Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands

[American Patriot]

Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands



By Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – 5 hrs ago



Seasteading Institute city design (Anthony Ling)



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 Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-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 Institute 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 Institute'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 titan, 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.

[American Patriot]

I don't see these becoming island havens, more like island hells - because people will not have ANY laws to start with, and what are you going to do with, say, a murderer, rapist or robber who hurts you there with little to live for?

Are they going to "ban guns" right off?

Will it become the Wild West if they don't?

LOL

I'm actually looking forward to outcome of this.

[Phil Fiord]

It is an interesting idea. I would think that without laws and people taking any feud to a mortal event, would be like the old west as well.

I'd visit, and if civil, stay a while.

[Aramus]

Its just a place where they can smoke all the pot and have sex with all of the children they want to... legally.

[American Patriot]

Its just a place where they can smoke all the pot and have sex with all of the children they want to... legally.

LOL. Hi Aramus. I think you're probably right.