Peter Thiel has proven that he knows a good idea when he sees one. He invested in Facebook when it was just a dorm-room operation and helped start up PayPal only to sell it to eBay months later for $1.5 billion.
Now the venture capitalist wants the world to know he has a good idea, and the sea is one.Thiel’s latest endeavor is making waves online after a profile in Details magazine has revealed that the billionaire with ties to the Bilderberg group has put $1.25 million towards developing a floating island of sovereign nations free of rules and regulations.The Seastead Institute has been trying to get investors to back them for years now. It’s the grand-plan of Patri Friedman, who wants to launch the first free-floating flotilla of oil-rig-resting offices off the Pacific Coast in 2012. By 2050, Friedman hopes to have millions of seasteaders residing within a frontier crafted “for experimenting with new ideas for government.” Beyond the laws of the land, those residing on the movable structures will be able to start anew, incorporating libertarian-minded agendas that’ll rescind restrictions and allow man to make a modern world without, well, The Man."When you start a company, true freedom is at the beginning of things," Thiel tells Details. "The United States Constitution had things you could do at the beginning that you couldn't do later. So the question is, can you go back to the beginning of things? How do you start over?"“We’re at this pretty important point in society where we can either find a way to rediscover a frontier, or we’re going to be forced to change in a way that’s really tough,” adds the investor.Thiel has been contributing money to the Seastead Institute for years now, and the recent interview he gave confirms that he is certainly still interested. He has more than doubled his first contribution to the cause, which was for $500,000 back in 2008."There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said the next year at a Seasteading Institute Conference. "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."Until it’s too late? That’s rather ominous omen being broadcast from Thiel, so perhaps it’s in the best interest of other Libertarians to sign on to ship out to the Pacific before America sinks into despair. After all, he was right about Facebook, and that deal made him a billionaire. Friedman hopes to have a full-time settlement in operation by 2018.