No one, that is, except Peter Thiel.
File Photo: Peter Thiel (Citation Needed)
Thiel is the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, The first investor in something called Facebook, an avowed Libertarian, and a quixotically gay conservative. More recently, he has donated 1.25 million to a project that plans on building sovereign aqua nations in international waters under the guise of exploring new frontiers in the “governance industry”, as explained in a recent interview with Details Magazine. This latest venture isn't even his first into the world of "bondian" villainy. On his journey to the darkside Thiel has invested in Palantir, a software firm that was caught out recently for its role in planned attacks on Wikileaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald. His original darling venture, PayPal, was envisioned as a subversive tool to create a new world currency, which as discussed in the previous article, is the sort of bold stroke the west will depose you over.
With quotes like this one found at the end of the article, there can be little doubt that Thiel fancies himself a super genius.
This idea, known as Seasteading, is the brain child of fellow Libertarian and aspiring supervillain in his own right, Patri Friedman. The idea is to found these water worlds around specific ideologies: by which they mean “rich guys who don’t want to pay taxes or a fair living wage to poor saps” ideologies. When describing the idea, the examples Friedman gives are “no welfare”, “no minimum wage”, “looser building codes” and “less restrictive gun laws”.
Artist's rendering of first Seastead Nation (Citation Needed)
Sure, while couched in some high minded talk of evolutionary government and freeing technology and science from the bounds of bureaucratic interference, what this really amounts to is a floating pleasure plank where the rich can create their own rules and escape all these annoying ideas like “ethics” and “equality” to focus on the important things like world domination, and slave labour. At its least damaging, it’s a bunch of trust fund babies trying to puzzle out who on earth would possibly come and work for whatever they feel like paying them when there are plenty of other nations that provide guarantees of a basic living wage, minus the constant threat of tsunamis, pirates and the corrosive properties of salt. At its most depraved, it’s “Hostel” on an oil platform.
However those of us naturally inclined toward fair wages, the distribution of wealth, the pursuit of happiness, now have a viable way to remove one of the great obstacles the poor and downtrodden face in life: Rich bastards.
In fine conservo-libertarian fashion, no doubt the building of these floating Studio 54's will be contracted out to the lowest bidder, who will no doubt use cheap materials, in the middle of the open ocean, to come in on budget. All we need to do is help get as many of the world's powerful and elite on them as quickly as possible, and watch as the inevitable occurs.
For that matter, if the dangerous combination of crushing waves and cheaply constructed supports doesn't finish them off, they may just do it themselves. If there's one thing we know about the rich, it's that they really love their cocaine. Imagine what would happen on "less restrictive gun laws" aqua nation when you mix a yacht load of cocaine and a large stockpile of AK-47's.
Or perhaps I'm underestimating their ability to find people willing to work for nothing to remove their trash and clean their toilets. There are arguably hundreds of thousands of people out there on the globe's poorest nations, desperate for a chance to earn something, anything to keep themselves alive. Perhaps these poor wretches will embrace the opportunity to plunge the chemical toilets of the rich and completely out of touch. At least at first.
Before long, Peter Thiel, Patri Friedman, and the rest of the self-proclaimed elite would find that there is a reason uprisings over class disparities and austerity measures are cropping up all across Europe, South America and soon enough, North America. Eventually, the new citizens of "AynRandia" might wonder if they could have planned better when their slaves have risen up, broken their salt rusted chains of oppression, and cast the mighty into the rough seas to die a slow and agonizing death as hypothermia sets in, or if you like, a fast and horrifying one as sharks circle in for an easy meal. Perhaps in this final moment, they might come to the stunning realization that those with nothing will only take it in the arse from those with everything for so long, before turning on the buggers.
See? Fantastic idea!
