DailyDirt: (Not So) Huge Tracts Of Land...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, May 20th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Maybe if you had a sizable fortune, you wouldn't want huge tracts of land to live on, but more than a few billionaires seem to like owning islands or a few hundred acres in remote locations. But you don't necessarily have to be rich to rule a tiny part of the world -- you just need to have the will to do it. Sorta.

Mark Zuckerberg has spent over $100 million on various properties to secure his privacy IRL. He's not the only wealthy individual to buy up strategic plots of land to make sure his home (or homes) has a nice fortress around it. You don't necessarily need to be a billionaire to have a private spot all to yourself, but you can get a better ocean view if you are. [url]
Renato Barros, aka Prince Renato II of the country Pontinha, created his own island country when he bought an island off the coast of Portugal for just 25,000 euros about 15 years ago. This country has only four citizens -- Renato, his wife and two kids. Pontinha is also one of only a handful of nations that generates all of its energy from renewable resources. [url]
There are estimated to be over 400 micronations -- such as the Imperial Kingdom of Calsahara, the Conch Republic, and the Principality of Sealand -- that no one has ever heard of. Part of the reason no one has ever heard of these places is that many of them are not officially recognized as sovereign states. But if you're crazy enough to want to declare yourself a dictator of your own realm, you can. [url]

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Filed Under: billionaires, dictator, mark zuckerberg, micronations, pontinha, private islands, real estate, renato barros

9 Comments

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mr. sim (profile), 20 May 2015 @ 5:29pm

isn't it ironic that zuckerberg tells people privacy is dead and then spends millions securing his own? maybe what he should have said is privacy is dead if your poor.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 May 2015 @ 5:53pm

Re:
Mark Zuckerberg also famously said that people who trusted him to respect their privacy were "dumb fucks" -- a point that Zuckerberg has proven many times over.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 May 2015 @ 6:16pm

Sometimes I really wish for the political climate of America as depicted in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash where every neighborhood is it's own micronation.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 May 2015 @ 8:34pm

Re: Re:
Hahaha - with raising water levels he buys land on an island ... who is the dumb fuck?
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Anonymous Coward, 20 May 2015 @ 8:37pm

Re: Re:
Is there a list of Zuckerberg-isms like the dumb fuck and this privacy "say one thing do another" event so that I can post 'em to facebook in an attempt to be banned from facebook by facebook?
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Shadow Firebird, 20 May 2015 @ 10:46pm

"That no-one has ever heard of"?
Picky, I know, but that's clearly not true.
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Bamboo Harvester (profile), 21 May 2015 @ 4:27am

no one has ever heard of these places
Really? I've held a Baronetcy in Sealand for over thirty years.
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 21 May 2015 @ 8:34am

Re:
This practice is really nothing new. Obnoxious rich folks have been doing it for a long time. How long? Consider the following:

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

-- Isaiah 5: 8
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mdpopescu (profile), 21 May 2015 @ 12:06pm

Crazy?
I guess we can't all be Hos...
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