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With no hidden fees and a 100% purchase guarantee, you can feel confident when you book your premium LA tickets with Sweet Hop. Visit suitehop.com today. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today on Radical Personal Finance, we're going to talk about freedom, specifically freedom of country. I'm here with the president of the nation of Liberland. Vite, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Great to be here, Yisho. So here at Radical Personal Finance, for your background, we talk about freedom in all of its senses, focusing on financial freedom, because of course, if you have enough financial freedom, you can buy for yourself a significant level of lifestyle freedom.

But from time to time, we do talk about freedom of countries, free places to live, etc. And you also care a lot about this concept to the point where you started your own country focused on freedom. Tell us the story. It was six years ago now when we decided enough was enough.

And maybe actually also because many people told me I should start my own country. I was very vocal about freedom, about free markets, and I was trying to push the idea of turning Czech Republic into New Switzerland. And there are not too many fans of that idea. You know, they really believe there is not enough Swiss people to basically turn Czech Republic into Switzerland.

But on the other hand, I realized there is enough people that share a similar belief, that want to have a new country at some point. But I was thinking, you know, that we will get like 20,000 people applying for citizenship when we started Liberland, or shortly before I was there, by the end of the year.

And the reality was completely different. We had actually 20,000 first hour and 200,000 by the end of the week. Now we've got 750,000 people that applied for citizenship. It's a huge nation by now. By no means Liberland is a micronation. Wow, that's amazing. So for the background, you've always been interested in libertarian ideals, freedom-oriented ideals.

In your bio, it says that you read "The Law" when you were a young man by Friedrich Bastiat, and you were inspired by his concepts. Definitely. And here at Radical Personal Finance, there's actually an entire episode of the show that consists of my simply reading "The Law" for anybody who's interested.

Awesome, awesome. That's really cool. So where did the actual, let's talk about the physical territory first. Where is Liberland? Liberland is located between Croatia and Serbia, only 10 kilometers away from the Hungarian border. It's a beautiful spot of land. It's actually heart-shaped. It's three times bigger than Monaco. Unlike many people say, it's too small to build.

No, you know, you could fit three Monacos inside of it. And it was created through this kind of crazy border dispute between Croatia and Serbia. That means that none of the countries for the last, now 35 years, have claimed the territory. So we just came there six years ago.

We stick the flag. We said this piece of land is Liberland. And we received enormous recognition by the world media. And now, luckily, we also receive recognition by other sovereign states. Right. At the beginning, though, there was, from my reading about it, there seemed to be more people contesting your claims.

But some of those that has changed recently. I don't think anybody really contested the claims by Liberland. Croatia basically, Serbia stated right away, which was very important. And if you look into any world map, Serbia is part, Liberland is basically part of Serbia on the regular world maps. And what Serbia stated is that they don't mind creation of Liberland on this territory.

It was an official Serbian claim by the foreign ministry, only 10 days after Liberland was created. And that actually raised a lot of eyebrows. Croatia secretly meet on the Sunday following day. And imagine that they actually put together a governmental meeting just to question how do we tackle Liberland.

And they said they will call it internet joke, but they never ever claimed that this piece of territory is theirs. And of course, Liberland is the best solution, potential solution to their whole border dispute. And I'm quite happy that Croatia is doing what they're doing for us right now.

They're actually protecting our borders. So you have a piece of land that is a border dispute. On most maps, it seems to be within the lines of Serbia. Why doesn't Serbia claim it? Well, that's simple, because if they did, they would go with the Croatia's version of the border.

That means they would lose a lot of other territory in a different place, in different places. OK. And so Croatia doesn't claim this land. Why not? Because they want this other land in other places. OK, so they have other border disputes. And this particular piece of land is not claimed for more than 35 years by neither of these sovereign states.

Because of the impact on their other areas. I see. OK, so you and some friends went to Liberland. You planted a flag and said, we claim this land for Liberland. Yes, exactly. That's what we did. OK, but you didn't just... it wasn't just an Internet joke. Like you actually intend to build a legit country.

We went there to start a country. That was the only thing which we didn't expect that there will be such a huge interest in actually doing so. I was really thinking this will be a really multi-year project in which we will slowly grow our claim. And I wouldn't believe that there would be Russia today, knocking on my door the next day after we established a country.

And right after Russia today, the CNN comes and wants to report about Liberland. So there was like a substantial media coverage by basically the state's televisions of the world coming down and acknowledging our claim. What is a country? What do you need to have a country, in your opinion?

Well, there are these Montevideo criteria that you need to have a population. I'm fine with 700,000 people, basically, but right now signed up. You need to have a territory. I'm really happy about the whole territory of Liberland. It's a really beautiful, heart-shaped piece of land with very well-defined borders with our neighbors.

You need to have a governance. We have this, I would say, classical government, very stable. I would say more stable than what our neighbors have currently. And you need to have diplomatic relations with other countries. And that's why I started these representative offices in more than 115 countries around the world.

There is a person responsible for our diplomatic relations with some other countries. So also, we are, I would say, better covered. We're covering the world better than traditional European countries in that sense. But that, of course, is not enough. You really have to have people that are in direct relations with the government that are able to open the right talks at the right time, and that are able to get Liberland recognized sooner or later.

Is there anybody living in the territory of Liberland? Well, right now, we do have houseboats. Something changed three weeks ago. We stopped having problems with Croatian police while we were coming from Serbia, which is pretty exciting. But I don't want to have any to knock on the wood. And I just hope it continues.

But for the case it doesn't, we are actually building a floating city on Danube next to Liberland, a couple of meters away from the shore. We're putting together houseboats and people that want to do business and live in Liberland can do so. But on the other hand, we also started developing a piece of Serbia right across the river.

We're building actually a really nice resort. I think it's an important part of the story of Liberland that we kind of get ourselves settled on the other side of the river as well. We're building something really nice and futuristic. And I've got Zaha Hadid, one of the best architectural studios in the world.

They just finished Beijing airport, for example. So they stepped up and they really wanted to help us from the beginning. And now it's a time for them to do something which will be actually built in physical reality. And it will be a small, little Liberland across the river. Did you fight Serbia for the land?

How did you get this land across the river? No, no, no. We actually bought it one week ago. OK. So it's pretty fresh. So you used the money from people buying citizenship. Actually, no. For this particular case, I used the Ethereum, which I bought as a private person when the whole sale started.

So I used that, but I put it into a company and that company bought the property. OK. And this company is a state asset of Liberland. It is kind of a state asset. Yeah. But it's still like it's a private venture. Unlike, I would say, we really don't want actually state to interfere with the business of the regular business.

I don't think state should be a developing property. So I'm kind of sitting on two chairs. Some of these things are private businesses. And I'm also president of Liberland as well. I'm trying to do the best so I kind of don't have friction between these two positions. But I believe that the state shouldn't develop a land, like shouldn't build resorts.

We really have private investors to do so. And the same thing should apply for Liberland. State should really take care of security, justice, diplomacy, and that's it. You know, don't give a state another power to do that. We will be selling land in Liberland. We will be selling the land in Liberland.

But that's a, OK, the government will decide how the land will be distributed. But it shouldn't build something there inside of it. Like housing for Liberlanders or something like that. Right. So what I find so interesting about this, I was having a conversation with someone earlier this afternoon. We were talking about Bitcoin and the concept of cryptocurrency.

And I was talking about how I genuinely believe, one of the things I believe now that I didn't believe some time ago, but I genuinely believe that the world can change the way that it views things faster than we imagine. And we're talking about money. One of the things that in the future I'm going to do, which I've heard a number of people do, and I realized how powerful it was, is instead of using money, some people have just mentioned in passing, oh, when you want to turn your Bitcoin into fiat.

Well, of course, being interested in economics for a long time, I'm well familiar with the use of the word fiat. But I don't use it in normal conversation. It's not something I just say, OK, how much fiat would you like or how much US dollar fiat would you like?

In the future, I think I'm going to do it because I realize how powerful it is. It's absolutely true. It's simply a way of acknowledging the reality of what a currency like the US dollar is. It's a fiat currency. Now, I was thinking, though, that I increasingly do believe today that we actually could change.

I was not an early believer in things like Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. But as I thought about that, I've realized that I was wrong because we really could change and people really could use these currencies. And I think that that change could happen faster than ever. So I was thinking about Liberland and the concept of the state, the concept of the government.

And you mentioned Monaco. Monaco, you say that Liberland, the physical territory of Liberland that you've claimed is three times larger than the physical territory of Monaco. But no one in the world would say that Monaco is illegitimate just because it's a third of the size of Liberland. Monaco is legitimate.

You can be a citizen of Monaco. You can live in Monaco. Famously, many wealthy, successful people do live in Monaco because famously it's a tax haven. You can become Monagask. No, it doesn't happen actually. There are three, four generations of Italians living there and they still didn't get the citizenship.

So the prince has to be the one. It's actually not happening. I don't think it's like really difficult. So the point is that the physical size of a nation doesn't necessarily determine its legitimacy, I guess is the point. And so as I think about the Liberland concept that you're building, it really is possible to build a nation.

It's not like you have to... Senores, hey, senores, senores, por favor, estamos grabando una entrevista acá. Ok? Por favor, gracias. The physical size of a nation doesn't determine its legitimacy. So what does determine the legitimacy of a nation, I guess is my question. I would say it is... I would say the best countries are actually formed by nations that have a clear vision of how they want to govern themselves.

And of course, the more free market vision they have, the better the country that they're forming is. And again, like country or nation is nothing but a common belief how to run your business. It's not connected to your language. It's not connected to your culture, not connected to your color of the skin.

It's literally a way how you think about how things should be run in a society. Does a country have to be a place where lots of people live? Because you have hundreds of thousands of citizens of Liberland, and yet nobody is physically located full time on that physical territory.

I guess my wife is actually having a party in Liberland as we speak. So they took 25 ladies out for a boat ride, and now they're partying inside of Liberland. So there are people physically there. But the fun part is that, yes, you're right. But to be honest with you, for the recognition by other countries, it's actually important to have the territory.

And there is so much space on this planet. Like come on, there could be thousands of countries here. And of course, it's also just a convention that you need to have a physical space. They tried to get rid of this rule that actually they kind of kicked out the possibility to put man-made platforms as a territory when these things like Rose Island, as you probably saw the movie, started to happen.

But it's also just a convention. But why not fulfill the convention? There are still so many places that kind of can be claimed as a country on this planet. I agree. I agree. So that's a good question. I was thinking about this just because I'm so intrigued by the idea and the philosophical implications and questioning all of my own assumptions and beliefs.

I guess one thing I think you need for the legitimacy of a nation is simply for other nations to accept it as legitimate. There's nothing really more than that. So if we think about, I don't know, I can't restate any better. You need other nations to say, "Yes, we accept you as legitimate." And then basically, if that can happen, then that nation state can flourish more and more.

I don't think that's the case, actually. And the International Law is also very specific about it. The existence of state is independent of recognition by other states. That's actually one of the articles in Montevideo Criterion. Really? So you established, tell me the story of Somaliland. Because you established, Liberland established diplomatic relations with Somaliland.

But I'm not familiar with that story, but I thought it would be interesting to hear. Tell me about Somaliland and their struggles to attain recognition. They are fully functional for 30 years, fully functional country with defined borders. It's as big as United Kingdom. There is five million people living there.

They have very decent government. There are no security threats, unlike in Somalia. But nobody recognizes them. Or actually, it's starting to happen. Because it was kind of pathetic that the world decided not to recognize Somaliland for some strange reason. Nobody really knows why. But right now, it's slowly developing relations with other countries.

And I knew that it's going to happen. I kind of wanted to help them. I thought we will be kind of working hands in hand on recognition of Liberland and Somaliland. So it's kind of happening. I helped them to get to a couple of international conferences on high level.

And I'm helping them to get more good contacts in the Western world, where we are strong. And I think we actually do have similar size coverage in terms of marketing, like Somaliland does have. And funnily enough, we also have similar size budgets, for example, for the foreign efforts. So from that perspective, I was just thinking, they are actually good partners.

Why don't we recognize them first? Because we are going to work hand in hand with them to get more recognitions. And I also believe it's a huge business opportunity. All Somaliland is full of gold, iron, ore, diamonds. Just nobody is picking them up from the street. Wow. OK. So how can I be attracted to Liberland?

What can Liberland offer me in order for me to want to immigrate to Liberland? I think it's a great opportunity to find like-minded people. And the price of the citizenship is cheap now. In a way, it's much lower than your golf course yearly fees. But it's going to change because we are putting merit, which is the currency basically which you need to stake, we're putting it on a float.

It's going to be basically decided by market what the value of that will be. So it might just skyrocket as well. I think it will actually. So it is a very, I would say, it's a very good social club. That's for sure. But then it's also a concentrated effort to build a sovereign country, which I think, you know, we don't have much competition right now.

Everybody is doing what we're doing in a way. So the idea is that I could join Liberland by becoming a citizen. I would pay for that citizenship. I can pay for it in fiat or in some other form of currency that Liberland accepts. And I can become a citizen immediately?

Yes. Yes. That's the way it is. And about how much does that cost right now? It's now 5,000 merits. And my merit is still tied to US dollar. So you have a currency called the merit. The merit is currently pegged to the US dollar. So I could turn 5,000 US dollars fiat into 5,000 merits.

And then I could purchase my citizenship with that. And in exchange for that, what would I receive? You're going to get passport. You're going to get e-residency card, which you can use to open companies, for example, in Liberland. You get access to, I don't know, Chamber of Commerce, our yearly events.

You know, you'll be able to actually vote. And I think we are like three months away from the blockchain governance. So we will be able to vote with your merits who will be sitting in the Liberland Congress. You will be able to take part of public veto. And you will be able to utilize the system of Liberland courts, for example.

And you're seeking, I understand, to put all of the Liberland government functions onto the blockchain. Is that right? That's exactly our mission. I think it's also pretty cool to do that when the technology is just ready for it. We took whatever Polkadot has put together so far, which I think is a nice code, and we are putting it, we are twisting it a little bit to build the whole country on top of the technology.

So Polkadot is something like Ethereum, but it's a proof of stake network, which I think is the right concept for a country as well. You mentioned that the three basic functions that you see for government, because I think most of us who are freedom-oriented, the vast majority of us, I think, would concede that there is a role for something called government.

We argue at the fringes about what that role is. Should it be in developing national parks? Should it be in building roads? Should it be in maintaining militaries? You mentioned three things earlier. Security of its citizens, a court system, and diplomacy with other nations. If you don't have an army, at least you really need to have good relations with your neighbors.

So can those things be expressed in the virtual world? The system of decentralized course is something which has, I would say, erupted in the blockchain world already. You've got companies like Kleros that are trying to build a decentralized court system or juror.io. And I think it's a good time for us again to kind of learn from them and put it on a complex blockchain which represents a nation state.

And diplomacy is a bit difficult. I don't know how to do it. The system, of course, can be kind of put on blockchain and also scaled and decentralized, which is pretty cool. But with security, I think we can uberize Liberland police fairly easy. And we had this application called 911, which was kind of a test of it.

And then there is another application like Liberland e-residency application. We're still testing it. But I think there is a bright future for a similar concept. Actually uberizing the service of the police. So you allow all the citizens that feel like protecting the others to log into the application and simply provide the service.

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, there's a tremendous amount of ideological agreement that I have with some of these concepts. My opinion, if I were painting my perfect world, I have one function for government, and that is the courts. I believe that that's fundamentally at its core what the function of government is.

You need a magistrate and you need a court system where one person can bring a complaint against another person and an independent third party can pass judgment and have some kind of sanction brought against that person who is found to be in the wrong. And so it's fascinating to think of building a nation from the ground up.

It's fascinating to think of what could happen. Well, I'm also really excited about launching the whole things system. We're doing very well. I would say the last month was the most successful month of Liberland in terms of finance and new people coming and organization and all these things that are literally starting just now like the village, like free trade zone that we are building in Serbia, like new boats coming to Liberland, like the fact that we can actually access the land.

But I think there will be a huge boost, another round of huge boost once we actually put things on blockchain because there will be different people in the blockchain arena that will recognize the achievement. And I hope, you know, in combination with the things that we already done, we managed to get the country recognized by a couple of other countries and the fact that we are actually putting together decent governance for the whole system.

They will just like to support it. I don't think we will have a problem with people paying voluntary taxes in Liberland. So I've got about three questions left. Number one, you mentioned taxes. The vision of Liberland is that the tax system would be voluntary. Tell me about that. Yeah, we really believe it's time to switch this relation from like if you don't pay taxes, we put you into jail into like, can you please contribute to this particular effort of the government and you will actually get the shares of that project or of the government itself back, which I think is a reasonable way how to run things.

So, that's my belief, you know, and I think once you actually do this, you know, we will attract so much attention when we get this off the ground and it will be working. That again, I'm really truly a believer that you don't really need a tax system, a non-voluntary tax system in the new millennia, that we need to get more civilized as a society and stop these kind of clans taking over different states and basically extorting the value from others through the state.

How do you, are you a big thinker? Well, you know, to be honest with you, I wish I had more time to read recently. That's my wish. But it's because we are doing so many projects now and I just wake up and get on my calls and I'm dead and I cannot, but I do think about things trying to get them through and I'm trying to encircle myself with people that are really big guys in the arena of constitutional law and diplomacy and cultural connections with other countries.

So I just wish, you know, I had a little bit more time to read, to be honest with you. From my perspective, I've been thinking a lot, I first became aware of Lieberland a couple years ago, but I laughed it off a little bit. I didn't know, I didn't ever research to know whether to take it seriously or not.

We met a few days ago and so I've been thinking about some of our conversation. And what is so interesting is it seems like there's actually far fewer things in the world that have to be the way they are than we usually think, right? We're accustomed to the world working the way that it works just because that's how it is.

But it doesn't actually have to be that way in most circumstances. Realistically, things can change. I come from the United States of America. In the United States of America, if you go back 200 and whatever years ago, you had a group of several dozens of men who came together and they said, "We think these certain things should change." And they were able to popularize their ideas, publicize them.

They were able to recruit enough men to go to war with them. Then the world changed and the history of the world has never been the same. But at its core, it was a few dozen men who were working together, who believed in a set of ideas and ideals, and then were successful at convincing those other people.

It started very humbly, right? There was a relatively small area of territory, but then those men continued to expand. They eventually took over an entire continent, plus some additional territories and other places through a variety of means. And so the interesting thing about it is that there's no fundamental reason why Liberland the nation couldn't grow in physical geography.

One thing you think about of a country, "Oh, it's a big area." Well, it's not a big area, as we talked about with Monaco. It's not a big area. You also think about a country has to be all in one place. Well, it doesn't, right? When you think about it, there are exclaves and enclaves of countries all around the world, including most, the United States has its own exclaves and enclaves in other places.

And so the nation of Liberland can begin with a small island and some territory near the Danube River on the border between Croatia and Serbia, but the nation of Liberland can then go and purchase land from another nation and spread in other ways and in other places. And so what's fascinating to me is that when I sit down and think about it, there's no fundamental reason why somebody can't create a new country, why they can't build it on certain shared principles and values that bring people together.

And even that, right? One of the things that's been so painful for me, and I'm just telling you a little of my story and thinking about it, I come from the United States of America, but I really don't feel very much kinship with US Americans, many of them, anymore.

Because I'm not united by the fact that we both carry a blue passport with a golden eagle on its front. I'm not united by the stars and stripes. I'm united by a set of ideas, a set of ideals. And when I talk to people who share those ideas and ideals, I feel a sense of kinship with them.

But when they don't share them, I feel alienated. So I feel more kinship with you being from the Czech Republic. - You must be liberal-minded. - No, I certainly am. And so I guess that's just a way of saying that I love seeing what you're doing. I admire your big thinking to be willing to spearhead things.

And I would love to see things change because the world can change faster than we usually think it can. And 50 years from now, a totally different world order, right? We talk a lot about the new world order. Well, 50 years from now, there's going to be a new world order.

But I don't believe that new world order is determined. I believe that, meaning it's not set in stone what it's going to be. Rather that new world order of 50 years hence is going to be determined by what billions of individuals choose to do. And today, small groups of men have the ability to influence tens of thousands of people, have the ability to attract hundreds of thousands of citizens very quickly.

And so I'd love to see the project flourish and succeed. - Thank you very much. And I hope to see you in Liberland soon later. - I would like to be there. So if my listeners want to get information on Liberland, what's the best way for them to do that?

- Liberland.org. That's still, you know. - Liberland.org. L-I-E-B-E-R-L-A-N-D.org. - Yes, it takes, you know, five minutes to register, actually. And you start your pass for citizenship. You first get e-residency. It costs actually $150. In 14 days, you should receive the card. Then you can use the whatever facilities we have to start a new company, for example, in Liberland.

And if you start paying taxes, those taxes go towards your citizenship. So you can also decide to basically do it gradually when you feel like you are making value inside of the ecosystems, which also many people do. Or you can just decide, "Oh, I'm going for it right away.

I want to be a citizen." Get the passport, and you add another 5,000 merits to your account. - Awesome. Vy, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. - Thank you very much. It was a great pleasure. - CuriosityStream is the streaming service for people who want to know more.

And now, check out Curiosity's new series, "The Real Wild West." Rolling Stone magazine says it's the history of the West they usually don't teach you. - The mythology of the West left out a lot of the people. - People said they'd never seen a black cowboy. - This is the history book, but did you know about these other facts?

- Watch "The Real Wild West" now on CuriosityStream. With monthly, annual, and bundled plans, find the one that works for you at curiositystream.com. (rumbling)