Libertarian Wet Dream

Literally. This newest John Galt gimmick is sort of a cross between Atlas Shrugged and Waterworld.

I like Ayn Rand as much as the next person. Who could read The Fountainhead and not be rooting for Howard Roark to stomp all over those faceless one-dimensional conformists who kept holding him back?

Ditto for Atlas Shrugged. John Galt, Hank Reardon and all the rest of those self-made self-actualizing heroes — how could you not be on their side?

But how do you apply this to the real world? It’s like watching Death Wish and then trying to apply what Charles Bronson “taught” you at your next Neighborhood Watch meeting. Reality gets in the way.

Today’s technology — plus the fact that the population has probably tripled since Atlas Shrugged was written — would prevent America’s movers and shakers from building their own secret community in a hidden canyon somewhere. That damn Google Earth!

What to do? Where can you go to get away from that smothering nanny state and all those clingy parasites? To the ocean. No joke. The Seasteading Institute is a think tank that wants modern day frontiersmen and John Galt wannabes to build large concrete floating platforms in international waters. Free at last. Uh oh, Somali pirate ships on the horizon!

The main founder of this think tank is Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton Friedman. Something about the apple not falling far from the tree…

Friedman acknowledges that Libertarians are too small a minority to ever win any elections. So his solution is seasteading: “Expensive though ocean platforms are, they are still cheap compared to winning a war, an election, or a revolution…the unique nature of the fluid ocean surface means that cities can be built in a modular fashion where entire buildings can be detached and floated away.”

And they lived happily ever after.

cross-posted at Bring It On!