Where is the World Going To ?! :))

Peter Thiel Makes Down Payment on Libertarian Ocean Colonies
From Wired News 19 / 05 / 2008
Tired of the United States and the other 190-odd nations on Earth?
If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.
With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities "with diverse social, political, and legal systems."
"Decades from now, those looking back at the start of the century will understand that Seasteading was an obvious step towards encouraging the development of more efficient, practical public-sector models around the world," Thiel said in a statement.
It might sound like the setting for the videogame Bioshock, but the institute isn't playing around: It plans to splash a prototype into the San Francisco Bay within the next two years, the first step toward establishing deep-water city-states, or what it calls "seasteads" -- homesteads on the high seas.
Within the pantheon of would-be utopian communities, there's a particularly rich history of people trying to live outside the nation-state paradigm out in the ocean. The most ambitious was Marshall Savage's Aquarius Project, which aimed at nothing less than the colonization of the universe. There was also Las Vegas millionaire Michael Oliver's attempt to create a new island country, the Republic of Minerva, by dredging the shallow waters near Tonga. And the Freedom Ship was to be a mile-long portable country costing about $10 billion to construct.
None of these projects has succeeded, a fact that The Seasteading Institute's founders, Google's Patri Friedman and the semi-retired Wayne Gramlich, are keenly aware of throughout the 300-page book they've written about seasteading.
Instead of starting with a grand scheme worthy of a James Bond villain, the Institute is bringing an entrepreneurial, DIY mentality to creating oceanic city-states.
"There's a history of a lot of crazy people trying this sort of thing, and the idea is to do it in a way that's not crazy," said Joe Lonsdale, the institute's chairman and a principal at Clarium Capital Management, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund.
The seasteaders want to build their first prototype for a few million dollars, by scaling down and modifying an existing off-shore oil rig design known as a "spar platform."
In essence, the seastead would consist of a reinforced concrete tube with external ballasts at the bottom that could be filled with air or water to raise or lower the living platform on top.
The spar design helps offshore platforms better withstand the onslaught of powerful ocean waves by minimizing the amount of structure that is exposed to their energy.
"You have very little cross-sectional interaction with waves [with] the spar design," Gramlich said.
The primary living space, about 300 square feet per person, would be inside the tube, but the duo envisions the top platform holding buildings, gardens, solar panels, wind turbines and (of course) satellites for internet access.
To some extent, they believe the outfittings for the seastead will be dependent on the business model, say aquaculture or tourism, that will support it and the number of people aboard.
"We're not trying to pick the one strategy because we think there will be multiple people who want one for multiple reasons," Gramlich said.
Dan Donovan, a long-time spokesman for Dominion, an energy company that operated Gulf of Mexico-based gas rigs, including Devils Tower, the world's deepest spar structure, said the group's plan wasn't too far-fetched. His company's off-shore rigs, which are much larger than the institute's planned seasteads, provided long-term housing for its workers.
"They were sort of like mobile homes. We could move them from one place to another," Donovan said. "People did live on them."
But even the institute members admit that their plans aren't far enough along to stand up to rigorous engineering scrutiny. Some engineers, Gramlich said, have been skeptical of their plan, particularly their desire to do it on the cheap.
"We have some legitimate doubting Thomases out there," Gramlich said.
But if the idea turns out to be just crazy enough that it works, Friedman, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, envisions transforming the way that government functions.
"My dad and grandfather were happy arguing their ideas and were happy influencing people through the world of ideas," Friedman said. "I see a real need for people to go out and do something and show by example."
True to his libertarian leanings, Friedman looks at the situation in market terms: the institute's modular spar platforms, he argues, would allow for the creation of far cheaper new countries out on the high-seas, driving innovation.
"Government is an industry with a really high barrier to entry," he said. "You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a new one. That's a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it's got enormous customer lock-in. People complain about their cellphone plans that are like two years, but think of the effort that it takes to change your citizenship."
Friedman estimates that it would cost a few hundred million dollars to build a seastead for a few thousand people. With costs that low, Friedman can see constellations of cities springing up, giving people a variety of governmental choices. If misguided policies arose, citizens could simply motor to a new nation.
"You can change your government without having to leave your house," he said.
Of course, one major role of government is to provide security, which would seem to be an issue on the open sea. But Friedman's not worried about defense beyond simple firearms because he thinks pirates will lack the financial incentive to attack the seasteads.
"More sophisticated pirates will take entire container ships that have tens of millions of dollars of cargo and 10 crew [members]," he said. "On a seastead, there's a much different crew-to-movable assets ratio."
In fact, his only worry is that a government will try to come calling and force their jurisdiction upon them. Toward that end, they are planning to fly a "flag of convenience" from a country that sells them, like Panama, to provide them with protection from national navies.
"If you're not flying a flag … any country can do whatever they want to you," he said.
Even if their big idea doesn't end up panning out, their story should live on in internet lore for confirming the dream that two guys with a blog and a love of Ayn Rand can land half a million dollars to pursue their dream, no matter how off-kilter or off-grid it might seem.
"Everything changed when we got the funding," Friedman said. "Before that, it was two guys with some ideas writing a book and blogging about their ideas.... Now that we've got some funding, it's something I plan to make a full-time job out of."

Today...

I watched a few hundred policemen run down my street chasing maybe 150 young men and women, cowering from tear gas. Another usual day in Turkey? In this fascist police-state of ours, cops are nothing but a threat. I do not know a single person who trusts them. Most people don't go to them for help when necessary, as there is always a possibility they will charge you with something and you'll end up worse than when you came for them.
I am not for organized struggle... Maybe it's cowardice but crowds do not make me feel empowered or liberated. I try to stick to my political principles in my own sphere. With my daughter, my wife, my friends. I am not sure that the people in the crowds are practicing what they may be preaching, my choice is to try to do that in my daily life, hoping I may change things bit by very small bit.
However, there is no justification for what happened here today. No one should be chased down a street by robocops with shotguns. I am at a loss for words... Really.
I had the urge to document the whole thing by going out with a camera; then looked at my wife and child. They weren't pleased with my idea, needless to say. Especially not after we had to close the window to block the tear gas. Not sure what to do, I suddenly remembered a whole list of chores I had to do with state offices and grandparents, and knowing most people are staying at home, minding their business, I took this as an opportunity to handle stuff in an Istanbul without traffic.
Am I a coward? Perhaps, but when I saw my centenarian grandfather's face light up when I came to surprise him, I really wondered if I had paid some sort of dues to somewhere, I don't know where though... joy is so short lived and so infrequent in this world; it s a shame what we have created in the name of civilization. Or maybe Buddha and Schopenhauer and Jesus Christ were right. Maybe one has to recognize that all is suffering, in order to know non-suffering. Maybe when thinking of the suffering of the masses, one should look at a babies' face for momentary relief. Not for forgetting the former, but to re-kindle the hope that humans are, in the end, incredibly beautiful creatures, and can do beautiful things for the world. Like Bukowski, I can easily stay away from individual humans for days on end but am terribly in love with the race. Humans are hideously mesmerizing, like Kafka's giant bug. Disgust and awe in one. Desperation and hope at the same time. Sorrow and infinite love bundled in the same experience. One can go on with these binaries. Maybe the Tao is silent and noisy as well.
At moments like these I also like to daydream about my imaginary anarchist commune where money doesn't exist, where we are off the grid and self-sufficient, where all are truly equal and eventually I move to fantasies in having the farmers nearby our commune start trading with us without money and how we might spread a different understanding of life, bit by little bit. Not impossible I think, in fact more probable than overthrowing the state. Power corrupts, no matter who is involved with it. No masters no slaves, no representatives, i don't trust anyone who professes to help me through politics. As Jack Nicholson says to the Martians in Mars Attacks: "Why can't we all just get along?" Then ZAPPP!:)
Today's attack was no surprise to anyone. However, i think it really showed how the present administration is full of fools. Again, I'm sorry and feel shame.