Refutation of VICE's segment on Liberland

In April, 2022, VICE Media produced a segment critical of Liberland, which begs refutation on several levels. The segment is embedded above, for those who want to watch it directly.

First things first, Liberland appreciates the exposure, even if in a critical segment. Kudos to VICE for accurately describing Liberland’s founding and its situation as of April 2022.

That said, VICE took the predictable tact of questioning the motives and methods of Liberland’s founders. Examination of the questions raised brings me first to what may be a misunderstanding of Liberland’s system of taxation. VICE bristles at the idea of political power in Liberland hinging on how much one pays in taxation, but taxation in Liberland is voluntary. To induce the voluntary payment of taxes, an entity’s political clout is proportioned to the amount volunteered in taxation. Considering that whatever public actions and expenditures are done using funds volunteered in taxation, political influence’s proportionment based on those contributions is the fairest deal to offer. Nothing says that if a greater number of tax contributors objected to the higher tax contributors’ proposals, that the lesser tax contributors en masse would be unable to outvote such proposals.

VICE still is concerned with transparency in Liberland’s voting system run on blockchain, and though I hate to wax ad hominem, are they comparing the perfectly transparent and unmanipulable system we have here in the USA? In 2016 half the USA distrusted and violently rejected the presidential election’s results, and in 2020, the other half of the country did so. When technology exists to allow real-time crypto-ledger accounting of all participating voters in a given election, not to embrace that is pure folly.

At time stamp 16:50, VICE’s segment begins analysis of Liberland’s demography and culture. Avoiding the quagmire of discussion about whether any idea is unmeritorious depending on its proponents’ perceived ethnic homogeneity, VICE bases judgment only on the people attending Floating Man that year. Liberland actually has hundreds of thousands of applicants for citizenship and e-residency who span all races and continents. The idea that they share a culture of Libertarianism — a national creed of “live and let live” — is proof that a desire for liberty can unite people of all backgrounds.

The last topic for criticism in VICE’s segment is Liberland’s use of crytocurrency. Conceding some of VICE’s points about Bitcoin’s inequitable roll-out in El Salvador, the comparison is inapt given that Liberland — founded in 2015 — is not “foisting” a digital currency on a pre-existing population uninitiated to digital finance. Liberland uses Bitcoin only as one of its reserve currencies, recognizing the use of others as well. Comparing that system to the imposition of legal tender fiat in countries like the USA — the currency of which has suffered precipitous devaluation since 1913, when issuance was centralized in the private bank consortium which is the Federal Reserve — one sees that Liberland is better positioned to safeguard its residents’ wealth equity.

In conclusion, VICE’s segment on Liberland is a commendable exercise in market capitalism, creating content desired by its customer base, ever wary of corporations (other than VICE Media Group Inc., of course, valued in 2021 at $3 billion). With slightly more imagination, VICE’s reporter could have viewed that undeveloped tract of land in the Danube and mused on what would effectuate the ambitious vision of Liberland’s founders, such as the fully sustainable metropolis as conceived by Zaha Hadid architects in metaverse (pictured above). Such vision requires diverse investments of capital AND labor, which means that systems must exist to allow all stakeholders proportionate influence in the micronation, and to safeguard such investments against devaluation through centralization.

Originally posted June 15th, 2022, on Facebook.