Nearly 150 Companies Show Interest in the Tech Love Boat 332
New submitter dandv writes with a story from VentureBeat about another entry in the race to escape national jurisdiction by offshoring work — literally offshoring, that is : "Blueseed is a Silicon Valley company that plans on launching a cruise ship 30 minutes from the coast of California, housing startup entrepreneurs from around the world. These startuppers won't need to bother with U.S. visas, because the ship will be in international waters. They'll have to pay tax to whatever country they're incorporated in, though. So far, 146 startups said they'd like to come to the ship."
I predict another Sealand (Score:5, Informative)
The advantage of these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction. The problem with these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction - and for almost every company out there, they benefit from the protection of a country's laws more than they suffer from them.
Sealand failed because anyone who hosted data there was wide open to the whim of Roy Bates - and if you didn't like his whim, you had no recourse. This will be no different.
A good article on Sealand: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/28/2909303/sealand-havenco-doomed-data-haven-history [theverge.com]
Re:I fail to see the point (Score:5, Informative)
In order to be in international waters, the ship would be what, 200 miles out from shore?
I've looked into cruising and the myriad of laws. First of all you just described the EEZ limit which controls "traditional money making activities and environmental laws" but expressly does not include loitering. So its a fuzzy zone. The coast guard can order you to not discharge your blackwater tanks, cannot tell you not to just sit/anchor there, can tell you not to fish there, and running an office is somewhat vague.
The contiguous zone is 24 miles and you must follow customs laws presumably including visas. This is a recent "American Empire" turn of the century thing and the whole world used to (still does?) respect only 12 miles. In the REALLY olden days before the previous turn of the century it was defined as a cannon shots length, or so I'm told, like a mile or two.
This is very important to cruisers... more than 200 miles away you can technically tell all authorities other than your flag nation to F-off, but you need to stay at least 24 miles away or else have to go thru customs, and in that range from 24 to 200 miles you sorta have to listen to them. Customs is not necessarily the end of the world, but its nice to not even have to think about it. For example, say you were sailing from California to Alaska, it would be extremely advisable to stay at least 24 miles away from the Canadian shore.
Disclaimer, I've done hundreds of hours of sailing on little craft, mostly inland, but never across an ocean.
30 miles in a 150 knot helicopter for the VCs to visit you is what, 12 minutes of flight? I'm not seeing this as a serious issue. Also I can see a pleasure cruise on a well appointed yacht when making visits rather than flying, if they're in the mood for some fun.
Re:Quick primer on the downfall of the US economy (Score:4, Informative)
Actually we still have the largest manufacturing sector in the entire world by quite a bit.
We have completely and almost totally destroyed our consumer products manufacturing, true. The only thing I've bought in 20 years made in the USA is/was some plastic trash cans and oddly enough a gasket-less aluminum pressure cooker made in Wisconsin.
The whole world depends on the USA either exclusively or as a majority provider for aerospace, mining equipment, heavy stuff like that. To a much lesser extent we still make cranes too. And chemical process equipment although like cranes we're trying to give that away to China as fast as we can. You can almost draw a graph of "unit weight" on the x-axis and percent imported on the y-axis and you'll see damn near a straight line where we import 99% of our kitchenware but we manufacture 99% of the world's production of 100 kiloton and up mining dragline equipment (you know, the things that strip entire mountaintops off?) and practically all mining trucks larger than 100 tons.
Re:The US should provide no protection (Score:2, Informative)
You're probably thinking of the Republic of Rose Island [wikipedia.org].
There was also this illegal gambling operation off the coast of California [wikipedia.org]. That didn't end well. In fact, practically all these libertarian paradise offshore independent micronations [wikipedia.org] haven't ended well. Either they never really became self-sufficient, the people who ran them turned out to be more dictator-like than anyone wanted to deal with, or they were only intended as a joke in the first place. Evidently starting your own micronation ("with blackjack, and hookers") isn't so easy.
There's this interesting historical anomaly [wikipedia.org] in what is now New Hampshire, but that was more of a leftover from unresolved disputes than something newly established.
Maritime law disagrees (Score:4, Informative)
None. The "Tech Love Boat" exists solely as a tax and immigration dodge, and its founders are proud of it. May real pirates raid this libertarian haven
Under international maritime law, all nations have a duty to combat piracy. "Piracy is of note in international law as it is commonly held to represent the earliest invocation of the concept of universal jurisdiction. The crime of piracy is considered a breach of jus cogens, a conventional peremptory international norm that states must uphold. Those committing thefts on the high seas, inhibiting trade, and endangering maritime communication are considered by sovereign states to be hostis humani generis (enemies of humanity)" Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
The bottom line is that it isn't in the interests of the United States to have pirates operating off the U.S. coast, even if they only target vessels of other nations.
When a crime occurs on the "Love Boat", who will settle that crime?
It is exactly the same legal situation as a crime on a cruise ship. The passengers are subject to the legal sysem of their flag nation, and of others that exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction. The U.S. Constitution gives the federal courts jurisdiction over maritime matters, so it is up to the courts to rule on which particular crimes are worthy of extraterritorial jurisdiction. See In international waters, are you beyond the reach of the law? [straightdope.com]
Re:Quick primer on the downfall of the US economy (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. The grandparent is complete bullshit and should be modded down.
The US is the world's largest manufacturing nation in terms of economic output. People seem to forget giant companies like Intel, Caterpillar, Boeing, Cisco, ADM etc. not to mention the pharmaceuticals and the farming industry which are world leading. Not only that but the US does it with a mere 8% of its workforce. The economic output of the average US worker is more than 10 times that of his Chinese equivalent because he's more technically skilled and produces far more valuable products in a highly automated setting.
The Boeing main aircraft assembly building in the Seattle area is the largest manufacturing facility in the world.
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/facilities/ [boeing.com]
It was Boeing who discovered the Y2K problem because they are such a large consumer of aluminum they have to project consumption of aluminum a decade in advance so the aluminum industry can scale their capacity to match their consumption.
I don't know where people get the idea the US isn't competitive in manufacturing. It is a huge force on a global scale in manufacturing, and factors like low energy costs because of the vast natural gas reserves being developed are likely to keep it that way. Anyone writing that the US has no manufacturing capability is full of bullshit.
http://www.shopfloor.org/2011/03/u-s-manufacturing-remains-worlds-largest/18756 [shopfloor.org]
http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/ [time.com]
Re:Hey, worked for Sealand (Score:3, Informative)
If you read up on Sealand [wikipedia.org], my favorite incident is the fire that effectively ended that wackjob dream. Here these are these libertarians screaming that they're an independent country and don't have to pay taxes. But then comes a fire and what's the first thing they do? They start screaming for the British Air Force and Navy to come save them.
Libertarians don't want to pay taxes, but let one of them dial 911 just once and be told "Tough shit. Deal with it yourself" and watch them scream like little girls.
Re:I fail to see the point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I fail to see the point (Score:4, Informative)
That's one of the problems with libertarian dreamers. They crave a dog-eat-dog world, but they all think THEY'RE going to be one of the top dogs. They watch Firefly and think they're going to be Malcolm Reynolds. It never occurs to them that the vast, vast, vast majority of citizens in a truly libertarian system would basically be dirt-poor slaves to a handful of top dogs, and the odds of you being one of those top dogs (unless you're *already* very wealthy and powerful) is slim to none.
Re:I fail to see the point (Score:5, Informative)
This is mostly true, and can bite them in the butt.
If they intend to operate out of US ports, and provide anything that even looks remotely like passenger service (I.E. hosting staff for their clients) then they can't exit and re-enter the United States without visiting a "distant foreign port". Back in the day when there was tons of coastwise passenger transport, this protected US firms from foreign competition. Today it mostly means that Alaska cruises have to port at Victoria and Maratimes/East Coast cruises usually in Halifax. For Blueseed this is going to mean visiting Mexico between port visits to the US. (And they *will* either have to visit the US or sail across the Pacific Ocean for servicing - a ship can't stay at sea forever.)
Also, pretty much every nation subscribes to SOLAS and even the flag-of-convenience nations have safety requirements. Not to mention, that if they ever port, they'll be subject to safety inspections by the Coast Guard of the nation they're porting in. These are non-trivial to comply with and are deadly serious - the can be at a minimum refused entry, or at worst impounded for failing to comply. On top of these inspections, if they hope to carry insurance, the ship will have to regularly be inspected and certified on a regular basis by a legitimate classification society...
These "tech Love Boat" companies all sound to me to have based their plans on urban legends about how the law of the sea and related conventions work, and not on any real world legal and business research.