Patri Friedman, a grandson of the classically liberal, Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, deserves some admiration for pursuing a principle to its logical libertarian extreme. As the best way to become entirely free from the state, he is proposing floating homesteading - in effect, sophisticated rafts - on the high seas.
Mr. Friedman is the principal force in the Seasteading Institute, having left a good job at Google in the service of this cause. If his plans are fulfilled, however, it seems likely that the nation-state system will eventually cast its net over the future laissez-faire communities of the oceans.
In the July issue of Reason magazine, Brian Doherty, the author of such books as Radicals for Capitalism, has a friendly, though by no means humourless, article on Mr. Friedman and the seasteading movement. The idea goes back at least to the 1970s - when there was also hope that space exploration would lead to extraterrestrial libertarian utopias - but he and his colleagues are trying to work it out thoroughly: the engineering of floating platforms, legal implications, economic viability and much more. In contrast to their forerunners, they have correctly concluded that reefs will not do as the basis for truly free-market life; anything solid is subject to existing ownership claims connected to states.
Three centuries ago, some pirates, such as Daniel Defoe's perhaps fictional Captain Mission, who operated around Madagascar, purported to form "floating republics." But today's would-be seasteaders do not aspire to live by robbery, kidnapping and extortion, which in any case would doubtless attract the interest of some of the world's navies.
Somalia's anarchy did attract some Western libertarian approval a decade ago, but it is only fair to acknowledge that that was before some Somalis applied their business acumen to piracy.
Even so, peace-loving anarcho-libertarian entities would not be left alone in the long run. The 200-mile economic zones that many nations have asserted may well get bigger, and the Law of the Sea Treaty is likely to extend its reach. The oceans are a power vacuum that will be occupied.
The international community is difficult, if not impossible, to define, but it could hardly remain indifferent to any confederacy of mobile artificial islands.
