The most important technology during the next hundred years will be the high speed Internet for ocean vessels.
Once that technology becomes widely available, you'll see people abandoning their failed land-based countries and forming independent nations on the sea.
The rich will be the first to move to the sea to escape confiscatory levels of taxation in their countries of origin. The tax savings alone could be enough to pay for floating island homes for the wealthy.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for taking to the sea is climate change. It might someday become necessary to live on moveable ocean structures just to avoid hurricanes, floods, droughts, blizzards, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
I can imagine security being better at sea too.
You'd have pirate problems, but that might seem manageable compared to the risk of nuclear war, traditional war, terror attacks, violent crime, and civil wars.
Traditional armies and even terrorists rarely attack anyone without one of these reasons that wouldn't apply to floating islands:
Hey, you're on my land!
Hey, you're defiling my holy land
I want your oil
You're harboring terrorists!
In the first phase of human migration back to the sea, floating islands will be comprised of vacation condos and second homes.
Over time, the island homes will be built larger until some are mansion estates. At that point, the islands will become primary residences for the wealthy, and they will abandon their bankrupt countries of origin, leaving the debt problems to the unfortunates who remain.
Each floating island could become its own nation with its own laws. Some floating islands might be corporate headquarters. Some might be formed around lifestyle preferences, such as Vegan Island, Gay Island, Gay Vegan Island, and that sort of thing.
And you'll have all sorts of island alliances to promote health, security, and economics.
This reminds me a bit of the migration from mainframe computing to personal computing and now to cloud computing.
Land-based nations will be abandoned (to a degree) for independent micro nations at first. But over time, the floating islands will form virtual "cloud" nations, independent of location.
Does anyone think the rich won't someday migrate to floating islands?
Once that technology becomes widely available, you'll see people abandoning their failed land-based countries and forming independent nations on the sea.
The rich will be the first to move to the sea to escape confiscatory levels of taxation in their countries of origin. The tax savings alone could be enough to pay for floating island homes for the wealthy.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for taking to the sea is climate change. It might someday become necessary to live on moveable ocean structures just to avoid hurricanes, floods, droughts, blizzards, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
I can imagine security being better at sea too.
You'd have pirate problems, but that might seem manageable compared to the risk of nuclear war, traditional war, terror attacks, violent crime, and civil wars.
Traditional armies and even terrorists rarely attack anyone without one of these reasons that wouldn't apply to floating islands:
Hey, you're on my land!
Hey, you're defiling my holy land
I want your oil
You're harboring terrorists!
In the first phase of human migration back to the sea, floating islands will be comprised of vacation condos and second homes.
Over time, the island homes will be built larger until some are mansion estates. At that point, the islands will become primary residences for the wealthy, and they will abandon their bankrupt countries of origin, leaving the debt problems to the unfortunates who remain.
Each floating island could become its own nation with its own laws. Some floating islands might be corporate headquarters. Some might be formed around lifestyle preferences, such as Vegan Island, Gay Island, Gay Vegan Island, and that sort of thing.
And you'll have all sorts of island alliances to promote health, security, and economics.
This reminds me a bit of the migration from mainframe computing to personal computing and now to cloud computing.
Land-based nations will be abandoned (to a degree) for independent micro nations at first. But over time, the floating islands will form virtual "cloud" nations, independent of location.
Does anyone think the rich won't someday migrate to floating islands?
