How Do You Build A Charter City? With Patri Friedman

What are charter cities? Is law really just like computer code that can be forked and modified? How do you bootstrap an economy?

Patri Friedman founded The Seasteading Institute, a non-profit exploring the creation of sovereign ocean colonies. He is on the board of the Startup Societies Foundation, advising a variety of new governance projects. Most recently he founded Pronomos, the first charter city investment fund.

Pronomos Capital - https://www.pronomos.vc/

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is something, you know, bold and visionary.
I want people to be able to start new countries.
I want people to start a bunch of new countries around a bunch
of different concepts of the good life so we can see what
works and have them. Some of them eventually work so
well that the mainstream countries are like, we got to
try that. Hello, I am Cody Allingham, and
this is the Transformation of Value, a place for asking

(00:22):
questions about freedom, money and creativity.
Today I'm joined by Patry Friedman.
Patry founded the C Stealing Institute, a nonprofit exploring
the creation of sovereign ocean colonies.
He is on the board of the Startup Societies Foundation,
advising a variety of new governance projects.
And most recently, he founded Pro Nomos, the first Charter

(00:44):
City investment fund. Patry, welcome to the show.
Hey thanks for having me. A lot of your work seems to be
focused on the idea of reimagining cities, and I
thought maybe we could start offyou could tell me a little bit
about where you grew up, where you're originally from, Petrie.
Sure. Yeah.
I grew up mainly in the Philadelphia area on the East

(01:05):
Coast. And then I turned 18.
I went off to California Collegeand stayed there for almost 30
years. So I moved to Austin a couple of
years ago. I am curious.
I did a bit of research and it seems like the place you did
grow up is a bit of a small townbecause I'm from a small town in
New Zealand. And I just wondered, like your
first encounter with a city of scale, like what?

(01:27):
Tell me about what that meant for you like.
Yeah, my town was mainly famous for its mall.
That's what like people from thePhilly area have heard of it
for, you know, and I. Mean come on man.
My, my town, we have like one place with an escalator that was
like a big thing at times. So I think I understand where
you're coming from, right. So you came from a small town.

(01:49):
I mean, did that change your outlook though on sort of what's
possible of cities and what cities actually mean as a place?
Yeah, for me, I think it's like it's less about something about
the city and it's more that likeit just seems like the right
unit to work with, you know? My, my passion is for trying to

(02:11):
help us upgrade our governance and make governments that work
better and preserve freedom better and let people prosper
and just feels like it's, you know, like it.
If we can start a sovereign citystate in 10 years, I'd be
ecstatic starting something evenbigger than that, like a
country, which is like more thana city.

(02:32):
Like, I mean, a sovereign city state is already so big.
And then that's like even more. It doesn't make sense.
And like for units like smaller than the city, you know, I want
to have impact on the world. I want to help millions of
people get better jobs. And you know, a 10,000 person
town is, is, is not going to do that.
The impact is limited. You know, I want, I want to make

(02:53):
Singapore's and, and, and Hong Kong.
So like, I feel like the city isjust like this, like economic
units and it's just, it just hasfelt for a while like the right
size to work at. Yeah, well, I, I think pulling
on that thread, I mean, throughout history, we do have
this lineage of great cities andyour places like Athens, Rome,

(03:14):
Jerusalem, the Italian city states, you know, and, and
history. And then obviously today places
like New York or Tokyo, these these these places that have an
energy to them and there's like a scale of economy.
There's all these things that gointo a city.
But you're right that at least in the, in the ancient sense,
historically, you know, the eternal city somewhere like Rome

(03:35):
had a profound impact on the world.
And so there is like a, an economic power or sort of a even
more than economics, there's, there's a, there's something
about their gravitational pull right of, of cities.
Yeah, it's like, it's just like the right sized Organism.
The right sized Organism, That'sinteresting.

(03:57):
It's like environmental logic, right?
Like what's the, because they docome in different sizes because
even in ancient times, I mean, Rome wasn't that big, you know,
maybe 100,000 people. And yet here I am myself an hour
South of Tokyo, which is made maybe 20 or 30 million people
depending on the time of day. So you've got this range of

(04:17):
sizes. And so I mean as as, what are
your thoughts on that role of like the scale and actual
population size of cities? I mean, I think if it works, the
goal is to make things like Singapore or Hong Kong.
I don't know if we'll be able todo that.
And you know, it really depends on the time scale you're looking

(04:38):
on. You know, we're talking about
about compound growth. And so the difference in size at
20 years and 50 years is going to be, is going to be really
different, you know, and our jobis to, you know, make sure that
that they succeed, that they're great places to live, that draw
people in and, and grow faster than, you know, the majority of

(04:58):
the world, which has not been zoned into good governance.
It's not been zoned into good governance.
That's interesting. You know, this idea of zoning
even at a, you know, what you can even do with a plot of land
is quite an interesting questionhere in Japan.
Have you ever been to Japan, Patri?
Yeah, I've been to Tokyo a few times.
I haven't been anywhere else. Yeah, it's kind of an

(05:18):
interesting situation where you can have like light industrial,
you can have residential, you can have all sorts of stuff sort
of together. And you get this density which
is quite different to somewhere like New Zealand where I'm from
where it's, it's you know, kind of suburbia in a lot of cases.
It's sort of spread out and you don't get that density right.
But probably on this this threatof of cities, I'm keen to just

(05:38):
trace the lineage of your work. And obviously you've probably
talked about this a million times, but and certainly your
your early work looking at sea steading, it seemed like some of
those ideas have fit into your later work.
But maybe if we just start therewith that place and and sort of
what what seasteading sort of where that came from and what
that meant for you at the time? Sure.
I mean, you know, seasteading was kind of like was was was a

(06:04):
tool. And the real goal is to make it
so that people can try out different systems of laws,
different constitutions, different bodies of regulation.
You know, the way I look at it is that like innovation, which
is like figuring out how to do things in new ways, requires
experimentation. Like we don't know if we don't

(06:26):
know what's going to work when we haven't tried it yet.
And so in order to, you know, and we have startups all the
time inventing new software and building new kinds of cars and
you know, and all this stuff, but like, there's, there's not a
way for like a team of people with passion and idea and some
funding to try out a new system of government.

(06:50):
And so that means that you don't, you know, whether you
want to think of it as like a scientific metaphor of R&D and
experiments or a startup metaphor of these as being
startups to try, you know, cleanslate rewrites of, of, of things
of value. You know, either way, like we
need the experiments, we need the startup sector.
And so I was like, well, how do we do this?

(07:12):
You know, all land is claimed. And back when I started this
work in the early 2000s, countries weren't open to the
kinds of deals that we're makingwith them now.
And so I looked at the, the ocean and, you know, both
because it's, it's the next frontier and you know, it's,
it's, it's open. But also like the legal

(07:33):
structure is very different. Like some people hear about my
work and assume it's like, oh, on the high seas you can do
anything, which is, which is notat all true.
It's, it's the way that it worksis that every ship has to
register with a country and fly their flag.
And then when that ship is out past 12 nautical miles, it is

(07:53):
governed by the laws of the flagcountry.
It's like a way of franchising sovereignty.
There are some additional rules basically about like who owns
the oil, basically, you know that, that says that the, the
closest country gets all the resources out to like 200 miles,
but you know, for whatever is happening, you know, on, on
board the ship. And so this system and it's,

(08:15):
it's like you can, you can choose any country in the world
and you can change it. So it's actually a competitive
system with relatively low switching costs.
And like, I mean, I kind of feellike if this was the way we
structured, if like towns could like choose their counties and
counties could choose their provinces and provinces could

(08:36):
choose their countries, like I'dbe done, you know, we'd be able
to have competition and experimentation and, and learn
better ways to live together. So it's actually this great
legal structure, but at the sametime, it's, it's partnered with
like, the reason for that legal structure is that the ocean is
like physically different and things move around different

(08:56):
parts of the world all the time.And it makes it, you know, very
difficult to build things there.And so it was kind of like back
in the 2000s, you know, I workedon it for 10 years.
It, it kind of like looked like the best approach.
But ultimately, when countries started being willing to do

(09:16):
these experiments on land, starting with Honduras and 2011,
all it took them most, you know,took them five plus years to get
the program running. I switched to to doing that.
I feel like we're making, we're making a lot of a lot of
progress with places like Prospera and Alpha cities and
and other, other companies. So.
That's kind. Of where I'm coming from.

(09:38):
Yeah, no, I understand. And look, man, I guess on the
creative lens of this, I'm really interested in kind of
where these kind of conversations came from.
I saw a really good documentary a few years ago called Spaceship
Earth, which was looking at, I think it was called Biosphere 2,
which was this like self. And you're probably, yeah,
pretty familiar with it. And I mean, it was, it was

(09:59):
pretty trippy. It was like kind of born out of
this hippie movement, this idea that we could sort of build a
new community that's totally hermetically sealed from the
rest of Earth and had some interesting, they had some
interesting outcomes. I mean, there was some
challenges that didn't quite work as planned in some ways,
but it also was a success. They, I think it was like a year

(10:19):
or two, they ended up living in this, in this Dome.
And we see concepts like this Buckmaster Fuller and others
have explored, you know, what itmeans to kind of exit and, and
in a creative sense. And I'm just wondering some of
maybe did some of these ideas fade into your, your thinking
kind of on the creative side? Yeah, I mean, definitely after I

(10:40):
kind of researched things and, you know, had my own insights
about thinking about law, like software and thinking about
governments, like businesses andcitizens as their customers.
You know, I did a lot of research.
I looked at, yeah, Buckminster Fuller's Triton City.
And I just think, you know, thisis a tension that comes up a lot

(11:02):
in this space between, I call itlike the dreamers and the doers,
where like, this is something, you know, golden visionary.
I want people to be able to start new countries.
I want people to start a bunch of new countries around a bunch
of different concepts of the good life so we can see what
works and have them, some of them eventually work so well
that the mainstream countries are like, we got to try that,

(11:25):
you know, and impact humanity. So it's it's a huge crazy
vision. I mean, people tell me sometimes
I tell them about pro Nomos, my fund, that it's like the
craziest fund that they've ever heard of, even in all the crazy
stuff in Silicon Valley. You know, at the same time, the
reason I'm doing this, I mean, Iguess it's fun along the way to
pitch big ideas. I like that certainly, but like

(11:48):
I want to work on things that turn into reality.
And so I, I just, I find myself in this, in this space where
like I, I'm, I'm reading and learning about a lot of people
who had all kinds of ideas. You know, the millennial project
by Marshall Savage, I think was like proposing these huge
floating O tech powered cities. And like, you know, I end up

(12:09):
being around that stuff and being compared to it.
And the same time I feel like I have like a profoundly different
attitude as far as like the pragmatism of like, no, I
actually want to get there. And I think that a lot of these
they're they're, they're thoughtpieces.
And, you know, there's nothing wrong with thought pieces, like

(12:31):
there's nothing wrong with science fiction.
But I guess I've kind of come developed some strong opinions
along the way about the differences between like thought
pieces and the kind of like the mindset that they're written in
and like what it takes to actually build something really
new and difficult in the real world.

(12:52):
I think I understand the, the praxis of, of doing the thing
and, and actually, you know, making it happen is, is quite
profound and people can live in,in an intellectual bubble as
it's the realm of ideas, right? But to actually go and, and I
think you talk about the, the, the beauty of dirt in one of
your talks or the profoundness of like seeing, seeing a piece

(13:14):
of dirt that's like actually sovereign.
Instant, Yeah, yeah. After you show people renderings
of ocean cities, you know, for 10 years or whatever, and then
renderings of future cities for another 10 years.
And it's like, wait, luck. There's real, there's something
real. This is the goal.
And actually, you know, another one of our companies just let me

(13:35):
know today that they've, they'vegot a, a lead investor for
enough funding to build their first, you know, campus, you
know, their first like in persondevelopment.
I was like, Oh my God, I'm so excited.
I want to go fly to Africa and you know, I want to see when it
opens like tangible. What I think's interesting that
pulling on that thread and I'm, I'm really interested in hearing

(13:57):
a perspective on this, but thereseems to be a connection with
startup culture and basically the, you know, startup style,
San Francisco style startup culture, which is to build
things, iterate quickly, fail fast, these kinds of ideas,
right. And that when that comes to to
State Building, though, and and and sovereignty, it maybe that's

(14:20):
the piece that people get a bit funny about, you know, this
isn't just a business. You can fail and then go on your
way. If it is actually a state,
there's all sorts of questions that and we necessarily must
confront. What does it mean for a refugee
from a failed state? Well, you know, etcetera.
So what are your thoughts? On that, I mean, this is the
advantage of the Charter City approach is that the long term
goal is to start sovereign countries, but we're not ready

(14:41):
yet. And the way a charter city
works, you can think of like it's a bit like Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong was more like an overseas territory where, you
know, it's part of the British Empire, but it had its own laws,
its own government, its own courts, you know, or another
example of the Dubai's financialcenter, which, you know, is run

(15:03):
by the government, but which, where they, they took an air,
both a physical area and it's a it's an incorporation
jurisdiction and brought and made completely different new
laws for it based on London's financial regulations in
English, you know, where the previous laws, you know, were
like Sharia influenced in Arabic.

(15:24):
And they said this area of the country and all companies who
incorporate there are under thisdifferent legal code.
And so in a charter city, the the host country passes
legislation to enable the creation of a new type of
special economic zone and then forms a public private

(15:46):
partnership with a company, although it doesn't have to like
in Dubai, they ran their own. But yeah, so the projects that
that that I'm working on are generally done by a private
company, you know, that that we invest in that partners with the
government just like any other PPP to develop a city and have
significant autonomy over what the regulations are there.

(16:08):
So government designates a pieceof land at different laws in the
rest of the country. And so it, you know, if it if it
fails, like they're, they're still part of their same
country. There's there's no need to be a
refugee. You know, we would.
Yeah, we would. We would.
We would wind things down, you know, properly and they would
transition back to what they have right now.

(16:29):
I understood. Well, but long term, yeah, well,
you're going to have to believe in it to want to go join the 1st
Sovereign Startup City state. The reason I bring that I was
actually just in Hong Kong the other month and you know, this
idea of law as code, I think in one of your talks you talk about

(16:50):
forking London's code for Dubai and how that that happened.
And I mean, I think this is really interesting.
You know, I'm obviously really interested in these ideas, but
at the same time, it seems to perhaps overlook the importance
of the spirit of the law and thefact that in Hong Kong that that
project has failed, right? The the Communist Party of China
has taken over, and now we're seeing the failure, you know,

(17:13):
like that, that basic law. I totally disagree.
I think members of Hong Kong haskept significant economic
freedom. But second, like there was a
lease and it ended like the proper thing is for it to be run
by this other country and everybody knew the whole time
that China was going to take it back.
Like that was the deal. And I guess I'm in the business
now of making these kinds of deals.

(17:35):
And so I'm like, you got to follow the deal.
That's like that's first principles.
And I would say that, you know, I mean, existing at now, like on
the political freedom side, certain, like Hong Kong is no
longer a bastion of political freedom, you know, for, for for
in the region and for Chinese people, like, like for sure.
But on that, I think I guess that's the best way to

(17:55):
differentiate it. Whereas like on but it had a lot
of influence. I'm sure it fostered lots of
sentiment about changes in China, you know, over those over
those many decades. But from an economic
perspective, you know, I think there's a lot of connection
between the existence of Hong Kong and the creation of
Shenzhen and all the other zones, which lifted more people

(18:17):
out of poverty, half a billion people than has ever happened
before the entire world. Because they had this, you know,
not just example of a charter city, but like tons of Chinese
people made lots of money and learned business and got really
good at it. And there was like the culture
of business and entrepreneurshipwas able to like flourish for
those people. And then, you know, when Gang
started, like liberalizing, there was, you know, plenty of

(18:39):
talent and business experience to change the trajectory of the
whole country. So I feel like it succeeded.
And I, you know, I would love tohave, you know, 1% of that much
of the impact that that Hong Kong had an uplifting people
would be pretty sick. Yeah, understood.
Well there's kind of two situations there, right, because
Shenzhen was its own kind of mini.

(19:00):
I wouldn't charter cities might not the right word, but Shenzhen
had its own policies that liberalized a lot of the
entrepreneurship there as is mentioned under Deng Xiaoping
within the context of of China. But coming back to Hong Kong,
you mentioned, you know there, Imean clearly there has been
decline in the political freedoms and this does it loops
back though to the economic freedoms because people think,

(19:23):
well, hey, can we domicile a business business in Hong Kong
if our chairperson says the wrong thing, he's going to get
hold of off to jail. And I mean, I know look for.
Sure. You know, this is this is a
complex space to be working in, but I mean, we must look at
this, right? And look, I'm not saying that
like Hong Kong is now an equallygood jurisdiction at all.
I'm just saying it's it's had insane impact already.

(19:47):
And, and I think what the threadI want to pull on and look, you
know, we're trying to just analyze this to come to truth
together. But with with the case of Hong
Kong, it reminds me of many other situations in the past
where a hegemon a a powerful country, and it could be anyone
from the British Empire through to the Communist Party of China.
Someone can come in and kind of overwrite whatever is going on

(20:10):
because they feel like it. And I see as.
Well, as hackers, they felt it was it's theirs.
When the lease expired, it was theirs.
I mean, you get to, I mean, at the in the same way the CCP can
override whatever happens in Shanghai whenever they feel like
it. Yeah.
Like that's what it means to be a sovereign.
Specifically that specifically. So.

(20:30):
I might just, I must comment on that though.
I mean the lease expired, but the the provision was that you
would maintain Hong Kong Basic Law throughout the period and I
mean that. And they didn't.
No, no, they haven't. I mean the Hong Kong no longer
has it's, it's, it's fundamentalsituation that it had in 1997.
And I guess that's what I'm getting at, man.
Like just clearly. They weren't sticking to that,

(20:51):
to that part of the area. That's not right.
Yeah, and I think that's why a lot of Hong Kong is.
And I mean, I've interviewed plenty of people about this,
Like, they're pretty upset that the freedoms that they knew in
the 90s because the honk, I don't know about you, man, but
the Hong Kong I grew up thinkingabout, you know, in little old
New Zealand, it was this kind ofcool happening place.
It was Jackie Chan. It was all I love it.
Man, it's like high rises and St. markets.

(21:13):
Yeah, But that Hong Kong now is,you know, you can't you can't
sell a you can't sell a book about Xi Jinping without getting
hauled off to jail. You know, there's a chilling
effect. And I mean, I know people, you
know, people working in businesses who are like, well,
we can't domicile there. And it's a boon for somewhere
like Singapore. I mean, this is your competitive
cities kind of playing out, but who would want to have a bank in

(21:37):
Hong Kong? Wouldn't want to domicile in
China then. I would be very leery of
domiciling in Hong Kong these days.
And I, I guess that's what I'm getting at, man, because, and
again, because I'm, I'm very passionate about these ideas
that you're exploring. But, and the other example that
comes to mind, just coming back to New Zealand.
Have you ever been to New Zealand, by the way?
Or? I have not.
I haven't been to. New I do hope you get the chance

(21:58):
to come sometime. But back in the back in the 19th
century, obviously New Zealand was a colonial project and I've
been reading this incredible book on a self sovereign
community that was developed by the Maori people of New Zealand
in the eighteen from the 1860s to the 1880s.
It was a place called Padihaka, and it never ceded sovereignty.
They didn't want to be part of the British Empire.

(22:19):
They didn't want to become part of that.
They just wanted to do their ownthing.
And it was the British came in and and it's kind of like, and
it was peaceful resistance as well.
They didn't fight back. But where I want to take this
with you, Patrias, this idea of,you know, law as code and
startup cities about, you know, that's all nice and good until
the tanks roll in and the bayonets come out.

(22:40):
And I just wonder if you have a philosophy or sort of approach
to how that works. Yeah, I mean, I think the risk
of getting, the risk of getting invaded by a powerful country
is, is definitely not high on mylist of concerns.
And I think if you look at how things went down in in Honduras,

(23:03):
you know, it's, I think it's a much better example of the
reality. So, you know, for those who
don't know, Honduras created thefirst charter city program in
the world starting in 2011. I worked with them for a year or
two back then, but it being a, you know, like a small country
without great state capacity, trying to do something really
new was hard. And it took them probably 6-7

(23:24):
years to actually launch the program.
And a company got Honduras, Prospera, worked with them,
helped finish the program and became the first, the first
registered zone under it where they get to write all their own
commercial law. And you know, a couple of years
after they launched, there was an election where the party that

(23:47):
had been ruling the country since 2009 been winning the
elections, lost in the landslide.
They were while the program itself was totally clean.
I mean, it didn't even have any budget for for many years.
It was like a nights and weekends Google 20% project for
the regulators, which I think ishilarious.
You know, it's their passion project, you know, but the, the,

(24:10):
that government and the president were, were corrupt.
And in fact, the US was waiting to arrest him until he left
office because the US doesn't arrest sitting heads of state
and he lost the election and is in AUS jail.
And the person who won, Jemira Castro, who is the, the wife of

(24:31):
this guy's a liar who like triedto abolish term limits and the
military kicked him out in 2009.She's, I would describe her as a
Marxist in the sense that she like unrecognized Taiwan, cozied
up to China, restored relations with Venezuela.
Like, I don't mean a Marxist, like I'm a libertarian and she's
the left of me. I mean, like that's, that's,

(24:53):
that's clearly her, her jam and her world.
And she hated the program, you know, because there's a sense in
which it's like capitalism and and innovation, value creation
is kind of anathema to that worldview.
And she had a campaign promise to shut the program down.
And she she was elected. She hired someone who's like

(25:15):
full time job. It was to work against the
zones. And they weren't able to do it
because the program was put in the Hunter and Constitution and
the Hunter and law. And, you know, eventually they
were able to, when enough Supreme Court judges, they got
into a point, they got a SupremeCourt ruling against it.
But you know, I should explain what that what you'll see what
the enforcement mechanism is because you don't it doesn't

(25:38):
depend on on the country itself.And so like they weren't able to
and you know, like like a military attack on this, you
know, hotel resort and, you know, house factory, etcetera.
Like it doesn't make a lot of sense.

(26:01):
And yeah, so they, they weren't able to shut it down.
And the enforcement mechanism, it's actually, it's, it's one of
the like the very few times in the world where like the way
things work is kind of like maybe how like AI don't know an
economist would design them. So the way it works is it's
effectively like all of the country's assets that are held
outside that country, whether that's a bank account, you know,

(26:26):
somewhere or they're state ownedenterprises property, like any
kind of assets. It's kind of like a bond that
they've posted that they will stick to their agreements.
And so the way it works is that,you know, if Honduras was like,
you have to shut down and, and like, and they would never
return. Like they, they just ghosted all

(26:47):
the requests where, where you know, where there's like legal
letters being like, Hey, do you mean this?
Are you saying we have to shut down or is it just like
rhetoric? And they would never answer any
of them because if they say like, no, we didn't mean it.
That's like portraying their campaign promise and and if they
say like, yes, you have to shut down, that's like immediate
grounds for action against them and injunctions and like, and

(27:08):
all of that. So they just didn't answer.
And eventually, you know, Prospera sued them.
So you sue an international arbitration.
There are these big dispute resolution networks that, you
know, most, most countries are part of.
And if you win, you can take that award to any most of the
countries in the world, A100130 most countries, and you can just

(27:31):
take anything that that country has up to the value of the
award. So you can take from their bank
accounts. If there's people like paying
their state owned enterprises, you can like garnish that and
make them like pay like you buy the oil from them, but the money
goes to me. And so you're not depending on
the country's legal system at all.

(27:52):
And so something like them, you know, appointing some friendly
Supreme Court justices and having a totally nonsense ruling
that like goes against like 40 precedents, like because they
tried to rule that, that, that the program was not just like
not valid. Like we got to can't, we got to
stop, we got to like stop approving new ones.

(28:12):
But they said it was like never valid.
It was invalid from the beginning.
And the Honduran constitution actually says you can't
retroactively say that things were invalid from before.
And it's been upheld, held like 40 times.
So it's like a total nonsense ruling, but like, but like
you're not depending on it. And so like, sure, can a can a
government with significant military power like come in and

(28:34):
you know, like take the factories or attack you like
sure, but you know, their mechanism prevent this.
And and these mechanism, obviously we're not in any way
invented for or by us. This is literally the way that
all cross-border investment in the world is protected.
Every time a country makes a partnership to go, you know,
mine resources or build a factory or whatever, they're all

(28:56):
depending on this, on this same system.
And last, last on this, there's a funny story about it, which I
love, which is that like, so Honduras was like these investor
dispute resolution networks, They always rule for the
companies against the countries.They're no good, they're biased.
And so they withdrew from IXED, the the largest one, which

(29:19):
doesn't retroactively get them out of a lawsuit or anything.
Obviously you wouldn't allow that.
So they withdrew. And meanwhile they're cozying up
to China. They stopped recognizing Taiwan
and China of course, is going tolike Belton Rd. style, throw a
few 100 million to start into some infrastructure or loans or
something. And China said, Hey, Honduras,

(29:39):
we, we, we can't, we can't give you this money if you're not in
an investor state dispute resolution network, like even
their new commie, it's like thisis the, the glue to all like
international commerce. And so even the CCP was like,
you got to be in one of these networks.
It doesn't have to be that one. You can pick one of the its
competitors, but like so. OK, that's interesting.

(30:01):
So there's this global network of international organizations
that can help facilitate this international law, international
trade and can punish. And there's like this treaties
involved, you know, Honduras hashas investor treaties with the
US and Kuwait which tie them into this system.
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I again, I mean the

(30:23):
thought experiment, I mean, I appreciate this is in the
abstract realm, but I also wonder what happens when you
start getting conflicting interpretations of truth.
And we do see this sometimes with little islands in the
Pacific, you know, someone claiming this island or that
island. So the arbitrators a lot, Yeah.

(30:43):
A lot larger, larger islands as well.
So, yeah, talk to me about this.Yeah.
Arbitrary. Another thing on this threat
model is that a guy I know started a community in South
America. Libertarians, you know, I don't
know, maybe a few dozen families.
They were in a rural area when the pandemic happened and the

(31:04):
country they were in didn't do so great.
Law and order, what kind of wentto crap.
And they found themselves like defending, defending their
community with firearms from people come to pillage and rape.

(31:27):
And it's that kind of thing, youknow, makes it very real, you
know it. I'm not saying that that kind of
thing doesn't happen. And governments are very,
they're very into violence. But it's just, it's not, it
doesn't really seem like the waythe 21st century is mainly, is
mainly structured with countriesresolving their disputes that

(31:49):
way. And we're not trying to be like
the enemies of some country, right?
I mean, the host country is likeour key partner, although, as in
the case of Honduras, elections happen and things turns out and
that's when you use your your defenses.
But I think that, you know, obviously I would encourage
people to be able to defend themselves.
I'm I'm not like, like, like, I don't know, my, my boys wouldn't

(32:10):
go down and peaceful protest. But I just think it's not the
main enforcement or defense mechanism.
For the industry and this is where, and I appreciate this is
getting into into some history and stuff, but that's what's
really interesting to me is again, I mean, I think this is
an incredible approach or philosophy towards doing stuff.
And obviously you are doing stuff in this space.
But I look at New Zealand duringthe pandemic and I was quite

(32:32):
critical of the government and Ithought that they fucked it up
and that they shouldn't have done what they did and locked us
down. And I was protesting and then
they brought the police in and they bashed everyone over the
head and I got away. But it was like, okay, what do
you do in that situation? Or if you're in Hong Kong and
saying, Hey, guys, you know, my basic law has been violated.
I don't agree with this. I'm going to exercise my right
for peaceful protest, blah, blah, blah.

(32:52):
And then the police come in and tear gas you and there's kind of
like, what do you shoot back? And what happened?
A lot of people don't even have guns anymore.
And so, you know, they're kind of, it comes back to law of the
jungle and the police always have the monopoly on violence,
you know, the state. And it's kind of, I don't know,
man, It's, it's a thought piece.Yeah, I mean, I mean, police
don't have a monopoly on violence in the states.

(33:14):
You know, I own a firearm. But yeah, I mean, but the state
does have a massive amount of military power and, you know,
shooting back is romantic. But again, I don't I don't think
that's the way that you battle governments in 21st century.
You know, I'm all about buildingbetter alternatives.
Exit, exit to better systems. Go rebuild, find the like minded
people to see things your way, form communities together.

(33:36):
Yeah. OK, So pulling on that street
then, because, I mean, that's cool.
I mean, that's exciting, right? It sort of represents a turning
of the corner. We don't have to go out onto the
streets and pick up the brick and throw the thing.
You know, it's actually an economic process.
Exit and build baby. Exit and build.
OK, so look, let's talk about that because I mean this same

(33:57):
again seems to be pulling from this kind of San Francisco
business culture, startup culture.
And it's it's exciting like what's possible with that.
And so pushing the limits of what's possible, the economic
engine of these these charter cities.
I mean, what do you see? Is it, is it intellectual in

(34:18):
terms of building software, things like that?
I mean can, is it manufacturing?Because I mean, economies
generally are quite mixed, right.
Yeah, farming industry, all sorts.
Of things for sure. In a charter city, what can it
do? What?
Where's its economic engine? Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's like asking what a city's economic engine
is, right? And it depends on the city.
So for example, our kind of fastest growing company, Alpha

(34:40):
Cities is working with like 8 countries in Africa, you know,
close to getting our first land grants.
And so for that, it's like in each country that we're looking
at, we, I mean, it's kind of like you go into McKenzie mode a
little bit, right? Like what are their resources
like? What is untapped?
What are the skills that people have?

(35:01):
Like what industries would make sense here?
And I think that at the beginning, you know, one mistake
that I think has been made in the space I made myself for a
long time is this idea of like, better with better government,
you have higher compounded GDP growth rates, right?
And over time, this ends up mattering a lot.

(35:22):
And so I think that like freedom, economic freedom, you
know, political freedom is like a really powerful accelerant for
the engine. But I think what people miss is
that at the beginning, you have no engine.
You can't you can't accelerate it.
You have to like build it. And so we're expecting that like

(35:43):
with Alva City, we'll have to either be like forming the key
partnerships or, you know, finding great anchor tenants or
in a lot of cases starting them ourselves.
So that like to create the initial economic engine that
starts making jobs. And then you can have all kind
of, you know, then you need yourdentists and you need your
coffee shop and, and all of that.

(36:04):
But yeah, it's, it's a, it's a customized plan, you know, based
on the country and the location.And as far as you know, I can
give some examples. For example, we're looking at AI
data centers and, and there's some places in Africa that have
massive amounts of untapped renewable energy, just insane

(36:27):
amounts of geothermal. And so, and like AI data centers
is like the great way to monetize that.
If you have, you have cheap power, you know, put up data
centers. And another is manufacturing
electric vehicles on continent. So, you know, right now it's
like, and, and there's generallylike I, I think a general model

(36:48):
we're looking at is it's like vertical integration or like
onshoring later stage processing.
So just think of the difference between like mining lithium and
then like sending it to China orthe US and then it gets made
into a lithium battery to power an electric vehicle.
And then also the drivetrain gets manufactured.
So like you put it all together versus like you make the

(37:09):
batteries and then you ship out the battery, which is now a
higher value, like further in the chain, you know, or, or like
the difference between, you know, growing cow and like
coffee bar, right. The cacao is like 5% of the
value of that, of that chocolatebar.
And so like keeping more value in country by doing the later

(37:34):
steps of the processing there. That's the closest thing to like
a, a general formula that we're finding.
But yeah, each, each, each country is different.
What resources do they have? Well, it's interesting because I
mean, we're sort of diving into,you know, development studies
here where we're actually looking at, you know, how do
you, how do you build up an economy?
And I recently interviewed a guy, Joe Studwell, who did a lot

(37:56):
of work looking at African Development and the different
kind of modes of African Development.
And you have places like Angola,which kind of these extractive,
basically an oil company will come in, they have like 5 dudes
extracting billions of dollars of oil.
And then you've got the, the villages on the outside.
And then you've got other parts of Africa that are maybe a
little bit more integrated and moving forward with kind of

(38:17):
cities that actually have, yeah,economy, mixed economies that
are not just one thing. And there are challenges there
because we're talking about a city here, which necessarily is
a cosmopolitan thing. And when you're looking at
resource extraction, I mean, it is a one way process and you
don't even really need a city for it.
You just need a rig, right. And so how do you balance that
kind of cosmopolitan mixed economy with we're going to

(38:39):
extract the thing and, and, and mine the lithium?
Like, how do you, yeah, how do you, how do you sort of go from
one to the other? I.
Mean think about the difference between these models of like you
mine the lithium, you send it off, you mine the lithium, you
make the batteries, you manufacture Dr. trains
manufacture the motors, right? And then you put together the
EVI mean it's it's, it's a lot more different industries and a

(39:03):
lot more jobs, right, versus like 5 dudes even a rig running.
And so, you know, I think Angolawould be a great candidate for
that because they they're doing so much extraction, you know,
and I think that they're interested trying some of these
new things. I mean, I do think of it as like
21st century version of International Development where

(39:25):
20th century was like aid and NGOs and like it just it didn't
work that well. Well, I think that the
interesting piece is that the the economic reality is that
they can't manufacture batteriesand Angola because there's not
the scales of economy, there's none of the infrastructure,
right? And so there's this role
necessarily of the state. And this is where we get back

(39:46):
into like butting up against perhaps what I would like to
believe is that we can minimize the state, but you do need a
strong state in these places to come in.
And we've seen this in places like Rwanda with Paul Kagame,
who's like, all right, we're going to be the Singapore of
Central Africa. And he's the strong man and he's
coming in and he's trying to push that.
But there's. Yeah, it's been very successful

(40:08):
at at influencing Rwanda, Yeah. Yeah.
So he's he's sort of being able to have a vision, right.
And then we come back to being, well, basically we're just
having normal countries. You know, these are not startup
states anymore. These are like normal countries.
And I don't know, man. It's it's sort of like, do we
end up like going through this whole process and then we end up
back at like, you know, nation states as, as they are
currently? I don't know.

(40:29):
Well. You know, we're talking about
like we're talking about a for profit company, like providing
like governance and like body the regulation and courts, like
the entire the whole incentive structure.
I mean, get back to a nation state as far as like there's a
clearly defined entity who is like has control over is the

(40:51):
point of contact for a fixed like geographic territory.
Like sure, that could happen. I think we're going to move away
from that with network state stuff, but you know, it may take
a while and there probably will be some of that territorial
nation state like left. But if you know, if, if instead
of it being like, you know, whatever, whatever strongman can

(41:14):
grab power or whoever to be popular enough to win an
election, it's like, well, there's shareholders and a board
of directors and an executive team and it's their job to make
things happen. And they can have like
performance incentives based on like things like GDP or citizen
satisfaction in a way where likeright now, if you're, if you're

(41:36):
in a, a state and you do something that like slashes the
country's GDP by 10%, Like if people realize it, you might be
unpopular, but like you, you know, you still are going to
have your, your job for a while versus like, Hey, like my annual
bonus depends on the impact thatI've managed to have on this

(41:59):
economy. You know, So I, I, I think it'll
be, I think it'll be really different.
But yeah, I guess we'll see. I hope you get a chance to find
out. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's
interesting. I guess what that necessarily
leads into, though, is a thoughtexperiment again.
And reality perhaps is the question of money, pottery.

(42:20):
And we look at the, you know, what are the fundamental roles
of the state? And one of them is, you know,
love it or hate it, central banking and provision of
currency. And I'm keen to understand what
your thoughts are with these charter cities and this
innovation space moving forward.Like, how can money work?
You know, obviously, I'm very interested in Bitcoin.

(42:41):
How do you see that playing intothe picture here?
Yeah, look, you know, just when the government is a business is
trying to, you know, if it's getting, if it's collecting
income tax, say, then it its revenue is like, so you charge
10%, it's like 10% of GDP, then it wants to create a great
product to attract people. And I think, you know, the way

(43:04):
that we would look at money is like, what are people using?
What do they want to use? How can we provide them options
that we like? And so again, you know, it's
it's it's to me, it's like, it'snot, it's not, it's not
philosophical. I know for like, I mean, money
can be, but like like currenciesin a charter city to me is kind

(43:26):
of like purely pragmatic. Like of course we're not support
like stable coins and Bitcoin, you know, and, and give people
options. You're like, at least that's how
we're thinking it. Alpha cities.
Like at the same time, there's this general like people always
ask me for like that type of question.
And it's like, well, which charter city?
Like I don't, I don't control them.

(43:46):
They're going to create different products, they're
going to make different feature choices.
And currency is like is one of those feature choices.
So different ones might do it really differently.
Maybe it'll be all crypto, maybeit'll be no crypto.
But for, for the projects that I'm more, I'm more directly
involved in. Yeah, we just, I mean, you know,
Africa's had some insane growth from like, payment processor

(44:09):
companies and like, it's still like, there's a lot of issues
with the financial system there.I think there's a lot that can
be done. Yeah.
Again, like, even something as simple as like stable coins and
then make it just easy for people to like, bank and
transact in like USDC or whatever.
I, you know, I think would be bea big win.
But we just, you have to look atwhat people want, right?

(44:31):
And, and another like Philly Prosper kind of tried to build
like for libertarians. And what they've seen is it's
really hard to get, you know, and a lot of these products are
targeting nomads and they're like, oh, a person who can live
anywhere will come to my new city.
But the person who can live anywhere could be in Tokyo or
Austin or Bali or whatever. Like those people are really
hard to compete for. Our focus with alpha is much

(44:53):
more on building for locals. And it's like, to what degree is
like currency an actual problem that they would want us to put
effort into fixing. You know, I mean, it, it, it
depends on the depends on the country, But they're not coming
at it philosophically. They just want to live.
Yeah, no, I understand. And I guess I mean, I mentioned

(45:15):
philosophically in the sense that I think this question does
butt up against again, development studies and like,
what does it mean for a country to come in for a, for a group to
come in and take sovereignty over a country?
In the vast majority of cases, historically it has meant
issuing a currency and that currency then is required to pay
your taxes and their, and there's different ways of

(45:37):
analysing this. You've got chartalism and
different ways of looking at it,but basically you have to pay
us, so you have to get it. And so it like makes the sort of
virtuous cycle of money come into being.
And I have a lot of criticism ofthat, don't get me wrong.
But I wonder, you know, when you're using something like
stable coins, are you really sovereign or are you downstream
of the United States, or is there other ways of looking at

(46:00):
it? I mean, I'm a human who lives on
Earth and so in many ways I'm downstream of the United States.
So, you know, I, I don't believethat sovereignty is not being
downstream in the United States.Like the United States has
plenty to worry about and plentyof plenty of problems and plenty
of priorities. Yeah.

(46:21):
You know, I guess I just, I think, again, I think of this
stuff as like pragmatic, like I,I don't, you know, I don't know
that stable coins are the way like long term.
But what an incredible bridge from where we were to where
we're going. And like, you know, again, like
charter cities are not explicitly not sovereign, not

(46:41):
trying to be sovereign. You know, like, like if I, if I
started like my like Libertopia,like sovereign city state and
people wanted to use USDC. I mean, go for it, right?
Like the important thing is thatwe like support better
alternatives and then people aregoing to do what they're going
to. Do yeah, I, I think so.
I mean, obviously you're, you'refamiliar with the sovereign

(47:04):
individual and these this kind of works that have been
exploring this for a long time. And certainly that book left a
big impression on me that. Yeah, it was great.
Back in what, 1997? And, and it's funny, they
mentioned New Zealand quite a lot in that book for some
reason. But there's this kind of history
of thought of, of sovereignty, of exit, perhaps connected with

(47:25):
neoliberal thought. And I just wonder and, and, and
I hope we can, we can talk aboutthis.
There has been some criticisms of this, of this general
approach. And it's, it's strange because I
think both you and me are looking at this and we're trying
to build stuff, You know, I'm really interested Bitcoin
passionate about freedom, you know, feeling like, look, there

(47:45):
is a better way to do things that we should be talking about.
But there have been criticisms. And I'm just interested to run
this past you and kind of get your thoughts because I was
quite surprised. I watched an interview with
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. They're called yourself Peter
Thiel and others by name as participating in a kind of end
times fascism that somehow you know, we're going to all eggs,
we're going to exit the consequences of what we've done

(48:09):
there's. Some like schizophrenic Blogger
who like says that like like, like I am like taking over the
US and the UK, the UK with like free ports and the US with like
freedom cities which like aren'teven a thing.
And they're going to be like 99.99% the same US laws as as as

(48:30):
the rest of the country. If like.
And so it's just, yeah, it's just, it's just retarded.
But you know. Yeah, well, in particular.
Whatever entertains Naomi climb,you know, Yeah.
Well, I mean, to, to be fair though, because I mean, I'm
trying to build bridges with people and I'm trying to
communicate that there is a better way.
And obviously the importance of freedom and having been through

(48:51):
the COVID era myself in a country that really didn't do it
in a very good way, I'm quite, quite sensitive to questions of
freedom. And I mean, she does say that
it's it is a this fantasy of exit that rich people should be
able to exit from nation states,regulations and especially
taxes. It is a fantasy that has been
brewing on the libertarian tech,right, for the last few decades.

(49:13):
And I mean, you've you've talkedabout how you're still using law
from other countries for franchising the law.
Yeah. So you've.
For two reasons. One I'm most of my attention is
on building in Africa for Africans.
So they just throws the entire thing out.
It's true that Peter Thiel is aninvestor who's helping me build

(49:37):
these new zones with better regulations and water and roads
and houses for Africans. But like, that's, that's what
I'm doing. And then and the other thing is
like, has she never heard of theBahamas that does she not know
like what the US expatriation tax law is?
It's completely legal to change what country you live in.

(49:58):
Like, and if it wasn't, people would, you know, be swimming,
like to get to other places. And there exists many tax
havens. There's places where a rich
person can move and pay no taxes.
There have been forever, and I'msure there will be forever.
And like, so it's kind of like, like, what does that have to do
with us? And I get that there is like a

(50:19):
little bit of connection. I do, like, philosophically feel
like, yeah, people, like people should be empowered as, like,
customers to like, choose where they want to live and like, look
at the different packages of what will I pay and what will I
get? And like, one of my things is
trying to get people to think more like customers.

(50:39):
I think that all this stuff getswrapped up when you talk about a
state, you know, where people are like, oh, they're dude,
they're passing this law that mypolitical enemy is like that I
feel like is like against me, like all this and like morals
and ethics and like philosophy and all of this that I think can
like get in the way of, of pragmatically improving things.

(51:00):
And like, it sounds like she's against the idea that some
people might have other options and take them up on it, which
sounds like a typical leftist thing to be like concerned
about. But it's, you know, and like, I
think that that that there's probably a fear underlying this,
which is like, what if the people who actually make stuff

(51:20):
leave, like, and they probably think of it as like the rich
people who have like wrongfully captured all this value or
whatever. But it's like, no, like
whatever, Jeff Bezos starting Amazon or something and they're
probably scared of that. And they should because like
countries are, you know, the US is going downhill and most
countries do a really crappy job.
And I think that we can out compete them.

(51:40):
But that's great. Making something better that is
like the foundation of society that gets people to like move
there is amazing for humanity. I mean, look at the US.
It's how we came to exist. What what what does she think
about all the people who fled Europe for the US?
Like the source of the entire population of the US that was.
They just probably didn't like the taxes back there.

(52:01):
How dare they flee? Yeah, I know.
I understand. And I think her critiques struck
me a little bit though, because I'm like, hey, like, you know,
I'm trying to just build bridgeshere with different people.
And I was like, hey, you know, are you including me in that?
Because I'm one of these guys who left New Zealand, which is
going through a major recession.The shit's hit the fan.
You know, it's not so right. I'm doing the arbitrage where
I'm like, I'm living in Japan now.

(52:22):
You know, we're, we're, we're taking advantage of the
opportunities that are given to us.
How dare you? Yeah, you know, and so.
Ungrateful to the country of your birth.
And have you paid? Those involuntary taxes, you
know. Yeah, some tribute.
But what this butts up against though is if we've got a city

(52:42):
that is treating people, you know, it's a customer
relationship, right? It maybe comes up against the
question of what is national identity and what is like, what
is your your birthright and these kinds of questions and
they become kind of social questions.
And this is the basis of patriotism.
This is the basis of national identity.
And I just wonder if you have any thoughts on how that's

(53:04):
evolving. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's much harder for us.
And that's like a downside, right, Is, you know, we don't
have some strong ethno religiousgeographic identities to draw
from, you know, to be to be social blue.
You know, if you're, you know, obviously when we're building in
Africa for Africans, you do. But you know, if we're talking

(53:24):
about later, you know, starting,starting a sovereign city state
that attracts people from all over the world.
And then you don't have that. And you have to form like a new
identity around this, like new thing that you've created in the
same way that a new company does, except much more intensely
because it's like your state andyour homeland.

(53:45):
So I think that like we're just going to have less of that glue
and that. But if the place is strong and
attractive, it's going to develop its own culture and
people have some identity. But I would kind of expect, like
if you're thinking more as a consumer, then you're not going
to have a strong, I mean, I havesome identity 'cause I finally

(54:05):
got a test. Apple fan.
Toys. Yeah, exactly.
I don't. Don't get me started on how my
dad's started sending me the first Max.
He would get one and he'd get the new one and some of the old
ones. So I've been using them since
the 80s. But yes, yes, I am, you know, so
there's some, but it's, it's not, it's not as strong, I think

(54:27):
for for most people in most countries as their national
identity. So.
Well, one way, one way of pitching this is I think the
people who are think about this,people like you, you and me who
are looking at what we can do, how we can get out.
I mean, we are a certain strata.And there is also a huge amount
of people, you know, I just was back in New Zealand recently.
And I mean, there are a huge amount of people who are just

(54:47):
sort of doing what they've always done.
And it kind of implies that they're going to just keep doing
that. They're on the single flag, you
know, they're in the country of birth doing the thing they've
always done. And there's other people now who
have increasingly this is trickling down to enable people
even of more humble means to be able to leave and go and do
other stuff. And so maybe there's almost like

(55:08):
a different approach where people can move to Dubai and not
not pay the same taxes or they can stay behind and pay 35
percent, 40% taxes. And that maybe that's not for
everyone, though. You know, maybe some people are
like, well, I'm just happy aboutwhat I've always done, right?
I mean, I, I think yeah, for sure.
I mean, people are different andyou know, I, I think like look,

(55:30):
but products have different prices, like a Tesla doesn't
cost the same as a Lambo and a Tesla's also doesn't cost the
same as like a Kia. There are different price points
where people can choose what they want.
And I think that, you know, again, if you think about it as
a business, like, I would expectthat like different, different
charter city projects would likemake different choices.

(55:51):
And some will charge more and offer more and some will charge
less and offer less, just like, just like any other product.
And then consumers will decide, look at the options and, and
decide what they like. And then I think, like, I expect
our taxes to be lower than otherplaces because like, you know,
there's the old startup saying is like, to make a startup work,

(56:11):
you have to either be 10 times cheaper or 10 times better.
And like, if we're trying to compete, we have the
disadvantage of not having economy to scale and not being
an incumbent. And so I, I want to make it
better and cheaper. And I think if you know, anybody
who's looked closely at how governments spend money, you
know, will understand that it's actually probably possible to do

(56:32):
like a lot more with a lot less.But you know, I'm just talking
about like, we have a new product.
And so we, we're going to want to make it cheaper.
But that's different than being like, nobody should ever, I
don't know, pay taxes. I mean, I just, I want to, I
guess I want to move that, you know, once you've like chosen,
like you have where to go, like take that from some kind of like

(56:55):
profound moral question about who has the right to tax me and
how and just be like you're, you're getting stuff and you're
getting charged for it. And here's how.
So pick what you want. Yeah, and I mean, we're already
seeing this play out. I mean, the the phrase user pays
is quite common even in New Zealand, which is historically a
very nanny state. You know, everything was done

(57:17):
through the government. Now you, you, you want to do
some processing, You want to getyour license renewed.
I mean, you have to pay, user pays.
And there's aspects that are notlike that.
But it's kind of interesting that this lexicon has developed
over the last 30-40 years of neoliberalism.
And even here in Japan, which isa major nanny state, I still
have to pay for things out of pocket that I want through the

(57:39):
government. And it's interesting, right,
that this has slowly creeped in and it's sort of, I mean, what's
the end state of? That well, I wasn't familiar
with this. Wow, I really like user pays.
That's great because like bundling is such an issue and
like when you bundle the budgetsand government departments for
like a massive number of different things into one

(58:01):
economic unit. I mean, I worked, this is a, you
know, I worked at Google 2004 and, you know, even at that
size, and of course we came muchmore of a problem over the
years. The challenges of like the
internal markets, like a decision making, who gets what
compute resources, like how do you allocate budget when, when
together all of these different groups are forming your Google

(58:23):
search engine and ads. And like, it's not easy to say
like what percentage of the value comes from comes from
which right. It's, it's really, really hard,
even at something the size of a,of a large corporation, like,
let alone a government. And so the more you can like UN
like unbundle and have there be like, you know, the, the
incentives of having use fees sothat people don't overuse

(58:44):
services and just like tying thevalue created by that
department, like more closely totheir revenues.
I I think it's amazing. Yeah, and I mean, there's been a
bit of work on this. There was a economist, Eleanor
Ostrom, who I think developed concepts around like, yeah,
institutional economics and transactional transaction cost

(59:04):
economics, which kind of covers some of the stuff.
And I think some of that thinking has begun to fade into
government approaches. And the other comment I would
make patri is New Zealand is a small country, smaller, 56
million people. And it's kind of interesting.
I was just back recently and we had a.
Have a lot bigger than Google. Yeah, but still, I, we had a, we

(59:27):
launched a Bitcoin Policy Institute and, and I'm a
committee member there and I mean, we had like MPs and
ministers turn up to the event. And it was like, you couldn't do
that in the US with like a couple of guys like organizing
an event, you know, on, on, on on a very, you know, with
limited resources. And so with smaller economies,
smaller, you know, projects likethat, you can actually just talk

(59:49):
to the boss, you can get things done.
And, and I think this maybe speaks to your decentralization
and kind of maybe smaller statesin the US, you know, how do you
get anything done when there's like 50 layers of bullshit to
get through? And I mean, there is scales of
economy, but it's also the slow moving base where a place like
New Zealand, Luxembourg, Switzerland, you know, slightly

(01:00:11):
smaller countries and even smaller than that, you get into
some of these micro states, theycan do stuff right.
Yeah. I mean, we mainly, you know,
what we see is that it's much easier, much quicker to work
with smaller countries. It can still be be frustrating.
You know, I think like, like to me, 56 million is like starting
to get like too big in terms of like what I've seen like working

(01:00:34):
with democracies. At the same time, the larger
countries are larger markets. You know, if if you look at a
place like, you know, like Angola, for example, with like
40 million people, there is a lot more opportunity there.
And so, you know, we're kind of working on both, just
understanding that the larger countries are like riskier and

(01:00:55):
like slower, but then potentially a bigger payoff.
But yeah, it's funny. It's funny here that you think
that way because like for, for my orientation these days, I'm
like, man, if I could start, if I could start something that was
5 million people, like that would be amazing.
And when I'm working with a country of 5 million people, to

(01:01:16):
me that's already like starting.It's get, it's starting to get
big. Yeah, understood.
Well, look man, it's really interesting to talk about all of
these ideas. And when it comes to pro nomos,
what's next for you? What are you excited about for
for the fund? Yeah.
So, I mean, we've, we've wrappedup our five year investment
period earlier this year and my focus is mainly on, on helping

(01:01:37):
our company Alpha Cities raise the money to build out a bunch
of cities for a bunch of Africans all across Africa.
And that, yeah. And then you know, if, if, if
that goes well, I'd probably raise a second fund.
Yeah. What's what part?
Have you spent much time in Africa?
What? What part do you enjoy being?

(01:02:00):
So my, my, my business partner is the CEO of that business, you
know, I'm focused more on fundraising and content and
things like that. So he, he does the travel I
expect to get out there next year.
We're mainly working with, with former Portuguese countries to
speak Portuguese because I had agood connection there to get in

(01:02:23):
with them. And yeah, really excited to, to
visit some of those, some of those places next year.
Other stuff we'll have, you know, there's there's there's
socials for Pronomos at Pronomosdot at Pronomos PC on Twitter.
And there's going to be a lot more.
I've got a bunch of like short like back type videos and we're

(01:02:46):
working a lot of content about what we've learned over these
five years. Things like build for locals,
not for not for nomads and a lotof stuff, a lot of things like
that, like the amount of founderexperience that's required to do
this. I mean, this stuff is is hard.
So going to be a lot of a lot ofstuff coming out in the coming
months. Yeah, that's that's incredible.

(01:03:07):
Well, man, thanks for for sharing that and it's telling us
a bit about what you're doing there.
I guess there's just one more thing.
I just having a look on my list here that I don't know if we
fully covered and if it's OK to come back to it.
I just had here that the idea ofthe moral substrate of a place,
and I, again, I think this mightbe something you talked about in
one of the videos, but the unifying idea of a city beyond

(01:03:29):
just lower taxes, whether it's religion, ethnic identity, these
kinds of things. When you're building for locals,
how does that fit into it? Is it about their place and
their people, or is there something something else that
can fit into that? Yeah, that's, yeah, that's an
interesting question. You know, because like we,

(01:03:49):
we're, we're not going to come in proselytizing about freedom.
You know, that's, that's, that'snot what anyone asks for.
We're going to build stuff that makes their lives better.
And I think that like over time,as it's working, I think this
like will affect the moral substrate.
I mean, I'm sure that, you know,people who spent ten years in

(01:04:13):
Hong Kong versus people who spent ten years in Beijing
probably have pretty different ideas about the benefits of
freedom, for example. You know, But we want to we want
to do this by by doing it by having them see the benefits,
see the factories get built, youknow, see the jobs come move up
the economic ladder. And then when someone wants to

(01:04:36):
know, like, why, like, why do things work here?
Well, you know, now it's a greattime for maybe a smidge of
proselytizing. Yeah, yeah, Understood.
All right, man. Thank you so much for your time.
All right. Thanks so much for having me.
Thank you for listening. I am Cody Allingham and that was
the transformation of value. If you would like to support
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(01:04:59):
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