Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands
Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.
Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Ins ute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of lat-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."
"There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Ins ute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late."
The Seasteading Ins ute's Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later.
Thiel made news earlier this year for putting a portion of his $1.5 billion fortune into an initiative to encourage entrepreneurs to skip college.
Another Silicon Valley an, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced in June that he would be funding the "Clock of the Long Now." The clock is designed to keep ticking for 10,000 years, and will be built in a mountain in west Texas.
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"looser building codes" Where do I sign up?
More to the point, where do you get insurance for a structure built on such an island?
Last edited by RandomGuy; 08-16-2011 at 11:32 AM.
Honestly, I would love to see a real live laboratory for libertarianism.
I tend to be highly skeptical that such a thing is possible in the real world, but if it works it works.
The fun thing for me would be the stammering justifications by the inhabitants as to why it doesn't really work after a few years.
Frankly, I think an island where women will be forced to have their tubes tied is doomed for failure.
Moreover, they will be dealing with a population that barely could register as a township in remote Iowa.
Honestly, I would love to see a real live laboratory for libertarianism.
I tend to be highly skeptical that such a thing is possible in the real world, but if it works it works.
The fun thing for me would be the stammering justifications by the inhabitants as to why it doesn't really work after a few years.
Gather 300-400 like-minded individuals and everything is hunky-dory. Multiply that by 100k and the seams of society will be stretched beyond their limit.
I mean, think about the process first of all.
Potential residents will have to:
- Be willing to move onto a floating platform
- Be immunized if necessary
- Submit medical records (dont want herpes floating about)
- Be aware of the project's vision and direction (thereby influencing behavior)
They basically go through a medical, moral and political application test. Coupled with a low, low population, I think the results will be completely useless as a reflection of society.
But hey, at least you can count on one or two The Village-type scenarios happening.
Lots of groups have tried communes, utopias, ALL have failed. Plenty of doc and studies done.
Megalomaniac billionaires, to whom the universe's rules don't apply, and their billions are soon parted.
Interesting. A libertarian equivalent to the hippie commune on water.
Doubt this gets off the ground (hey oo). Not sure how much funding has been procured, but something like that would have to be on a pretty large scale and would be 10's of billions of dollars. The 1.25 mil is a paltry gesture at best (unless it was a typo and meant billion).
Obviously, Peter Thiel has never played Bioshock.
Nailed it.Obviously, Peter Thiel has never played Bioshock.
Sounds like the anti-Cuba. Who's going to be their Fidel Castro?
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