Zadekpedia2015-08-08 · Guest: Vít Jedlička (Founder and President of Liberland) · 52:18
Filed under: Federalism and exit · War and foreign policy
Founding and legal status of Liberland
Bob Zadek interviews Vít Jedlička, the founder of Liberland, a sovereign micronation established on a parcel of unclaimed land between Croatia and Serbia. They discuss the legal foundations of the country under the Montevideo Convention, its radical libertarian governance model featuring voluntary taxation, and the broader movement of “startup countries” and seasteading.
Topics: Liberland, Vít Jedlička, libertarianism, voluntary taxation, international law, Montevideo Convention, seasteading, startup countries, competing jurisdictions, foot voting, Sandy Springs
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek: Host
- Vít Jedlička: Founder and President of Liberland
- Charlie Deist: Producer and Co-host
- Michael: Caller from San Francisco
Introduction to Startup Countries [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, every Sunday at 9:00 AM. We are the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. Yes, a libertarian wasteland for live radio but for the Bob Zadek Show. Thanks so much for listening every Sunday from 9:00 to 10:00 AM in the Bay Area on 910 AM—easy to remember. To join my conversation at any time, 800-345-5639. We are proudly the show of ideas, not attitude. Thanks so much for listening.
America has, of course, a fairly active entrepreneurial economy with startup businesses beginning, struggling, and for the most part failing, but many of course succeed. The world, our planet, has far fewer startup countries. But today we are going to discuss with a special kind of entrepreneur. It is not every day that entrepreneurship is written so large so as to create a new country from scratch. And as a special treat, the new country that we are going to discuss this morning is being formed, or has been formed, on purely libertarian principles. Indeed, its very name, Liberland, says it all. I’m happy to welcome to my show all the way from Croatia, the Entrepreneur of the Year award winner on the Bob Zadek Show, the founder of Liberland, Vít Jedlička. Vít, all the way from Croatia, welcome to the show this morning.
Vít Jedlička: Oh, it’s a pleasure to be on the show. And actually, let me correct you a little bit. We have been just recently in Liberland, so right now we are moving back to Serbia. So we are not in Croatia. We haven’t passed to Croatia. We had a lot of interesting time with Croatia police a couple minutes ago, and our mission was successful. We were able to go to Liberland and back to Liberland a couple minutes ago, which is a great success because we’ve been having some access troubles lately.
Bob Zadek: So I might have been interviewing you from some holding cell?
Vít Jedlička: No, no, no. We are traveling on our speedboat right now from Liberland waters back to Serbia. And I’m in the cabin inside of this ship. We are traveling pretty fast, probably 30 miles an hour, going back to our base camp in Serbia right now. But we had a great time. Both our boats did, and many, many newspaper crews here from France, from Czech Republic. So it’s been a lot of fun, and we were able to now access the land, at least for a short time, despite this effort of Croatia to put us back and not let us to inhabit the land.
Locating Terra Nullius [03:51]
Bob Zadek: So you are actually on the—what are you on, the Danube River right now?
Vít Jedlička: Yes, and we are in the middle of Danube River traveling downstream pretty fast.
Bob Zadek: So you and I could spend the hour talking about maritime life, because I, as you know, live on a boat. I live on the Laissez-Faire. But I dare say my life on in Sausalito Bay is probably a tad less eventful than escaping from local police on the Danube River. But thank you very much for finding time in what has to be a somewhat busy and hectic day to share with us your experiences on the formation and the building of Liberland. Now, probably I dare say most of my listeners haven’t had all that much experience with founders of countries, or even with understanding how one goes about building a country from scratch. So tell us, if you would, where is Liberland, and how did you locate the land on which to plant the flag of Liberland and actually declare the creation of a country?
Vít Jedlička: Well, the main and most important thing, of course, is to have a piece of land which is under no jurisdiction. And that is when you search for terra nullius. Then you get it. You get a list of the places on Earth which are still unclaimed.
Bob Zadek: Now, just let me interrupt. Terra nullius, for the audience, terra nullius is land that is not claimed by anybody. There’s a lot of terra nullius in the solar system, but not that much on Earth. So how did you find this piece of land that was not claimed by anybody?
Vít Jedlička: A friend of mine did an extended research on the subject, and he has been posting me all these pieces of land which he found. And it was actually at the end we found it was even on the Wikipedia page that this place was no man’s land. And it’s still claimed by the only nation on Earth, which is Liberland, which I find fantastic that we don’t even have any dispute with any other country. We just do have a little bit, let’s say, jealous countries around us, or at least one. And it might take us a little bit of diplomacy to show them that we are a lovable nation with good ideas and that we will be their good partners in the future. But just let me get a little bit back to your boat, Laissez-Faire. The boat I am now on is called Thomas Jefferson because we set up the country on 13th of April to celebrate his birthday, and we also renamed our first boat Thomas Jefferson to honor the legacy of the American Revolution.
The Legal Path to Statehood [06:53]
Bob Zadek: So it sounds like you are on the first boat in the Liberland Navy.
Vít Jedlička: Not really Navy. We don’t have an army. This is a private-owned boat. It is in the cooperative effort between Liberland Settlement Association and the state of Liberland. So we don’t have any Navy, we don’t have any guns. We just have a crew of very enthusiastic settlers with us.
Bob Zadek: Settlers. And so once you had the idea and you have this land that is owned by nobody, what legally gave you, the founder of Liberland, how did you acquire rights to this land that are superior to anybody else’s rights? What if I tomorrow said I want to form a country and I want to call it Bobland? What gives you—and if we were to have a dispute whose land it is, yours or mine—what gives you the superior rights? How did you go about acquiring those rights?
Vít Jedlička: You are the second in the line, you know. And according to the Montevideo Convention, any takeover of the land is considered a false act according to international law. So you don’t have the rights to take the property now when it has been acquired. I didn’t take it from anybody. There was no owner of the land before that, because the state of Serbia denounced its ownership 24 years ago and they keep on denouncing it until now. So there was nobody to buy it from. It was there to acquire by declaration, and that’s what we did. We declared our country there. We said this is Liberland, all the land is property owned. And you know, if somebody else now comes, they’re the second in the line and that is too bad for them. They have to find another place which they can declare the country and claim as theirs.
Bob Zadek: Now, how does Liberland, just mechanically—and then we’re going to get into the philosophy, which is quite interesting—but how did Liberland, when you form a corporation, to use a somewhat silly but helpful analogy, you file certain documents with a governmental body and they put a stamp or whatever on that document and boom, you are a separate entity. How did Liberland get—how does it become a separate entity so as to be recognized by other countries on the planet?
Vít Jedlička: Well, first of all, it’s not necessary that the country is recognized in order to be a country. Again, Montevideo Convention says exactly that you don’t need that. You don’t need another country to recognize you in order to be a country. And how do you do it? How to deal with other nations? You just have to work on the recognition. If you want to do business with other nations, they must recognize you. And we are so young, and it would be a little bit silly to expect that some other country would recognize us so fast. We got recognition from Northern Sudan, which was there right after we established the country. But you know, if you research the country, it’s a country between Egypt and Sudan, which status is a little bit also unsure at the moment. And I think, you know, we’ve got a great support from Serbia from the very beginning. Their government said this Liberland is not formed on their property. They don’t mind creation of Liberland. They called the creation of Liberland to be a frivolous act, which I like the word. And you know, that was the biggest state support from other countries so far. But we are working on the recognition in like 10 other states, mostly in Africa, some small islands, which are very happy to talk to us and make future deals with us. So in order to get recognized, for example, for the United States, we need at least 50 recognition from other states so that the US government would take us seriously. But we are working on it pretty hard.
Geography and Connection Issues [11:17]
Bob Zadek: And how—tell us just geographically, how big is Liberland and where is it located so all of our listeners can get out some Google Maps and find at least where you are. If I were to look at a map of Earth, how would I find—I know Liberland is not going to be identified, but where is it?
Vít Jedlička: You just put Liberland into Google Maps and it comes out. You know, there is an embassy in Prague which comes out, and then when you zoom out at Europe and you put Liberland, then you see as well as the embassy, you can also see the land itself. It says “closed” because we are having some troubles with the entry, but the Google Maps recognize our claim to this land. So you just need to put it into Google Maps and you can see that it is between Croatia and Serbia, very close to the Hungarian border.
Bob Zadek: And you’re right on the Danube River, are you not?
Vít Jedlička: Yeah, that is great because we do have an access from international waters there. You know, nobody can prevent us from going there because Liberlandian waters are part of Danube River, which is considered to be an international waterway and everybody has free access there. But regarding to your question about the size, we are three times larger than Monaco. It’s a pretty nice piece of land, three and a half square miles. And it’s very hard to find any better spot for such a project. You know, I’m really much in love in this country because if you look out of the window from the boat, you can see sandy beaches, miles long sandy beaches right now because the river water is quite low in Liberland and you can see that everywhere sandy beaches are up.
Bob Zadek: So you have sandy beaches on the Danube River.
Vít Jedlička: Yes, exactly.
Bob Zadek: Now, is the land occupied now?
Vít Jedlička: The land itself is now… Vít, we’re breaking up a little bit. Can we try to call you again because the sound is breaking up a little bit and I know the audience is fascinated by your discussion. I don’t want them to miss out even on a word. Can we try to call you back in one second?
Vít Jedlička: Yes.
Bob Zadek: All right, we’re going to disconnect and we’re going to try to call back. Raymond, if we could just do that. This is Bob Zadek, 800-345-5639. I am talking to Vít Jedlička. Vít is a 31-year-old Czech politician who has taken it upon himself to locate unclaimed land on Earth in between Croatia and Serbia. It is land not claimed by anybody, and he has declared this land to be a new country called Liberland. It was formed—its date of formation is not coincidentally Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. And Liberland is today a country. It is in the early stages of formation. It is, as you will hear, being formed on libertarian principles. It is, I dare say, New Hampshire on the Danube. Talk about the Free State Project of New Hampshire; this is the free country project on the Danube. And it will be a quite interesting activity. They already have a functioning government, as it were, with embassies. They have a representative in a consulate in the United States. And Liberland is in the process of forming its own government according to, as you will hear, pure libertarian principles.
Seasteading and Voting with Your Feet [14:40]
Bob Zadek: Raymond, do we have Vít on the phone? We’re having a little trouble reaching Vít. The interesting part of this conversation is when we were speaking to Vít, he was on a boat. He was just leaving Liberland on a boat called the Thomas Jefferson heading down the Danube. And from what we learned before the interview started, he had a little bit of trouble with local police. Those problems seem to have been remedied, so we hope to be able to get Vít back with us really shortly. In the meanwhile, I have in the studio with me my dear friend and producer, Charlie Deist. Charlie was good enough—he spent time with Vít. Charlie helped us put together this show. So Charlie, when you met with Vít, what was your first impressions when you learned about the Liberland project?
Charlie Deist: Yeah, thanks Bob for having me on. Yeah, so I had the privilege of meeting my first head of state, that being President Vít, just last month in New York City. I put together a small gathering that came together to be a part of what is hopefully going to be a pioneering movement at a little project in Williamsburg, which is kind of an up-and-coming area in Brooklyn where they’re also seeding a little community of their own on a farm/park that’s another kind of innovative project in a more urban environment. And Vít and his delegation were—it was a pleasure meeting them and hearing a little bit about the project. I have sort of a history of looking into these efforts to start new countries. My first job out of college was working at the organization called the Seasteading Institute, a local nonprofit which is exploring the possibility of establishing new countries in international waters.
Bob Zadek: Another big area of no man’s land, because the oceans are outside of the territorial borders. The oceans are free of control of any government. As we have learned recently in the news, there have been a lot of news articles about some rogue ships with some pretty bad practices, and under international law, there’s no nation that controls what goes on in international waters. So seasteading was the first example, recent example, of forming a new country from scratch without having the governmental influence of another country.
Charlie Deist: Right. And it continues to function as this thought experiment about politics where we can look at the kind of country club of existing nations which recognize one another and give each other certain privileges, respect each other’s boundaries, and entering that country club is a very exclusive club and it’s a difficult process. You basically either have to win a war or start a revolution, and those aren’t very pleasant things. So the idea behind seasteading, which was founded by Patri Friedman, the grandson of the economist Milton Friedman—what if we could have a fully peaceful new country movement and not only start one new country necessarily based on libertarian principles, but we could actually have an entire new ecosystem in which governments compete for citizens just like startups in Silicon Valley compete for customers?
Bob Zadek: And it’s very interesting because what we’re doing is we’re taking in a way the American experiment of federalism and having—this is my own invention—world federalism. And by that I mean the America of the founders envisioned a bunch of states—they didn’t envision 50, but a bunch of states—which were, in the words of Justice Brandeis, incubators of innovation. And the states would be competing for citizens. And if one state learned how to do something better than the others, the other states would quite naturally copy the successful experiment of the state which did something better, and as a result of which, the sum would be greater than each individual part and the country as a country would have 50 much better states. That hasn’t happened as much because it is much harder, obviously, to change country than it is to change state, but at least you’re given the choice. And of course, the immigration controversy today is nothing other than that. People, as they say, vote with their feet and they gravitate towards the state or the country that meets their expectations. And seasteading simply envisions building a whole lot of competing micro-states, if you will, so that ultimately the planet would be better off.
Charlie Deist: That’s exactly right. Another way of saying it would be that people vote with their boats, and that actually enables an even more fluid dynamic. Fluid, fluid—there the puns don’t end. You have the ability to change your jurisdiction based on how your needs might change. Maybe at one point in your life you’ll want to live under a certain set of rules, but you’ll come to find that you want to move with your family, and it would be a lot of work otherwise to lift up your whole life and take it to another country. But if it’s floating real estate, just the physics of that can actually kind of add fuel to the fire of these competitive dynamics.
Bob Zadek: And what could be more—you know, what’s a best manifestation or what could be a better manifestation of freedom than giving people a choice? After all, let’s go down to something really mundane, like building a portfolio of investments. As your needs change in your life, you change investments. And you will, when you’re younger and can replace capital, you will purchase an investment that maybe is more riskier because if you lose money you can replace it. As you get older, you get more conservative. So as your needs change, the investments you buy will change. It doesn’t mean one investment or another investment is bad or good; it’s bad or good for you at that time. Well, the same with states, and less so with countries, but certainly the same with states. When you are young and energetic and you can tolerate Northeast winters, well, there’s a lot of good things about living in the Northeast. When you get to be older and you get a little impatient with black snow, you move to Florida or to the Sunbelt. So giving people the choice based upon their needs is after all simply a manifestation of freedom. And the Free State movement in the states and the seasteading movement and what Vít is doing in Liberland—the being able to find a selection of countries—is simply another example of the right and the need for individuals to vote with their feet and to have the freedom to select their lifestyle.
Charlie Deist: That’s right. And I think with the Liberland project or any other new country effort, it often gets—the point isn’t made that it doesn’t only benefit the people who have the ability to be the initial pioneers. In fact, the greatest hardship often falls upon those first pioneers, and it’s not meant to be some isolationist escape from the rest of society. If you go to Liberland’s constitution—I don’t know the exact article, but somewhere in there they have a unilateral free trade clause which says that they will engage in free trade with any other country that wants to do trade. And this is something that benefits the rest of the world. Another way that it benefits the rest of the world is just by adding competition to the space where governments will have to step up their game if they don’t want to lose citizens, if they don’t want people to get siphoned off to better jurisdictions. So you can imagine that if you had, you know, right off the coast of San Francisco a jurisdiction that was able to provide lower taxes with the same level of governmental services, or the same taxes with a higher level of governmental services, then San Francisco would have to reform its ways. And so maybe by having a little Hong Kong on the Danube, it will encourage some of the reforms which Europe is in pretty dire need of at the moment.
The Philosophical Core of Liberland [21:13]
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I am in the studio with my dear friend and producer, Charlie Deist. We are discussing Liberland, a new country recently formed, an entrepreneurial new country on the Danube River between Serbia and Croatia. Applications are being accepted for citizenship. And I do not know the tax status yet, so all of you who are thinking about, “Hey, a country where taxes are, yes, voluntary”—it is like crowdfunding writ large. If you like a governmental project, you simply subscribe to it, but all taxes are voluntary. I don’t know about the tax treaty, I don’t know about secret bank accounts, whether they have bank secrecy laws. Right now, what I do know is it is formed according to core libertarian principles, and that is certainly enough for me. Now, we have a caller—always like to have callers. Michael from San Francisco, welcome to the show this morning. How are you this morning?
Caller (Michael): Oh, I’m fine, Bob. How are you?
Bob Zadek: Michael, what’s on your mind this morning?
Caller (Michael): Hi Charlie, this is Michael Edelstein. It’s great to hear you on Bob’s show.
Charlie Deist: Oh, good to hear from you, Michael.
Caller (Michael): Charlie, I wish you would reevaluate your practice of referring to the association of countries as a country club. I think it might give people the wrong idea and blurring the distinction between coercion and consent. Country clubs don’t bomb other countries, and it really is not country clubs; it’s robber gangs associating with each other. What do you think of that, Charlie?
Charlie Deist: Fair enough. I like analogies, and I think that sometimes an analogy can be useful on one dimension, mainly just in terms of the exclusivity and the fact that members have a voice in who gets into their restrictive community. But I do think that it is a good point when we’re looking at international law. Some people actually describe it as a form of anarchy. Walter Block, I think, who was on the show and who I think is also a personal friend of yours, Michael, talks about the anarchic international relationship between nations where, you know, it’s not always the good kind of anarchy, but there’s no formal overarching structure. What do you think about that?
Caller (Michael): Oh yeah, I would agree with that. The relationship between these gangs is anarchic. There’s no overarching ruler of all of them. So I agree with that, but I think that’s consistent with avoiding referring them to country clubs. It reminds me of a discussion I had with someone who I was explaining libertarianism to, and he said, “Oh, I get it. The government is just like a condo community. It has rules, and if you don’t like the rules, you leave.” So that’s another problem of blurring consent with coercion.
Charlie Deist: Yeah, well, that’s interesting you mention that. We actually have Vít back on the line. Before the show, Bob made the point that there are some ways in which Liberland could still function as an experiment as a sort of homeowners association or a gated community. Maybe we can see what Vít thinks of that route. And I know that’s not necessarily what you’re advocating, and maybe there is a good reason why it’s better to aim for the pure libertarian principle rather than this idea of, “Okay, we’ll allow for some overarching structure that we’ll all opt in, but it doesn’t have to operate by strictly libertarian principles.” I think there are kind of two…
Bob Zadek: And Michael, I wince at—even though I made the analogy to a gated community—that’s actually what conservative Republicans are seeking to do to the United States: make us into one big gated community with, like any gated community, a whole lot of rules and with an armed guard at the border deciding who gets in or who gets out based upon allegedly protecting the citizens who are in. So to me, a gated community, while I use the analogy, is a painful analogy and one that I pull back from.
Caller (Michael): Yes. And now I have no objection to Liberland operating as a condo as long as whoever enters Liberland to buy some property signs a contract and there’s an escape clause in the contract. That is a condo community. The problem is when there’s coercion introduced and the coercion is “legal” in quotes, then consent becomes coercion.
Bob Zadek: Michael, thanks so much for the call. We always appreciate your being a loyal listener and thanks for your comment.
Caller (Michael): You’re welcome, Bob. Good to talk to you.
Voluntary Taxation and Governance [24:28]
Bob Zadek: And we’re happy to say that Vít is back with us. Vít, are you there?
Vít Jedlička: Yes, I’m here. I’m listening to your discussion and I’m back with the signal. It somehow disappeared, but it’s now back in the very same spot where I was talking before.
Bob Zadek: I can hear you so well, you must be at a Hilton hotel somewhere. I can hear you perfectly.
Vít Jedlička: Well, I’m right in the restaurant where we did have a celebration last time when we had the most media coming—Bloomberg, Euronews, and New York Times, which I can announce that next weekend there will be a big article in the New York Times about Liberland. I hope everybody gets to read it because it’s very precisely written what our aim is, how the situation looks like, and it’s a full-page, five full-page article about us.
Bob Zadek: Now Vít, let’s get to the good stuff. Vít, tell us about the philosophical core of Liberland. What are the governing principles and how will the government of Liberland be organized? This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for, so go ahead, Vít.
Vít Jedlička: We really wanted to get back to the legacy of American Revolution, and the very beginning the operation was called the Exodus—the Exodus of pissed-off taxpayers, actually. And this is something which has gone terribly wrong, what is happening in nowadays societies, that there is—you probably are discussing quite a lot there—there is more than 60% overall tax on citizens in nowadays societies. And what we said, we are going to do a society based on voluntarism, a voluntary tax system where everybody contributes just to the things that they seem fit. And this is the core. There is nothing that will make citizens pay for something which they don’t like themselves. And we try to take the best parts of American Constitution, best parts of Swiss Constitution, best parts of maybe a little bit of Estonian Constitution as well, to make sure that government is really limited, that people can always have the say at the end what gets to be voted or not, and that the state doesn’t vote about any issues such as, for example, education or health—public health. We think that state shouldn’t do anything about these subjects; it should be completely left to the citizens. And also, for example, marriage. You’ve got so much talk in the United States about the marriage, and we think that it’s none of the government’s business to do anything about the marriage. It should always stick with the charities or nonprofit organizations or whoever might do that, but not the states, because then there is this ongoing nonsense debate about the gay marriage, which is now solved with Liberland.
Bob Zadek: On the issue of voluntary taxes—of course, they’re not taxes if they’re voluntary—but on that issue, how do you deal with the issue of what is called free riders? Most of the population decides it’s a good idea to fund the building of a road, if that’s what they do, or build a public building, a courthouse. And there would be citizens who think it’s a good idea but would just as soon not pay for it, let others pay for it. So they get to use the facility for free and others pay for it. How do you confront the issue of what’s called free riders?
Vít Jedlička: Well, the issue about, for example, the roads is that we are such a small state, there is not going to be any large infrastructure. And as you can see with all these commercial projects, for example, in Prague, that all the roads in some of the places in Prague have been done by private investors. And they do the private parks, and they do it because they want the people come there, shop there, and feel good about the thing. And I don’t know why that should be any of a problem, because even the private investors and private enterprises are actually building infrastructure in order to let customers or people go there and feel free to have a good time there.
Bob Zadek: What’s interesting is one of my first shows many, many, many years ago was on a small city in Georgia called Sandy Springs, Georgia, which is a city that privatized every function. There are one or two city employees, and every function—police, fire, the courts—are all privatized. So you certainly—your principle has been tested and is shown to work, because Sandy Springs is a prosperous, thriving, safe, clean city here in the United States. So to those who are listening and are scratching their heads and wondering if it can work, my guess is that the area in which Sandy Springs, Georgia occupies is probably larger than the area of Liberland, and it works not just fine, it works better than other models. So you’re onto something; you’re simply taking a model that has proven to work and you’re doing it on a country basis rather than a city basis. So I think any skepticism is not well-founded because there’s no reason to be skeptical. It’s different than what people are accustomed to, and that’s the problem. But it’s different in that it’s better, not different in that it’s worse.
Vít Jedlička: Exactly. And I’ve heard about this city. I really, during my next visit to States, I want to stop by there and see how it functions. And I think we will have no problem, especially with all the modern technologies that are now available. We’re discussing the possibility of introducing Uber police, for example. You know, that the officers just sign up when they have a time to do it, and they—people or citizens—get trained so they can all be police if they want to. They can make sure that the security within their area is fine, and they just go to the application, sign up, “I’m as a police,” and everybody can order my services and people can rate them. There’s so many now new possibilities and new perspective with these mobile applications which can be introduced. For example, we can make the world better.
Rejecting the Presidential Model [32:15]
Bob Zadek: Now, you’ve explained that you have picked selectively parts of the United States Constitution, you mentioned Estonia and other countries. What parts of the US system have you rejected as not working so well as you went and picked the best of a lot of different countries?
Vít Jedlička: For example, the part from Switzerland is the veto—the citizens, whenever there is some bill passed, the citizens have a veto within some time frame to reject any new legislation. And I think Patriot Act would be easily rejected if it was introduced, and all these new bills about the healthcare, they would also be rejected if there was a possibility for the citizens of United States to reject them. And a part of that, we also decided that we don’t want any presidents in future. So when this first constitution goes into power, there is no place for president and there will be just a head of this assembly body of 20 people who will get to decide about stuff, but he will have no extra privilege like the presidents do. So we should secure it that it’s not a presidential republic, because I don’t think it proved to be right when you take a look at what the administration in US is doing nowadays.
Bob Zadek: So if you don’t have a president, would you have an executive branch? That is, who will carry out—who will be the CEO? Who will sort of make sure that although it will be very small, there will be some government workers, and to whom will those government workers report? Who will hire—what agency will hire and fire them and make sure they do a good job?
Vít Jedlička: Well, we don’t want to have two things. You know, we don’t have to have a force of president as well as force of some assembly body. And to be honest, president doesn’t really have to worry too much about Congress, for example, about the war. You know, there is this clause that president has to ask within 60 days or 55 days if the war is correct or not. And it always used to be a power of Congress, and nowadays, you know, the United States constitutional lawyers are not too bothered about the fact that there is a war in Libya and nobody declared it and Congress didn’t approve it. Because maybe, you know, the presidential powers are just—there is too much of them nowadays. And that’s why we decided we don’t want to have a presidential republic, that we want to only have a assembly body which will do these things. It will be doing the legislation as well as it will be the government picked out of this assembly body who will be the executive body.
Direct Democracy and the Swiss Model [36:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, you said something which was really important to me and I perked up over it, and I want to be sure it isn’t lost on our audience. You mentioned that the citizens, the voters, will have a veto on the laws. So if the legislator body—is it a parliament or is it a congress?
Vít Jedlička: Well, it’s a parliament. It’s an assembly body of 20 people who get to decide about stuff. And it’s also very important that we decided that two-thirds of the votes will be necessary to pass any bill, and that there has to be an unanimous decision about the change of constitution. So we can make sure that the constitution doesn’t get changed for a long time, and that’s why we also need to work a lot on it so there is no need for change.
Bob Zadek: And if the parliament passes a law that is unpopular, the voters have two remedies: they can vote the politicians out, but that’s a delayed choice because you have to wait for the next election. Or there will be a system where they can organize a vote to veto, to reject the law.
Vít Jedlička: Exactly, exactly. And this is taken from the Swiss model, and it’s proved to be working very good. Every new crazy law which comes out in Switzerland is rejected, and I find it a great way how to prevent, for example, rising of the taxes. In Switzerland, whenever there is a rise of the tax, there must be a national referendum on it or some sort of national veto on it, and you can tell people don’t like to pay higher taxes and they don’t vote for it. And also, you know, we took from the Swiss model just one other thing: that there must be no budget deficit. State is not allowed to run any deficit whatsoever. And this is also a great way from the Swiss model.
Bob Zadek: But if you’re going to have—I’m going to raise a question and then I think answer it—if you’re going to have votes on whether to reject a law or not, citizens can spend their entire day voting and reading about bills and never be able to work because there’s a lot of bills that could be passed. But I guess you could remedy that by having simply electronic voting, like one big SurveyMonkey, and you therefore you go home from work every day and you get to vote electronically or on your cell phone on a bill that Congress passed, and it can be very inexpensive and very quick.
Vít Jedlička: This is exactly what we are taking from the Estonian model. This is something they have already introduced and which is working. You don’t have to take people to the voting machines or somewhere to let them vote. But I don’t think there will be so many laws passed. I think it will be pretty hard for the assembly to pass any laws with this very strict system of what the laws can be about, and also that you need two-thirds of the body to pass any law. So I don’t think there will be too much trouble. And especially I think when the assembly will pass something, it will be something important that will not infringe upon the liberties of the citizens, so they don’t have to worry about it too much.
Citizenship and the Merit System [41:12]
Bob Zadek: I must say, as we’re talking, I’m getting more and more—and you probably can hear it in my voice—I’m getting more and more excited, and on the way home I may have an accident because I may be texting your website to get an application for citizenship. So you’ve gotten me very excited about becoming a charter citizen, if there’s such a concept, of Liberland. Now, what has been—you have traveled extensively—what has been the reception, and I’m going to ask it on two levels: both from the governmental officials you have met with, and from the citizens you have met with when you’re standing around at a private gathering introducing these citizens around the world to Liberland. What has been the reception from each of those two classes of people?
Vít Jedlička: I think it was fantastic. I couldn’t actually expect any better. Like a couple of days after we formed the republic, maybe like four days after, I met an ambassador to Czech Republic, Austrian ambassador to Czech Republic, who was very enthusiastic, who introduced me in front of a large audience of people as a president of Liberland. And that’s sort of how the whole thing started. Then the media took care of it, and they thought that there is some official taking our claim to the land seriously. And then I met—and I got to meet like 20 members of European Parliament. I met one congressman, one senator in United States. I met the former president of Czech Republic, former president of Croatia, and foreign minister of Croatia, and deputy speaker of Serbian Parliament, and they all seem to be very enthusiastic about the project. And that is great. But there is this other side of that, which is that on the other hand, they are a little bit scared, you know, because we are sort of breaking the status quo. It’s something which has been introduced, a way of thinking that new states cannot be created this easily. Everybody is a bit cautious at the end. And for example, the Austrian ambassador said that he supported me only in his private capacity, not in the official capacity. But still, it’s a great amount of support that we’ve got. And if you consider that we have something like 370,000 people applying or registering on our website, out of which 65,000 people applied fully for the citizenship, you can see the enormous force that we have now.
Bob Zadek: Now, if a listener to my show found themselves, as they almost have to be, intrigued by the concept of becoming a citizen of Liberland, and when they apply for and if they are granted citizenship, what does that mean? How is their life changed? What privileges do they then have, and what privileges do they lose by becoming a citizen of Liberland?
Vít Jedlička: Because we are not recognized yet, for example, by United States, you don’t have any problem with the dual citizenship. So until we get recognized by United States—and it can take a while, I can tell you—there is no issue about it. And you basically become a member of this worldwide community of similar-minded people who would really like to have this state in existence. And that means you get to meet a lot of enthusiastic people about the project, a lot of influential people as well. It’s a big social gathering, I think, in the modern century. Wherever I go, I always meet so many people who applied for the citizenship or who are enthusiastic about it. We’ve got almost 9,000 people from US who registered at our website. I got to meet hundreds of them during my stay in States. We had a really nice meeting in San Francisco, and we’ve got a great person called Thomas Arton, who is now the future consul of Liberland to California. So there is really cool thing about this, that all these people who wouldn’t meet otherwise, who share this idea, now get together. And what we want to do with the website in the near future is that we want to turn it out into a social network so people can very easily interact with one another and they can send emails, send SMSes with the network, also see, for example, if they want, where the other people are meeting, where they are located, get together with them, and also fulfill tasks necessary for the creation of Liberland. So they will see what needs to be done, they will also see how many merits they will get for it. And this is like our evaluation system which will allow the citizens to get the citizenship if they will have enough merits.
Conclusion and How to Join [49:55]
Bob Zadek: Now Vít, we only have—regretfully—two minutes. Tell my friends how they can learn more or become citizens of Liberland, and we only have about a minute and a half.
Vít Jedlička: It’s very easy. Just go to liberland.org and you can register there. This is the first stage, or you can go all the way and apply for the citizenship. And very shortly, we are going to test this merit system, a way how the citizenship can be acquired all the way. And it’s going to be a very big—I think it’s going to be one of the biggest games in the century. We will allow people to get fully engaged through this website on the creation of new country. And that means setting up embassies all around the world. That means doing these lectures about liberty all around the world. That means maybe building the city itself. So it’s a great entrepreneurial and social opportunity for everybody.
Bob Zadek: Any plans for an acquisition of other countries to bring them under the libertarian flag?
Vít Jedlička: We shouldn’t be talking about that so much. But there is a couple of political parties which have a Liberland in the name at the moment. And everybody tells me that your land is so small, and I said, “Okay, then we have to find more space for it elsewhere.” So we’ll see.
Bob Zadek: Well, thank you so much, and thank you so much for—I know it was a little stressful to get this show organized. Thank you so much for helping out and for participating from all the way in Central Europe. We really appreciate it, and I invite all my friends out there to do what I have done, which is visit the website, apply for citizenship. And by the way, let me know when you’re taking applications for Secretary of the Treasury of Liberland. I would like you to include my name, if you don’t mind.
Vít Jedlička: All right, great.
Bob Zadek: Lots of luck to you and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Vít Jedlička: Thank you very much for taking me in. Enjoy the rest of the day. Bye.
Bob Zadek: Thank you so much.