
A man who created a tiny country he can no longer enter - ghosh
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37941931
======
igor_varga
As someone who grew up and lived very close to that area I find this free-
state territorial claim attempt deeply disturbing and here are some reasons
for that.

Probably most important is psychological one since there was a war and violent
clash between disputed sides in the 1990s and that land was claimed in very
similar manner like this guy is attempting now. Coming there with such claims
is very wrong and locals and authorities from both sides will be irritated by
such attempts.

This guy's sad interpretation of current dispute situation would be something
like: there is a free piece of land and everyone is invited to claim it. That
is far away from reality. There is a dispute about that area but that doesn't
mean that it doesn't belong to anyone and that it is not controlled. At the
moment land part access is controlled by Croatian police and river access by
both sides. Legally that land still belongs to Serbia and that comes from last
legal border agreement between two sides which is constitution document of
Yugoslavia dating from 1974. Borders between countries were defined back then
very precisely but that document is subject of dispute from 1990s till now.
Dispute and border changes were caused by war, politics and riverbed changes.

Both river and land were used for years by locals as a result of agreement
between disputed sides in order enable local population to access that area
without too much hassle by the border police.

Now, thanks to this idiot, locals are banned from using it any more. Besides
collecting a lot of money for his agenda from similar people like him around
the world, that is the only concrete result of his actions.

~~~
paxcoder
The BBC article claims Croatia doesn't want the land because claiming it would
validate Serbia's interpretation of the borders leaving Croatia with less land
over all.

I can't find the relevance of years 1974 and 1990 in the wikipedia article[1].
The article describes a long-standing dispute last addressed in 1948.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia–Serbia_border_disput...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia–Serbia_border_dispute#Start_Of_The_Dispute)

~~~
igor_varga
You are right about the long-standing dispute and arguments from both sides. I
was referring to 1974 since that was the last time two countries agreed on
document where borders were mentioned although in a very general way. That
constitution was also foundation for succession rights and deeds of federal
republics after declaring independence.

I mentioned 90s since that was the fist time international commission was
involved in trying to help in determining the borders. But it was all in vain
since one side states that border is determined by data based on cadastre and
one is claiming that the river is the border. The riverbed changed during the
years and that created fertile ground for political manipulations.

------
shp0ngle
From what I know about this guy's project, he is more concerned about PR,
going around taking money and talking at circlefriendly libertarian
conferences than actually doing anything meaningful.

Last I heard him talk at one conference, he was talking about making a
Liberland app, that's Uber, AirBnB and ebay in one app, using smart contracts
on blockchain. And it somehow connects to Liberland.

So yep, I don't see this as a serious attempt.

Edit: here is the app, I have no idea what is it actually doing.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.liberland.s...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.liberland.services&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dliberland+mobile+app&pcampaignid=APPU_1_eXcpWLTeG6zKgAacmo7IDQ)

~~~
madaxe_again
Totally. If he were serious about his libertarian ideals he'd bear arms
against the police and declare war between his state and his neighbours - or
is he waiting for a pro bono pmc to do it for him, in true quasi-libertarian-
but-actually-fascist style?

~~~
muninn_
So you can only be serious about political ideas if you start shooting cops?
Nonsense.

~~~
madaxe_again
Why? One of the pillars of statehood is self defence. His political ideal is
founding a state, not promulgating an ideology.

To be clear I'm not suggesting that he should, but if he wishes to found a
libertarian state, that would be the correct step.

Can you think of any state that had a non-violent birth?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Canada gained its independence without a war.

You can call out the native issue as in the case of Brazil, but then you doom
any possible future state to a "violent birth" just by virtue of some
cromagnon somewhere beating the last neanderthal to death to establish Homo
Sapiens dominion on the planet.

And in any case, so what if every state so far has had a violent birth? Are we
doomed forever to repeat the same paradigm?

~~~
umbrai_nation
To be fair, Canada's not _actually_ independent yet. The queen is still our
head of state, but that probably lasts only until she actually tries to act
like it.

~~~
quicknir
She's the head of state, not the head of government. She doesn't have the
power even theoretically to make any executive or legislative decisions. Aside
from "representing" Canada in a very vague sense, the closest thing to real
power that she or her representative (the governor general) has is to "decide"
which party to ask to attempt to form a government after an election. This is
basically always simply the part with the most seats, barring very rare
exceptions.

Anyhow, tl; dr: Canada is most certainly independent, and gained its
independence peacefully (although there were minor conflicts prior to that).

~~~
dleslie
This is woefully incorrect.

The Crown is the head of our State; all authority derives from our Sovereign.

[http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/compendium/web-
content/c_d...](http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/compendium/web-
content/c_d_rolecrowngovernorgeneral-e.htm)

~~~
tdb7893
He said she was the head of state. I don't know how this disproves the point
that the queen has no legislative or executive powers in the Canadian
government

~~~
dleslie
The Sovereign may recall the Governor General, or request that their Governor
General dissolve Parliament and call an election and the Governor General is
compelled to comply.

Ultimately, all legislation requires Royal Assent, and all executive powers
are granted by the authority of the Sovereign, who may revoke them at their
will and so force an election.

------
walrus01
For a recent (within the last 100 years) example of Terra Nullius, look at
Svalbard and the Svalbard treaty. Any citizen of a signatory to the treaty is
entitled to live there. In practice it's kind of hard to do, since there's not
much economic activity up there and logistics/transport costs and energy costs
makes everything very expensive. But theoretically an Afghan citizen could
move to Svalbard freely.

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

also, no, it does not have any armored polar bears.

~~~
rmc
Fun fact: In Svalbard it's common to see people entering a (the?) bank wearing
a balaclava and carrying a gun. Balaclava for the cold, and gun for the polar
bears.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Shops, banks etc. have gun lockers just inside the door where you put your gun
while shopping.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Just don't tell the polar bears; supermarkets are basically polar bear sardine
tins then.

------
thomasfoster96
The bigger story here seems to be that Croatia is treating the territory of
Liberland as its own. I wonder what that means for Balkan relations? Has
Croatia now accepted the revised borders?

Edit: Actually Wikipedia says that Croatia's position is that the land belongs
to either Serbia or themselves, to the exclusion of any third party. Link:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_borde...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_dispute)

~~~
temp
>The bigger story here seems to be that Croatia is treating the territory of
Liberland as its own

That's not a big story at all. Ever since around early 2000s the deal between
Croatian and Serbian governments was to treat it that way until the borded
dispute was resolved.

Vit forgot to read up on a lot of stuff before going on this adventure.

~~~
thomasfoster96
> That's not a big story at all.

I should have looked at Wikipedia first :) Although I do find the arrangement
quite odd - Egypt and Sudan don't have a similar arrangement?

------
scirocco
Makes me think about Ladonia in southern Sweden. Painter built a tower by
using wood lying around on the beach, and proclaimed the 1 km2 area the name
of Ladonia. Local authorities see it as a crime due to the area being a nature
reserve and had plans of taking it down, but at the same time they can't say
no to the increasing amount of tourists.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_(micronation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_\(micronation\))

~~~
nissehulth
The two stories are similar in that both founders seem mostly interested in
getting publicity for themselves. Neither project is a real attempt to create
a new state.

------
samdung
Came across Liberland about a year ago and filled a citizenship form on their
site ([https://liberland.org/](https://liberland.org/)) out of curiosity. I
occasionally get their newsletter. Altogether i find this a an occasional and
nice distraction from my work. Maybe this is how all countries came into
existence.

~~~
h4nkoslo
Any country you can name came into existence when a collection of warlords
established it by force. Ironically, you would expect libertarians to know
this better than others.

~~~
tn13
Power of the state comes from its ability to engage in coercion and hence
generally it is true that you can't expect to have a country without someone
at the top with power to beat up the citizens into submission.

But generally the warlords are powerful only to the extent the underlying
nation is engaging in extensive co-operation and wealth creation out of their
free will. Nations are truly created by those ordinary people.

I am reminded of a powerful Indian tyrant named Muhammad Bin Tughlaq. He for
some reason decided to move his capital to a different geographical area. By
moving he literally wanted to move everything including the people to this new
geographical area. Not only he failed miserably his name Tughlaq is synonymous
with "idiotic behaviour high on power".

~~~
seesomesense
"There is more to the transfer of capital than what is generally written. It
is believed that Tughluq wanted to make Daulatabad an Islamic cultural centre,
thereby helping him to have better control over the region, reducing the
number of "Hindu" rebellions. His efforts to bring Ulema and Shaikhs from
provincial towns and make them settle down in that city give a clue to his
true intentions. The view of Muhammad Tughluq was that something like the
above had to be done in the Deccan to strengthen the Muslim position in that
area.

As regards its remote effects, the Deccan experiment of Muhammad Tughluq was a
remarkable success. The boundaries which had separated the North from the
South broke down. It is true that the extension of the administrative power of
the Delhi Sultanate into the Deccan failed, but so far as the extension of the
cultural institutions was concerned, it was successful."

------
vacri
> _But in the mind of Vit Jedlicka, its first president, it 's the fulfilment
> of the libertarian dream - a land with no compulsory taxes, no gun control,
> with Bitcoins as currency._

Too true: A country that sounds great on paper, but is really an
infrastructure-free swamp that no-one _actually_ wants to live in. It is
indeed libertarianism at its finest!

~~~
moyta
It is, I encourage Libertarians & Anarchists to go live their dreams, you can
live in a community or lack thereof that shares your values, and if you are
unwilling to live in a community that shares the values you advocate and
support, you should seriously rethink your values.

This is why I can't respect people like Peter Thiel, he would rather take all
the benefits he can accrue from a society he so loathes, but he refuses to
live in any of the Libertarian communities that exist. What kind of person
can't even stand up for their core beliefs? An unrespectable pile in my
experience.

I know I will get downvoted for this comment, and I encourage you to respond.

~~~
dmichulke
> you can live in a community or lack thereof that shares your values

The thing is, as a Libertarian you literally can't.

One principal idea is to live without coercion, but as long as you're part of
a tax collecting state, you are to "share" part of the fruits of your labor
with authorities you do not recognize or else...

Secondly, the rights and laws (such as really free speech or free contracts)
are overridden (e.g., by hate speech, minimum salary, anti-discrimination
laws, ...), so there is no way you can meaningfully establish a libertarian
society within a current nation state.

Finally, there are other (possibly quasi-) monopolies (such as monopoly on
violence, Taxi licenses ~ anti-Uber, Hotel Services ~ anti-AirBnB) that you
cannot get rid of unless you get rid of the controlling entity.

Note the difference to e.g. communist societies where you can just start
sharing everything (much like you might already be doing within your family).

~~~
soundwave106
I have heard of stories of people who move deep into the woods, disappearing
from standard society, and actually successfully manage to live completely off
the land. So, technically, this would certainly be possible.

Few people are willing to do pursue things on this level however. When more
than one person gets involved, politics can easily enter the equation.

Personally, I find the libertarian philosophy a bit naive for that reason. The
natural state of humanity is tribal in nature. "No rules" is a bit of a
fantasy; eventually, _some_ foundation will have to be established.
Inevitably, people will disagree on this foundation.

Technical achievements aside (the blockchain will live on), Bitcoin actually
is a great example of how something with somewhat idealistic libertarian
underpinnings ended up turning into the usual tribal politics in the end.

~~~
dmichulke
Moving into the woods is certainly a way but libertarians are big fans of the
market and a far away single man show is not a market, so there is no division
of labor and consequently no prosperity (relative to what is possible).

Well, all libertarianism is based on ownership and contract law (plus some
other stuff like homesteading as initial means to acquire ownership). So rules
there are, they are just not forced unto someone.

Consider the opposite - maybe you are in favor of Uber or abortion or against
taxation. Yet somehow your state assumes that you implicitly agree to
everything the state mandates, such as laws and sharing the fruits of your
labor.

You can think of Libertarianism as a way to have many many states instead of
just a single one the size of the US. In this way, you can choose with your
feet what rules you accept because you have a choice. And you have this choice
without travelling thousands of miles and leaving your family, friends and job
behind.

You can avoid Donald and Hillary by moving a few miles, you can avoid paying
taxes or your personal nemesis law (like abortion) because you have a _market
of possible states_ (I'm simplifying here) and not just a single one.

Bitcoin is indeed a great example of Libertarianism (or rather the market)
because if the BTC guys don't adapt to what people need, another crypto-
currency will eventually take over. You now have a market of semi-anonymous
currencies and that's not the problem but the solution to BTC's tribal
politics.

~~~
soundwave106
There are many visions of "libertarian", and I do think that the decentralized
version is more realistic than the anarcho-capitalist one. :)

The main problem I see with this vision is that, in order to achieve it, I
feel that a large portion of humans would need to develop the ability to
respectfully disagree with personal opinion differences, without resorting to
conflict. This actually is difficult as it does not seem to be default human
nature. Even Bitcoin showed this -- DDOS were reportedly used as a "weapon"
against some of the forks.

I do agree that, whenever possible, it is a good idea to have some degree of
state / municipal / etc. flexibility such that one can experiment with what
works and what doesn't.

~~~
vacri
> _I feel that a large portion of humans would need to develop the ability to
> respectfully disagree with personal opinion differences, without resorting
> to conflict._

If we could do this, we wouldn't need libertarianism, or any other kind of
-ism.

------
maybeiambatman
This is so crazy. Just out of curiosity, is there a list of places around the
world which are claim-able yet still unclaimed?

~~~
speeder
The only other place, that is actually colonizable is Bir Tawil, but the land
there is so terrible, but so terrible, that noone actually made a serious
attempt (a bunch of people made bogus claims, for example one guy proclaimed
himself king, just so his daughter could be a princess).

Even for desert standards, Bir Tawil is desolate, and it has no decent natural
resources, so literally noone wants it.

~~~
biggerfisch
Forgive me for only doing basic research into this, but couldn't one set up
some solar panels for electricity, dig some shelter, and recover water from
the atmosphere? Wouldn't that do a decent job of allowing at least some degree
of livability there?

~~~
tpm
No, you wouldn't get a meaningful amount of water from the air (I think it is
safe to assume the air is quite dry there). And you'd still need food, at
least.

~~~
logfromblammo
The amount you would need to reclaim is related to the efficiency at which you
recycle the water you have. You would need to invent a real-life culture like
the Fremen of Arrakis.

Of course, if you got efficient enough, you could simply buy water to be
airdropped into a catch pond. Then you drain the pond and pipe the water into
your recycling system. It would likely be cheaper than trying to dehumidify
desert air.

------
drej
I've been following this for a while now - I actually met this guy in a pub a
few years ago, a friendly chap. While I don't subscribe to his ideology, I do
wish him luck. As long as they are not harming anyone, I encourage people to
push the limits of all sorts of established ideas, including big things like
starting a country.

I'm still not sure - and nobody is I guess - if it's sincere, a PR stunt, or a
scam, I guess it will take a while longer for us to find out. In the meantime,
let's hope it's resolved in a friendly and peaceful manner and all the best to
his new family (both literally and figuratively).

------
xiphias
They forgot the most important part, without which a country can't be created:
the army that protects the borders

~~~
LoSboccacc
Lichtenstain, the Vatican and San Marino disagree. Unless you count in fervent
catholic bodies as an army

~~~
pluma
San Marino has a military.

Lichtenstein and the Vatican have contracts with other nations, effectively
"renting" their protection.

You don't need a standing army, but having military protection of some kind is
vital to maintaining your sovereignty.

All that aside, the only real way to have a nation is to have other nations
acknowledge its existence. Good luck claiming sovereignty when not a single
member of the UN is willing to say you exist.

~~~
runn1ng
> the only real way to have a nation is to have other nations acknowledge its
> existence

I always think of Taiwan / Republic of China.

While most countries don't officially acknowledge it (and, slightly amusingly,
Taiwan doesn't officially acknowledge communist China), it is without a doubt
its own country with its own military and democratic government, etc.

But yeah the only reason is that there is water between China and Taiwan and
China never bothered to attack.

~~~
jamiek88
The onky reason Taiwan is there is that it has US support for it's existence.

------
dandare
I for one don't see a point in these micro countries - they are
philosophically inconsistent, nothing more than a make believe game for
adults. What if I came to said Liberland and claimed one of the corners of the
island for myself?

------
pif
> a land with no compulsory taxes, no gun control, with Bitcoins as currency.

There's a name for this: "wildlife". Humanity knows it very well. We escaped
it as soon as possible.

------
ommunist
This is really interesting and reminds me of legal grounds for Lacota Republic
in the middle of the US. Lacotas insist that white people did not fulfilled
the contract that was with their forefathers, so Lacota current lands use
legislation framework is void. However, Lacotas do not have enough nukes to
enforce the consequences of white people misbehaviour, so the illegal use of
their lands by the self-proclaimed "The United States" continues.

------
gravypod
This guy very much reminds me of Dave from the Republic of Dave in Fallout 3.
A little quarky but he thinks he can do it. It's interesting to see if he can
do this as it would set an interesting geopolitical precedent for the area.

------
unicornporn
Related:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_(micronation)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_\(micronation\))

------
max_
Just applied for the citizen application form :)

[http://liberland.org/en/request/](http://liberland.org/en/request/)

------
Unbeliever69
Let us not forget Ziqistan!

[http://www.zaqart.com/zaqistan/zaqistan.shtml](http://www.zaqart.com/zaqistan/zaqistan.shtml)

------
donretag
"he can build a temporary settlement on houseboats on the Danube"

Reminds me of the movie "Crna Macka, Beli Macor (Black Cat, White Cat)"

------
frozenport
Obviously its not a real state because it doesn't have a `Monopoly on
violence`.

~~~
coldtea
Obviously, and non ironically, yes. Seeing that what makes a state a state, is
the ability to keep others who want to run it/claim it for themselves, outside
which takes (among other things) violence.

~~~
ommunist
Yeah! Basically these days you need a nuke and to demonstrate that you are
ready to use it.

~~~
jandrese
Not necessarily a nuke, but you need an army or friends with armies otherwise
someone else is going to march their army in and take your land.

