I actually saw this awhile ago, but I’m only getting around to posting about it now. Really quickly, if you haven’t seen the article and don’t feel like reading it, PayPal’s Peter Thiel is helping to fund an initiative to create a free-floating libertarian country out in international waters, where residents can be “free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place.” I don’t know about you, but reading that automatically made me think of the BioShock series. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one.
For those of you who don’t game or following the gaming industry, BioShock and BioShock 2 are RPGish first-person shooter (FPS) games that are set in an underwater dystopia. Well, it wasn’t founded as a dystopia. Obviously, it was intended to be a utopia. Anyway, businessman Andrew Ryan is fed up with government and decides to form is his own laissez-faire utopia where humanity can work and live without that meddling above-water government. And then…things turn horribly wrong. You should go play the game.
Now then, doesn’t that sound very much like what Thiel is trying to do? The only big difference is that BioShock took place under the water and Thiel wants his utopia to be above water. It seems to me that he wants to create this libertarian, Ayn Rand-esque, laissez-faire place just like how Ryan was trying to do in BioShock.
Um…do you think that Thiel is really a LARPer? I wouldn’t really be surprised if he is after reading about what he’s trying to do. He wants to be Andrew Ryan and form his own underwater utopia. Only, it’s pretty hard to build stuff underwater and I don’t think it’s been extensively done. Not in terms of whole cities and the like. I’m sure it’s more expensive than building above water. I mean, oil rig technology has been around for a long time. You’d probably have to research all kinds of new building methods to be able to build a city underwater. You might as well build a city on an oil rig that’s above water. You don’t become a wealthy businessperson making entirely stupid decisions, after all. Now you can spend some extra resources on meddling with the forces of nature. I’m sure Thiel will have something other than Big Daddies, Little Sisters (and later, Big Sisters), and Splicers to run rampant over his now dystopia, but the idea will probably be there.
The thing is…Rapture (BioShock’s dystopia) was underwater and thus fairly remote and cut off from the rest of the world. Thiel’s project, being above water, isn’t as far removed from the rest of us. I wonder how we can contain the dystopia, when it becomes such, from spreading out to the rest of us? Do you think…this is where the zombie apocalypse is going to start? O.O
Random moosages as I see fit. 