ew countries at sea
A BILLIONAIRE is planning to create his own countries — by building them on giant floating platforms in international waters.
PayPal founder Peter Thiel is funding a project that intends to create new societies governed in a radically different manner from conventional states.
The communities would be run according to libertarian ideals and be housed on gargantuan ocean platforms.
According to a magazine, the islands would be a "kind of floating Petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage and few restrictions on weapons".
And the first experimental example of the radical scheme could be built off San Francisco as soon as next year.
Thiel, 43, who is worth an estimated $1.5billion — or £910million — has given £763,000 to the Seasteading Institute planning to build the floating nations.
Seasteading argues that building in the ocean "is the only option to create new societies on Earth".
The institute is run by Patri Friedman, the grandson of Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman.
He argues that "government is an inefficient industry because it has an insane barrier to entry. To compete with governments on existing land, you have to win a war, an election, or a revolution."
Thiel admitted that many saw the idea of creating societies in the ocean as a crackpot scheme.
He added: "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."
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