# Cato Unbound **Cato Unbound** is the [[Cato Institute]]'s online essay-and-debate journal. Each monthly issue gives a lead essayist a proposition and has several respondents argue with it in public. It is small, but in this KB it matters for one issue: **April 2009**, which published the founding text of the post-democratic tech right. ## The April 2009 issue The issue, *From Scratch: Libertarian Institutions and Communities*, was built around a lead essay by [[Patri Friedman]] of the [[Seasteading Institute]]. Friedman argued that libertarians had put too much effort into policy advocacy and not enough into demonstration projects: new communities, ocean platforms, start-up jurisdictions. Respondents included Free State Project founder Jason Sorens and *Reason*'s Brian Doherty. The response that outlived the debate was [[Peter Thiel]]'s **"The Education of a Libertarian"** (April 13, 2009). It contains the line "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," and a passage blaming the expansion of the welfare state and of the franchise to women for making a libertarian majority impossible. Its prescription was **exit**, not persuasion: an "escape from politics in all its forms" through technologies such as cyberspace, outer space and seasteading. See [[Peter Thiel - freedom and democracy compatible]]. The backlash was immediate. On **April 29, 2009**, editor Jason Kuznicki published a defense of the issue. He said it reflected his wish to see "one particularly radical branch of libertarianism publicly confront its critics," not disappointment over the 2008 election. ## Why it matters here The essay predates Thiel's political turn by seven years, and nearly everything later in the Thiel file can be traced back to it: - the [[Network State]] and seasteading "exit" projects - the patronage of [[Curtis Yarvin]] and [[Neoreaction]] - the bet on unelected engineers and defense tech over democratic procurement (see [[Defense Tech Timeline]]) - the [[Post-Democratic Tech-Right]] as a movement The venue matters too. It was published by the flagship libertarian think tank, as a debate prompt, at a moment when it read as a thought experiment. Seventeen years later, the man whose 2022 Senate race its author bankrolled, [[JD Vance]], is Vice President. ## See also - [[Peter Thiel]] · [[Peter Thiel Ideology]] · [[Peter Thiel Quotes]] · [[Thiel Network]] - [[Peter Thiel - freedom and democracy compatible]] · [[Post-Democratic Tech-Right]] - [[Cato Institute]] · [[Patri Friedman]] · [[Seasteading Institute]] · [[Network State]] · [[Dark Enlightenment]]