Patri Friedman

Patri Friedman (born July 29, 1976) is an American libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, neoreactionary, and theorist of political economy. He founded the nonprofit Seasteading Institute, which explores the creation of sovereign ocean colonies. 2Early life Named after family friend Patri Pugliese, Friedman grew up in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Upper Merion Area High School, class of 1994, where he went by the name Patri Forwalter-Friedman. He graduated from Harvey Mudd College in 1998, and went on to Stanford University to obtain his master's degree in computer science. He also holds an MBA from New York Institute of Technology – Ellis College. He worked as a software engineer at Google. As a poker player, he cashed in the World Series of Poker four times. 2The Seasteading Institute Friedman was executive director of the Seasteading Institute, founded on April 15, 2008, with a half-million-dollar donation by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The Institute's mission is "to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems". This was initially a part-time project — one day a week while working as a Google engineer the rest of the time — but Friedman left Google on July 29, 2008 to spend more time on seasteadin