by Zoë Pollock
Peter Thiel wants to build a colony on an island:
One potential model is something Friedman calls Appletopia: A corporation, such as Apple, "starts a country as a business. The more desirable the country, the more valuable the real estate," Friedman says. When I ask if this wouldn't amount to a shareholder dictatorship, he doesn't flinch. "The way most dictatorships work now, they're enforced on people who aren't allowed to leave." Appletopia, or any seasteading colony, would entail a more benevolent variety of dictatorship, similar to your cell-phone contract: You don't like it, you leave. Citizenship as free agency, you might say. Or as Ken Howery, one of Thiel's partners at the Founders Fund, puts it, "It's almost like there's a cartel of governments, and this is a way to force governments to compete in a free-market way."
Lauren Indvik notes that micronations are nothing we haven't seen before:
Among the better-known entities that have failed to be formally recognized by any other country is the Principality of Sealand, founded in 1967 off the coast of Suffolk, England. Sealand issues its own currency, postage stamps, passports and certificates of nobility. Its current population: 3.
Weigel says Thiel's pipe-dream is old news:
My theory is that the persistance of Ron Paul and other libertarians in the current political debate means that liberals are more interested than they have been before in making fun of libertarians. This desire outmatches the desire to find out the details of the thing being made fun of. The fact that this is the third annual Seasteading news cycle suggests that Seasteading isn't actually catching on yet.
(Photo of Sealand by Flickr user Octal)
The Dish 