there and when he underwent as the ambassador the american investor in that country was amazing. and his wife and his kids. this is been going on forever and continues to go on and it was a wonderful way to start our story. >> to watch the rest of this program visit our website c-span.org, type the authors name john in mendez, in the search box at the top of the page. >> the book and called "seasteading" the author is joe quirk, mr. cork, what is "seasteading"? >> seasteading is homesteading i see 45 percent of the earth's surface is unclaimed by any nationstate. in the technology creating little nano nations on the sea the startup miniature countries he is at hand and we are starting as soon as we can. >> when you say it's at hand what you mean? >> the first a single-family

seasteading was built off the coast of thailand in the beginning of 2019. >> how far off the coast? >> 13 miles off the coast. it was outside the territorial waters in the key victory is that it was cost less than the cost of the average american home. it was $150,000 for the first pilot project. this got people very excited like the average middle-class american can afford seasteading now, we had investors interested in underwater restaurants where you could look at the windows at your aquarium. aquarium windows looking at the ocean. the idea for seb be for people to come in now we are negotiating with other countries around the world to host little startup societies on the ocean to begin colonization. >> to somebody live at that residence in thailand? >> someone lived at the residence for two months.

>> why only two months? >> because the tide nearly took ãband complicated this seasteading and my friend fled and at large now and they are safe fortunately but they've stopped in internet ãbsparked international conversation about seasteading and cause seasteading to be invited to other nations. >> before we go back to the political nature of that, who's the we interested in it? >> the wii is the community of deceased daughter's the international there's a lot of people interested in startups. i knew live near silicon valley people want to start up companies. when you tell people like that you could have a startup society you could use block chain governance and finance with crypto currency all sorts of innovators come to you with their ideas how they could reconceived society from the ground up the only trick is you can't use the ground.

we should be able to colonize the ocean with startup society's way before we go to mars. >> you said you did build one but it was confiscated by a nation that was 13 miles from them. won't that be the case if somebody tried to build 13 miles off the coast of florida? >> 60. i think this was reaction was unique reaction by the thai navy another example i would give up maybe the original seasteading is sealand which is off the coast of england. which went out and declared sovereignty like 60 years ago. >> they remain sovereign in a sense. >> they declare their sovereignty but they are not recognized so england and the european nations tolerate them but they make like 600 thousand dollars a year selling titles of nobility of stamps and passports and they've offered safe haven to my friend who ã

as seasteading there's a lot of nations that will be tolerant of startup societies off the shores and hoping to negotiate with existing countries. >> they can offer a passport to sealand but it's not accepted anywhere, is it? >> no. as far as i know. people love the idea of freedom and doing something new they are willing to bypass and buy stamps they are willing to buy titles of nobility. there are people dukes and lords of seasteading they do quite well for themselves by being a defiant startup nation. we would like to accelerate that process. >> how was the property off thailand built and how does sealand exist? >> sealand is an abandoned seaport but england didn't use anymore and it was taken over by pirate radio guys who are

some of the first people to say that rock 'n' roll to england in defiance of the bbc. it has the pirate radio thing going on and the thing that is unique about the sealand, the seasteading built by ocean builders is that it's not from the ãit's actually floating. the technology is best described as thinkable wine bottle if you could tell a wine bottle out onto the ocean and fill the bottom with sand and slip it up right you have ã below the ocean and the bottom is filled with sand and maybe a fifth above the ocean but use it the tiny house on top you are up above the waves but there is so much ballasted wit below the seas that you are as stable as a fencepost and fairly high wind. >> the victory for ocean builders and seasteading's everywhere is that this is the first one that's like affordable for the average american family. she

we think this guy is the limit now. >> you run an organization called the seasteading institute, how is it funded? >> is funded entirely by donors. >> is a public? >> they are certainly public. over a thousand people have donated to the seasteading institute since it was formed in 2008.>> including peter teal? >> peter teal cofounded the seasteading institute with audrey freeman michael off the book who is the grandson of milton friedman in the son of david for treatment. seasteading is the fulfillment of their legacy. in the 1970s david friedman wrote the machinery of freedom where he move proposed of houses were on wheels and people can move about and choose the country they want we would have an economic solution to political problem.

the next decade milton and rose friedman wrote "free to choose" they propose water people to choose to be governed last? what if we could choose among different societies. patrick friedman proposed a machinery of freedom to choose which is seasteading which he says if we made our own land and instead of voting over control of conflict we voted with our houses by moving them about and choosing the neighbors want. we could unleash an economic solution to political problems we could choose the societies we want and we would have variation in governance providers and selection by citizens if we'd unleash evolution and governance as well. so who essentially govern the people off of thailand and who is governing the people of sealand? >> sealand is technically the property of britain.

because their tote aerials seas has been expanded to encompass sealand but sealand the text of position that they are independent. england and in other words them because it would be a pr disaster to interfere. these are incremental steps toward independence and see staters want to evolve society from the bottom up. based on emergent governance but they could choose the neighbors they want. >> from your book you write that if the great depression had happened in the 50s he predict we would be building seasteading instead of going to the moon. >> i think it's the cold war. buckminster fuller designed the floating city hold more than 50 years ago. it was funded by a japanese funder who died bennett was taken on and funded by aspects

of the u.s. government. it was so visionary and productive it spent time in the white house and the johnson administration. as the cold war geared up the project was put aside to focus on getting to the moon. so mankind was well underway to creating floating societies of the ocean buckminster fuller until the end of his life eroded lovingly about his city. the last book he wrote he proposed the critical past forward was floating societies and he dived in that the city that was never made. half a century has passed material science has advanced. decolonization has advanced. all the technologies to do this have advanced considerably since then.

>> you are calling them societies and not countries? >> i am. because i think these would be different from countries. i think a nation is fundamentally a monopoly of governance over a tract of land. i think floating societies where you could move your land about and choose the societies you want would be voluntary societies and i think that fundamentally would be lowcountry though i do call the nations rhetorically in the book. >> i call them nano nations. but i don't call them nationstates. because i think this would be emerge in governance the same way we don't call cruise ships countries or just call them self-governing temporary floating societies and as long as people can choose among them and leave them if they don't like them, better governance evolves and emerges over time.

>> mr. court that would call into question all nation borders at some point? >> nation borders can remain if you like your government you can keep your government would see staters want to do is provide alternatives provide platforms for new innovators and hopefully create societies that will change the old governance as significantly as hong kong changed communist china. >> we are nearing hurricane season or in hurricane season. it is the proposal and the materials sturdy enough to protect against hurricanes? >>. >> certainly. it's important not to build in hurricane waters. there is vast tracts of the oceans have not seen her consist of the best place to build sc stead is along the equator. along the equator it's very warm waves are low, hurricanes don't affect you. but there is the dull drum

there's all sorts of cold places in the oceans where we can build. >> seasteading subtitle, "seasteading: how floating nations will restore the environment, enrich the poor, cure the sick, and liberate humanity from politicians" restore the environment. how do you get there? >> when you build a home on land you destroy life on that spot. you float a home on the ocean you provide a home for a rich ecosystem. most of the ocean is a desert there is no life at the upper part. life looks for solid things to attach to. imagine if you could increase the amount of life on the ocean with every society you built. we have muscles already attaching the floating platform the first seastead was growing coral creek along the star of the water so they are actually going up cold ecosystem on the seastead so these would be the first environmentally restored in society this is way beyond

sustainability. this is historic and the book goes into great detail in this. >> how big could these get? >> they could get as big as they like. the challenge is not making them big, the challenge has been making them small and affordable so that if they succeed, more seastead can attach. in the ones that sue succeed and provide the best governance will withstand the ones that will fail will take apart as people move their houses elsewhere. we want to create a market of competitive governance on the sea and hopefully the most successful ones will go as big as we want. >> back to the subtitle, seasteading will enrich the poor. >> there's like a billion people who live in dysfunctional governments who have no place to go. because existing nationstates acts as gated communities not letting them in. the great thing about seastead

is that they can't survive economically without attracting people to move to them. if my friends build a floating algae form on the sea with vast weed farms i don't think you ended i are going to take a job on those seastead but i think the developing poor will gladly choose something better and seastead will be incentivized to provide them better options. >> joe quirk, what role do see we play in seasteading? >> seaweed is fundamental to seasteading. on land we rely on corn wheat and soy, which is not healthy and very destructive to the ocean environment. all the nutrient pollution that we flush into our toilets and from the farms runs into the sea and creates dead zones from all the nutrient pollution that goes into the ocean which is very negative. i wrote a whole book about this. what makes seaweed unique as it

can absorb all the nutrient pollution it can absorb the carbonic acid from the sea and we can restore the societies ã ãwe could to restore these environments by growing seaweed farms. in the fish would return and this is already been demonstrated. imagine if you could eat to restore the environment. people who want to live on seastead would use the vast space to grow seaweed farms and the seaweed is way more healthy for you. it's a complete protein, it has all the best fats in it. not many people know that fish don't synthesize their own omega three and six to get it by eating algae. you go to the base of the food chain and create very healthy complete protein plant that's way more healthy then the land-based crops we use now. >> back to your subtitle, seasteading will cure the sick. >> the people knocking on our

doors demanding their seastead are medical researchers and medical entrepreneurs that want to create floating hospitals. there are people full of ideas for better drugs, better therapies, that are held back by the 20th century regulation and they have 21st century innovations they want to try out a new regulatory structures for people to choose voluntarily. debbie shetty mother teresa's former heart surgeon been called the henry ford health care he was quoted in the economic times saying that the best place to have a hospital is off the coast of an existing american city. given that i don't have that i'm going to build a health city in the cayman islands. some of the most innovative medical entrepreneurs in the world are looking for ways to

create regulatory startups so we can unleash modern innovation and medicine. >> the fourth part of that subtitle is, liberate humanity from politicians. we talked about that a little is there anything else you like to add? >> when i'm on a cruise ship i'm not arguing with people but who the captain should be. we don't even know that the captain is essentially a dictator. he is a de facto dictator because if his cruise ship flies the flag of panama or of liberia those countries have mostly buried little ability to enforce rules on the thousands of ships that fly their flags. so why doesn't this king pop dictator of the cruise ship flogged us and keyhole us. it's not because he's more nightly than a politician on land because we can choose another cruise line. it's because i can type a negative yahoo review. this incentivized the providers of cruise governance to please

us because they're competing with other cruise lines. the governance on cruise ships get better and better. we don't need to vote and argue we just need to choose something better in the broader governance emergence. this goes for employees on cruise ships as well. the employees could choose another cruise lines. >> some would say this is relatively utopia. >> utopians will come true all the time i think blue topi and some next. you and i living in the united states right now the things we take for granted, almost entirely from crazy european utopians who saw things like women should be able to vote ed i should be able to sound my own society and band dancing. dancing should be allowed. the idea is that people did it choose went away but the ideas that worked manifested. now these ideas have spread and change the whole world. now in europe people think constitutional republics and

democracy make complete sense. that would've never happened if there hadn't been the giant seastead of the new world. >> can one get a boat now and just float outside territorial limits and be his or her own nation? >> you can but both are designed to be stable by moving boats fly the flag of an existing nation. >> today have to? >> they do. and trends 12 would probably have to fly a flag of his existing nation just like a cruise ship. both have to dock a lot. all the wonderful things i said about seastead were corals attach implants attached this is wonderful for the seastead economy, it's bad for boats. both are designed to move and donkey lift them up and clean them off and put them back it's in the back out. it's not an ideal way to live permanently at sea on a boat

the seastead are designed to float permanently at sea and all these things bad for boats would be good for seastead's. >> you are saying the technology is here, the reasoning is here, what's holding this back? and people are interested in funding it mac. ãbwe need post nation to allow us to scale this up in their territorial waters. to legislate us the seed zone which is the next step beyond the economic zone. providing wealth everywhere. leading legal innovators have designed it the sea zone. if we fail that's on us. if we succeed, we share in the prosperity. the only thing at this point holding seastead back is misunderstanding. we solved the engineering challenges, we solve the

economic challenge, we solved the price challenge now we need people to understand what we are trying to do and be the host of the new blue economy. >> joe quirk, co-author of this book "seasteading" he is also president and cofounder of the seasteading ã >> thank you for inviting me. i must correct you and not cofounder of the seasteading institute but i am cofounder of blue frontiers. >> thank you. >> thanks for having me. booktv in prime time begins now. first up, the wall street journal ross sold gold reports on alternative energy resources. then john mcmanus provides a history of the u.s. army in the pacific ãb natalie wexler argues the u.s. education system can be improved by expanding the curriculum of limited school students. that's followed by one american news network liz wheeler on how

to debate the political left at 10:00 p.m.. and we wrap up our prime time programming with journalist liz len's report on faith and religion in middle america. check your program guides for more information. now, here is russell gold on alternative energy sources. >> today i'm pleased to introduce russell gold, politics and prose. in 2010 he was part of the award-winning wall street journal team that covered the deepwater horizon explosion and oil spill. his first book the boom was long listed for the financial times and mckenzie book of the year award in 2014 his newest book "superpower" examines michael scally, an infrastructure builder who began working on wind energy in