A new country?

An interesting article is linked at the title that reports on the progress of a group who is attempting to make their own country, not on land but on sea. It caught my interest when I heard about it some time ago, so it was interesting to read the coverage (ironically from the UK and not here). Some selected parts of the article:

A utopian project part-funded by a dotcom tycoon aims to build a giant platform off the coast of San Francisco where people can live free of government regulation.

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.

If this inspires you to want to learn more, there are some pictures:



You can also read quite a bit more about this by visiting The Seasteading Institute where they have more information, a blog and are even using Twitter now.