Some people criticize libertarians or anarcho-
capitalist as being “utopian-minded” or “impractical”.  Yet, the utopia described by the Marxist may have been the foundation for changing millions of people into socialist.  The ideas that were supposed to lead us to the Marxist utopia became widely accepted by people in the intellectual classes of every nation on the planet.  Logical arguments designed to delay the steady march towards totalitarianism are crushed like a Branch Davidian infant under a US tank.  The powerful allure of a “better world” is difficult to overcome without a competing version of another “better world”.   Thus, I think that there is something to be gained in establishing a libertarian utopia in the minds of the masses. 

I have been interested in various “freedom” projects for a few years now.  I suspect most anarcho-
capitalists have gotten their hopes up at one time or another over some new plan to escape the clutches of the Leviathan.  There are probably many projects I am not aware of, but I’d like to provide a list of some interesting ventures that I do know a little about and follow this article up with some ideas on a plan of my own. 

I started visiting the Oceania website several years ago after they were written up in Wired magazine.  This project billed itself as “The Atlantis Project”.  The plan was to build a floating city that would grow quickly because of the large quantities of freedom available to its citizens.   I don’t think there has been any new information since 1995, so I’m assuming that the project is dead.  

A lot of the same ideas were incorporated into the plans of Robert Heinlein fan Prince Lazarus.  The plan is to build an island in a shallow part of the Caribbean on concrete pillars.  The country would be made up of thousands of little islands separated by picturesque canals according to the website.  It  seems technically possible to me, in Japan they built a two square mile island airport for about 12 billion dollars.  Lazarus then hopes that the country will swiftly grow as a center of tourism, unregulated health care and offshore banking. Lazarus isn’t completely libertarian, he wants to have a tariff of 15% on all imported goods, which he says will be the only tax allowed by the constitution.  The rest of his ideas for ruling the country are supposedly derived from the “philosophies of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein”.  He wants the country to be a constitutional monarchy, ruled by himself of course.  They have regularly pushed back the construction date for several years now.  If you email the website for info they do send back a prompt reply and there are periodic updates about the development. There is some speculation that the whole plan is a complete fraud meant to get investors money, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.  However, I am foolishly optimistic that one day the Freedom Ship will make frequent visits to what Lazarus calls the Principality of New Utopia. 

What is the Freedom Ship?  At over ¾ of a mile long and 25 stories tall, it is going to be the biggest ship in the world if the project is completed.  The investors in this project do not publicly claim to be libertarian, but they do plan on having no duties or taxes on income or trade.  The investors seem to be legitimate businessmen who are trying to make money. This greatly increases the probability that something will actually happen in my opinion.  One of the key problems with most freedom projects I have seen is the lack of capital.  The lack of capital is direct result of there not being a credible business plan for people to get a good return on their capital.  The investors in freedom ship see this as being a good opportunity for small businesses, retirees and entrepreneurs to make money at various ports around the world as the ship circles the globe every two years.  They have a lot of promotional information you can get a hold of, as they are always courting investors and trying to sell condos on the ship. They have pre-sold a substantial percentage of the condos, and they have leased a construction site in Honduras.  However, I am not sure that they have begun construction yet and the project is continually delayed due to legal problems and other red tape.  Who knows when we can expect to see the implementation of any of these projects? 

There have been many other attempts to start countries in the last 30 years.  There is a book offered by the Loompanics bookstore, “How to Start Your Own Country”, that documents several of the efforts.  The book also points out many of the reasons for failure and offers some insightful points for anyone who would like to see a successful attempt in the future. 

I recently read an announcement for a “Free State Project”.  The originator of this project, Jason P Sorens wants several thousand libertarians to move to the same low population state(yet to be determined).  He then wants the libertarians in that state to use the political system to vote libertarian people into office and gain control of the political system.  He hopes that they will be able to eliminate lots of taxes and regulation at the state level and then threaten the feds with secession in order to lessen the federal burden on the state.  There is a substantial problem in convincing a large number of people to uproot their families and move to a random low population state, but maybe some libertarians are freewheeling enough to do this.  If all of them are actually motivated to get people elected they should have no trouble making a few thousand dead people to vote libertarian as well.  I’d certainly like to visit if they get something going.  If your curiosity is piqued by this plan then I advise you to also checkout the data on population by county as well as state.  There are 7 counties in Texas alone that have a population of less than 1000.  There are over 690 counties in the US that have populations of less than 10,000.  Email me for any US county population data.  There are a lot of things that the state and feds rely on the county police to enforce.  With a little well placed intentional incompetence, passive aggressiveness, peaceful non-compliance and outright threat of secession, a county government could do a lot to increase freedom.  

I enjoy reading about these plans and hope they succeed beyond expectations, but I think there is room for as many different freedom projects as there are people.  Thus I’ll share a little bit about my plan in an upcoming article.