Ephemerisle got its libertarian streak from its founders: the event was originally conceived of by the Seasteading Institute, a San Francisco nonprofit that supports the creation of thousands of floating city-states in international waters. After overseeing the first Ephemerisle in 2009, the Institute handed over responsibility for the festival to the community in 2010—it turns out a raucous floating party costs too much for a tiny think tank to insure—and last year, the group consisted of 300 amateur boaters, intoxicated partiers, and a committed clan of Seasteaders.

Seasteaders made up about a quarter of Ephemerisle’s attendees. If they took the operation somewhat more seriously than the young Californians who came just to party and build things, it’s because they dream of a day when they’ll have their pick of floating city-states to live on, work from, and eventually abandon in favor of a different platform when they get bored. Borrowing from the lexicon of evolution, the Seasteaders say that a “Cambrian explosion” of these new countries will bring about greater freedom of choice for individuals, stimulate competition between existing governments, and provide blank “nation-slates” for experiments in governance. Ephemerisle is supposed to distill the ambitious project into a weekend that would “give people the direct experience of political autonomy.” It combines its political ambitions with appeals to back-to-the-land survivalism, off-the-grid drug use, and a vague nostalgia for water parks. “There are no tickets, no central organizers, no rules, no rangers to keep you safe,” reads the Ephemerisle mission statement. It’s “a new adventure into an alien environment, with discoveries, adventures, and mishaps along the way.”

via n+1: Seasteading.