Hello guys,
So I’ve read my Rothbard and my Minerva and now I’m faced with the following question: how do we build our own Minerva? I don’t believe in turning a state libertarian from the inside out. I’d rather take the Minerva-route, buy some land and found my own country. I think seasteading is cool, but I really like land.
I’m sure many people here are interested in this also. Are there any projects going on at the moment? If not, why don’t we start our own? Building a country takes lots of people, money, time and effort. I’m convinced that it can be done, though, even if it takes a few years or decades.
Who here’s interested in joining up for a project group of some sort? Since it’s a very complicated topic and different people have different pieces of knowledge needed to make this work, there needs to be a boatload of thinking, brainstorming and discussion going on. For starters we can discuss in this thread, maybe later get our own project site somewhere. This is pre-pre-0.1-Alpha stage (at least for me), but we’ve got to start sometime.
Topics which I think are important (feel free to add anything I forgot and comment on anything I got wrong):
- Where will Rothbardia be?
I’m thinking Africa, coast. Africa because there’s a lot of weak governments. If we do this in Langley, they’ll shoot us down in no time. In Africa, many people don’t give a shit about their government and might join us. Many governments there are just warlords. We’ll definitely be attacked by these warlords, but they’re easier to defend against than the US.
Why not an island? In the beginning an island might be of advantage due to the isolation. But when this thing really goes off, the isolation will be our biggest problem! There will be lack of space, transportation and immigration. Also, islands in the Pacific get hurricaned all the time.
- Will it even be called Rothbardia?
This is just my name for it. Call it what you want, so long as we make it work.
- How will we get the land?
I’m thinking buying from the owners, not the government. Unless the government IS the owner, in which case we’ll buy from them. I don’t think “buying sovereignty” is the right start. We don’t accept authority of meta-beings like states. We respect the ownership of the land by the natives of the area.
Another point for Africa: I’m guessing many people will be happy to sell their land for a)little money or b)promise of future goods. We could just give them a house when we’re done. Raising the standard of living is in anyones interest, and in many African areas it might be as easy as providing water.
- How will we get the money?
Yea, this is a good one. Of course we’ll have to be filthy rich to get this started. But a few hundred dedicated people should be able to do this. Right? Maybe we’ll get investors.
IF this takes off, we’ll have huge industry in no time. If only for tax purposes.
- How will we purchase the land?
In Minerva, a huge company is formed which then buys the land, sub-contracting it to all the residents. We could either do it that way or buy our shares individually. It shouldn’t be more expensive than buying land anywhere else on the planet. Probably cheaper in the beginning.
- Public Relations
I think it’s important to be open about this. There shouldn’t be any chance of “Rich Right-Wingers Exploit African Natives” spin. This could easily be done with a few semi-dedicated journalist types and a website. If everyone can see we’re friendly, non-criminal people and actually RAISE the standard of living in these areas, nobody has any reasons to condemn us. This could be a war-preventer, in my opinion. We don’t want the american public to feel we’re a threat to freedom or anything.
- Immigration Policy
Immigration is practically non-existent in a private country, as I understand it. If you’re “in”, it’s because you OWN or RENT the part you’re in. There is no problem with immigration, because immigrants won’t be “taking our jobs” or “siphoning our social systems empty”. If they get in, it’s because they paid for it.
In fact immigration will be of great advantage in this system, because each immigrant will mean more productive work. People can work in Rothbardia and rent a house or apartment. Many of the locals might do this, as it’s probably more lucrative for them than farming for rice or what they did before.
I also think Rothbardia should be open about joining it. Everyone who owns land can join Rothbardia. This way, our country would spread like a virus. A good virus! If our neighbors see the advantages of living in Rothbardia, they can just join up and the country grows organically. This doesn’t even have to be local neighbors, it could be people around the world. But those would probably rather found their own country after our example.
- Law
I’m not very knowledgeable in this category, but I’m sure many of you are.
It’s mostly IP I’m concerned about. If we do non-IP (which is the libertarian thing to do, isn’t it?), will major corporations even join our country? Right now most companies are freaking out about outsourcing to China, because they don’t respect IP properly. If we openly declare that IP is worthless in our country, will companies not be afraid to even sell their products to us?
- Defense
I see three main defense scenarios.
1)Random thugs and raiders
This shouldn’t be too hard if we bring some rednecks with guns.
2)Warlords
Depending on the area, this might be hard. They’d probably just kill and loot everyone. It would be easy diplomacy-wise, because it’s clear we’re the victims. The fight would be hard. Some african countries have less than 1 million residents, some have 150 millions. We’d have to find a region that is not too badly struck by warlordery.
3)Western countries
Some western countries might feel threatened by us or declare we’re violating some UN resolutions. Some of the european tax havens have been “economically attacked” because they didn’t release information about their bank customers! And the US has attacked countries for less than that.
This would be a VERY hard battle, but I think it could be very dependent on diplomacy. If people get the impression we’re a bunch of armed thugs taking advantage of poor people, we’ll get attacked immediately. If we instead are able to project the truth, by being open and inviting journalists etc., we might prevent such an attack. It’s more difficult for a democratic government to attack a bunch of nice people that do nothing but help the local economy.
That’s just the stuff going through my brain right now. Let’s make this more than just a book we all like (Minerva). Let’s try to do it for real. It’s a long way, but this might be the first step.
Also: please don’t reply to tell me this is a stupid idea or why Anarcho-Capitalism is flawed. Constructive criticism is very much wanted, but no “your idea is shit!” stuff. If I made major mistakes or forgot major points, just join the discussion. It’s going to be our country, so we should all discuss it.
