Creating a privately owned city in the Pacific, free from the legislation and regulation of legacy nations
Eleutheria has begun the process of building a free private city and is currently seeking a sovereign lease with the Pacific nation of Tuvalu. With a sovereign lease, the land would ultimately belong to the host nation but Eleutheira would have legal jurisdiction over the territory for the period of the lease. Do you like the sound of this scenario?: zero vested interests.
This allows full scope for founding-father-level society building: What do you think the tax system should look like? How do you choose your representatives? Can the city take on ‘sovereign’ debt or is this going to be survival of the fittest? What about deciding which laws are sensible and which to drop? Should design and manufacturing be regulated? Under what circumstances does the state dictate to the family unit? Is it necessary to have another country’s protection and, if so, what concessions can be offered up? Then there’s the question that follows from success: Can everyone move to this city or are there constraints?
Necessity is the mother of invention. As a free private city with a 99-year sovereign lease, Eleutheria will be able to build floating housing and attract new investment and expertise to Tuvalu, even as the land the country was constructed upon slips beneath the sea.
I have to say blinked in pain at the retrogressive Bronze Age religious bias to an otherwise forward-thinking plan, but their stated intentions are to:
- Create a free, prosperous and ethical community for Christian pioneers who want to work towards a shared goal.
- Allow fractional ownership and blockchain technology for financing real estate investments, thus attracting new capital.
- Develop new seastead vessels to support tourism, investment and medical services.
- Have very minimal impact to the natural environment.
Eleutheria aims to raise sufficient capital inflows to enable Tuvalu to fund its Long Term Adaptation Programme (L-TAP). Once established, they intend to seek recognition under the Montevideo treaty as a sovereign micronation.
The founders are Steve Clancy, an insurance broker based in Melbourne, Australia; Jonathan Weinert, a finance specialist based in Germany; and Eric Belarbre a French engineer & entrepreneur based in Sydney, Australia.
Eleutheria will be offering an opportunity to support this venture with future parcels of land to be reclaimed under the Sovereign Lease with Tuvalu. You can register your interest on their waitlist.
You can also support Eleuthera by becoming a citizen, which will empower you to vote in online elections. This will allow applicants to help build a “diverse” (to clarify: no atheists, no agnostics, no other religions?), free private city with others who value hard work, free markets and the rather subjective and undefined term “Western values”.
There is also a Business Membership Program which offers an opportunity for entrepreneurs and businesses to share their products and services with the founding population.
Does anyone want to guess at how land-based legacy nations with huge national debts and ageing populations to service will react if their young and entrepreneurial workforce stops paying taxes and emigrates to a new state with no legacy debt, freedom from the paralysis of business regulation and perhaps even no taxation? If this works, what happens when more and more floating cities with competing rules and philosophies emerge around the world? I will follow this revolution with interest.
PS. If anyone wants to send me to Tuvalu, I look awesome in flippers.
To learn more about seasteading (forming new settlements on the sea and the philosophy of getting away from large government):
The Seasteading Institute
PO Box 7775
San Francisco, CA 94120–7775
8667436660
http://www.seasteading.org
