Floating Startup Nations Excite Silicon Valley Libertarian Elite

As dawn breaks over the Gulf of Fonseca, southeast of El Salvador, Patri Friedman sets out for a jog. He trots past domed hothouses filled with fruit trees and feels the sidewalk sway gently underfoot as a tugboat chugs by with a floating apartment building in tow. The year is 2024, and Friedman lives on a so-called seastead, a waterbound city of some 1,000 people who produce their own food, their own energy and -- most important -- their own laws.

That’s the dream that Friedman, a libertarian software engineer at Google Inc. and the grandson of Nobel Memorial Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman, is working to make a reality. As Bloomberg Pursuits will report in its Summer 2014 issue, Friedman is chairman of The Seasteading Institute, an Oakland, California–based group financed with $1.2 million in seed money from PayPal Inc. billionaire Peter Thiel.