A seasteading design by Andras Gyorfi.

Seasteading sounds ridiculous to me, but what do I know? Ray Kurzweil’s blog has a transcript of “How to Create a Startup Country,” a speech on building nations on the ocean, presented by Patri Friedman:

“A startup country could be the world’s first trillion dollar business.

Now for humanity, this is a huge problem, but with our entrepreneur hats on, what a business opportunity! A startup country could be the world’s first trillion dollar business. But right now, there’s no way for an entrepreneur with a great idea for a startup country to make it happen. Unlike the software industry, where you can get started with just a laptop, to enter the government industry, you need a open space, a physical place that allows political experiments. But there is no such place — every piece of land in the world is claimed.

So there are no startup countries, there’s no channel for innovation of entrepreneurs … no wonder it’s a such a sad industry.

So why don’t we see more innovation in politics? Now, politics is a pretty emotionally charged subject. You’re not supposed to talk about that, or religion. So let’s take a new perspective. Let’s forget about left and right and instead, put on our entrepreneur hats. Let’s think of government as an industry, where countries are firms and citizens are customers.

This is not just any industry. This is the world’s biggest industry. The leading firm had 2009 revenues of 2.5 trillion dollars. Strangely, it’s also an industry legendary for poor performance. That leading firm lost 1.4 trillion. And that’s a top company. The worst companies kill many of their own customers. It’s a pretty sad industry!

The seasteading solution: let a thousand nations bloom

So that’s how we come to seasteading — homesteading the high seas. What we need is a new frontier, an open space for political experiments…and the next frontier is the ocean. With a little technical innovation to make this new frontier accessible, we can unleash enormous political innovation. Let a thousand nations bloom on the high seas, trying diverse political systems — essentially, a startup sector for government.”