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Paypal Founder Helping Build Artificial Island Nations

MadMartigan2001 writes with a pretty crazy article on a project involving floating libertarian paradises. From the article: "PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters. 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."

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  1. Re:Only as "free" as your ability to defend it by ShakaUVM · · Score: 1, Redundant

    >>These people are the same ones who hate obamacare, right up until they need to show up at an ER and expect a free ride

    It's EMTALA, not Obamacare, that guarantees free medical care at every ER in the country (and has put a lot of ERs out of business thereby). I'd expect most Tea Partiers to have medical insurance, and so your objection is rather misguided. Their objection is to excessive federal spending (which is absolutely a valid argument, especially when it comes to public health care, which is almost designed to be tremendously wasteful) and to the lack of fiscal responsibility demonstrated by both parties.

    >>It's not that they should be worried about our navy attacking them, it is that they expect to pay no taxes and yet have our navy come and defend them

    I don't really see that as being a concern. If these libertarians ever do build their Bioshock seastead, I'd expect they'd either contract out for some other navy to protect them, or to just have a lot of guns lying around. If they're like the libertarians I know, it'll be the guns.