Welcome to Keith's night, don't try it on anyone in the
libertarian Institute today. I am joined by Peter Young, the
managing director of the free cities, Foundation, mr.
Young, thank you so much for your time.
I'm skate for inviting me on. It's a pleasure to be on the
show. What is the free cities
Foundation? The free cities Foundation is an
organization that wants to create more competition in what
we call the market for living together for various reasons.
The world at the moment has little variation in the style of
governance that there is most governments.
Although they have different levels of government spending in
different. Social policies will generally
raise money in the same way. They have a central government,
that taxes people and run certain areas of the economy
that they have local governments, which Their own
revenues locally and the combination of public spending
derives from taxes. But there's no place in the
world right now where you can go and you can have a totally
service-based, kind of society. Whereby people can just like,
they can in Industries like clothing, Electronics, food,
choose, the kinds of services they want.
And we think that there needs to be new Innovations in
governance. And so the focus of the free
City, Is foundation, is to find models different models for
governance that exists. Whether they be the free private
cities model, which is conceived by our founder TTS, Gable or see
stead's or intentional communities.
The Liberty Focus or special economic zones.
We just think there needs to be more choice and variety and that
that would spur Innovation and that Innovation would encourage
better systems of government to develop around the world.
So that is Focus of our mission to create more competition and
more innovation in the area of governance.
Do you see competition as the opposite of cooperation?
Or do you think those two ideas can actually be complementary?
These ideas are absolutely complementary.
And actually we think that cooperation is essential in a
Libertarian Society. One of the common misconceptions
about Libertarians is that they believe that Society is run best
when everyone keeps themselves to themselves when it's just
about me and my family and I don't help anyone else.
And in fact, in a Libertarian Society That's the worst
strategy you can pursue because in a Libertarian Society if you
keep yourself to yourself and you don't involve yourself in
the community and you don't contribute and you don't get to
know people and you don't be supportive of others and provide
services that other people value.
Then you're going to have a much poorer quality of life because
people even if you're in a situation where you're, you
know, disabled or whatever, you know, Having those connections
means that people won't support you and the great thing.
You know, the great Insight that I've gained from studying, the
Austrian School of Economics is the Insight.
That when exchange happens it happens because both parties
believe that this is going to be a beneficial outcome and they
bear the consequences if it's not a beneficial outcome.
So when people trade, one of the common misconceptions in kind of
some macroeconomics, And theories is that market prices
are equal to the value of goods. But actually Austrian economics
teaches us that trades only happen because there is a
different in subjective, valuation of goods.
When something is valued Higher, by one person and lower.
By another person, a trade will take place and both people have
decided they value the other thing more than the other.
So, I'm explaining that because the the Ation of that is that
when you have more free cooperation and exchange more
division of labor, a larger pool of people who can work together
and people I should emphasize are the most valuable resource
we have on the planet you can create more of anything.
Any natural resource you want as a great book on this by Julian
Simon called the natural resource and at this or the
ultimate resource it's called and human time is the most
valuable thing we have. So If you're a Libertarian, the
best strategy and the best way to live, aside from the fact
that it's good to be social and build human Connections in
itself, is that we need to cooperate and work together.
And that's very much the ethos that we promote our foundation.
We don't want to have, you know, walled-off enclaves that are
just limited to certain groups in society because a, it's not
the kind of society. I want to live in that simply,
it's not a good. Business model, if you're a shop
and you say, sorry, only these kinds of person can enter.
Generally, you're going to be limited to like very like
certain clientele, whereas, most shops, say it's open to
everyone, you can come in, you can buy things and it's the same
with free cities as long as you don't, you know, sha flipped in
a shop, you shoplift in a shop, you can come and came to a shop
as long as you respect the rights of others.
And, you know, don't don't violate property rights or
violate some Basic rules, then you're welcome to become part of
this community. When people look at the free
cities Model, A very common objection, is things that I
currently get from the state. Now that are free, education,
policing, fire department. I now would have to pay for, why
would how would you talk to someone who says, I don't want
to switch from this model where I get things for free versus one
where there might be instability and I might have to pay and if I
lose my job I might lose things and never have access to them.
So yes it's a common question it's good that people ask this
question because it's an important issue.
How do we provide education and Healthcare and the things that
we normally have government support for in a free City.
And the answer is that we provide them on the private
Market but we take away the barriers that to Innovation that
make these products expensive and and and we give people more
choice. In the ability to, to, to send
their children, to two different kinds of school because not all
children fit into the same box. So, if you're putting 30
children into a school, which in the UK is generally based on the
postcode that you live in, you'll have one or two choices,
maybe three. And you just get put into that
system. You're stuck in that system for
however, long the teachers, you know, have certain rules.
But They might not be the rules that you that you think are
optimal and the way it works now is that the government has a
top-down way of deciding what the national curriculum is.
This is in, this is in the UK, I believe it's slightly different
in the US, but there's a national curriculum.
Everyone has to study it. And someone decides what they
should study and what they shouldn't.
But in our society, people would have the ability to to, to set
up different kinds of school. You might Have a school that
focuses on kids are super artistic.
You might have a school that focuses on kids that love to
code and want to train them in coding.
But the essential thing is that people because they get
something free at the point of service, such as the NHS in the
UK. They believe that they're not
paying cost for it. But, of course, they're paying
for it in tax and even though the percentage of people who pay
taxes is very skewed, You towards the wealthy.
I can't quite remember the exact figures, but it's something
like, you know, only about 40% of the UK population are net tax
receivers, rather than tax beneficiaries in terms of what
spent on them versus what they actually get taxed.
But even that you have to understand the bigger picture
because if a company offering Services is getting taxed more,
it means that their input costs are higher which prevents them
from lowering prices. So Is costs all feed into the
economy. They all bring costs higher and
they mean the services that are normally really expensive.
Like, for example, u.s. medical services are incredibly
expensive and people say to us, you know, you want to privatize
Healthcare. Look at the US, look at how
expensive it is compared to the UK.
Look at how much government money they get, and it's still
twice as expensive as the UK. And I just say, I agree, but it
has nothing to do with the free market.
There are Are all kinds of Licensing and and kind of
qualification requirements. They have to go through
universities, which are then government, you know, funded as
well. Which costs huge amounts of
money, this huge amounts of cost to train, the Personnel.
There's also intellectual property law, which this is not
a foundation position, but this is a personal position I think
that intellectual property is something that we can't make a
good moral case for I think. Property rights should only
exist in the realm of actually what's the rivalrous rivalrous
goods? Where if one person owns it,
another person Own It owns it. But intellectual property laws
mean that for example you know, medicines can be patterned and
then it can cost up to a billion dollars to get something
approved by the FDA in the US. So what this does is it raises
all the prices of Medical Care. It also skews Medical Services
towards large companies, and there are other ways in which
large companies benefit fit through State intervention.
Probably, the largest one being the fact that we have inflation
in the economy. So people are forced to invest
in stocks and publicly traded. Stocks have to be 0 companies
over a certain size and they have to pay a lot of money in
order to become publicly listed. And so the whole population ends
up investing their Savings in these companies, in order to, in
order to just stay in their purchasing power over time.
And this means that we have a strange economy, which everyone
defines, as, you know, free market run a mock.
But when you actually look under the hood of how the economy
works and you see that, there's so much regulation and so much
intervention and that's preventing Competitors from
providing cheaper services and better Services.
Then you start to see that this has nothing to do with the free
market at all. It's a mixed economy.
It's some kind of three elements but it's very State Control even
in the US. And I often joke, like, do I say
to people, you know, in socialist countries like the US
where they have this system and it doesn't work particularly
well, you know, because I do think the u.s. model is actually
incredibly socialist and state-controlled.
And the comparison would just be where the US was say 100 years
ago or where Britain was a hundred years ago because we had
very different models and the economy, the like the advances
that were made in terms of the level of human impact were, were
much greater. So, what I would say is just to
come back to your question. These Services would be provided
on the market, but In a system where only the companies don't
pay taxes, they just pay a fixed low service fee to have security
and basic Services. They can lower their costs and
they can provide these services cheaper and there can be more
variety of services, so people can choose exactly what's works
for them and their children in terms of health care and
education. And if people want to opt out of
funding these services, are they legally able to So the way that
we think it would work in one of our models to free private
cities model, is that there is a operating company that the rap
that owns the area of land and sets the rules.
And so this word private is sometimes people.
You know, when they set here private they imagined.
Oh this is some kind of gated community that's very secretive
and people can, you know, wealthy people Retreat to but it
literally just refers to the fact.
Not that it's run by a company and the company would have a
profit motive just in the same way that Apple Amazon Facebook,
all of these companies that we use all the time, have a profit
motive and the reason for that is that you want people to
invest in things because if they invest in things in a free
economy, the only way those companies can make money is by
providing something that customers are willing to buy.
Really, there's no regulation that says you have to buy this
particular thing to get it to do this job or you must purchase
this particular permit to park, your car, or whatever it is.
Like in that sin that system. There is much more choice for
people and people would be, you know.
So so so the idea of it being private just refers to the fact
that there's an operating company.
So What could you opt out of the question?
So, and can I just specify? So in America, the idea is,
well, we pay for the police through taxes and we pay for the
courts through taxes and then they give us, it's amazing that
they still call it free even though they admit they're paying
in taxes. And then we get these things for
free, and that's what makes the social contract legitimate.
Which immediately raises the And so if they don't protect us and
they don't issue Justice, then we no longer have an obligation
to pay taxes, right? Like if BLM burns down the city
or something, we don't have to pay taxes anymore and that's
just okay. And they go, no, you have to
pay. Well, what if the military
doesn't keep us safe? Well, you're actually going to
end up funding the military more.
So my whole thing is, is there an actual contract?
Where if I say, yep, I'll pay the security fee.
By the way, I've been robbed and assaulted 20 times at this Place
I'm done paying your fee and I'm not leaving my house because you
told me if I paid the fee, I'd get the service.
I haven't gotten the service, so I'm keeping the money.
Is there an actual contract or is it the fake social contract
that statist? So tell us is real, I'm really
glad you asked that question because we have an article
written by our Founders Titus which is entitled why a
citizen's contract is better than a constitution and we focus
this Is a core part of the model that we Advocate most strongly
which is that there is a specific contract that exists
between every citizen and the operating company.
So just to follow up, briefly on what you said there about having
problems with health care. And having problems with
policing like what if I'm not protected?
Am I entitled not to pay tax in the current system?
No you're not your you take what you're given and if the police
Isn't working. The solution is normally pay the
police more. So the incentives are all the
wrong way round. It means that.
I also know that in particular in the u.s. there is a lot of
Divergence of view about how the police should handle certain
instance, in our system. That is a, that is that is sold
through a market mechanism because the policing and
security is provided by an operating company that can set.
At a specific kind of policy like our.
If we see something suspicious happening, we have the ability
to stop and search in this city. But this is specified in a
contract at the beginning. So people don't like that idea.
They might choose a different free City, but basically the
rights of the citizen are made clear in a physical contract and
that in contract includes all the services.
The citizen wants from the operating company.
And they don't have to be the same.
So for example, I think what the minimum would need to be is some
kind of basic security to protect the overall land area
which would cost some money. And in one of the projects we
work with in Honduras, which has some similarities to this this
kind of free cities concept. They have a they have a company
there that manages to security and does it very well, and
efficiently and very cheaply. And so these are huge costs but
things like that. Basically, within the contract,
you would have certain things that could be specified.
Like, if you are mugged on the streets and the, the culprit
can't be found to compensate you.
You're entitled to compensation from the operator, you know, the
operator would could decide on having policies like this, which
may be attractive to some people, but may be attractive to
others, but the whole point of this is that we Often assume
that there is an ideal system for running Society, a society,
a world where there are 7 billion people.
And in fact, we live in a world of different different kinds of
people different kinds of taste different levels of income and
there will be some models that are right.
For some people in some models that are right for others and
these models can still cooperate, you could have three
cities that like, you know, Target retirees.
And you could have three cities that Target digital.
Some remote workers and young people, it doesn't mean that
because you're a resident of one.
You never talk to the other you know, there's every incentive
for systems to be set up so that these free silliest can
cooperate. You might live in one free City
at one point in your life and decided another point.
You like you want to move to another but they're all based on
the ideas that, you know, we should have more choice in the
kind of structures under which we live and you know, it's
really an irresolvable problem, the policing problem.
Oblem, you mentioned in in the US because people people, you
know, people cannot opt out of paying for the, for the police.
And so, someone in government that doesn't, you know, have
access to the mines and preferences of different people,
has to, sort of, make a guess at what, the right level of funding
is, make a guess of what the right policies are.
But in free cities, people can choose.
See the policies in black and white and they can And they can
choose whether they sign up to them or not and people that want
to have, you know, police that never do stop and search and
police that don't carry guns, that could be, that could be
their choice. People that want the police to
have guns or want the whole population to be able to carry
guns. That would be their choice as
well. So you could decide on the
policy and then basically, people people can choose where
they want to live and we kind of solved the solution and And even
if you don't like living under a system, there's every incentive
small communities to allow free travel set up simple treaty
saying if you're a member of this recently and come to this
free City, you can trade with this free City.
And I think the world would just be much more harmonious because
we Bill all be under the system. We want to be in, but we can
still all cooperate and trade peacefully.
One of my favorite articles on the topic of libertarianism is
from a guy named Roderick T long and he says, you know,
technically, a credit card company could make a credit
card. That is a cube and it's there,
it's there card. If, if only it works in one
machine on the planet, you can do that.
But no one would do that. So they all cooperate to make
them the same size so you can cooperate with more people.
You technically. Can have a cell phone service
that only calls people on the same cell phone service, but no
one has think the incentive to do that.
Therefore, they're going to constantly cooperate.
What if there's a USB that only works on one type of computer
and there's only one of those computers.
Well, they have an incentive to make USBS work on every
computer. So we actually see this
everywhere. Just one more note on the US
healthcare costs. Paul Krugman in his book, The
Conscience of a liberal said in. Listen for government programs.
Paid for 44% of Health Care in America.
While private insurance only paid for 36.
So that's in 2004 before Bush jr.
Expanded Medicare Part D before Barack Obama's implementation of
the of the Affordable Care Act. So it is a lie that the US has a
free market Health Care System. Imagine saying that gay marriage
is legal but 80 percent of the marriages are denied and they
have to get permission. Ian from the Catholic Church to
get married well. Okay, that's so heavily
regulated. It's not actually a free
exchange. So that's just a very important
thing that people need to understand before, you know,
accepting the free cities concept.
Our unions and worker cooperatives in alignment with
the free cities foundation. So they would be free to set up
a union and the operator of a city would be free to set.
I'd policy on unions for example they could say within our free
City unions have the right to strike against their employees.
That's fine. If that's the policy they want
to set. If they want to set up a workers
Cooperative. So that there's a more
socialized form of work where there's less kind of monetary
trade and it's more about actual labor for labor, like the
Israeli kibbutz, and they will be free to do that.
We just don't think that would be a particularly attractive
long-term model. The Israeli could put some are
attractive for some people but you know it's not a model that
has been adopted widely for very for reasons that I think, you
know, people if you have the ability to strike and you're
legally protected from not being fired, that just makes things
much more expensive. And it puts the population at
Ransom, to the major services in the city and within the UK.
For example, we've had like very big changes to 2 Union power.
The Union's used to have a lot of power in the UK, in the
1970s, Margaret Thatcher, who was quite a controversial prime,
minister did rain back, some of the Union power that there is,
but unions still have a reasonable amount.
Amount of influence and power and funding their large, the
large funders of the Labour party in the UK and they
influence the Labour party, quite considerably, but we've
seen in the last week that there has been the largest national
rail strike, in 30 years. The whole, you know, Network in
the UK was shut down for for like three days and on limited
services for the others. So there's been doctors strikes.
And basically, these are all in public sectors sector delivered
Services. Because within the public
sector, there are certain rights that you have to strike and to
retain your job and not be penalized for striking.
You also have very you also have everyone working under the same
umbrella with no competition, because whilst there is a
private healthcare sector. In the UK you have to pay for
the public one. Anyway.
So you're either getting a service that you paid for
already and is free or you're getting a private provider that
you have to pay for as well. So really like when you when you
like artificially conglomerate has large sectors of the economy
and because rail in the UK developed, you know, the UK was
a Pioneer in real it developed most of its Network completely.
Italy and most of the network. If you look at the history of
when the lines were built, I mean, the last ones were built.
I think no late and about 1910. The whole network was built
during the period of the gold standard, a couple of other,
than a couple of recent high-speed lines.
And, you know, this, this mainly was driven by private companies.
It was only later that they started to kind of nationalize
and coordinate on the trains. And the same is true for
Education, just as an aside. People and and Healthcare.
In fact, Britain is a great case study because we were kind of
you know we've got a long history of industrialization.
We were one of the first countries to industrialize we
kind of led the Industrial Revolution and during during
that time, you know, the there were, there were loads of
hospitals that were built. In fact, there's almost a kind
of religious conviction and belief in the In the UK because
the idea of Health Care free at the point of delivery.
It's something that you know, sounds really nice because
everyone likes free things, but of course, like it's more, it's
more nuanced to make an argument to say, hey, well actually if
you do this is the consequence. But if you look at the
hospital's there about 57 58 hospitals in London and all of
them were built for the NHS was was an existence.
If you look back at the history of how Healthcare Are worked.
Sure like it was much less Advanced but things like, you
know, like various various various medical Blake
breakthrough such as the discovery of penicillin such as
the first polio vaccine. All of these things were
happening and aesthetic development.
All of these things happened. When we had an entirely
privately, Run Healthcare sector.
And what you also found was that many there was large.
Irritable donations doctors would often have in some parts
of the country half of their day would be dedicated to private
patients and then some of their day would be dedicated to
low-income people's. That just didn't have the money
to help and actually the fees weren't very, very high.
I saw something that showed that it was like, you know, to get a
consultation the average for you is something like to two
Shillings or something around 1910, which was probably like,
you know, about a tenth of a week's wages something.
Like this. So it wasn't it wasn't like
unreasonably High to get a consultation but there was lots
of support actually like even though we were living in an
earlier time resources were less but when more limited they are
today, I'm not saying that that was a better Society in any
stretch because we just hadn't developed capital, accumulation
takes time, but back then, if you look at the surveys that
were done, there's a survey that was done in 1898 and it analyzes
How much was being given by the average person to help the poor
including in stuff like health care and education.
And the figure was 10% of salaries, even though people
were much poorer than they gave ten percent of their salaries on
average to charity and the figure has since Fallen to 2%
now that we have the welfare state and the other thing
briefly to mention, sorry to get a bit Carried Away by.
I just think it's an interesting story to tell and a very unknown
story. Is Is that people often ask the
question, how would education provided surely?
There will be loads of kids that didn't go to school if there
wasn't the state providing it and it wasn't free and actually
and they say look at places like Britain where you know,
Healthcare is. Sorry education is free.
Healthcare is free. But if you look at these studies
that were done, there was a big study in the 1816 1860 called
the Newcastle commission, which investigated whether or not
schooling should be made. Compulsory because this point
schooling wasn't compulsory and they did a big survey of the
whole country and they found that the the 95 percent of the
children in England were going to some form of schooling up to
the age of 12. And sure that's not up to the
age that we have today. But it's shows that actually
most of the growth that happened in like education and schooling
happened without any government involvement.
Aunt, same is true of science, say mystery of healthcare, these
things are totally possible and we should try and learn from the
way in which Britain. Experienced such dramatic
development, take away some of the bad bits and focus on the
bits that were beneficial and try and learn from them.
So just like in America, the things that these dates
subsidizes the most Education Health Care housing and the
military are the things we see the highest prices.
And so instead of producers Being accountable to Consumers
that are actually accountable to the state who has very little
incentive to go through things with a fine-tooth comb.
Making sure there's low cost and high quality, they don't face
competition. So it's terrible.
And also, if you opt out of funding something in the private
Market, it might not be a great option, but at least you don't
go to jail. If you don't fund the state,
they'll actually put you in jail.
They just did it with a guy from the Jersey Shore.
Mike The Situation? What?
My childhood Heroes, this this was a great tragedy against
Freedom, when it comes to things like Bitcoin, how can Bitcoin
help us achieve these free cities?
So Bitcoin is of great interest to me personally, I think that
one of the central reasons why government systems tend to be.
So aligned is that if you decide that you want to adopt something
that's unconventional and goes kind of contrary to what the
accepted International Norms are then you can get shut out of
systems of international trade. Because international trade is
not something that is this simple to do.
It's been a problem that Humanity has been trying to
solve for Millennia. The question of how we can
exchange with each other across long distances, and how we can
cooperate and how we can store our value.
And the current system we have is evolved from the gold
standard. When you know, gold was
initially used, you know, in coins and Traded directly mainly
by the wealthier people richer that has poor people use you
silver more but gold kind of countries kind of converged on
gold because gold proved to be the commodity that existed that
had the lowest what's a feed in a moose, cause the, the lowest
reliable stop to flow ratio. Which means that the amount that
you can physically produce Relative to the existing stop
each year is it is the is the lowest.
So that's a naturally occurring thing.
Gold is very scarce in the Earth's crust, and it's becomes
more and more expensive to mind because the more gold you dig up
the further, you have to dig the more expensive equipment, you
need. And so gold is reliably had a
kind of growth rate of about one to two percent every year.
No higher than 2% in any particular.
The year that's been the maximum and of course, that has meant
the gold. Historically has been able to
serve as a commodity through which countries can trade,
because if you have everyone trading in paper clips, then
someone sets up a paperclip Factory and they can just buy
goods from everyone in the economy that doesn't work.
You have people that could just easily create the currency that
doesn't work and you seen that play out in historically in
places like well, well in Us where they were using cowrie
shells as currency and then the colonias came over and started
using silver money and buying their stuff with shells and
basically, like they realized, oh, we're giving all our stuff
away and they're making more shells.
So there's more inflation here. The same thing happened.
Glass beads were used in West Africa as currency and when
foreigners move there they realized that they could
manufacture glass beads in Europe.
So they came in and they were able to buy things locally with
new glass beads and it took a while.
I'll before people realize, actually these glass beads are
becoming more prevalent and we should be charging more for
things in glass beads. But we conversion on gold
because it's because it's so hard to find and it's had this
kind of reliable growth rate in Supply over time, which has
been, which has been low. And so, the country, the whole
world converged on a gold standard, most of the names of
currencies refer to, you know, quantities of gold in their own
language, or, Derivation related to a weight in their own
language. No, the British pound being a
good, good example. So, you know, so gold was used
and and as a way of trading historically, but the problem
with gold is that is the physical commodity, and it
allows it is hard to transport large quantities of it.
And it's hard to, you know, it's expensive to to transport large
quantities of it because You know, you have a security risk
for one but you actually have to physically take it and pay for
the transport. So, gold has great.
Again, this is a kind of insight from say, feeding a moose, gold
has great saleability across time.
Meaning that if you buy at one time, you can sell it easily.
Another time, it's got a long history where you can, you know,
reliably know that the purchasing power is going to be
roughly the same or or even higher if you hold it into the
future. But it doesn't have very good
saleability across space because it has high transaction costs.
And so the result of that is that intermediaries started to
keep track of gold payments and people would deposit their there
gold in Banks. And these Banks would then keep
track of who's who owes what to who they would be trusted to
manage them and then the the transactions you know you didn't
have to pay that. Transaction cost but you didn't
have to pay as much to actually make a transfer.
So Some people prefer preferred that and it's probably a better
solution than just trading physical gold.
But the problem with that is that the gold all ends up
centralized in particular places and when the goal is centralized
in particular places and those are known to be places that hold
gold. Those places are subject to
government capture. And we've seen that Various
mandates, you know, famously in the United States when gold was
banned. We've seen that, you know, gold
ended up getting transferred to the bank of England.
And then it only takes if it's all in one place and the whole
country believes that they're suddenly, everything's
exchangeable for gold. If they want to which limits the
amount of gold that you can, you can actually the amount of
tickets you can produce to claim gold.
Then actually the government has the power to just say Sorry,
we're not honoring that obligation anymore and that's
exactly what happened. And we then moved into a period
where we gradually as a world. You know we moved through the
gold exchange standard. We move through the Bretton
Woods system, where the US dollar was backing, everything
in the US dollar was technically redeemable in Gold by other
central banks, but that system had its value.
Because it's old one problem of gold because it allowed for
International Exchange to happen.
But what it did is it put extraordinary new power in the
hands of government because the government could then choose to
print. But like, when Nixon went off
the gold standard in 1971, the government could choose to
print, however, much money it wanted, and because of that
transition period, after Bretton Woods, when all the Countries in
Europe, were we're struggling for funds, they'd have to pay
the US a lot for armaments. That's why there's so much gold
in Fort Knox. Is all came over from from
Europe during the second world war and it stayed there.
The US had the backing and so it made sense for the US dollar to
become this, this Global Currency that everyone used.
And basically, the whole financial infrastructure that we
exist today was set up between the end of the Bretton Woods.
No shortly after Bretton Woods that took place in 1944 and 1971
and by the time it was set up. You know there's things happen.
Charles de Gaulle the French President famously said you
know, we need to reclaim our gold and he said, take a
battleship across to the u.s. to collect the Frances gold.
And this is partly why Nixon panicked and took the u.s. off
the gold standard. Sorry to give quite a long
answer. I think the history of this is
kind of a kind of relevant to why I think Bitcoin is, you
know, a potential solution because what happened through,
you know, once you've established all of these payment
rails based on the US dollar there there you've got existing
infrastructure. It's like having like building a
load of petrol stations that only take a certain amount of
petrol if you want to change the hydrogen, you've got to rebuild
every single petrol station, that will really exist.
So, the u.s. became the de facto Controller of the world's
economy and because every Bank, every Central Bank has an
account in the Federal Reserve, the u.s. can decide who can
operate on the system. What the rules of the system are
and can print money, that gets inflated, which gets passed and
which creates inflation, which gives them extra spending power.
But that inflation is passed on to the rest of the world because
more US Dollars circulate outside the u.s. than in the US.
Economy alone, that's at least true for like, paper US Dollars
and the whole system operates on US dollars.
So what we now have is a centralized system whereby if
you don't respect certain US policies which you may disagree
with or you may agree with. You get shut out of
international systems. You can't join the WTO if you
don't respect us and other country intellectual, Rights.
For example, you can't join the WTO WTO.
If you don't have you no respect, certain ways of doing
business and you don't, you know, there are various
different policies that you cannot adopt if you want to be
members of of international trade organizations and if you
want to use the US dollar, you know, as we've just seen with
Russia, regardless of what you think about the ethics of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putting that aside we have seen
that. Russia, that the US has the
power simply to flick a switch and that country's balance is is
gone and they do the same thing here on, you know, regardless of
what you think they had the capability to completely isolate
Iran from the International Financial system.
And you know Iran's government obviously has lots of
controversial policies but you know it's a popular is a huge
population of people. And you know, you might not
think it's right to be eight to shut the entire population, out
of that system. So the reason I'm giving this
background is because there is a genuine problem that is being
sold by having an international digitized payment system.
That's run by the Federal Reserve because it has allowed
global trade to increase and I think that's partly why we've
seen such a growth in development in The third world
since the 1990s, because we've seen a huge uptick in global
trade, and this is particularly true in China, where I spent 10
years living and working is particularly true in India.
Its southeast Asia in general, there's been a huge Improvement
in quality of life and I think that's attributed to the fact
that we can trade freely using digital technology.
But the disadvantage is, obviously, that technology is
controlled by one particular party.
And if that particular party decides they don't like you or
that, you're adopting a policy See that they don't like you're
shut out of this global economy. But the to come on to why I
think Bitcoin is important. Shortly after the internet
started to become widely used, there was a book by James Dale,
Davis and William Rees smog, in which they wrote about the
inevitability of the Internet by providing like free speed of
light, access to information to be able to come up with some
form of money. But in order to do that, they
have to solve a few technical problems and they Wrote, this
was in about 1997 or 996, they wrote about various ways.
This could work and they knew about public-private key
technology and it's quite remarkable to read what they
wrote about how digital money could work and how it could
replace central government run money.
And I think when we change to a world where the internet allows
us to exchange information, the development of something, like,
Bitcoin was only really a matter of time because all that Satoshi
Nakamoto, whoever he, she or they were did, was, was uniquely
combine a few specific kinds of computing technology.
That allowed them to the first time to create a scarce digital
asset. Something that like if you and I
exchanged a JPEG, you can send that JPEG to as many people as
you want. That's one of the advantages of
data is just information in their system, but basically, the
long and short of it is that Satoshi Nakamoto was able to
design a system. Whereby a ledger of transactions
could be protected for a mechanism called proof of work
and this would mean that we would have Have a way of
transacting over time, using the, the most advanced
cryptographic technology sha-256 that's ever been invented and
this has this new technology solves the problem that we've
been facing for the last kind of hundred years which is how do we
have something that doesn't need to be monitored like controlled
by a central? Lies party and centralized.
The also is in is has it has a monetary policy that people
can't change? How can we have silence both?
She has Fiat monies or, you know, normal government monies.
Saleability across space and gold saleability across time.
And basically, because Computing systems can be designed on a
purely mathematical basis, you can kind of look for like, the
perfect properties. You want in a money and you Can
design that system within cyberspace.
And that's basically what Satoshi Nakamoto did and we've
seen since then remarkable growth in the adoption of this
technology, I think we're. So we're still very early, but
to bring this back to free cities.
What this means is that there is now for the first time, an
alternative mechanism through which countries that don't
necessarily agree. With us or other government
mandated policies have an alternative way to trade within
their local economy. You can kind of do that anyway
with the national currency but crucially to trade between each
other. So unions that you know the
countries can have an incentive to cooperate and say you know we
accept and we use Bitcoin and we accept our payments for services
and Bitcoin. This is now made possible and I
think this is This is really important, because one of the
free, the challenges that free cities face is that, you know,
getting their bank account setup is really difficult.
Because, you know, if you are operating in a jurisdiction,
that is regarded as kind of non conventional or, you know,
viewed as a tax Haven for example, which, you know, it's
a, it's a word that people use, but really it just means that
they, you know, have lower lower taxes and that's not necessarily
a bad thing, you know, Calm developed with 10% of the.
Sorry about the, a third of the tax level per capita that
Britain did after the second world war and it managed to
overtake the the UK's GDP and just in just six decades, so
calling it a tax Haven, you know, it's a different
development model. But the point is that now we
have Bitcoin, there's an alternative mechanism that
actually works that can be used for international trade and I
think this will be a great Good Catalyst to allowing free
cities, to have genuine Independence and offer more hope
and opportunity to people, particularly those based in the
developing World. Peter, if people want to find
more about the free cities found station, where can they go?
So our website is www.pevs.com free Dash cities, dot-org.
If you go there, you can find information about our
organizations and resources. Some things Read.
And if you scroll to the bottom of that page, there's a link to
subscribe to our newsletter but something the flag is that we're
currently doing a website reap redesign so they'll be a nice
view website up there. That's got our updated materials
in about a month so that's one place you can find us.
We're going to be announcing a new Twitter handle this week.
We're just try and we're just finalizing what?
That will be. So that in the meantime the best
way of Of finding us on Twitter is to follow me at my handle
Peter Mi young, and I will be posting out the links to all of
our new social media that you can find.
But actually the best way to find out about us.
And the best way to find out about free cities is actually to
come to an event that we're running in Prague.
Now, I know that many of you are audience in the US and it's a
long way to come but Prague is really a wonderful historic.
And the event we're planning is going to have people from all
around the world coming together that are believers in Freedom to
talk about the different kinds of structures that are
developing in areas like education finance and governance
you know like are ideas like free cities.
We've got speakers lined up. Like, Prince Philip of Serbia,
emerge at Wade, some big names in the Bitcoin.
Industry involved, Stephen lovera.
We've got a virtual panel with Jeff Booth Craig Foss and Larry
Lepard who were going to talk to us about nation-state Bitcoin
adoption. So it's a really exciting thing
that would the weird that we've got going.
And it's also an event that we really want to reflect what the
communities we're trying to build in free cities because
free cities are for everyone. So we invite people to bring
bring their, you know, bring their partners.
They're bring their children along, we're going to be how
hosting some special activities for children alongside the
program. So if you're thinking about
which conference to go to regarding finding out more about
Freedom, all of the projects that are currently ongoing,
whether they're free cities or intentional communities, or
special economic zones, they'll all be kind of represented here
and you can see the lay of the land.
So maybe if you're someone, that's thinking about moving to
a new jurisdiction or wants to support, Or tour be involved.
Or you've got practical skills, where you actually want to come
and help build one is a Pioneer, then this is the place to find
out about it, and if you can't make it in person, there are
options to attend online. But the way to find out more,
it's to go to our website. Www.levitt.com Liberty.com,
you'll be able to learn about the theme, what's happening on
each day and see all the list of the confirm speakers.
And that list is only going to grow.
Thanks to everyone for watching Keith and I don't tread on
anyone and the libertarian Institute Peter.
Thanks so much for your time. Ring, that's a cheeky.
Thank you very much for inviting me.