I want to bring forth the idea of creating an independent nation for us.

Not one for all of us to live in - an unlikely concept, considering how many of us there are - but more like a city-state, with tourists making up a greater population than the actual permanent residents.

The idea that we could buy land and separate from a country is unlikely.

However, there is a concept called "seasteading" that interests me:

http://www.seasteading.org/

A joint effort of wealthier autistics, also receiving donations from philanthropic sources of various sorts, would build an artificial island at an appropriate location, at sea.  Those who work to establish the seastead would live on-board an old cruise liner that we could buy at discount.  

At its completion, I would like to see a seastead that is 1000 metres by 2000 metres in area per level, less the airport facility, which would have to be adjacent to the living areas.  There would be three levels: the top consisting of mostly parks and greenhouses, the middle level consisting of the main "urban" area, and the lower level consisting of customs facilities, utilities facilities, etc.  The middle and lower levels, despite having a "ceiling", would be open air on the sides, with people protected by railings.  (The upper level would also having railings at the edges.)  There would be about fifty metres of separation between the levels, in order to be able to construct buildings.  The highest-priced houses and condos would be along the edges where you can get a sea view, and less expensive real estate would be in the central areas.  As we are an autistic nation, special attention will be given to privacy in all infrastructure projects.  Fluorescent lightbulbs would be illegal.

We would need to be in international waters, in order to keep off claims by other countries over our territory.  UN outlines state that any waters more than 22 kilometres from a nation's land are considered international waters.  So we would need to be at least 44 km from land, in order to have a ring of 22 km around our seastead to establish our territory.

It would need a small airport, and would need to be in range of a mainland airport that could fly small commuter aircraft, like the Bombardier Q series, out to the seastead.  

We would have to use a reliable currency for our country.  Gold may be a good idea.  

We would need our own water treatment and sewage system, so we wouldn't need to import fresh water.  

We would need an electricity generation capacity of some sort.  I like nuclear, but natural gas would be the least expensive.  Tidal hydroelectric systems may also be a good idea.  

We would need a national telecommunications system, available to all residents.

We would need some sort of a central government, perhaps one modelled off of other tiny nations, like San Marino, Andorra, or Liechtenstein.  

We probably won't need much of a military, and only rudimentary law enforcement.  Perhaps we could contract out our on-foot civilian law enforcement to private security companies, whose workers would be residents but non-citizens, unless they were autistic.  Our actual military would be open to citizens only, be they paid or volunteer.  An army would be unnecessary.  Our air force could consist of two or three armed drones, and maybe a dozen or so unarmed drones.  Two or three search-and-rescue ships, maybe six helicopters, a handful of UUVs, and two or three second-hand corvettes could form our coast guard.

We would need some sort of transportation besides walking and biking.  I don't think we should have road vehicles; too much potential for accidents.  Light-rail transit would be too expensive and wouldn't be used enough.  Perhaps things like publicly-owned Segway transports.

If we were to be situated say off on the west coastal shelf of Florida, we would obviously establish English as our official language, since we cannot accommodate all languages.  We would have to cater to the anglophone autistic community.  

We would have to establish some sort of home-schooling system, since I think we autistics do better in that kind of environment anyways.

I don't personally believe in the United Nations, so there's no point in us spending the money on membership for it.  

I have a flag design for our nation, which you can view on my Flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76720341@N05/8129832740/

We would need a national anthem of some sort.  I love the tune of 'Patrioticheskaya Pesnya', written by Mikhail Glinka, the national anthem of Russia from 1990 to 2000.  I am going to informally work on lyrics for it.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLj68sMb5ZY

Or perhaps as a musician I could compose a whole new tune and then we could vote on one that we as autistics like.

Since many if not most of our citizens will want to also be citizens of the country of their birth (USA, Canada, Britain, etc), we will have to allow for dual citizenship.  Citizenship law would have to be modified once we populate the seastead with approved autistics.  I would like some input on what you think would be good specifics for nationality law; on one hand, I don't want the island to be filled to the brim with senior citizens.  But I also don't want a huge and growing population with nowhere to live on the seastead.

Have I missed anything?

Well, one really big thing we need to establish for an independent nation for autistics-only is a source of income; it is going to take a lot of money to build this seastead.  

Here's some ideas I have...

- Tourism

Well, that wouldn't come until all the final garnishes were put up on the nation.  And that wouldn't happen for many years.  I personally like the idea of setting up a seastead in the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico, in shallow waters.  That way we could build condominiums for retired autistics, as well as being an pro-autistic location for us to visit.  But that would have to come later.

- Agriculture

Greenhouses use up a lot of area, but then, many of us autistics don't like direct sunlight anyway.  Perhaps half the upper level could be dedicated to greenhouses, where we could grow tropical plants, especially specialist crops that fetch high prices - not just typical things like oranges or bananas.  Growing plants is a very peaceful hobby/career that I think most of us autistics enjoy.  

- Winemaking

With our greenhouses, we could have some good vineyards and produce some of our own fine wines.  The fact that they would only be in small batches by unknown names doesn't mean anything; my favourite red wine is a very sweet watermelon wine made in Gruene, Texas.  It is delicious, even to me, a man who prefers white!  

- Offshore Banking

The independent autistic seastead nation should establish a state-run bank where the wealthy can dump their money and know that they won't be pursued by anybody there.

- Vaccine production and immunology research

I think it would be possible for us to convince a pharmaceutical company like GlaxoSmithKline to set up a vaccine production facility on our seastead.  The isolation of it, and the dedication and focus of our autistic workers, would be very attractive to the company.  

Because it is an isolated location, it would be an interesting place for immunology study and research also.  A lot of money could come out of that.

- Ocean research

Since we would have our own airport and hotels for visitors, ichthyologists and other ocean scientists would come to our seastead to go out on expeditions.  Not the same as tourism, but it generates money the same way.


Some of the for-profit things we should AVOID are:

- lenient ship registration
- narcotic production
- weapons manufacturing
- ammunition manufacturing
- fishing licenses

Like I said, we should avoid the UN, and most international organisations.  We would have to arrange some international agreements, due to the large amount of imports and a need for defense.

We should consider ourselves militarily neutral.  Like I said, our entire armed force would consist of private security contractors on the seastead in lieu of an army/police forces, two or three armed UAVs, and two or three second-hand corvettes.  These would be just to enforce our territorial waters and thwart terrorism and piracy.  

If we were ever able to get enough money, we could establish our own little space agency, sending up small satellites with SpaceX or somebody, and have a ground station at our airport.  An observation satellite set in geosynchrous orbit over our seastead would be able to monitor all ships that entered our territorial waters, and be able to see if spilled oil entered our waters.

For our governance system, I think it should be run more like a municipal government; instead of political parties, independent candidates would run for head-of-state.  Beyond that, let's discuss.

Well, I've only spent three hours or so working on this.  I still don't even know what kind of a name to give our state.  But God Almighty, I love my idea.  Not merely because it's mine, but just think about it: the middle level is entirely open-air, but there is still a roof, even when you're outside.  So you get fresh air, but you don't have to walk outside and be covered with rain if there's a storm!  Imagine living in a nation built by autistics, for autistics.  The crime rate would be almost zero, there would be almost no pollution, there would be few tragic accidents and no excessive noise...

I want your input on this.  If I get rich after I leave university (or even before then, if I score big on the stock market) I might throw resources at this idea.  Seasteading could become very big the future.

Let's do this.

Unless I'm replying to Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates I think what you've got here is an awesome idea for a video game or movie. Not a feasible social project.

This sort of thing would require the entire treasury of a large multi national corporation or small country.

I genuinely wish you lots of luck however.

This post was last modified: 10-28-2012 10:34 PM by Thomas81.

I am fully aware of how expensive it would be.  It is only a semi-serious prospect for the moment.  And the fact that it is not vital to our existence makes it even less likely to happen.  The world's economy will need to heal before this can get into the territory of realism.  

What first will need to happen is a greater consciousness and sense of unity amongst autistics.  That is far more important than finances of any sort.  

Most great things started just the same way: some guy thinking, "Could we do it?"

I don't think it would work....

It would be easier and more environmentally sound to establish a floating farm collective.  But the area would be so small and the proportion of labor needed to feed everyone so large, I don't think that would work either.

This post was last modified: 10-29-2012 04:58 AM by Lang.

I think we should build a giant orbiting space colony instead. That would be cool.

Maybe the moon can be an eight continent?

This is no better, morally, than South African apartheid ot the racila laws of Nazi Germany."No-one else can be a citizen of this country, only those of us who happen to be a certain way."

Repulsive and discriminatory.

^Not to mention impossible now.....

Heh, I haven't seen this discussion come up in awhile.

OP, it's been done to the death. It's not feasible.

It is a nice fantasy

It is not a nice fantasy, unless you have fond memories of the states I mentioned earlier and regret their passing into history.

Well, it is at least an interesting thought exercise, if nothing else.

Yeah. Those poor NTs. Why they only have every other single country on Earth to live on.

I would want the island for myself


Y`all get your own