Bitcoin Enables Free Cities Movement – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Stephan Livera, host of the “Stephan Livera Podcast” and CEO of Swan Bitcoin International.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at Liberty In Our Lifetime, a conference hosted by the Free Cities Foundation in Prague, Czech Republic. And it occurred to me that we are now seeing the emergence of an adjacent and relevant movement for Bitcoiners interested in citadels, and what they might even look like in the real world.
The Free Cities Movement consists of a combination of libertarians, bitcoiners, free private city operators and investors, seasteaders, those seeking to create intentional communities and those seeking to create parallel institutions and structures within today’s existing statist world. What lessons are there in this movement and how can more Bitcoiners get involved?
At a high level, there is a strong crossover between the cause of many Bitcoiners and those who hunt for free cities. They have a broad liberal ethos, and they are interested in economic freedom and creating parallel structures. For people unfamiliar with the free city movement or the free private city concept, I recommend listening to my podcast episodes with Titus Gebel (SLP161, SLP417) or, of course, reading the Free Private Cities white paper as ways to learn more.
As a leader in the Free Private Cities movement, Gebel opened the conference with a reminder of why there is a fundamental need for this parallel approach. He noted that modern states are run by “bolshe-woke” progressives. Many institutions in society have been effectively captured, bloated and/or corrupt. Progressives simply go where their ideas don’t have to work in the real world, such as universities or in the media. Over time, the social and cultural degeneration has worsened, so that even a moderate or center-left person for decades is now considered a “far-right” person.
For this reason, there is a need to create alternatives. But it is only through trial and error that we can understand which approaches work and which do not. Of course, there will be many states that oppose this kind of thing, but there may be some that can be taken if the approach is “win-win” in terms of creating jobs and opportunities for people locally, or perhaps to attract Foreign investment .
Overall, I felt a bias towards action rather than just talking about the philosophy of freedom and libertarianism, which I appreciate.
ZEDEs: Próspera Morazán and Ciudad Morazán
Some of the most prominent projects within the free city community are based on the idea of using Honduras Zones For Employment And Economic Development (ZEDEs) to create the conditions for good, private governance.
Now there is good and bad. The good thing is that the projects are moving forward with construction, and given a setup that promises favorable regulation and lower taxes, this could be attractive to investors, entrepreneurs and even workers. The bad thing is that there are challenges coming, and some states will resist because they may see free private cities as a challenge to their national sovereignty.
Trey Goff from Próspera spoke about the governance market and how globally it is a huge market with further potential wealth. How much additional wealth could be created if people all over the world had access to high quality governance?
Can these free private cities replicate the successes of other economic free zones such as Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore or Dubai?
The Próspera management platform was laid out like this:
Goff also noted that by providing the right circumstances, such as competitive taxes (such as 10% flat income tax, 2.5% value added tax (VAT) and 1% land value), along with high quality infrastructure and dispute resolution, they could hypothetically achieve following growth:
And it’s not just about rich businessmen and expats. There will be job opportunities for, for example, local Hondurans who can come and work for a company inside the ZEDE/free city. There are some projects that intend to provide employment opportunities for workers, and have housing that is cheap and accessible. Some speakers mentioned how the ZEDEs want to hire Hondurans and provide good paying jobs, paying above what they would otherwise earn.
The elephant in Honduras room
To be clear, there is one elephant in the room: the recent Honduran election and change of president, and the Honduran Congress repealing the so-called ZEDE law to repeal the ZEDE framework. There is technically a 50-year protection in place, according to the presentations, as the government is supposed to respect the “vested right”, but as noted by a free city project speaker, the government still controls the men with guns. So it is still unclear what happens to these special ZEDEs/free private city projects as a ratification process is expected to take place next year.
I have sympathy for the people who run, invest and promote the ZEDEs, as they are likely to be subjected to unfair treatment by the mainstream media. Bitcoiners know this feeling well, as they are subject to being told that “Bitcoin is dead” (for the thousandth time) or that “Bitcoin is boiling the seas” (while the mainstream cites a statistical central bank blogger with an ax to grind). ZEDE operators seem to want to provide freedom, choice and improved prosperity, from what I could tell.
ZEDEs from a Bitcoin perspective
Interestingly for Bitcoiners, Próspera is open in terms of legal tender and there is no capital gains tax, allowing free use of bitcoin without accounting and record-keeping headaches. It is also worth noting that the island of Roatán (Prospera is located on this island) has also focused Bitcoiner education.
Dusan Matuska spoke at the conference about his educational efforts with AmityAge Academy, the first Bitcoin education center in Honduras. There are Bitcoin workshops, and restaurants and pubs on the island that accept bitcoin, and even bitcoin education projects and events planned, such as the bitcoin hill run.
Seasteaders
There were some influential people from the seamen’s movement who also presented, such as Patri Friedman, Joe Quirk and others. The catchphrase I noticed was: “stop arguing. Start seasteading,” which I can understand given the attitude of many statistics around the world who proactively stop libertarians and other free-minded people from having freedom.
If all (or most) of the land on earth is claimed and ruled by statistics, is the answer really to go and establish yourself on the sea? I saw different approaches and ideas shared in this way, such as the creation of a SeaPod (or perhaps stylized as a “SeaBNB”), which could be set up so that the visitors/residents get a full 360-degree view of the sea.
Picture from OceanBuilders.com
Various technological and almost sci-fi ideas were also shared, such as the use of drone delivery, helipads and intelligent voice assistants (that do not “phone home” to Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.).
Separately from SeaPod, ideas were also presented on how to gradually create a community of like-minded seafarers who would first come together in their boats in marinas around the world, then slowly and gradually shift out in stages. form connected floating platforms that allow freer markets offshore, and to have the ability for people to join, leave or reconfigure their components in the common floating platform, all within a voluntary free market context.
Flag theorists
Of course, from the liberal world there is “flag theory”, and we saw some consultancies such as Katie The Russian’s Plan B Passport and Staatenlos’ talk of playing the geoarbitrage game.
This can mean using different types of “flags”: citizenship, residency, business structures, bank accounts, phone service, insurance and various other components to choose from choices around the world – rather than being locked into one country. Of course, this crowd is very familiar with using Bitcoin as part of an overall strategy to achieve freedom, and they are generally comfortable trading with bitcoin.
Bitcoiners
Of course there were bitcoiners in attendance as well. I gave a talk about some practical tools and examples of people or organizations using Bitcoin as a parallel system.
We also saw some well-known Bitcoiners present and host a panel discussion on Madeira, an autonomous region in Portugal. Daniel Prince, Knut Svanholm, Andre Lojas, Jeff Booth (virtual), Greg Foss (virtual) and Lawrence Lepard (virtual) presented on the Free Madeira initiative.
And of course, while in town in Prague, the Bitcoiner crew visited Paralelní Polis, a unique organization known for promoting freedom and cryptoanarchy. There you can pay with bitcoin on chain or through Lightning!
Summary
These various projects and methods are additive and help the overall cause of freedom. For example, flag theorists are out there encouraging individuals to obtain additional residency or passports and to play the jurisdictional arbitration game, this helps to reinforce the idea that countries or states must compete with each other to attract talented individuals or companies. The creation of new free city projects also helps to provide new opportunities. The sea-going effort (although it may not be my cup of tea), still provides new opportunities for people to express their desire for freedom and choose another jurisdiction.
Of course, most powerfully, Bitcoin has a huge role to play in enabling these other projects and initiatives to work, even despite resistance in the fiat banking system. We should all look for ways to trade more freely, and grow our parallel financial system: Bitcoin.
This is a guest post by Stephan Livera. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
