Are the oceans the new land for the pursuit of happiness?
Futureoftheocean interview with Carly Jackson
I've known about The Seasteading Institute (TSI) for a few years already because I'm a fan of the idea of working and living on, at and in the seas and oceans (so normal for a Futureoftheocean team!).
The first discussion about floating cities in the LinkedIn "Maritime Group" (group managed by Futureoftheoceanteam) dates from 2011. The Seasteading Institute website is mentioned there.
That's how I met Carly because I came into contact with her when I volunteered in 2023 for The Seasteading Institute's (TSI) classification project.
Carly amazed me with her energy and drive to orchestrate the progress of TSI's goals, one small step at a time...and my amazement grew when I understood that she was born and raised in a landlocked Texas city, El Paso...
Until now, people's passion for seas and oceans in Futureoftheocean interviews starts at the seaside, but Carly's passion for seas and oceans seems to have a different starting point, and this was intriguing.
I invite you to briefly join Carly Jackson, director of development for The Seasteading Institute (TSI), to take a look at the horizon she dreams and sails.
or How a Texan woman dreams of oceans as lands of freedom
If you like to learn more about Seastead Classification please see here:
I remember looking at ... pictures of beautiful coral reefs when I was growing up
Futureoftheocean:
Thank you so much Carly for agreeing to share with us your amazing work for the future of humanity on the seas and oceans. This is more than a vision, but a vision in action.
But let's start with the fact that you were born and raised in El Paso, a landlocked Texas city at the border of the US with Mexico. I heard you say that "we in Texas love cowboys". Cowboys are cowboys, but not sailors, so how does a woman born and raised far from the sea fall in love with the seas and oceans?
Ms. Carly Jackson
I remember looking at my dad's National Geographic Magazines and pictures of beautiful coral reefs when I was growing up. I heard a lot about the peril that the coral reefs were in. I also have family who live on the coast and have visited many times and gone to the beach many times. When I first learned about seasteading, I was watching a presentation by Joe Quirk, President of The Seasteading Institute and he had these pictures of pristine white sand beaches in Tahiti. When I saw that presentation I thought, “Sure, I'll go live there!” The project in Tahiti did not go through because of political reasons but I was already working for The Seasteading Institute when that happened.
With seasteading, the idea is that you can innovate in governance
Futureoftheocean:
I understand that you came to love the seas and oceans through political activism. This is not quite the usual way, or at least you are the first to give this answer in an interview with Futureoftheocean, so can you tell us more?
Ms. Carly Jackson
Yes, I was a political activist for many years. I remember talking to a married couple who are activists and we were celebrating a small win in some city policy. This couple had been working on this issue for 20 years. It felt very disheartening that they'd worked for 20 years and there is this very small change and there was so much work left to do.
With seasteading, the idea is that you can innovate in governance. You don't have to beg and plead your fellow voters or your city counsellors or other representatives to agree with you. You just find a community of seasteaders who agree with you and you go build that community together. If it doesn't work for you any longer, you can take your house with you and float to a new community.
The fact that there is no one government that rules over the whole ocean is what makes seasteading appealing. We have freedom to pick a flagging registry to flag our vessel and that creates a marketplace in which we hope to see flagging registries and governments actually compete to have seasteaders flag with them. They will offer more attractive policies in order to attract seasteaders for their flagging registry. For example, when the United States was being settled and Wyoming was still a territory it was not part of the United States yet, there were a lot of men settling Wyoming but there weren't a lot of women. So they offered women the right to vote. This was decades before women earned the right to vote in the United States and when Wyoming became a state they had to revert back to not letting women vote. But on the frontier, in order to attract people, they had to offer a benefit.
We hope to see a similar competition among Classification societies and flagging registries.
..help the cowboys be a bit more professional and to help the professionals be a bit more cowboy
Futureoftheocean:
The classic maritime industry is notoriously conservative. The offshore industry is younger, therefore more dynamic, but has learned the hard way that conservation has a value measured in human lives and huge sums of money in losses. Both are professional industries with people who work hard and professionally at sea and come home safely (in most cases) to shore.
Cowboys are not examples of conservatives (or so the Hollywood movies make them out to be), so is Seasteading about cowboys or about professionals who work at, on, in the seas and oceans and return home safely on a "boat"?
Ms. Carly Jackson
Our goal with the Classification Project is to help the cowboys be a bit more professional and to help the professionals be a bit more cowboy. We want you to be confident when you step on a seastead that it won't sink and it won’t be confiscated by any government. But the conservative maritime industry is not accessible to the middle or lower classes of people right now. We need to open it up so that more people can afford to seastead.
Futureoftheocean:
I have a difficult question... but it needs to be asked.
"Aquarius" as a stage in the development of humanity is already a known first phase of the Millennial Project, but nowhere is it mentioned that this could be a social experiment.
Is Seasteading first about the social experiment or about the love of the seas and oceans?
Ms. Carly Jackson
A big motivation for most seasteaders is to have the opportunity to find new ways to govern a community. In the Seasteading book, Joe Quirk describes many innovators who came to the idea of seasteading because they were not able to protect the ocean under existing governance structures. They love the ocean and found solutions to improve the health of the ocean, but land-based government prevents their solutions from being adopted. The social experiment cannot be separated from love of the oceans.
Aquarius
... is the first phase of the Millennial Project.
If you like to find more about it please use the button below:
I hope we can build a civilization in which they're free to ... develop new solutions
Futureoftheocean:
What do you want to say to today's young professionals? How do you think they could be attracted and especially how they could benefit and grow professionally from Seasteading projects? How could they fulfill themselves as people together with TSI?
Ms. Carly Jackson
The work place is in the midst of huge changes right now. I think it's partially in response to the Covid pandemic and partially because of technological development. The status quo has shifted quickly for people in my generation and it will continue to shift, so following the old wisdom for how to build a career will no longer apply. Seasteading offers an environment where you will be free to try things out and be flexible to do what works best for you personally and financially.
In the U.S., in most states, it requires. thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of training to be able to cut hair. Why? Hair grows back! Why not let customers choose if you're a good stylist or not? There are thousands of jobs with these kinds of burdens for licensing. Our partner Neil Sims has not been able to get a permit for his floating fish farm in Florida. His fish farm is much cleaner than current fish farms and actually promotes diverse life around the farm instead of creating an excess of waste and disease. But because the tangled webs of land- based regulation, he's not able to prove his
fish farms would improve fish supply in the gulf near Florida. Seasteading offers space for innovators like Sims to develop and prove his technology. So if a young professional wants to carve their own path and test the limits of their creativity, they should be a seasteader.
Futureoftheocean:
You work daily without rest for the next generations, for the future.
Let's say this is your "message in a bottle" for the people of the future.
What would you like to say to them?
Ms. Carly Jackson
We cannot know what the people in the future will need to thrive. I hope we can build a civilization in which they're free to abandon the systems and technology that don't work and develop new solutions.
About Carly Jackson
Carly Jackson is Development Director for The Seasteading Institute (TSI).
She joined the Seasteading community after many years as a political activist. She has dreamed of living on a seastead ever since. She works to spread the idea of seasteading across social media and at conferences. She considers seasteading the next phase of human civilization. Currently, she is working with a team of volunteers to create Classification Rules so that seasteads will be safe and legal.
The Seasteading Institute (TSI)
www.seasteading.org
Pictures:
Street art photographed by Ramona Popa (aka Monny Wee Bonnie):
Galati, Romania, Domneasca Street, Street art in by MEDE_E_A
Street art photographed by Ramona Popa (aka Monny Wee Bonnie)
Madrid
“Storm makes sense of shelter”
TSI graphic resource
“Artisanopolis”
Artist concept for The Seasteading Institute by Gabriel Scheare, Luke Lourdes Crowley and Patrick White
“Basic Platform for seasteading”
TSI graphic resource
Street art photographed by Ramona Popa (aka Monny Wee Bonnie)
Aberdeen
Profile picture provided by Carly Jackson
Photo by Avens O'Brien
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