 If you're interested in startup societies and the Hopian concept of private law, you'll wanna meet our guest today, Dr. Titus Gebel. He's joining us from Monaco, where he now lives originally from Germany, where he founded a mining company and was president and CEO of that. He's now president and CEO of freeprivatecities.com. He'll be speaking this week at George Mason University on this very topic. So that said, Titus, first of all, tell us a little bit about free private cities incorporated, what the business model is and what you're trying to do. Yeah, Jeff, thank you for introducing me. So what a free private city actually is, is the idea that the private company offers you the basic services of a state or a government, which is the protection of live liberty and property. And we are doing this in a defined territory within a host nation. And the idea is that you pay or every resident pays a certain amount for those services per year, but this will be a fixed amount. And your respective rights and obligations are laid down in a written agreement between you as a resident and the city provider, which is me. And apart from that, you're free to do as you choose. And the big difference is that suddenly you are a contracting party on an equal footing with a secured legal position instead of being subject to the ever-changing whims of politics. And of course you only become part of it if you accept the offer. So what we are doing is basically we're transferring something that we already know, which is behavior in the market, in the service market to the market of living together, as I call it. And you've got a real social contact with the written contract and you can in advance have a look at, okay, is this, do I like this way? How they offer it? And if yes, I know what I have to pay per year, which will be much less obviously probably than you pay now in Texas. And then you can decide if you like the offer or not. If you like it, you come. If you don't like it, you stay where you are. What's interesting to me is what parts of the world do you think are more interested in serving as a host to this kind of things? The West seems to be jaded and sadly in some ways less interested in liberty than it once was, but other parts of the world are waking up and wanting greater wealth, greater prosperity for themselves. Do you find a particular region that interests you primarily? Well, we are basically open. I mean, it's indeed so that a wealthy country has not real incentives to try out such radical new things, right? I mean, it's not so radical. It's basically a kind of a special economic song or special administrative song. And you can say maybe it's like the relationship of Hong Kong, China, right? The country will still remain sovereign and will be responsible for defense and foreign policy, but for the rest of you, we are more or less autonomous. Well, there are already some attempts in the world and they are all not in restaurant countries. They are like in Central America where the other countries that are interested, of course, because countries have problems, right? I mean, that's how the world works. Like you have a problem, you think, okay, I should change something. And now I'm open to new ideas. Whereas in Western Europe, we have so many tax income, why should we try out new things, right? That is the point. And in so far, to be realistic, we probably will end up in the first degree with countries that have some issues. But on the other hand, these are countries that are open enough to say, okay, let's try out a new thing and we are willing to give guarantees. We are very close with one country in Central America. It's not completely finished. And so far, it's a little bit too early to announce now this is the country and there you go. But I would just invite interested parties to subscribe to my newsletter on the website, FreePrivateCities.com. And there you will be informed hopefully in the next two or three months. And then there are other countries like Puerto Rico. There's an interesting conference coming up in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday. And they are broke. And so they're open to new ideas. It's not decided if they will be open to the FreePrivateCities idea, at least they are willing to listen. And there are other countries in the world like Georgia. They are trying to establish new special economic zones. And also they approached me and said, we want to talk about your concept. So while you start, my idea is you start at the fridges and then come back to the developed world. And because they will once we have proven that this concept works and that it's beneficial to all parties, to the residents, to the government, to the state and also to us as a provider, then it's probably then easier to go to other countries or maybe even countries will approach us that are more developed. They say, okay, we have seen what you're doing and we want to give it a try. But I want to distinguish between what you're proposing and other startup society concepts. So what you're talking about is different than let's say C-Stating proposals or the Liberland concept. You're not necessarily talking about creating a new nation. You're talking about creating a private city within an existing host nation. So in that sense, you think it's more practical. Yeah, look here, the problem I see, I mean, I have good contacts to both Liberland and to the C-Staters. And I support both of them and many more. I mean, I think this is a market of living together and as a libertarian, I think we should have more competition, right? Because it's raising the quality of the products. And so far, but you're right. I mean, it's much more difficult to go and say we have founded a new nation. And even the Terra Nullius concept where you claim that you have found a piece of land that is unclaimed, it's only unclaimed as long as the neighboring states doesn't decide the other way, right? And then suddenly it's a problem. And so definitely, I think this was, were also the problems of the attempts in the past that they were basically going against existing states. That is something I think is not really the right way to do it. It has not much chances of success. So the better way is to go to something they already know which is a special economic zone. And now you say, okay, we are special economic zone plus on next level. And we can also point on entities in Dubai or Abu Dhabi that have implemented foreign law. So it's a legal system within a legal system. They've implemented common law from most British oriented common law within an Arab country. So it's already there. And we are just going one step further and we are also willing to make compromises, right? In Central America, for example, where we are negotiating with the government, they said, okay, but we have certain areas of our constitution, they still must apply. And we have international agreements that we cannot give up and we understand that completely, right? So if people now are listening to your show and are screaming of a perfect world, I cannot offer that maybe later, but we have to make compromises in the beginning and it still will be much better because I mean, where do you have a contract where we can sue the government? And only you, there's no need for a parliament or an institution to sue the government, but you can because you have a contract. And you say, I think I feel that you, government or administration, you have violated our contract. And now going to independent arbitration because that's the mechanism we are offering, right? We are not offering our own courts, we are offering independent arbitration outside of the free private city. So that is a more balanced approach. And that is already something I think we have many areas where we can prove new concepts that they are going to work because they're not so new with it. That's what you know from the daily life, right? If you make a service agreement with a lawyer or a tax accountant, you know what you have to pay for what you are expected to get. And so it's not a utopian idea, it's just a, well, we are transforming already known market ideas to the living together model. So the incentive for the host company, the host country is the opportunity for capital to come in, to attract capital. In other words, that's why they would want to cooperate. Yeah, that's, it's indeed, it's like, imagine you have an area where before is nothing or very few activity and then you create in Monaco or Hong Kong there, right? And even that's one of my main arguments when I discuss with the stage or government and I'm saying, look at Singapore, look at Hong Kong and look at Monaco. All of those city-states around those states within the, in the other state is a big belt of wealth. And a lot of people are commuting there, working there, a lot of companies from the surrounding states, you're getting basically demand from within there. And if there before was nothing and suddenly there's such a wealthy place, it's a win-win situation. And here's another thing where we are different to the other approaches. We are there for profit, right? A lot of people say, ah, that is not unethical or something like that. No, no, we, here's the thing. It's two things. One, what is it big advantage of doing it for profit? One is we have to take care that our custom, we are treating our customers well because otherwise they don't come and we don't main money. So we have a real incentive to treat them well. The other thing is we have to be very wisely with our resources. So we cannot waste resources because it's all for we want to save the world and all that, no, no. And so we have two incentives that are extremely strong to create something that is sustainable and that is working and that is attractive to everybody. And that is always often lacking if only idealists coming together and say, let's do something there. It's, I mean, you know, two people, three opinions. I mean, I've seen this several times, especially in this area. And so you need a more, you need really a pushy business models. Okay, here we want to make money and this is the concept. And of course, we have to adapt our concept if we see that it's not working or people do not accept it. But what you're talking about is forget all the big picture libertarian theory. When you get down to sort of nitty gritty daily life in a city and so-called services that a city provides, what you're talking about is really upending the model because cities and localities don't have market discipline in how they provide services. Whereas a private city could. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Sandy Springs is a super example where Oliver Porter has introduced market thinking into communal services and it fantastically work. And I'm proud to say that Oliver is one of my advisors because we want to learn from him. But so it's not against being the overall ideas and basically philosophy. It's just at the end of the day, it's, do you have an attractive product, right? And maybe, I think Joe Krug from Seastead, he put it down, he said, he nailed it down. I said, 50 years from now, probably the most successful societies will not subscribe to any of today's ideologies. And that is what the market is a discovery process is I want to basically initiate that. I say, okay, we have libertarian classical liberal ideas. And I stick to that ideas. And if we are right, our product must be a success. But if it's not, maybe we are not so right. Or maybe it's only what I think, Jeff, is that people are different and some people will prefer other models to other people. And so there is probably not one model fits all, even if it's a super libertarian model, some people probably want more guidance, they want more welfare, whatever they have to pay, more for that. That's the deal, right? Or to give up some freedom, that's the deal. And so we are starving with a classic liberal model, protection for life, liberty and property for all the rest you're on your own. But then we will see what's going to happen. We will probably offer also a natural capitalist model, which is even less state and one model which is a little bit more state, right? And there's no more need to argue between anarchists and minarchists and status, let the market decide, right? But we could really upend the whole concept of government if people were truly mobile and governments had to compete for constituencies if people could leave. Talk about the issue of passports. That seems like a thorny issue in the notion of a private city that exists within a larger sovereign country. Yeah, well, look, at the beginning, I would say it's even an advantage. I mean, we are not a sovereign entity, we cannot give out our own passports. So everybody keeps their own passport, right? They come from all kind of areas. I mean, immigration is something we have to deal with the host nation. But we say, okay, we want to attract people from all over the world, but we will also select people we don't want political or religious extremists or criminals, right? So we refuse them. But for all the rest, we would like to attract people from all over the world. So we agree on an immigration procedure with the host nation. That is already happening, for example, in Central America, for example. It's not a problem. And then we can say, if you break the contract, for example, you do not pay your annual fee or you become a criminal, we kick you out. We cancel the contract. And then the person can go back where they were coming from. So that is something that is for us a little bit easier in the beginning. Over time, probably something like citizenship develops and then you have to change the policy and say, okay, what we are doing with our criminals now, right? So we have to put them in prison or whatever. So I think in the beginning, it's not a problem at all. You just, you have a, like in Monaco, right? You have a residence card, but 80% of the people there are not Monagas citizen. So you have an entitlement to be there in the city, not everybody has, but you have your city card, your residence card, and you have your passport from whatever country. So in real life, it's not a big issue. It's like you living in Dubai or Singapore with your US passport. So you mentioned Singapore, you mentioned Dubai, you mentioned Monaco, Hong Kong. So we have some existing models. Are there any models in history? You know, we look back at European history, there were city-states like Venice, there were free ports, places where very low tax zone. So it's not something that doesn't have historical precedent. Excellent, yeah, indeed. I mean, that is also basically a good sign, right? That the people from Venice, for example, they escaped a war and could better defend the lagoon and there they developed their own city. And in the Middle Ages, especially in Germany and Central Europe, you had those independent cities that were sick of their princes and their art bishops. They said, we want to be, well, the deal was we are directly under the emperor, but the emperor was basically powerless at that time. So they were independent. And that worked over a long time and they even formed the Hanseatic League, which was a strange system because all these cities were still part of empires and countries. But at the same time, they were part of the Hanseatic League, which was by themselves a very powerful association. They even could fight the big powers of their times, which was Denmark, for example. So indeed, we have some precedents in history. And I think the new one, what we have here is that it's on a private free market basis with a contract, but the overall idea is not so much different from the people in the ancient times in the Greek city-states, Venice, the Italians, or the German imperial free cities. That is all the same. We want to govern ourselves according to our rules. And we want to do it the way we like it, right? And that's exactly basically what we are offering, but we are offering it on a for-profit basis to avoid the problems that all those cities became over time, that they had a parliament and a majority, which eventually was hijacked by wealthy families or the mayor or people who want to expropriate others. And here you're protected by the contract. And the people are free to form their own councils. But even if 99% say we have a council and subscribe to the council's decision, the 1% who says, no, I stick to the contract with the city provider. I don't want to have anything to do with your council. They are left alone. And that is the difference to anything we had before. So there is something new and something old. Do you have any thoughts on the Swiss model of subsidiarity and pushing decision-making down to the local level and decentralization generally? Yeah, I think this is one of the big resides for success of Switzerland. It's not only direct democracy. It's especially the fact that are so decentralized so that the community, they can decide a lot. And then above it's the canton. And only then it's a federal level. And there's not much remaining at a federal level, right? Which is exactly the opposite of what happened in Germany, which also is a traditionally federal country. But even after World War II, since then the public went more and more to the central government. And basically communities and cities have not much power. The federal states still have some meaningful power, but the communities basically zero. And that is something which is not correct. And that's one of the reason why it's not working that well. Look, if we have some entities like FreePivotCity or comparable special zones, that this alone would put some competitive pressure on the states, even if it's only a handful, right? Because then people would say, they have a contract. I want a contract for my government too. So things like that, right? So I think competition even works if it's only a few examples in the world. Well, it's amazing isn't how almost every aspect of human life is becoming more and more decentralized except governance. That's the only part of life where things that used to be local become national, things that used to be national become super national. So I think the idea of competition is absolutely critical here. So Dr. Titus-Gelbel, your website is FreePrivateCities.com. You'll be in the US this week, I believe, speaking at a conference. Yes, I will be this week, Wednesday and Thursday on the Startup Societies Foundation Conference in Washington where it's about creating new ideas for Puerto Rico to become successful again. So make Puerto Rico great again with new ideas of living together. And I will hold a speech there and I invite everybody to join the conference. It's just George Mason University together with the Startup Societies Foundation. And if you're interested in maybe becoming a resident of a FreePrivate City, I would invite you to subscribe to my newsletter. You can find it through the website. And it's not coming often every two or three months, but if something is happening, you will be informed by the newsletter. Well, excellent. Titus, thank you so much for your time. It's great meeting you. Thank you, Jeff. My pleasure.