Patri Friedman believes that some day humans might live on platforms in the middle of the sea. The Mountain View resident is so dedicated to the idea, in fact, that he received a half-million dollars from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to study it further.

So with Thiel's gift as seed money, Friedman quit his job as an engineer at Google in 2008 to start The Seasteading Institute with co-founder Wayne Gramlich.

The 33-year-old is the grandson of famous libertarian economist Milton Friedman, whose philosophy he largely shares. But in a Silicon Valley twist, Friedman believes technology will play a significant part in solving social problems.

"You might not think this is the place to start a political revolution," Friedman said of Silicon Valley. "But (sea steading) is a technological solution to the problems of politics. Rather than saying 'Can we get people to go with this ideology?' and trying to convince people, if we can invent this technology to build cities on the ocean, it will increase competition between governments" and fix many problems.

He envisions small communities, or countries on prefabricated platforms, where switching citizenship would involve simply floating from one platform to another.

Currently, he said, "you have to win a war or an election or a revolution" to start your own country, "which is just ridiculous."

What began as a part-time interest for Friedman is now a full-time job. He employs three staffers and three interns, who spend their work days in a Palo Alto office generating ideas about how to sustain sovereign nations at sea.

Friedman lives in Mountain View with his wife Shannon and his son in a co-housing community near Dale Avenue, where he and a group of people bought two four-plexes to create a community they called "Tortuga." But his ultimate goal is to live with like-minded people who have taken over a piece of the unclaimed ocean.

"Mostly I'm a libertarian, and we live in a very non-libertarian world," he said. "It really bothers me to live in a country that operates with such a dramatically different moral system. I would like to live in a society that I actually think is moral and with people who agree with me on what moral is."

To do that, though, he'll need entrepreneurs, and "Entrepreneurs don't want barriers," Friedman said. In order to attract businesses into the middle of the sea, "you have to get the cost down enough" by eliminating unnecessary regulations.

To that end, The Seasteading Institute has commissioned design of a $110 million, 200-guest hotel and resort called "Club Stead" that would "out-Vegas Vegas" in the middle of the sea, he said. The patented design — its construction would cost an estimated $310 per square foot — is based on large floating dumbbells that hold the platform above the waves. Friedman hopes to build a prototype platform within the next two years in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.

Above board

Over the years people have come up with numerous ideas for businesses that would support a sea steading community. The list tends to include less-than-desirable businesses, often illegal in the U.S., such as online gambling or illicit data storage — an application useful for those trafficking child porn or similar contraband.

But Friedman has some less shady business ideas as well. Lately, his favorite idea is to allow low-cost "medical tourism" on the ocean — a place where regulations and malpractice lawsuits haven't driven up the price of health care.

Friedman's interest in medical tourism got a boost, he said, when he and his wife looked into the costs of in-vitro fertilization in other countries and found that it could be done in Panama for one-third of what it costs in the U.S.

Recently Friedman held the first-ever conference on sea steading in San Francisco. Among the attendees were wealthy tech executives like Joseph Lonsdale, executive vice president of Palantir Technologies, which rents office space to The Seasteading Institute for $500 a month. Lonsdale also sits on the institute's board.

Friedman brushes off criticism from those who say sea steading is a crazy idea.

"It's bound to happen," he said. "Having done a huge amount of research on this, I think there are significant challenges, but it has a shot at working."