Welcome to Ephemerisle: Burning Man on the Water!? An Annual Libertarian Seasteading Party

What do you call a patchwork of houseboats, floating platforms and walkways populated by a bunch of Libertarian revelers? A death trap? A cop magnet? Ephemerisle is a collaborative, voluntarist event which takes place every year on the Sacramento River Delta at Mandeville Point.

There is no central authority. There are no rules. It is constructed on the spot for the purpose of the event, then torn down afterward due to - you guessed it - local regulations concerning floating structures. But for the couple of days each event lasts, something magical is born. Free cooperation between like minded people to construct something amazing. To exchange ideas, to trade labor and to enjoy the spectacle of a floating community.

Every year it gets bigger and bigger. Ephemerisle 1.0 was little more than a few floating platforms with tents on it moored right up against the shore. As it's grown in size due to increased participation, it's also grown more daring, moving out into the open waters and incorporating ever more ambitious 'modules'. Some for sleeping in, some for basic utilities like bathrooms or showers, and some just for fun. Each sort of like a parade float, expressing something about the team that built it, joining the chaotic mishmash of the rest.

Ephemerisle was started by the Seasteading Institute, an organization which aims to establish permanent floating human settlements out on the open ocean. Once sufficiently far from the US coast, such a colony would be exempt from taxation (but also from Coast Guard protection). Such floating micro nations would act as countless experimental testbeds for different types of governance, no governance of all, and a variety of ways for humans to live. The most successful would then demonstrate to the world the best ways of organizing human societies.

What you're looking at in Ephemerisle are baby steps towards that lofty goal. It may be difficult to recognize given how rudimentary Ephemerisle is, but less so with every passing year. Every time artists, engineers, thinkers and dreamers come together to build ever larger and more ambitious versions of Ephemerisle, another step is taken towards the realization of their shared ambition.

It's possible future generations living aboard floating cities will look back on these photos with nostalgia. The sort you feel for your own romantic notion of the past. They will take for granted sprawling, fleshed out seafaring civilization. But it is those lucky few who attend Ephemerisle that will have directly taken part in, and lived through it.