Randa Abdel-Fattah

Wayne called the paper Seasteading, Homesteading the High Seas.

To capture some of the romance of, you know, manifest destiny.

It reads like an instruction manual, very much seen through an engineer's eye.

He didn't talk much about the more dicey political stuff, like how you deal with pirates or how you'd get the nation recognized by the UN.

He figured it was just a thought experiment, so he didn't need to have everything figured out.

Back then, I was just publishing everything I did on the internet.

It's like, why not?

In 1998, he uploads his paper to the web and... For a while, nothing much happens.

Three years later, in 2001... You've got mail.

I remember he said that he should eventually just join the family business.

Journalist Atusa Araxia Abrahamian has interviewed Patry Friedman, the grandson of free market pioneer Milton Friedman, a number of times over the last couple of decades.

We reached out to him for an interview ourselves, but didn't hear back.

Atusa says Patry came to Seasteading from an economics angle.

It was a way to create more nation states in the world, to create competition and have better ideas and kind of evolve from our land-bound system of governance.

We had a few back and forths.

And then I think I asked him, like, by the way, where are you?

Because, you know, the fun thing about the Internet is nobody knows where anybody is.

He says, well, I currently live in Sunnyvale, California.

So, well, guess what?

So do I. Let's get together for lunch.