20,000 nations above the sea.

• Author: Kuhl, Jackson
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

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The main dilemma of island living--the guillotine hanging over the necks of everyone from Block Island to Bermuda--is resource collection. Water, food, fuel/diesel: The minute you leave the dock, you're depleting all those things. You have to be very conscious of either returning or reaching another port so you can reacquire them. If you spend time on any island and read the newspaper or talk to the locals, the constant simmering pressure, the white noise in the background, is access to resources. It's not intolerable, nor does it make island living unenjoyable; many people love the challenge and the romance of man vs. nature. But it's the primary issue with Patri Friedman's seasteading project ("20,0000 Nations Above the Sea," July). And Friedman needs to recognize that.

It's clear Friedman doesn't believe a seastead, at least in the preliminary stages, will be self-sufficient. By dwelling on the design rather than the economic model, he's putting the wagon before the horse. Vacation resorts aren't likely since any seastead will probably more closely resemble the rusted cement hulk that is Sealand rather than Atlantis Paradise Island. "Sin industries" and "universal data libraries free of national copyright laws" will just attract aggression from nations. Read Bermuda's Royal Gazette; the reverberations of a few words in one of Obama's campaign speeches about going after tax havens are still being felt.

A fair amount of utopianism courses through libertarianism's veins, and here we see it in Friedman's desire to remake the wheel because ships "are simply too old-fashioned to...