Free Cities Podcast

Today we’re beginning our series of interviews recorded in Poland and we’re starting out with a conversation I had with Tom Palmer during the Weekend Kapitalizmu conference.

Tom is an American Libertarian author and theorist, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network.

Just prior to recording this episode, Peter Young, The Free Cities Foundation’s CEO was chatting with myself and Tom in our makeshift studio in Warsaw and it such an interesting discussion that I asked Peter to come onto the podcast with us to further the conversation. As a result, after briefly discussing Tom’s work at Atlas Network, he and Peter end up deconstructing some of the concepts underlying Free Cities and we get a very useful insight into Tom’s thoughts on the general validity of the Free Cities model itself.

I would like to say Many thanks to Tom and Peter for making this a lively and interesting dialogue

Enjoy the conversation.

TWITTER:

Atlas Network: https://twitter.com/AtlasNetwork

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

Peter Young: https://twitter.com/petermiyoung

Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound

WEBSITES:

Atlas Network: https://www.atlasnetwork.org/

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/

TIMESTAMPS:

00:10 - Introduction to this episode 02:59 - A brief history of Atlas Network 06:09 - Street vending in Burundi 12:34 - Why should we prioritise dignity in development? 19:15 - The free cities model 25:27 - The difference between a free city and a free private city 29:38 - How did the guilds become anti-competitive monopolists? 36:29 - Can a child become stateless in a free city? 41:51 - Localised tyranny vs a free society 48:58 - How do we deal with the question of children leaving communities? 55:26 - What kind of city do you want to live in? 1:00:15 - What happens to people who choose to leave communities? 1:05:25 - The attractive element of the idea of enterprise zones 1:11:01 - The resurgence of friendly societies and private cities 1:18:22 - Innovation as a driver of human improvement

Today I'm talking with Martin Leskovjan.

Martin is a member of the subversive Czech art collective Ztohoven and co-founder of Paralelni Polis which is one of the collective’s better known projects, also the site of the world’s first bitcoin-only cafe.

This is a conversation about art and the power to influence. Ztohoven are a band of merry pranksters with a desire to provoke emotion and open minds and I talk with Martin about many of their projects and whether it is possible to create parallel social structures that can liberate people.

Martin is a fascinating and inspiring individual, one of many good people I had the pleasure and privilege to meet in Prague for this series and I sincerely hope you enjoyed the discussions as much as I did.

Enjoy the conversation:

A.I. generated summary:

00:10 - Introduction to this episode.

06:32 - Spreading awareness of Bitcoin.

13:14 - The Artistic side of the collective.

20:12 - The fetish of national and state symbols.

26:55 - How did the idea of the red underpants come about?

30:34 - Trolling on the internet vs. trolling on 4chan.

37:32 - What is Ztohoven's latest project?

41:56 - The beginnings of the art collective.

48:49 - What was the intention behind the creation of Paralelni Polis?

54:06 - Organising the Hackers congress.

1:01:36 - The price of being ungovernable.

1:09:57 - What is meme culture?

1:19:22 - Being compelled to be subversive.

1:23:58 - The tools of crypto-anarchy.

1:28:13 - The transition from centralized systems to decentralised systems.

1:33:47 - The fall of Rome.

1:37:44 - Awareness of cryptography tools.

1:44:37 - Problems with the current state of activism.

LINKS:

Liberty In Our Lifetime 2023: ⁠https://libertyinourlifetime.org/⁠

TWITTER:

Martin Leskovjan: ⁠https://twitter.com/LeskovjanMartin

Timothy Allen: ⁠https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen⁠

WEBSITES:

Ztohoven: http://www.ztohoven.com/⁠

Paralelni Polis: https://www.paralelnipolis.cz/

Free Cities Foundation: ⁠https://free-cities.org/

VIDEOS:

The official burning of the red boxer shorts: ⁠http://shorturl.at/mqrxU⁠

The Triggering of Shia | He Will Not Divide Us: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p4h3jwJob0

This is Episode 18 of the Free Cities Podcast, and it is also the penultimate show from the series of conversations I had in Prague. I am in Warsaw for the next seven days, recording interviews that you will be listening to over the next two months on the Free Cities Podcast. I can report that I am only three episodes in, and I have to say that my mind has been blown already on two different occasions, so I am really looking forward to sharing these conversations with you over the coming weeks.

Today on the show, I am talking with a Swedish couple by the name of Pontus and Ulrika Lindblom. Pontus and Ulrika are a family with a fascinating story…a journey around the world searching for liberty that has led them to the point of purchasing a property in Próspera on the island of Roatán in Honduras. I won't give too much away here, but needless to say, they have an exceptionally 21st-century story that revolves around, amongst other things, digital nomadism, flag theory, and Bitcoin.

If living in a Free City project is something you've thought about yourself, then today's guests should be able to offer you a wealth of first-hand experiences of the trials and tribulations faced by a freedom-loving family looking for the best way to navigate the idiosyncrasies of the times we are living in.

It was great to speak with them both. I very much appreciate people who are actually 'walking the walk' in this world. I sincerely hope they can offer some of you the inspiration to get out there and create the change you want to see in the world.

Enjoy the conversation.

AI Generated Summary:

00:30 - Introduction by Timothy Allen

03:04 - How did you end up in Prague?

10:48 - Homeschooling is illegal in Sweden.

18:31 - Prague’s experience of lockdowns.

25:11 - The Pirate Party in Sweden.

33:15 - The decentralisation of the family.

37:21 - Finding a community to grow up in.

43:43 - Prague's Liberty in Our Lifetime conference.

49:39 - Buying an apartment in Próspera with bitcoin.

55:29 - How much do apartments in Próspera cost?

1:00:21 - How to make a living as a digital nomad.

1:04:03 - The ideal situation for the family.

1:10:02 - What are the advantages of having residency?

1:14:20 - Why did you decide to go to El Salvador?

1:21:41 - Democracy in the future.

1:26:41 - How to prepare for the future.

1:34:09 - How did your neighbours in Prague react to the lockdowns?

1:41:52 - Advice for people who want to live a nomadic lifestyle

LINKS:

Liberty In Our Lifetime 2023: ⁠https://libertyinourlifetime.org/⁠

TWITTER:

Pontus Lindblom: ⁠https://twitter.com/ponli137

Timothy Allen: ⁠https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen⁠

Próspera: https://twitter.com/Prosperahn

WEBSITES:

Próspera: https://prospera.hn/

Free Cities Foundation: ⁠https://free-cities.org/

Today I’m talking with Max Hillebrand.

Max is a well-known privacy and Bitcoin activist who is also the CEO of zkSNACKs, the company who’s flagship product is the privacy oriented Bitcoin wallet, Wasabi Wallet.

Max spoke in depth about privacy and self-sovereignty at last year’s Liberty in our Lifetime conference and this conversation follows in a similar vein. We begin with a few stories from his time working at Deutsche Bank but the conversation quickly moves on to open source software, Bitcoin and of course privacy.

We discuss many of the practical aspects of privacy tech, including how GitHub works, methods for anonymising bitcoin transactions, blockchain surveillance and the privacy implications of Bitcoin’s lightning network.

Max also makes some fascinating predictions about the far distant future of the Bitcoin network … certainly some things that I, for one had never contemplated before.

Enjoy the conversation

AI Generated Summary:

0:10 - Introduction to this episode

3:33 - How did you become interested in economics and banking?

5:57 - Falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole at Deutsche Bank

12:23 - What did you learn from the bank?

15:19 - What does anarchy mean to you?

21:52 - The power to change code

28:37 - The difference between Git and GitHub

32:29 - Where is the source code of bitcoin on GitHub?

37:48 - The importance of privacy in banking

40:22 - Definition of privacy

45:33 - What do we want to prevent with Bitcoin?

51:01 - Explain how privacy tools work on the blockchain

56:21 - How does a bitcoin transaction work?

1:00:29 - The cost of a single transaction

1:08:58 - How much does it cost to use coinjoin?

1:13:21 - What’s the legality of what you’re doing?

1:17:30 - What is the attack vector on privacy?

1:20:49 - The legality of using a wallet

1:28:09 - What are the percentages of people making illicit coinjoins?

1:33:12 - Centralised vs decentralised

1:42:59 - How do wallets decide which coins to spend?

1:49:38 - The second layer of the monetary system

1:55:10 - Opening lightning channels

2:00:15 - Custodial wallets vs. money warehouses

2:04:58 - Federated money warehouses and Bitcoin

2:30:58 - What are your thoughts on other cryptocurrency coins?

2:37:28 - Bitcoin is not inevitable

2:44:52 - Hashing power and mining

2:51:30 - What would you do if money was no object?

LINKS:

Liberty In Our Lifetime 2023: https://libertyinourlifetime.org/

TWITTER:

Max Hillebrand: https://twitter.com/HillebrandMax

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

WEBSITES:

Max Hillebrand: https://towardsliberty.com/

Max's GitHub: https://github.com/MaxHillebrand

zkSNACKs: https://zksnacks.com/

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/

Today we have another dispatch from the Czech Republic which is also another refugee story of sorts, in a similar vein to my interview with Tom & Emily Lahdenranta who were the family of 5 who left Canada due to their government's pandemic policies.

In this episode I’m talking with Caroline King.

Caroline is a Swedish mother of 4 living with her husband and family in Prague. They had to leave Sweden in order to be able to homeschool their children on account of the Swedish governments restrictive policies on self-directed education. This move has taken her on quite a journey to the point of public vilification by the Swedish media who labelled her as “The leader of the anti-school movement’… a somewhat laughable claim as you will discover during the interview.

As you would expect, much of this conversation revolves around education, in particular unschooling which can take on many forms as Caroline explains, but we also hear a lot about their experiences as a family of digital nomads which has taken them all over the globe.

As a father of 3 myself, I love talking about different parenting strategies and this conversation with Caroline did not disappoint in any shape or form.

If you want to follow up on anything we are discussing here, Caroline has told me that she’s happy for anyone to reach out to her. Check out the links below for more info.

I think its also worth noting that I initially met Caroline at last year’s Liberty in Our Lifetime conference, which is the Free Cities Foundation’s annual get togather. So, if you’re interested in meeting and connecting with people like Caroline then make sure you put October 14th and 15th, 2023 in your diary and get yourself to the wonderful city of Prague.

TWITTER:

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound

WEBSITES:

Caroline King: https://www.denandraresan.com/

Prague Worldschooling: https://pragueworldschooling.blogspot.com

Swedish Unschooling Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/236574749814115

Czech Worldschooling Retreat: https://www.facebook.com/events/s/worldschooling-letni-pobyt-202/1107236173248122/

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/

VIDEOS

"Leader of the anti-school movement": https://youtu.be/ROD-ecCL96g

"Criminal family": https://youtu.be/-GFdbYfCGZI

On this week's podcast I am talking with Přemysl Bosák.

Přemysl is the founder of a new dispute resolution platform called Disputio which is an obvious fit with people like myself who would prefer to bear the responsibility of resolving their own disputes.

In this conversation we discuss the platform and how it works as well as a little about the history and evolution of law including bottom up solutions to legal problems. Přemysl is an anarcho-capitalist so we discuss anarchy and voluntarism as well as transhumanism, epistemology and the resurgence of personal responsibility in contemporary culture.

This is my 5th interview from Prague. Coming up will be 3 more touching on subjects from worldschooling to Libertarian art and I talk to one family who, amongst other things have just purchased a property in a free city in Honduras.

Thanks for listening to these conversations. It's heartening to see the number of subscribers going up steadily each week which makes me happy that our movement is gaining momentum. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review and thanks in advance for both.

SAVE THE DATE!

Liberty in Our Lifetime Conference

October 14th - 15th, 2023

Empire Hall, Prague.

TWITTER:

Disputio: https://twitter.com/appDisputio

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound

WEBSITES:

Disputio: https://www.disput.io/

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/

In part 4 of our series of conversations recorded in Prague I am talking with Jan Mošovský.

Jan is the Director of Research at the Liberalni Institute, a Czech think tank championing the ideas of classical liberalism. He is also the European programs Manager at Students for Liberty, the largest libertarian students organisation in the world.

I begin this conversation by asking Jan about something he wrote in an article…

"Every good story is ultimately libertarian in nature"

An interesting observation that’s leads us into an in-depth discussion on Libertarianism, liberalism and governance models.

Jan has reservations about the viability of the Free Cities model and we discuss where he sees vulnerabilities and potential alternatives.

Listening back to our conversation I feel that I should add a small addendum to my side of the dialogue for the point at which we were discussing the possibility of the State coming into a Free City and shutting it down. Since our conversation I have got further clarification from Prospera about the legal treaties in place to mitigate this. There are in fact two, the first being the [Central American Dominican Republic Free Trade agreement](//Central American Dominican Republic Free Trade agreement) in which the US is a signatory. Within this treaty is a key clause that guarantees that the property of foreign investors will not be expropriated by another country. This affects Prospera since it has several US investors. The second treaty is the Honduras Kuwait Treaty in which there are similar clauses that would impact investments made by Kuwaiti nationals.

TWITTER:

Jan Mošovský: https://twitter.com/JanMosovsky

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound

WEBSITES:

Students for Liberty: https://studentsforliberty.org/

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/

Today's episode is my third conversation from our series recorded in Prague and this week I am talking with Pavla Karon.

Pavla is what I would describe as an anarcho-capitalist entrepreneur and mother… labels aside she’s also a super interesting person to talk to who has much to say on the subjects of freedom and liberty, especially in the context of parenthood and relationships.

Our conversation goes in many directions but in particular we discuss subjects such as what it was like growing up under socialism, bringing up free children, digital nomadism, tools for staying free and the importance of the path to inner freedom, particularly in relationships. On that subject, in her own marriage Pavla and her husband of 10 years practice ethical non-monogamy, a relationship model that she sees as a natural extension of her libertarian beliefs.

This is a fascinating conversation that was constrained in time by my busy schedule but I will certainly be recording a part 2 in the future.

TWITTER:

Pavla Karon: https://twitter.com/KaronPavla

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound

WEBSITES:

KHDK Electronics: https://www.khdkelectronics.com/

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/

This is the 2nd iteration of my series of conversations recorded in Prague and today I am I am talking with Josef Tětek.

Josef is an author, educator and founder of the Slovak Ludwig Von Mises institute. He also hosts the popular Czech podcast Stackuj which is a show about Bitcoin, money and freedom.

Josef’s background in Austrian economics and political philosophy informs the majority of our conversation and we start off by having an interesting discussion about the private provision of public goods and the various incarnations of this model that have existed around the world. Josef makes particular reference to ‘BB Centrum’ which is a privately owned public neighbourhood not far from where we were recording the podcast in Prague.

Other topics discussed include social engineering, the evolution and dissolution of the state, digital gulags and Josef reports on what he discovered about monetary colonialism during a recent trip to the African Bitcoin Conference in Ghana.

This was another extremely fascinating conversation from the Czech Republic. Look our for more of them on the show over the next few weeks and if you are enjoying our content please leave us a review on your podcasting app and many thanks in advance.

TWITTER:

Josef Tětek: https://twitter.com/SatsJoseph

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound

WEBSITES:

Stakuj: http://stackuj.cz/

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/

Today we begin our series of interviews recorded in Prague and my first guest is Alena Vranova.

Alena’s extremely accomplished track record includes several successful startups in finance and technology but she is best known as the founder and former CEO of SatoshiLabs who produce one of the world's best known cryptocurrency hardware brands TREZOR. SatoshiLabs also founded Slush Pool which was the world's first Bitcoin Mining Pool established way back in 2010.

In this conversation we talk about Alena’s experiences growing up in the Czech Republic under communist rule and her thoughts and predictions for a future in which she sees technology emboldening many authoritarian regimes around the globe. In our discussion she highlights Paraguay as a relatively unknown destination for people considering a Plan B residency option, something that she has taken advantage of herself. She also speaks about an innovative project in the country that is using the profits from Bitcoin mining to fund an education programme teaching 21st century skills to Paraguayans.

Other subjects covered include open source technology, central bank digital currencies, homesteading, self sufficiency, transhumanism and Alena offers up some suggestions on how to prepare for the future that she sees coming.

As a renowned technologist, I find Alena's unique perspective on the world absolutely fascinating and I sincerely hope I get to continue our conversation at some point in the future.

TWITTER:

Alena Vranova: https://twitter.com/AlenaSatoshi

Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen

Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound

WEBSITE:

Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/