I had not heard the name Peter Thiel until today. But the Google millionaire has just shelled out a down payment on a very interesting idea: seasteading.
Tired of the United States and the other 190-odd nations on Earth?
If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.
With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities “with diverse social, political, and legal systems.”
“Decades from now, those looking back at the start of the century will understand that Seasteading was an obvious step towards encouraging the development of more efficient, practical public-sector models around the world,” Thiel said in a statement.
What a great idea! If governments won’t leave you alone, leave them behind. Of course, there are many questions to answer. How do you stay out of international politics? How do you defend your new ocean based colony?
The idea has been tried before and failed. It will be interesting to see what happens when Google employees are involved.