Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands
133 replies, posted
[quote=Yahoo]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]
Ahem... Brink?
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8tV9BIGwU8[/media]
That will end so well.
Let's hope everything goes well, a fresh start in politics and economics is something we need
Make it underwater.
[video=youtube;qbI7gxxbYpo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbI7gxxbYpo[/video]
[quote] no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."[/quote]
Congratulations on learning absolutely nothing from early industrialization. Now all the people who wound up dead, dismembered, or sick will have suffered for absolutely nothing.
The Enclave
This is how it starts.
I had a similar idea to this but I wouldn't say it was a Libertarian island. It would be more like a political experiment with many different ideologies.
[QUOTE=OvB;31768020]I had a similar idea to this but I wouldn't say it was a Libertarian island. It would be more like a political experiment with many different ideologies.[/QUOTE]
At least until the underclass of poor immigrants revolt and kill their masters, anyhoo.
Looser building codes? That is a [I]great[/I] idea on an artifical island floating on the sea.
All in all, this could be interesting, but there's no fucking way I'd ever live in a place like this. And I have a feeling it'll wound up becoming essentially a police state in the long run in order to survive.
The capitalist Texan dream, your own island where no one can talk any sense into you.
Edit: Also sounds like a pricey plan for tax evasion
[QUOTE=Contag;31768080]At least until the underclass of poor immigrants revolt and kill their masters, anyhoo.[/QUOTE]
The guests kill the founders.
Besides, if it's successful enough, it will be gobbled up by a sovereign state which hungers for additional tax revenue.
Make a different island for each one.
Communist island, Socialist island, liberal island, anarcho-liberal island, conservative island, reactionary island and fascist one.
Also make a pragmatic one.
try to be singapore
end up like the czars
[editline]17th August 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=OvB;31768203]That's kind of what I was thinking. However let the people move freely between them and make regulations so you don't end up with a police state in any of them. Let the people decided what system is best for them.[/QUOTE]
That kind of defeats the purpose, though?
Neat!
This is good even if you don't like libertarianism. They can all go somewhere else and not trouble you and either it will succeed and they'll be better off or they'll just destroy themselves.
[QUOTE=OvB;31768020]I had a similar idea to this but I wouldn't say it was a Libertarian island. It would be more like a political experiment with many different ideologies.[/QUOTE]
You mean like the United States?
That's all this really has been.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;31768299]Neat!
This is good even if you don't like libertarianism. They can all go somewhere else and not trouble you and either it will succeed and they'll be better off or they'll just destroy themselves.[/QUOTE]
This will be an interesting experiment to see if Libertarianism can actually succeed without leaving so many poor and destitute in the dirt.
I would like to be part of one of those islands
[QUOTE=Swilly;31768311]You mean like the United States?
That's all this really has been.[/QUOTE]
[quote]two party liberal democratic system[/quote]
huh what are you talking about?
[editline]17th August 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Megafanx13;31768369]This will be an interesting experiment to see if Libertarianism can actually succeed without leaving so many poor and destitute in the dirt.[/QUOTE]
Without robots, and the robots to repair the robots and so on, I doubt it.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;31768299]Neat!
This is good even if you don't like libertarianism. They can all go somewhere else and not trouble you and either it will succeed and they'll be better off or they'll just destroy themselves.[/QUOTE]
Everyone's a winner! unless of course it fails miserably.
Wow now they're creating their own tax havens under the guise of "freedom"
This sounds awesome.
Social experiments all up in this bitch.
Hell yeah, I would get a summer condo on that bitch !!!!!!!!!
If I could build my own island it would be centered around scientific research and advancement. The population would consist souly of scientists and their families, professors and students, maintenance crews and other crews needed to keep a city afloat. The government system would probably be a liberal democracy/technocracy.
No man is an island, even on an island built by man.
Haven't all of these "Libertarian utopias" failed miserably before?
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation#New-country_projects[/url]
Wait, what if those Malatora dudes tried to take over one of those islands?
[QUOTE=OvB;31769147]If I could build my own island it would be centered around scientific research and advancement. The population would consist souly of scientists and their families, professors and students, maintenance crews and other crews needed to keep a city afloat. The government system would probably be a liberal democracy.[/QUOTE]
A liberal democracy? I would have thought that such a society would revolve around a quasi-democratic liberal technocracy.
Though I suppose if everyone is an expert, it's semi-technocracy anyhow.
[QUOTE=N.A.N.B;31769235]Wait, what if those Malatora dudes tried to take over one of those islands?[/QUOTE]
Maybe send a tip to Al-Qaeda and watch shit hit the fan?
But we all know a bunch of basement dwellers can't take on a bunch of rich guys with bodyguards.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
