Many of us spent years, some of us a decade, dreaming of a place where we can live according to libertarian principles, securely and in peace. It is time to broaden the paths available to us. We must encourage those prepared to create real settlement opportunities: on land, at sea, and, one day, beyond Earth.
Dear fellow freedom seekers,
We are officially asking all our existing and potential leaders and future heroes to go out there and create settlement opportunities for our community.
In exchange, you will naturally have the right of first sale of properties in the area. This is to make such a venture worthwhile and to pay off the investment you may need to enable an opportunity to settle.
Most of the world's habitable land is already claimed by existing states. That leaves us with two broad kinds of settlement opportunities: Diplomatic and Pioneering.
Diplomatic Settlements
“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” — John F. Kennedy
A diplomatic settlement may take the form of a special administrative arrangement, a chartered development zone, or another agreement that gives the community defined powers of self-administration. We call these "SARs" - Special Administrative Regions. Think, for example, of Hong Kong of China or Gibraltar of the United Kingdom.
Typically, a diplomatic settlement venture approaches the government of a host country and offers to develop an unused part of its territory into a residential and commercial community. The deal is VAT/sales tax income from goods and services provided by locals outside of the SAR to the settlers in exchange for the autonomy of our community inside of the SAR.
In short, "we will build a city in your desert by making it attractive for settlers using the autonomy you will give us (no taxes within the SAR, for example), and your government will earn a lot on VAT/sales tax these settlers will pay when buying from your people." The number of people who expressed interest in becoming members of our community exceeded 800,000, and that's already a considerable number for many governments. We should not expect a host country to give us full autonomy right away; it's likely to be a long-term development project with increasing autonomy based on mutually agreed milestones, while the two sides gain trust in each other.
Pioneering Settlements
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
Pioneering settlement ventures seek an opportunity to establish living conditions in harsh environments. The easy-to-survive environments on Earth have already been claimed, but by far not the entire Earth (and possibly beyond) is claimed by an existing country. On Earth, this means the high seas and Antarctica - if you technically figure out how we can live there unthreatened and undisturbed by the environment. Given the latest technological development, it is also becoming more and more thinkable for pioneering settlement ventures to strive for establishing life in space.
Settlement Enterprise Structure and Funding
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
Both kinds of settlement enterprises are financially challenging.
- Diplomacy requires establishing local ties, developing plans and projects, and potentially lobbying or running public campaigns over years.
- Pioneering requires developing and constructing reliable life support and logistics systems to enable survival in conditions otherwise unbearable.
These are the reasons why we believe that, if someone (likely an enterprise) manages to enable settlement for our community under our own rules (unthreatened, undisturbed), they should have the right to the initial land sale to pay off the investments.
For both types of settlement ventures, a shareholding structure with funding rounds is advisable and perhaps even necessary. It allows for smooth capital onboarding; shares (or tokens) can be theoretically linked to future land claims.
Please consider inviting the government of Liberterra as a potential investor in each funding round from the very first one. While Liberterra might not participate as an investor until your settlement venture reaches certain milestones, it may become your strong strategic partner in terms of contacts and planning. As a venture reaches meaningful milestones, the government may consider participation as an investor or strategic partner.
Governance and Administration of Settlements
Once the initial land sale starts and settlers are progressively moving in, there is going to be a need for governance systems and community member services. Liberterra is ready to provide that, and we hope your settlers will choose Liberterra as their governance and citizen services. If you and your settlers feel like Liberterra's governance and services are not completely fit for your particular settlement, many things can be adjusted per region. It is even possible to run the governance and systems in a white-label approach, should you and your settlers decide to associate yourselves with a different "startup nation name" publicly, but share the underlying infrastructure and global community with Liberterra behind the scenes.
You create the settlement opportunity and sell the land; governance and services are a specialty of Liberterra, and your community can have them.
We can offer the underlying systems needed for day-to-day administration: identity and citizen records, property registries, cadastral mapping, dispute resolution, governance tools, and other community services. The settlers and property owners ultimately decide whether to adopt those systems and on what regional terms.
Liberterra already has property registries established, including cadastral maps, which may be handy for your initial land sale or claims for your existing investors. However, Liberterra will only publish your plots of land in its cadastral map if:
- in case of diplomatic settlement ventures, there is an official agreement on the complex autonomy goal (the freedom not to follow any laws of the host country and follow and enforce its own/Liberterra laws instead) of the SAR with the host country (officially verifiable with the government of the host country),
- or already deployed and reliable life support and logistics systems allowing settlers to actually arrive and live, in case of pioneering settlement ventures.
Until these conditions are met, if your settlement venture requires a cadastral map for any reason, you should develop your own or use the host country's cadastral system.
Side note: Liberterra's cadastral system already supports Earth and beyond.
What about Gornja Siga / Liberland?
“It is incredibly easy to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to realize that it’s leaning against the wrong wall.” — Stephen R. Covey
Given the private settlement framework described above, Gornja Siga / Liberland technically qualifies as a diplomatic settlement because the place is currently occupied by Croatians. And it already has one settlement venture - while Mr. Jedlicka and his peers do not pursue state-building too much (unlike Liberterra), they officially do strive to enable settlement there.
In over a decade, their effort has had very limited success, if any. There does not seem to be any plan to achieve agreement with Croatia, at least nothing that would be officially verifiable from the Croatian side as well. And therefore this settlement venture would not qualify for integration into Liberterra's cadastral system.
Gornja Siga is a place conveniently located in the middle of Europe, which may pay off very well to anyone who might enable unthreatened, undisturbed settlement there. Perhaps the time has come to apply alternative ideas by alternative venturers.
Please Go Ahead
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
There is no competition in building a free community. We are not limited to one territory, one initiative, or one group of builders. If you have identified an opportunity, assembled a capable team, developed a concept, or hold relationships that could open a path forward, we invite you to begin the conversation with us early. We are ready to help serious initiatives grow from an idea into a settlement where people can live, build, and govern together.
Remember:
- Start coordinating with the Liberterra government as early as possible.
- Establish a shareholding structure for your settlement venture unless there's a reason for a different approach.
- When ready to sell shares or tokens (or land), set the price high enough for the effort to pay off based on your estimates, and low enough to make it interesting for settlers.
- Invite Liberterra as a potential investor in each funding round.
- Liberterra's systems are ready to administer your community with all its needs once settlers move in.