Seasteading

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2011/08/seasteading

Peter Thiel, the Pay Pal founder who was in the news for giving money to encourage entrepreneurs to skip college, is also reportedly backing the Seasteading Institute, which was founded by Patri Friedman, a grandson of Milton Friedman. The Institute promotes plans to build artificial libertarian islands, like oil rigs or big cruise ships. The Frequently Asked Questions section on the Seasteading Web site is pretty great: "Why not just buy an island or part of a third-world country?" and "What about Hurricanes?"

The Yahoo! News article on the phenomenon, which is headlined, "Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands," reports:

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."

I don't buy the idea that voters have been indifferent to either welfare reform or Second Amendment rights — both have actually proven to be pretty powerful political issues. But you get the idea.

by Editor  |  Aug 17, 2011 at 9:40 am receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list