Libertarian Imaginaries and Sea Spaces: Why do Libertarians love Sea Spaces?

The election of Donald Trump has anchored libertarian imaginaries back on the mainland, as in recent years they were mainly to be found in the digital space or in sea space. The assumption that digital space opens up a space for libertarian speculation is not new and has already been addressed in various texts in different ways. However, the examination of sea spaces in the context of libertarian imaginaries often fails to materialize. This only confirms the observation of the organizers of this session that the so-called “blue turn” has only occasionally arrived in political science. For libertarians, on the other hand, sea spaces have long been political projection surfaces: In 2008, Patri Friedman (grandson of Milton Friedman and son of David D. Friedman) and Peter Thiel (right-wing libertarian investor) founded the so-called “Seasteading Institute”. The aim of the Seasteading Institute is to create floating cities and living spaces in international waters, i.e. outside of national legislation. Their website states: “Seasteading means building floating cities with significant political autonomy.” (https://www.seasteading.org). But why and since when have libertarians been interested in sea spaces? This question will be explored in this paper in the context of an examination of political theory and the history of ideas. The first part of the paper will reconstruct some libertarian positions, focusing on the concepts of territoriality, statehood and freedom. The second part will focus on Hugo Grotius and his descriptions of oceanic freedom, which can also be understood as a form of economic freedom. Against this background, the third step will be to demonstrate the continuity in the history of ideas of the idea of an economic, respectively capitalistically exploitable, ocean space, which represents the conceptual framework of contemporary libertarian imaginaries, such as the Seasteading Institute. The text will also touch on the extent to which Grotius' position on natural law means that this is also a conception of an economically sacred sea space. In the fourth step, a critique of the libertarian imaginaries of sea spaces will be formulated with the help of postcolonial approaches, whereby the contradictory nature of libertarian assumptions can be highlighted here at the same time. Finally, also with the help of postcolonial approaches, an argument will be made for a serious liberation of sea spaces.