bpwallace49 Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 ..Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands. .By Liz Goodwin 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. .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westvirginia Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 I wouldn't move there unless they had some kind of serious defense. Whether or not you agree with the principles, an anarcho-libertarian government would create enormous amounts of wealth. You don't think Red China or the Indians (dot, not feather) wouldn't decide to come knocking? Or even some concerted pirate (arrghhhh!) effort? In fact, you'd probably need to have some kind of agreement with the US so the Navy keeps an Aegis can alongside most of the time or aircraft carriers stop off regularly for shore leave. Of course, the income of the hookers and barkeeps would quadruple during those times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tazinib1 Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Of course, the income of the hookers and barkeeps would quadruple during those times. +1,000 baht Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Holy Roller Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 +1,000 baht ...or $200 (in 1973 ). Sa-wa-dee! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bushwacked Posted August 17, 2011 Share Posted August 17, 2011 They tried this already in Water World. It ended in violence, murder and madness. In other words, par for the course for Randian dystopias Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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