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PayPal Billionaire Peter Thiel Funding Libertarian Seastead

posted by LaminatorX on Thursday March 19 2015, @01:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the No-Gods-or-Kings-only-Man dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Alternet reports:

Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel...has teamed up with the grandson of libertarian icon Milton Friedman, Patri Friedman, to try and develop a “seastead,” or a permanent and autonomous dwelling at sea. Friedman formed the “Seasteading Institute” in 2008, and Thiel has donated more than a million dollars to fund its creation...

they claim a floating city could be just years away. The real trick is finding a proper location to build this twenty-first century Atlantis. Currently, they are attempting to find a host nation that will allow the floating city somewhat close to land, for the calm waters and ability to easily travel to and from the seastead.

In recent years there have been reports of similar efforts, like the Freedom Ship, a floating city designed to house 50,000 people, with a landing strip on top of the vessel.

Such concepts raise the questions, "Can these communities create new social structures when the subconscious societal norms we all grow up with have such a powerful influence on our expectations?" and "Is the ocean really the best place to site these communities, given how powerful, treacherous, and corrosive an environment the sea is?"

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:30AM (#159706)

    http://www.bssa.org.uk/topics.php?article=100 [bssa.org.uk]
    http://www.marinecorrosionforum.org/explain.htm [marinecorrosionforum.org]

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:51AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:51AM (#159722) Journal
    Corrosive substance [wikipedia.org]:

    A corrosive substance is one that will destroy and damage other substances with which it comes into contact. It may attack a great variety of materials, including metals and various organic compounds, but people are mostly concerned with its effects on living tissue: it causes chemical burns on contact.

    I have no qualms with the steel corrosion by sea water, but I think it's a bit an exaggeration to stick a "Corrosive substance" label on the surface of the ocean(s).

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:59AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:59AM (#159728)

      It's not an exaggeration if you're engineering a ship or semi-permanent seastead and have to deal with the effects of seawater on your project.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 19 2015, @03:34AM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday March 19 2015, @03:34AM (#159740)

      Seawater is extremely corrosive to most metals, so in context (the topic is human habitats at sea, which with today's technology means some kind of ship made of metal) it's entirely accurate and not an exaggeration at all.