“Every good story is ultimately libertarian in nature.”

Jan1

This week on the Free Cities Podcast we continue our series of interviews recorded in Prague and my fourth guest is Jan Mošovský.

Jan is the Director of Research at the Liberální Institut (Liberal 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 his observation that every good story is ultimately libertarian in nature.  His answer 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 Próspera 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 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 Próspera 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.

Enjoy the conversation…