat in the water.
As far as they're concerned, all we expect from the
Thai government is that they follow international law. We will
be doing the same. But Nadia and I aren't doing
anything we can't do on land. So you think that worked, Dave,
I mean, it's again, it's just that they're they're just
living in the ocean like it doesn't feel like they've

(01:01:19):
built a libertarian society. Here's the thing, you know, who
took this seriously is the Thai government. Um, so in
Thailand you can go to prison for forever if you
like make fun of the king. Um. Right, you can
get executed for for smuggling drugs. It's not a chill government. Thailand.

(01:01:39):
Government tightly wound is They're a little tightly wound, right.
They don't like people just existing in their ocean. Yeah,
they don't like some guys starting his own nation off
of their coast that they did not. They were not
okay with this. I mean in fairness. Like if I
had a yard and then someone was like, look, I'm
just existing in your yard yard, I'd be like, maybe

(01:02:01):
get off my yard. Yeah, Like, I'll talk to you,
I'll see if you're cool, but maybe get off my y.
They're like, it's cool. I'm a libertarian, and I'm like,
I'm I'm calling the cops. But actually I'm not going
to call the cops because that doesn't help. But yes,
yeah I will. I will have a drone. Thank you.
By the way, Sorry, quick aside. This is called ocean Builder. Yeah,

(01:02:25):
what's all the name? Spend there was like ocean the
utopianis Oceania. It just occurred to me. They all sound
like sim builder games. They do all sound like video
games that what's his name? The game made the sims, Yeah,
they all sound like that, anything like that. So the
Thai government finds out because he keeps doing press that

(01:02:47):
he's living illegally, maybe off of the coast of their nation. Again,
the legal situation here is kind of unclear, um, but
the Thai government is not chill about it. And in
April of two, nineteen summer, a girl gets a text
from a friend back on the mainland that she and
her new husband are on TV. The Thai Navy had
judged their platform to be in a legal breakaway state

(01:03:08):
and a threat to tie sovereignty and threatening Thaie sovereignty
is a capital crime. They could both be given the
death sentence for this. Oh my god. Also, there's never
a good time to be surprised by the text you're
on TV, Like I would never be like, oh yeah,
like you want to know if you're going to be
on TV. You don't want to be shocked by that.
And and here's the thing, Um, Chad is an an

(01:03:32):
archo capitalist and when the when he gets reached out
to by the media, like, hey, what do you think
about the Thai government threatening to to like saying that
you're a threat to their sovereignty. He like, he goes
into an ideological explanation. He's like, well, I don't believe
in nations or borders, so obviously I'm not trying to
create a breakaway nation. Like that's just the Thai government
does not by this, Like, you're not going to convince

(01:03:56):
the Thaie government that that anarcho capitalism is the thing, Chad.
They're just not going to listen. And they don't. I've
never once been able to leave a store with a
product and pay with I don't believe in money, Like
that's never been a thing they'll accept many times. They
not believed in a state, but Thailand does, and they

(01:04:17):
have a military which they send after him. Um. He
and Summer Girl barely managed to escape pursuit with their lives.
It's a whole deal. Um yeah, like they and they
are wanted in a bunch of the world. Now they
had to travel places that didn't extradite to fucking Thailand.
Um and it's it's it's actually kind of an interesting
story you can find in that Guardian article. But to

(01:04:39):
make a long story short, the place they land next
is Panama. Now, over the course of late two thousand nineteen,
after fleeing for their lives, Chad and Summer Girl had
sat down with Coke via the Space Slingshot Guy in
Panama and another guy, Grant romant Um. Now Grant is
the former host of a TV show for hairstylists, UM
who has made CEO. Once they meet Grant, this hair stylist,

(01:05:02):
they make him CEO of Ocean Builders fairly shortly UM.
And from what I can tell, he did have one
real qualification, which is that in the nineties, before his
hair stylist days, I guess he had worked on the
freedom Ship project in Florida. UM, so he had he
had that experience. He worked on a grift Um. The
first two qualifications on his company bio where that he

(01:05:23):
had he had quote one of the most advanced mobile
paperless offices in Canada in nine and that he had
also quote lived in a tech frat house in San
Francisco with one of the six co founders of PayPal.
So literally the top two lines and his resume are
I I ran an office in Canada once and I

(01:05:44):
used to live in a frat house. I lived with
some people. Yeah, it's amazing. It's an incredible incredible plex
all of these this it is a like a pattern, right,
not just with this, but a lot of your episodes
where if you look at their like employment history three,
it's like it's like like managed to terry queen one

(01:06:05):
year later, tried to start a government and like it's
it's just again. I I sort of get it. Frustrated
people are just like, you know what, I'm just gonna
hit the reset button. But it never works. It never does.
So he had had this guy Grant, who they pick
as their CEOs. They all meet up in Panama and

(01:06:26):
uh Coke introduces these two run now fleeing from the
Thaie government to Grant, and they're like, well this guy
should run our fucking business. Um Now, Grant was like,
all of these people independently wealthy, right, That's the other thing.
These are all like independently wealthy, rich people with nothing
else to do. Um. And this is the first one

(01:06:46):
I respect because at least Chad put some skin in
the game. So together, independently wealthy, it often feels like
it means they had wealthy they're from a wealthy family.
I think it probably in a lot of cases. I
don't know, I I don't know as much about all
of their early lives, because there's not always a lot
on these people. There's not like super detailed wikipedias and
stuff disappear, and that you have what they say to

(01:07:09):
journalists about their background. So we know that UM, l Wartowski,
Grant and Coke put a bunch of money into setting
up a land base in Panama where they were going
to invest in technology. They'd figure out how to three
D print the things they need and design submarine drones
and the like. And UM, I do think they put
a lot of money into this. Again, they're not grifters.
I don't think they do actually believe, or at least

(01:07:31):
some of them believe. L Wartowski certainly does. UM. Unfortunately,
what they believed in was not freedom so much as
it was a specific freedom to take ownership of a
thing not currently owned and exploited for profit. The Guardian
makes it clear that their ideology, while less fraudulent than
their predecessors, was still deeply problematic. Quote in the nineteen essay,

(01:07:52):
Wayne Graham, Like a founder of the c Stetting Institute,
noted that the Frontier was settled not by a few
well financed parties, but by tens of thousands of smaller groups.
These homesteaders were granted the legal right to a plot
of land so long as they built a house and
farmed for five years. As they converted the landscape, they
laid the foundations for today's continent spanning United States. Grahamlick
wanted to find technologies that would allow individuals to similarly

(01:08:15):
colonize the sea. Quirk to discusses the U. S Frontier
in his book c Stetting. It was a place, he notes,
where leaders liberally doled out rights as they complete peded
for new citizens. Western states did away with voting eligibility
requirements based on landownership or tax payment, Quirk says, and
Wyoming offered women the right to vote before anywhere else
in the United States, in part because the territory needed

(01:08:36):
women to marry its abundant bachelor's. When the topic comes
up during my time in Panama, Coke claims that frontier
initiatives helped make the nineteenth century probably the freest century
we've ever had in human history. That's what I think about.
The eighteen hundreds very free in the United States. A
lot of free people walking around. Yeah, it's just like,

(01:08:59):
look at all those free people there's that romanticizing the
olden times, uh, where it's like, yeah, I mean, that's
what we had to do. It's just not we don't
do that now because we did it already, Like we
can't we can't go out into the frontier and do that.
It's just the world. The reason that could happen is

(01:09:20):
because you couldn't get in a plane and like go somewhere.
You'd have to be like, yeah, everybody go out into
this area, start their own thing, and we'll catch up
to you. Yeah. Well, you know, like that's just the
only way to do that. And it's it's such a
he's coming at it from such a myopic, like white
dude focused view of of the way the history went,

(01:09:42):
like even and even by that standard, for a huge
chunk like the first third of the nineteenth century in
the United States, white men didn't have the right to
vote universally right, like there were property requirements for a
lot of the country. I think was Andrew Jackson that
ship changed under um and then for they're forgetting like
you know, there were people already there a side that

(01:10:04):
preceded it, and I guess you don't have that with
the sea except for you do have cetaceans and like
all other kinds of you still have, yeah, exploitation, have
you have marine life? He's again, you learn a lot
about this guy. He's calling the eighteen hundreds the freest
century in human history. Women couldn't vote in the US
for any of that time, and black people were slaves

(01:10:25):
for almost It's only a thing a white guy can say.
It's that again, that obsession, the idea of like, oh,
what would the founding fathers think about X? Or why?
And it's like, I don't give a ship what they
have to think? Like they give what would Julius Caesar
think about doing this? Like you know who gives a ship?
He's dead? Yeah. Also, I don't give a ship with

(01:10:47):
old people. Like the progress the whole ideas we're moving forward,
and part of that is not giving a ship with
the people before us thought and recognizing that they sucked. Yeah,
that's the lesson you should learn at age eighteen, but
sometimes takes longer. So there was of course weird tax
stuff wrapped up in in the plan these guys were

(01:11:08):
cooking up. That's a factor in all of these Like
they're still they still have their their pitches about how
it's going to be a tax haven, UM, and that's
why the group moved to Panama in the first place,
right to avoid taxes. When Ocean Builders started advertising sea
pods for sale, UM, they were I think serious. I
don't think it's a grift. I think this is the
first one that they really I don't think they'll ever

(01:11:29):
build any but I think they mean to. So the
sea pods that l Wartowski and the others are selling
our luxury sea homes, UM I found them described in
one article is looking like giant motorbike helmets on poles,
which is not a bad way off. They look like
the Jetsons house houses a little bit, but coming out
of the ocean UM. They put a lot of money
into designing their website, which has some lovely renders and

(01:11:51):
succeeds in making these pods look like new tech industry releases.
The Apple is heavily and influence here, like they're trying
to make it look like that as opposed to like
frontier ship like the future. That said, when you read
through their marketing materials, there's actually some unintentionally horrifying things
like this. The native pod software can be upgraded remotely

(01:12:13):
and new sensors or automat and automations can be easily
hot swapped. The pod will be like a mobile phone
where you can install new home maps that are constantly
being developed. So that sounds great, right, What if your
home was in the middle of the ocean and also
worked like your phone. Hey, you want to live in
a tech nightmare suspended above the ocean. You know how

(01:12:33):
your phone works perfectly all the time and you love it.
What if your house was like that, and also if
anything went wrong, you drowned. Right, It's the thing that
we we said in one of these episodes, which is
like the ultimate goal. It's successful, it's still something I'm
not interested in. It's it's like it's the same with Mars,
where it's like, hey, you want to live on this
dead planet or you can't go outside, and it's like

(01:12:55):
not really, I might live on the sea and the
right circumstance, but it's not a bunch of sterile techie
looking pots. It would literally, yeah, on a sea. Like
the like said before, the worst case scenario is a
bunch of drownings. But honestly, that is the best version
of dying in the ocean. Yes, Like, like that is

(01:13:15):
the that is baseline. That is like, if you're drowning,
you're like, oh good, I'm glad I'm drowning and not
getting eaten by a monster, because that is also on
the table. There are literal monsters in there, fucking monsters
like love Craft I and looking demons that will that
will eat you or or try to have sex with

(01:13:38):
you if they're a dolphin. It's just the the end
goal is not appealing to me. Yeah, I mean it's not.
I don't know, uh that that that's that's I guess
a taste thing. You know, different people appeal for different things,
but the way in which they're specifically trying to sell
this is just horrifying to me. Like the fact that
it will work like your phone, well, that's not very attractive.
My phone is a piece of shit. No one wants

(01:14:00):
to live in a smart home yet until we actually
figure out a way for that to work, especially not
one on the sea. It's the same with Tesla, where
they're like, have instead of all these dials and stuff,
have a screen, And I'm like, I don't feel good
about that. Even if it works, I'm not Maybe the
kids under me will be okay with that. I'm still

(01:14:21):
I'm too old to be okay with that. I'm certainly
not okay with that. And also in the damn ocean,
and it's like, yeah, I'm not an expert on building
things in the ocean, but all of their renders are
like these smooth, white, curved products that look like again
like apple gadgets, and all of the permanent sea structures
I've ever seen, like like oil rigs, like look huge

(01:14:43):
and rough and blocky and like they might need to
maybe they need to look that way to like survive
in the ocean. I don't know, I'm not an expert,
but no, like when you were talking about those modular things,
you think of this futuristic idea of like whoop whoop,
they just it's like, no, they probably have to like
toe it. It probably takes like like weeks to move

(01:15:05):
and it's probably like really rough season, really inconvenient. Uh yeah.
And it's the same with this. It's like salt water
and air and it's just gonna rust and look gross.
Like you don't want it to be like white because
that will just become gross, right, Like it will get
really weird and stained. Yeah, but it just seems like
a nightmare. Here's what they write about. Um, this is

(01:15:29):
maybe the most unintentionally horrifying thing they've written about these
houses they're trying to sell. We think the home of
the future will be elegant, simple and clean. To achieve this,
we decided to hide the lightbulbs lights, which is in
power outlets, by building them into the design of the
house that they are invisible yet always right where you
need them. Oh boy, yeah, that seems like a good idea,

(01:15:50):
that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's everything hard to adjust
and change on the fly, which again I think bow
you need to be able to like repair them and
ship in media rez otherwise you might die. I don't know,
not about expert here. Just tell them what other people
have told me. The house is like you you need

(01:16:11):
to if you need to do the rewire stuff. It
shouldn't be tough. It shouldn't be built in Yeah, it shouldn't. Yeah,
it's the hubrist of the design, which is like speak to.
One of the features they advertise for the seapod is
a lightning prevention system. Um. Yeah, in that in that
exciting didn't even think about lightning, And now that now

(01:16:33):
that's all I can think about. Yeah, they talk about
lightning rods because like those just direct lightnings flow. What
if you could just stop lightning? And I don't entirely
know their plans there, but do they not explain it?
Because I think there's a bunch of different reading you
could do. But it all comes back to like my question,
which is, well, if you're doing something to the environment

(01:16:54):
around you that makes it unable for lightning to form
in a time when it's trying to form lightning, what
else does that affect. It's like cloud seating where it's
like okay, but you know that'll that'll do other stuff too, right,
like like if you if you start making it rain
places it's not supposed to rain, like other stuff will
happen right now exactly, it's okay, you want to live

(01:17:15):
near this volcano, don't worry. We figured out a way
to make it not erupt. And it's like I don't
believe you. I'm gonna need to have a lot of
information before, like the garantt we guaranteed to stop lightning.
It's like m M, I just will need more information. Yeah,

(01:17:36):
I would need a couple of different things, I think. So, Yeah,
if you've been following along so far, this doesn't seem
dissimilar to a number of grifft saciety projects we covered earlier.
The seapods could easily be yet another attempt to get
rich in pre orders or whatever and then run away.
But as it turns out, the Ocean Builders team we're
willing to put yet more skin in the game. COVID

(01:17:58):
hit and it absolutely pants the entire cruise ship industry.
And suddenly there was a way cheaper way to like
build a ce platform than they're making seapods. You could
just buy a cruise ship, a brock Bottom price cruise ship,
Dave um. So the three pulled their money and put
together nine and a half million dollars, which they definitely

(01:18:19):
should never have had in the first place. So this
is fundamentally a happy story. They really shouldn't have any money.
Oh my goodness, they're about to buy a cruise ship.
They shared you buy a cruise ship day. They're just
gonna sail that around and then they're gonna like, well,
they had realize fuel is expensive. We're going to Oh,
this is a full story. You don't have to wonder

(01:18:39):
how it'll end. Sorry, I'm just imagining like someone waking
up and going outside and just seeing a cruise ship
just like beached near their house, three dead Libertarians on
the beach in front of it. Exactly. Oh God. So
they buy a cruise ship, the Pacific Dawn, forty five

(01:19:00):
meters long, which is just four thousand meters short of
the Freedomship. So they're on their way. At least it's real.
So they they pivot in their dreams of c setting. Um,
they commissioned plans for a new ce city, and the
Dawn is going to be, in their minds, the centerpiece
of a network of sea pods. So they'll park the

(01:19:20):
Dawn somewhere and then start selling sea pods which will
like form out around it, you know. Um, and they'll
build a little sea town that way. Um. They also
decide that like, well, we need a lot more startup capital,
although I don't know that they did, because ten million
dollars seems like you could build some sea pods with it.
I'm sure the guys who go to that, like burn
on the Water managed to build things like that for

(01:19:41):
less than ten million dollars. But instead of using it
for R and D, they buy this boat and the
plan is to sell the cabins on it for dollars
a piece and use that money to fund the development
and sale of sea pods, which will gradually turn into
a society. I imagine the response with people saying no,
saying I can just take a cruise like a cruise,

(01:20:04):
but you're on the cruise ship and it never moved.
And bitcoins, that's the other thing, Like there's no like
they're not doing like a little Broadway shows or like
you know, no fancy dinners. It's just and we'll talk
about that in a second. So their plan is that

(01:20:25):
like gradually, over time they'll be able to fund the
creation in the sale of more sea pods, which will
like surround the Pacific dawn, and there will be platforms
for growing food and manufacturing things and providing park land. Um,
although I guess you would have to pay for the
park land because there's no government that's paying for things.
I don't know if that's never explained. They name their
cruise ship the Satoshi because the guy, the anonymous founder

(01:20:51):
of Bitcoin's pseudonym was Satoshi. Um. And yeah, the plan
for the c city is for it to look from
the air like the B and Bitcoin. Oh so gross. Yeah,
I know, and it's also like, well, okay, if you
don't have if you're a libertarian society who's making everybody

(01:21:13):
form the shape of a bitcoin logos, whose whose job
is that, how do you tell that behavior? How do
you make that? Yeah? So I don't know. Maybe they
had a plan on October. Oh you're not into the
big bitcoin c city based around a cruise ship that
you live in forever. No, man, it's such an incredible

(01:21:37):
down grade. Like again, all these stories are like these
negotiations where they're like I want to start my own country,
and then it ends with like okay, but I get
to keep the truck. It's and then they get like
a truck and that's it. So on October, Chad el
Wartowski announced to read It that the fondest dreams of

(01:21:57):
generations of libertarians were about to be real. List they
were going to build finally a sea born libertarian nation.
And I'm gonna quote from a Guardian summary of the
discussion that followed, quote, So I am buying a cruise
ship and naming it M. S. Satoshi. A m A
asked me anything. The responses were quick, need an apprentice
aviation mechanic. I know how to use a yo yo

(01:22:19):
any room for me, and included the inevitable skeptics, anyone
remember the good old days of the fire festival. But
Plenty took the proposition seriously and wanted to go over
the small print. Where is the power coming from? Gas? Internet, food, water, toiletries?
What taxes will she be subject to? L Wartowski answered
every question with grave attention to detail. There would be

(01:22:40):
generators at first, followed quickly by solar power. This would
be an eco friendly crypto ship. High speed wireless internet
would come from land. Utilities would be included in the
fees at first, but would be meted out when the
cabins were upgraded. You don't want to have to pay
for someone else's mining rig in their cabin, he wrote,
referring to the resource intensive computational process that introduced his
new crypto coins into the system. But as the Reddit

(01:23:03):
q and A continued, l Wertowski's meticulous responses revealed some
of the more naughty practicalities of life on board. It
turned out that the only cooking facilities would be in
the restaurant. For safety reasons, no one was allowed to
have a microwave in their rooms, though some cabins had
many fridges, noted al Wartowski, determinatively sidestepping the point. He
offered residents discount at the restaurant and mentioned that some

(01:23:25):
interested cruisers had already talked about renting part of the
restaurant kitchen so they could make their own food. Would
entrepreneurs to come up with solutions and try them out,
he wrote, in a valiant attempt to convert a fairly
fundamental stumbling block into wild startup energy. This is your
place to try new things right there. He You have

(01:23:45):
to pay for the food at the restaurant. Yes, is
the only kitchen. That is the only kitchen that libertarian
mecca that has a cafeteria. This will be the freest
ace on earth. But no microwaves. Ye, no microwaves. And
you can't make your own food in anyway? Well, no,

(01:24:07):
you could pay to use the communal to use the kitchen.
Someone entrepreneurs could figure out how to lease it. Yeah,
it's it's very funny. We haven't. I feel like I
should have threw out this been talking or speculating about
the amount of cocaine is involved in this entire It's
not none, David's not not none or at least it's

(01:24:35):
a real three in the morning. I'm starting a business energy,
you know, like it's it's it's that. It's probably cocaine. Yeah,
it's painful. What else hurt us again? Tell us more bad?
So uh yeah, And it is funny. You can you
can't have microwaves in your room, but you can't have
a bitcoin mining rig. It's it's perfect, It's perfect. It's

(01:25:02):
just fucking perfect. Um. It is very funny that both
the Liberty Ship and the Setosis founders admitted upfront, Oh, yes,
we will have to radically curb your freedoms in order
to make a life on a boat together possible. Um.
Whatever criticisms you have of them, though, they hired a
captain and a skeleton crew for the ship, and some
of them sailed their asses to Panama with it. This

(01:25:22):
is again, more than any of their predecessors except the
Sea Land Guy ever managed. They started auctioning the seven
hundred and seventy seven open cabins off in late November.
They held a number of informational calls for potential customers
where they talked about ship like their COVID safety policies
on board, and their plans to accept a bunch of
stupid crypto coins with names like Eureka coin and doge coin.

(01:25:45):
They also informed people that pets larger than a small
dog or pets that barked, would not be allowed on board. Oh,
it's so it's crawling with cats, thousands of that's what
That's what it would be, is give it cats eating
the corpses of libertarians who died when their mining rig
overheated them as they stroked out of the island in Japan.

(01:26:07):
It will be like this boat perpetually sailing the ocean.
Just covered it, and we'd just say that dogs would
not want to attend that event. Yeah, thank you. Cats
would love it. So, how many rooms do you think sold, Dave,
I'm gonna guess it's like when he's like trying to
get those signatures and all that. I'm guessing, all right,
I'm gonna say seven rooms. Wait, that's how many sold. No,

(01:26:31):
that's how many are were available into I'm guessing three seven,
So twice as good as you thought, more than twice
as good as you thought. Dave really underestimated them. Um,
So the fact that only seven rooms sold was a problem.
Another problem was that none of the men who had
thrown down near ten million dollars for this boat and
decided to make life on the sea their chief goal.

(01:26:53):
Actually knew about living on a boat or say, like
a boat, why would you need to know that, Dave,
You're trying to figure out a whole new way of life.
You don't have to know how to work a sale
or maintain an engine. Likely this this remind this is
like this is like a slow down g T a
rampage where you're just like jumping from one thing to

(01:27:14):
another desperately trying to hijack stuff. Like it feels like
the boat has been hijacked in slow motion by someone
who doesn't know how to use a boat. And now
they're just sailing off and they're wondering what the hell
all the buttons do and they're not sure what they're
gonna do. They do they do have to hire an
actual professional captain to say that's the good news. Can

(01:27:34):
you imagine being that captain's he's giving some quotes and
it sounded like a nightmare, but in your tongue. The
whole way of this was very adamant about like they
did not know what they were doing. Where they're like,
we can pay you, and I'd be like cash, I
don't want I don't want to goddamn like pictures of

(01:27:55):
dogs on coins. You give me cash, fucking cash money baby.
Um So, there's a lot of talk this whole episode
about like international waters, the freedom of international waters. Here's
the thing, International law heavily regulates a lot of the ocean.
Um sailing requires certain certificates, like you have to have

(01:28:16):
a bunch of things that prove your boat is safe.
And the guys didn't realize they needed to have that.
Um so they had to like put it in drydock
and pay a bunch more money and set the project back. Yeah,
just google it, you just they could have googled it.
They could have googled that. It also turns out that
you have to have insurance for boats that are going
to sail into and exist within another nation, and insurance

(01:28:38):
companies were like, well, we're not going to ensure a
boat run by three guys who don't know anything about
boats and want to park it off the coast of
Panama and turn it into a floating bitcoin city. Like
we don't, we don't. We're like, we're not even going
to quote you a premium on that that's just not
a business we want to be. I never thought i'd say,
comrade insurance guy. Yeah, well, I mean it's just it's

(01:28:59):
pretty basic. So the whole venture fell apart, and the
ship was eventually sold for scrap at a loss of
a lot of money. The Guardian chronicles the very funny
reactions these guys had when they realized they'd never bothered
to learn ship about what life on the ocean might entail. Quote.
After trying multiple insurers and brokers, Romance began to realize
that the cruise ship industry was, as he put it,

(01:29:20):
plagued by over regulation, along with airlines and nuclear power.
According to Harris, it's in the top three. The ocean
builder's great freedom's project, whose intrinsic purpose was to offer
an escape from oppressive rules and bureaucracy, was being hobbled
by oppressive rules and bureaucracy. As l Wartowski would reflect
a few months later on Reddit, a cruise ship is
not very good for people who want to be free.

(01:29:44):
So perfect punchline to all this to be like this
whole time, they're like, we're taking to the sea where
there's no laws, not bothering to google or check to
see if that's true. Are their laws in the sea.
That's basically what this all is. As they've and fantasizing
about going to this place that was magical in their

(01:30:05):
mind and now they're learning, like finally what the place
actually is. Yeah, like that's what it seems like. It's
like it's like it's like wanting to go to Mars
for all the fresh air in trees, you know, like
they never bothered to check incredible. It's it's it's very funny.
And of course they have to sell the cruise ship

(01:30:25):
for scrap metal. They it's it's just a giant disaster.
It's all, none of it, none of it works out. Um.
And as time has gone on since the dream Dying,
Chad l Wartowski has gone on to post more concerning things. Uh.
The post he made when they had to sell the
boat was quote, we have lost this round the new

(01:30:46):
normal great reset gains another victim, which is like Q
and on anti vac ship. So I am worried about Chad. Um.
I like you. I like you, buddy, I you got potential. Yeah,
it's in terms of like I understand your disclaimer where
you're like, these aren't bastards the bastard is like huberous

(01:31:06):
and maybe our education system. Yeah, like the bastard is more.
This is more people victims of their own yes, of themselves,
and like the grifters early on, Yeah they were bastards,
but it it is like I feel bad for them,
and honestly, I kind of want them to have a win, uh,

(01:31:28):
provided that they are good people, like you said with
the vaccine stuff and getting a little shaky. Um. You know,
they could be terrible people otherwise. But it's like, oh man,
oh buddy, Yeah, and it wants I want I want
to do something for you. Yeah, I I want to.

(01:31:50):
I want something. I want there to be I want
I I think this idea is cool. Like I think
that I might go to that event in fucking Sacramento. Um,
that sounds rad as hell. I love the idea of
like people walking away from I mean speaking of of
of the term walk away. Read Cory Doctors wonderful sci
fi book walk Away. But I love the idea of
people like, let's let's abandon these horrible governments and figure

(01:32:12):
out over time how to like live in the sea.
There's a cool idea there, as long as you're not
poisoning the ocean or or whatever, like I don't I'm
not laughing at the idea of wanting to live in
like a designed community and the ocean of like hard
scrabble frontiers people. That's pretty rad, but that's not These

(01:32:34):
are not hard scrabble frontier people except for maybe Chad. Yes,
their heart is in the right place or when they're
not grifting, their heart is in the right place. And
that's the thing is like you could point that lens
at me and be like, look at you, you fucking coward.
You're not trying anything. These people are at least trying.
They but they're trying to actually accomplice this thing instead

(01:32:55):
of just bitching about the government, like it's like you
got to give them something that it's just you gotta
again going back to that, yeah, going back to the
core idea of libertarianism where it's like I've never seen
someone's explain how it would help society. It always feels
like it's just I I I I want this freedom,

(01:33:16):
I don't want to pay taxes, and it's it's the
idea of how to build an actual practical society. I've
just maybe I'm ignorant, maybe that's been explained, but I've
just never seen it. Well. Part of it is, you know, Dave,
And this is the thing where because Chad's not really
a pioneer, the original like pioneers for all of the
genocide and stuff, we're like number one people who could fail.

(01:33:39):
Like it was life or death for a lot of them,
like we are either going to make life out here
farming or like we will starve to death. Like that
was for some of them a very real thing. We
only hear of the successes. Yeah, the rest are like
just skeletons. And they they were also all people who
like knew how to do ship Like you watch the
fucking the Avich, you know that that's a good example

(01:34:00):
of like showing how many different skills a person would
have had to have to like make a life even
vaguely feasible in those kind of conditions. So, like the constant,
the costs are high, and it was people who were like,
we're already very self reliant. These people number one, they're
all millionaires. No, I don't think any of them are
gambling more than they can afford to lose, So like
they're they don't they can easily go do something else,

(01:34:22):
this is not the stakes are not actually that high
for them. And number two, they don't have much in
the way of skills. It doesn't seem like like they
don't know how to do any of the things. It
would be like somebody setting out to start a farm
in an undiscovered to them continent and like having never
touched dirt or built a house and just being like,
we'll I'll pay people along the way to do that part. Right,

(01:34:44):
it's the top down thinking. It's the fact that they
live in this society that they live in where they're
afforded a lot of privilege or comfort, and they say, oh,
I want to make it like a city in the
in the sea. Uh, And they don't think about where
do you start because they just that's not how they
are thinking about it. It's it's absolutely top down thinking.

(01:35:05):
And it's like very cringe to listen to. And I
still feel bad because they are their own worst enemies
with this stuff. Again, their heart seems to be in
the right place. If if it's the non grifters, it's
just their methods. The swings they take are so silly

(01:35:26):
and like again the ideas there there are these ideas
that are like Oh, that's a neat thing. But they're not. Yeah,
they're trying to start with those ideas and not grow
to them. Yep. I think that's as good an epitaph
for this as possible. You got any You got any
plug doubles? Yeah, Dave plug your plugibles. Fuck it at
Movie Hooligan on the Twitter. I have a podcast network

(01:35:50):
with Tom Ryman that's called game Fully Unemployed. Uh. We
we do a lot of podcasts about movies, mainly movie
reviews and so on and so forth. We have some
podcasts under our Patreon that's patreon dot com slash Gamefully Unemployed,
one called Fox Molders, a Maniac one called Tom and
Jeff Watch Batman. They they they are exactly what they

(01:36:12):
sound like. Check all that out if you want to,
you know, if you don't, you don't have to. I
don't know if you know that. And there's also the
new podcast Tom and Jeff Watch Bateman, which is just
a chronicle of the fact that Tom and Jeff have
been stalking Jason Bateman for years. Yeah. Yeah, but we're collecting.
We're we're waiting for that saga to end before we

(01:36:34):
do the podcast. You know, we want to see that
how that will turn out fire? But yeah, you should
do uh just doing sequests, just the show where you
just explain episodes of sequence. Yeah, let me tell you
know this episode of sequest. Yeah, that's it. That's the
title of the podcast. It's fine, Yeah, I think so.
It'll just be me talking about how much I appreciate

(01:36:56):
Roy Scheider. Nobody else, it's nobody up, just me. Well, um, look,
take a hundred dollars and throw it into the air
somewhere in the outdoors. If you want me to make
that podcast, and if enough of you do it, I'll
release it. That's how money works. That is how money works.
Dave Well, that's going to do it for all of

(01:37:16):
us here at behind the Bastards Until next time.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

The Nikki Glaser Podcast

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: The Not-At-All-Sad History of Libertarian Sea Nations