I remember hearing about the Free State Project about 15 years ago. I may have vaguely heard the same vague suggestion mentioned here, that several thousand people moved, and some of them even got elected to the gigantic state legislature, but I'd be interested in knowing anything more about how much success they've had at any of their goals. Is there a good place to learn more about this, or should I just read the book about the bear?
There's all sorts of discussions people have about how a bunch of politically motivated people could move to a low population area with overly powerful democratic representation due to something like the electoral college (or New Hampshire's absurdly large legislature) and then use their numbers to somehow Fix Politics. It's seemed to me that the Free State Project is basically the best possible case for this - Libertarians are an unusually privileged political minority, with an unusual commitment to geographic movement for their views, and New Hampshire is a place that is already distinctly appealing to them ideologically, as well as being in congenial commuting distance of a major city. So if Libertarians can't even get control of New Hampshire this way, then there's no hope of Alabama becoming a "Black Quebec" (https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/charles-blows-dream-of-a-black-quebec) or of Democrats moving en masse to Wyoming to get two more Senators. Maybe Georgia could become a "Black Quebec", because Atlanta is already the "Black New York", and Georgia is getting to a partisan tipping point already due to underlying economic effects.
Scott continues to demonstrate his blatant anti-Marx bias through his endorsement of Black Hammer!
(KKKlown Marx is actually pretty funny just from how over the top it is, but I'm not sure what their problem with Shirley Temple is).
Anyway, I love that reparations can now be paid in instalments in exchange for merch, but since that's apparently a thing I can do to wash the blood off my hands, I think I'll find some colonised people who actually have stuff I want and buy that instead. Good thing my country colonised 1/3 of the world to make it easy for me!
I do wish Black Hammer the best of luck, I find their project fascinating in the same way that a burning fireworks warehouse is fascinating - I want to watch it explode, but from a very safe distance.
Unpopular opinion, but I think the much more successful route for a charter city to go through would just be to copy the commercial codes of an already existing, successful 1st world country. Versus whatever Prospera is trying to do, which seems to be creating a new political system & commercial contract code that has never been tried before- plus lots of blockchain language, of course. Without commenting on the specifics of Prospera's proposed system- basic intellectual humility tells us that a new, untried system of governance & commercial regulation will probably encounter some unforeseen issues and hiccups.
On the other hand a charter city could just, like, use the UCC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code 'The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), first published in 1952, is one of a number of Uniform Acts that have been established as law with the goal of harmonizing the laws of sales and other commercial transactions across the United States' The UCC currently runs a $22 trillion economy and has for decades- Prospera's proposed system has never, uh, run anything ever. Which sounds like a better option?
Residents could use binding arbitration to resolve disputes under the UCC- tons of US law firms offer it now, and I bet a few would even offer lower rates for a charter city in dirt-poor Honduras trying to get off the ground. (Lots of law firms do pro bono or charity work). Fast, efficient, and certainly better than using local judges.
I suspect there is tension between idealistic charter city libertarians, who may be a bit touch impractical, versus what might actually be the best system for Honduras, Ecuador, Haiti, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, etc. This plus switching to using the US dollar versus the totally unstable local currency (Ecuador, Panama and Somalia already do this as an official policy) seems much more practical. Also seems like it would advance US interests & influence, particularly in getting more & more small countries to use the dollar as their official currency
If I were going to make a libertarian enclave in the US I'd obviously go to Puerto Rico. Yes, New Hampshire has 1.4 million people and PR has 3.2 million. But in both cases 10k is not really enough to make a difference. Puerto Rico needs people to stimulate the economy much more, which a bunch of wacky ancaps might be able to. Plus Puerto Rico's got extremely generous tax incentives to move. You can basically get out of all your US taxes by moving to Puerto Rico. This is because Puerto Rico isn't a state so it has less direct Federal rule. If you got control of Puerto Rico you'd have a semi-sovereign state where even Federal rules on expatriots don't apply.
If I were going to make a libertarian country I'd choose the Bahamas. It has a smaller population (less than 400k), outsources its defense to the US/UK, good internet access, and funds itself mostly through sales taxes. It's also relatively wealthy, has good infrastructure, and used to be a bunch of pirates. Only downside is that you have to be a resident there for ten years before you can vote. But what are you going to vote for anyway? It already has no income taxes. If that's a real bar, there's Antigua and Barbuda (population 100k). It has high corporate and sales taxes and is more distant and less built up. But it's also already a small government with no personal income tax, including on foreign investment. You can buy citizenship much cheaper than Montenegro. So there's two countries that already have pretty libertarian-ish policies and are small enough that 10k people moving there would make a real difference. They're also famously beautiful places.
Of course, I'm still broadly of the opinion that Special Economic Zones work when they are large areas of land, there's large pre-existing inefficiencies, there's significant regulatory and judicial concessions, and the someone dumps in a lot of money.
Might there be a reason (beyound systemic oppression) why Libertarians are always "losing at everything" ? Mixed economies dominate the developed world, after all.
The circle encompassing "Don't tread on me, I should be free to smoke, shoot guns, employ 8 year olds, and drive without a seatbelt" people and the circle encompassing "Willing to learn Serbo Croatian and live with mandated government health insurance" peopl don't seem like they'd have much overlap.
I'm very conflicted about what my takeaway from this blog should be. Scott is a Libertarian, and I (like many other readers) am sympathetic to Libertarianism. However, at the same time, he writes about Moloch, which can only really be solved by a benevolent dictatorship or some other form of government that solves the biggest coordination problem known to humanity. He talks about the state guiding charter cities in order to really upliftment millions out of poverty.
So every individual should be completely free both socially and economically, but there should be someone at the meta level who is coordinating all our actions?
I think Akoncity, a planned 200 acre, 6 billion dollar enterprise by rapper Akon deserves mention, if only for the over the top bio-punk aesthetic: https://akoncity.com/
Let's say one hypothetically wished to found a separatist city-state and managed to achieve a large-enough group of people willing to follow you to this new attempt at utopia. What systems do you put in place to guarantee the best possible result?
For instance, one could implement systems to cull some of those wishing to join. "No violent felonies" is always a good place to start, and I imagine a number of people in the rationalist community would elect to implement a minimum IQ or a minimum net worth. Others might want to survey for compatible values, or require a donation to fund the city-state and perhaps be a measure of commitment to its well-being.
What ideologies, values, and systems would separate your city-state from others? Other than state-subsidized Modafinil, that is.
You've read Nixonland already but Black Hammer really reminds me of the black kids who would go to MLK events to boo him for being a weak moderate and then demand money from naive white people for 'our brothers in prison' (page 211)
These things can also happen spontaneously. An example, from close to where I grew up, is Åland Islands. It is Swedish speaking, but goes under Finnish law (with a substantial amount of autonomy from mainland Finland), so when Sweden outlawed homeschooling, they started attracting new citizens. I think the numbers of families homeschooling is at 5 percent now, and it has been doubling every year for 5+ years, so this group (consisting to a large degree of an unholy alliance of hippies and libertarians) could conceivably become a major political force in the Island Government in a few years. That could lead to a lot of new possibilities for developing better modes of education.
(We see a similar trend at the island where I live, Bornholm, where German families tend to escape if they want to homeschool.)
And I assume there are other, similar developments, in other areas, caused by differences in legal codes.
No, it is an asshole idea. Its basically a hostile takeover or an invasion. The plan is take over a place and then enforce your politics on other people. That is just one or two steps of evil away from invading a foreign country and stealing the natives land.
On the project in Montenegro, 95% of our main activity is in the telegram, we have not yet found a better platform and are concentrated there. At the same time, basically everything is in Russian - https://t.me/Seasteading_EastEurope
It occurs to me that the Great Pandemic of 2020 may have given all of these projects a boost, if they can move fast enough to take advantage of it. One of the problems with e.g. the Free State Project is that the sort of libertarians who are most likely to make it viable (or the sort of POC most likely to make Hammer City viable, etc), are the ones most likely to already have established careers and social networks that would not survive moving to Random Isolated Low-Population Enclave. And the ones most likely to make the move will be the ones with the least to lose. Which will include some contingently-capable people who can flourish but only in a community tailored to their needs, but even more of the generally-incapable losers in the movement.
I think a lot of people are greatly overestimating the extent to which "work from home and socialize on Zoom!" is going to be the Wave of the Future, but it's a lot more thinkable and at least somewhat more practical than it was two years ago. I don't think it will be a huge effect, but I could be wrong. Has anyone looked to see if there's been an uptick in e.g. the number of libertarians moving to Grafton, or to NH generally, over the past year?
Hopefully France will keep vetoing the access of new countries in the eu. Nothing personal and I am really sorry for the people of the Western balkans but our union is already disfunctional enough with 27 states with veto power over everything that matters.
Charter cities are very interesting as an idea, but I remain skeptical until we see a major success. Running a city is difficult and expensive, and the ideological bent of many charter founders leads me to suspect that they may be more in it for ideology than execution. Whether you're libertarian or anarchist or communist, SOMEONE has to do the hard/frustrating/expensive work of executing the many complex things that allow a city to function.
It's also important to note that most cities rely on funding from state and federal sources for significant portions of their budgets. This may not be essential to a successful city, but it certainly disadvantages charter cities which may not have access to such funding.
I'd be much more persuaded by an execution-oriented charter - a charter formed by people who are very passionate about making a great city per se - than by these ideological charters.
Montenegro is beautiful and well worth a visit. Last time I was there, I had a Montenegrin explain to me how much better it was under Tito - at least it was predictable. I'm not sure libertarianism will rule the day there. :) I'm also not keen on ethnic/religious conflict.
I'm pretty skeptical of organized entrism, like the Montenegro thing. Collective action is difficult and mostly attracts crazy people. I prefer the invisible-hand approach of e.g. just moving somewhere with low taxes if you like low taxes – you instantly get what you want, and, as a bonus, you push the market in the right direction.
The Shirley Temple thing freaked me out so I didn't go to their website, but I'm not sure how profitable running an 8 week bootcamp for $200 is. I assume people will need to eat and sleep over the two months in addition to learning all the great stuff they want to teach. But they're charging about $3/day, which doesn't seem to leave a lot for profit. Or maybe it's subsidized by all the money they're making from the Hammer City development
The idea of a large number of like minded people moving to a small town to gain political control was tried in Antelope, Oregon in the 1980s. Hundreds of followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh moved to a nearby ranch, took control of the town, which had fewer than 30 residents, and re-named it "Rajneesh".
There were power struggles amongst the Rajneeshees, crimes were committed, including bio terrorist acts and attempted murder. The guru left the country, and the commune collapsed.
While I strongly sympathize with the original townspeople, the basic plan is legal. Except for the bio terrorism and murder, of course.
You know, it's fascinating that in an era of absolutely unprecedented ability to communicate and see who thinks what about this and that, it is still possible for people to fall into the delusion that they and their friends are just the tip of some giant iceberg, a Silent Majority (or at least Puissant Minority that can fend off any interference from the unenlightened). All we need to do is raise the flag, get more visible, and stop sitting around and just talking.
Maybe it's psychological denial? Nobody *really* wants to believe that the vast mass of humanity is like just exactly what you suspect it's like from Facebook, Twitter, and CNN.
If anyone knows the history of Montenegro, which mostly consists of the local clans charging down out of the titular mountain and kicking the everloving shit out of whoever was stupid enough to try to take it, they would know that it's a spectacularly poor candidate for this sort of thing. I've been there, they're lovely people, but if they genuinely thought the Free Staters were a threat, I think it would end...poorly...for the libertarians.
I really feel like the U.S.A/China/anybody who wants the world richer should really lean into this charter city concept; they dont even have to back libertarian places, just like, not obviously bad policy charter cities.
Oh man, image of US libertarians trying to take over Montenegro made me actually laugh out loud in front of the monitor. So, for the benefit of Great Nation Of Murica and its not too East-savvy inhabitants, here's a 15 second intro:
There's a country called Turkey, which used to be Ottoman Empire for some centuries before and controlled to some extent huge area, including most of the Balkans. There were parts of Balkans they should have controlled but didn't. These were mostly Venetian, heavily fortified, backed by rich and influential republic and quite often islands/peninsulas/cut off by mountains. Also Ragusa (todays Dubrovnik), which is quite a jumble, so let's not go there, even though it's amusing jumble. And then there was Montenegro. Stuck between Venetian coastal strip on one side and Ottoman territory on all others, it managed to keep/regain some forms of autonomy or independence by consisting of mountain tribes of the most pig-headed, unrelenting, head-cutting bunch of highlanders you could find in the region that has, among others, Albanians.
They are in NATO these days and some of them are allegedly miffed about attempted Russian coup of 2016. Since this creeping takeover seems to be another attempt of spreading Russian influence through pan-Slavism, the miffed ones might not take kindly to them. Also lots of others voted in the new pro-Russian gov't recently, these might not take kindly to them as well - there's still this thing with US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, of which was Montenegro part. Libertarians of Ron Paul's ilk might do okay, if willing to be reduced to "voice of American freethinkers oppressed by globalizing global globalism". Even ignoring general not-taking-kindly-to-weirdo-immigrants-of-the-kind-I-dislike, there's more. You won't find libertarian leaning country in former Soviet Bloc, but I guess the ubiquitous shirking of statist requirements and lack of enforcement of laws might give you the illusion for a while. Once you really try to start and expand some enterprise or organize a political movement, it will very fast turn into Kafka or crime drama from Latin America.
As for fantasies that libertarians might be tolerated in Balkans because they are themselves tolerant, non-threatening and bringing benefits, sure. Explain this to locals. And don't forget to speak loud and clear - it's difficult to speak intelligibly when your cut off penis is stuck in your throat.
Anyway, while I've never been there myself, country is known to be beatiful, rakija strong and locals reasonably friendly, as long as you avoid some topics. Go visit once the travel gets normal, just don't buy any landmarks.
To what degree does the whole charter city concept contradict that "seeing like a state"-type notion of cities emerging organically? An efficient city that emerges organically presumably does so by selecting for skills that are relevant to making the city productive, such as attracting the best plumbers, carpenters, and hat store owners. What is neither particularly organic nor conducive to productivity is getting a bunch of people into one spot because they agree on free speech. Like at some point your city needs to actually get good at things, which would involve attracting people based on their plumbing, carpenter, and store owning credentials - but then you'll dilute the libertarian-ness of the project?
Besides, charter cities are supposed to be long-term projects, right? So how do they solve the institutional Succession Problem? For mean-reversion reasons these libertarians will probably have kids who don't really care about libertarianism. So how do they ensure the city remains libertarian?
Do you think Vesna Bratić will be happy about the "Free Society Project Europe" ?
I remember hearing about the Free State Project about 15 years ago. I may have vaguely heard the same vague suggestion mentioned here, that several thousand people moved, and some of them even got elected to the gigantic state legislature, but I'd be interested in knowing anything more about how much success they've had at any of their goals. Is there a good place to learn more about this, or should I just read the book about the bear?
There's all sorts of discussions people have about how a bunch of politically motivated people could move to a low population area with overly powerful democratic representation due to something like the electoral college (or New Hampshire's absurdly large legislature) and then use their numbers to somehow Fix Politics. It's seemed to me that the Free State Project is basically the best possible case for this - Libertarians are an unusually privileged political minority, with an unusual commitment to geographic movement for their views, and New Hampshire is a place that is already distinctly appealing to them ideologically, as well as being in congenial commuting distance of a major city. So if Libertarians can't even get control of New Hampshire this way, then there's no hope of Alabama becoming a "Black Quebec" (https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/charles-blows-dream-of-a-black-quebec) or of Democrats moving en masse to Wyoming to get two more Senators. Maybe Georgia could become a "Black Quebec", because Atlanta is already the "Black New York", and Georgia is getting to a partisan tipping point already due to underlying economic effects.
"But could a charter city be Park Chung-Hee’s Korea? Sounds like a harder problem, especially since it won’t be immediately profitable..."
Also harder because most charter cities aren't going to be dictatorships.
Scott continues to demonstrate his blatant anti-Marx bias through his endorsement of Black Hammer!
(KKKlown Marx is actually pretty funny just from how over the top it is, but I'm not sure what their problem with Shirley Temple is).
Anyway, I love that reparations can now be paid in instalments in exchange for merch, but since that's apparently a thing I can do to wash the blood off my hands, I think I'll find some colonised people who actually have stuff I want and buy that instead. Good thing my country colonised 1/3 of the world to make it easy for me!
I do wish Black Hammer the best of luck, I find their project fascinating in the same way that a burning fireworks warehouse is fascinating - I want to watch it explode, but from a very safe distance.
"I have always found these fascinating and just remembered that nobody can prevent me from talking about them."
This was such a wonderful line! It also sums up why I love this blog. Humor, intellectual honesty and openness in exploring sometimes crazy ideas.
I almost never comment but I wanted to say I find this very interesting and hope you do more of it.
Unpopular opinion, but I think the much more successful route for a charter city to go through would just be to copy the commercial codes of an already existing, successful 1st world country. Versus whatever Prospera is trying to do, which seems to be creating a new political system & commercial contract code that has never been tried before- plus lots of blockchain language, of course. Without commenting on the specifics of Prospera's proposed system- basic intellectual humility tells us that a new, untried system of governance & commercial regulation will probably encounter some unforeseen issues and hiccups.
On the other hand a charter city could just, like, use the UCC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code 'The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), first published in 1952, is one of a number of Uniform Acts that have been established as law with the goal of harmonizing the laws of sales and other commercial transactions across the United States' The UCC currently runs a $22 trillion economy and has for decades- Prospera's proposed system has never, uh, run anything ever. Which sounds like a better option?
Residents could use binding arbitration to resolve disputes under the UCC- tons of US law firms offer it now, and I bet a few would even offer lower rates for a charter city in dirt-poor Honduras trying to get off the ground. (Lots of law firms do pro bono or charity work). Fast, efficient, and certainly better than using local judges.
I suspect there is tension between idealistic charter city libertarians, who may be a bit touch impractical, versus what might actually be the best system for Honduras, Ecuador, Haiti, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, etc. This plus switching to using the US dollar versus the totally unstable local currency (Ecuador, Panama and Somalia already do this as an official policy) seems much more practical. Also seems like it would advance US interests & influence, particularly in getting more & more small countries to use the dollar as their official currency
Montenegro and New Hampshire? Weird choices.
If I were going to make a libertarian enclave in the US I'd obviously go to Puerto Rico. Yes, New Hampshire has 1.4 million people and PR has 3.2 million. But in both cases 10k is not really enough to make a difference. Puerto Rico needs people to stimulate the economy much more, which a bunch of wacky ancaps might be able to. Plus Puerto Rico's got extremely generous tax incentives to move. You can basically get out of all your US taxes by moving to Puerto Rico. This is because Puerto Rico isn't a state so it has less direct Federal rule. If you got control of Puerto Rico you'd have a semi-sovereign state where even Federal rules on expatriots don't apply.
If I were going to make a libertarian country I'd choose the Bahamas. It has a smaller population (less than 400k), outsources its defense to the US/UK, good internet access, and funds itself mostly through sales taxes. It's also relatively wealthy, has good infrastructure, and used to be a bunch of pirates. Only downside is that you have to be a resident there for ten years before you can vote. But what are you going to vote for anyway? It already has no income taxes. If that's a real bar, there's Antigua and Barbuda (population 100k). It has high corporate and sales taxes and is more distant and less built up. But it's also already a small government with no personal income tax, including on foreign investment. You can buy citizenship much cheaper than Montenegro. So there's two countries that already have pretty libertarian-ish policies and are small enough that 10k people moving there would make a real difference. They're also famously beautiful places.
Of course, I'm still broadly of the opinion that Special Economic Zones work when they are large areas of land, there's large pre-existing inefficiencies, there's significant regulatory and judicial concessions, and the someone dumps in a lot of money.
Might there be a reason (beyound systemic oppression) why Libertarians are always "losing at everything" ? Mixed economies dominate the developed world, after all.
The circle encompassing "Don't tread on me, I should be free to smoke, shoot guns, employ 8 year olds, and drive without a seatbelt" people and the circle encompassing "Willing to learn Serbo Croatian and live with mandated government health insurance" peopl don't seem like they'd have much overlap.
The Black Hammer section really made me smile. I feel sanguine about it, and apparently so does Black Hammer.
MARS NOT MARX!
(or is it "Musk not Marx"? Doesn't have the same ring to it)
Look at the advantages of Mars over Montenegro:
- Naturalization: Montenegro: never. Mars: upon arrival.
- Current population: Montenegro: 600,000 people. Mars: 3 rovers.
- Naturalization by investment: Montenegro: ~$1,000,000. Mars: $200,000.
- Existing laws: Montenegro: over 1,000,000 pages. Mars: 1 paragraph in the Starlink ToS.
- Available land: Montenegro: "what land"? Mars: go wild! (literally)
- Expected time until libertarians can exert serious influence: Montenegro: never. Mars: even before take-off.
- Risk tolerance: Montenegro: average. Mars: do you even have to ask?
- Intelligence: Montenegro: average. Mars: probably < 90 if you are stupid enough to sign up.
- Endorsement: Montenegro: FSPE. Mars: Musk. Which of these has the record of getting things done? Exactly.
If you keep writing about the progress of these projects I will become a paying subscriber! These fascinate me
I'm very conflicted about what my takeaway from this blog should be. Scott is a Libertarian, and I (like many other readers) am sympathetic to Libertarianism. However, at the same time, he writes about Moloch, which can only really be solved by a benevolent dictatorship or some other form of government that solves the biggest coordination problem known to humanity. He talks about the state guiding charter cities in order to really upliftment millions out of poverty.
So every individual should be completely free both socially and economically, but there should be someone at the meta level who is coordinating all our actions?
I think Akoncity, a planned 200 acre, 6 billion dollar enterprise by rapper Akon deserves mention, if only for the over the top bio-punk aesthetic: https://akoncity.com/
How 'bout starting a model company and having a town /community grow around it?
(Well ya gotta figure out what the company will make.)
Let's say one hypothetically wished to found a separatist city-state and managed to achieve a large-enough group of people willing to follow you to this new attempt at utopia. What systems do you put in place to guarantee the best possible result?
For instance, one could implement systems to cull some of those wishing to join. "No violent felonies" is always a good place to start, and I imagine a number of people in the rationalist community would elect to implement a minimum IQ or a minimum net worth. Others might want to survey for compatible values, or require a donation to fund the city-state and perhaps be a measure of commitment to its well-being.
What ideologies, values, and systems would separate your city-state from others? Other than state-subsidized Modafinil, that is.
The libertarian-exacerbated bear problem in Grafton, NH sounds like more than a “snafu” from what I’ve read.
Black Hammer seems to have explicitly adopted original sin and "extra ecclesiam nulla salus".
You've read Nixonland already but Black Hammer really reminds me of the black kids who would go to MLK events to boo him for being a weak moderate and then demand money from naive white people for 'our brothers in prison' (page 211)
These things can also happen spontaneously. An example, from close to where I grew up, is Åland Islands. It is Swedish speaking, but goes under Finnish law (with a substantial amount of autonomy from mainland Finland), so when Sweden outlawed homeschooling, they started attracting new citizens. I think the numbers of families homeschooling is at 5 percent now, and it has been doubling every year for 5+ years, so this group (consisting to a large degree of an unholy alliance of hippies and libertarians) could conceivably become a major political force in the Island Government in a few years. That could lead to a lot of new possibilities for developing better modes of education.
(We see a similar trend at the island where I live, Bornholm, where German families tend to escape if they want to homeschool.)
And I assume there are other, similar developments, in other areas, caused by differences in legal codes.
"Still, it is a cool idea. "
No, it is an asshole idea. Its basically a hostile takeover or an invasion. The plan is take over a place and then enforce your politics on other people. That is just one or two steps of evil away from invading a foreign country and stealing the natives land.
On the project in Montenegro, 95% of our main activity is in the telegram, we have not yet found a better platform and are concentrated there. At the same time, basically everything is in Russian - https://t.me/Seasteading_EastEurope
but there is also a small community in English - https://t.me/FSPE_Montenegro
I nevertheless invite everyone interested to get to the telegram, this is a very ergonomic social network, relevant even without our project
It occurs to me that the Great Pandemic of 2020 may have given all of these projects a boost, if they can move fast enough to take advantage of it. One of the problems with e.g. the Free State Project is that the sort of libertarians who are most likely to make it viable (or the sort of POC most likely to make Hammer City viable, etc), are the ones most likely to already have established careers and social networks that would not survive moving to Random Isolated Low-Population Enclave. And the ones most likely to make the move will be the ones with the least to lose. Which will include some contingently-capable people who can flourish but only in a community tailored to their needs, but even more of the generally-incapable losers in the movement.
I think a lot of people are greatly overestimating the extent to which "work from home and socialize on Zoom!" is going to be the Wave of the Future, but it's a lot more thinkable and at least somewhat more practical than it was two years ago. I don't think it will be a huge effect, but I could be wrong. Has anyone looked to see if there's been an uptick in e.g. the number of libertarians moving to Grafton, or to NH generally, over the past year?
Hopefully France will keep vetoing the access of new countries in the eu. Nothing personal and I am really sorry for the people of the Western balkans but our union is already disfunctional enough with 27 states with veto power over everything that matters.
Charter cities are very interesting as an idea, but I remain skeptical until we see a major success. Running a city is difficult and expensive, and the ideological bent of many charter founders leads me to suspect that they may be more in it for ideology than execution. Whether you're libertarian or anarchist or communist, SOMEONE has to do the hard/frustrating/expensive work of executing the many complex things that allow a city to function.
It's also important to note that most cities rely on funding from state and federal sources for significant portions of their budgets. This may not be essential to a successful city, but it certainly disadvantages charter cities which may not have access to such funding.
I'd be much more persuaded by an execution-oriented charter - a charter formed by people who are very passionate about making a great city per se - than by these ideological charters.
"African, Indigenous, and Colonized people"
Oh great, another new term to learn.
"paying reparations for all that’s been stolen in your name."
But wait! I am both White *and* a working-class Colonized person! Do I pay reparations to myself?
Yeah, I think this project can be best described as "interesting" (any thing more frank will only get the lawyers involved).
Montenegro is beautiful and well worth a visit. Last time I was there, I had a Montenegrin explain to me how much better it was under Tito - at least it was predictable. I'm not sure libertarianism will rule the day there. :) I'm also not keen on ethnic/religious conflict.
Request comments from marxbro1917 on the Black Hammer thing.
I'm pretty skeptical of organized entrism, like the Montenegro thing. Collective action is difficult and mostly attracts crazy people. I prefer the invisible-hand approach of e.g. just moving somewhere with low taxes if you like low taxes – you instantly get what you want, and, as a bonus, you push the market in the right direction.
The Shirley Temple thing freaked me out so I didn't go to their website, but I'm not sure how profitable running an 8 week bootcamp for $200 is. I assume people will need to eat and sleep over the two months in addition to learning all the great stuff they want to teach. But they're charging about $3/day, which doesn't seem to leave a lot for profit. Or maybe it's subsidized by all the money they're making from the Hammer City development
The idea of a large number of like minded people moving to a small town to gain political control was tried in Antelope, Oregon in the 1980s. Hundreds of followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh moved to a nearby ranch, took control of the town, which had fewer than 30 residents, and re-named it "Rajneesh".
There were power struggles amongst the Rajneeshees, crimes were committed, including bio terrorist acts and attempted murder. The guru left the country, and the commune collapsed.
While I strongly sympathize with the original townspeople, the basic plan is legal. Except for the bio terrorism and murder, of course.
You know, it's fascinating that in an era of absolutely unprecedented ability to communicate and see who thinks what about this and that, it is still possible for people to fall into the delusion that they and their friends are just the tip of some giant iceberg, a Silent Majority (or at least Puissant Minority that can fend off any interference from the unenlightened). All we need to do is raise the flag, get more visible, and stop sitting around and just talking.
Maybe it's psychological denial? Nobody *really* wants to believe that the vast mass of humanity is like just exactly what you suspect it's like from Facebook, Twitter, and CNN.
Also in line with this topic is the Church of Scientology's "Project Normandy", their 50-year attempt to take over Clearwater Florida. (https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2019/investigations/scientology-clearwater-real-estate/)
If anyone knows the history of Montenegro, which mostly consists of the local clans charging down out of the titular mountain and kicking the everloving shit out of whoever was stupid enough to try to take it, they would know that it's a spectacularly poor candidate for this sort of thing. I've been there, they're lovely people, but if they genuinely thought the Free Staters were a threat, I think it would end...poorly...for the libertarians.
Wait. London really bans people from carrying knives?
by the way, the link to the discord has also been updated https://discord.com/invite/dDvsWMW2Ga
well, the site https://montelibero.org/
European Libertarians should probably just move to the Netherlands, the only even remotely actually liberal country in the EU.
I remember that you (the OP) also used to have a "Mantic Monday" column. You should keep this column and move this one to a different day.
I really feel like the U.S.A/China/anybody who wants the world richer should really lean into this charter city concept; they dont even have to back libertarian places, just like, not obviously bad policy charter cities.
HAHAHAHAHA!
Oh man, image of US libertarians trying to take over Montenegro made me actually laugh out loud in front of the monitor. So, for the benefit of Great Nation Of Murica and its not too East-savvy inhabitants, here's a 15 second intro:
There's a country called Turkey, which used to be Ottoman Empire for some centuries before and controlled to some extent huge area, including most of the Balkans. There were parts of Balkans they should have controlled but didn't. These were mostly Venetian, heavily fortified, backed by rich and influential republic and quite often islands/peninsulas/cut off by mountains. Also Ragusa (todays Dubrovnik), which is quite a jumble, so let's not go there, even though it's amusing jumble. And then there was Montenegro. Stuck between Venetian coastal strip on one side and Ottoman territory on all others, it managed to keep/regain some forms of autonomy or independence by consisting of mountain tribes of the most pig-headed, unrelenting, head-cutting bunch of highlanders you could find in the region that has, among others, Albanians.
They are in NATO these days and some of them are allegedly miffed about attempted Russian coup of 2016. Since this creeping takeover seems to be another attempt of spreading Russian influence through pan-Slavism, the miffed ones might not take kindly to them. Also lots of others voted in the new pro-Russian gov't recently, these might not take kindly to them as well - there's still this thing with US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, of which was Montenegro part. Libertarians of Ron Paul's ilk might do okay, if willing to be reduced to "voice of American freethinkers oppressed by globalizing global globalism". Even ignoring general not-taking-kindly-to-weirdo-immigrants-of-the-kind-I-dislike, there's more. You won't find libertarian leaning country in former Soviet Bloc, but I guess the ubiquitous shirking of statist requirements and lack of enforcement of laws might give you the illusion for a while. Once you really try to start and expand some enterprise or organize a political movement, it will very fast turn into Kafka or crime drama from Latin America.
As for fantasies that libertarians might be tolerated in Balkans because they are themselves tolerant, non-threatening and bringing benefits, sure. Explain this to locals. And don't forget to speak loud and clear - it's difficult to speak intelligibly when your cut off penis is stuck in your throat.
Anyway, while I've never been there myself, country is known to be beatiful, rakija strong and locals reasonably friendly, as long as you avoid some topics. Go visit once the travel gets normal, just don't buy any landmarks.
Black hammer society made my day
To what degree does the whole charter city concept contradict that "seeing like a state"-type notion of cities emerging organically? An efficient city that emerges organically presumably does so by selecting for skills that are relevant to making the city productive, such as attracting the best plumbers, carpenters, and hat store owners. What is neither particularly organic nor conducive to productivity is getting a bunch of people into one spot because they agree on free speech. Like at some point your city needs to actually get good at things, which would involve attracting people based on their plumbing, carpenter, and store owning credentials - but then you'll dilute the libertarian-ness of the project?
Besides, charter cities are supposed to be long-term projects, right? So how do they solve the institutional Succession Problem? For mean-reversion reasons these libertarians will probably have kids who don't really care about libertarianism. So how do they ensure the city remains libertarian?