PayPal founder’s next project: Libertarian island nations

08-16-2011 • www.rawstory.com

Peter Theil, the billionaire investor who co-founded Internet payments processor PayPal and made a key initial investment in Facebook, has a whole new idea occupying his time lately: according to a profile published in Details magazine Tuesday, he wants to build a series of island nations governed by a strict libertarian ideology.

The bizarre experiment would be a way to test alternative theories of governance, he and associates told reporter Jonathan Miles. The micro-countries would be something like city-states floating the ocean on massive platforms, like oil rigs.

Theil's profile also mentions that he originally wanted PayPal to be a BitCoin-like alternative currency, in the techno-anarchist sense, acting as a store of value immune to the fluctuations of national currencies.

He's even gone so far as to donate $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, to study the viability of livable platforms that rest on top of the ocean's waves.

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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.

1 Comments in Response to PayPal founder’s next project: Libertarian island nations

Comment by PureTrust

Entered on: 8/16/2011 6:24:40 PM

Now with China developing its navy - you heard about their aircraft carrier, didn't you? - there will be a big sea battle between the U.S. submarines and those of China. They will be battling for first dibs on nuke-torpedoing the Libertarian island nations.

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