In what seems like something out of J.G. Ballard, Scientology, and the final act of Roland Emmerich’s 2012, like, combined, a number of billionaires are taking to the high seas for their Plan B.  I can see their point.  You’ve ravaged the planet and trashed the economy, if that possibly results in pitchforks and flaming torches at your door, a thousand miles of ocean makes a better barrier than a gate or concierge.

Thus, Utopia, a floating, billion-dollar luxury liner now being built by Samsung of Korea (you can tour the ship below).  Its 200 or so cabins run anywhere from $4 million (that gets you a small condo), to $160 million (that secures you a home of 40,000 feet).  Prices aside, what kind of people would choose such a lifestyle?  A fascinating article in today’s Alternet provides the answer:

The floating castle is a longtime dream of libertarian oligarchs—a place where they can live their lives in peace free from the teeming masses of starving losers and indebted parasites and their tax demands.  Since they’ve grown so rich off of America, they have enough spare change to fund projects like the Seasteading Institute, run by Milton Friedman’s grandson, Patri Friedman, and financed by the bizarre right-wing PayPal founder, Peter Thiel.  It couldn’t have come a moment sooner for Milton Friedman’s grandson, who was best known until recently for running a grotesque advice blog for married swingers, PUA4LTR (Pick Up Advice For Long-Term Relationships).

Thiel is also the person who last year wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”   Maybe it’s also not surprising that he does believe America’s decline started with women gaining the right to vote?  Unfortunately, Thiel and Friedman are the more benign tip of the iceberg here. 

The article continues by listing the far graver misdeeds of the other players in the flee-to-the-sea movement.  They include former Carlyle Chairman and Donald Rumsfeld crony, Frank Carlucci, as well as financier Danny Pang.

Pang, along with Carlucci, are founders of the Frontier Group (the backers of the Utopia).  Pang died, though, back in September under mysterious circumstances from possible suicide.  And perhaps not a moment too soon.  He’d recently been accused of the execution-style murder of his wife, as well as the embezzlement of hundreds of millions from his private equity firm, the PEMGroup.

 
The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles

Two points:
1)How will they live when land and sea are ravaged?
2)And Do they really think they’re safe from determined pirates in speedboats and rocket launchers?

They maybe brilliant thieves but I doubt they’re brilliant survivalists.

fuck me….

Didn’t Grant Morrison predict this in The Filth?

While Seatopias on this scale are just starting to be taken seriously, you can already buy condos on ocean liners. You can’t do full-time drunken monkey knife fighting or get your crack on with prepubescent prostitutes because AFAIK they all still regularly dock inside territorial waters, but from a logistics and legal standpoint this is a solved problem.

The real weakness of these things, from a smashing-the-proletariat-and-hightailing-it-away standpoing, is that their crews are larger than their resident populations. Absent an invincible robot security force, the Masters of the Universe are, if anything, <i>more</i> vulnernable to the righteous wrath of the workers on one of these things. You can dump a lot of bodies in the middle of an ocean before anybody catches on.

There’s a scene in the novel <i>Lucifer’s Hammer</i> where the rich protagonist tries to retreat to his private observatory/shelter/thing after a civilization-destroying asteroid impact, only to find that the caretakers have moved their families in and not only are not interested in having the boss back, they’re not interested in letting him back in at all and send him packing. That sort of thing will be pretty common come The Day.