> enabling that is not the purpose of maritime treaties.

Neither is preventing it. So why is it a 'loophole'. (leaving aside the issue that it would be very hard to justify the legitimacy of such a law)

It doesn't prevent it, but it also doesn't prevent any nearby country from folding you up if they feel like it. The premise of seasteading seems to be that they are somehow prevented from doing this by maritime treaties.

No, i think the premise is that, since governemnets have claimed sovereignity over any terrain on earth, including the moon and planets, the only places where it's possible to set up ship for a new country nonviolently is the middle of the oceans. Seasteaders understand that they'd have to build their own defenses, and don't rely on nearby countries for protection.

Right, this is exactly the misapprehension. The agreement that nobody claims the middle of the ocean does not exist for the purpose of letting folks create their own countries, it exists for the purposes of allowing everyone's ships to pass through. Starting a country is unlikely to go better in the middle of the ocean than in e.g. the middle of the Mojave.

> does not exist for the purpose of letting folks create their own countries

Says who? this is an arbitrary interpretation.

Further, there is obviously no law about how and where to create a new country, as the UN by definition will defend the status quo as a union of sovereign nations. Most countries emerged violently and illegally in their beginning, and got recognized later (including the US).

The mojave is in the middle of what the world recognizes as a sovereign state, it would be a much more difficult starter and impossible to find allies.

> > does not exist for the purpose of letting folks create their own countries

> Says who? this is an arbitrary interpretation.

> Further, there is obviously no law about how and where to create a new country, as the UN by definition will defend the status quo as a union of sovereign nations. Most countries emerged violently and illegally in their beginning, and got recognized later (including the US).

> The mojave is in the middle of what the world recognizes as a sovereign state, it would be a much more difficult starter and impossible to find allies.

I think what amalcom is getting at, is that maritime law does not offer any protection to aspiring nation states. It is in place solely to allow free travel. That same free travel would allow another sovereign who happens upon your budding nation state to take it with impunity (unless the state is prepared for armed conflict with another, more established (and probably more populated and wealthy) state).