Latest / IMI Podcasts / #19: Free Private Cities and Governance as a Service in Coercion-Free Jurisdictions - With Dr. Titus Gebel

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#19: Free Private Cities and Governance as a Service in Coercion-Free Jurisdictions - With Dr. Titus Gebel · IMI Podcasts

0:04
SPEAKER_03: Ladies and gentlemen, it's 7 p.m.
0:06
SPEAKER_03: in Dubai, 3 p.m.
0:07
SPEAKER_03: in Lisbon, 11am in St.
0:09
SPEAKER_03: Kitts.
0:10
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to a new episode of the Mobility Standard, the podcast where we dissect current events, trends, and crucial questions related to investment migration.
0:21
SPEAKER_03: I'm your host, Christian Nessim, editor of Investment Migration Insider.
0:27
SPEAKER_03: Imagine for a moment a society in which a private company buys a plot of land, obtains autonomy from the state in which it's situated, and invites businesses and individuals to stay there by offering government as a service.
0:43
SPEAKER_03: This free private city company would provide protection of your life, liberty, and property, a service that includes internal and external security, a legal and regulatory framework, and independent dispute resolution.
0:59
SPEAKER_03: As a resident, you would pay a contractually fixed amount per year for those essential services and take care of everything else yourself.
1:08
SPEAKER_03: You'd be able to do as you please, limited only by the rights of others and the contractually agreed rules of coexistence.
1:18
SPEAKER_03: That is precisely the vision of my guest in today's episode, Mr.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: Titus Goebel, a German entrepreneur and lawyer and the founder of the Free Private Cities Foundation.
1:30
SPEAKER_03: I spoke to Titus about the concept of a free private city and the degree to which it's feasible, the latest developments in the field with an emphasis on the CV projects in Honduras, the historical precedents for free private cities, the long-term ramifications of successful free private cities, technology's role in the decentralization of political power and the rise of sovereign individuals, and why the European Union, which is totally opposed to special economic zones, is unlikely to survive the next three decades.
2:09
SPEAKER_03: All of that and a great deal more in today's episode of the Mobility Standard.
2:14
SPEAKER_03: I'd like to remind you that you can follow all of IMI's stories on our website, imidaily.com, on our mobile phone apps, in our free newsletters, as well as on your favorite social media network.
2:26
SPEAKER_03: You can also follow this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcast platforms.
2:33
SPEAKER_03: With the preambles out of the way, let's get this show on the road.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: Titus, I read your white paper from start to finish, and I found myself nodding along the whole way through.
2:51
SPEAKER_03: It reminded me of the uh Free to Choose series from Milton Friedman back in the 80s.
2:56
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you ever saw that.
2:57
SPEAKER_03: Um I was a big, big, big fan of his.
3:00
SPEAKER_03: Um you had that eloquence in there.
3:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, but anyway, before we get into all of that, let's uh start the way that we usually start on this podcast, which is by having the guests give a brief introduction of themselves, and then we'll get into talking about free private cities.
3:20
SPEAKER_03: So um you are originally from you're an entrepreneur from the private sector, um, you've now retired, and you are um full-time running the Free Private Cities Foundation.
3:33
SPEAKER_03: Is that correct?
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Nearly.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm originally from Germany.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Um I I started as a lawyer, so so not as an entrepreneur.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: After my university, I did a PhD in international law in Heidelberg's uh university.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but started as a more or less normal lawyer, a little bit more focused on the public side of things or public law.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh after five years I discovered this is not for me for the rest of my life.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: I want to create something, and so I changed into uh what at that time was relatively hot, that was around the year 2000, in uh in the part of southern Germany where I lived was the biotech industry.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: So I became a manager there um also for legal issues, but also for human resources, and later general manager um uh for things, and then switched sides to the venture capital area where I discovered uh natural resources uh just by reading newspapers that this is the next big thing because the the industry totally was collapsed um after all the cheap stuff come came on the market from the from the fall down of the East Bloc.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: So nobody wanted to do this any longer.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, you had China with with increased demand, right?
4:51
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I started really in the resources industry in 2004, uh China was accounting for 10% of the metal consumption of the world, and now it's 25%, right?
5:03
SPEAKER_00: In such a relatively short period of time.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: And I saw it coming.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it wasn't too difficult, right?
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but um my business decision, which I eventually took with a partner back then, is to well, let's form a resources company.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: So the the old-fashioned stuff that nobody wanted to do.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And even my mother told me that back then, why didn't you why don't you found a solar company instead?
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Right.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: So and I told her, I said, Mother, before I found the 167th solar company in Germany.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: I found the first new resources and mining company.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: And eventually we did that.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Um uh started with gold mining, tin mining, even in uh in East Germany, uh SinkLED joint venture with Glencore in Canada.
5:51
SPEAKER_03: Um uh had a so this is with your firm, uh Deutsche Rohstoff.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: That's Deutsche Rolstoff today, yeah, and which later became then an oil and gas dominant company um after we started doing oil and gas business in southern Germany and then eventually with American partners in uh in the Midwest, became very successful.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: This was basically the company maker which allowed me to retire um after being eight years the CEO and co-founder in the end at the end of 2014, and I could move with my family to Monaco where I'm now residing and where I'm sitting now um looking out of the window, seeing the marvelous uh blue sky and the Mediterranean Sea, maybe like you.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: And um, I don't know, or are you on on the Atlantic side of Portugal?
6:42
SPEAKER_03: Uh well I'm on the river that comes in from the Atlantic, but what what uh what an illustrious career you had.
6:50
SPEAKER_03: Extremely interesting to hear that, and it it's obviously turned out well for you.
6:55
SPEAKER_03: Monaco isn't a place that welcomes just anybody, obviously.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: And um also extremely interesting to hear about that background in Deutsche Rohstoff.
7:05
SPEAKER_03: Uh because uh I'm sure we could have a whole separate conversation about the upcoming energy crisis, commodities uh prices are going through the roof.
7:15
SPEAKER_03: Uh, obviously, the the world's uh biggest exporter of wheat has uh recently invaded the world's fourth biggest exporter of wheat.
7:24
SPEAKER_03: That is going to do something to food prices around the world, no doubt.
7:28
SPEAKER_03: Uh we have uh probably, you know, if if the if the pipes fill up uh coming from the Sakhalin field in in Siberia, uh we're going to probably have to see shut-ins in in a lot of the Russian fields, and they of course freeze over, and you can't reopen them uh in the in the near term.
7:49
SPEAKER_03: So we're probably going to have a big energy crisis, four or five million barrels of oil per day going offline.
7:56
SPEAKER_03: Um so and anyway, I I wish we had the extra.
7:59
SPEAKER_03: We only have 50 minutes, so so I wish we had the time to talk more about this.
8:03
SPEAKER_03: But today what I really want to talk to you about is your your passion, which is free private cities.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh what what I did then, I I mean I was disappointed by politics.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: I was involved in politics since I was a young boy, right?
8:19
SPEAKER_00: In the uh more or less in the in the classical liberal spectrum.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh so the the the term liberal, as you know, has moved towards the left, especially in the US, but uh also uh in Europe in the last years.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Um that's why I today would rather call me a libertarian to make it clear that I'm standing for the classical liberal principles of a small state and have have own decision capacities as an individual.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: But I was disappointed.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: I had had good connections.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: I was part of the establishment, you could say, as a as a somebody who had good connections to the to the Liberal Party who was in government from time to time.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh I was a CEO of a well-respected company.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, so um I got it in an insight, uh, and after that I found okay, this system cannot be reformed.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: There's absolutely even if you are the best willing person in the world, um, it's impossible.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: It's totally entrenched in the vested interests, and uh there are so many people who have an interest that they or they make a living out of not recognizing what's going wrong, right?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: And um right.
9:31
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's it's parasitism, it's a parasitism, and and I think that uh people you know have always told me ever since I was a very young man that well, you know, if you don't like the system, why don't you join it and and change it from the inside?
9:45
SPEAKER_03: But but that argument is kind of like saying, well, why don't you join the mafia and try to from the inside turn it into a benevolent uh association?
9:54
SPEAKER_03: Because the system itself exists not for the purpose of you know making life better for everybody, but to serve the interests of the people in that system.
10:04
SPEAKER_03: And I think what you're doing is sort of a it's a recognition of you know this is beyond redemption, there isn't something we can do, we we can't tweak it to make this uh uh a libertarian solution.
10:16
SPEAKER_03: What we have to do, and and also to your point about you know the bastardization of the term liberal, I think it's important uh for people to point out for the audience that the way as you say that it's the phrase or the term liberal is used in the United States, you know, it means really lefty.
10:32
SPEAKER_03: Whereas uh the classical, in the classical sense, liberal is the the tradition of Adam Smith.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: John Locke.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Adam Smith, John Locke, yes, um and and rule of law, right?
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh all these things.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Austrian economics, Austrian economics, all this, yeah.
10:52
SPEAKER_03: Okay, great.
10:53
SPEAKER_03: So let me start asking you about the concept of a free private city.
10:59
SPEAKER_03: I think I wonder if, first of all, do you have sort of an elevator pitch, uh like a one or two sentence uh description, uh a brief description of what the concept means?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: So the the the the defining feature of a free private city is that it's run by a for-profit company, um uh which acts as a government service provider, so to speak.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: And uh in this capital capacity, this company called the operator offers citizens of the free private city protection of life, liberty, and property.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: And uh these services encompass internal and external security, a predefined legal and regulatory framework, and independent dispute resolution.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: So interested individuals and companies alike enter into a citizens contract and paying a fixed yearly fee for these services instead of taxes, a fixed fee.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: And within that framework, which is relatively limited, a spontaneous order can develop which emerges from the voluntary activities of the citizens.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And uh, very important is that the operator cannot later unilaterally change the citizens' contract uh uh without the permission of the citizen concerned.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: And that is one of the I would say most important features that many people don't really get is that this citizens' contract instead of a constitution is giving you a much better legal position because there is no uh third party like the majority or parliament or government that could intrude into your contract, right?
12:36
SPEAKER_00: This is purely bilateral.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And the other big the other big thing is that if you like free market mechanisms and see that they're working, if you like Austin economics, I say, okay, why then not transfer these insights into the market of living together?
12:51
SPEAKER_00: And what I'm offering is a new product on that market, and if you don't like it, just stay where you are.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not attacking the existing systems, I'm just uh want to create an alternative.
13:02
SPEAKER_03: And hypothetically, of course, if you if you wanted to, I think you mentioned also in your white paper, if you want to live in sort of a kibbutz style, uh that type of social organization, there is there is room for that within the scope of a free private city as well.
13:17
SPEAKER_03: You you would simply uh put that in the citizens' contract, as you call it, or it maybe in the charter of the free private city.
13:25
SPEAKER_03: Uh it would be a contract, right?
13:27
SPEAKER_00: It's not a charter city.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: It's because there is no charter, there's a contract for the reasons I outlined.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: But you are right.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can basically modify these types.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't then call it a free private city, you would call it a free whatever cooperative city or whatever.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the term private also does just mean this is this is a company that has to operate for profit, but the company can be owned by the citizenship, it can be also organized as a cooperative, and the rules can be, as you said, keyboards-like, right?
13:57
SPEAKER_00: No private property allowed.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And if people like it, they can come.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: So you can design those different free private city types to different order target groups, so to speak.
14:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
14:10
SPEAKER_03: Well, okay, so the the concept is extremely well founded in the tradition of, I mean, you what you're making is a a gulch gulch, in a sense.
14:20
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, of course, yeah.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: You you you could be making it uh kibbutz, but in in all likelihood, the people who would be most interested in this, such as you and me, we would want it for the the elements of freedom that it would provide, which we can't find anywhere else.
14:38
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you you you have uh you enjoy probably one of the highest degrees of freedom living in in Monaco.
14:44
SPEAKER_03: Uh that unfortunately is not available to most people.
14:48
SPEAKER_03: Uh you would like to kind of bring this to the the masses.
14:52
SPEAKER_03: But um I I've I've followed this, I've followed these uh lines of thinking for uh probably decade, 15 years, and I've been excited in the past about various initiatives, starting with the Seasteading Institute and their work.
15:08
SPEAKER_03: Um I had some hope when I when I saw that um that in uh that Vitjedlitska uh had uh occupied a part of a small island on the Danube, which is unclaimed territory between uh Serbia and Croatia, is it?
15:24
SPEAKER_03: Um that's a diff that's a different model.
15:27
SPEAKER_03: Of course, we can we we can widen the scope to you know the first one of the first examples is probably like Sea Land, where uh the Principality of Sea Land, where they took over an old uh fortress, was it in in uh international waters?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Anti-aircraft platform.
15:43
SPEAKER_03: Anti-aircraft platform from World War II.
15:46
SPEAKER_03: Right.
15:47
SPEAKER_03: Um and then I think probably uh the the latest and and what to my mind seems like the most feasible model are the sedes in in Honduras, right?
16:00
SPEAKER_03: And I know you've been involved um with uh Prospera, uh one of the sedes there.
16:06
SPEAKER_03: I know we had a spot of bad news recently from that there was a change in government and they seem to have repealed it.
16:14
SPEAKER_03: Does this mean the end for Prospera, for example?
16:16
SPEAKER_03: Uh what went wrong there?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think um no, it's not the end of Prospera because what they have repealed is the Sede law, but there are already three SADs existing, and according to the Sede law and the constitution, even if the Sede law is repealed, this existing SEDEs are untouched for at least 10 years, which could be extended up to 50 years if there's an international treaty with another country, which luckily is the case with the country of Kuwait.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: So there's a country uh there's a bilateral agreement between Kuwait and Honduras saying that the Sede regime uh should should uh continue for 50 years.
16:53
SPEAKER_03: So the people who have created So this is sort of a fail-safe that you put in place right from the start.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: A fail-safe in case of Yeah, that that were the basically the people that were from the Honduran government, uh jurists also that were putting that up.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Their idea was um more that at that time they they had the feeling their country was in the hand of of drug gangs and they could corrupt uh everything up to the highest judges and things like that.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: And so they said, but what can we do?
17:21
SPEAKER_00: And they wanted to create a new Hong Kong in the Caribbean.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Said let's create a Hong Kong type of thing with own legal system and own administration and own courts, and they copied in a way the Hong Kong base law, and then some libertarians from the US got some influence.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: There's even a possibility for uh agreement of coexistence in the CEDE law, which is a little bit like my citizens' contract, and that was why people then and this law was passed in 2013, and then in 2016 people approached me, uh Venezuelan US group.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they wanted to create a the first CEDA, and they have had heard about my private governance ideas.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: So they approached me to become a part of that, and I I like that concept, I like the group, so I I put in some money and then eventually became chief legal officer uh uh and helped creating this legal structure because originally that was not a private governance model, it was more a top-down governor model like Hong Kong, and we basically put uh a private thing uh umbrella around it.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: So you have both, you have a charter there and a contract.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit a hybrid, but it was really uh a very promising model and it still is.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh the problem was that's my personal view, the Condor government took too let it let pass too many years from 2013 to 2017 before they uh really approved the first SEDE.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: And then the SEDE it took too much time, uh uh also because uh government uh procedures were not really established to really start getting something on the ground, which is now has happened last year, right?
19:05
SPEAKER_00: So and first hundreds of jobs are created.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: So let's imagine everything happen has had had happened three years earlier.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And you would have now three CEDAs, or I know that there were 20 more applications on the on the table.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: You had maybe would have ten CDs with uh tens of thousands of jobs and then it wouldn't be so easy as it was now for the leftist government or the president calls herself socialist.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, to to say this is evil capitalist Yankees coming taking away your land and um and expropriating you, right?
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Which never happened, and every SADI said we are never going to do that, but this was basically their ticket, and that's how it works in politics.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: I think you know that, I know that, uh we have to cope with that.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: So um it is easy to repeal the SADI law because there was no interest group behind it, right?
20:03
SPEAKER_00: So it was an easy target.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Other things in the country you have very influential industrial, in rich people, influencer groups that it's might make it much harder to then to to to do to change those things.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: But the sedies, there are foreigners there, they have no real influence, um and and so far was an easy target um for the socialists.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: But now from a legal standpoint, it's very hard to get rid of the existing CEDEs, and that's be because the initial Honduran creators did a good job, right?
20:36
SPEAKER_00: And we will see what's happening now.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: So, my la latest information is there's a negotiation going on um between the parties saying maybe we can find a compromise uh so that we repeal the Sede law, but the existing SADs are getting another name, they're coming under another regime.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh we make a law with which everybody can live, and the investment stays in the country, and the the uh people who who prefer this legal autonomy of the SADs, they are also happy enough that they stay.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: So this is maybe a a potential good outcome.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: There's also a potential bad outcome that they just say no, the SEDI law is repealed and we're getting we're taking away your CEDEs.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: But that this would definitely trigger uh will trigger uh damage claims before international arbitration courts.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Right?
21:25
SPEAKER_00: So this is yeah, these are basically the two options that we are facing now.
21:28
SPEAKER_03: But so but that would imply uh damages in what sort of magnitude?
21:34
SPEAKER_03: Tens of millions of dollars?
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Um I heard uh one 1.3 billion dollars is a f is a number I heard.
21:43
SPEAKER_03: So it's a significant amount, even for a sovereign country.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Prospero alone, I think there are sixty companies, right?
21:51
SPEAKER_00: And um I have a I have uh another company which is um in the Morazan uh zone active.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: There About 10 or 20 there.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: So this is something where you can say, hey, it's not it's not so easy just to say, hey, you can go, we don't need you, because so many people, I mean, this is already established, right?
22:13
SPEAKER_00: So and the people who are working there and who are inside are happy, right?
22:18
SPEAKER_00: And and Morazan is basically Honduran only, say they, right?
22:22
SPEAKER_00: So they're 99% of the people there are Hondurans, and they're they are happy.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but they're not enough.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: They're not enough to make a political difference, right?
22:31
SPEAKER_00: If there would be already 10,000 like Morazan has planned for the next two years, would be maybe a different story politically.
22:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're saying there there wasn't the critical mass necessary to have a sustained interest group.
22:44
SPEAKER_03: Uh and that's why if it is if they had uh progressed on a on a track that was three years earlier, then maybe by this point you would have been there, and that would have made the barriers to repealing it all the higher.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: So I understand that.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: Now, I read your whole white paper from start to finish, and I thought, okay, this has perfect internal validity.
23:05
SPEAKER_03: You it's like you've thought of you've thought of every eventuality, uh, all the incentives are entirely aligned to prevent any metastasis of the cancer that is the state.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: You've you've removed uh that that tumor entirely.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: But what about the external validity?
23:23
SPEAKER_03: Because a free private city would be extremely successful and an example for others to emulate.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: And it would it could happen very, very quickly.
23:34
SPEAKER_03: Um and if allowed to propagate, it could become, or I think it if allowed to propagate, it would become the dominant model of governance simply because it would outcompete anything coercion-based, any coercion-based model.
23:49
SPEAKER_03: And that no doubt is the whole point of a free private city.
23:53
SPEAKER_03: But any state or any politician that understands market economics and understands the model of free private city and its long-term consequences would reject that out of an existential fear.
24:08
SPEAKER_03: Um, so are you then dependent on the host nation's state representatives not grasping the seminal nature of a successful free private city, not understanding the wider ramifications of an example of a successful free private city until the concept has gained so much momentum and legitimacy that it's too late to stop it.
24:33
SPEAKER_03: Is that kind of what you're gambling on?
24:35
SPEAKER_00: No, I I don't think that this is this is this is absolutely necessarily the case.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Because you if you look at the special economic zones, right, it's a little bit a comparable thing.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, um, in the 60s, 1960s, you had maybe three to five of those special economic zones where people were saying, hey, we have to create a special legal system which is better for business than what we have.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: So every special economic zone is a is a confession of the state that obviously their rules are not the best.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, the number of special economic zones has grown from five to five thousand, right, in 50 years.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: It's an incredibly large number.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, many of them are not really active.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: But even if it's 500 successfully active special economic zones, this is a huge number.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: It's bigger than the number of states.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: And I would say the same will happen with free private cities.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: We have seen it in the Middle Ages, where the um uh the free cities, the free imperial cities um in uh uh in central Europe were popping up.
25:39
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, sorry, let me let me ask you on that, because I was going to ask, you know, what there must be some historical precedent for free private cities.
25:47
SPEAKER_03: I I know that Europe, you know, uh after the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire, had hundreds of city-states.
25:54
SPEAKER_03: Uh some of them, as I recall, had names like Freierstadt, for example.
26:00
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
26:00
SPEAKER_03: Uh but even yeah, so this was the period that that's known as Kleinstadt Reich, uh, where you had all these small states that kind of governed themselves in the in the wake of the breakup of that empire.
26:11
SPEAKER_03: But even these cities, I think, had some form of rulers and coercion of sorts.
26:16
SPEAKER_03: So are there examples truly?
26:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were still part of the Holy Roman Empire, right?
26:22
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Roman Empire only uh came to an end in 1806 or so when when Napoleon um basically declared or that or the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor, who was also then the Emperor of the uh Holy Roman Empire, um uh gave up his throne.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: But before you had the situation that you had an official ruler, which was the Emperor of the Holy Roman Nation of German, or the Holy Roman Empire of German nation as that was told, which was basically Germany in Italy, or large parts of Italy, and they um they established uh kind of freedom that made them only dependent on the emperor who was far away and had no standing army or standing bureaucracy, so in principle they were completely independent.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: And you have a comparable model with Venice.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Venice was starting originally as a subsidiary of the East Roman Empire of Byzanz, and then here's the thing that could happen in the future: it faded away, right?
27:33
SPEAKER_00: It was never officially declared that they are not part of Byzantinic Empire any any longer, they just became independent.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And I can imagine, Christian, that this might happen again, that we are officially under the sovereignty of country XYZ, um, paying our tributes every year, and eventually some states fall apart, but the city will remain.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: And the city will then gain a kind of a uh of a factual sovereignty, factual independence.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, even if a city is so successful that it's much more wealthy than the rest of the country combined, then it's uh eventually the outcome is.
28:15
SPEAKER_03: So even if even if the country around it, even if the s the what you call the host nation, even if the host nation doesn't fall apart, uh let's say that like you you have 30 years of running a proper, say the in Honduras, and then they end up having this GDP that is triple uh of what the the general GDP in Honduras is, and at that point you have a certain leverage that you didn't have in the past.
28:42
SPEAKER_03: But this goes back to my point about uh about kind of keep keeping the keeping the host nation blinded to that ambition uh until you reach such a point.
28:53
SPEAKER_03: Because if they understand that this is the end game, then naturally wouldn't they oppose it?
28:59
SPEAKER_03: Wouldn't they wouldn't they recognize that this is an existential threat to them?
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, it it let's go to back to the Middle Ages.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: How was it there?
29:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean it was the same.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Some some cities like the city of Cologne, they date it back to 1100 when they wanted to gain more independence from their, I think it was a bishop, right?
29:16
SPEAKER_00: Was their ruler.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: And uh and it took them 100 years to get finally their independence, and then they became uh free city just under the emperor, and the bishop was thrown out, or was even militarily defeated.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: But it took another 100 years for other uh monarchs to recognize hey, a free city is not a bad thing because they they are creating um uh economic activity in areas where before there was not much economic activity, and so first they were really defeating, trying to defeating these cities, they were fighting those cities, these free cities, or these attempts to become a free city, and then it turned totally around.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And they said, No, we are inviting you to create a new free city because then we think we have also some benefits out of that.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: So this this is a very probable scenario, and it happened in the Middle Ages, it happened again with special economic zones, and they think it will happen with free private cities.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: Having said that, your concern is valid.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: It will be some cases, maybe like we will see, maybe in Honduras soon, that the country will say we don't like this, we we we kill it.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: But um I think that if you are already established as a free private city successfully with 10,000 or 20,000 people or 50,000, and they say, Hey, we're coming to take you over, then we say, Okay, then we just move.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: And what have you gained?
30:45
SPEAKER_00: Nothing, right?
30:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the rule will not be that the host nations will try a military takeover or something.
30:55
SPEAKER_03: Well, it would be uh it would be a Pyrrhic victory, right?
30:58
SPEAKER_03: Because they would uh become kings of the ashes and that there would nothing would be left, right?
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in a way, and they will recognize or the the more intelligent will recognize and they will find a kind of a compromise.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: So this is also a um, I mean, politicians um are also that they do understand what is good for their power.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: And if they can make a deal with a free private city that puts them some money in their state coffers instead of creating a conflict situation which at the end costs them much more money, then maybe they are willing to make compromises.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have seen this in the past, right?
31:36
SPEAKER_00: You can you can take Monaco, for example.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Monaco had a big problem in the 1960s because all the rich French people were just moving to Monaco, still doing all their business in France, but not being taxable because they are now residing in Monaco with a um residual tax system.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: And so Charles the goal, the French president said, Well, this has to come to an end, right?
32:01
SPEAKER_00: And we are going to make a blockade of Monaco and say Monaco is is a protectorate, and from now on, everybody in Monaco is paying taxes to France.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: If not, we are blocking all your uh your traffic way, and that that was happening in I think '62 or so for for some weeks or months, and then eventually a compromise was reached.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: And the compromise is still valid today.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: It's it the compromise is that every French citizen residing in Monaco who has settled there after 1962 is paying taxes to France until today, and everybody who is not French is tax-free and only taxed by Monaco.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's this is the situation to today, and this is a typical um model for a bargain.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Of course, in theory, France was militarily much superior, right?
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Could have easily sent tanks and occupy Monaco, but it would create a reputational loss.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: It would create would have created a loss of uh of wealthy people, a lot, a loss of very productive people.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: And in so far, General Charles the goal was uh just making saying, okay, I mean if we get our taxes, why should we kill Monaco?
33:22
SPEAKER_00: It has more advantages.
33:24
SPEAKER_03: So he took a he took a relatively pragmatic approach as far as state actors go.
33:29
SPEAKER_03: Uh that's that's not what's happened in Honduras, it seems.
33:33
SPEAKER_03: You you think there's still hope.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: It's too early to make that call.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: What they have done is they have repealed the Sede law, which means you cannot create new SADEs, right?
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And I have heard that the president herself had said we want to keep the investment in.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: So that sounds pragmatic to me.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: So it's too early to make that call.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean the parliament has said we we don't want this law, but they haven't made a decision on the existing CEDES yet.
34:03
SPEAKER_03: What was the reason that Honduras became the uh host nation for CEDES to begin with?
34:11
SPEAKER_00: Because they again they wanted to do something against the uh taking take over of the country by organized crime, and they had also experienced that a reform is impossible in the country because it's too divided.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: And these people just said, okay, then then this charter city idea of Paul Roman was was developed in that time, 2009.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: They said that's a good thing, maybe you can try something like that.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: And they also said if this is working, uh other uh uh uh territories or other lands and even other villages can join existing cities if they will want to, right?
34:53
SPEAKER_00: So the good system can grow.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: That was a was a great idea.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And since Honduras just was the only country that had made such a far-reaching law, it became then the target uh uh nation for freedom seekers, for people like you and me who had always thought about those ideas, the Charter City people, and the free private city idea, and all that.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: So there was no other opportunity from a legal standpoint, right?
35:23
SPEAKER_00: We hear a lot about a billionaire X wants to create uh a private city here and there, but these are just real estate developments, right?
35:33
SPEAKER_00: There is no legal autonomy, so it's not really what people think it is, and and and so far, Honduras was so the only place, um and the Free Private Cities Foundation that you that you mentioned, that was of course founded by me to promote the idea, is now um will now be relabeled as a Free Cities Foundation so that we can have a broader scope.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: So we are covering all of those achievements, even only these, even this intentional communities who don't have real legal autonomy because there's a real momentum.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people want to create something new, want to try out a new thing.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, I have a commercial company called Tipolis, which is trying to make this project happen.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: And Tipolis is participating in the Prospera uh as an investor, and we also are negotiating with African governments about the establishment of the next uh independent or with legal autonomy.
36:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, let me ask you about that a little bit more because I'm I'm very curious to understand you know uh where is the cutting edge of free cities uh right now?
36:42
SPEAKER_03: Um obviously the most advanced are the Zedas in Honduras, but what other projects are you you're working on currently with uh Tipolis?
36:53
SPEAKER_00: I cannot disclose that, Christian, because the problem is um if you disclose this too early, then the political opposition in this respective country will jump onto that to damage the government, right?
37:05
SPEAKER_00: No matter if it's from the left or the right, right?
37:07
SPEAKER_00: So what we have to do is what we call in the mining industry the dirty end of the stick work is to negotiate with governments for years and years trying to convince the the Congress people, the parties, the interest groups, the elites in the respective countries that this is a good thing, and say, hey, it's a win-win situation, and often it they think it's just a special economic zone, and then they say, Oh, you want to have an own security?
37:36
SPEAKER_00: No, that doesn't work, right?
37:38
SPEAKER_00: So, this is relatively often the case, so it's not easy to make this happen.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: And I I knew this when I wrote a book.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: I said, Okay, I just dedicate the rest of my life.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: The book was published in 2018.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: I dedicate the rest of my life on making this a reality, right?
37:53
SPEAKER_00: And that Honduras was was a windfall profit, it was was was a lucky coincidence, and what's great that that so many people now really could try to work on that.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: And you know, Seasteading Institute is working on things.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I've become the chairman uh recently of the Seasinger Institute, um so I'm also supporting them.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh then you have the Charter City Institute, and the former founder Mark Lutter is now, we don't know where, uh, also involved in a in a real-world project to make a real Charter City uh reality.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: I assume it's also in Africa, but I'm not sure.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: Nobody knows about that.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's fair, right?
38:34
SPEAKER_00: You you shouldn't disclose this too early because you first need your legal autonomy approved by all parliament, state institutions, and then you go public and then you say, Okay, this is our model, this is why it's good for the country, and this is this is what we can discuss.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: And I hope sincerely that we will see one or two projects coming up this year.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: But my personal um negotiation experience, also from the mining sector, is it always takes longer than you think.
39:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
39:05
SPEAKER_03: So um I want to ask you more about these uh alternative models that are uh trying to reach the same destination by a different road.
39:16
SPEAKER_03: Um but but before we do that, I understand you you cannot say specifically you know which countries you are pitching uh for pre free private cities.
39:25
SPEAKER_03: But can you tell me a little bit about what is your what does an ideal candidate host nation look like?
39:32
SPEAKER_03: What elements are in place that that make you say, uh-this place could be this this is maybe the government I should be talking to and trying to convince to open a pre free private city?
39:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean ideally it would be a government this is this is long-term stable, right?
39:50
SPEAKER_00: That is not changing every four or two years, like in Honduras, so that has a long-term stability because people trust the government, or it's it's only one strong party, or the party is very dominant, and the rulers are reasonable people.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: That does exist in in some parts of the world.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, then you should have ideally you have access to the sea for the free private city or prosperity zone or hybrid model, whatever you have, autonomy zone, because then you can trade with the rest of the world.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and and there's no opportunity for some corrupt uh public officers to say, hey, you give us money and otherwise we don't let your containers in and stuff like that.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: Right.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: So this is this is certainly better if you have access to the sea to have an own port or to trade.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: Um other than that, I'm I'm I don't think this there's a specific uh environment that we need because at the end of the day we want to create our own model.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and the only thing you need from the other side is that they keeping the contract that they have signed.
40:54
SPEAKER_03: Right, which uh is easier said than done a lot of the time, I can imagine.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: True.
40:59
SPEAKER_03: But but uh what about you know um in terms of geography?
41:06
SPEAKER_03: Can it be under, for example, could it be under the EU umbrella, or is that out of the question?
41:12
SPEAKER_00: It's out of the question because the European Union exactly wants the opposite.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't it does not want a comp competition of systems, it was it wants what they call harmonization, which is centralization, right?
41:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: And that means even countries with special economic zones that were joining the European Union, they had to sign that they're abandoning the special economic zones by the year 26 or whatever, like Poland or Portugal with Madeira, right?
41:43
SPEAKER_00: So they they have said okay, you you there's a there's a transitional period.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: So and I have I can disclose this now.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: I've negotiated with Montenegro and said, Hey, what about uh Europe?
41:55
SPEAKER_00: This is a great country, and Mediterranean would be my favorite place, by the way, like in the old Greek times, right?
42:00
SPEAKER_00: So many city-states.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: And I said, It's a uh I talked to a law lawyer who was very close to the government, and he said it's a great idea, but the problem is that we are already candidate for EU membership and we are already receiving money from the European Union.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: So if we could would come up now with such an autonomous zone model, they would say, Hey, wait a minute, right?
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Stop that, or we stop paying your money.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: And that is the situation.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh very difficult in Europe, maybe at the edges, right, where people where countries are not really candidates for the European Union.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: But times might change, right?
42:38
SPEAKER_00: What is not possible today in the European Union is maybe it's possible tomorrow, like in the UK, where they said uh immediately after Brexit, let's make 10 special economic zones in the country, right?
42:51
SPEAKER_00: So this again can change quickly.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: And um, I mean, what is possible is a kind of a de facto free private city where which is more an intentional community, where you acquire private lands, make up your own rules, but you're still subject to the state rules, of course.
43:09
SPEAKER_03: Well, I I think that it it's uh it's ironic that the European Union uh, or not the European Union, but that that Europeans should be opposed to uh free private cities.
43:20
SPEAKER_03: Because I think that this plethora of jurisdictions that Europe had in the Middle Ages and later was a source of incredible competitive economic advantage to the region.
43:37
SPEAKER_03: Because this is I think this is one of the reasons that Europe was able to develop more quickly and become richer than East Asia starting from you know about 500 years ago and up until today, because in East Asia you had you had these 5,000 year old civilizations, but they were centralized, the power was.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: Centralized.
44:01
SPEAKER_03: You had wide steps that were it was it was easy to move about in the region, it was easy to conquer, and so it was easy to centralize.
44:09
SPEAKER_03: Whereas in Europe, you had hundreds of these small statelets, and if they raise taxes too much or they treat you too poorly in one particular area, you can very easily move a couple hours to the east or the west or the north or the south and find uh a better jurisdiction.
44:27
SPEAKER_03: So you had this, I mean, just like in any kind of market, and you you speak of living together as a market, right?
44:34
SPEAKER_03: And in in every market, competition, what does it do?
44:37
SPEAKER_03: It lowers price and it improves quality, right?
44:40
SPEAKER_03: So if you could have if you could have a market for living together in Europe, and you did have a market for living together in Europe during the Kleinstadt period, um then you of course can have uh you're forcing each state to treat uh eat its citizens much better, and as a result, you you you economically you develop much more much more quickly, you have prosperity, you have not necessarily peace, that's a different question.
45:09
SPEAKER_03: Um but but are there is there any precedent in Europe for I mean we talked about all these small free cities, they were called free cities, but even those cities, I think, had some form of rulers and coercion.
45:27
SPEAKER_03: Uh are there any example of truly stateless governance as a service type of cities from the Europe's past?
45:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean what they did is is comparable in a way.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: For example, the the upper Italian cities, which were the first to come up, they or the the Hanseatic League, they were basically the business people in the in the city that made up a council, right?
45:55
SPEAKER_00: And but but the normal people didn't have a say in the council, so it was more steered by it's not a gu, not a company, but but the association of business persons.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: But it guild and it it it it was going into that direction, and the people were happy because they had more freedom, uh and over time the number of voters increased, which created other problems that we know from contemporary democracies.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: But I have elaborated on what you were saying in my book extensively, and it's not only the Middle Ages, it's also an ancient Creek that had so many competing police or police, uh different cities, um, which was one of the reasons why they were culturally and militarily so successful, right?
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Because there was a competition for innovation and everything.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: And um, in so far you're right, uh, Europe is the place where this is going to happen, and um still we have some reminders of the past, like San Marino, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra, um uh the Channel Islands.
46:59
SPEAKER_00: It's still there, it's still not totally lost, right?
47:02
SPEAKER_00: And it will come back again.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: That's my prediction, and we will see it in lifetime, and this is a good thing.
47:08
SPEAKER_03: Okay, I I I really, really hope you are right about that.
47:11
SPEAKER_03: It would be uh a dream that I share with you.
47:15
SPEAKER_03: Um I'm just pointing out that it's yes, the European Union is going in the opposite direction.
47:21
SPEAKER_03: They want to stamp out competition, they do not want competition.
47:25
SPEAKER_03: Uh, and as you point out, yes, there are some vestiges, some I would call them anachronisms uh left in Europe.
47:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh Monica, where you yourself live, San Marino, etc.
47:36
SPEAKER_03: Uh, why do you think that we will see this return to Europe in our lifetime?
47:41
SPEAKER_03: I hope you're right.
47:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying you're wrong.
47:43
SPEAKER_03: I I would love for you to be right.
47:45
SPEAKER_03: It just seems to me that the trend is towards centralization, not uh yeah.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: This is this isn't this is not doubted.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh I'm not disputing that there's a trend to centralization.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm what I'm saying is it's it's not going to work, especially in Europe, right?
48:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we can see it now, right?
48:02
SPEAKER_00: The enlightened elites, what they have, they created the biggest energy crisis since the 70s.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: The enlightened elites have have created a food crisis because of their uh their lockdowns, their unnecessary lockdowns.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: We have now seen that the results in not locked down countries is not much different from lockdown countries, but the result is a is a is a food crisis, right?
48:23
SPEAKER_00: Which was even there before the war.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: And and and this is what we have a negative selection of people who are in power in such empires.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: And that means these people are not capable of dealing with crisis.
48:38
SPEAKER_00: They are doing the wrong things.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: And they're just the only thing they can do is is just uh censor other people's views.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: They're very good at that, I admittedly.
48:47
SPEAKER_03: But now sorry, let me interrupt you for a second, Titus, because this very this very failure of the centralized model, all it's doing at the moment is okay, the centralized model plainly fails, and the answer is more centralization.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's yeah, you see what I mean.
49:06
SPEAKER_00: I see what you mean.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh but but let me let me uh say why, nevertheless, I think it will eventually lead to more decentralization.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: That is because um the the central government uh at some point in time can make any rules they want, they're just not followed any longer, they cannot enforce it, right?
49:31
SPEAKER_00: Because they this they destroyed all the existing working mechanisms through their stupidity.
49:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that means that uh eventually uh uh Bristols or Berlin will say you have to wear a red hat from now on, right?
49:46
SPEAKER_00: And you just don't do it.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: And people don't do it.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: We have had this before.
49:50
SPEAKER_00: You have this in many failed states.
49:52
SPEAKER_00: The government is just ruling over the capital and maybe 10 or 20 kilometers around.
49:57
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the country they do what they want.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: There's some warlords there or whatever, but this means decentralization, right?
50:04
SPEAKER_00: And so my job is I cannot change the system from within.
50:08
SPEAKER_00: I think we agree from that.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: I said I'm presenting a model which we try out in fringe states, every state that's welcoming us, which are mostly small states that have problems, so they must do something new.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: But it's a good thing, right?
50:22
SPEAKER_00: So they have a competitive advantage.
50:24
SPEAKER_00: But eventually the Europe can see hey, these models are working, and then I can come back and say, Hey, why don't we establish such a model in Europe?
50:32
SPEAKER_00: And then people just say, Okay, let's do it.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: And the central government says, No, you can't do it, and they say, You know what?
50:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what you say, central government, because you don't have the power any longer.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: And that is what I see coming.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can see how the formerly well functioning and extremely good organized country like Germany is now going down every year when it's still functioning, but you in some areas it's impossible to get even a driving license, right?
51:06
SPEAKER_00: Because the administration is incapable of doing that within a year or so.
51:11
SPEAKER_00: So that wouldn't have been the the case in in earlier uh times when I was still back in there in Germany.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: So you can see it as a decay, um, and this decay will lead to a situation that um uh a lot of people are um not um I I would say um or even governments are not able to enforce what they want to enforce.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: And that is then the case for decentralization.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: This is just a theory um based on what I've seen in other countries or in history, but I'm relatively sure that the European Union will not be there in uh 30 years' time.
51:50
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
51:51
SPEAKER_03: I okay on that point, I totally agree with you.
51:53
SPEAKER_03: I I've reached the same conclusion, maybe maybe for a variety of different reasons.
51:57
SPEAKER_03: But I I want to ask you about um the concept of the sovereign individual, because I think uh a lot of this ties into sovereign individualism.
52:06
SPEAKER_03: Of course, absolutely uh famous book uh William Rees Mogg and James Dale Davidson uh in the I think in 96 or 97 they wrote the book.
52:16
SPEAKER_03: Um their their central thesis, essentially, is that uh technology will advance to such a stage that it'll it'll it'll make it'll move leverage away from centralized governments and toward the individual.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: Uh and I I wanted to ask you what you think the role of technology will play in uh the fragmentation or decentralization of Europe.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: A huge role, and not only in Europe, in the world.
52:48
SPEAKER_00: One of the big things that government is accountable for in most countries is energy, right?
52:53
SPEAKER_00: If you have decentralized energy, and I mean really reliable, baseload, capable, cheap energy, like a new form of nuclear energy.
53:05
SPEAKER_00: You have a small reactor in the city, which is good for 25 years, and you don't have to replace anything, that gives you total independence basically.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: And there are other things that are comparable.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: Um look, when I was started in the US oil business, I mean we started from zero and eventually we managed to get a production of 10,000 barrel a day with only five employees.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that?
53:33
SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is is technology and uh the uh pot possibility to subcontract everything today, right?
53:41
SPEAKER_00: So you can sit in your home office in Lisbon and say, Okay, let's start a company for something.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh I make some phone calls, look at the internet, video conferences, all technology.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: Hey, let's agree on this and that, and then some engineer uh uh office will will do it.
53:59
SPEAKER_00: So this is this hasn't been possible even 20 years ago.
54:03
SPEAKER_00: So we will see in the future that the single person uh will have much more possibilities to to make something if he or she wants to.
54:11
SPEAKER_00: And then even smaller places, even remote places, say, Hey, we have internet, we have energy.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: What the fuck?
54:18
SPEAKER_03: We have low tax, we have low tax, come here.
54:21
SPEAKER_00: Zero tax fee system, right?
54:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah you you pay only for what you have ordered.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is also one thing what few people see on the first side.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: One of the big problems of our societies today is the so-called social contract is constantly changed.
54:38
SPEAKER_00: But never by us.
54:39
SPEAKER_03: Already let me just specify, I I don't remember signing any social contract.
54:45
SPEAKER_03: Nonetheless, I am I am told that I'm subject to that social contract.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: That's unfair, and that's obviously not what happens with contracts in the rest of your life, right?
54:56
SPEAKER_00: You cannot just order something from your tax advisor, and then he says, by the way, you have to pay double because I also did your garden.
55:04
SPEAKER_00: You said, I never ordered that, right?
55:07
SPEAKER_03: So No, I I get a I get a lot of bills from the I get I get invoices from the government for services that I never ever ordered.
55:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I get a lot of those.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: And and with three private cities, you're signing a you're really physically signing a contract and it has the rules in it, and the contract cannot be unilaterally changed.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is really this is new, right?
55:28
SPEAKER_00: This is groundbreaking.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: It's totally contracting.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's new in the market of living together.
55:37
SPEAKER_03: Right.
55:38
SPEAKER_03: That we that we would not force each other into uh association.
55:43
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so um technology obviously is going to play a role in the sense that people can work from anywhere and and the technology gives people the leverage to set up large organizations uh with very few people, yeah, simply by subcontracting the vast majority of the work.
56:03
SPEAKER_03: Um you mentioned the energy, uh, energy depend in so energy dependence.
56:09
SPEAKER_03: If you have energy independence, uh you have a great deal more leverage, of course.
56:13
SPEAKER_03: We're seeing now, you know, in the last um seven, ten years, the United States has become energy independent thanks to the Shale Oil Revolution.
56:21
SPEAKER_03: They're now an energy exporter.
56:24
SPEAKER_03: That makes them care a lot less about what happens around the rest of the world.
56:28
SPEAKER_03: The Soviet Union is long gone, they don't need to kind of bribe other countries with access to their markets to get them to take their side against the Soviet Union.
56:37
SPEAKER_03: This, of course, means that the Americans are kind of pulling back from the world stage.
56:42
SPEAKER_03: They're pulling out troops from a lot of places, they are uh refusing to continue subsidizing the safety of global shipping, uh, and they are leaving a lot of countries to pay for their own protection.
56:54
SPEAKER_03: Uh, Germany, we just saw recently, is uh vastly expanding their military budget.
57:01
SPEAKER_03: Uh same is happening with the Japanese.
57:04
SPEAKER_03: Old enmities are resurfacing.
57:07
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of a return to the historical norm.
57:10
SPEAKER_03: This, I imagine, will, you know, America will probably be fine because it can feed and fuel itself, and probably everything in the Western Hemisphere that's under the American umbrella of interest slash security will, thanks to the Monroe Doctrine, they'll probably be okay.
57:25
SPEAKER_03: But I in the rest of the world, we will probably see more turbulence in the next decade than we've seen in the last five decades combined.
57:32
SPEAKER_03: Um so how does energy uh play into this?
57:37
SPEAKER_03: How does energy you're saying if we have, for example, um we have a small reactor in our backyard or we we have uh photovoltaic cells on our roofs that have a very high efficiency, it captures most of the sunlight, then we will have a better chance at small um enclaves or small jurisdictions that that are relatively free?
58:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean if you're not depending on outside energy, if you're the US or a small free private city, it's the same result, right?
58:12
SPEAKER_00: You can you can do much more because you don't have to care about uh potential suppliers and their wills and their ideas and and their changes in mind.
58:22
SPEAKER_00: Um but I think uh if it's true that the US is basically withdrawing, then a lot of countries, and that might also happen because of the downfall of uh of the European Union, and um then a lot of failed states that getting 50% of the state budget financed by Western countries, they just have to think about how they make a living.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: And this is this is a good thing because it forces them to be more creative, to do new things, to to be really under market conditions, and they will definitely try out uh things like free private cities if they see that this is working.
59:01
SPEAKER_00: And um and in so far, I think this is also will create more competition on the market of living together, and it's eventually will be a good thing.
59:10
SPEAKER_00: Um I I don't think that all the subsidies for Africa have really done good for Africa in the last 50 years.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh the the president of Rwanda had said the opposite.
59:20
SPEAKER_00: If you leave Africa alone, it's divided better.
59:24
SPEAKER_00: And uh I think there's some truth to that, and uh we are really trying to offer products and models, and if people like it, they take it, and if not, they they don't take it.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: So I think uh the the turbulence in the world that we are expecting, and uh I do also expect them, is also creating chances for for new models like ours.
59:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
59:49
SPEAKER_03: Okay, that it's fascinating.
59:51
SPEAKER_03: I I wonder if you could you you you said I I don't think in 30 years that the European Union will be here.
59:57
SPEAKER_03: I wonder if you can kind of map out uh what are the dominoes that will fall during those three decades that'll lead to uh disintegration of that political union.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_03: Which which, by the way, I think we should point out to the audience, it was first introduced as a pretty simple free trade agreement.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_03: And then uh okay, you had free trade, and then they said, Oh, but now we have to have now we have to have common right.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it starts out oh just just a free trade agreement, and then it's like, oh no, but now we also need to have you know common standards on the angle that bananas can have, and then now after that we need to have oh, we we need to share some money with the periphery, which means we need to have a euro, uh so now we have a common currency, and pretty soon it's gonna be oh now we have to have a common uh common censorship guideline.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, common everything.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_03: Uh in in and it's all happening in the name of harmony.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_03: Of course, of course.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is I mean you know the the people who are in for the good cause they have created more damage than any all criminals together in the history of the world.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_03: The the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: And so this is not not different this time.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: But here's the domino thing what's happening.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_00: The moment people don't have enough energy uh because of stupid German energy policy, for example.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: The moment people will not be able to buy the food in the quantities they are used to, people a lot of things will ch will change quickly.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_00: And then they will, as you said, they will then come with more suppression, with more centralization, which will eventually lead to other countries dropping out, not only the UK, right?
1:01:41
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe they kick out of kick Hungary out or Poland or whatever.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_00: So and then you have it, right?
1:01:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's just if they're not delivering what they're pro look, what the European Union has done, why they are so successful, have been so successful, they're they're throwing money on everything, right?
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: And there's not a single NGO in Europe which has not received any money from the European Union, so they're all in favor.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_00: But if they cannot pay any longer, it's over in five years, right?
1:02:11
SPEAKER_00: And and it will not be completely over, and there will be uh hybrids and new models and and and successor models or whatever.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_03: But as a example, your example with Montenegro, where you spoke to the lawyers there and they said, look, we can't we can't have a free private city because that would imperil the funds that we get from the European Union.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_03: A few years ago, Moldova was opening a citizenship by investment program.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_03: Uh they turned right around uh after a few months because the European Union threatened to withhold the tranche payments.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_03: Uh so you're even the countries that are not in the European Union, uh a lot of the countries on the periphery are receiving EU funds, and this gives uh the European Union leverage over domestic policy in those countries.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_00: It's even worse.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_00: I think the European Union tried to uh force the Mercosur, the South American free trade organization, to follow some vogue guidelines in order for their trade agreement, right?
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: So they're truly trying to establish their um ideology, uh which they think they are the good people, but eventually they're just the usual totalitarian, know-it better people that want to rule over other people, right?
1:03:26
SPEAKER_00: So they think they're on the right side of history, and I've even seen people with t-shirts saying I'm on the right side of history.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, imagine if you have to wear a t-shirt like that.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_00: That's a clear indication that you may be not on the right side.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_00: And and history will history will what what what so far history is telling about people who are censoring, cancelling, um, uh forbidding speech, forbidding uh universities to hire professors with a different view.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_00: Usually history is not very kind to these people afterwards, right?
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: And it will be no difference this this time.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, and in so far, um, we have to survive, Christian.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_00: We have to find our niche um for our families, for like-minded people, and we have to present um concepts for the for the time after the uh the empire has collapsed, and that is all we can do, right?
1:04:21
SPEAKER_00: But it's a that's a lot.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, of course it's uh it's a huge job.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_03: But you're what you're saying then is uh look, we cannot we cannot stop, we can't prevent the collapse, we cannot uh prevent uh this unmitigated disaster, but at least what we can do is in the here or now present viable alternative, we can make predictions about what is going to happen so that after the collapse, people come to us and say, Hey, you remember that guy, Titus Gable, what he said, and ah, it turns out he was right all along.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_03: Now let's listen to him.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_03: So that's that's the idea.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't mean that we don't try to establish free private cities now, right?
1:05:00
SPEAKER_00: So I mean I I I I'm in negotiating uh uh every week, and it's a it's a hard thing, you can imagine.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: But we have a lot of supportive people, we have a lot of uh enthusiastic people.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_00: We are getting proposal from all over the world that hey, here we want to create, I think we can create a free private city, the government is in favor, and and normally it's not, right?
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: But uh but there are chances there, and if we can show it, it's even more convincing than just a white paper.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_03: That's it for today, folks.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_03: But we'll be back soon with another episode of the Mobility Standard.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_03: In the meantime, I want to remind you to follow our work on iMyDaily.com, the world's number one publication for investment migration, home to the internet's greatest collection of investment migration data, real estate, expert opinion, and the intelligence you need to be a successful investment migration professional.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_03: Thank you for listening.