Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Monday November 14 2016, @06:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the revolutionary dept.

One man is trying to create a utopia on what he says is unclaimed land between Serbia and Croatia. He's banned from setting foot in his would-be territory, but he has not given up.

The president stared across the water at his country, from which he is exiled.

We were in a boat on the Danube, only a few yards from the territory of Liberland - what he calls the "beloved country".

But we knew that if we tried to disembark, the Croatian river police would arrest us. Patriotism struggled with prudence, and lost.

Liberland is only 7 sq km (2.5 sq miles) of uninhabited marshland. But in the mind of Vit Jedlicka, its first president, it's the fulfilment of the libertarian dream - a land with no compulsory taxes, no gun control, with Bitcoins as currency.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by meustrus on Monday November 14 2016, @06:45PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Monday November 14 2016, @06:45PM (#426612)

    Anybody who thinks they can move into a 7 km space with no army and no international support is not just dreaming. They're living in a fantasy world. What's to stop anybody from just moving in and taking the land? That they are nice people? If your answer is "international law", well that law is written by the people with the guns. And by the way, it only applies to recognized nations, which this cloud-cuckoo-land is not.

    I suppose this is natural conclusion of ideologically pure Libertarianism: a nation which can only exist if everyone else in the world agrees to allow it, which has no leverage with which to make them. Perhaps this thought exercise will be instructive to the masses who believe this kind of fantasy can actually work in the real world.

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Touché=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Touché' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @07:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @07:02PM (#426620)

    Yeah, Libertarians are one day of missed meals from anarchy... Pure freedom is a nice ideal, but reality just doesn't work that way. Infringing on others' freedoms is one of the core missions of power hungry sociopaths. We need laws, we need government (to varying degrees), or as Louis C.K. said .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHnsajl-kB8 [youtube.com]

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday November 14 2016, @07:33PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Monday November 14 2016, @07:33PM (#426636)

    What's to stop anybody from just moving in and taking the land?

    The fact that the guys living there sound to be armed?

    I mean, there's always the question of whether the bigger country just decides to invade you, e.g. Austria-Hungary and Serbia in WWI, but that's a problem everybody has, and microstates wouldn't be unique in that regard.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday November 15 2016, @12:28AM

      by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @12:28AM (#426759)

      Is he armed with surface-to-air missiles and poised to strike round the clock? Because such a small spit of territory is just one drone strike away from oblivion. Other options include tanks, naval bombardment, or missile strikes. And even in the old days before all this force multiplication garbage, there's still the fact that the typical one-city kingdom could amass an army an order of magnitude larger than the entire population of such a small nation.

      A larger country can survive the initial strike to complain to other nations and potentially form alliances to push back. That's after their real military resources make every inch of ground a battle, stalling for time if nothing else. A little nothing like this "Liberland" will be gone in less than an hour and all of its citizens dead. I don't think that the body count would even be big enough to qualify as a genocide.

      I'm definitely not advocating for any of this, nor do I like that this is the reality in which we live. But you can't ignore the basic forces of human civilization that have been at work for thousands of years just because we now enjoy relative peace. Yeah, we're less free than we used to be. We also live longer and in enough safety to contemplate this kind of ludicrous isolationist fantasy. Come get me when you have a real solution to the freedom part.

      --
      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:23PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:23PM (#426985)

        I mean, there's always the question of whether the bigger country just decides to invade you, e.g. Austria-Hungary and Serbia in WWI, but that's a problem everybody has, and microstates wouldn't be unique in that regard.

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:06PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:06PM (#426954) Journal

    It reminds me of that character in Snow Crash who drove around on a motorcycle wired with a nuclear warhead. The warhead was connected to the guy's heart monitor, such that it would explode if his heart stopped beating or if the signal was interrupted. It made him a nation unto himself and nobody messed with him.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.