Peter Thiel, PayPal Founder, Funds 'Seasteading,' Libertarian Sea Colony

PayPal founder Peter Thiel has invested $1.25 million in an ambitious project--floating, autonomous colonies at sea.

The progressive entrepreneur who pays bright, young students $100,000 each to drop out of school and pursue business ideas, is one of Silicon Valley's more prolific investors. After selling his then-startup PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Thiel bankrolled Facebook in its early days. A series of successful investments has placed him comfortably on the Forbes billionaire list.

Inspired by Ayn Rand's 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Thiel has stated that he thinks sea colonization is an important step in securing mankind's future on Earth. "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 released in 2008, when he made his first investment ($500,000) in the project.

His most recent grant ($1.25 million) to the Seasteading Institute may help propel development of independent island colonies off the coast of San Francisco.

Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer (and grandson of Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman), is working on the seasteading project. "Big ideas start as weird ideas," Friedman told Details magazine in response to critics. "The ultimate goal is to open a frontier for experimenting with new ideas for government."

Thiel and Friedman say that the colony should be ready for "full-time settlement" in seven years. Margaret Crawford, a professor of architecture at UC Berkeley and recognized expert on urban planning, isn't so convinced. "It's a silly idea without any urban-planning implications whatsoever," she told Details.

What do you think? Is a floating sea colony science fiction or sound planning?

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Comments

[dbrett480]

08:41 PM on 09/07/2011

Send these knuckleheads to an artificial island. And then deny them ANY and ALL help when they need it.

[ThePlague]

09:23 AM on 08/23/2011

Can he get Howard Roarke to design the thing?

[argyle]

08:38 AM on 08/23/2011

These aren't libertarians. These are those who read in Rand a license to use their intelligence, social standing, and wealth to gather as many resources from those less intelligent, or less better positioned, as they can and then use them as they see fit, with no acknowledgement of the vast and expensive societal structure that educated, fed, clothed and housed them before they knew what those things were. In this case they are actually trying to create private nations for themselves.

These people are the worst kind of second-handers in the best tradition of Wynand himself. Rand herself didn't even truly understand the difference between creating something from real materials and positioning yourself to siphon off the paper wealth of those who do. She understood the concern of the private individual for the power of the tax, but she failed to consider those that would use the law to "create" uses for it that were against its spirit and so engender vast pools of private wealth "legally" taken from the public through myriad accounting tricks, tax dodges, and market schemes like flash trading.

[Viracocha711]

08:02 AM on 08/23/2011

Who do these people call when a storm rips through their island? Yeah, the GOVERNMENT!! IDIOTS!

[pharmmajor]

06:09 AM on 08/23/2011

The ignorant hatred I see directed towards libertarians in the posts here frustrates me, but comes as no surprise.

[madisonhack]

08:56 PM on 09/10/2011

Why are you here? Go to a libertarian website....we certainly don't need you unless you want to join us. If so, there are some rules...........taxes, shared sacrifice, etc.

[Ken Ritz]

03:21 AM on 08/23/2011

Biosphere II, anyone?

[jsgaetano]

01:54 AM on 08/23/2011

Finally, somewhere for all the libertardians to "Go Galt" to. Hopefully they renounce their US citizenship after they "Rapture out".

[Sean L Metcalf]

04:39 PM on 08/23/2011

better than living in a country of unskilled spoiled brats demanding everything be free at the expense of someone else. You know what I mean?

[jsgaetano]

06:00 PM on 08/23/2011

Yep. Just looking at the Red Welfare States whining that they aren't getting enough of my tax dollars proves that point loud and clear. The far right has spent more than enough of MY tax money! At this point, I don't even want them to pay it back, I just want them to get out of my country, since all they do is whine about how bad they have it here.

[onlyaquarterdelusional]

11:37 PM on 08/22/2011

A clear indication that one does not have to be very intelligent or sane and still make a lot of money. Is this guy kidding?

[WoodsideCraig]

11:34 PM on 08/22/2011

It sounds fantastic for about the 3/4 of a second it takes to realize that it's a big boat out in the middle of nowhere, utterly controlled by a small group of people and unless you really, really like water, it's not going to be a very nice place to live.

[madisonhack]

08:57 PM on 09/10/2011

Trust me - they have no intention of being too far from shore.

[Air Vice Marshal Park]

11:03 PM on 08/22/2011

This is one of the most hilarious things I have read about in many years. You can't build something based on Ayn Rand's principles; she didn't HAVE any principles.

Much better to go off in the forest and build a society based on "Winnie the Pooh."

[Mr Anonymous]

10:19 PM on 08/22/2011

I just hope it doesn't sink like the one they made for Waterworld.

[jodieez]

08:01 PM on 08/22/2011

These confused tea baggers will soon tire of each other and will find it hard to live on a tiny island with others they hate.

Who would like this kind of life style devoid of compassion, and empathy.

[wilray]

06:56 PM on 08/22/2011

Seems like quite an elaborate mail drop. I mean who really believes that the mega rich will actually leave their palatial estates and creature comforts for a 300 square foot studio apartment on some scaffolding on the ocean. Yes, park it near San Francisco so that civilization and hired help is only a jaunt away. It's not like the super rich would actually live there. It would simply be a pit stop between mega estates. However, by pledging allegiance only to Gilligan's Island for the über wealthy they could avoid paying taxes.

[kurtca]

04:59 PM on 08/22/2011

Hey Thiel, don't come crying back to the US when some banana republic overthrows you.

[bigmovieman]

03:35 PM on 08/22/2011

Talk about a society that is doomed to self destruct, if not by its policies certainly by the surrounding environment.

Though I have wondered about what it would be like to set up a completely secular society tailor made for the non-religous. Have everything a normal democratic country has, more in tune with European countries of course, but have absolutely no religious foundation.

Talk about heaven on Earth...