It is rooted in initiatives like the Seasteading Institute, which basically seeks to create a startup sector in governance and institutions.

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Then there was Patri Friedman, the founder of the Seasteading Institute.

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Thiel and fellow young tech billionaire Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, are slated to attend the next Seasteading Institute fundraising event in December, according to Friedman.

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It was co-founded by Patri Friedman, a grandson of Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics, and until recently executive director of the Seasteading Institute, a group producing research on how to build ocean-based communes.

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Mr Friedman's contacts seem more promising: the Seasteading Institute received lots of cash from Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who founded the internet payment service PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook, the world's biggest social network.

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