As a Peter Thiel-funded group moves to build a colony in a local lagoon, residents fear wealthy Americans just want to use their home to avoid taxes

A futuristic plan to build a floating techno-libertarian city in a French Polynesian lagoon has left some local residents worried they could be the next unsuspecting inhabitants of a peaceful planet in a science-fiction movie.

“It reminds me of the innocent Ewoks of the moon of Endor who saw in the Galactic Empire a providential manna,” said Tahitian TV host Alexandre Taliercio. “They let them build what they wanted on earth and in orbit, but that’s not to say that the Empire shared the blueprints of the Death Star with them.”

The proposal for a seastead – an autonomous oceanic colony; think homesteading, but wetter - took a significant step on Christmas Day, when a Silicon Valley group announced it had reached an agreement with the French Polynesian government, with officials poised to explore serving as the group’s host.

Seasteaders said it was a breakthrough that could change the world, but Taliercio worried that rich Americans simply wanted to use his home to dodge taxes.

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“These millionaires,” he said, “lulled by an illusory desire to free themselves from the existing states, seem to have much more to gain than we do.”

The idea of seasteading – escaping the laws, regulations, and taxes of life on terra firma by establishing an outpost in international waters – has long enchanted libertarians.

“The question of whether seasteading is possible or desirable is in my mind not even relevant. It is absolutely necessary,” the billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel said at a 2009 seasteading conference.

After Thiel helped launch the Seasteading Institute with a $500,000 investment, seasteading became the movement of the moment in Silicon Valley, where regulation and government bureaucracy are anathema and the billionaire’s success as an investor – his current fortune is largely due to his early stake in Facebook – has given him the reputation of a visionary.

The logistical and financial challenges of establishing a colony in international waters, however, proved steep. So this year the Seasteading Institute began negotiations with French Polynesia, which is a part of France, but has significant autonomy.

On 30 November, French Polynesia’s cabinet gave president Edouard Fritch a mandate, and he will travel to San Francisco in January to sign an agreement to develop a “special governing framework” for “seazones”, according to Randolph Hencken, the Seasteading Institute’s executive director.

Hencken said by email that the agreement stipulated that the institute must prove that seasteading will provide economic benefits and not harm the environment, and that the government will not provide any subsidies.

“Our seasteading collaboration with French Polynesia was initiated by the Tahitians themselves and will bring jobs, economic growth, and environmental resiliency to the region,” Hencken said.

Hencken predicts a close relationship between the seastead and the islands. In an interview with Business Insider in October, he suggested that he would be able to take a speedboat to French Polynesia to take yoga classes and go to restaurants. The islands would also provide a construction base, he said, further reducing costs.

While Hencken argued that seasteading would be a boon for French Polynesia, exemption from taxes is a key factor in the seasteading movement.

In his 2009 speech, Thiel argued that “anything that can be done to create much larger numbers of countries will be very good”, largely because the proliferation of nations would drive down marginal tax rates.

“If we want to increase freedom, we want to increase the number of countries.”

It is that attitude that draws the suspicion of local residents like Taliercio, who questioned whether “facilitating the tax evasion of the world’s greatest fortunes” would be healthy for South Pacific nations.

“I grew up in what is for the rest of the world a terrestrial paradise, but I can testify today that the other side of the picture is not glorious and makes me sad,” Taliercio said. “The unemployment rate is distressing; the impoverishment of the population is palpable everywhere; our social protection system is in deficit and is in peril.”

Indeed, French Polynesia’s GDP is just $5.6bn, or about the equivalent of two Peter Thiels.

Alexandre Le Quéré, a Tahitian radio journalist, poked fun at the idea on Polynésie 1ère, a local media outlet. He quipped that proponents of the “futuristic delirium” of seasteading wanted a “Noah’s Ark to the Wall Street gravy”. Le Quéré also expressed concern that the project could produce “chaos” for the local population.

Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, a researcher in international and environmental law at the Université de la Polynésie Française, pointed out that the island nation was “particularly vulnerable” due to its isolation, size, economy, and the threat of climate change, and that the population was generally opposed to large projects on environmental grounds.

“It is clear that the people do not think that the creation of artificial islands should be a priority,” he said.

The president’s office declined to comment on the plan to the Guardian, but a statement cited the potential for economic development as a benefit to the country. The government also mentioned the importance of “the presence of serious investors” and named Thiel as a backer.

Thiel’s spokesman told the Guardian that he was not “involved in the French Polynesia seasteading efforts”.

Marc Collins, a Tahitian businessman and former minister of tourism, said that the negative reaction to the project was to be expected.

“Tahitians are sick and tired and hearing of these mega, massive projects that go nowhere,” he said. “There is a predisposition of the population to be very cautious.”

But Collins, who invited the Seasteading Institute to consider French Polynesia after reading about the group’s attempts to find a host country in Wired, said he believed the project was in the best interest of his country, was much smaller than the mega-projects, and would not involve government subsidies.

Collins hopes that the seastead will boost the economy, bring the country into more contact with technological innovators in Silicon Valley, and help combat the “brain drain” that sees educated Tahitians leave the islands in search of work.

“If anyone knows how to live on the oceans it’s Tahitians,” he said. “Polynesians are the original seasteaders.”

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