Pay Pal Founder Peter Thiel Gives $1.25 Million to Create Floating Libertarian Countries in International Waters (His Goal is to Build Sovereign Nations on Oil Rig-like Platforms Free from the Laws, Regulations and Moral Codes of Any Existing Place)

Seasteading Institute city design

A group that wants to create sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms in international waters is distancing itself from the libertarianism of PayPal founder Peter Thiel after a profile of him in Details Magazine drew attention to the effort. The Details profile described billionaire Thiel's $1.25 million donation to the Seasteading Institute, and speculated that the Seasteading nation-building project 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."But Seasteading Senior Director Randy Hencken writes in a statement that Thiel's libertarian politics are his own, not the institute's. "Of course, Thiel is our most generous funder, but this doesn't mean that he dictates our plans," he writes. "While it is possible that the first seastead will be operated by libertarian entrepreneurs who wish to opt-out of the status quo, The Seasteading Institute remains steadfast about being apolitical and desires to see the creation of thousands of innovative governments on seasteads competing for citizens." Hencken also said that the nonprofit group has no immediate plans to start an island. Another sea-steading group, called Blueseed, plans to open an office on a boat in international waters outside San Francisco where it says tech entrepreneurs can work without obtaining U.S. visas as early as next year. - Seasteading Institute: Billionaire backer doesn’t ‘dictate’ our island-state plans, The Lookout, August 29, 2011

Silicon Valley Billionaire Funding Creation of Artificial Libertarian Islands (Seasteading Institute)

August 15, 2011

The Lookout - 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.