Why the World's Biggest Ship is an AWFUL Idea

this video was made possible by audible get a free audiobook when you sign up at audible.com real life lore let me ask you a question what's the furthest length that you would go to in order to reduce your taxes would it just be walking over to an h r block and talking to some guy over there about some tips maybe you would try and figure out a few legal loopholes with a shady lawyer maybe simply choose not to pay and see what happens or maybe fake your death then move to another country if you answered yes to any of those options well then congratulations because you're nowhere near as impressively insane as the guy behind this story who decided that in order to dodge taxes he was basically going to build his own libertarian dream country out on the high seas and by country i mean the biggest boat that has ever been imagined in all of human history and one of the most audacious mega projects ever proposed dubbed the freedom ship it was designed to be over 1 370 meters long by nearly 230 meters wide and 106 meters tall now to put those wacky numbers into a bit more perspective think about it a bit like this here is a map of the national mall in washington dc starting at the steps of the u.s capitol the freedom ship would stretch out nearly half of the distance to the lincoln memorial and it would take you about 12 minutes to walk across it then if you knocked over the space needle in seattle and put it sideways the freedom ship would still be wider and then if you put the statue of liberty right next to it the freedom ship would still stand taller the freedom ship is the largest ship that humanity has ever seriously designed and if it was ever built this is how much bigger it would be than several of humanity's already biggest existing ships the sheer physical space that the thing takes up is impressive enough but wait until you hear about the size of the cargo it can hold on board with its incredible girth the ship is estimated to have a carrying capacity of 100 000 people 40 000 of whom would be permanent residents living full-time aboard 20 000 more who would be crew members and with more room for up to 30 000 daily visitors and 10 000 overnight guests to put that into perspective the ship's permanent population of residents and crew members would be higher than the world's seven smallest countries more people would be living on this boat then on greenland the world's biggest island but the weirdest thing about the freedom ship isn't the ridiculous size of it or the crazy amounts of people who would be on board it's the fact that the ship's primary objective for existing was to enable everyone on board to dodge all of their taxes in the most creative way possible the freedom ship was intended to continuously travel along this route at all times never staying in a single place for too long in order to ensure that all of the residents on board wouldn't be classified as a resident of any single country retirees remote workers trust fund babies and ceos could all theoretically renounce any citizenship they had buy a condo on the ship and travel the world continuously on the high seas without having to pay any taxes to anyone ever again the ship would sail along this route continuously and slowly every three years and stop at 538 destinations across 135 countries over that whole time so life probably wouldn't ever be too boring the whole project was the brainchild of the eccentric engineer norman l nixon back in the 1980s he was a part of a team of engineers who were looking into building a brand new city on the 50 square kilometer uninhabited island of east caicos here just south of the bahamas the plan was to basically transform this small uninhabited island into an economic tax haven for the rich and transform it into something more like a caribbean island version of hong kong but after a bit of political turmoil the project ended up getting cancelled but nixon wasn't ready to quit on his wild city building dreams initially he and his team search for alternative natural or man-made islands to build their dream on but when nothing suitable could be found one of the original project backers suggested that they just build their own island instead nixon thought better yet what if they just built their own private tax-free island that could also move and so the insanity of the freedom ship was born life on the ship would be designed to be as normal as possible but there would be some distinct differences even though the primary draw for people potentially considering moving onto the ship would be the avoidance of any government taxes the freedom ship would still have a form of their own taxes in the shape of basically hoa or condo fees residents would have to pay a certain level of fees every month in order to provide for the general maintenance and upkeep of the ship's functions along with the salaries of the ship's 20 000 crew members but compared with the very high income taxes that a lot of very high net worth individuals would be facing back in their home countries anyway these fees would be just a tiny percentage of that so it'd be well worth it for them to consider the ship would also house light manufacturing in industrial areas offer a world-class hotel casino and even a convention center where events could be hosted as the world's biggest ships sailed around the world but since the ship would be such a behemoth there's a lot of places that it just simply wouldn't ever be able to fit into for a topical example the suez canal the freedom ship would be over 230 meters wide while the suez canal is only 200 meters wide at points meaning that if it tried to squeeze through the world's shortcut we'd have an even worse situation than the one we got earlier this year at only 150 meters wide at certain points the panama canal is also too narrow for the chunky freedom ship to squeeze into so the ship has to sail everywhere the long way very few ports would be able to accommodate it long term either so it's designed instead to be out of port more than 70 percent of the time most of the time it'll have to anchor off the coast and ferry passengers and supplies to and from the shore these boats run by the local freedom ship coast guard would be capable of holding 350 passengers each and leave the ship every half hour the ferries would be stored in a large marina on the backside of the ship but if anyone got sick of being on ships all the time they could always just fly to and from the freedom ship because on the top deck there would also be a two lane runway airport that would be capable of accommodating small private turbo prop aircraft that can carry around 35 to 40 passengers each this would let residents and guests visit the nearby shoreline and cities as the ship sails along as well as bring new guests on board for short-term stays and of course let's not forget the onboard subway system that would span the entire length of the ship as well allowing residents and guests to zip to anywhere they may need to go in just mere minutes you know if 12 minutes is just too long for you to walk for alright so you might be thinking at this point this sounds great and all but how could you possibly build such a massive ship the engineering approach for her construction will of course be much much different from today's ocean-going vessels while most modern ships are constructed around what's known as a keel which is like the main structural backbone of the ship the freedom ship won't the freedom ship will be constructed of large airtight steel cells that can be assembled on the shore and then bolted together once floated out to sea it's sort of like legos but scaled up to full-size shipbuilding the ship was also designed to be equipped with 104 000 horsepower diesel engines for powering the colossus across the world the only problem is is that nothing to the scale has ever been built before yeah it's technically feasible to do it and build it but the question is would it really be worth it norman nixon passed away some time ago and the freedom ship project has been trapped in development hell ever since it was first proposed back in the 1990s largely over how ludicrously expensive it would be and a lack of interest or trust from would-be investors the estimated price tag you ask a cool 10 billion dollars and that's just to get the thing out to see not factoring in operating maintenance or crew costs to keep it there 10 billion dollars for reference is about two and a half times the cost it took to construct the freedom tower in new york city the tallest skyscraper in the western hemisphere finding any kind of detailed information or data on this project online has been incredibly difficult as it is so honestly it would probably be even worse than that when the united states government began construction on the big dig highway project in boston they estimated that the initial cost would be approximately 7.4 billion dollars in today's money but 11 years behind on schedule when the project was finally completed the price tag stood at 21.5 billion dollars instead a cost overrun of 190 percent beyond the initial projected estimate massive construction projects run late and run over budget all the time and while governments can often afford them investors and private companies hoping to make a quick profit are generally scared away from them and a giant ship the size of a country with an airport a subway system and thousands of condos just screams that it'll take longer and cost more than anybody estimates it would technically the freedom ship still is an actual planned thing under a new owner and project manager and their website claims that 150 000 people are interested in purchasing a condo on board the ship once it's completed but that doesn't really mean anything over 25 000 people signed a petition stating their interest in the us government building a death star too and 107 000 people just told me in one of my polls from last month that their favorite small town in the u.s was ding dong texas so polls don't really mean a lot on the internet for now the free-floating city on the biggest ship ever designed traveling around the world with tens of thousands of obscenely rich residents dodging taxes with tens of thousands more working class crew members on board remains a blueprint a plan waiting to be carried out whenever the possibility arises if it ever does become a reality in the not so distant future though whoever builds it will have to work extra hard to not make it seem like a real life dystopian science fiction story we already have plenty of those like artemis by andy weir a story about humanity's first city on the moon that's as it happens is one of the many amazing audio books you can listen to for free right now on audible just like he did with his previous book the martian andy weir wrote artemis with extensive research detail and care towards the real-life physics and logistics that a hypothetical city on the moon would require and because of that the story's plot and world building feels real and is a super interesting view into what life on the moon could end up being like in the future now i'm sure you've probably heard all about audible by now but i've been an audible member for years now because they keep expanding their selection in fantastic new ways there's of course thousands of audiobooks for you to select from across dozens of different genres but that's really just the tip of the iceberg now with our newly rolled out audible plus membership you'll get access to thousands more originals and podcasts so you can go from a sci-fi novel like artemis to a true crime podcast and then to a biography and from there to countless other titles i listen to audible content nearly every day while i'm cooking doing chores commuting to the office studying or just falling asleep to something that sounds really nice and you can too but best of all you can get any audiobook you want out of their thousands of titles completely for free and get a 30 day free trial as well by going to audible.com real life lore clicking the link in the description or by texting real life lore to 500 500 you can get something really cool for free and you get to support real life lore at the same time and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 784,893

Rating: 4.9120131 out of 5

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, freedom ship, biggest ship, bad idea, insane plan, insane plans, freedomship, rll

Id: Ufrz07vVghc

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Sanco-Panza]

This is a kind of bad video, Bright Sun has a better one.

[u/tigersharkwushen_]

It's just a bigger version of The World Ship.

You can't dodge tax that way. You pay taxes because you are a citizen of a certain country. If you are a US citizen and you have properties in the US making money for you, then you can't get out of paying taxes. You would have to renounce your citizenship, but then you wouldn't have a passport and you can't get into any other countries.

[u/Wise_Bass]

There's no way that would work as a tax haven. Even when the Freedom Ship wasn't in territorial waters, ships in international waters are required to register a "flag" country under whose laws they are governed - and it would be subject to that country's taxes and rules (that's why lots of real life ships are registered under a Panama flag, for favorable regulatory conditions). You'd need said country to be a tax haven as well, at which point why do you need the ship to be so large, or even the ship at all? That's to say nothing of the recent crackdowns on tax haven countries in recent years.

Alternatively, they could try (likely without success) to get the ship itself recognized as a sovereign country.

[u/Capt_Blackmoore]

so.. what the hell is the logic that some "not rich" person would serve here? once onboard, you're effectively a slave to the rich people who are in charge with no means to escape outside of trying to swim to freedom. damn thing just screams as a means for not just providing a private playground for the rich, but a place to traffic humans.