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\u2014it turns out a raucous floating party costs too much for a tiny think tank to insure\u2014and last year, the group consisted of 300 amateur boaters, intoxicated partiers, and a committed clan of Seasteaders.<\/p>\n
Seasteaders made up about a quarter of Ephemerisle\u2019s attendees. If they took the operation somewhat more seriously than the young Californians who came just to party and build things, it\u2019s because they dream of a day when they\u2019ll 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 \u201cCambrian explosion\u201d of these new countries will bring about greater freedom of choice for individuals, stimulate competition between existing governments, and provide blank \u201cnation-slates\u201d for experiments in governance. Ephemerisle is supposed to distill the ambitious project into a weekend that would \u201cgive people the direct experience of political autonomy.\u201d 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. \u201cThere are no tickets, no central organizers, no rules, no rangers to keep you safe,\u201d reads the Ephemerisle mission statement. It\u2019s \u201ca new adventure into an alien environment, with discoveries, adventures, and mishaps along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n