One Nation Under Liberty?
August 17th, 2011
What a libertarian nation at sea would look like
Imagine a world run by libertarians, for libertarians. What would it look like? What would be the government of this world? Would there be a government at all? Well, Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, believes that having a sovereign nation governed on the principles of liberty is feasible, with the right amount of money of course.
Mr. Thiel’s utopia would be a chain of man-made islands, like giant oil rigs, where people would live as citizens of a sovereign nation governed by a “strict libertarian ideology”, which would include no welfare programs, no minimum wage, and very few other laws. In fact, Mr. Thiel is so interested in this project, he has already donated $1.25 million of his own money to the Seasteading Institute, an organization devoted to researching the feasibility of man-made island nations.
He also has some help in this exploit from former Google engineer Petri Friedman, grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. Mr. Friedman is the executive director of the Seasteading Institute, who insists that the idea, which has been around for decades (most famously the formation of the principality of Sealand), is more realistic now thanks to technologial advances, and a little start-up money to build the islands in international waters.
The proposal also includes the potential of United Nations recognition, and having thousands of citizens on the islands by 2050, using free, uninhibited citizenship as an incentive. It would be interesting to have an entire country devoted to libertarian governance spring up, and see how successful it can be. Given how fast technology is improving, it could be more realistic than it was fourty years ago.
H/T Freedom’s Phoenix & Ernest Hancock
