Vote to Float

2020-09-17 · Guest: Joe Quirk and Tom W. Bell (Seasteading Institute and Chapman University) · 52:10

Evolution of private governance and political autonomy

Bob Zadek discusses the evolution of private governance and political autonomy with Joe Quirk and Tom W. Bell. They explore how Special Economic Zones (SEZs), seasteading, and ZEDEs in Honduras create competition in the “market for governance” by allowing people to “vote with their feet” or boats.

Topics: Seasteading, Special Economic Zones, Private Governance, ZEDEs, Common Law, Charter Cities, Hong Kong, Dubai, Panama

Speakers:

• Bob Zadek: Host
• Joe Quirk: President of the Seasteading Institute and author of Seasteading
• Tom W. Bell: Professor of Law at Chapman University and author of Your Next Government?

Introduction to the Market for Governance [00:17]

Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. The show this Sunday, and always, of ideas, never once the show of attitude.

We often—there is a theme or a subtext in the shows that I participate in on Sunday mornings, my show—which is freedom, self-determination, the right to have control over your own life, your body, and your mind. This morning’s show is that topic on steroids. This is about one of the most important—the show this morning is about one of the most important freedoms we all cherish, we enjoy, indeed, it is essential. It is essential lest there be constant wars, people killing each other around the globe.

The topic this morning is the safety valve, the thing, the concept that keeps people at peace as best we can with one another. We are talking about the freedom to move from place to place, to move from city to city, from state to state, from country to country, and this morning, from country to something other than a country.

That is, this morning we are talking about private governance, the degree to which one can live in total control of the political environment that regulates, if you are to be regulated, your behavior. We are talking about the concepts of zones. Zones are political units that exist within countries or without, outside of countries, that are independent of the environment where they physically are, politically independent. And the residents of those zones—and one can think of a state as being a zone within the federal system, one can think of a city being a zone within the state in which the city is—but we are thinking more broadly and more expansively this morning.

We are learning—we will learn about the growing movement to create political autonomy within states, countries, and if you will, no man’s land, and what that does to economic life, to political life, and what that does to enable people to feel more in control of their lives. If people are in control of their lives, they are less angry, they are calmer, and they can just go about their business. To help us understand the concept of zones, politically autonomous units located somewhere on our planet, I’m happy to welcome two guests this morning.

One is an old friend of ours, Joe Quirk. Joe is the President and spokesperson for the Seasteading Institute. Joe will explain the mission of the Seasteading Institute. He is an old friend to my listeners; Joe has been on the show a number of times before. Joe has studied seasteading for a long time, is a great spokesman, and has written a book, very popular, very widely distributed, entitled Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians. So Joe, welcome to the show this morning.

And our co-guest with Joe is Tom Bell. Tom is a lawyer by profession. He has earned his JD from the University of Chicago. He practiced law for quite a bit in Silicon Valley and, no surprise, studied copyright law—we will not be discussing copyright law this morning. Tom has written a fascinating book, a fascinating book. I dare say all of you out there will, as soon as the show is over, you will buy the book, you will be curious about it, and you will learn a ton. Tom’s book is Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations. So Tom and Joe, welcome to the show this morning.

Joe Quirk: Thank you for having me back.

Tom W. Bell: Glad to be here.

Bob Zadek: All right, that was good. You did it in unison. Very cool, I like that.

Seasteading: Homesteading the High Seas [03:41]

Bob Zadek: So first, Joe, let’s start with you. Joe, tell us about, or to some of my listeners, remind us, because you have been on the show before, about the mission of the Seasteading Institute. What is its concept, and where are you in fulfilling that concept?

Joe Quirk: Seasteading is homesteading the high seas. The technology for floating your own society on the ocean is rapidly coming. We’re getting very close. Almost half the world’s surface is unclaimed by any nation-state. And if you think about what made the United States so exceptional, much of it was the Western frontier. And we want to expand onto the blue frontier, which is still not colonized. We’re going to go there long before we go to space.

And before I got on the air, you liked this line I said, which was: we don’t need political voice if we have political choice. And being able to vote with your feet and experiment with new societies will do more to change your government than voting. So seasteading isn’t crazy; politics is crazy. And Michelangelo counseled us to criticize by creating, and that’s what we’re doing. And we’ve already built the first seastead off the coast of Thailand, and now more beautiful ones are soon to be for sale in Panama in a community starting down there with the company Ocean Builders. And pretty soon we’re going to start startup societies along the equator out on the high seas where we’ll experiment with new forms of governance. And every penny that goes to supporting a political campaign should go to the Seasteading Institute. That’s why we say “vote to float,” because we’ll solve your political problems more quickly by setting better examples.

Bob Zadek: So this is do-it-yourself. It’s do-it-yourself, except the “it” is your own political environment, your own country if you will—but seasteading is not quite a country. But it is, if you don’t like how you are governed now, we will create competition, and countries or political environments will be competing for your business and for your residence. And if you don’t like the environment in one place you are, there will be plenty of others and you can just pick the one, sort of like the concept of states today, where we have states in our United States which are quite different from one another, and there is very active, as we all know, very active movement from one state to another as states become high-tax and have political policies that the residents don’t like.

So the moving to a political environment you much prefer is of course quite natural, also demonstrated by immigration. And Joe is just, with seasteading, providing a whole bunch of alternatives. So you can therefore have boutique environments that suit your exact political needs.

Defining Special Jurisdictions and Zones [08:51]

Bob Zadek: Now, Tom, you have studied—I said I used the word “zones” and you will help us understand what the concept means. The concept of zones is a concept that goes back as far back in our economic life as we have had economic life on this planet. So introduce us to the concept, the big picture first, then we’re going to drill down. We are going to use the word “zones,” I think, quite a bit. So tell us broad picture, what is a zone? What makes it unique? And why have you, an active libertarian and active with IHS and active at Cato, why were you drawn to the concept of zones? What is libertarian, if you will, about zones, and why do they make so much sense?

Tom W. Bell: Sure, Bob. My specialty is special economic zones and special jurisdictions in particular. And these are places where a country governs under different rules. They set aside—the country sets aside a small, usually, sometimes bigger, but sets aside part of its territory and says, “Within this area, within this zone, different rules apply.”

An example close at hand in the United States is you could, as you said, Bob, treat each state as a separate jurisdiction, legally speaking. That’s true in a lot of respects. That’s not the most interesting example. You’re right, zones go way back. My research has uncovered the earliest example in the Roman Empire in 166 BC; they created a free port at Delos. And now there’s zones, special economic zones and special jurisdictions, all over the world. My research uncovered this trend—both the numbers and the trend were remarkable. So it’s a new phenomenon for our generation that builds on this old idea, but it’s really taken off in the last 50 or 40 years, and it’s creating a lot of competition for governments. It allows you to not totally leave a country to get a better legal regime. And so that’s really appealing to people who like choice in governance. It means you don’t have to leave home to get better government.

Hong Kong and the UAE: The Power of Common Law [11:17]

Bob Zadek: Now, it’s always helpful to explain a concept with a tangible example that the audience knows about. And I’d like you to discuss two very tangible examples that almost everybody out there, perhaps everybody, will know about. And I’d like you to have us understand how the subject of Hong Kong fits into the subject of zones. And also share with us the experience in the Middle East with the formation of this common law British legal system embedded right in the Middle East. So those are two good examples, and if you tell us the story of how they fit into the conversation, the audience will get it right away.

Tom W. Bell: Okay, sure. You’ve picked good examples, interesting examples, Bob, because they are all special jurisdictions that use the common law. Hong Kong and then we’ve got a couple examples now in the UAE, United Arab Emirates.

Hong Kong isn’t—it’s not the best example in terms of how it was formed, because it was kind of jammed down the throats of the Chinese when the British won the Second Opium War, and they forced the Qing Empire to basically give them the territory of Hong Kong. Well, “give” is too strong; it was a long-term lease, a 99-year lease. And what the British did was they installed, sure, some of their people to run the joint—it was almost all Chinese people with a very thin layer of British people at the very top. But more important than the people were the rules, because the British brought in the common law.

And over a long period of time, that was proven to be vastly superior to, surprise, surprise, communism. And so Hong Kong in a way took over China. I know it doesn’t look that way now, but you could argue back in the late ’70s and throughout the ’80s and ’90s in China, which has implemented special economic zones throughout its territory, that they did that because they looked over the fence at Hong Kong and they said, “Wow, they are very prosperous and I would say free,” but the communists didn’t care about that. But they did care about money. And they said, “We want money too, because we’re starving over here under Maoist communism.” And so they adopted the rules, some of the rules of Hong Kong, in the rest of China, and it was a huge success.

And to talk about the UAE example, so there’s two of those now. The UAE is, as the name suggests, Arab, United Arab Emirates, and it’s basically a collection of emirates, which are little kingdoms. And they got together in this federation, the UAE. And of course for a long time they coasted on their oil revenues, but they’re not fools there and they realized, you know, this isn’t going to last forever, we need another basis for our economy.

And in Dubai, what they did was they implemented the Dubai International Financial Centre. It’s not a big area, but it’s an important area because there in that special economic zone they said, “Hey, London bankers, you can come down here and do all the financial stuff that you do back home under these rules, which we have borrowed from England and Wales.” They even hired retired English judges with the robes and the wigs and the whole deal to kind of—I think it was a bit of stagecraft, but it was very clever. And they put these out in front of the world saying, “Look how common law oriented we are. You can work here.” Because of course without the common law, they have Sharia law, which basically forbids interest. You’re not going to get a London banker interested in your legal system if you can’t charge interest. So that was Dubai. It’s been a huge success. Everybody’s heard about Dubai. And the reason they’ve heard about Dubai is probably because of the International Financial Centre. That has brought a massive influx of not just money, but also financial expertise so that people outside the zone had a place they could go to get funding and financing to build all those great buildings.

And then more recently, Abu Dhabi, another of the United Arab Emirates, basically learned from what Dubai did. It’s kind of like California—I wish they would do this—looking over the fence at Nevada and learning a lesson or two. Well, that’s what they did in Abu Dhabi. And so now they have their global financial market. The two systems are different, but they both basically borrow the common law to satisfy consumer demand. It’s not what the voters voted for—I don’t think that’s really an issue there—it’s what they wanted, the emirates wanted, and they wanted it because the outside people with a lot of money wanted it. And that has brought a lot of good reforms to the Middle East.

Competition and the Natural Order of Freedom [21:34]

Bob Zadek: And so what your examples have shown us is that while those in political power didn’t really relinquish much power—it wasn’t painful for the emirates to give up a little bit of power in a very small percentage, geographic percentage of their country—they were still the rulers of their country, but embedded within their country is this zone. And the zone was created because it makes money. In other words, the concept of honoring contracts, freedom of contract, private property, a judicial system that protects property rights are the keys to a vibrant economy. Not natural resources, not a great climate, nothing other than the freedom to transact business. And even despotic rulers or monarchs recognize you’ve got to have money, and as Tom said, you’re going to run out of natural resources. And I have once observed on my show that freedom of contract and private property are the ultimate natural resource. You don’t run out of that. And that’s all you need in order to prosper.

And it also now gives people within the country the freedom, I presume, Tom, that residents of the emirates can freely move into and work in these zones. You don’t require a passport, it’s not an immigration kind of a transaction, you just go there and you work and you sign on to that political and economic environment. Is that the case, or is there an application process for a resident to become economically active in the economic zone?

Tom W. Bell: Basically right, Bob. I would have to give a caveat in the case of those two zones in that they really don’t host residents, or rather they’re not directed towards residents. Basically they’re business zones. There are better examples of zones like those in Honduras, the ZEDEs, or the Astana International Financial Centre in Kazakhstan. There’s other examples of zones which follow the same model—both of those two zones in Honduras and Kazakhstan also have imported the common law—but they aim at more than just kind of banking centers. They aim at actual communities where people can live, literally live, you know, buy a house and move there and everything, live and work. So there’s so many zones in the world, it’s like being a biologist and studying all these beetles, but basically that is correct.

And Bob, I just want to point out, you touched on a very important new approach to government reform. I used to work at Cato. I love Cato, but their approach to reform of government is an inch deep and a country wide. You know, we’ve got this new tax proposal, and you’ve got to convince everybody in the country it’s a good idea, and that’s almost impossible. With these zones, what you can do is take a very small area, as you said, very small as a percentage of territory, and go deep. So instead of shallow and wide, the Cato approach—bless their hearts, I wish them luck, doesn’t seem to work too well—instead of going shallow and wide, you go narrow and deep. And we know that works. We have working examples, and that’s why I have focused on that as a way to reform government.

Joe Quirk: Yeah, and reading Tom’s book, I’ve realized there’s this worldwide global political revolution that’s been sweeping the world. And nobody’s aware of it because it’s completely peaceful. I always appreciate, Bob, that you say people discover that freedom is a natural resource. It was discovered in Hong Kong and then Hong Kong changed the government of China. It was discovered in Dubai and that’s changed other places in the UAE. And now there are more than 4,000 special economic zones all over the world. They have the 193 nation-states completely outnumbered. And nobody pays attention to it. They just set better examples and they incentivize all these countries to allow these examples. As a matter of fact, there’s 276 special administrative zones in the United States, depending on how you define them. So it’s like a pox of little zones of freedom breaking out all over the world.

And so I think we’re on the crest of this wave of freedom from the bottom up, breaking out in all these countries across the world. And seasteading is an attempt to accelerate that process with a technology, a technology for floating stably and comfortably at sea. And if we can unleash thousands of those on the sea, then we’ll—we can experiment with even more freedoms because all these special economic zones, they’re very modest. You could go much further if you’re not actually taking people’s land. So there’s something—if politics seems negative, there’s something incredibly positive happening in the world, and it’s the emergence of freedom getting out from under these old dinosaur nation-states. And we want to make that happen more quickly.

Bob Zadek: And Joe, you’re exactly right. And Tom made a really important point a second ago that I want to just restate because it is crucial to our conversation. And that is that Hong Kong had a profound change upon the largest by population, and I think by size, country on the planet, China. Hong Kong, minuscule, changed the economic system in China, and not by force. That the opposite of free markets and private property, freedom of contract, a court system that protects property rights—you never have to impose that system by force. That’s the natural order of things, and it is telling that any system other than that can only be sustained by force.

Communism cannot survive without force. Socialism cannot survive without coercion and guns and police. You do not need guns and armies and police to enforce freedom. It’s the natural order. And therefore that is where humans gravitate towards when given any kind of a reasonable choice. And this program is about the movement, which Tom and Joe have described, which creates the options that allow people to find an uncoerced environment in which to live their lives. And that’s what this show is all about. And you never need walls to keep people in a free country. You only need walls to keep them in an unfree country. And this is about building free not only countries, but free zones.

And when I say free, of course Tom has made it quite clear he used the phrase “economic zones.” Now Tom, we haven’t spoken very much—and it’s really not—we’re not going to get into it a great deal, perhaps a tiny bit—about social freedoms: freedom of religion, free speech, things like that. That isn’t really the hallmarks of these economic zones. This is not about having political rights; it’s about having economic rights. Is that a fair distinction to make?

Tom W. Bell: I think that’s pretty accurate as applied to the many special economic zones, because politicians don’t care as much about personal liberty; they care about tax dollars. But that said, the Honduran ZEDEs have put a very strong emphasis on civil liberties. I could tell you more about all the many things they’ve done there, it’s really wonderful, to protect citizens’ rights. And there are some other jurisdictions that are heading that way. But it sounds like you don’t want me to dwell on that, so I’ll say yes, basically that’s right. Focus has started on economics, and we’re starting to see a pivot towards a consumer-directed protection of individual liberties also.

Joe Quirk: I was going to say there’s a revolution in persuasion that’s been sweeping the world. I mean, everyone thought the Cold War would be settled by nuclear war. But it wasn’t. It was set by the West setting a better example. People in the communist states wanted Beatles and the blue jeans, and the thing just fell apart over time. Same thing with Red China. Communist China became more free-market because of the example set by Hong Kong. And we have lots of examples like this, and they continue to sweep the world. And our brains focus on what’s negative, so we focus on politics. But if we focus on creating new worlds with more freedom, we can set better examples and change the United States as radically as Hong Kong changed China.

And you asked for a concrete example. And your audience can visualize this if they just think about cruise ships. Cruise ships, imagine if they floated permanently on the sea and didn’t need to dock. They’re essentially private governance. You know, if it’s flagged in Panama and it’s sailing in Alaska, Panama has little capacity to force rules on the thousands of ships that fly its flag. So it’s essentially providing private governance that you choose. And we don’t sit on a cruise ship and argue about the politics of the cruise ship. We don’t argue about who the captain should be. We don’t have a vote. And we don’t need to do that because we have choice. We can choose another cruise line, so the cruise lines are hustling to provide us excellent governance on cruise ships that’s always getting better and better. And the same goes for the employees on cruise ships. They can go online and write a bad review, they can quit and join another cruise line if they acquire skills. So when you have choice among polities, you don’t need to argue, you just need to vote with your feet—or vote with your boat in this case.

Bob Zadek: Joe, you mentioned cruise ships. I started to smile a bit. I’m reminded of a news item several years ago. It was a story about an elderly woman who was on a cruise ship, a round-the-world cruise. And as soon as the cruise docked, she took another cruise. And she was like always on the same cruise ship on these round-the-world cruises. And she became the talk of the cruise, and people were wondering about this woman, she must be a zillionaire, she just takes round-the-world cruises. And she was interviewed by the media, and it turns out she said, “You know, I’m elderly, I’m retired, I have no real family, and the obvious choice is for me to live in assisted living or some group environment. And you know what? Taking constant round-the-world cruises is infinitely cheaper than living in assisted living. So I have just decided to spend the rest of my life on a cruise ship. And I get to see the world, I get to meet new people all the time, the food is great, the entertainment is fabulous, the accommodations are perfect, and I’m intellectually fascinated all the time.” So there you have it. So there’s one anecdotal example to absolutely—if you can allow anecdotes to prove a point—of yes, you’re exactly right, your metaphor is perfect, and that is exactly what it’s like. So Joe, you are right on with your point.

The ZEDEs in Honduras [28:21]

Bob Zadek: Now we talked about—both of you mentioned Central America, quite by coincidence. Joe mentioned it, and I’ll ask him to explain in some detail what’s going on in Panama, kind of an update on seasteading. But before we do that, Tom, you have mentioned the ZEDEs in Honduras. And Honduras is, of course, for anybody who is even slightly aware of what’s going on in the world, Honduras, even the name of the country sounds scary. Dysfunctional government, at one time the murder capital of the world, I think, I think I’m correct about that. And so Honduras is sort of a strange point of reference to talk about freedom and free economic zones. So tell us, because it is once again a tangible example of what you hope to accelerate around the world. So tell us, if you will, somewhat briefly, the story of, as you call them, the ZEDEs—Z-E-D-E-s, ZEDEs they’re pronounced—the ZEDEs in Honduras. What’s the goal, and what’s been going on in of all places, Honduras?

Tom W. Bell: Of all places. Thank you, Bob. ZEDEs, by the way, for your listeners, stands for Zones of Economic Development and Employment. It’s in Spanish, but it works out. And basically—well, the story is, Bob, in the line of work I’m in, working on special jurisdictions, just like doctors only deal with sick patients, I tend to be involved with countries that don’t do governance very well. Because Sweden does not have a big incentive to create a special economic zone to attract investment; they don’t need to. It’s the Hondurans and the other troubled countries of the world where governance frankly has its problems, where the governments really have a strong motive to say, to attract investors, “We’ve got to set aside a part of this country that’s run a little better to attract people.”

And that’s basically what Honduras did because they had so many problems and still do. It’s gotten a little better in recent years, but they’ve had some really tough stretch. And so they implemented these ZEDEs in a mission not only to attract foreign investment—they’ve done that, they’ve had special economic zones that don’t do as much, like maquiladoras where people sew garments. I mean, that’s good, good jobs for their people, one of the few bright spots in their picture. And they decided, “We’re going to take what works and hit it harder.” And these ZEDEs are not just special economic zones. They are—they’re basically private communities where, subject to oversight and control by the government—this is not “come and do whatever you want,” definitely not that—but subject to this oversight, private investors can come and build communities and run these communities under the common law, not the way they want to, but the way the market demands, subject to oversight.

And so this allows these ZEDEs to do things like have their own court systems, to import the common law, to even run their own police and penitentiary systems. They don’t get to pass their own criminal laws, but the problems with criminal justice in Honduras are not the laws on the books. You read those, they look great. The problem is how they’re enforced. And so they take that out of the picture. So that’s just a quick look at ZEDEs, why the Hondurans have done it. And it’s taken off. If your listeners want to check out Próspera on the beautiful tropical island of Roatán just off the northern coast of Honduras, that’s where Próspera has now launched. I worked on that in its early stages, so a little bit of my work is embedded in the coding. And I’m very excited about that. I think it’s going to be a huge success, not just for the investors and residents, but for Honduras and ultimately the rest of Central America. The rest of Latin America is going to look at this example and they’re going to learn, “Holy mackerel, we can do here what they did in Hong Kong, what they did in Dubai. There’s no reason we can’t do that in Central America, and we should and we will.”

Bob Zadek: Now Tom, I can’t control myself. I have to ask the incredibly obvious next question. Since the Honduran government looks at these zones and says, “People are happy, no murder, everything is working like it’s supposed to work more or less, certainly better than Honduras at large,” so why doesn’t the government just say, “You know, let’s make Honduras a special economic zone, and why limit it to one little island or whatever it is? Why not just say, ‘We’re all in, if it works’?” So give us your insight because you’re on the ground. What’s the dynamic that prevents the Honduran government from saying, “Okay, all in, let’s do it, let’s just make the country a special economic zone, at least in terms of the legal structure”?

Tom W. Bell: Well, that is a great question. And I’ve had it myself. And I’ve been to Honduras and I’ve talked to the creators of this program and other, you know, government leaders, business leaders to figure out what’s going on. And the short of it is, you ask why not, and I’ll give two reasons. The ultimate answer is: yes, that’s the plan. But the reason they don’t do it immediately is because one, they are prudent. There’s no guarantee the zone’s going to work. I have high hopes for it, but I think anybody, especially people who care about liberty, anybody involved in government should recognize stuff goes sideways. There’s a lot of unpredictability in this. And so it would be unwise for the Hondurans to stake the bank on this new plan for the whole country. So they’re being good experimentalists. They say, “Let the foreigners come and blow their money on it. If it blows up in their face, it won’t be, you know, on the tax bill.” So that’s one reason.

And the other reason is simply political. You know, you can’t throw that switch that quickly. But I will say—and this is the important point, Bob—the program is designed to allow incremental reform of adjoining territories. Basically, if you’re next door to one of these zones, one of these ZEDEs, the law is written: if you’re next door to it and it’s banging, it’s going off, and you want a piece of that because you own some real property, you can opt into the zone. You have to get the zone’s permission, of course. But the point is they can expand incrementally the way say cities do in the United States sometimes. Now, cities do it in the United States by annexing, usually without consent, adjoining unincorporated areas. It won’t be that way in Honduras. But basically the Hondurans are going to let it expand if it works, slowly and gradually, with the consent of the people who live next door. I think it’s a very prudent, a very safe approach that could result in rapid reform, but might not. It depends.

Domestic Zones: HOAs and Co-op City [35:04]

Bob Zadek: Now, before we go to Joe, and I want Joe to share with us what’s going on in Panama, but lest the audience feel that special economic zones are kind of exotic, seems a little weird to me, the audience is thinking to itself, but in reality, in reality, that is very much a part of American life today. And a large number of Americans live in zones. They have different labels, but they’re zones. Show us, Tom, just how familiar they are with these zones with reference to the discussion of homeowners associations, cooperative apartments and the like. Because economic zones or zones are very common in America today. So help us just to become familiar to see how familiar we are. Help us understand, because it’ll be so obvious, how a homeowners association and a—I hate to use the phrase because I don’t like it, but the audience will know what I’m talking about—what’s called gated communities. I hate the concept, I hate the words, but it’s—tell us about that living environment, how similar it is to an economic zone.

Tom W. Bell: Sure, Bob. There’s a whole chapter in my book, Your Next Government?, about special jurisdictions in the United States. It was one of my favorite chapters because, you know, I get to talk about my home country. And I just want to observe: the thing I just described in Honduras, if we had gone back say how many years now would it be, about 400 years, I could have been describing pre-colonial America. Because basically private parties got charters from the English King and they came over to America to build places like Jamestown and New Amsterdam. Those were all private projects, big special jurisdictions.

But you asked about today. I argue in the book that homeowners associations, condominiums, residential cooperative communities, all these private communities—you can call them gated communities—those are another example of special jurisdictions. Because when you opt out of your local municipal government and move into an HOA, you’re basically upgrading your government. It’s not the most important thing—I mean, your local city probably doesn’t, you know, run a Social Security program and a prison system—but they have a big impact on your life. And when a city is messing things up, they can’t keep their pools clean, they can’t keep their streets swept, you have a good reason to move into a private community. You’re willing to pay that extra amount.

Now, none of us are going to pretend living in a private community is all peaches and cream. We know all the horror stories about HOAs being kind of like a pain to live with sometimes. But there’s two things to note. One, people choose those communities because they’re moving from something worse typically. And if they don’t like it, they can move out. So there’s more choice. It’s not where everyone wants it, just like I’m not always happy with Facebook or, you know, I buy a Toyota, maybe it doesn’t run like I want it. It’s a consumer product. Sometimes consumers are unhappy, but the market can respond. And my research for this book showed private communities in the United States have really taken off since about the 1970s. About 25% of all Americans now live in these private communities. So again, Bob, I’m going to say this is another example of the thesis. It’s the same thing really that Joe is working on. It’s like seasteading on land in a way. What Joe is doing with the Seasteading Institute is going to be so much better, but it’s really not that radical. It’s just a step in the same direction.

Bob Zadek: And the important point is you said, which is really the theme of this morning’s show, which is you envision a world where countries are competing for your business, i.e., your residency. And we have it now, but it’s easier to change cars than it is to change citizenship in countries, obviously. It’s a little bit easier to change state residency than it is to change national residency, although California and New York are trying to pass laws that make you pay to leave. Interesting, they’re going to build their own economic Berlin Wall around California so if you leave to go to Texas or Nevada, you’ll have to pay taxes even when you leave—imagine that. But there is freedom of movement, and you envision that process, freedom, free to choose, to borrow Milton Friedman’s phrase, free to choose where you live and the system that governs you.

And we have that, as you said, in HOAs and in co-ops. And by the way, co-ops, as you mentioned in your book, are not limited to the wealthy or upper middle class. You mentioned Co-op City. I remember living in the New York metropolitan area when Co-op City was built on the site of a former amusement park, as I recall. And Co-op City is a middle-class, solidly middle-class, indeed lower middle-class because there are some subsidies, cooperative development where—and give us a sense of the size of Co-op City just so people understand we’re not talking about a few squatters, we’re talking about a big place. There’s, I think you said, 12 houses of worship and a bunch of malls and 55,000 people. So it’s a major political environment.

Tom W. Bell: Yeah, you gave all the relevant stats there, Bob. I wish I could share pictures with your listeners. You would see the series of high-rises. There are homes and schools and businesses and houses of worship. Over 50,000 people, solidly middle, even lower middle class as you said. By the way, we could add, very racially diverse. Now I will say—your libertarian listeners might care about this—it was a subsidized program. It was not pure free market. Try to find something that’s purely free market in New York real estate anywhere. But you know, it’s a step in the right direction. It does show, as you said, this is not just for the wealthy.

In fact, one of the best things that’s happened is these models of governance, ways to live together, have been pioneered by the wealthy because at first it’s expensive, you know, you’ve got to take a risk, you’ve got to hire lawyers to get all the wrinkles ironed out. But it’s just like with everything else that the wealthy—they introduce cell phones, and yes, the first ones are the size of a brick and it costs $4,000, but now they’re in everybody’s pockets. Same thing is happening here. And Co-op City in the Bronx is just a great example of how this can work for average everyday people and make their lives better. That’s at the end of the day what we really care about. Yes, high principles, sure, but I think it’s a beautiful thing to think about some single mother was able to move from some really crummy brownstone into a really nice community where her kids are safe and can walk to school. Man, that is what liberty’s all about, letting people live their lives. And that’s what they’ve done in New York City. And if you can do that in New York, why can’t you do it anywhere?

Floating Communities in Panama [42:38]

Bob Zadek: And she’s an owner, she’s not a renter, she’s an owner of her own home, which for this mythical theoretical single mom is a life-altering experience. Now Joe, in Panama, tell us sort of an update on—because seasteading is such an interesting concept, and it plays right into everybody’s desire to be independent and to have control over their environment. So tell us, if you will, in a few minutes, what’s going on in Panama? What is the status of your negotiations with Panama, and what is your hope? And also mention along the way, because you mentioned Ocean Builders, but tell our friends out there sort of what the actual physical living environment would be like in a seasteading community where the product is manufactured by Ocean Builders or one of its competitors. So give us an update on Panama and on what life is like to live in a seasteading community.

Joe Quirk: So the Seasteading Institute’s vision has inspired a number of companies, and one of them is Ocean Builders, who’ve set up the largest 3D printer in Latin America in Panama. And they already have for sale, if you check out oceanbuilders.com, you can look at the SeaPod, which is modeled after the iPod, and it looks a little bit like an Apple product. And basically it’s a single-family seastead that looks like something out of the Jetsons. And the thing that they have accomplished is they’re going to sell these for a price that’s cheaper than the average American home. So this to me is the holy grail of seasteading.

And if you want to visualize it, think of a wine bottle that’s full of wine and maybe even has some cement or sand in the bottom of it, and it’s floating in the water, so four-fifths of it is below the water. And maybe the neck of the wine bottle is up above it, and then you can put a little house on top of that. And then you can have quite high waves, as a matter of fact as high as five meters, and it doesn’t disturb these SeaPods. And you have underwater rooms, so you’re looking out on your aquarium apartment at a world of fish.

So they’re planning to sell these. People want to run businesses known as SeaBnBs. What’s radical about these is not just the freedom, it’s that every single one you build increases the amount of life on the ocean, because if you float something solid on the ocean, then life attaches to it and coral grows on it. So this is beyond sustainable; this is environmentally restorative. And I met with—Tom and I both met with many important government ministries in Panama. We even went to the presidency and presented this, though the president wasn’t there. And Ocean Builders is trying to arrange a special maritime zone where they could build these and create a little seasteading community. As a matter of fact, they also want to buy a cruise ship and a cargo ship and float it in the special maritime zone. And if we create a successful community out there, we hope to renegotiate with Panama and perhaps negotiate the Sea Zone that Tom has designed and thought about, which is basically the next step beyond the special economic zone, which would be a more free floating zone. And as the technology gets perfected, we hope to move out onto the high seas and secure a seasteading flag with a flagging registry. So if anyone in your audience knows any flagging registries, tell them to get in contact with us; we’re negotiating with a number of them. And once we have a seastead flag that’s much like a cruise ship flag, then I think seasteading will be underway and all sorts of companies will start building them.

Bob Zadek: And why would—tell us the prototype or the ideal candidate for the psychological and political profile of the candidate who would be drawn to a seasteading life.

Joe Quirk: Pioneers. The SeaPod is the covered wagon of the blue frontier. So there’s a whole lot of—there’s digital nomads, people have already put money down to buy some of these. There’s cryptocurrency professionals that want to live on these. There’s people that want to be a part of something new. But even as a basic business case, like exotic hotels are $10,000 a night are available all over the world, and some of them have underwater rooms. There’s one in Norway, there’s one in Dubai, there’s one in Singapore. And Ocean Builders plan to vastly undercut these. Imagine you just have a room on the shore and then you just kind of go down into an underwater room and look out at a window on the shore. Now imagine if you’re several miles out at sea and you’re floating and you have a 360-degree view and you’re actually growing a coral ecosystem garden on your SeaPod. That’s going to be a hell of a selling point. So some friends of ours are thinking about these as meditation retreats. One of the investors came up with the idea for a SeaBnB where you can rent it out for a night. But really, I think the people most attracted to this are the seasteading fanatics that want to explore freedom, the same type of people that left the East Coast of the United States to go out on the Western frontier. They want freedom, they want their own plot, they want the technology to go out there and build their log cabin. And Ocean Builders is providing that in Panama. Check them out.

Bob Zadek: Joe, I’m as much of a pioneer as anybody else, but I have one question. Tell us if Dominos delivers.

Joe Quirk: Drone Dominos. You know, I met Jeff Bezos. I’ve never told anyone my private conversation with Jeff Bezos. I was dressed as a pirate. And when I came up to him, his bodyguards surrounded me and got down like in a football three-point stance ready to tackle me if I did anything weird. And I shook his hand and I said, “Thank you for radically enriching my life.” And he looked surprised and shocked and didn’t know what to say, like no one had ever said that to him before. And to reassure him, I said, “I’m Joe the seasteader.” And then his face lit up and he said he’d be happy to deliver whatever you guys need out there. So Ocean Builders are already planning drone delivery, and their SeaPods have a little opening in the top where little drones can come in and drop things, and they’ve many times mentioned Dominos Pizza as an example, though we hope to grow sushi and seaweed and other kinds of edible sea crops on the SeaPods.

The Future of Stateless Nations [49:57]

Bob Zadek: So Tom, we’re now starting to get to the end of the show, as I cautioned you it would happen. Tell us about what you see as the projection for the growth of private economic zones. Where are they likely—and we have only a few seconds—where are they likely to grow the quickest? And tell us about the very exciting future for economic zones. We have about a minute left.

Tom W. Bell: Okay, they’re taking off. All trends indicate they’re going to keep growing. Economic indicators suggest that governments are going to need more freedom because they’re not going to be able to pay the bills. They’re taking off now in Central America. I think that’s the most promising place for the politically oriented zones. They’ll still keep being a success elsewhere. And they’re going to come to America. I’ve been talking with people about bringing United States special economic zones to fruition, so we’re hoping to bring these reforms home soon.

Bob Zadek: Tom’s book is Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations. It is a must-read. It is very readable whether you are a trained economist, a lawyer, or just somebody who is curious about where we are going. Joe’s book, Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians. Those are very admirable goals, Joe. I hope you are right. I kind of know you are. The only question is the timeline. So thanks a lot to Joe and to Tom for sharing their wisdom with us. We like freedom. So thank you very much. And to my friends out there, thanks for listening. I’ll be back again next Sunday. Please enjoy the rest of your weekend.