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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.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @07:03PM
This guy is(was?) a current Czech politician who did this as a stunt during the Croatian/Serbian border disputes that resulting in them redefining their borders to wht each thought was acceptable, which happened to have some 'undefined space' in between due to changes in the river flow between their border claims. He made a big stunt of this during that time having never set foot there, claiming it as a sovereign nation, and suckering a number of people into 'approving' it while titled as a Czech politician. The Czechs then disavowed him because he was making them look bad and that it was a Czech ploy on the land between the shakily resolved border agreements.
If that is a little unclear, I apologize, you would have to go read all the stories posted on the green site and here about it a couple years ago, it was a huge mess pandering to the same crowd as the seasteading.org website, with about the same level of focus on creating a 'real' nation. That is to say it was a libertarian land-grab ponzi scheme intended to bilk supporters out of money and if by some chance it works out, to be king of the hill as it were.
I am for the general concept of micronations but I don't see them working out as the traditional 'fiefs' everybody is trying to carve out. If you want to create a nation somewhere that is currently unclaimed or has had that claim lapse, you need to follow the 'squatter's rights' attitude of going there and setting up before someone can come in to oust you, and you can't be trying to parcel it up to sell wholesale, especially while enjoying the fruits of a parent country's labours, like most of these so called 'libertarian' charlatans are claiming. If you're going all in, give up your citizenship and prove it, if you're not, you're just a spoiled first worlder demanding attention for yourself.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Monday November 14 2016, @10:26PM
So, are you saying that he is just a libertarian bad Czech?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:29PM
So, are you saying that he is just a libertarian bad Czech?
Even worse... Everyone knows that such grabbing and defending of territory, in humans, is not a feminine trait but rather the opposite. One needs to be fairly well rooted in testosterone to try it.
So..... he's a libertarian bad Czech in the male.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:09AM
Ouch! What ever happened to the bad American in the male who claimed a country between Egypt and somewhere? Oh, here he is! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday November 14 2016, @11:10PM
Less specifically, I don't think it's a coincidence that many of these kinds of harebrained schemes for establishing libertarian utopias pop up and fail at enormous cost to anyone who believed the founder [dollarvigilante.com]. And there is a real reason for this: scammers and other criminals of all stripes tend to have libertarian tendencies. The last thing they want is a well-funded government with extensive laws and law enforcement agencies that can afford to investigate their activities, and libertarianism offers precisely that kind of light governance. If you want to hurt people, then Freedom and Liberty (TM) includes the freedom to hurt people, and if you are on the receiving end, well, tough, those are the breaks.
And that does also mean that libertarian-friendly projects are not-infrequently started by, and definitely attract scammers and criminals. I'm not saying don't get involved in things like this, but the importance of caveat emptor is at least doubly important when dealing with one of them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @12:22AM
I'd love to see you try to reasonably explain your claim that "freedom and liberty includes the freedom to hurt people". Such a claim seems like rank propaganda, in addition to a bald-faced lie.
A free person is one which has sole claim of ownership to their body and other property. Any "hurting" done to a free person by anyone else is a trespass against said free peron, though the crime usually goes by other names depending upon the severity of the trespass: battery, fraud, murder, etc.