The Floating City, Long a Libertarian Dream, Faces Rough Seas

In 1972, millionaire Michael Oliver founded a sovereign state off the coast of Tonga. He chose a shallow reef buffeted by ocean currents, and contracted a company to build an island dredged from the seabed. Oliver named his small island the Republic of Minerva, declared independence, and minted currency. This riled the King of Tonga, who rallied an army to depose his rival. Over time, the sea gradually reclaimed the sand, and the millionaire’s tiny utopia was no more.

“Plans to settle Minerva reef were crazy,” says Patri Friedman, former Google engineer and pointman for the Seasteading Institute. “But that didn’t mean the ideas themselves were crazy.” The California-based nonprofit has a different vision of waterborne independence: It promises to free humanity from state control via a network of ocean homesteads. As its website states, the Institute’s floating nations will feed the hungry, clean the atmosphere, cure the sick, and enrich the poor.