Get this! PayPal Founder Funding Off-Shore FLOATING COUNTRY!!! a la Ayn Rand

[housewolf]

From the "you can't make this stuff up" file -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024761/Atlas-Shrugged-Silicon-Valley-billionaire-reveals-plan-launch-floating-start-country-coast-San-Francisco.html

Silicon Valley billionaire reveals plan to launch floating 'start up country' off San Francisco
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 7:46 AM on 11th August 2011

PayPal-founder Peter Thiel was so inspired by Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand's novel about free-market capitalism - that he's trying to make its title a reality. The Silicon Valley billionaire has funnelled $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, an organization that aspires to launch a floating colony into international waters, freeing them and like-minded thinkers to live by Libertarian ideals.

Mr Thiel recently told Details magazine that: 'The United States Constitution had things you could do at the beginning that you couldn't do later. So the question is, can you go back to the beginning of things? How do you start over?'

The floating sovereign nations that Thiel imagines would be built on oil-rig-like platforms anchored in areas free of regulation, laws, and moral conventions. Mr Thiel and his colleagues say their ocean state would have no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.

Aiming to have tens of millions of residents by 2050, the Seastead Institute says architectural plans for a prototype involve a movable, diesel-powered, structure with room for 270 residents. The long-term plan would be to have dozens and eventually hundreds of the platforms linked together.

read the article...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024761/Atlas-Shrugged-Silicon-Valley-billionaire-reveals-plan-launch-floating-start-country-coast-San-Francisco.html

---------------------------------

Start-up community planned for around 2019

[True Blue Democrat]

1. Principality of Sealand is for sale

http://www.sealandgov.org/

Last I checked.

[rfranklin]

2. already exists---Somali pirate ships....

"Poor man wants to be rich, Rich man wants to be king"
--Bruce Springsteen

I think that sums it up nicely.

[zeemike]

3. Good riddance as far as I am concerned.

And they will soon learn that they are nothing without resources and the sea gives them up reluctantly.

[onethatcares]

4. that is,

until something happens like a large storm or some other disaster, then the hands will be out for taxpayer dollars.

I hope they take the seccessionist minded with them.

[Angry Dragon]

27. It will not be your tax dollars because they are starting

their own country...... it will be their dollars

[renegade000]

5. lol i love that quote at the end:

"Thiel meanwhile once a crowd at the Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009 that: 'there are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible.

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.' "

Yes, because heaven forbid a bunch of loonies move to the ocean. We have to prevent that BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! :rofl:

And tens of millions of people by 2050? He's seems rather confident that his experiment will work. It's one thing to have a creative idea, draw some pictures, and market the hell out of it... it's quite another to actually do the work to see how feasible it is...

[Frustratedlady]

6. Most of those probably don't pay taxes, anyway. Good riddance.

Another example of why the wealth should not be allowed to be top-heavy.

[renegade000]

9. indeed

I'm just waiting for them to realize getting all the comforts of civilization won't be cheap offshore. And what if there's a fire or something? Will they call crying for the Coast Guard?

[pennylane100]

7. I think that will end as soon as there is a really big tsunami.

[tularetom]

8. In a real life Atlas Shrugged scenario, nobody would miss the dipshits who left

The people who think they are the elite, the idea people and the jobs creators could all leave tomorrow and hardly anybody would notice or care.

Mr Thiel, if he ever gets his big giant raft afloat, will find that out to his dismay.

[provis99]

10. and we all know how well that will work out...

[Blue_Tires]

36. I was going to bring up this example...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock

[Trajan]

11. Completely unsustainable ...

No minimum wage ? ...... Hah .... Who the fuck is going to work the drudge work ? .... Up and coming billionaires ?

Who would they sell to ? .... How would they create anything of value ? ....

Sounds more like preteens planning a runaway ....

[RandySF]

12. I think it's great.

We can take a collection and send the tea baggers there.

[vademocrat]

13. Hope they call it "Galt's Gulch"...

"Waterworld" here we come!

[tridim]

14. Will pot be legal?

Or just alcohol?

[a simple pattern]

Sounds like someone wants to be free of those pesky age-of-consent laws!

Sounds like someone wants to own slaves!

[jtuck004]

15. If Michelle Bachman became president I might build my own country on a raft.

Or at least keep it chained up in the harbor, just in case. ;)

[struggle4progress]

16. Oh, yeah! It'd be heaven to be bobbing up and down with a few hundred other crazies

on a little floating platform somewhere out in the Pacific -- almost as much fun as living in a manmade cave on the moon

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy: Episode 6, Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLeBn2_W42U

[DirkGently]

17. Pleasepleaseplease let this happen. Watching idiots try to exploit each OTHER for labor & profits!

[annabanana]

29. Buy popcorn stock!. . . . .n/t

[Donnachaidh]

18. they can live on that floating pile of plastic garbage as far as I'm concerned.

Just cut off their bank accounts so they cannot take money from the US.

[Fearless]

19. Revoke their citizenship and deny them reentry.

[toddwv]

20. Hmmm... I always pictured Hell to be a bit hotter...

Still... I'm not sure that it's such a bad ideas to have all the crazies together in one isolated location...

[dixiegrrrrl]

30. I think that was Perry's idea when he proposed succession.

[libmom74]

21. I love this idea!

All the teabaggers, greedy rich and christofascists can live together in harmony and the sane people can all stay here in the US free from their crap. If they want to import goods we can impose large tariffs. Is there a way we can donate to help make the dream come true a little bit faster, say before 2012?

[awoke_in_2003]

22. "Start-up community planned for around 2019"...

I though private industry could work quicker than that- come on you lazy fucks, hurry up and get gone. Since the rapture probably isn't going to happen, this is a good way to get rid of our nut cases.

[DavidDvorkin]

23. And I was fantasizing when I wrote this, some time ago

http://www.dvorkin.com/essays/finalconq.html

[Cronus Protagonist]

24. They will be threatened and attacked and held to ransom over and over

As they have no decent defense against other greedy bastards like themselves.

[Moostache]

25. To paraphrase an old joke (also in "Philadelphia"):

Q: "What do you call a thousand Randians chained together in the middle of the ocean?"
A: "A good start."

Please do not let the door hit you in the ass the fucking way out!

I will gladly offer to drive any of this miscreants from East Kansas to whatever port of departure they are going to with only one caveat: that they NEVER return.

[999998th word]

26. Awesome .

Was that a threat or a promise !

[DallasNE]

28. Isn't That Called Las Vegas?

And it could be administered by this person.

[yesphan]

32. This photo

is precious !

[Demeter]

31. One Word: TYPHOON

What foolishness.

[Donuelhakman]

33. offshore nation

I never imagined a country that could be brought to court for being a navigation hazard

[pepperbear]

34. "The United States Constitution had things you could do at the beginning that you couldn't do later"

Like own slaves.

[Blue_Tires]

35. He'll either go bankrupt trying, or cut so many corners that the first storm kills them all

[GTurck]

37. I can see it...

now. A community with no rules, lots of guns, and randy men; sounds like heaven! Also sounds like "Lord of the Flies". How many times do prescient writers have to explain in story form, yet again, that we need rules and structure but not control through government? How often do we have to see failures such as Somalia and think that would be a good model for us?
Worse, I use Paypal and wonder how much of my liberal money is going for this Libertarian utopia?:puke: :puke: :crazy: