David McElroy

Most people associate heading out to sea with vacation cruises, but what if a floating platform in the ocean could be home rather than just an escape to a beach? With all of the available land on Earth claimed by one state or another, some people believe that the oceans offer the best chance to escape the control of coercive governments. The Seasteading Institute is an organization devoted to pursuing such a future. (Its founder is the grandson of the late free market economist Milton Friedman.)

I’m a little skeptical that a huge percentage of people will ever want to live without solid land underneath them, but I see a strong possibility that if something such as this happened, it could put pressure on governments not to tax productive people so much if those productive (aka wealthier) people have an alternative to pursue. What do you think? First, would you ever be interested in living on such a floating platform? Second, do you think it would pressure governments to be less coercive? And, third, do you think governments would band together to try to stop it?

About the Seasteading Institute

I don’t have any interest in starting a political movement. I just want to live life and be left alone as long as I’m peaceful with others. I’m trying to figure out how to do that. If you’re interested in doing the same — and if you want to do it without the shrill and angry confrontations of politics — I hope you’ll join me in a conversation that might lead to better lives for all of us.

My own political evolution is a long and twisting story. I grew up in a generally conservative household, but I was taught to be a political independent. I also learned — from school and from my own reading — to be an intensely patriotic kid. I believed in our political leaders. I believed in the political system. I believed in the morality of this country’s role in the world.

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If you just want to see a piece of libertarian-oriented political propaganda, you might like the new “Atlas Shrugged” movie. But if you want a film that does artistic justice to Rand’s book, this isn’t it. It’s a bad film.

I’m glad I saw it, because it reinforces my conviction that some books just don’t make good movies. But in the hands of these particular filmmakers, this book never had a chance to become a good movie. It’s a paint-by-numbers production that you might expect from an indie movie at a small film festival or maybe from a soap opera. It’s not good art.

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