“The healthiest societies in 2030 will most likely be on the sea,” O’Neill told an audience at a Seasteading Institute conference in 2009. In that presentation, he talked up the benefits of a free market for health care, saying that seasteads could offer improved health care and serve as medical tourism hubs: “The last best hope for freedom is on the sea.”
Some in the longevity community see the ultimate goal as establishing a network state within the US. “That’s essentially what we’re doing in Montana,” says A4LI’s Livingston, referring to his successful lobbying efforts to create a hub for experimental medicine there. Over the last couple of years, the state has expanded Right to Try laws, which were originally designed to allow terminally ill individuals to access unproven treatments. Under new state laws, anyone can access such treatments, providing they have been through an initial phase I trial as a preliminary safety test.
“We’re doing a freedom city in Montana without calling it a freedom city,” says Livingston.
Patri Friedman, the libertarian founder of the Seasteading Institute, who calls O’Neill “a close friend,” explains that part of the idea of freedom cities is to create “specific industry clusters” on federal land in the US and win “regulatory carve-outs” that benefit those industries.
A freedom city for longevity biotech is “being discussed,” says Friedman, although he adds that those discussions are still in the very early stages. He says he’d possibly work with O’Neill on “changing regulations that are under HHS” but isn’t yet certain what that might involve: “We’re still trying to research and define the whole program and gather support for it.”
Will he deliver?
Some libertarians, including longevity enthusiasts, believe this is their moment to build a new experimental home.
Not only do they expect backing from O’Neill, but they believe President Trump has advocated for new economic zones, perhaps dedicated to the support of specific industries, that can set their own rules for governance.
While campaigning for the presidency in 2023, Trump floated what seemed like a similar idea: “We should hold a contest to charter up to 10 new cities and award them to the best proposals for development,” he said in a recorded campaign speech. (The purpose of these new cities was somewhat vague. “These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite the American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people—all hardworking families—a new shot at homeownership and in fact the American dream,” he said.)
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