Billionaire to reinvent Haiti

[Johonny]

Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html

I enjoy that rich people like to try the same experiment over and over trying to get different impossible to obtain results. Trust them it will really, really, really work this time. Why not put that money towards a perpetual motion machine instead?

"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."

I believe they'll call the first one Liberia.

[Zax2me]

1. That's 1.25 million you will see no trace of within a year or two

Sad to say.
Over the last few decades we have watched billions not do anything to improve the overall situation there.
Corruption within seems to be the only thing succeeding. And that quite well.

[Shagbark Hickory]

2. I think you missed the point of the article. It has nothing to do with Haiti.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Don't bet on it.

First, places like Haiti will be a good labor source, and totally susceptible to outside private $$. The "floating" thingies are just beachheads.

[Starry Messenger]

3. Oh god.

What a horrorshow. :(

[sfpcjock]

4. OMG

love Paypal

[GKirk]

5. It's as good a place as any for

a social experiemnt. Nothing to lose by trying down there.

[KamaAina]

6. No, no, no. He wants to build his own private islands offshore.

And be the oligarch, with no pesky minimum wage or anything -- just like Haiti, only without the vodoun and Barbancourt rum. :eyes:

[Jackpine Radical]

8. See # 7 above for my take on that.

[Lance_Boyle]

9. Unwarranted dig at Liberia - Somalia would have been a better choice. n/t

[Xithras]

10. He wants to build the first one off the coast of San Francisco next year? Small problem...

The authority of the California Coastal Commission extends out 3 miles, and they'll never approve that. Construction within the Bay itself won't happen unless it's an approved part of one of the Bay Area cities, which sort of undermines their whole "libertarian paradise" idea. Outside of the 3 mile cutoff, you have (north to south) the Cordell National Maine Sanctuary, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which together stretch from Bodega Bay to Cambria, and extend outward more than 30 miles in places. Nobody is building there.

They'd have to plant this thing in international waters at least 30 miles offshore. If they're going to try that in the open Pacific, they'd better bring the Dramamine!

[OneGrassRoot]

11. I'm fine with libertarians and tea partiers leaving the land...

I fear for the oceans, however. They have little to no respect for the environment.


:scared: