005: Love Islands? Come and Get Your Sovereignty On

We’ve all wanted our own patch of land to do what we want, right? Little bit of crypto? Pharmaceutical experiments? Human cloning? Well the manifest destiny trolley has come back around again and they’re serving up ‘freedom cities.’ Now your little slice of paradise comes with a big helping of deregulation fantasies and a promise to build, build, build! 

If you can even get it off the ground, that is. This isn’t the first, second or third time that starry-eyed men have grabbed an island, called it home and installed a server farm and a crypto conference to the chagrin of the state that actually claims dominion. Will this time be any different for these plucky micronations? 

Links:

• Prospera: https://www.prospera.co/en
• ‘Startup City’ Groups Say They’re Meeting Trump Officials to Push for Deregulated ‘Freedom Cities,’ WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/startup-cities-donald-trump-legislation/
• California Forever: https://californiaforever.com/
• Trump’s “Freedom Cities” Are a Devious Scam, The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/192741/trump-freedom-cities-company-towns 
• Let’s Buy An Island: https://letsbuyanisland.com/
• The Principality of Sealand: https://sealandgov.org/
• Seeing Like A State, James C. Scott: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State
• Careless People, Sarah Wynne-Williams: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People
• Peckham Outer-Space Initiative: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/peckham-outer-space-initiative
• The Dawn of Everything. David Graeber & David Wengrow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything