Book Review: Free Private Cities by Titus Gebel

Free Private Cities: Making governments compete for you
by Titus Gebel ©2023
reviewed by Richard O. Hammer

In this wonderful book Titus Gebel builds confidence in the idea that new private cities, mostly free of government regulations, can be intentionally created. As such Gebel carries on with the project that we in the Free Nation Foundation (FNF) undertook during our active years, 1993–2001. And he goes further, adding valuable perspective.

The principal method advanced by Gebel for the creation of free private cities includes buying or leasing a chunk land from an existing country, probably a third world country. There would be a contract between this country and the entity which was founding the city. Gebel calls this founding entity the operator. There would also be binding contracts between the operator and each of the city’s inhabitants. This method of Gebel’s is similar to what I advocated in my article Why Not a New Hong Kong. It also resembles the model of a private hotel which was advanced by Spencer Heath MacCallum in The Art of Community ©1970. 

Spencer, who contributed several times in FNF, is also cited repeatedly by Gebel in Free Private Cities. Unfortunately Gebel does not cite any other contributors in FNF. Perhaps he never came across our work.

Strength From a Lawyer

When newcomers are presented with the idea of a new jurisdiction, intentionally created and mostly free of government, their greatest doubt is usually about law. This book has the most complete development of free-nation law that I remember seeing anywhere. And it is presented by an authority, since Gebel has a doctorate in international law, as he tells in his About me page.

Strength From an Entrepreneur

The credibility of Free Private Cities is also enhanced by Gebel’s business experience. He is a successful and apparently wealthy entrepreneur.

Practical Moderation in this Plan

I found a number of places in this book where Titus Gebel took a more moderate approach than I took in the FNF project. These differences concern:

1. how much effort should be invested in educating statists to see improvements which can result from reduction in the scope of government.
2. how much the operator should provide “public” services.

To explain these differences, I took the stance when founding FNF that FNF would be an effort by libertarians to build the strength of the free-nation movement from within — by building confidence among libertarians. As such our presentations would focus on an already-libertarian set of readers and listeners. This focus should stop our waste of time on trying to convince people who almost never listen to us anyhow. By starting thus among people who already agree on values and aims we should be able to make more rapid progress on our plan. In that 30-year-old mindset of mine Gebel’s slight differences stood out.

With regard to point (1) above, I was disappointed while reading the first three chapters in which Gebel gave what felt to me like a beginners’ introduction to freedom. But farther in, in Chapter 4, I started to appreciate what he was adding to the discussion among advanced readers.

With regard to point (2) above, Gebel focuses mostly on a plan in which law, streets, external defense, and some utilities would be provided by the operator. His reasoning when he is presenting these programs resembles, in my thinking, the justifications given by statists for any government program. Gebel reasons like: This service is essential to the success of the city and few people believe in private provision of this service so the operator cannot risk trusting the market to provide this service.

Such falling back to statist reasoning for “essential services” was what I hoped to break among libertarians when I founded FNF. And to this day I continue in that attempt to build deeper understanding of social order in my present project, the Resource-Patterns Model of Life.

But, for those “public” services noted, Gebel went on later in the text to moderate his initial presumptions that the operator must provide the services. Gebel showed that he was aware of the possibility of private provision. But he was not prepared to take an idealistic stance which might stall the advance of a project which was on the whole a big step in the right direction.

Conclusion

As such I wholeheartedly endorse Gebel’s approach toward Free Cities. His project is bearing more fruit than my old project in FNF, and I agree with his call to immediate practicality in place of the long-term academic idealism which I have pursued through my projects, FNF and the Resource-Patterns Model of Life.

Promising new organization: the Free Cities Foundation

Earlier this year I learned about the Free Cities Foundation. It appears to have a purpose similar to what we were trying to achieve in the Free Nation Foundation. That is, building confidence in the vision of the critical institutions, such as law and defense, which would make a new free nation (or city) possible. Such vision is laid out nicely by the founder of this new foundation, Titus Gebel, in his book Free Private Cities: Making governments compete for you.

The Free Cities Foundation, now apparently three or four years old, has annual meetings, and I will attend the next annual meeting, November 1–3, 2024, in Prague, Czech Republic.

Formulations available in PDF

Formulations is now available on the FNF website. Formulations was a quarterly published first by the Free Nation Foundation during the active years of that Foundation, 1993–2000, and then for a few more years by the Libertarian Nation Foundation. All thirty issues are available, each in a Portable Document Format (PDF) file, linked from the first table in the FNF Archive.

Alternately you may download the entire 30 issues in a single 108 MB zip file, here: http://freenation.org/a/F/Formulations.30issues.zip .

Playing with Fire: An Analogy

A few months ago a new free-nation project came to my attention. It is named Free Society. At a later date I may comment upon how I assess that project. But for now it stimulates me to publish these thoughts which have been waiting 20 years.

Trying to start a new free nation is like playing with fire. It is dangerous. It may blow up in your face for reasons you have not anticipated. But we know that mankind has benefitted immensely from successful uses of fire. We benefit from the play and experimentation with fire done by our ancestors since prehistory.

The first fires occurred naturally, of course. Humans who observed natural fires appreciated some effects such as warmth and cooked meat. Experimentation followed. Precautions and skills were learned. But notice that we humans employed fire beneficially for millennia before we developed the ideas of oxygen and oxygenation. So a deep theoretical knowledge of the process involved was not necessary before practitioners could learn from trial and error.

We libertarians see the freedom available in some nations, both present-time and historical nations, and appreciate what we see. We wish we could make more of it.

I have argued that the best free nations in history happened like the first fires – not because people tried to create zones of freedom but rather because larger historical and physical circumstances happened to combine in just the right way, so that when the final element (like a spark) was introduced a new free nation was likely to grow. We who want freedom from state power, as opposed to state power in our own hands, have not yet created our first intentionally designed nation, as I see it.

As with learning to manage fire, we need both experimentation and thoughtful reflection. I founded the Free Nation Foundation with a belief that history already provides many experiments, assuming we learn to look at the data correctly, and that our greatest progress can now be gained through thoughtful reflection – through research and publication focused upon the necessary institutions. I am heartened to see the spirit expressed by experimenters, that is by free-nation projects, but I continue to believe that detached analysis may bring greater rewards in our present circumstance.

Most libertarians engage, if we are to trust the perception of libertarian activism which comes to us through media at our disposal, in what I call the majority-rule paradigm. These libertarians work through means evidently available in Western civilization. That is education of the masses followed by elections, or at least education of anyone who will listen. That majority-rule paradigm could possibly work for libertarians, I suppose. But I propose that more rapid and direct progress can be made, by any who would join me, with focused research such as we have started in FNF.

Expectation: An atom for analysis in sociology and politics

The following idea has long been a bedrock in my analysis, but I have not expressed it directly before now. Here goes.

As individuals we humans experience needs. I have written about a relationship between human needs and politics (see the table in that paper for examples of needs). In any of these circumstances, when a human experiences a need, what is the first notion which may present itself in that person’s thinking concerning how to satisfy that need? This is how I will define expectation, being that notion.

Consider this example need. A parent has a child whom he hopes will receive an education. A parent in one cultural milieu may expect that the child will be bussed off to government-supplied schooling. A parent in a different cultural milieu may expect that the child will be educated mostly within the family about the family’s tradition and industry, but will receive any needed supplemental education by being sent out to privately arranged schooling. We see stark difference in these two expectations.

An expectation is learned, of course. Our success in life depends upon the relative fecundity of our expectations. Most of us live most of our lives with relatively stable expectations, because expectations may be very costly to challenge.

What do people in given cultural milieus generally expect when faced with a specific need? This question could motivate thousands of studies. Perhaps it has already motivated some studies. But if this question has motivated even one study that one study has never, I believe, come to my attention, and I have been searching for decades in many places. Although I admit I have not searched within sociology which may be the nearest neighboring science.

Expectations align closely of course with social institutions. (In another project I have described “social institutions” as persistent habits and expectations within the human population.) Social institutions consist (I guess, I am just now making this up) of many individuals’ aligned expectations.

There exists, I propose, a whole science not yet examined which builds up from the atoms of expectations. Second level building blocks may be, I guess, the molecules of institutions. In its mature reaches this science promises to offer explanations for why some nations are rich while others are poor.

The development and evolution of law would be one subdivision of this science, as I have started to explore in this paper and that.

Ideas on National Defense

David Henderson at EconLog has posted on Semi-Private Production of National Defense. Thus he adds to the discussion which we hosted in the Free Nation Foundation (FNF) during our active years. He stimulates me to post this update.

Proceedings of the Forum on Security now Available Online

During 1993–2000 FNF held 13 semiannual forums. Each forum focused upon a topic which seems critical to the creation and survival of a new free nation. The first two topics were Constitutions (October 1993) then Systems of Law (April 1994).

David Henderson’s recent post would have contributed to the third forum topic. While planning for that third forum we announced:

... we will study insurance. We will try to understand how, and to what extent, the inhabitants of a free country, with no government regulation (strangulation) of insurance, might be able to rely upon private institutions of insurance to satisfy their needs for security, both domestic and national. (Formulations, Vol. I, No. 4, p. 2)

So national defense was included in that broad topic which we named Security in a Free Nation. After that forum met (October 15, 1994) we published the proceedings, mailing a copy to each FNF member. Now I have gotten the originals of the proceedings scanned into a PDF file and posted here in the FNF Archive. This 61-page document contains papers by Roderick T. Long, Scott McLaughlin, Bobby Yates Emory, and myself. It also contains a section by Robert LeFevre as an appendix to Scott McLaughlin’s paper.

I want to add a few ideas about national defense which have taken shape for me during the decades since that forum. But first to prepare the ground:

• I will outline the FNF Work Plan;
• then I will sketch the historical context in which we (who work within the FNF work plan) should probably understand our work.

FNF Work Plan

We in FNF aim to advance creation of a new free nation by clarifying the vision of the critical workings (institutions) of that new nation. We want the institutions to be as libertarian as possible and we welcome theoretical inputs which remind us of our values. But we must also work with our feet on the ground to create an image which can attract a critical mass of investors. To particular investors our image has to seem within reach in this world.

The Historical Origin of National Defense

In The State (1908) Franz Oppenheimer tells a sociological history of development of the state. Perhaps this book should be required reading. All who would participate in the FNF effort should, I believe, either accept Oppenheimer's view or be prepared to argue from an educated stance (in light of Oppenheimer's view) for an alternative view. Here I will give a short summary from my memory, parts of Oppenheimer's view that pertain especially to national defense.

In the human history of a geographic region, before any states have developed there may exist tribes of people, some tribes which live by agriculture and other tribes which live by herding nearby. I will call these two populations the farmers and the herders. The herders discover that they can raid and steal parts of the crops of farmers. The raiding is often accompanied by violence, at first, as the farmers try to defend their baskets of harvest.

Herders, as a consequence of their usual occupation, are more skilled than farmers in movement and use of weapons. The farmers realize they cannot completely defend against the raiding, and that they often suffer casualties when they try to fight off the raiders. So after passage of some time the farmers start to leave out some baskets for the herders to take without a fight. The herders accept this, realizing that if their raids are too successful then the farmers will die off and the herders would thereafter get nothing. The herders and farmers fall into an uneasy sort of truce with minimal violence.

Up until this time the herders have been living out in the sticks and moving with their herds night after night to new camps. But after some time, with regular input of food from subjugated farmers, the herders realize they can settle down in a location near the farmers.

First Hint of National Defense
Early in this developing history the farmers were subject to raids from any nearby tribes of herders. But at about the time when one tribe of herders settles down near a group of farmers, then those herders have an interest in defending those farmers’ crops from other raiders. This is the birth of national defense, I propose. National defense starts as raiders defending their territory.

But it is not quite that simple. Some mingling of the two groups occurs after the herders settle close by the farmers. Intermarriage joins some of the families. And some among the farmers take intermediate roles. They manage for the ruling class, collecting transfers, and thereby come to have interest in the subjugation, in the continuance of both classes. The whole may be viewed as a feudal estate or a little nation state.

This History is Forgotten
After passage of enough generations this arrangement becomes taken for granted. The historical origin in plunder, with one group robbing from the other group, is no longer remembered. Those who occupy privileged positions in the state create a different, self-serving view of history in which the raiders become benevolent.

Perhaps almost every member of this whole may feel some interest in defense of the whole from outside raiders. Even the farmers, or their descendants among the subjugated class, may appreciate the defense insofar as they probably suffer less violence in the settled arrangement than they would suffer at the hands of raiders from the outside, at least during a possible invasion. But of course, on the question of which class will feel most interested in national defense, it seems the rulers more than the farmers would feel threatened by outside raiders.

Here are the points that I hope a reader of Oppenheimer will understand:

• The state originated in raiding.
• The purpose of national defense is to defend the income stream of the founding raiders, to keep outside raiders distant from the spoils.
• Most people in most national populations have lost sight of the above two points and have come to believe the contrived history which portrays the state as necessary and good.
• National defense serves at best to minimize plunder.

Additional Ideas on National Defense

• I have argued that for us to proceed in the given world we probably need to aim for creation of what most outside observers will perceive as a nation, standing as a peer among other nations. This perception may require some sort of national defense. 
• We should not lose sight of the fact that in the present world there exist many little nations which could easily be overrun by any of the major powers, but which carry on with a measure of neighborly amity enabled by treaty or friendship with one of the major powers. Our envisioned free nation should be able to establish one or more such protective friendships.
• We need more clarity about what we suppose would exist at the border of our free nation. It worries me somewhat that a completely open border, which we are apt to advocate, would be easily crossed by an invading army which entered one person at a time, each individual traveling under peaceful disguise, then to organize a threat once inside.
• In The Art of Community, Spencer Heath MacCallum suggests the model of a hotel as provider of all services needed by a community. Being privately owned, a hotel hires guards and polices the corridors and entrances. This model of a business providing defense on behalf of its customers needs further development.
• Our vision building work has barely begun.

Wake Up, Judge Napolitano!

Judge Andrew Napolitano sounds alarm: Wake Up, America!  But I wish he would wake up. His mind and passion could advance the free nation movement – if he would pay attention to what happens in the longer sweep of history.

The good Judge seems to believe that America may be saved from downward spiral into tyranny – if only more citizens will work to rein in abuse through the Constitutional, democratic process. The first step is education – 51% of the electorate must learn to vote responsibly.

I used to believe that too during the first decade of my conscious libertarianism, during the 1980s. But my own personal education, along with experience running for elective office as an unabashed libertarian, weakened my hope that liberty might be achieved through education of the majority. Most of us must remain rationally ignorant, after all, of most of the mechanisms that improve our lives.

In 1993, I founded the Free Nation Foundation to work on the plan that we libertarians could achieve liberty for ourselves – not through teaching others – but by completing our own educations.

Look at the history of states with an eye to see the sweet spots of prosperity and liberty. I assume prosperity and liberty go hand-in-hand because prosperity only grows where there is considerable freedom of trade, as even statist economists seem to agree. The US for the past 150 years has certainly been one of these sweet spots. Note however I do not claim that the US has been as free as libertarians would prefer; only that it has been very good when compared with the norm of states.

Here is a critical step in my argument. The US sweet spot was not planned or designed by liberty lovers. Rather it just happened. It grew as a spontaneous order in an environment where such growth was possible. The same is true of other sweet spots in history. They all grew as a consequence of human action but not of human design. (For more detail see my 2003 paper.)

We scholars and builders start there. How and why did sweet spots of liberty grow? Which of those circumstances, which gave rise to the sweet spots, can we influence? Which, when we gain better understanding of the process, can we shortcut around?

Teachers of math at the level of calculus normally insist that the students in their class start out with an understanding of math at the basic level, such as algebra and trigonometry.

I insist, for the Free Nation Foundation such as it was and may continue, that participants in the discussion be already educated at the basic level – that participants be already libertarian. If we start with libertarians we avoid the impossible task of educating the electorate. We avoid the impossible task of the interested 2% trying to educate the reluctant 98%. We can make progress if we libertarians face each other in this project.

We got a start during 1993–2000. See the archive. Much more needs to be done. A great man such as Judge Napolitano could encourage us, if he wakes up.