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by Camille Bianchi
18 May 2018
from
CNCB Website
The Floating
City
will become
the first floating nation on Earth;
a
Libertarian utopia free of
regulation and taxes.
It will
feature offshore housing, use its own cryptocurrency,
and operate
'outside of government regulations'.
A floating Pacific island is in the works with its
own government, cryptocurrency and 300 houses
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The Floating
Island Project plans to create off-shore housing
that uses its own currency and operates outside of
government regulations.
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The project is
a pilot program in partnership with the government
of French Polynesia.
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A long-term
vision for the project is hundreds of new countries
floating on the ocean.
If you're
struggling to do business or just live under
your country's administration, a movement of
philanthropists, academics and investors is
working on a very sci-fi alternative.
Nathalie Mezza-Garcia
is a political scientist turned "seavangelesse"
- her term for an evangelist in favor of living
off the grid - and on the ocean.
Mezza-Garcia spoke
with CNBC's Matthew Taylor about what she
sees as the trouble with governments, and why
she believes tech startups should head to
Tahiti.
This seavangelesse
is a researcher for the
Blue Frontiers and
Seasteading Institute's highly-anticipated
Floating Island Project.
The project is a
pilot program in partnership with the government
of
French Polynesia, which will see 300 homes
built on an island that runs under its own
governance, using a
cryptocurrency called 'Varyon.'
"Once we can see
how this first island works, we will have a
proof of concept to plan for islands to house
climate refugees," she said.
The project is
funded through philanthropic donations via the
Seasteading Institute and Blue
Frontiers, which
sells tokens of the cryptocurrency Varyon.
The pilot island
is expected to be completed by 2022 and cost up
to $50 million.
"There is
significance to this project being trialed in
the Polynesian Islands. This is the region where
land is resting on coral and will disappear with
rising sea levels," Mezza-Garcia said.
"If you don't want
to live under a particular government, people
will be able to just take their house and float
away to another island."
Nathalie Mezza-Garcia
Floating Island Projet
As well as
offering a home for the displaced, the
self-contained islands are designed to function
as business centers that are beyond the
influence of government regulation.
"This means there
is stability, outside of fluctuating
geopolitical influences, trade issues and
currency fluctuations - it's the perfect
incubator," she said.
It's also an
attractive alternative, Mezza-Garcia said, for
those disenchanted by the government of the day.
It's an
unapologetically
libertarian concept:
Governments under the Floating Island scheme
would exist only as service providers, according
to Mezza Garcia, and the "floating communities"
could self-govern.
"If you don't want
to live under a particular government," she
said, "people will be able to just take their
house and float away to another island."
In what Mezza-Garcia
describes as the "long term," she envisions
hundreds of new countries in the ocean.
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