Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands

[SlyPokerDog]

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.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout...artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html

 

[3RA1N1AC]

whomever controls the water will rule the new world as a god

 

[barfo]

I'm in favor of moving libertarians offshore.

barfo

 

[SlyPokerDog]

I'm in favor of moving libertarians offshore.

barfo

And midgets.

 

[Denny Crane]

I'm in favor of moving libertarians offshore.

barfo

They'll take their money with them. Out of reach of your greedy, grubby hands.

 

[barfo]

They'll take their money with them. Out of reach of your greedy, grubby hands.

That's a trade I'm happy to make.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

That's a trade I'm happy to make.

barfo

When those 238000 people can't be taxed, you'll be singing your usual tune.

 

[barfo]

When those 238000 people can't be taxed, you'll be singing your usual tune.

There are 238,000 libertarians? Gonna be mighty cramped on that oil rig.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

sovereign NATIONS plural.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

sovereign NATIONS plural.

You better hurry up and register LibertarianIslandTwo.com

 

[barfo]

sovereign NATIONS plural.

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

barfo

 

[huevonkiller]

We've already moved trillions of dollars offshore.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

i want to live on a desert island too, so nobody can take my hunting grenades away

and i want to live in a house with very small stairs, and pay my gardener with blowjobs

 

[MARIS61]

They'll take their money with them. Out of reach of your greedy, grubby hands.

You're confused about who has greedy, grubby hands, but I heartily encourage you to join them rather than continue your impotent but monotonous attempts to overthrow America, The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Time to put your money where your mouth is.