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This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

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Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#61

Post by pjc50 »

kauffj wrote: post #46
sam_goody wrote: post #8

Micro nations are not new, and they are almost never successful [1]. They are ripe for fraud: selling passports, fraudulent government bank, etc. In the event that they pick up any traction, they are swallowed by their neighbors with real armies (eg. Minerva), and the rest of the world sighs with relief. An interesting example of one that is still officially around, also claims land in Croatia, and exists just for fr…

Agreed, but why should the "rest of the world sighs with relief"? Existing government is sub-optimal and competition tends to increase quality. Is there a special property of government service that makes this principle fail here?

Government is not a service. It nearly always provides services, but it also provides stability and a means of dealing with "negative externalities". Running a government with a particularly lax policy on fraud, pollution, etc. can easily export problems around the world.

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#62

Post by desireco42 »

As a Serbian I welcome our Liberland neighbours. It really opens a lot of possibility. It citizenship doesn't require you to live there for Liberland to thrive. If he/they would just start a top level domain name for example, I can see how being citizen would be beneficial to enterpreneurs.

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#63

Post by jccalhoun »

huuu wrote: post #6

I'm sorry to be that guy, but a small note to all webdevs on Hackernews: please make sure to skip all bloated and hip Javascripts. Because not all visitors have the latest and fastest devices. This great article is unfortunately unreadable for me because I can't scroll down.

Being fully buzzword compliant isn't easy!

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#64

Post by mikeyouse »

tinco wrote: post #55
k__ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this happend to this oilrig land "sealand". People think it's easy to found your own country. Just find unclaimed space and be done with it. But there are many rich people out in the world who would hire armies to kill for such a spot.

That's a very good point. Obviously the only way any country can be bootstrapped is with military power. If Liberland is serious they should immediately engage Paraduin with a show of force. Secondly, I think the best course of action would be to secure funding for buying a protectorate like situation with either Croatia or Serbia. Though I don't know what the political consequences of such a situation would be. Imag…

It seems like killing the only security officer in a country would probably be the end of the war.. Most of the expressions of interest I've seen are explicitly because people think they'll be able to stop paying taxes so I'm curious what kind of voluntary funds they would be able to raise.

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#65

Post by wcummings »

tim333 wrote: post #54

> 160,000 people want to live there I just put my name down. It's a laugh. I'd probably be willing to fork over $30 for a passport. I don't actually want to live there. I suspect many of the 160,000 are similar. On a more serious note I could see an argument for setting up a new country that was open to all comers a bit like the US used to be when the "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to br…

Despotically?

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#66

Post by pjc50 »

sam_goody wrote: post #8

Micro nations are not new, and they are almost never successful [1]. They are ripe for fraud: selling passports, fraudulent government bank, etc. In the event that they pick up any traction, they are swallowed by their neighbors with real armies (eg. Minerva), and the rest of the world sighs with relief. An interesting example of one that is still officially around, also claims land in Croatia, and exists just for fr…

Liechtenstein is entirely legal, although formed by this kind of manoeuvring 200+ years ago.

"For this reason, the family sought to acquire lands that would be classed as unmittelbar ("unintermediated"), or held without any intermediate feudal tenure, directly from the Holy Roman Emperor. " ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein#Principality )

The quasi-independent fragments of the British Isles / Empire are also interesting and tend to operate as tax havens.

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#67

Post by Mikeb85 »

Retric wrote: post #49
izolate wrote: post #10

Why must every inch of this land have to be incorporated somehow? I'd much rather have no man's land, than have a land owned by a particular man's ideology (regardless of how much I may be inclined to agree with it).

In nobody owns most of Antarctica which is not exactly tiny. There is also a lot of effectively lawless land around the world.

> In nobody owns most of Antarctica which is not exactly tiny.

But many countries, including most of the 'powers', have also signed treaties ensuring that no one can lay claim to Antarctica...

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#68

Post by dragonwriter »

desireco42 wrote: post #62

As a Serbian I welcome our Liberland neighbours. It really opens a lot of possibility. It citizenship doesn't require you to live there for Liberland to thrive. If he/they would just start a top level domain name for example, I can see how being citizen would be beneficial to enterpreneurs.

You can't just start a top level domain. Calling yourself a country doesn't make ICANN hand you a ccTLD, and there's not currently an open period for gTLDs, even if the people behind Liberland could get one if there were.

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#69

Post by ColinWright »

gambiter wrote: post #56
ColinWright wrote: post #2

There have been several submissions about this recently. Here are a few: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9383560 Liberland (liberland.org) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9384107 Liberland (wikipedia.org) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9385492 A New State Has Been Declared - Liberland (between border of Croatia and Serbia) (liberland.org) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9388699 New st…

Why on every aggregator does there have to be 'that guy' who thinks it's somehow his job to dig up duplicate posts? Do you comment on various news sites whenever they post an article that the NYTimes covered? It's just... silly. This is the first time I've seen news about this particular 'country', and I'm glad I saw it this time because it is interesting. Duplicates FTW!

Duplicates will always happen, and as you have pointed out, sometimes there is positive value to that. The idea isn't to avoid duplicates, per se, but to try to ensure that the same discussion doesn't get hashed out again and again in different different, parallel and unconnected threads. There have even been cases[0] where the mods explicitly dipped in and moved comments from one submission to another to avoid the "split discussion" problem.

So the idea is to ensure that anyone interested in an item can, should they choose, easily find and read the comments made by other HN contributors. Feel free to disagree, although the 17 upvotes (at the time of writing - votes may go down as well as up) indicate that there are people who do find it valuable/useful.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8499286

Edit: Just checking your profile I see that you've been here less than a year, so you may not be aware that because it's me to whom you're replying, I can't down-vote you. In fact I've up-voted you, because while I disagree with you (obviously) I don't think your comment is especially negative.

Re: This man just claimed a new European nation. 160,000 people want to live there

#70

Post by dragonwriter »

mikeyouse wrote: post #64
tinco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good point. Obviously the only way any country can be bootstrapped is with military power. If Liberland is serious they should immediately engage Paraduin with a show of force. Secondly, I think the best course of action would be to secure funding for buying a protectorate like situation with either Croatia or Serbia. Though I don't know what the political consequences of such a situation would be. Imag…

It seems like killing the only security officer in a country would probably be the end of the war.. Most of the expressions of interest I've seen are explicitly because people think they'll be able to stop paying taxes so I'm curious what kind of voluntary funds they would be able to raise.

I think the point was that killing a Serbian military officer would start a war with Serbia. Of course, the challenging part would be convincing Serbia to back the scheme; if Serbia was going to defend the territory they'd be more likely to claim it themselves.
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