“It sounds like the plot of a pre-Daniel Craig Bond film: an internet tycoon invests part of his vast fortune to fund a fiefdom afloat in international waters. He is joined by the libertarian grandson of one the world’s most famous economic thinkers and advertises for like-minded citizens “who are dissatisfied with our current civilisation” to join him aboard his brave new world. However, this is not fiction. It is happening now and the group, called the Seasteading Institute, has just released the first detailed plans of what its utopian water world will look like. The first architectural stage is being financed by a $500,000 (£362,000) donation from Peter Thiel, billionaire co-founder of PayPal, the online payments system that was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. More funding will follow, and the group hopes to start building a small-scale version off the coast of San Francisco this year.
The computer renderings of this new ocean dwelling, called ClubStead, show a colossal structure similar to an oil rig that weighs 12,000 tons and is supported on four pillars each with a diameter of 30ft. On board will be room for about 270 people to live, including 70 staff, complete with shops, offices and transport. There will also be a hotel and spa facilities.
Although it looks like a fixed structure, the facility will be movable. It will have thrusters powered by four diesel engines capable of moving the whole structure at a top speed of two knots and providing utility power on the platform itself.
The brains behind the project is Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist. “If we can open up the ocean as a new frontier where different groups of people can go and set up their own countries and try different systems,” he says, “then the whole world can look at that, see what works and what doesn’t, and everyone can benefit. America was founded by pioneers who wanted to have a different society to reflect their political and religious values.”
More at Times Online. (thanks to Lew Rockwell for the tip).
Would you move there? :b. How about the Free State Project in New Hampshire? ( http://www.freestateproject.org/ ) The former solution seems like something by Buckminster, or Jacque Fresco ( http://www.thevenusproject.com/ ) — a little too ambitious :P.
New Hampshire is way too cold.
The ship project sounds interesting but it’s large scale for me…it sounds like a billionaire’s idea.
I’m into smaller scale things.
I have seriously considered living on a houseboat
or living in an assembled house (prefab domes, for eg.)
But dome houses are actually kind of expensive. Way more expensive than a good deal in rural area or small town.
There are little islands which you could buy if you formed a pool with other people, but then imagine being stranded on an island with people you end up hating.
Coleridge, the English poet, tried his hand at founding a new society – Pantisocracy. He even married someone because part the charter entailed participants being married. And though the plan fell through, he was quixotic enough to go through with the marriage, if I recall this correctly…