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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.

"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."

Patrick Degan wrote: Really, it sounds more like he should be setting up his own secret volcano base with talk like that...

Sea Skimmer wrote:I’d assume they plan on funding the places operating costs through hosting web servers… because otherwise it will get mighty dull eating fish every meal in the dark. Assuming, and this may be bold, that they have a plan.

Ahriman238 wrote:Wasn't Thiel the brain behind the '20 under 20' thing?

Seriously, I may count myself as a skeptic, but I truly hope Thiel and others get their libertarian paradise, that they get everything they want. Not just because it will be amazingly entertaining to watch them self-destruct, but because we could learn a lot from analyzing how and why they self-destruct.

Should I be wrong, and it all works out somehow, great. More power to them. Just what the world needed, another tiny nation with delusions of standing.

Ryan Thunder wrote:It never ceases to amaze me how many people in the world have more money than brains.

Sea Skimmer wrote:I’d assume they plan on funding the places operating costs through hosting web servers… because otherwise it will get mighty dull eating fish every meal in the dark. Assuming, and this may be bold, that they have a plan.

Darth Wong wrote: A tiny libertopia might actually work, just as a small-scale commune can work. If it does work, it will just become another idiotic libertarian talking point, with an obvious rebuttal.

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."

madd0ct0r wrote:

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."

because everyone knows building codes are there to make the poor consumer pay more right?

I don't know whether it'll set on fire, fall over or sink first.
possibly all three, in that order.

Ahriman238 wrote:Wasn't Thiel the brain behind the '20 under 20' thing?

Ahriman238 wrote:Seriously, I may count myself as a skeptic, but I truly hope Thiel and others get their libertarian paradise, that they get everything they want. Not just because it will be amazingly entertaining to watch them self-destruct, but because we could learn a lot from analyzing how and why they self-destruct.

Should I be wrong, and it all works out somehow, great. More power to them. Just what the world needed, another tiny nation with delusions of standing.

Sarevok wrote:They have brains alright. It's just that they are selfish people.

madd0ct0r wrote: because everyone knows building codes are there to make the poor consumer pay more right?

I don't know whether it'll set on fire, fall over or sink first.
possibly all three, in that order.

Floating nation with poor building codes

Skgoa wrote:I am still mystified by how exactly they plan to keep that society stable. They can't think they can live totally without poorer people... and what exactly would stop those from rising up against the fat cats?