“I certainly think if we had competition in governance, we would do a lot better,” Thiel remarked on The Rubin Report.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h10kXgTdhNU&feature=youtu.be&t=1h44m9s[/embed]
Peter Thiel appeared on Dave Rubin’s show and frankly answered almost every question you would want to ask him, accumulating over a quarter of a million views on YouTube in one week. Rubin guided the conversation to the topic of Seasteading by stating, “Let’s shift to some new ideas, how about that?”
In perhaps the most interesting anecdote from the interview, Thiel remembers a trip to a conference in Guatemala.
“They told me they had free speech on everything, but one thing you were not allowed to speak about was seasteading or starting new countries. And the reason you were not allowed to speak about them was that if you started, people wouldn’t want to speak about anything else.”
“We could do three hours just on this,” remarked Dave Rubin.
While Thiel is best known for co-founding PayPal and Palantir, and as the first outside investor in Facebook, he’s well known to seasteading enthusiasts as co-founder with Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute. Ten years ago, Thiel helped kickstart The Seasteading Institute with the first donation.
As a technologist and entrepreneur, he is particularly excited about the biomedical opportunities made possible by seasteads.
“You let a lot of these different micro-states bloom, and you can you see what would come out of it, but the specific technological thing that I think could come out of the new political arrangements is always this question whether we can get new medicines or new drugs. Could you have something where you use psilocybin or MDMA as an antidepressant drug? Or could you get new medical treatments where you break the FDA monopoly on medicine worldwide?”
Thiel continued. “The specific thing that I would hope would come out of it would be more scientific and technological progress that’s too heavily regulated by the heavy hand of our existing state.”
Thiel’s vision of biomedical advancement enabled by seasteading is merely one commercial application of the floating platform technology. Aquaculture, deep sea fish farming, energy production, and borderless multinational corporate collaboration will underlie the entrepreneurial explosion as well.
Seasteading is robust because of the diversity of opportunities facilitated by free floating city-states. High-profile advocates like Thiel influence the conception of what Seasteading is, and yet it remains as important as ever to continue our own dreaming. What’s possible on your seastead?
Welcome to our Guest Blogger Nate Gruendemann is a fintech entrepreneur and futurist. He is the co-founder and CMO at Board Private Bank, providing cash offers to mortgage homebuyers. In his spare time, he writes about the future and opines the merit of pumpkin-spice lattes.
