Patri Friedman

Most of my life these days centers around my family (wife Shannon, son Tovar) and my role as the Executive Director of The Seasteading Institute, a small non-profit whose mission is "To establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems". Please consider joining TSI and helping us increase competition in government.

If you are looking for other worthy non-profits, check out The Singularity Institute if you're more into futurism, or my grandparent's foundation, The Friedman Foundation For Educational Choice if you're more into choice & freedom. If you're into neither, go to GiveWell to learn about the most effective ways to help the world.

My views on politics are somewhat odd: I am a libertarian who laments current political systems and dreams of better ones, yet I believe most libertarians are deeply wrong about how to improve government. Either they have given up completely on change, or they are naive idealists, failing to see that the same economic principles that make freedom good also make freedom and democracy incompatible in the long-run. The best introduction to my views is my lead essay in the April 2009 issue of Cato Unbound: Beyond Folk Activism. A longer and more detailed/messy compedium of my thoughts is on my politics page, or you may wish to read some recommended references on competitive government.

Find me on or or read one of my many blogs.

Some other useful and reasonably recent material:

• Tortuga - I helped found this Mountain View retrofit cohousing community. As of fall 2008, we have 13 adults and 3 kids. If you are interested in cohousing in Silicon valley, read about joining our community. Or email me for invites to our parties.
• My (non-mainstream) views on diet and exercise.
• Picasa web albums for my pictures.
• Some of My prose writing.
• The ultimate in vanity: My wikipedia entry.
• I was a Board member for 2009 of Humanity+.
• I can be found in videos such as a 9-min documentary on Ephemerisle (a floating-festival I founded), or for something sillier, We Seasteaders wish ye a happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

This page reflects who I am in my 30s. You can also go to my old home page, which reflects who I was in my 20s, and has lots more crap on it.

If you need to correspond with me, I can be reached for personal things as patrissimo-at-gmail-dot-com and for work things as patri-at-seasteading-dot-org. I read all of my email, but I unfortunately often don't have the time to respond to it. If you promise not to take it personally, I'll promise to use my time to do awesome things :). (Here's a good piece on the philosophy behind this.)