
This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there - webdisrupt
http://littlerock.com.mt/news/this-man-just-claimed-a-new-european-nation-160000-people-already-want-to-live-there/
======
sam_goody
Micro nations are not new, and they are almost never successful [1].

They are ripe for fraud: selling passports, fraudulent government bank, etc.
In the event that they pick up any traction, they are swallowed by their
neighbors with real armies (eg. Minerva), and the rest of the world sighs with
relief.

An interesting example of one that is still officially around, also claims
land in Croatia, and exists just for fraud is the Dominion of Melchizedek [2].

Even Lichtenstein, which thrives on laws that allow outside companies to evade
their local taxes, skirts on the definitions of "legal", "nation", et al.
(though I have a few friends from there who are all great guys)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation)
[2]
[http://www.quatloos.com/groups/melchiz.htm](http://www.quatloos.com/groups/melchiz.htm)

~~~
kauffj
Agreed, but why should the "rest of the world sighs with relief"?

Existing government is sub-optimal and competition tends to increase quality.
Is there a special property of government service that makes this principle
fail here?

~~~
pjc50
Government is not a service. It nearly always _provides_ services, but it also
provides stability and a means of dealing with "negative externalities".
Running a government with a particularly lax policy on fraud, pollution, etc.
can easily export problems around the world.

~~~
gosub
Aren't stability and "dealing with negative externalities" also services?
Without goverments people would seek them elsewhere (other forms of ruling,
insurance companies, etc.)

~~~
lmm
> Aren't stability and "dealing with negative externalities" also services?

In a sense, but they're subject to a tragedy of the commons (that's almost the
definition of a negative externality), so competition does not improve them.

------
tinco
This country is also on the verge of having its first war. The Liberland flag
has already been removed by another micro-nation that claims to have laid
claim on the land just over a month earlier:

[http://www.paraduin.nl/?p=173](http://www.paraduin.nl/?p=173)

Unfortunately, the Paraduin people seem a bit nutty to me. An excerpt from
their constitution, which is in Dutch:

"Paraduin is een monarchie. De titel van de monarch is prins(es), voluit
Prins(es) van Paraduin. Monarch zijn Prins Ogidius en diens wettige opvolgers.
De opvolging wordt bij wet geregeld."

Translates to:

"Paraduin is a monarchy. The monarch holds the title of Prince(ss), in full
the Prince(ss) of Paraduin. Monarchs are Prince Ogidius and his lawful
successors. Succession is determined by law."

Paraduin itself is something like a religion, they (if there's more than one
person, I'm not sure) believe there's a magical parallel universe from which
some people are fleeing unto the earth we live on.

~~~
k__
Something like this happend to this oilrig land "sealand".

People think it's easy to found your own country. Just find unclaimed space
and be done with it.

But there are many rich people out in the world who would hire armies to kill
for such a spot.

~~~
tinco
That's a very good point. Obviously the only way any country can be
bootstrapped is with military power. If Liberland is serious they should
immediately engage Paraduin with a show of force. Secondly, I think the best
course of action would be to secure funding for buying a protectorate like
situation with either Croatia or Serbia. Though I don't know what the
political consequences of such a situation would be.

Imagine if from those 160.000 signups they could get 5.000 people to pay $1000
in taxes per year, that could fund a Serbian police/military officer and a
small office. Just his presence and his commitment to engage in violent
conflict with aggressors could deter any other party. (Killing him would be an
act-of-war or at least a criminal act against his country)

~~~
jobigoud
> if they could get 5.000 people to pay $1000 in taxes per year,

Not sure they appreciate the concept of shared expenses though, from their
objectives "a country where honest people can prosper without being oppressed
by governments making their lives unpleasant through _the burden of
unnecessary restrictions and taxes_.".

~~~
juliangoldsmith
The key word there is unnecessary. Having some sort of police or military
would be considered to be necessary by most.

~~~
jobigoud
That's why it's hard to make a country. You have to allocate resources to
education, defense, health, public goods maintenance, etc. And inevitably
_some_ people will think that _some_ expenses are not necessary.

------
huuu
I'm sorry to be that guy, but a small note to all webdevs on Hackernews:
please make sure to skip all bloated and hip Javascripts. Because not all
visitors have the latest and fastest devices.

This great article is unfortunately unreadable for me because I can't scroll
down.

~~~
AndrewOMartin
Looks fine in W3M, so they're doing something right.

------
tim333
> 160,000 people want to live there

I just put my name down. It's a laugh. I'd probably be willing to fork over
$30 for a passport. I don't actually want to live there. I suspect many of the
160,000 are similar.

On a more serious note I could see an argument for setting up a new country
that was open to all comers a bit like the US used to be when the "Give me
your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.." thing
was happening. The US and EU could maybe buy the land off some hard up African
country. You could govern it a bit like Singapore.

~~~
nashashmi
You laugh at the concept of a passport but there are lots of people who don't
have a passport at all and no citizenship to any country. They would like to
be a citizen of one country or another. This might be a great way to do it.

~~~
emodendroket
A country that is recognized by no one? Probably not a "great way" to get a
passport that's worth anything.

------
izolate
Why must every inch of this land have to be incorporated somehow? I'd much
rather have no man's land, than have a land owned by a particular man's
ideology (regardless of how much I may be inclined to agree with it).

~~~
Retric
In nobody owns most of Antarctica which is not exactly tiny.

There is also a lot of effectively lawless land around the world.

~~~
Mikeb85
> In nobody owns most of Antarctica which is not exactly tiny.

But many countries, including most of the 'powers', have also signed treaties
ensuring that no one can lay claim to Antarctica...

~~~
Retric
Nobody is going to stop you setting up a tent there. Creating a factory or
even a city would be another issue, but as long as you think like a hobo an
unenforced rule is meaningless. The same thing applies large stretches of the
US let alone much of Afghanistan or other failed states.

PS: What most intellectual Anarchists want is high quality fertile land free
for the taking. But, so does everyone else which is why it's not free in the
first place. With some effort you could live in the middle of the ocean and
never see another person. When you get down to it most of them really want to
live with the benefits of government without paying for it.

------
fractalsea
For those interested in why this land is unclaimed, this video provides a nice
visualisation:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZdkqqjosCM&t=6m49s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZdkqqjosCM&t=6m49s)

Essentially the river has changed, but the two countries claimed land at
different times.

------
desireco42
As a Serbian I welcome our Liberland neighbours. It really opens a lot of
possibility. It citizenship doesn't require you to live there for Liberland to
thrive. If he/they would just start a top level domain name for example, I can
see how being citizen would be beneficial to enterpreneurs.

~~~
dragonwriter
You can't just start a top level domain. Calling yourself a country doesn't
make ICANN hand you a ccTLD, and there's not currently an open period for
gTLDs, even if the people behind Liberland could get one if there were.

~~~
desireco42
I understand that, still this is just opening of possibilities. EU wants to
manage our thoughts, this guy is busting that trend, of course he is welcome.

~~~
jacquesm
> EU wants to manage our thoughts

What do you mean with that?

------
funkyy
This gets much more attention than it should in my opinion. Its another micro
nation that within few weeks no one will remember about. Besides stamps
collectors and non-recognized passport holders.

~~~
ctdonath
Au contraire, I've been casually following "micro nations" for decades, and
attempts are often long remembered. This one is notable as it involves actual
viable land (in contrast with artificial or new/fluke natural dry surfaces),
which the surrounding countries just plain don't want. It's not just a rock or
platform with a flag on it.

~~~
gedrap
>>> I've been casually following "micro nations" for decades, and attempts are
often long remembered

Could you share more? Are there any decent write ups about the more
interesting attempts?

~~~
ctdonath
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations)
(Liberland is already listed)

Some are just notable crackpots, some take advantage of geographic changes or
artificial structures (Sealand the most famous), some are whims tolerated by
controlling sovereignties, some are violently overthrown, some are long-
respected special cases (Vatican), some are genuine attempts that failed
(Oceania).

~~~
gedrap
Thanks for sharing :)

I found these resources about Sealand [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/03/sealand-and-haven...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco/) and a much more detailed about the legal
situation in Sealand (80 pages, PDF)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130114064309/http://illinoisla...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130114064309/http://illinoislawreview.org/wp-
content/ilr-content/articles/2012/2/Grimmelmann.pdf)

------
arihant
Sidenote: This page has unbearable amounts of JS. It is unscrollable on latest
generation Chromebook, a device explicitly built to browse the Web. There is a
limit to how much JS one should use; if your website requires a pro gaming
machine to be readable, you probably crossed that limit.

~~~
leppr
Still a bit laggy on my overclocked i7, this site was probably designed with
GPU acceleration and double GTX 980 machines in mind.

------
ColinWright
There have been several submissions about this recently. Here are a few:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9383560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9383560)
Liberland (liberland.org) [0]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9384107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9384107)
Liberland (wikipedia.org) [1]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9385492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9385492)
A New State Has Been Declared - Liberland (between border of Croatia and
Serbia) (liberland.org) [2]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9388699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9388699)
New state established on unclaimed territory between Croatia and Serbia
(wikipedia.org) [3]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400443)
About Liberland (liberland.org) [4]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400443)
Liberland - Europe's Brand New Country (liberland.org) [5]

    
    
        Yes, I know this is a repeat - the submission title got
        changed.  It's also a repeat submission of [0], and the
        submission with the most discussion - over 80 comments.
    

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9401128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9401128)
Liberland. New country in Europe with no taxes and Bitcoin as official
currency (independent.co.uk) [6]

[0] [http://liberland.org/en/about/](http://liberland.org/en/about/)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland)

[2] [http://liberland.org/en/news/press-release-a-new-state-
has-b...](http://liberland.org/en/news/press-release-a-new-state-has-been-
declared-liberland-21.htm)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland)

[4] [http://liberland.org/en/about/](http://liberland.org/en/about/)

[5] [http://liberland.org/en/about/](http://liberland.org/en/about/)

[6] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/welcome-to-
li...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/welcome-to-liberland-
europes-tiny-new-country-where-taxes-are-optional-and-youre-allowed-to-move-
in-as-long-as-youre-not-a-nazi-10185477.html)

~~~
gambiter
Why on every aggregator does there have to be 'that guy' who thinks it's
somehow his job to dig up duplicate posts? Do you comment on various news
sites whenever they post an article that the NYTimes covered? It's just...
silly.

This is the first time I've seen news about this particular 'country', and I'm
glad I saw it this time because it is interesting.

Duplicates FTW!

~~~
ColinWright
Duplicates will always happen, and as you have pointed out, sometimes there is
positive value to that. The idea isn't to avoid duplicates, _per se,_ but to
try to ensure that the same discussion doesn't get hashed out again and again
in different different, parallel and unconnected threads. There have even been
cases[0] where the mods explicitly dipped in and moved comments from one
submission to another to avoid the "split discussion" problem.

So the idea is to ensure that anyone interested in an item can, should they
choose, easily find and read the comments made by other HN contributors. Feel
free to disagree, although the 17 upvotes (at the time of writing - votes may
go down as well as up) indicate that there are people who do find it
valuable/useful.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8499286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8499286)

 _Edit: Just checking your profile I see that you 've been here less than a
year, so you may not be aware that because it's me to whom you're replying, I
can't down-vote you. In fact I've up-voted you, because while I disagree with
you (obviously) I don't think your comment is especially negative._

~~~
gambiter
Thank you for your reply. While you said my comment wasn't especially
negative, I understand that the first sentence could have been taken that way,
and that's probably the reason for the downvotes. It's just that I've seen
people yelling 'DUPE' since the first year of Slashdot, and it seems like
every site has some who make it their personal mission to rain on OP's parade.

I love the idea of stopping the 'split discussion' issue, but I feel like it's
at odds with a site like HN where stories fall off of the front page so
quickly. I'm not able to read it all day long, and I rarely look at it in the
evenings. Especially when we have articles about potential gaming of the
article positions, it seems unrealistic to expect that you would have a chance
to actually get the real 'news' at any given point without duplicate posts.

What I mean is, there are certainly more than 30 in-progress topics appealing
to HN readers. If I look at the front page in the morning and again in the
afternoon, I'm only going to get a small subset of the topics that are out
there. That's why I appreciate duplicates so much... it's really the only
thing that makes a site like HN relevant to the occasional reader.

Anyway, thanks for supporting me even though I wasn't the most ambassadorial.
:)

~~~
dang
(Thank you for turning your comments in a more civil direction. That's rare
enough that it cheers us up every time we see it.)

You make a fair point about duplicates. There used to be a second-hand clothes
store in my home town called "New To You". Similarly, if you haven't seen a
story, it isn't a dupe.

The problem is that the HN front page only has 30 slots. Those slots are the
scarcest resource on the site. Since we have no way of knowing what you've
seen, we have to target overall coverage.

We don't treat stories as dupes just because they've been posted already; they
have to have had significant discussion. But I get that you're talking about
precisely those stories. I do think we have more work to do here.

In the meantime, one thing thing you can do is look at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/active](https://news.ycombinator.com/active) and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/best](https://news.ycombinator.com/best) for
major discussions you missed.

~~~
gambiter
I appreciate you considering the point! I can imagine it being a difficult
thing to solve.

For now, thank you SO MUCH for mentioning /active and /best. I had no idea
those existed, and they are exactly what I need.

------
playing_colours
I am trying to speculate what kind of people this new country can attract and
give its citizenship? I tend to think (sorry for sounding biased) that it
would be adventurers, hippies, suspicious characters, illegal migrants,
fraudsters. The topic about legalisation of marijuana is quite popular on
their forum so it may attract drug dealers and drug addicts.

Can this microstate be interesting for entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists,
doctors, economists - those who can contribute a lot to build some prosper
experimental state, say micro-Singapore?

How can this country attract them, maybe, introduce sort of point based system
for giving residence / citizenship?

~~~
GFischer
What does legalizing marijuana have to do with drug dealers? Isn't the reverse
more likely? I live in a country with legal marijuana(1) and I don't see the
correlation (it does attract marijuana-related tourism though).

(1) Uruguay. It's legal for now, the current president is not happy at all
about legal marijuana and wants to revoke the law.

~~~
playing_colours
I agree with you about legalizing marijuana in an established state with
working institutions. I see Netherlands as a successful example of it. But
here we have the state in the very beginning of its existence, without the
recognised law enforcing institutions. Thus it may be more difficult to
control drug traffic.

The current president is more like a king at the moment with a lot of
influence to shape the country, but can also be heavily influenced by external
forces (by money, armed force). A lot of things depend on personalities and
hidden agendas of people who will rule there, and it may be difficult to
control them. Money from illegal activities like drug traffic may be very
attractive.

I am just speculating about this potentially interesting experiment.

~~~
jp555
Cannabis is not legal in NL and there are many problems with their current
setup involving organized crime. You say you "see" NL as a successful example,
but I think it's more of a belief based on assumptions. In reality it's a bit
of a mess.

The U.S. ironically (they're the ones who got the world to sign treaties
promising to never legalize) has the some of the best
decriminalizatoin/legalization laws on the planet

~~~
playing_colours
Wikipedia [0] says it's still legal, but more and more restricted. So NL are
not the best example for successful legalisation.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands)

~~~
jp555
Never been legal, but tolerated. If you're smoking in the streets you can
still get into trouble with the police. That's why there's coffeeshops. Smoke
there or home and NL looks the other way. But on the supply side there are
many problems.

------
kazinator
"Live _there_?" Where is that? You can't live in a nation; it's not a place,
but rather a set of people, of which you can be a _member_. You can live in a
country. A nation doesn't imply a country; nations can be displaced.
Furthermore, having a certain nationality which is tied to a country doesn't
mean being a resident of that country. Perhaps not all 160,000 people want to
actually live in that country; maybe some only want the nationality. If this
new nation has very relaxed rules about residency for maintaining nationality,
they might not even have to visit there very much, if at all.

~~~
workingandtired
From the wikipedia page for nation
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation)]:

 _The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for:

State (polity) or sovereign state: a government which controls a specific
territory, which may or may not be associated with any particular ethnic group

Country: a geographic territory, which may or may not have an affiliation with
a government or ethnic group

Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level
governments (as in the name for the United Nations), various large
geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet._

In general, whenever I come across the word "nation" I assume it's being used
colloquially to refer to "nation-state", unless the context is specifically
related to ethnic nationalistic identities.

------
sparaker
Well i just applied to be a citizen, lets see if i get a citizenship before my
children our born.

Edit: Got the activation link in SPAM, perhaps google didn't recognize the new
country sending emails :P

------
axus
It's funny, I play on some Minecraft servers where this kind of thing happens
all the time. The comments about competing claims and military power are true
for the virtual world as well as the physical world.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/CivilizatonExperiment/](http://www.reddit.com/r/CivilizatonExperiment/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/](http://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/)

------
doctorwho
Give us all your personal information so we can consider you for citizenship,
and steal your identity. Best phishing scam ever!

~~~
leke
Yeah, I noticed that sign up form had just the right amount of information to
do that.

------
elmar
The defining conception of the state is a monopoly of the legitimate use of
physical force, also known as the monopoly on violence.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence)

~~~
collyw
What about anarchist states? Does that make them an oxymoron?

~~~
anonbanker
Yes. But only if you think anarchist == anarchy. In reality, anarchist ==
anarchism, which is a collectivist/socialist philosophy masquerading as
anarchy.

A state based on anarchy is an oxymoron.

~~~
elmar
there are several very different models of a anarchist society, some are based
on collectivist/socialist others on capitalism/individualism.

~~~
anonbanker
Yeah, the Individualist Anarchists prefix Anarchist with "individualist". The
Anarcho-capitalists add a suffix to it. Both groups understand that Anarchy
("No Authority") is being altered by their beliefs, and is therefore not a
pure Anarchy.

Only the Collectivist/Socialist Anarchists have the audacity to call
themselves "Anarchists" without any qualifying suffix or prefix. The fact that
they've coined "Anarchism" (of which they are "Anarchists") to mean something
that isn't a pure Anarchy is extraordinarily disingenuous.

------
nivertech
They should do something similar to Andorra.

Every odd year they should send an ambassador with 1000 BTC tribute to
Belgrade.

And every even year they should send an ambassador with 1000 BTC tribute to
Zagreb.

As you already guessed, I propose them to adopt Bitcoin as a national currency
;)

~~~
zo1
>" _As you already guessed, I propose them to adopt Bitcoin as a national
currency ;)_ "

It already is, from what I can tell. As "official" as you can get at this
point.

------
pipboy3
a small problem could be fact that this area is regularly floded every year.

------
expertentipp
Isn't it some Czech style prank? Similar to
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402906/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402906/)

~~~
vacri
Not really. It actually is unclaimed land - the border between Croatia and
Serbia was drawn along the middle of a river. The river moved. One country
(can't recall which) claims the border is still mid-river, the other claims it
follows the original river line, not the new position. This has created areas
of overlap and areas of _terra nullius_ \- there are a few tiny ones, much
smaller than Liberland.

And if no-one claims the area, you can wander in and stake your own claim. Of
course, if no-one recognises you, there's not much you can do, and if you
don't ally with someone meaty, no-one will stop an 'annexation'. Ultimately
it's a jape, but unlike most micronations, it's not stretching the rules - the
land really is currently, officially, unclaimed.

------
mladenkovacevic
Emir Kusturica needs to make a movie out of this. Perhaps a sequel to
Underground?

------
reitoei
3.7MB of JavaScript. Christ.

------
hellbanner
This would be the first country where registration comes with a password.

------
steamy
Is this micro-nations fever a by-product of the proliferation and popularity
of Clash of Clans and other related mobile strategy video games recently?

I can't help but to make the connection here, what do you think guys?

------
stefantalpalaru
Nice stunt, but without an army and/or international recognition it will never
be a country.

~~~
crocowhile
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_armed...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_armed_forces)

~~~
bottled_poe
The examples listed there are really not very similar to Liberland. Those
countries may not have military power, but they certainly have political
power.

~~~
jacquesm
The 'no true country' fallacy at work.

