Some comments from the
YouTube video of Edan Yago's presentation at Bitcoin 2013:
- Edan Yago is a good speaker and it's worth watching if you're interested in free cities.
- It sounds like the territory will be created from an unpopulated area of a Caribbean nation with beaches, one that currently has bad governance.
- It should be more free than any country in the world or the proposed Honduran free zone.
- Law will default to common law, but you will be able to opt into other legal/arbitration systems instead, for contract, civil, and even some criminal matters.
- It will be funded primarily by land leases, but they will also have fees for services. An example of the latter would be a stamp fee on a contract to fund arbitration.
- There will be no taxation of income, assets, etc.
- They will explicitly recognize crypto-currencies, despite the acknowledged ideological blemish of recognizing any currency at all. They expect to be able to work with Caribbean banks and follow international rules when interacting with government-sponsored currencies.
- They aren't involved with Paul Romer. Yago's group won in Honduras; Romer's lost.
- Drugs would apparently be illegal there (he didn't acknowlege that as another ideological blemish).
- They'd try for the thinnest platform of law possible, e.g. setting up a corporation would be as easy as registering a domain.
- They expect to announce it in November, 2013.
- They're keeping it low profile, as media attention drew the opposition from vested interests that scuttled Honduras.
- They'll have their own security force but no military.
- They wouldn't offer citizenship or have embassies or a foreign policy independent of the host country, but would have an immigration policy and provide residency.
Yago's Twitter is
https://twitter.com/EdanYago.
