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.

I wish them the best. I just don't see any success they have means their policy would work for America too. I believe we have too much regulation right now, but by the same token I think a country of this size and diversity needs a certain amount of order that I don't hear from the some of the libertarian bent.

Our founders realized this when they moved from a confederacy to a Republic. Yes we've slid off the deep end, but I don't want to see us over correct either.

Just add ADAM, mix well, stand back and wait for the Big Daddies to be made.

I guess that depends on the kind of governing you want to do. If you do the kind the founders intended, I don't think so.

oil rig-like platforms...looser building codes

This does not bode well.

Did you know it is against building codes for your electrical outlets to be oriented such that the ground wire hole is on the bottom?

So if they were to actually become their own country, what would stop someone from attacking them and stealing their stuff. They would have to have their own security, but if you went in and killed them all no one could prosecute you for it because it would be outside of other countries jurisdiction. I suppose there could be some international court but not sure how that would work.

So if they were to actually become their own country, what would stop someone from attacking them and stealing their stuff. They would have to have their own security, but if you went in and killed them all no one could prosecute you for it because it would be outside of other countries jurisdiction. I suppose there could be some international court but not sure how that would work.

I guess that depends on the kind of governing you want to do. If you do the kind the founders intended, I don't think so.