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Floating Cities of the Past and Future

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The threat of climate change is looming before us. Sea level rise concerns over 410 million people at risk of losing their livelihoods. Coastal cities are choked with high-rise buildings and traffic-laden roads, consuming land insufficiently. Synthesizing these problems, architects across the world have proposed a potential answer - floating cities. A future of living on water seems like a radical shift from how people live, work, and play. Vernacular precedents prove otherwise, offering inspiration for what our cities could morph into. As world leaders discuss courses of action to tackle climate change at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, ArchDaily dives into the concept of radical water-based settlements.

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According to the standard civilization narrative, the first human settlements flourished in the vicinity of water bodies - rivers, lakes, wetlands, and seas. Nomads required water for drinking and hunting, and agricultural communities for farming as well. Land was also most fertile where it could easily be nourished by a water source. As a result, humans established themselves at the intersection of land and sea, building and growing their settlements in either direction. Kampong Ayer in Brunei, Makoko in Lagos, Ganvie in Benin, and the Mesopotamian Marshes provide a peek into a lifestyle of living amidst water. They provide a starting point for imagining how our lives would be shaped by new offshore settlements.

A more contemporary idea of marine cities began to emerge in the 1960s with Buckminster Fullers Triton City and Kenzo Tanges Tokyo Bay Plan. These utopian projects developed on existing ideas of water architecture - proposing modern amenities, advanced mobility networks, and ordered growth in addition. Vernacularly built water-based architecture usually comprised tectonics like stilt houses, and more recently, buoyant frameworks made of hollow plastic elements. Idealistic structures proffered in the modernist era featured buoyant structures made of steel and explored new methodologies of keeping buildings afloat.

With advancements in technology comes innovation. In the 21st century, architects and the public have started to take the idea of aquatic cities more seriously. The most famous design at the moment is starchitect Bjarke Ingles Oceanix City, developed in partnership with UN-Habitat and blue tech firm OCEANIX. The vision for the worlds first prototype sustainable city on water will be situated in Busan, South Korea, an important maritime city in the region. The island-like colony would be anchored to the sea floor by biorock that would harbor artificial coral reefs. Food would be grown on floating farms and via aquaculture, and drinking water would be obtained from desalinated seawater. Oceanix in its early conceptual stages promises potential.

Similar high-tech concepts have been showcased in Vincent Callebaut's Lilypad, the Seasteading Institute, and Phil Pauleys Sub-Biosphere 2. Already ahead of these visions is a state-of-the-art floating residential development in Amsterdam. Given the Netherlands eco-consciousness, the project titled Waterbuurt successfully tackles the low-lying countrys imminent threat of sea-level rise. In Lagos, a new coastal city is being developed via land reclamation, similar to projects along the UAEs shore.

While visible environmental damage has urged for a conversation around floating cities, skepticism still remains. Questions about feasibility, cost, and expertise in building offshore infrastructure concern stakeholders. Political ideas around jurisdiction and ownership would require reconsideration. These expensive projects might only be accessible and affordable to certain sections of society. Environmentalists have also severely criticized land reclamation projects for disrupting ocean ecosystems and risking floods.

The future of urban living may closely mimic its lesser-known past. In times of uncertainty, case studies of traditional architecture and systems of indigenous cultures can provide learning opportunities. Amphibious communities shared their resources, and concepts of ownership were majorly absent. Water was viewed as commons and the ecosystem as part of themselves. Settlements were built to co-exist with the established patterns of nature, contributing as much as they extracted from the environment. Semi-permanent structures - since they are not anchored into the earth - grew and shrank organically as per the needs of the community.

According to The Institute for Economics and Peace, more than 1 billion people will be located in areas of insufficient infrastructure to withstand sea-level rise by 2050. At this rate, it would take over 9,000 Oceanix cities to relocate climate refugees. Floating cities are not a single solution to sea-level rise and climate change, but might be an impactful step toward remediation. This shift will call for a reevaluation of living patterns, legal structures, and man-made ecosystems. A new frontier of aquatic lifestyles seems hopeful.

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Floating Cities of the Past and Future | ArchDaily

When civilization collapses, J.C. Cole will be ready.

Hes founded Safe Haven Farms, a maximum security compound to ride out the next pandemic or climate-change disaster. And those who can afford to join him will also have a shot at survival, he promises. But the price tag isnt cheap.

A $3 million investment in his startup isnt just about getting admission. Members also get a stake in a potentially profitable network of local farm franchises that could reduce the probability of a catastrophic event in the first place, writes Douglas Rushkoff in his new book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (W.W. Norton).

Cole, 66, has two farms in development, one outside Princeton and the second somewhere in the Poconos, which he envisions as a network of secret, totally self-sufficient residential farm communities for millionaires, guarded by Navy SEALs armed to the teeth, writes Rushkoff.

The developer, who says hes not independently wealthy but did well in real estate, wont share the exact locations of either farm, at least not to outsiders, nor will he pose for photos as his concerns about security and the end of the world rides high.

The majority of Americans do not have an insurance policy by their choice, Cole told The Post. If/when the supply chain collapses, these people will not have food. A certain percentage of them will break the law and do whatever possible to get food. Therefore we want to remain not findable.

Cole is far from alone. The worlds richest are increasingly insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion, writes Rushkoff.

And while many billionaires have claimed that their interests are in saving the worldsometimes they even get into pissing matches on social media about who is more benevolent Rushkoff argues that the ultimate goal of the super-rich is to protect themselves.

For the wealthy and privileged, writes Rushkoff, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.

And theyre escaping in style. Texas-based Rising S Company sells luxury bunkers that run up to $9.6 million for the Aristocrat model which comes with a private bowling alley, swimming pool, bullet-resistant doors and a motor cave exit, so you can sneak out for errands like Batman.

California-based company Vivos sells luxury underground apartments, converted from Cold War missile silos and storage facilities into miniature Club Med resorts, writes Rushkoff.

Ultra-elite shelters like The Oppidum in the Czech Republicbilled as the largest billionaire bunker in the worldinclude amenities like simulated natural sunlight, a wine vault, and a place to hide all your stuff thats impregnable to hostile outsiders.

Youve worked hard over many years, taken risks, seized opportunities, made your vision a reality, the companys website tells its billionaire customers. Your reward is the means to acquire and curate all the beautiful, rare and precious objects you desire.

Luxury yachts large enough to be a billionaire Noahs Ark are seeing huge surges in sales 887 superyachts were sold globally in 2021, a 77% increase from the previous year and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, 58, even commissioned a smaller companion yacht for his main superyacht, as a separate space to store his helicopter.

New Zealand has become a prime destination for billionaires seeking doomsday refuge, from Google co-founder Larry Page, 49, to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman, 37, who let it slip in a 2016 interview that he and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel had a mutual agreement to escape to Thiels New Zealand compound via private jet at the first sign of societys collapse. (Thiels owned the property since 2011 but hadnt made the news public.)

But the billionaire bunker, whether on land, sea or someday (ostensibly) on another planet entirely, is at best a temporary fix, less a viable strategy for apocalypse than a metaphor for this disconnected approach to life, writes Rushkoff. Like a hiding toddler who thinks holding their hands over their eyes can prevent them from being seen, the billionaires who rely on a safe haven from the outside are in for a surprise.

Thiel discovered this recently when the 54-year-old entrepreneur worth an estimated $7.4 billion learned that his plans to build a 477-acre doomsday home overlooking Lake Wnaka in New Zealand was being blocked by environmental groups.

Even the preexisting bunkers offer only nominal protection, and the probability of one of them actually protecting its occupants from the reality of, well, reality, is very slim, writes Rushkoff. Whatever threat theyre trying to escape toxic clouds, plague and radiation it all has a way of spreading and seeping through the most well-thought-out barricades.

Cancer-causing microplastics are as plentiful in the polar ice as they are in the typical European town, Rushkoff continues. There is no escape.

But survival may not be their only rationale for disappearing. The seasteading movement a Minecraft-meets-Waterworld future, Rushkoff writes, in which the wealthy live in independent, free-floating cities is not just about aquapreneurs escaping the dry-land apocalypse. Its also about creating a new ultra-libertarian civilization free from taxes, anti-monopoly regulations, and meddling politicians.

As the Seasteading Institute website explains, Weve had the agricultural revolution, the commercial and industrial revolutions, but why not a governance revolution? Enter the sea.

If they cant find sanctuary for their bodies, they can still outsmart the end of the world by having their minds preserved. Silicon Valley tech billionaire Altman paid $10,000 to startup company Nectome just to be on the waiting list to have his brain uploaded to a computer.

[Its about] only one thing: Escape from the rest of us.

Who joins Altman (or has already joined him) remains to be seen. This past July, Dogecoin creator Shibetoshi Nakamoto asked his followers on Twitter if theyd ever upload your brain to the cloud, and Elon Musk, 51, cryptically responded, Already did it.

Before coming to the United States, Cole spent 18 years in Eastern Europe, serving as a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Latvia in Northern Europe. He witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he insists we should be learning from the Soviets mistakes.

I am deeply concerned with what I see happening in Europe, especially with energy and food, he said. That can easily happen here.

His biggest concern isnt a violent confrontation with the armed mob on the other side of the fence. Its the woman at the end of the driveway holding a baby and asking for food. I dont want to be in that moral dilemma, he told Rushkoff.

Cole hopes Safe Haven doesnt just provide protection from those wealthy enough to afford it but becomes a prototype of how sustainable farms can be used to make sure everybody has enough food to eat and protection from the elements.

Hewont reveal exactly how many wealthy investors he has, but he does claim the farms community will be evenly split between the rich and those with skill sets to rebuild the country, including doctors, machinists, and security.

But Coles ultimate goal, writes Rushkoff, is to ensure there are as few hungry children at the gate as possible when the time comes to lock down.

The mindset that requires safe havens is less concerned with preventing moral dilemmas, writes Rushkoff, than simply keeping them out of sight.

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How the worlds billionaires are paying to escape global disaster

Photo by Chris Le Boutillier

With our economy in tatters and the frightening roll back of our democratic rights now beginning to expose the true nature of Brexit, some leave voters are even beginning to question what Brexit was all about. However, it is not that way for everyone involved, some truly are about to get their Brexit benefits. Namely the American billionaire-funded corporate-fascist networks and the Russian state/Putin circle that both heavily financed it. The Russians were buying the general corruption and weakening of the UK state, the erosion of a once formidable opponent on the geopolitical stage, and of course they were protecting and enhancing their money laundering operation via the City of London too. The American corporate-fascist network, historically backed by the heavy industry tycoon Charles Koch and hedge-fund manager/Artificial Intelligence (AI) pioneer Robert Mercer, and now bolstered by the new age Tech billionaires finance and insight were more interested in Charter Cities up and down the UK. Not just for the unfettered exploitation of the UKs people and natural resources, that is undoubtedly part of it, but they have their sights set on more than just taking our money.

What are Charter Cities? Exactly what the name suggests, privately owned and operated cities where everything from healthcare, education and the police force to the legislature and judicial system are ring fenced from the host country becoming a privately operated fiefdom. All these institutions and more are operated by a private company that is accountable to nobody else. There is no independent or legal oversight of these cities, just the rules that they set in their privately owned legislative bodies and enforce with their privately owned judicial system.

Paul Romer (professor and mentor to Rishi Sunak who is now spearheading the UKs Charter Cities plan) first proposed the Enterprise City model, which differed slightly to the Charter Cities plan being rolled out across Britain now. Romers Enterprise Cities model was to establish these cities in underdeveloped countries, making a post-Brexit Britain with its rising inflation and collapsing living standards the perfect testing ground. This calls into question the true motives for the various current crises in Britain too, has the levelling-up agenda been an intentional ploy to drive down our living standards and erode our rights, not only to force through the project under the radar but also to push us all to the point of willingly accepting that these cities may offer us the economic prosperity their proponents allege? Crucially in Romers model decision making was to be transparent, each city would be backed by a developed nation and adopt the legal code of that nation. Romer officially distanced himself from the initiative following a distinct lack of transparency in deals with private companies in the thwarted first attempt to establish such a city, or ZEDE (Zone for Economic Development and Employment), in Honduras. This eventually snowballed into an adoption of the more extreme private Charter City model and was only recently halted after significant protest by the local population.

Babson Global Inc, the commercial arm of Babson college, embarked on a new mission in 2013 to introduce a worldwide network of Charter Cities. The heavy industry tycoon Charles Koch is one of many notable graduates of Babson college, his Heritage foundation has active members serving on the board of Babson college and he is one of the central figures in this story. Another important figure is Shanker Singham, a London born dual national who often refers to himself as American, who headed up this new project at Babson Global Inc as the Managing Director of Competitiveness and Enterprise Cities Project. During his time there Babson Global offered packages for e-City installation to potential host countries, offering integrated support at every level. Their name for this desired global network of enterprise cities where laws are seen as services that businesses demand, was the World Operating System. Singham officially left Babson Global in 2015, however he has remained a major proponent of the idea ever since. He originally made his name in the privatisation of the English electricity market in the 1990s and now lists his experience of privatising national assets as a key skill in his biography page for Competere Ltd. As reported by Baker Street Herald, Singham was a key figure, alongside Erik Brimen and Dr Barbara Kolm, during their time at Babson Global, in reshaping Romers original state-backed Enterprise cities idea into the fully privatised Charter City model now being peddled in Britain.

It is argued by the advocates of Charter Cities that this idea will unleash unrivalled economic growth and raise the residents of such cities up out of poverty. However, there is little if any evidence to support this theory and conversely, there is a mountain of evidence detailing the exploitation, corruption and lawlessness that similar arrangements cause.

The idea for Enterprise/Charter Cities is like that of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), of which there are many different examples around the world. Some SEZs are popularly cited as successful examples that we should be trying to emulate, such as Shenzhen, Hong-Kong and Bangladesh. These examples are commonly touted by proponents of the idea as shining examples of what all Charter Cities could become. It is true that they have all been hugely successful in delivering economic growth for their areas. While each of these was a public-private partnership that had specific circumstances both locally and globally that made them successful, they also took years to find their feet. What the proponents of this idea fail to mention is that these circumstances, most important of which was access to cheap exploitable-labour in a booming global economy, were fundamental to the success of these SEZs and are unlikely to be replicable now in other places.

Honduras was a key battle ground for the modern Charter City initiative prior to Brexit. Following Romers failed attempt and a subsequent change in legislation by the Honduran Supreme Court to outlaw ZEDEs, a new government bowed to another initiative that was launched for a fully private ZEDE. Erik Brimen, formerly of Babson Global, returned with the financial backing of American billionaires including Peter Thiel, CEO of Palantir and co-founder of PayPal with Elon Musk, to try again. Brimen came incredibly close to realising the first truly privately operated city in Honduras, forming his company/town Prospera and attracting a significant amount of investment before ultimately the project imploded. The neighbouring town of Crawfish Rock was connected to Prosperas water supply at Brimens direction, following issues with their own system. He then went on to use the water supply in a power play during a dispute with the residents of Crawfish Rock and eventually cut the town off. He continued to aggravate locals in a series of heated public exchanges over their concerns about the true intentions of his project and a lack of transparency over plans for future land acquisition. Following a significant period of protest Honduras elected a new government who promptly repealed the ZEDE legislation that permitted Prosperas existence and the project eventually collapsed. The example of the water supply in this situation is a basic yet clear example of how private companies, particularly those led by dangerous idealogues, will behave when given complete control of a territory.

Charter Cities in Britain will be no different, due to the sheer scale of the project it will likely be far worse than can be imagined now. In short shrift, there will be no public services to speak of and everyone must abide by the laws set out by the corporate owners or face the punishments that they also define. Such an arrangement will only lead to massive human suffering and the enrichment of the few individuals who are pulling the strings. The first step will be the complete deregulation of everything within the boundaries. Not this light touch deregulation we are seeing across the UK now, but the complete removal of all regulations surrounding workers rights, environmental protections and of course their own business and tax obligations. Everything will be privatised and these Charter Cities will operate under the rules defined by the Peel Group in Liverpool, DP World in London and the other private companies that now own the rest of the sites. If you cant afford to pay for healthcare, education or a private security force with the meagre wages that your 7 day-a-week, 12 hours-a-day job, in appalling conditions provides you, then too bad. That is your fault.

How did we get to a point where the UK government are about to give away entire cities up and down the country to private companies? As with most of the joy in Britain these days, it starts with Brexit and if you follow the money, you get a good idea.

Matthew Elliott, the former Chief Executive of Vote Leave and founder of the Tax Payers Alliance and Big Brother Watch, is recognised to have been instrumental in both the successful yet legally-questionable campaign to leave the EU and the subsequent huge shift right that British politics has experienced since. In a speech to a US think-tank in 2017, Elliott announced that he had been coming to the US for >14 years to learn campaigning techniques from the highly influential libertarian lobbyist Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform group. It was during his time working with Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform that he met his wife Sarah, an avid Trump supporter and prominent right-wing Republican lobbyist. Since then, they have both worked for powerful Koch-funded think-tanks/lobbying groups in the US and have openly sought to import the increasingly successful right-wing lobbying strategies to the UK. Desmog carried out a detailed investigation into the dramatic push for environmental deregulation post-Brexit and concluded that Matthew and Sarah Elliott had been a vital bridge in the Transatlantic network of lobbying groups and think-tanks backed by Koch and Mercer and the subsequent push for deregulation orchestrated by these same groups. Some of which are the same groups now advocating for Charter Cities.

The decision to leave the EU was always about getting away from the democratic regulatory framework and international rule of law that prevented such arrangements on the basis that they are exploitative, environmentally dangerous and function as both tax-havens and hot-beds for a raft of criminal activity, much like a Mafia state would. The vote to leave the EU has now been widely reported to have been influenced by several highly-questionable and potentially illegal factors. From allegations of Russian finance and influence and the illicit overspending and coordination by Leave campaign groups to the controversial use of AI-driven data-scraping from Facebook by Cambridge Analytica, it seems it was far from a fair and democratic vote. It is of note that some of the leave campaign groups were reported to have met with Steve Bannon, Trumps campaign manager, a key figure at Cambridge Analytica and a central figure in this wider ploy; and that Peter Thiel was a long serving board member at Facebook. In this post-truth world, the UK has a lot to thank Carole Cadwalladr for. Her investigations and reporting have been essential in highlighting to the public the various elements of alleged corruption flowing through the leave campaign. The year-long investigation into the role and potential influence of Cambridge Analytica on the Brexit vote should have been a tipping point to opening official investigations into the results and all the allegations that have been reported. Yet with the figurehead of the campaign to leave the EU now sat in Downing Street, changing laws at will to protect himself, there seems little hope of that happening soon.

Robert Mercer, a major financier of Trumps and a pioneer in the early days of AI development, was reported to have directed his data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica to provide support to leave campaign groups. Using technology that was originally developed for military applications to harvest massive amounts of Facebook data on UK citizens they were calculating who would be susceptible to targeted advertising in the run up to the vote. These services also appear to have been an undeclared expense or gift of support provided to the leave campaign groups that facilitated massive amounts of targeted advertising being delivered to undecided voters in the final few days before the referendum. Mercer has always denied any undeclared support or work for Leave EU, however, Cambridge Analytica soon closed after the story broke and multiple whistle-blowers have provided corroborating information on the story since.

The American-billionaire financing of the Transatlantic right-wing, free-market extremist think-tank network has grown extensively in the last couple of decades. These corporate-fascist networks now gaining a foothold in the UK political landscape have been growing for decades in America. For those members of the network based out of Tufton Street, it has enabled them to buy themselves an alarming amount of power and proximity to the government. With their ideology rooted in the controversial Austrian-American economics and philosophy of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Freedman and Ayn Rand, they have pushed this extremist world view right into the heart of the UK government. The Tufton Street think-tanks, including the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) London, the Tax-Payers Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies and of course the Leave campaign groups in their day are all tightly interwoven into an international network with their US counterparts, largely funded by Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, and a network of other billionaire empires. There is a coalition of >500 billionaire funded right-wing extremist think-tanks, known as the Atlas network, that has a stranglehold on both governments and is increasingly dictating the policy agenda on both sides of the Atlantic. Several familiar faces from the Brexit-Imperialist gang are prominent members and influencers in the US organisations, Matthew Elliott, Daniel J Hannan and Steve Baker among others, all hold prominent roles in various think-tanks in the Atlas Network. The Cato institute is another Koch-funded lobbying organisation separated from the atlas network, that has a significant role in knitting together and funding various right-wing free-market think tanks from both the US and the UK.

Primarily with the aim of obscuring their sources of funding, these organisations all make frequent donations and grants to one another. Under the guise of supporting policy-research, millions of dollars are spent annually per organisation on donations to other members of the network. The true extent of the financing of these organisations is further muddied by their hiding behind charity status in the UK. This means they have no obligations to pay taxes or to publish certain financial records that companies would usually be expected to with multi-million $ balance sheets and has facilitated the anonymous purchasing of our democracy. However, the true sources of the hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into these organisations is now well documented to be mainly coming from Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, the oil and gas sector and a few other hedge-fund and Silicon Valley billionaires.

These think-tanks are not free-thinking institutions genuinely researching novel policy ideas for the benefit of the increasingly impoverished people of Britain. They and their financiers all have agendas that they are trying to push. For some, the agenda is realising Charter Cities in the UK. In the context of Charter Cities, one member of these think-tanks warrants closer inspection, the IEA.

The IEA are the most influential think-tank in the UK in 2022, with 14 of their alumni sitting in Boris Johnsons first cabinet and many more publicly crediting the IEA with shaping their highly-questionable ideology that is now being exposed daily. They are moulding the future of the country outside of any democratic oversight from Tufton Street. Interestingly, Alexander Temerko a director of Aquind with alleged links to the Kremlin, serves as an advisor to the IEA, alongside Douglas Carswell formerly of UKIP and now also serving as president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. However, another of their members has had an important role this story already, Shanker Singham.

Singham, previously of the Babson Institute and latterly the Legatum Institute, which was the last think-tank dictating the agenda in the UK, was appointed as Director of International Trade and Competition to the IEA in 2018. His departments alternative Brexit plan published in 2018 was roundly criticised for proposing a general roll-back in regulations to make post-Brexit Britain more appealing for foreign trade deals. He is now listed as a Fellow of International Trade and Competition on their website, presumably to avoid a conflict of interest with his current government position. He has held multiple government positions since 2018, officially advising on trade. Having resigned from his first advisory role under May after being caught out with a conflict of interest, Johnson could not wait to bring him back into the heart of government and reappointed him in 2020. He reportedly held several unminuted meetings with members of both May and Johnsons cabinets and it is likely that he personally influenced the decision for the ultra-hard Brexit we find ourselves with now. Singham was also competing for a 200m government contract related to post Brexit border checks down the Irish sea, having published papers in his time at the Legatum institute that led to the adoption of the policy in the first place. Being in the running for a 200 million contract for which he was partly responsible for creating is one of his Brexit benefits, but Shanker Singham has more to play for than a few million pounds. This is an ideological battle for him, free-market fundamentalism is his ideology, where the only value that anything can ever be ascribed is financial. The way to bring his ideology to the world is via Charter Cities and his new World Operating System, starting with the UK.

From his time at the Babson Institute through to present day, Singham has been present in almost every chapter of this story, with the latest instalment now unfolding before us in Britain. Having provided commercially available products at Babson Global Inc. for governments to buy one-stop installation packages for Charter Cities, he went on to devalue the concept of government and promote Euroscepticism and right-wing free-market fundamentalism within the conservative party before, during and after the Brexit vote through his various think-tank roles. He now sits as an unelected bureaucrat at the heart of our government, apparently advising on trade, but enjoying unparalleled access to the Brexit process and senior government ministers, including several cabinet members and head of the European Research Group (ERG) and religious fundamentalist, Steve Baker. At every step down this sorry path, Shanker Singham has been there guiding our way. Now that the full extent of the governments plans to unleash the chaos of privately owned Charter Cities on their unwilling and unknowing populace is coming to light, remember who has been whispering in their ear and pushing them on to realise his dream.

There is scant information publicly available as to what the governments plans are with these Charter Cities in the UK, or freeports, as they duplicitously refer to them to downplay the sheer scale of territory being given away. This lack of transparency has been key to get these plans so near to completion. There is little chance that anyone would have voted for Brexit if they were warned before the vote that they were voting to scrap their own rights and to subjugate themselves to corporate-fascist overlords. We know there are eight sites already tendered out in England with the bidding process ending on 05-Feb-2022. These areas are the East-Midlands Airport including Derby, Nottingham and part of Leicester; Felixstowe and Harwich; Humber including Hull and Lincolnshire; Immingham and Goole; Liverpool City; Plymouth and South Devon including Dartmoor; Solent including Southampton, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight; Thames, incorporating DP Worlds London Gateway and Tilbury ports, Thurrock, Havering and Barking and Dagenham; and Teesside.

Each area is permitted to have a diameter of up to 45km initially (although some are significantly larger), as stated in section 1.2.2 of the governments bidding prospectus. Sections 4.2.24.3.2 go on to define how bidders (existing port owners) are to be responsible for and must include plans in their bid for security services and governance structures. The prospectus further elaborates in section 4.3.5 that the UK government are open to any degree of formality and legal structure in a freeports proposed governing structure as long as it is effective. All other stipulations around governance structures for the residents already living in these cities are mere recommendations that do not have to be followed by the bidders. Finally, the list of minimum effective functions that the bidders must maintain as per the prospectus are largely concerned with the profit-generating ability and marketability of the sites. So much for reclaiming our sovereignty.

With eight sites already given away, the British Ports Association immediately began lobbying the UK government to consider granting freeport status to some of the unsuccessful bids, meaning it is highly likely that more swathes of UK land and people will be packaged up and gifted away soon. Scotland has also agreed to two green freeport sites, so called because of the environmental and workers protections that have been built into the bidding prospectus for these sites. These sites are yet to be decided and will likely differ little from the eight English sites. Something the former Secretary for Scotland, Alister Jack, was happy to go on record in opposition to.

As this plan has been unfolding in the UK, there has been a simultaneous sustained attack on American democracy occurring too. Thiel was a key financier of the Trump campaign and a close advisor to him in government. He has now pumped in around $20 million to the campaigns of even more right-wing fundamentalists seeking election at various levels of government in the coming years. The attempts to overthrow the government in the US and new moves to install a natural successor to Trump are intrinsically linked to the UKs decision to willingly gift large swathes of its land and people to private investors. There are several other companies and projects around the world looking to start their own charter cities too, two of which are also backed by Peter Thiel.

In 2019, Thiel invested $9 million in Pronomos, another company pushing the charter city idea. Together they are backing Bluebook Cities and are in talks with African and Mediterranean countries looking to secure territory for their projects. He was also the cofounder and main financier of the Seasteading Institute, a group looking to build independent floating cities. Their original project in French Polynesia never fully materialised but they are now actively engaged in developing 7 other sites around the world. There are other billionaires looking to establish similar projects too, Elon Musk has his own plans for a Charter City, dubbed Starbase, attached to his SpaceX launchpad facility in Texas.

Overthrowing the government in the US, either by force or from within, the UK Charter City nightmare and these other projects around the world are all connected. The main aim is to establish a network of strategically placed, fully independent cities around the world, that will not only engage in a race to the bottom of standards for their residents but will also exhaust the natural resources of their surrounding areas. They will be parasites on the countries and communities to which they are attached, leaching everything from them while contributing nothing, never mind the fate of those unlucky enough to have been trapped within their boundaries. This will ultimately lead to the establishment of a powerful cooperative trading-defence partnership between the worlds biggest businesses that have no desire other than to protect their own interests. Controlling trade routes around the world with private security forces, financed by a never-ending supply of tax havens and exploitable cheap-labour, even has the potential to massively upset the global balance of power. If a trading and defence cooperative of billionaires and their exploitative businesses can achieve this goal, it will be the realisation of a dream decades in the making. Wealth and power unchained, ending democracy once and for all.

Read more:

Charter Cities: The Real Reason for Brexit and the Bigger Picture

Peter Young is the managing director of the Free Cities Foundation. In this interview, we discuss the development of autonomous administrative areas around the world called free cities, where new types of governance can be offered to citizens outside the control of existing states.

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Paul Romer, former chief economist at the World Bank and a Nobel prize winner, proposed in 2009 the concept of Charter Cities. Romer was trying to tackle the problem of stagnant investment in the Global South arising from bad governance. The solution was to evolve the idea behind special economic zones and create autonomous city-states within existing countries.

The autonomy would extend to alternate legal and political systems from the host nation, and to the provision of services by private organisations. An advanced guarantor country would protect the legal rights of residents. The idea was that such cities would become trusted centres predicated on good rules, attracting investment, firms and people, the benefits of which then filter beyond the cities' boundaries into the host country.

The Free City Foundation have taken Romers idea and sought to implement it in different parts of the world. The aim is to provide citizens with alternatives to the status quo: establishing new legal, financial and municipal relationships with residents. The ideology is to reduce the size of the modern state, which is considered to act in its own self-interest at the expense of society.

There are a number of different scales of initiatives for the Free City Foundation: from intentional communities to prosperity zones, all the way to Free Private Cities. Prospera in Honduras is a working example of a Free City: a new settlement on the island of Roatn is being developed within its own civil law, regulatory agencies and taxation; although it must still adhere to the Honduran constitution, international treaties and criminal law.

But this is only the start: many more examples are being developed across the world. Perhaps the most innovative idea is Seasteading, where independent communities are developed in international waters, outside of the jurisdiction of existing governments. Are these initiatives viable and preferable alternatives to the nation-state? That may be too early to tell, but there is a growing number of investors who think they are the future of civilisation.

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Free Private Cities with Peter Young - What Bitcoin Did

Jacob Bruggeman is a PhD student in history at the Johns Hopkins University and the editor in chief of theCleveland Review of Books.

Imagine if Ayn Rand had written a novel that imported the basic attitudes and ambitions from her famous protagonist John Galt into a steel-willed detective who gallivanted around the Caribbean in an attempt to turn a coup dtat into the stateless society of tomorrow. Her protagonist would probably resemble a collage of the real-life adventurers, financiers, exCIA agents, abject European nobles, and gunsmiths who mounted several profit-driven attempts at exit projects, or plans to create stateless and market-oriented micronations in the decolonizing world of the late 20th century. In his new book,Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age, author and professor of history Raymond B. Craib demonstrates how Rands vision of Galts Gulch, the libertarian safe haven inAtlas Shrugged, actually served as a source of inspiration for so-called exit projects. But unlike Rands bestselling novel, every exit project has flopped.

The repeated failure of these projects, from immigrant Michael Olivers attempt to create a micronation on the Minerva Reefs, to Peter Thiels Seasteading Institute, will likely prompt readers ofAdventure Capitalismto nod in agreement as they learn that Murray Rothbard, don of radical libertarian theory and an inspiration for Oliver, derided exit projects as cockamamie stunts. Rothbard instead advised the founders of would-be micronations to come back to the real world and fight for liberty at home.

Few heeded Rothbards call to check the aspirations of political imagination with a dose of political reality. Peter Thiel, for example, took the position that the libertarian project requires an escape from politics in all its forms. In contrast to Rothbard, as well as thinkers like Friedrich Hayek, who advised that the work of liberation reform should be made through societys existing channels of governance, and saw freedom as less of an ideal state than a shifting equilibrium between the markets emergent order and a minimal government, Thiel now proposes a wholesale abandonment of the democratic project. Forget improvements forged at the intersection of coalitional interests, like the growing YIMBY movement. The real solution, according to the Startup Societies Foundationthe Center for Decentralized Governanceis withdrawal: Dont argue. Build.

What should we make of exit projects, past and present? I spoke with Craib about this question, the paradoxes these projects contain, colonialism, and the way the sea represents freedom. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

JACOBBRUGGEMAN:Gunsmiths, CIA agents, the Koch brothers, Southern segregationists, the kings of Pacific islands nations. This is a small sample of the characters included inAdventure Capitalism. Its a motley crew connected by what you explain as attempted libertarian exit projects. What were these ventures and who pursued them?

RAYMONDCRAIB:Libertarian exit is the phrase I use to designate a set of projects, pursued by various individuals in the wake of World War II, to escape or exit the nation-state by creating new countries organized almost entirely through contractual, market relations. The 1960s and the 1970s were decades in which such projects proliferated. Inspired by Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, the individuals who pursued such projects can fairly be described as libertarian in the midcentury American sense: they were hyper-capitalist, opposed to the regulatory and welfare state, radically individualist, and equated freedom with private property rights. They were not, in other words, libertarian in the classical sense (i.e., anarchists).

These individuals experimented with an array of projects, most of which took place either in the ocean or on islands or archipelagoes that were struggling to be free from colonial rule. The figure I focus on most closely is Michael Oliver. Oliver was born Moses Olitzky in Lithuania and was the only member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. He arrived in the US as a young man in 1947 and established himself in Nevada, where he soon achieved success as a land developer and coin dealer. In the 1960s, he feared the US was turning toward totalitarianism, and he wrote a book calledA New Constitution for a New Country, in which he laid out the rationale and plans for exiting the country. Between 1970 and 1980 he tried repeatedlywith the aid and support of various libertarians, including University of Southern California philosophy professor John Hospers, Ayn Rands acolyte and lover Nathaniel Branden, investment guru Harry Schultz, and investor John Templetonto bring his dream to fruition. He first tried to build an island on the Minerva Reefs in the southwest Pacific, between Tonga and New Zealand, then linked up with former OSS and CIA agents in an effort to colonize the Abaco islands if the Bahamas, which were slated for independence, and then helped foment a secessionist rebellion on the island of Santo in the New Hebrides. In each case, these efforts came to naught, but they wrought havoc in the regions where they were undertaken and upon local populations, all of which were in the process of decolonizing.

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Raymond Craib: Rich Tech Libertarians Have Fantasies of Escape, but a ...

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In March 2022, Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters was asked to name an ideological influence. Rather than answering Ayn Rand or French philosopher Ren Girard (a favorite of Masters benefactor, tech billionaire Peter Thiel), Masters cited Ted Kaczynski.

Yes, that would be the same guy who murdered strangers through the mail as the so-called Unabomber.

His answer caught many off guard. Why would a technology venture capitalist who co-authored a book about building the future cite a Luddite terrorist? It was, however, a fittingly heterodox paradox for a member of the Thielverse.

Neil Youngs Long Record of Spreading Scientific Misinformation

Just like his patron, Masters has aligned himself with a seemingly antithetical figure in his pursuit of political power. Kaczynski was a reactionarya trait seemingly more important to Masters than attitudes towards technology. Though confusing, Masters endorsement and adoption of his rhetoric (along with other Thiel surrogates) weirdly makes sense.

Ted Kaczynski was not a hippie who broke bad, as some assume, and his manifesto wasnt some extremist interpretation of 1960s whole earth environmentalism. Anyone who has bothered to read even just the first few pages of his manifesto will know that Kaczynski was a fanatical culture warrior and reactionary conservative, both socially and technologically.

While mainstream conservatives fretted about feminism and multiculturalism, seeing them as left-wing ideological constructs (as Thiel argued in the 1995 book he co-authored The Diversity Myth), Kaczynski focused more on technological progress as the mother of these movements. To him, political correctness was an aberration of modern life, the outgrowth of not independently meeting our core human needs. He posited that technology inevitably becomes a tool for authoritarian, communist central planners and that, consequently, technology and freedom were mutually exclusive.

Whether it is the scourge of political correctness, the threat of woke Big Tech or the rise of the technologically savvy Chinese Communist Partyyou can probably see why parts of Kaczynskis manifesto have resonated in the Thielverse. On the other hand, Kaczynskis core macro thesis directly conflicts with Thiels, who in his infamous 2009 Cato Unbound essay on seasteading (which imagines a no-government libertarian utopian society on boats and man-made islands) stated were in a deadly race between politics and technology and that our fate may depend on the effort of a single individual that builds and propagates the machine of freedom.

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This diametrically opposed thesis, which more broadly posits that technological stagnation leads to societal conflict, is something Thiel continues to expound, most recently blaming it for the political madness of our times.

This begs the question: Why do Thiels political surrogates seem to be running on a platform of neo-luddite populism? Theyre contributing to the political madness, rather than selling solutions to the stagnation which caused it.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

Aside from his explicit endorsement of Ted Kaczynski, Masters also recently lamented automated checkout machines, demanding we bring back humans and ignoring the increased demand and employment in food preparation it has created. Masters also opposed COVID-19 vaccine mandateswhich isnt necessarily anti-vaccine when argued from a libertarian perspectivebut went further, labeling them evil. He came out against abortion, a medical procedure he once supported. He appeared to blame a school shooting on anti-depressants. He called out search engine rankings on Tucker Carlson (who has also positively cited the Unabomber), seeming to forget the point of search engines is ranked results.

Masters isnt an outlier in his neo-Luddite rhetoric. J.D. Vanceanother Thiel surrogate running for Senate in Ohiowants to ban pornography to save families. Texas Sen. Ted Cruza long-time Thiel patroneeblamed mass shootings on modern innovations like video games and prescription drugs. Cruz in the past has also attacked encryption, a technology that is key to protecting individuals from surveillance, and which has long been under assault by well-meaning technophobes. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawleystill another candidate in Thiels orbitcalled for Chinese Communist Party-style time limits on social mediaa bizarre level of government overreachwhile also warning of the CCPs influence over TikTok.

The notion that technology is both a tool for communist control and the root of society's evils is Kaczynski-esque, and a common theme among Thiels political surrogates. That Masters would cite him directly suggests these similarities may be more than a coincidence. Even Thiel himself has floated similar ideas, most notably in 2018 when he said, AI (artificial intelligence) is communist. Crypto is libertarian. Then in 2021, Thiel wondered whether perhaps bitcoin may be a communist tool, too.

The rhetoric of Thiels political protgswhether calculating kayfabe, sincere or a bit of bothis an iteration of a political movement. Its Trumpism with a dash of Kaczynski, a 1 to n political innovation. Ironically, its the kind of underwhelming iterative change Masters and Thiel warn against in their book Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future.

The populist right sees American carnage rather than American innovation. And its part of the reason neo-Luddismrather than tech-progressivismhas been the Thielverses political rhetoric of choice. Its almost certainly rooted in Thiels pessimism about optimism. Thiel told Mitt Romney in 2016: I think the most pessimistic candidate is going to win, because if you are too optimistic it suggests you are out of touch.

He was right then, as a political prognosticator, but that doesnt mean hes right now.

By eschewing optimism and embracing neo-Luddite narratives, Thiel and his acolytes are missing a big political opportunity to move the Republican political narrative in a new direction. They could, if they so chose, work to end the political insanity and zero-sum battles borne of memetic conflict, wrought by technological stagnation. Theyre forgetting that just as the next Mark Zuckerberg wont build a social network (to paraphrase Zero to One) the next Donald Trump wont build a wall. The next breakout Republican firebrand will build something new, fresh, and strange. Instead, theyre doing this.

Masters and Vance, especially, had painfully obvious opportunities to forge an alternative path to political appeal, framed through the lens of technological progress. But only on the issues of cryptocurrencies and nuclear power did they take this approach. Regarding the latter, they took on the undeniable failing of the progressive environmental movement, whose anti-nuclear Luddism led directly to more fossil fuels being burned, and contributes to increased climate change today.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

The college issue was another obvious opportunity, one with which Masters has experience stemming from his time running the Thiel Fellowship (a philanthropic effort that questioned the value of college by paying kids to drop out and become entrepreneurs). Masters, in particular, could have spent political energy pointing out that higher education in America is a system that Democrats want to fully subsidize, but is also the kind of faux meritocracy the left abhors, perpetuating the sort of systematic discrimination they decry.

Employers screening for a diploma excludes nearly 80 percent of Latinos, close to 70 percent of African-Americans, and 70 percent of rural Americans (the very demographic JD Vance needs to win a Senate seat.)

The opportunity to offer something less stale than BUILD A WALL! (and less divisive), all while appealing to minority swing voters, went ignored. Instead of taking on the hiring credential oligopoly and offering new tech-enabled paths to employment that dont favor Democrats, Masters instead blamed Black people for gun violence, and along with Vance promoted the racist great replacement theory. Both continue to tout Trumps border wall as a solution to opportunity in a world where employment and location are becoming increasingly untethered.

Foreign policy saw a similar squandering of opportunity, but offered some substantial self-owns. Rather than saying Who cares about Ukrainians, JD Vance could have hailed a new era of warfare, where cheap drones beat expensive tanksand where leading and defending the free world doesnt inevitably mean a ballooning deficit and increase in Americas overseas military presence.

Democrats Want to Outlaw Apple From Thinking Differently

Instead of blaming gun violence on anti-depressants, they could have blamed mental health and FDA-erected barriers to medication access. This would have doubled as a way to protect access to abortiona popular but outwardly unspoken issue among Republican womenwithout having to step into politically divisive grounds.

If Peter Thiels political influence operation was more technologically progressive, perhaps hed be lobbying Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to not remove Disneys jurisdiction over Reedy Creek Improvement District, the location for Disneys dormant project for a futuristic city: EPCOT. This would be the kind of corporate sovereignty and futuristic industrialism Thiel said was only possible on platforms built in international waters in his aforementioned Cato Unbound essay.

For every issue borne of scarcity, tech-progressivism offers a third waya purple pill as an alternative to the usual red and blue. Something less divisive, more constructive and more progressive.

It wont be clear until November if Thiels pessimism about optimism (and pandering to luddite populism) will succeed or, rather, deliver lackluster results and cost him the political influence he desires. Whether it does or not, could depend on Democratsand some Republicansseizing the political opportunity of an optimistic tech-progressive platform.

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Peter Thiels Candidates Are More Unabomber Than Tech Bro - Yahoo News UK

Love, Death & Robots (Netflix) returns for a third season of animation across the spectrum, lots of swearing, gore, and sex, and under-20-minute platforms for directors to really go off. Co-creator David Fincher even steps in to helm an episode. In the first installment, the three robots of Love, Deaths first season return to a ruined Earth for more sarcastic exploration into humanitys demise.

Opening Shot: Earth from above. Wisps of cloud gather along ridges, and lichen climbs unbidden. A shadow falls across the land

The Gist: The third season of Love, Death & Robots begins with a nod to its first, as K-VRC (Josh Brener), XBOT 4000 (Gary Anthony Wiliams), and 11-45-G (Katie Lowes) also known as Elena return to the ruined post-apocalypse planet we call home. As they did on their first visit to Earth in the season one episode Three Robots, the explorers from a nascent machine culture attempt to connect their limited knowledge of humanity with whats been left behind. (Like that first episode, Exit Strategies was written by Hugo Award-winning science fiction writer John Scalzi.) The robots first stop? A survivalist compound. Or, whats left of it. These humans thought that with freedom from government-sponsored medical attention and enough bullets and venison jerky, they could found a utopian society, 11-45-G says. Skeletons still clad in prepper gear and trucker hats are splayed here and there before ruined communications equipment and gun emplacements. Theres a minefield outside, and a pit full of punji stakes. We also learn that humans hunted to extinction every animal larger than a cat.

The familiar format of Love, Death has returned, too, from its titles rendered in emoji to an array of different directors and animation studios handling the nine new episodes. And while each story is a standalone, there are thematic links in the chain. For Exit Strategies, Wreck-It Ralph animator Patrick Osborne is at the helm; future episodes will feature the return director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, as well as a turn from David Fincher, who remains as a Love, Death producer alongside Tim Miller. And if youre a person who mints it on the blockchain, stay tuned until the end for an NFT-friendly QR code.

Remember the sentient, talking cats from Three Robots? They figure into Exit Strategies, too. At the end, humans were genetically engineering felines, even as society had irrevocably stratified. Leaving the survivalist compound behind, K-VRC, XBOT 4000, and 11-45-G land their ship on an oil rig that tech millionaires converted into a seasteading platform. They thought of every luxury, but their robot support staff turned on them, and started the uprising that established the explorers machine society. The trio also visits the bunkerized mountain fortress of the worlds superpowers, where they find another failed food system and examples of extreme democracy (the Secretary of Agriculture paired well with a 79 merlot), as well as their final stop, an elite spaceship base fortified against desperate hordes of 99.9 percenters by gargantuan flamethrowers. Hold the fuck up, XBOT 4000 says. Are you saying they went to Mars?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If NSFW animation is your game, Netflix also features America: The Motion Picture, a potty mouthed, ahistorical riff on the nations founding that features the voice talents of Channing Tatum, Jason Mantzoukis, and Olivia Munn, amongst many others. Munns voice acting also appears in Hit-Monkey (Hulu), the Marvel-affiliated adult animated series about a Japanese macaque with the skills of an assassin.And, of course, this whole series is the result of David Finchers reboot of the 1981 sci-fi rock n roll animated cult classic Heavy Metal failing to take flight.

Our Take: As mentioned above, Love, Death & Robots is said to be the manifestation of how creators Tim Miller and David Fincher hoped to reboot the 1981 fantasy animation classic Heavy Metal, which explains both its rich, varied visual palette and solidly-imagined anthology format. Even if the narrative here isnt full of connective tissue, Love, Death has always thrived on its universal vibe, a vibe that aligns it with something like Black Mirror. In season threes lead episode, Blow Studio creates sharply rendered, nearly photorealistic backgrounds that burst with natural wonder and cerulean ocean waters, the bounty that thrives as humanitys detritus rusts and rots in the foreground. The survivalist compound includes a Winnebago repurposed as an elevated gun platform, the seasteaders built a bastion that resembles Miami art deco floating on the sea, and the one percenters budgeted enough time between constructing their rocketships and defenses to print up hysterical flyers. (So long dead planethello red planet!) Theres also an easter egg included in launch footage the robots watch, the imprinted date and time code of their departure from our blue origin. Love, Death & Robots is full of rich imagination, smart details, and a refreshing lack of restraint, in both its visuals and language.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode. No skin, only skeletons.

Parting Shot: From the earthly spaceports of the ultra-rich, we cut to Mars, where biodomes are nestled amidst drifts of red planet rock. Theres an astronaut here, gazing upon whats been built, a refreshing daiquiri alongside. I wonder who made it out? the robots had asked back on Earth, and the answer is not one of our societys usual suspect UHNWIs.

Sleeper Star: Hes only a sleeper star in that hes not physically on screen. But as XBOT 4000, Gary Anthony Wiliams of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and a wealth of voice roles keeps the robot crew together with humor and a flair for social comment.

Most Pilot-y Line: Yes, an in-depth survey of post-apocalyptic humanity. When 11-45-G says it in her computer-rendered monotone, it almost sounds like an interesting documentary. Then you remember that humanity is us.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Love, Death & Robots keeps the run time tight and visual pizzazz expansive as it explores its titular topics in relation to society and ourselves. And oh yeah, swear words.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Love, Death & Robots: Season 3' on Netflix, The Return of David Finchers Adults Only Animation Anthology - Decider

[Editors note: Watch Not My Party every week on Snapchat.]

Tim Miller: Could a gay Silicon Valley billionaire who might be kind of a vampire and wants to create countries on the sea be the most influential person for the future of the Republican party?

Peter Thiel: Basically, all the pieces make sense.

Miller: This is Not My Party, brought to you by The Bulwark. This week I wanna talk to you about a guy named Peter Thiel. You might know him as the robotically diabolical early Facebook investor in The Social Network.

Peter Thiel (Wallace Langham in The Social Network): Hey guys.

Miller: Or the first openly gay man to speak at the GOP Convention.

Thiel: I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican.

Miller: Or the guy financing the Right Stuff, the new conservative dating app where women can find a man who likes locker-room talk and grabbing em by the pussy.

Jean-Luc Picard: Ingenious.

Miller: Well that guy is trying to remake the party in his Barrys Bootcamp image.

Joey Thurman: So Im sweaty, Im hot. I swear, I still smell good.

Miller: Hes investing tens of millions in candidates who hew to an extreme nationalist agenda. Heres Thiels political spiel.

Woman on The Simpsons: What is his deal?

Miller: Crack down on immigration. Go after Big Tech. Isolationist foreign policy thats tough on China but soft on Putin. Dismantle big parts of the federal government. Support Bitcoin and other alternative currencies. Reject climate science. And of course, clamp down on anything he finds too woke.

Man in car: Stay woke.

Jack Donaghy: Never.

Podcast March 18 2022

Sarah and JVL talk about free speech, cancel culture, and whether or not we have

Miller: Dude is so out there that even Steve Bannon described his proposals as far more disruptive than what Trump wanted.

William Forrester (Sean Connery in Finding Forrester): Thats quite an accomplishment.

Miller: And the frightening part is, this guy does have an eye for predicting the future. He started PayPal. And was among the first investors to Facebook. The last time oil prices skyrocketed, he was on it. He called of the housing bubble that led to the 2008 economic collapse. And in 2017, he bet $15 to 20 million on Bitcoin, which has turned into Scrooge McDuck-level gold bars.

Scrooge McDuck: What a surprise.

Miller: Now hes bringing that Rain Man-like track record to politics. Hes personally interviewing Republican candidates before putting in money. And has decided to fund 16 white dudes plus one woman, who happens to be running against vocal anti-Trumper Liz Cheney. (Still love ya, Liz!) So if youre like me and miss the old

George W. Bush: Compassionate conservatism.

Miller: Thiels move should be a concern. Because hes planning to finance a future of smart Trumps

Liz Lemon: No, thats not a thing.

Miller: who share the former guys antidemocratic tendencies, but might be more competent when it comes to actually, you know, pulling it off. And because Thiels vision for the GOP might actually come to pass, you should get a sense for just how out there he can be.

Henry McCord (Tim Daly in Madam Secretary): How is that, exactly?

Miller: Thiel wrote a book arguing that it actively makes things worse when we worry so much about racism and multiculturalism. He said he doesnt think freedom and democracy are compatible, in part because women and welfare recipients are allowed to vote, and they dont love their freedoms like white bros do.

Hes a climate change truther. And encouraged Trump to hire a science adviser who thought carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was a good thing.

Bill Nye the Science Guy: The planets on f**** fire.

Miller: Hes a big crypto guy. And has strongly implied that hed like to dismantle the government-backed currency system altogether. Hes a big promoter of seasteading, which was the idea that smart guys (and I assume some women for reproduction purposes?) would create a community on a boat that floats in international waters and wouldnt be controlled by any government.

Mariner (Kevin Costner in Waterworld): Nothings free in Waterworld.

Miller: And oh yeah, hes huge on immortality and has funded tons of moonshot fountain-of-youth s***, like cryogenics and parabiosis, which may or may not include the practice of injecting his vampiric body with twink blood.

Thiel: I wanna publicly tell you that Im not a vampire.

Gavin Belson (Matt Ross in Silicon Valley): Hes my transfusion associate.

Dr. Evil: Right.

Miller: And right now, its been the Thiel-backed candidates who have been the most vocal about the U.S. not doing anything to stop Russias advances in Ukraine.

Blake Masters: The ruling classs latest genius idea is to send American teenagers over to the Ukraine, to fight and die.

Seymour (Steve Buscemi from Ghost World): Must have missed that one.

Miller: The good news, those candidates arent polling so hot right now. But its early in the midterm cycle and Peters got unlimited resources to help them turn it around. And for those of us in the middle, thats a scary thought. See you next week for more Not My Partyfrom Colorado.

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Peter Thiels GOP Makeover - The Bulwark

What were selling is freedom, says a digital media executive played by Demi Moore, of the promise of virtual worlds in Disclosure (1994). We offer through technology what religion and revolution have promised but never delivered: freedom from the physical body; freedom from race and gender, from nationality and personality, from place and time.

Based on a Michael Crichton novel, the movie explores in classic Crichton fashion a theoretically possible but highly unlikely scenarioin this case, a 32-year-old single woman who sexually harasses her married 50-something male subordinate; it is also one of a number of features from the 1990s to tease out the potential of VR and simulated worlds. Examples range from the campy (The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity) to the brilliant (Dark City, eXistenZ) and bizarrely compelling (The Cell, the miniseries Wild Palms). And of course, theres The Matrix, the critically acclaimed box-office sensation that arrived at the end of the millennium like a beam of light to the next one.

The Matrix Resurrections, the first feature in the franchise since 2003, and the first Lana Wachowski has directed without her sister Lilly, arrives in theaters at the moment the metaverse is the hottest buzzword in the tech industry. But the visionas executives like Demi Moores character in Disclosure would pitchhas changed in 20 years. Instead of freedom and VR as an escape to dream worlds guided by dream logics, the technology is now hyped as a cohesive and stabilizing force in an increasingly fractured and incoherent world. Facebook broadly fomented this new wave of VR enthusiasm following the recent name change of its parent company to Meta, signaling its increasing focus on virtual reality products. As Facebook would have it, VR will be a unifying spectacle: Today, you step on a train and see everyone on their phones, having their own personal experience of the internet. But what if internet users all went to the metaverse and their unique journeys all routed to this single digital destination? Naturally, real names and stable identitiesFacebooks raison dtreis part of the plan. And just as naturally, Facebook denies any responsibility for the fractured world of misinformation and erosion of trust in public institutions that the company believes VR can surmount.

There was a brief moment of VR hype in 2016 that faded, but this new round of messagingand investmentsuggests that this time plans are serious. Plus, the technology latches on, Voltron style, to other enormously hyped digital trends like the marketplace blockchain concepts known as Web3. A use case that Web3 and metaverse evangelists might speculate is that someone will buy an image of roller skates as an NFT and take the digital object from Facebooks VR platform to Roblox and other corporate virtual worlds. This decentralized interoperability through crypto supposedly sets the vision apart from previous digital marketplace iterations like Second Life, in which a platform-specific currency (Linden Dollars) was used to trade goods native to Second Life.

Money isnt the opposite of freedom, exactly, but capitalism certainly forecloses on our degrees of it. In a widely circulated interview The Verge conducted in December with the stars of The Matrix, Keanu Reeves laughed at the idea of NFTs and seemed largely unimpressed with Facebook and other capitalistic platform applications of virtual world technology, which he is otherwise enthusiastic about.

Perhaps Resurrectionsnot screened at press timewill infuse the metaverse discourse with some of the more romantic ideals from the 90s. After two years of endless Zoom calls, Im not excited by the idea of meetings in VR. I am, however, still intrigued by virtual environments as a means of time travel, which The Matrix originally posited. Its 2199 in the real world of the first filma bleak reality of robots harvesting humans as batteries. Through the eponymous technology, Neo journeys a hundred years back to the time of Massive Attack, the guttural ring of landline telephones and the Twin Towers still standing. Appealing as it might initially sound, that world is a lie, as he comes to find out, thus predicating his decision to take the red pill, for the truth of reality, or the blue pill, to remain in the illusion.

Theres time travel in The Thirteenth Floor, also released in 1999, as characters spend much of their time in a VR simulation of Los Angeles in the year 1937. That turns out to be one of thousands of layers the characters can port through. Josef Rusnaks film wears its philosophical questions heavily, as it begins with an epigraph of the Descartes line: I think; therefore, I am. The sci-fi thriller is based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, also adapted as Rainer Werner Fassbinders 1973 miniseries World on a Wire. These earlier works show there has been interest in the metaverse decades before Neal Stephenson coined the term in his 1992 novel Snow Crash.

Snow Crash depicts an anarcho-capitalist dystopia of megacorporations and oligarchs, where a superrich monopolist named L. Bob Rife controls the fiber-optic network to the capital-m Metaverse. Despite the evil intermediary, this virtual world is an oasis from the hell of reality that earth has become. The virtual world, Stephenson writes, is where magic is possible. The Metaverse is a fictional structure made out of code. And code is just a form of speech. Rife, providing the infrastructure, might have maintained an amicable relationship with Metaverse hackers and builders. Instead, he seeks to infect them all with a mind virus/religion/drug known as Snow Crash. Guns have come to Paradise, Stephenson writes, and to solve this crisis will require a fundamental rebuilding of the Metaverse, carried out on a planetwide, corporate level.

Real-life tech billionaires like Sergey Brin and Reid Hoffman cite the novel as an influence. Peter Thiel is a Stephenson superfan (PayPal employees were required to read his 1999 novel Cryptonomicon) who even unsuccessfully attempted to bring something like Rifes floating community the Raft to life through his Seasteading Institute. Stephenson is not just an inspiration to, but a colleague of, Silicon Valley architects. Beginning in 2014, he worked as Chief Futurist at the augmented reality startup Magic Leap. He was, for a time, the only employee at Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin. The author and Amazon founder went to see October Sky together in 1999, where the idea for the private aerospace company hatched. Stephenson left Blue Origin in 2006, but Bezos continues to bring him up as an inspiration. An interactive book imagined by Stephenson in his novel The Diamond Age was influential to the creation of Amazons Kindle e-reader.

The Web3 ideal of decentralization is meaningless if this interoperability depends on Facebook and other Rife-like corporate intermediaries to function. Likewise, the 90s vision of virtual worlds as freedom neglected how racism, sexism and other oppressions persist despite anonymity, as academics like Lisa Nakamura and journalists like Julian Dibbell, in his classic 1993 feature in The Village Voice, A Rape in Cyberspace, demonstrated. But 2022 is still early. Humans have plenty of time to find a better future for ourselves than as robot fuel, plugged-in and perpetually dreaming of what 1999 used to be.

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Freedom as a Preset: Joanne McNeil on Metaverses Past and Present | - Filmmaker Magazine

Quirk also pointed out that the idea of floating nations may become more accepted as the impacts of climate change are seen. Consider the Maldives, he said, which is sinking below rising sea level. You can see this nation could be transitioning to a floating nation, and the question becomes, does the world recognise them as a nation?

Rule breaker

Sealand and the Seasteading Institute share some core aims and values, but theyre also substantially different. Sealand was a quirk of history, a single man who flew in the face of rules he disagreed with. Seasteading has much of that in its heart, but with a more complex philosophy behind it, rooted in the principles of the free market.

Unlike Sealand, which isnt trying to build a population, the seasteads would have to compete with one another to attract people to live there. Quirk imagines a world in which citizens, unhappy with the infrastructure, laws or systems of one nation, can break apart and float over to another. We think a market of competing services will unleash innovation in governance, he said.

When I asked Quirk what he imagines when he closes his eyes and thinks about a future seastead, he answered quickly. Venice. I love the history people were chased out of the places they lived in by warfare and they moved out into swamps and over time they built a civilisation on stilts that eventually became one of the wealthiest places on Earth.

The rest is here:

I rule my own ocean micronation - BBC Future