My prediction: The “libertarian” wealthy, like the Kochs and others of their ilk, will immediately buy out the starting population, bring in enough minimally paid support staff to run a few basic households, and will do their best to transfer their citizenship there while continuing to live elsewhere, and basically use this as a tax haven and base of operations while they continue to buy elections and governments in the US and elsewhere.
This is, of course, assuming that the countries around it don’t just sigh and send in their police.
That’s looks like a flood zone to me. I doubt it would ever even get that far.
I would imagine that they would try to build flood defences that make it someone elses problem.
“If you live in Liberland, you don’t pay taxes! You just pay annual flood-defense maintenance fees.”
There’s an interesting article on Strange Maps about a peninsula between the Netherlands and Belgium that was in a similar situation. As it was Belgian territory, yet accessible only from the Netherlands, it was effectively unpoliced.
It was apparently to be ceded to the Netherlands, I don’t know if this happened or not.
There’s a chunk of the US like that too, Point Roberts near Vancouver. Should really be part of Canada because it’s attached to the mainland Canada, but because it’s south of the 49th parallel it went to the US.
It doesn’t have any schools, kids actually have to ride a bus over the border (twice) and loop around to mainland Washington to get to their classes.
The created a country between Croatia and Serbia? Really. Which is there due to a border dispute between the two countries…What could possibly go wrong there? Welp, at least they didn’t attempt to carve out space between Kosova and Serbia…
This fledgling libertarian nation already has an immigration office with a 7 person staff. Fail.
So, do those kids burn through passport pages really quickly, or do they all enroll in NEXUS?
Wiki says it’s going to have a government of “10 to 20” members. And it’s 7 sq km. So much for small government.
I imagine this will go as well as Sealand.
Also, there appears to be a dispute because the “nation of Paraduin” has also claimed the same land.
Already causing trouble:
Bets on whether Croatia and Serbia take sides and who backs which state… sorry “state”? Seems like Croatia might be backing Paraduin…?
ETA: Actually, this is really sort of interesting, isn’t it? These are like experiments in new kinds of state-craft, theories and ideas can be put into practice in areas not claimed by anyone else. But land that is not claimed by any state or territory is at such a premium (or is completely useless) that it could cause new kinds of conflict.
I have never had a passport stamp for entering leaving Canada via the WA crossings, heck I just use my enhanced license now so there is nothing to stamp. I imagine they either have an enhanced state ID and/or some sort of Nexus pass like arrangement.
Here’s the thing about being an independent nation. At the end of the day your continued existence is contingent on either
- Not having any land, assets, resources or strategic value that any other nation wants, or
- Having the ability to defend those things with physical force when necessary, either by maintaining a military force that is up to the task or by becoming a protectorate of another nation which does.
The second that this country becomes worthwhile for either Serbia or Croatia to control it will cease to exist.
Agreed. The modern nation-state is supported by a state monopoly on violence, yeah? But yeah, once this land becomes valuable for whatever reason, it puts both of these experiments at risk from the superior fire power of either Croatia and Serbia.
It’s where I was going to have my anarcho-syndicalist Peoples Republic of Solidarity too.
How many other micronations have claimed this wonderful area of floodplain?
Why hasn’t BoingBoing claimed it?
Are there any other similar lands they could claim?
Can we get passports?
I always said that such tiny nations are those who should have nukes.
I dunno… maybe no one should have nukes. But I get your point.
I know you can actually get an NSK passports, but obviously, they have no land.
There used to be a virtual yugoslavia too… but I don’t know what happened to it… I can’t find it now.
