58 ms·

Croatia demolished houses of libertarian project “Liberland”, seized property

185 points by acadapter 3y ago

perrygeo 3y ago
For anyone interested in self-made independent nation states, I recommend "This Land is My Land"[1] Not exactly a comprehensive history, but it highlights and celebrates the human story of why people dare to engage in these seemingly insane projects. [1] https://www.amazon.com/This-Land-My-Micronations-Self-Made/dp/1452170185 https://www.amazon.com/This-Land-My-Micronations-Self-Made/d...
runnr_az 3y ago
Sounds like they’re at war with Croatia
RetroTechie 3y ago
Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_...
- acadapter 3y ago
  Yes, it's a messy place they they selected for their "free state"...
  - capableweb 3y ago
    It's either choosing a "no mans land" and hope they'll ignore you until you're established, or you chose something that isn't no mans land, and expect them to come knocking very quickly. You can't really occupy useful land without expecting quick and dire consequences.
    - notpushkin 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure Liberland's case classifies as “no man’s land” (neither of the bordering countries wanted it, and nobody else bothered with it, too). Still, once Liberland established a country there, suddenly everybody wants it. I think nowadays you can't properly set up a new state, period. It’s just impossible. Currently existing states would do anything to push you out (unless you maybe play along with their political games somehow – and even then you get maybe just a tiny bit of recognition).
      - RetroTechie 3y ago
        It's probably more subtle than that: As part of the dispute, Croatia didn't claim it, and neither did Serbia. But in the meanwhile, Serbia did control various other disputed areas. So it would make sense that in turn, Croatia did the same with 'Liberland'. There's no contradiction between [not claiming an area] but still [asserting some degree of control there]. 'Liberland' people claimed homes demolished "without warning" etc, but then complain about having been harassed for years. So, more likely there were previous warnings, legal procedings or whatever, Liberland ignored those because 'not in our country, doesn't apply', and at some point time is up. Given its history, it's logical Croatia would be sensitive about border disputes. And then some 3rd party steps in, complicates things & proclaims a new country between your neighbour & yourself? Can't have that! So this whole clearing operation would simply be "what a nuissance these people! Let's fix that" on Croatia's side. And in the process, assert some control over the area. All in all it seems the Liberland folks are rather naive about land being abandoned, or how border disputes work. Possibly no-one would care if they'd just squatted there without proclaiming anything.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        You can, but you'll have to budget for a sizeable army if you want to keep it.
        notpushkin 3y ago
        Probably, yeah. And sizable in this case means that you not only need to be larger than Serbian and Croatian armies, but perhaps all of NATO as well.
        justinclift 3y ago
        Nah. If these people had a reasonable functional economy (somehow), plus enough military gear/people to make it too costly to try invading, then they'd probably be ignored if they didn't cause trouble. That "enough military gear to make it too costly to try invading" is an absolutely key requirement though. In some ways similar to the China/Taiwan thing. China could invade Taiwan (manpower wise, etc). Taiwan knows it though, so they've focused their defences on asymmetric warfare. "You might take us, but you'll bleed forever from the attempt" kind of thing.
    - gerikson 3y ago
      It's only terra nullius because Croatia considers it to be Serbian territory according to its interpretation of the border, while Serbia is fine with it being part of Croatia according to their interpretation. Croatia claiming the territory would undermine their claim on much bigger land parcels now administered by Serbia. But that's de jure. De facto, it's part of Croatia, and as a basic national security issue Croatia isn't interested in letting squatters have free reign on a parcel of land adjacent to their border.
      - mistrial9 3y ago
        can you say more about the 20th century involvement of Sweden, their government and bureaucracy, in re-shaping the Balkans since 1970 or so ? (all new to me, news media seems filled with ads)
        gerikson 3y ago
        Sorry, not my area of expertise. I do know that parts of Swedish foreign aid is in the form of building public institutions, reforming tax collection, etc.
        pjc50 3y ago
        Sweden?? And surely the start date has to be 1991?
        mistrial9 3y ago
        no, certainly ten years+ after that series.. Is it unusual that the Swedish wrote documents, also published in English, documenting the forest and natural species of the range of mountains in the South West of the Balkans. Those documents were later used as part of a declaration headed by an American group. Real estate sales is also listed, along with the "pristine" nature. Somehow, the nature preserves are not respected now?
defrost 3y ago
For reference: Free Republic of Liberland is a sovereign state located between Croatia and Serbia. It is a 7 km² piece of land referred to as “Gornja Siga”. The founder and elected head of state is President Vít Jedlička. Liberland is a constitutional republic with elements of direct democracy. The state has two Vice Presidents and 5 Ministers. The language is English. The Liberland merit is the currency of Liberland. The country's motto is: To live and let live. After 8 years of international diplomatic efforts, Liberland recently opened its border with Croatia on the 6 August 2023. This marks a significant step forward for Liberland, followed by an active settlement of the land. The Liberland community aims to construct enduring structures to facilitate economic growth for both the residents of Liberland and the surrounding community. https://liberland.org/en/ https://liberland.org/en/ It's another postage stamp self declared sovereign state, although being bang in the midst of already disputed territory it's more interesting than, say, the Principality of Hutt River. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River http://www.principality-hutt-river.com/ http://www.principality-hutt-river.com/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  > being bang in the midst of already disputed territory It's kind of the logical opposite of disputed territory. Due to the nature of the dispute, the parcel is in territory that neither side claims, if they are being consistent with their claims.
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    Neither country claims it, but both countries agree it belongs to one of them and that it's not free for taking for anybody else.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - PeterisP 3y ago
AynRandQuote 3y ago
[flagged]
- mlinhares 3y ago
  [flagged]
- rglullis 3y ago
  > It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. So is her Objectivism.
  - dang 3y ago
    "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ausbah 3y ago
  “my ideology is the absolute objective truth and the opposite of my ideology is trash”. no wonder no one takes her seriously or actually what’s worse is someone made a whole throwaway account to post this one comment
  - fkdsajfkldsj 3y ago
    More like "this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes it with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists, and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and they call themselves Libertarians and run for office".
  - dang 3y ago
    "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bm3719 3y ago
  I suppose we all reserve our greatest ire for the apostate. If Rand were alive today, I'd probably respond by saying that as she identifies as a philosopher, she's (part of) the logos to libertarians' praxis. So, naturally there's going to be some sloppiness introduced into her conceptual ideal. That's there to account for the real world issues she didn't have to deal with alone at her typewriter, like how to get enough bodies to have a viable a political movement. Furthermore, what she's describing in the latter half are anarcho-capitalists, which are a small subset of libertarians. In fact, many (perhaps most) of them would be very uninterested in being labeled as such, thinking of libertarians at best as minarchists.
atemerev 3y ago
Sovereignty is impossible without defense. Defense is impossible without credible deterrence. Deterrence forces of newly established states are probably impossible without private nuclear weapons.
- tgv 3y ago
  Liechtenstein? Andorra? Luxembourg?
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    Lets add San Marino, Monaco and the Vatican for good measure. All those states have very specific historical reasons why they dodged unification with their surrounding countries. The most surreal being Monaco's sovereignty saved by Grace Kelly's fame as an actress moving American public opinion to pressure France not to swallow it. Also, note, that all the towns you listed are (historically) worthless border towns wedged between titans who would violently oppose their neighbor swallowing them. Sure, now those microstates are rich, but historically they were worthless and not worth war with a powerful neighbor to take over.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      Taiwan?
      - SonicScrub 3y ago
        > Sovereignty is impossible without defense. Defense is impossible without credible deterrence See above
      - thsksbd 3y ago
        You're comparing an island with millions of people to Andorra? Except for Luxembourg a few hundred guys could besiege all of the states listed above. Ten thousand would suffice for Luxembourg. As it stands no one is really sure if China - with one of the the world's largest armed forced - could successfully invade Taiwan.
__sy__ 3y ago
might makes right
- pixl97 3y ago
  Maybe if a bunch of libertarians get together for mutual defense, elect leaders, set rules on how they'll pool their resources, they'll be able to prevent this from happening... Oh no, they created a government!
  - nannal 3y ago
    Why didn't the other party just follow the NAP?! Then this couldn't have happened!
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    Yeah, I don't believe a true anarcho-capitalist society is possible at this point in time. (It's a neat concept, though!) Minarchism, also a part of libertarianism, is definitely more realistic though.
  - solarman5000 3y ago
    Believe it or not, libertarianism is the entire bottom half of the political compass, and the vast majority of them are not anarchists
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      "the entire bottom half of the political compass" drawn by libertarians.
  - abigail95 3y ago
    Are you giving a definition of libertarians or making a rhetorical point about the inadequacy of democracy in the short term for avoiding a crisis, or arguing against any form of government? I can't make any sense of this.
- INTPenis 3y ago
  The reason this is terra nullius is because the river has moved that land around for centuries, and will continue to do so. That border attempts to follow the river but the river doesn't follow diplomacy. These people who take advantage of this fact are very short sighted and mostly bored middle/upper class kids.
notum 3y ago
[flagged]
karaterobot 3y ago
Behind any philosophical notions of statehood, a country is still just whatever territory your army can protect from other armies.
- boomskats 3y ago
  And this is exactly why we must all remember to pledge 2% of our Gross Domestic Product to Lockheed Martin.
  - belter 3y ago
    Europe thanks you, so it can only pledge 1.5 %
  - dvgddksj 3y ago
    How much do we give to Apple?
  - anon1199022 3y ago
    More like few trillion to Afganistan and Iraq with no real threat but idk, you can say whatever % too.
    - alwa 3y ago
      I wonder if the parent comment was referring to NATO’s 2% Defense Investment Guideline [0], where NATO countries agreed in 2006 to spend 2% of their respective GDPs on defense. The Americans periodically get grumpy that the European countries tend to come in short of that target. [0] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm#indirect https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm#indirect
  - pjscott 3y ago
    It's a little under 0.2%, using the revenue and GDP numbers from last year. (You might have misplaced the decimal point?)
  - PKop 3y ago
    Non sequitur aside, given the outcome of this very situation, is it not true that power dictates (whether we like it or not)?
tzs 3y ago
They should have picked disputed territory where all existing states that could reasonably claim it insist that it is not theirs. E.g., Bir Tawil [1], which is 2000 km^2 (800 mi^2) of disputed territory on the border between Egypt and Sudan. Egypt says it belongs to Sudan, and Sudan says it belongs to Egypt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil
- acadapter 3y ago
  Exactly the same situation exists in four places along the Danube river's coastline (although only one of the land pockets is somewhat suitable for creating a country)
- PeterisP 3y ago
  This is a literal equivalent to Bir Tawil, with both sides of a border dispute preferring the interpretation of the whole border that leaves this particular plot to the other. However, as demonstrated by this situation, in practice that doesn't mean that some third party can just grab that land - and I'd expect the same thing to happen in Bir Tawil; legal technicalities are nifty but they aren't really sufficient for de facto recognition, which is the main thing that matters in international law.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It’s like when two siblings are fighting and a third comes in and insults one and they stop fighting to beat the living daylights out of the interloper.
- c7DJTLrn 3y ago
  The fact that nobody wants it is telling. It's an uninhabited, landlocked strip of desert with no water. Would be hard to start a new settlement there.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    Landlocked is important since have to travel through Egypt or Sudan to reach it. Which means they can block any independence movement by denying entry to participants.
tzs 3y ago
An interesting place to try to establish a new state might be some of the weird places that exist due to the ridiculousness of the India and Pakistan border (if they still exist--I remember that there was some talk of adjusting the borders to get rid of them). There are (or were) some places where Indian territory was entirely surrounded by Pakistani territory, and some places where Pakistani territory was entirely surrounded by Indian territory. But it didn't stop there. There were a small number of cases where within one of those surrounded territories there was an even smaller territory that was part of the other country. E.g., a small Pakistani territory entirely in a larger Indian territory which was entirely inside Pakistan. Pakistan and India aren't friendly with each other. So suppose you went to one of those innermost territories and convinced the people there to join you and declare themselves a new independent state. Say some Pakistani territory inside some Indian territory inside Pakistan. Pakistan can't reach you to kick you out without crossing Indian territory, which India is not likely to give them permission to do.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  This was east Pakistan, aka Bangladesh (cooch behar enclaves), and that border was resolved recently
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    Not entirely resolved. Some enclaves and exclaves were transferred but some still exist. A big issue is citizenship and relocation, respecting peoples prproperty rights and perceived nationality, and this is the most densely populated region on the planet. It's a messy situation along that border, thankfully not one viewed by the governments as contentious or worthy of conflict.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      Yeah Iirc the status of the biggest enclaves are still enclaves but that's manageable.
- baybal2 3y ago
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
As fun as this little project is, it has the potential to turn nasty if it goes on. I imagine Croatia will start taking this seriously at some point.
- davidgerard 3y ago
  It's functionally a bitcoin scam.
- LAC-Tech 3y ago
  [flagged]
- nsajko 3y ago
  It's been taken seriously from the start.
Nihilartikel 3y ago
Still waiting for a sovereign _Libertine_ state.
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
unethical_ban 3y ago
So disappointing that people hear are waving it off, when it sounds like The form of government they're attempting to create is more just and democratic than any country surrounding it. Sure, it's an experiment, and one that was probably doomed to fail without croatia's permission. It's still sad this happened.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  It's Yet Another Libertarian free land project like minerva, sealand, jfip, operation atlantis 1, 2 & 3, satoshi, rose island, blueseed etc. They all end effectively the same way: either discovering there is such a thing as society through things like disease, disaster, securing water, or that other people, with like armies and planes, also value property rights. Yet somehow I guess the inevitable happening is still shocking to some. When I'm either old or dead, I'm sure this will repeat itself on Mars
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    Point to where I said it was shocking.
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      Not you individually. I said "some", that's a subgroup from a larger population
  - davidebaldini 3y ago
    In what instance did it happen that a libertarian claim to a territory survived so long as to fail by its own ineptitude?
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      This is only influencing a local government, not establishing a sovereign state, but it's in that direction of failing by its own ineptitude: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-... "... Sean Illing: And how did they take over the local government? Did they meet much resistance? Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: When they first showed up, they hadn’t told anyone that they were doing this, with the exception of a couple of sympathetic libertarians within the community. And so all of a sudden the people in Grafton woke up to the fact that their town was in the process of being invaded by a bunch of idealistic libertarians. And they were pissed. They had a big town meeting. It was a very shouty, very angry town meeting, during which they told the Free Towners who dared to come that they didn’t want them there and they didn’t appreciate being treated as if their community was an experimental playpen for libertarians to come in and try to prove something. But the libertarians, even though they never outnumbered the existing Grafton residents, what they found was that they could come in, and they could find like-minded people, traditional conservatives or just very liberty-oriented individuals, who agreed with them on enough issues that, despite that angry opposition, they were able to start to work their will on the levers of government. They couldn’t pass some of the initiatives they wanted. They tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the school district and to completely discontinue paying for road repairs, or to declare Grafton a United Nations free zone, some of the outlandish things like that. But they did find that a lot of existing Grafton residents would be happy to cut town services to the bone. And so they successfully put a stranglehold on things like police services, things like road services and fire services and even the public library. All of these things were cut to the bone. Sean Illing: Then what happened over the next few years or so? Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a town’s success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute. So there were all sorts of negative consequences that started to crop up. And meanwhile, the town that would ordinarily want to address these things, say with a robust police force, instead found that it was hamstrung. So the town only had one full-time police officer, a single police chief, and he had to stand up at town meeting and tell people that he couldn’t put his cruiser on the road for a period of weeks because he didn’t have money to repair it and make it a safe vehicle. Basically, Grafton became a Wild West, frontier-type town. Sean Illing: When did the bears show up? Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: It turns out that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations, each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way, then you’re essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses. One thing that the Free Towners did that encouraged the bears was unintentional, in that they just threw their waste out how they wanted. They didn’t want the government to tell them how to manage their potential bear attractants. The other way was intentional, in that some people just started feeding the bears just for the joy and pleasure of watching them eat. As you can imagine, things got messy and there was no way for the town to deal with it. Some people were shooting the bears. Some people were feeding the bears. Some people were setting booby traps on their properties in an effort to deter the bears through pain. Others were throwing firecrackers at them. Others were putting cayenne pepper on their garbage so that when the bears sniffed their garbage, they would get a snout full of pepper. It was an absolute mess. ..."
Kosirich 3y ago
Idiotic decision by Croatia, here I'm talking both as a Croatian, as well as someone supporting this kind of "liberal" experiments. Instead of seeing this as a fun experiment that wouldn't cost Croatian tax payer anything, the most politically controlled nepotistic organization full of "uhljeb's", Hrvatske sume, decided to act this way (under direction). If Croatian government was smart, they could have tried reaching some deal proclaiming "Liberland" as a free zone, under protection of Croatians army until UN recognition is made (probably never). The potential touristic revenue to local areas could have been used to justify it to Croatian people. Sad...
- acadapter 3y ago
  Yes, they messed up in this. Croatia did a mega police operation, in order to get rid of people that brought them tourist revenue and didn't bother anyone. Now all the money will go to Serbia, as the participants hold their events and "Floating man" festivals in Apatin instead.
- tail_exchange 3y ago
  What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Allowing some entity to establish a government in your lands just to see what happens doesn't seem like a wise move to me. This would only legitimize their claims to the land and legitimize them as a sovereign state. It's a good way to end up losing this land and creating yet another microstate.
  - logicalmonster 3y ago
    > What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Not that the only group of people who want to bother nobody else need any justification for living their lives as they see fit, but how else is humanity going to learn about the different ways we can organize society if we don't try them out? It would be phenomenal for humanity if people with ideas outside of the box organized as they saw fit without outside interference and we all get to see what works and what doesn't.
moomin 3y ago
This is a good read: https://www.britannica.com/topic/international-law/States-in-international-law https://www.britannica.com/topic/international-law/States-in... The TL;DR of this is, ultimately, that a state is whatever other states say is a state, and they're generally wary of recognizing anything disputed. There's a fair bit of nuance there though so it's worth a proper read. And, as we know from Ukraine, even when the state is widely recognized with well-established borders, you'd better be in a position to enforce those borders by force if your neighbour decides they disagree.
- dudinax 3y ago
  I think you're saying any small group of people is in danger of being pushed around because they can't defend themselves. Heck, just look at the difficulty communist China had being recognized as a state, and they certainly could defend themselves.
adolph 3y ago
The number one threat to governments is a lack of need for a government. Croatia, like any government, must crush independence (lack of dependence) even if it exists outside the government's claimed borders. All past revolutions sought to replace government. The universal revolution of all humanity is to leave no reason for it to exist.
- semicolon_storm 3y ago
  Liberland had a government. Apparently no one ever told them they didn't need it.
jq-r 3y ago
Interestingly there were no major (or minor) media articles about this at all (or at least what I usually follow). Which goes to say that it was either a cover-up or parts of Croatia don't exist outside of major cities. From my experience its more of the latter as Croatia's public media houses are notoriously terrible and they don't bother reporting on something unless you literally write an article for them.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  It's simply something so tiny and irrelevant (unless you have a special interest in libertarian experiments) that it doesn't warrant major or minor media articles - from the pictures it looks like the officials enforced a building regulations issue for 2-3 tiny cottages/sheds that somehow involved (but clearly couldn't house) a community of 19 people. Like, that's not news - the outcome of that thing was as expected, no surprises there and such things are routine - every day there are multiple building code enforcements on larger, more significant buildsites. Why should general media care about this one in particular? I'd assert that demolishing some illegally built sheds in the backyard of some locally popular actor, politician or businessman (I'd assume Croatia has hundreds people each of whom are more widely known there than Liberland is) would be far more newsworthy than this, but still likely not newsworthy enough for most media, perhaps only as a filler for some celebrity gossip yellow press.
  - jq-r 3y ago
    Oh don't get me wrong, I thought it was just a bit funny and/or ironic because the media will write about even the most mudane things if they are easy to write about. Something happens outside of a major city where nobody was seriously injured, no public figures explicitly involved, or there were no major crimes commited - it's very unlikely it'll end up in the news. I'm 100% sure if this happened near some major city, it would be top 5 news item of that day. But alas, it happened in the middle of nowhere, so it kind of not happened if you get my meaning.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  "A cover up"??? "Teeny group of squatters get evicted" isn't exactly headline news in most places.
hackandthink 3y ago
Berlin 1988: There was some GDR territory near Brandenburger Tor beyond the wall. Similar story but people escaped over the wall. https://alternativeberlin.com/2015/05/21/the-amazing-story-of-the-kubat-dreieck-land-enclave-in-east-west-berlin/ https://alternativeberlin.com/2015/05/21/the-amazing-story-o...
IOT_Apprentice 3y ago
Cosplayimg sovereign citizens eh?
- slater 3y ago
  I wonder who the money person is, in this group. There's always at least one propping things up, with libertarians.
EGreg 3y ago
I met Vit, like I met many other people in this space. At Brock Pierce’s school in Washington DC, during Government Blockchain Association’s event. We build the apps for their events and I have been meeting all kinds of people through these kind of conferences: https://community.intercoin.app/t/qbix-and-intercoin-around-the-world-greg-magarshaks-travelogue/2365 https://community.intercoin.app/t/qbix-and-intercoin-around-... https://community.intercoin.app/t/greg-magarshaks-travelogue-in-the-second-half-of-2022/2743 https://community.intercoin.app/t/greg-magarshaks-travelogue... I went to Honduras to see Prospera, and other “micronations” or libertarian experiments, and want to help them out. I interviewed Patri Friedman on our show (and if anyone knows Balaji Srinivasan, who wrote The Network State, please message me — I’d love to interview him too) Say what you will about running a crypto startup, but I get to do fun things: https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-2-0/392 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-2-0/392 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-3-0/1061 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-3-0/1061
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Our legal position supporting our claim is clear: that the territory has never been part of Croatia and falls outside of its borders. My legal position is that I'm king of the universe, but I've had some difficulty getting recognition by other states. This will go down exactly how all these silly "sovereign citizen", seasteader, etc. type things go down. People have somehow forgotten that all of our "legal fictions" we've created are just that: fictions. They are general rules that we've set up to manage society, but unless you have the ability to back up your stance with force, or to convince someone else to back you with force, "legal positions" are meaningless.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  They are general rules that we've set up to manage society, but unless you have the ability to back up your stance with force, who to convince someone else to back you with force, "legal positions" are meaningless. These "market anarchists" have an odd need to believe that the literal interpretation of human-dreamed-up laws would will be sufficient to protect them forever. It seems like this belief goes with the need to believe that in their future "selfish-market-behavior-creates-mutual-benefit" society, the stronger won't use their strength to subjugate the weak.
  - breakyerself 3y ago
    Not to mention that every attempt at basic administration of society is viewed as a violation of the rights of the individualists living their libertarian values so you end up with nothing but dysfunction and a breakdown of society. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
- kderbyma 3y ago
  [flagged]
nsajko 3y ago
The whole Liberland micronation project was just a ridiculous publicity stunt and scam from the start. 1. The "unclaimed territory" story is a blatant lie. 2. The land in question (Gornja Siga) is a floodplain. It gets completely flooded with water multiple meters deep every couple of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland EDIT: > Define "scam"? Who is trying to scam who in this situation? Jedlička sold quite a few Liberland "citizenships".
- acadapter 3y ago
  It is unclaimed if you choose to accept both the Croatian and Serbian border definitions at the same time (which they apparently have done)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Without dignifying any of this supremely silly drama, that's not an option that logically avails. Both Serbia and Croatia agree that one of them is getting this territory.
    - yreg 3y ago
      Neither of them claim it. Why is their opinion on land they do not claim relevant? (Other than because of force.)
      - kramler 3y ago
        Croatia asserts its right to administer the patch through the simple expedient of actually administering it. The fact that Croatia claims to only be controlling access and evicting squatters on behalf of Serbia does not change the fact that Croatia is controlling access and evicting squatters. The Liberlanders' claim that the patch was terra nullius was silly from day one. An area is terra nullius if there is no recognized government hoping to run it, not if there is no recognized government that will publicly commit to keep running it forever. The Liberlanders' new claim that the patch is bona vacantia is just completely batshit gaga. Bona vacantia is about private ownership title rather than sovereignty, does not exist in civil law jurisdictions, and when successfully invoked just means ownership of the item in question has reverted to the Crown. We need a moratorium on ancaps having legal opinions until their semantics games become functionally distinguishable from SovCit woo.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
It sounds like a silly project, but there is no reason to not be more respectful in kicking these people off of this unclaimed land. I am an old man, so apologies in advance for making an old man comment: in all of my travels, I have uniformly found people kind and decent and I have found governments to be fucked up. To be honest, there are a (very) few governments on our planet that I respect so maybe my generalization is unfair.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  > I have uniformly found people kind and decent There's a whole ton of assholes out there. You can get ripped off in any culture if you don't watch your back.
archsurface 3y ago
Sounds like they were inspired by Russia. Unnecessarily aggressive. There must be accountability.
kderbyma 3y ago
shoot first, ask invaders later...
PedroBatista 3y ago
Every couple years there are scams like this all over the World. They usual go the "spiritual" route and end like pretty much every cult ends, ie. it becomes an harem, someone gets raped and/or killed and police gets called. The other way is the "political" route, they usually get a small group and try to create their own "perfect system" isolated from external influences ( of course.. ). When police comes down and tells them they can't simply take some land and make their own "laws", of course its the police being "oppressive/fascist/[insert your one "ism"] and they are the victims. I've seen this playbook and least since the 60's but I'm sure it existed before that.

185 points by acadapter 3y ago

For anyone interested in self-made independent nation states, I recommend "This Land is My Land"[1] Not exactly a comprehensive history, but it highlights and celebrates the human story of why people dare to engage in these seemingly insane projects. [1] https://www.amazon.com/This-Land-My-Micronations-Self-Made/dp/1452170185 https://www.amazon.com/This-Land-My-Micronations-Self-Made/d...

runnr_az 3y ago

Sounds like they’re at war with Croatia

RetroTechie 3y ago

Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_...

acadapter 3y ago
Yes, it's a messy place they they selected for their "free state"...
- capableweb 3y ago
  It's either choosing a "no mans land" and hope they'll ignore you until you're established, or you chose something that isn't no mans land, and expect them to come knocking very quickly. You can't really occupy useful land without expecting quick and dire consequences.
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure Liberland's case classifies as “no man’s land” (neither of the bordering countries wanted it, and nobody else bothered with it, too). Still, once Liberland established a country there, suddenly everybody wants it. I think nowadays you can't properly set up a new state, period. It’s just impossible. Currently existing states would do anything to push you out (unless you maybe play along with their political games somehow – and even then you get maybe just a tiny bit of recognition).
    - RetroTechie 3y ago
      It's probably more subtle than that: As part of the dispute, Croatia didn't claim it, and neither did Serbia. But in the meanwhile, Serbia did control various other disputed areas. So it would make sense that in turn, Croatia did the same with 'Liberland'. There's no contradiction between [not claiming an area] but still [asserting some degree of control there]. 'Liberland' people claimed homes demolished "without warning" etc, but then complain about having been harassed for years. So, more likely there were previous warnings, legal procedings or whatever, Liberland ignored those because 'not in our country, doesn't apply', and at some point time is up. Given its history, it's logical Croatia would be sensitive about border disputes. And then some 3rd party steps in, complicates things & proclaims a new country between your neighbour & yourself? Can't have that! So this whole clearing operation would simply be "what a nuissance these people! Let's fix that" on Croatia's side. And in the process, assert some control over the area. All in all it seems the Liberland folks are rather naive about land being abandoned, or how border disputes work. Possibly no-one would care if they'd just squatted there without proclaiming anything.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      You can, but you'll have to budget for a sizeable army if you want to keep it.
      - notpushkin 3y ago
        Probably, yeah. And sizable in this case means that you not only need to be larger than Serbian and Croatian armies, but perhaps all of NATO as well.
        justinclift 3y ago
        Nah. If these people had a reasonable functional economy (somehow), plus enough military gear/people to make it too costly to try invading, then they'd probably be ignored if they didn't cause trouble. That "enough military gear to make it too costly to try invading" is an absolutely key requirement though. In some ways similar to the China/Taiwan thing. China could invade Taiwan (manpower wise, etc). Taiwan knows it though, so they've focused their defences on asymmetric warfare. "You might take us, but you'll bleed forever from the attempt" kind of thing.
  - gerikson 3y ago
    It's only terra nullius because Croatia considers it to be Serbian territory according to its interpretation of the border, while Serbia is fine with it being part of Croatia according to their interpretation. Croatia claiming the territory would undermine their claim on much bigger land parcels now administered by Serbia. But that's de jure. De facto, it's part of Croatia, and as a basic national security issue Croatia isn't interested in letting squatters have free reign on a parcel of land adjacent to their border.
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      can you say more about the 20th century involvement of Sweden, their government and bureaucracy, in re-shaping the Balkans since 1970 or so ? (all new to me, news media seems filled with ads)
      - gerikson 3y ago
        Sorry, not my area of expertise. I do know that parts of Swedish foreign aid is in the form of building public institutions, reforming tax collection, etc.
      - pjc50 3y ago
        Sweden?? And surely the start date has to be 1991?
        mistrial9 3y ago
        no, certainly ten years+ after that series.. Is it unusual that the Swedish wrote documents, also published in English, documenting the forest and natural species of the range of mountains in the South West of the Balkans. Those documents were later used as part of a declaration headed by an American group. Real estate sales is also listed, along with the "pristine" nature. Somehow, the nature preserves are not respected now?

defrost 3y ago

For reference: Free Republic of Liberland is a sovereign state located between Croatia and Serbia. It is a 7 km² piece of land referred to as “Gornja Siga”. The founder and elected head of state is President Vít Jedlička. Liberland is a constitutional republic with elements of direct democracy. The state has two Vice Presidents and 5 Ministers. The language is English. The Liberland merit is the currency of Liberland. The country's motto is: To live and let live. After 8 years of international diplomatic efforts, Liberland recently opened its border with Croatia on the 6 August 2023. This marks a significant step forward for Liberland, followed by an active settlement of the land. The Liberland community aims to construct enduring structures to facilitate economic growth for both the residents of Liberland and the surrounding community. https://liberland.org/en/ https://liberland.org/en/ It's another postage stamp self declared sovereign state, although being bang in the midst of already disputed territory it's more interesting than, say, the Principality of Hutt River. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River http://www.principality-hutt-river.com/ http://www.principality-hutt-river.com/

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
throwawaymaths 3y ago
> being bang in the midst of already disputed territory It's kind of the logical opposite of disputed territory. Due to the nature of the dispute, the parcel is in territory that neither side claims, if they are being consistent with their claims.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  Neither country claims it, but both countries agree it belongs to one of them and that it's not free for taking for anybody else.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterisP 3y ago

AynRandQuote 3y ago

[flagged]

mlinhares 3y ago
[flagged]
rglullis 3y ago
> It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. So is her Objectivism.
- dang 3y ago
  "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ausbah 3y ago
“my ideology is the absolute objective truth and the opposite of my ideology is trash”. no wonder no one takes her seriously or actually what’s worse is someone made a whole throwaway account to post this one comment
- fkdsajfkldsj 3y ago
  More like "this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes it with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists, and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and they call themselves Libertarians and run for office".
- dang 3y ago
  "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
bm3719 3y ago
I suppose we all reserve our greatest ire for the apostate. If Rand were alive today, I'd probably respond by saying that as she identifies as a philosopher, she's (part of) the logos to libertarians' praxis. So, naturally there's going to be some sloppiness introduced into her conceptual ideal. That's there to account for the real world issues she didn't have to deal with alone at her typewriter, like how to get enough bodies to have a viable a political movement. Furthermore, what she's describing in the latter half are anarcho-capitalists, which are a small subset of libertarians. In fact, many (perhaps most) of them would be very uninterested in being labeled as such, thinking of libertarians at best as minarchists.

atemerev 3y ago

Sovereignty is impossible without defense. Defense is impossible without credible deterrence. Deterrence forces of newly established states are probably impossible without private nuclear weapons.

tgv 3y ago
Liechtenstein? Andorra? Luxembourg?
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Lets add San Marino, Monaco and the Vatican for good measure. All those states have very specific historical reasons why they dodged unification with their surrounding countries. The most surreal being Monaco's sovereignty saved by Grace Kelly's fame as an actress moving American public opinion to pressure France not to swallow it. Also, note, that all the towns you listed are (historically) worthless border towns wedged between titans who would violently oppose their neighbor swallowing them. Sure, now those microstates are rich, but historically they were worthless and not worth war with a powerful neighbor to take over.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    Taiwan?
    - SonicScrub 3y ago
      > Sovereignty is impossible without defense. Defense is impossible without credible deterrence See above
    - thsksbd 3y ago
      You're comparing an island with millions of people to Andorra? Except for Luxembourg a few hundred guys could besiege all of the states listed above. Ten thousand would suffice for Luxembourg. As it stands no one is really sure if China - with one of the the world's largest armed forced - could successfully invade Taiwan.

__sy__ 3y ago

might makes right

pixl97 3y ago
Maybe if a bunch of libertarians get together for mutual defense, elect leaders, set rules on how they'll pool their resources, they'll be able to prevent this from happening... Oh no, they created a government!
- nannal 3y ago
  Why didn't the other party just follow the NAP?! Then this couldn't have happened!
- notpushkin 3y ago
  Yeah, I don't believe a true anarcho-capitalist society is possible at this point in time. (It's a neat concept, though!) Minarchism, also a part of libertarianism, is definitely more realistic though.
- solarman5000 3y ago
  Believe it or not, libertarianism is the entire bottom half of the political compass, and the vast majority of them are not anarchists
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    "the entire bottom half of the political compass" drawn by libertarians.
- abigail95 3y ago
  Are you giving a definition of libertarians or making a rhetorical point about the inadequacy of democracy in the short term for avoiding a crisis, or arguing against any form of government? I can't make any sense of this.
INTPenis 3y ago
The reason this is terra nullius is because the river has moved that land around for centuries, and will continue to do so. That border attempts to follow the river but the river doesn't follow diplomacy. These people who take advantage of this fact are very short sighted and mostly bored middle/upper class kids.

notum 3y ago

[flagged]

karaterobot 3y ago

Behind any philosophical notions of statehood, a country is still just whatever territory your army can protect from other armies.

boomskats 3y ago
And this is exactly why we must all remember to pledge 2% of our Gross Domestic Product to Lockheed Martin.
- belter 3y ago
  Europe thanks you, so it can only pledge 1.5 %
- dvgddksj 3y ago
  How much do we give to Apple?
- anon1199022 3y ago
  More like few trillion to Afganistan and Iraq with no real threat but idk, you can say whatever % too.
  - alwa 3y ago
    I wonder if the parent comment was referring to NATO’s 2% Defense Investment Guideline [0], where NATO countries agreed in 2006 to spend 2% of their respective GDPs on defense. The Americans periodically get grumpy that the European countries tend to come in short of that target. [0] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm#indirect https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm#indirect
- pjscott 3y ago
  It's a little under 0.2%, using the revenue and GDP numbers from last year. (You might have misplaced the decimal point?)
- PKop 3y ago
  Non sequitur aside, given the outcome of this very situation, is it not true that power dictates (whether we like it or not)?

tzs 3y ago

They should have picked disputed territory where all existing states that could reasonably claim it insist that it is not theirs. E.g., Bir Tawil [1], which is 2000 km^2 (800 mi^2) of disputed territory on the border between Egypt and Sudan. Egypt says it belongs to Sudan, and Sudan says it belongs to Egypt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil

acadapter 3y ago
Exactly the same situation exists in four places along the Danube river's coastline (although only one of the land pockets is somewhat suitable for creating a country)
PeterisP 3y ago
This is a literal equivalent to Bir Tawil, with both sides of a border dispute preferring the interpretation of the whole border that leaves this particular plot to the other. However, as demonstrated by this situation, in practice that doesn't mean that some third party can just grab that land - and I'd expect the same thing to happen in Bir Tawil; legal technicalities are nifty but they aren't really sufficient for de facto recognition, which is the main thing that matters in international law.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It’s like when two siblings are fighting and a third comes in and insults one and they stop fighting to beat the living daylights out of the interloper.
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
The fact that nobody wants it is telling. It's an uninhabited, landlocked strip of desert with no water. Would be hard to start a new settlement there.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Landlocked is important since have to travel through Egypt or Sudan to reach it. Which means they can block any independence movement by denying entry to participants.

tzs 3y ago

An interesting place to try to establish a new state might be some of the weird places that exist due to the ridiculousness of the India and Pakistan border (if they still exist--I remember that there was some talk of adjusting the borders to get rid of them). There are (or were) some places where Indian territory was entirely surrounded by Pakistani territory, and some places where Pakistani territory was entirely surrounded by Indian territory. But it didn't stop there. There were a small number of cases where within one of those surrounded territories there was an even smaller territory that was part of the other country. E.g., a small Pakistani territory entirely in a larger Indian territory which was entirely inside Pakistan. Pakistan and India aren't friendly with each other. So suppose you went to one of those innermost territories and convinced the people there to join you and declare themselves a new independent state. Say some Pakistani territory inside some Indian territory inside Pakistan. Pakistan can't reach you to kick you out without crossing Indian territory, which India is not likely to give them permission to do.

throwawaymaths 3y ago
This was east Pakistan, aka Bangladesh (cooch behar enclaves), and that border was resolved recently
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Not entirely resolved. Some enclaves and exclaves were transferred but some still exist. A big issue is citizenship and relocation, respecting peoples prproperty rights and perceived nationality, and this is the most densely populated region on the planet. It's a messy situation along that border, thankfully not one viewed by the governments as contentious or worthy of conflict.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    Yeah Iirc the status of the biggest enclaves are still enclaves but that's manageable.
baybal2 3y ago

c7DJTLrn 3y ago

As fun as this little project is, it has the potential to turn nasty if it goes on. I imagine Croatia will start taking this seriously at some point.

davidgerard 3y ago
It's functionally a bitcoin scam.
LAC-Tech 3y ago
[flagged]
nsajko 3y ago
It's been taken seriously from the start.

Nihilartikel 3y ago

Still waiting for a sovereign _Libertine_ state.

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

unethical_ban 3y ago

So disappointing that people hear are waving it off, when it sounds like The form of government they're attempting to create is more just and democratic than any country surrounding it. Sure, it's an experiment, and one that was probably doomed to fail without croatia's permission. It's still sad this happened.

kristopolous 3y ago
It's Yet Another Libertarian free land project like minerva, sealand, jfip, operation atlantis 1, 2 & 3, satoshi, rose island, blueseed etc. They all end effectively the same way: either discovering there is such a thing as society through things like disease, disaster, securing water, or that other people, with like armies and planes, also value property rights. Yet somehow I guess the inevitable happening is still shocking to some. When I'm either old or dead, I'm sure this will repeat itself on Mars
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Point to where I said it was shocking.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    Not you individually. I said "some", that's a subgroup from a larger population
- davidebaldini 3y ago
  In what instance did it happen that a libertarian claim to a territory survived so long as to fail by its own ineptitude?
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    This is only influencing a local government, not establishing a sovereign state, but it's in that direction of failing by its own ineptitude: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-... "... Sean Illing: And how did they take over the local government? Did they meet much resistance? Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: When they first showed up, they hadn’t told anyone that they were doing this, with the exception of a couple of sympathetic libertarians within the community. And so all of a sudden the people in Grafton woke up to the fact that their town was in the process of being invaded by a bunch of idealistic libertarians. And they were pissed. They had a big town meeting. It was a very shouty, very angry town meeting, during which they told the Free Towners who dared to come that they didn’t want them there and they didn’t appreciate being treated as if their community was an experimental playpen for libertarians to come in and try to prove something. But the libertarians, even though they never outnumbered the existing Grafton residents, what they found was that they could come in, and they could find like-minded people, traditional conservatives or just very liberty-oriented individuals, who agreed with them on enough issues that, despite that angry opposition, they were able to start to work their will on the levers of government. They couldn’t pass some of the initiatives they wanted. They tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the school district and to completely discontinue paying for road repairs, or to declare Grafton a United Nations free zone, some of the outlandish things like that. But they did find that a lot of existing Grafton residents would be happy to cut town services to the bone. And so they successfully put a stranglehold on things like police services, things like road services and fire services and even the public library. All of these things were cut to the bone. Sean Illing: Then what happened over the next few years or so? Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a town’s success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute. So there were all sorts of negative consequences that started to crop up. And meanwhile, the town that would ordinarily want to address these things, say with a robust police force, instead found that it was hamstrung. So the town only had one full-time police officer, a single police chief, and he had to stand up at town meeting and tell people that he couldn’t put his cruiser on the road for a period of weeks because he didn’t have money to repair it and make it a safe vehicle. Basically, Grafton became a Wild West, frontier-type town. Sean Illing: When did the bears show up? Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: It turns out that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations, each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way, then you’re essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses. One thing that the Free Towners did that encouraged the bears was unintentional, in that they just threw their waste out how they wanted. They didn’t want the government to tell them how to manage their potential bear attractants. The other way was intentional, in that some people just started feeding the bears just for the joy and pleasure of watching them eat. As you can imagine, things got messy and there was no way for the town to deal with it. Some people were shooting the bears. Some people were feeding the bears. Some people were setting booby traps on their properties in an effort to deter the bears through pain. Others were throwing firecrackers at them. Others were putting cayenne pepper on their garbage so that when the bears sniffed their garbage, they would get a snout full of pepper. It was an absolute mess. ..."

Kosirich 3y ago

Idiotic decision by Croatia, here I'm talking both as a Croatian, as well as someone supporting this kind of "liberal" experiments. Instead of seeing this as a fun experiment that wouldn't cost Croatian tax payer anything, the most politically controlled nepotistic organization full of "uhljeb's", Hrvatske sume, decided to act this way (under direction). If Croatian government was smart, they could have tried reaching some deal proclaiming "Liberland" as a free zone, under protection of Croatians army until UN recognition is made (probably never). The potential touristic revenue to local areas could have been used to justify it to Croatian people. Sad...

acadapter 3y ago
Yes, they messed up in this. Croatia did a mega police operation, in order to get rid of people that brought them tourist revenue and didn't bother anyone. Now all the money will go to Serbia, as the participants hold their events and "Floating man" festivals in Apatin instead.
tail_exchange 3y ago
What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Allowing some entity to establish a government in your lands just to see what happens doesn't seem like a wise move to me. This would only legitimize their claims to the land and legitimize them as a sovereign state. It's a good way to end up losing this land and creating yet another microstate.
- logicalmonster 3y ago
  > What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Not that the only group of people who want to bother nobody else need any justification for living their lives as they see fit, but how else is humanity going to learn about the different ways we can organize society if we don't try them out? It would be phenomenal for humanity if people with ideas outside of the box organized as they saw fit without outside interference and we all get to see what works and what doesn't.

moomin 3y ago

This is a good read: https://www.britannica.com/topic/international-law/States-in-international-law https://www.britannica.com/topic/international-law/States-in... The TL;DR of this is, ultimately, that a state is whatever other states say is a state, and they're generally wary of recognizing anything disputed. There's a fair bit of nuance there though so it's worth a proper read. And, as we know from Ukraine, even when the state is widely recognized with well-established borders, you'd better be in a position to enforce those borders by force if your neighbour decides they disagree.

dudinax 3y ago
I think you're saying any small group of people is in danger of being pushed around because they can't defend themselves. Heck, just look at the difficulty communist China had being recognized as a state, and they certainly could defend themselves.

adolph 3y ago

The number one threat to governments is a lack of need for a government. Croatia, like any government, must crush independence (lack of dependence) even if it exists outside the government's claimed borders. All past revolutions sought to replace government. The universal revolution of all humanity is to leave no reason for it to exist.

semicolon_storm 3y ago
Liberland had a government. Apparently no one ever told them they didn't need it.

jq-r 3y ago

Interestingly there were no major (or minor) media articles about this at all (or at least what I usually follow). Which goes to say that it was either a cover-up or parts of Croatia don't exist outside of major cities. From my experience its more of the latter as Croatia's public media houses are notoriously terrible and they don't bother reporting on something unless you literally write an article for them.

PeterisP 3y ago
It's simply something so tiny and irrelevant (unless you have a special interest in libertarian experiments) that it doesn't warrant major or minor media articles - from the pictures it looks like the officials enforced a building regulations issue for 2-3 tiny cottages/sheds that somehow involved (but clearly couldn't house) a community of 19 people. Like, that's not news - the outcome of that thing was as expected, no surprises there and such things are routine - every day there are multiple building code enforcements on larger, more significant buildsites. Why should general media care about this one in particular? I'd assert that demolishing some illegally built sheds in the backyard of some locally popular actor, politician or businessman (I'd assume Croatia has hundreds people each of whom are more widely known there than Liberland is) would be far more newsworthy than this, but still likely not newsworthy enough for most media, perhaps only as a filler for some celebrity gossip yellow press.
- jq-r 3y ago
  Oh don't get me wrong, I thought it was just a bit funny and/or ironic because the media will write about even the most mudane things if they are easy to write about. Something happens outside of a major city where nobody was seriously injured, no public figures explicitly involved, or there were no major crimes commited - it's very unlikely it'll end up in the news. I'm 100% sure if this happened near some major city, it would be top 5 news item of that day. But alas, it happened in the middle of nowhere, so it kind of not happened if you get my meaning.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
"A cover up"??? "Teeny group of squatters get evicted" isn't exactly headline news in most places.

hackandthink 3y ago

Berlin 1988: There was some GDR territory near Brandenburger Tor beyond the wall. Similar story but people escaped over the wall. https://alternativeberlin.com/2015/05/21/the-amazing-story-of-the-kubat-dreieck-land-enclave-in-east-west-berlin/ https://alternativeberlin.com/2015/05/21/the-amazing-story-o...

IOT_Apprentice 3y ago

Cosplayimg sovereign citizens eh?

slater 3y ago
I wonder who the money person is, in this group. There's always at least one propping things up, with libertarians.

EGreg 3y ago

I met Vit, like I met many other people in this space. At Brock Pierce’s school in Washington DC, during Government Blockchain Association’s event. We build the apps for their events and I have been meeting all kinds of people through these kind of conferences: https://community.intercoin.app/t/qbix-and-intercoin-around-the-world-greg-magarshaks-travelogue/2365 https://community.intercoin.app/t/qbix-and-intercoin-around-... https://community.intercoin.app/t/greg-magarshaks-travelogue-in-the-second-half-of-2022/2743 https://community.intercoin.app/t/greg-magarshaks-travelogue... I went to Honduras to see Prospera, and other “micronations” or libertarian experiments, and want to help them out. I interviewed Patri Friedman on our show (and if anyone knows Balaji Srinivasan, who wrote The Network State, please message me — I’d love to interview him too) Say what you will about running a crypto startup, but I get to do fun things: https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-2-0/392 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-2-0/392 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-3-0/1061 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-mural-3-0/1061

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> Our legal position supporting our claim is clear: that the territory has never been part of Croatia and falls outside of its borders. My legal position is that I'm king of the universe, but I've had some difficulty getting recognition by other states. This will go down exactly how all these silly "sovereign citizen", seasteader, etc. type things go down. People have somehow forgotten that all of our "legal fictions" we've created are just that: fictions. They are general rules that we've set up to manage society, but unless you have the ability to back up your stance with force, or to convince someone else to back you with force, "legal positions" are meaningless.

joe_the_user 3y ago
They are general rules that we've set up to manage society, but unless you have the ability to back up your stance with force, who to convince someone else to back you with force, "legal positions" are meaningless. These "market anarchists" have an odd need to believe that the literal interpretation of human-dreamed-up laws would will be sufficient to protect them forever. It seems like this belief goes with the need to believe that in their future "selfish-market-behavior-creates-mutual-benefit" society, the stronger won't use their strength to subjugate the weak.
- breakyerself 3y ago
  Not to mention that every attempt at basic administration of society is viewed as a violation of the rights of the individualists living their libertarian values so you end up with nothing but dysfunction and a breakdown of society. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
kderbyma 3y ago
[flagged]

nsajko 3y ago

The whole Liberland micronation project was just a ridiculous publicity stunt and scam from the start. 1. The "unclaimed territory" story is a blatant lie. 2. The land in question (Gornja Siga) is a floodplain. It gets completely flooded with water multiple meters deep every couple of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland EDIT: > Define "scam"? Who is trying to scam who in this situation? Jedlička sold quite a few Liberland "citizenships".

acadapter 3y ago
It is unclaimed if you choose to accept both the Croatian and Serbian border definitions at the same time (which they apparently have done)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 3y ago
  Without dignifying any of this supremely silly drama, that's not an option that logically avails. Both Serbia and Croatia agree that one of them is getting this territory.
  - yreg 3y ago
    Neither of them claim it. Why is their opinion on land they do not claim relevant? (Other than because of force.)
    - kramler 3y ago
      Croatia asserts its right to administer the patch through the simple expedient of actually administering it. The fact that Croatia claims to only be controlling access and evicting squatters on behalf of Serbia does not change the fact that Croatia is controlling access and evicting squatters. The Liberlanders' claim that the patch was terra nullius was silly from day one. An area is terra nullius if there is no recognized government hoping to run it, not if there is no recognized government that will publicly commit to keep running it forever. The Liberlanders' new claim that the patch is bona vacantia is just completely batshit gaga. Bona vacantia is about private ownership title rather than sovereignty, does not exist in civil law jurisdictions, and when successfully invoked just means ownership of the item in question has reverted to the Crown. We need a moratorium on ancaps having legal opinions until their semantics games become functionally distinguishable from SovCit woo.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

It sounds like a silly project, but there is no reason to not be more respectful in kicking these people off of this unclaimed land. I am an old man, so apologies in advance for making an old man comment: in all of my travels, I have uniformly found people kind and decent and I have found governments to be fucked up. To be honest, there are a (very) few governments on our planet that I respect so maybe my generalization is unfair.

lamontcg 3y ago
> I have uniformly found people kind and decent There's a whole ton of assholes out there. You can get ripped off in any culture if you don't watch your back.

archsurface 3y ago

Sounds like they were inspired by Russia. Unnecessarily aggressive. There must be accountability.

kderbyma 3y ago

shoot first, ask invaders later...

PedroBatista 3y ago

Every couple years there are scams like this all over the World. They usual go the "spiritual" route and end like pretty much every cult ends, ie. it becomes an harem, someone gets raped and/or killed and police gets called. The other way is the "political" route, they usually get a small group and try to create their own "perfect system" isolated from external influences ( of course.. ). When police comes down and tells them they can't simply take some land and make their own "laws", of course its the police being "oppressive/fascist/[insert your one "ism"] and they are the victims. I've seen this playbook and least since the 60's but I'm sure it existed before that.