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Idiotic decision by Croatia, here I'm talking both as a Croatian, as well as someone supporting this kind of "liberal" experiments. Instead of seeing this as a

Idiotic decision by Croatia, here I'm talking both as a Croatian, as well as someone supporting this kind of "liberal" experiments. Instead of seeing this as a fun experiment that wouldn't cost Croatian tax payer anything, the most politically controlled nepotistic organization full of "uhljeb's", Hrvatske sume, decided to act this way (under direction). If Croatian government was smart, they could have tried reaching some deal proclaiming "Liberland" as a free zone, under protection of Croatians army until UN recognition is made (probably never). The potential touristic revenue to local areas could have been used to justify it to Croatian people. Sad...

acadapter 3y ago
Yes, they messed up in this. Croatia did a mega police operation, in order to get rid of people that brought them tourist revenue and didn't bother anyone. Now all the money will go to Serbia, as the participants hold their events and "Floating man" festivals in Apatin instead.
tail_exchange 3y ago
What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Allowing some entity to establish a government in your lands just to see what happens doesn't seem like a wise move to me. This would only legitimize their claims to the land and legitimize them as a sovereign state. It's a good way to end up losing this land and creating yet another microstate.
- logicalmonster 3y ago
  > What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Not that the only group of people who want to bother nobody else need any justification for living their lives as they see fit, but how else is humanity going to learn about the different ways we can organize society if we don't try them out? It would be phenomenal for humanity if people with ideas outside of the box organized as they saw fit without outside interference and we all get to see what works and what doesn't.
  - tail_exchange 3y ago
    Isn't that why we don't have just a single country with a single set of laws? What experiment is being performed in Liberland that cannot be done in other countries that already exist?
    - chromoblob 3y ago
      It is indeed like you say. You are making a hyperbole, but essentially we have a single type of country.
    - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
      >Isn't that why we don't have just a single country with a single set of laws? Historically this is not the reason. And as a justification for continuing to have many countries it would only be convincing if people were free to choose which "experiment" to join or start. The reality is, we are all guinea pigs that get thrown into some random country where some experiment has already started and we have no right opt out. If this is indeed someone's experiment, I would say it's highly unethical :)
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > What experiment is being performed in Liberland that cannot be done in other countries that already exist? Existing countries are captured by various interest groups who use their control over the government to their benefit. In a democracy this is generally various industries or government factions that control a large voting bloc or resources politicians need like campaign contributions. In a non-democracy the existing rulers want to remain in power and continue to rule as they see fit. If the experiment you want to run is a country with an extremely limited government, you would either need a stable country where that is already the case (not currently available), or a way to overcome the entrenched interests in some existing country (good luck), or you need a new country not already beleaguered by entrenched interests.
  - LAC-Tech 3y ago
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  - 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
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- wodenokoto 3y ago
  > Allowing some entity to establish a government in your lands just to see what happens doesn't seem like a wise move to me. It is land that Croatia very actively considers someone elses land. That is why Liberland was established there in the first place. Two countries are arguing "not mine, its yours" about a plot of land. If anything, this can be used against Croatia to argue that it is in fact Croatian territory
  - lolinder 3y ago
    The reason why both countries refuse to claim ownership is actually really interesting: both sides agree that the Danube should be considered the border, but the Danube has changed course over the centuries in a way that left a lot more land on the east than was there before. Naturally, that means that Croatia insists on using the historical path of the Danube, while Serbia insists on the modern one. For either side to claim the land on the west of the current Danube would be to cede the larger quantity of land to the east.
  - josefx 3y ago
    > It is land that Croatia very actively considers someone elses land. It doesn't consider the land to be "someone elses land" it considers the Serbian definition of the shared border faulty. Letting people that cite the Serbian definition of the border settle there is the last thing they want, since it actively undermines their own definition of where the border between it and Serbia should be over its entire length.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Liberland doesn't cite the Serbian definition of the border, they accept both definitions at once. If either definition were given preference there would be no terra nullius. If Croatia were serious about their border claims then they should see Liberland as strictly Serbia's problem. Edit: I suppose that actually allowing an independent state to settle there would ruin their chances of ever trading it with Serbia for the eastern land, but the chances of that are slim to none anyway.
      - 3y ago
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  There are great artistic and cultural reasons to let this happen. After all, look what happened with Kugelmugel - another of these liberal experiments: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/austria/articles/kugelmugel-the-micronation-in-viennas-prater-park https://theculturetrip.com/europe/austria/articles/kugelmuge... Spoiler: the bigger states always win.
  - acadapter 3y ago
    Denmark's Christiania had quite a long time of "hippie semi-anarchy", but it was formally reintegrated into society about 10 years ago. However, this was a product of the Boomer generation, when they were young. It might not be possible in today's more authoritarian world.
standardUser 3y ago
Most people would not consider it 'smart' for a sovereign nation to voluntarily give up territory. Maybe they could have responded less aggressively, but if you're waiting around for governments to start giving away land, keep waiting.
- acadapter 3y ago
  It's not a situation where someone is "giving up land". Croatia doesn't claim the land from its own legal perspective. The Croatian ambition is to use a historical path of the Danube river (from something like ~150 years ago) as the border. This way, Croatia could control larger pieces of land which today belong to Serbia. The line of control, after the war, is the modern-day river, which follows Serbia's claim. However, despite Croatia's claims, there's also been some gray-area Croatian forestry going on there, through Hrvatske Šume. And since the Liberland movement started to claim the parcel as "no man's land", Croatia started patrolling it with police and arresting people occasionally.
uxp8u61q 3y ago
They experimented, and they discovered what happens if you try to claim land that isn't yours. They also discovered what happens in a libertarian world when someone stronger than you wants your stuff.
- claytongulick 3y ago
  > They also discovered what happens in a libertarian world when someone stronger than you wants your stuff. How is this in any way unique to libertarians? Maybe take a look at civil forfeiture abuses in the US? Not to mention other county where the rule of law is more of a polite suggestion.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - zzzeek 3y ago
    It's not unique but only apt as libertarianism advocates for dominance of the strongest
    - anon84873628 3y ago
      You seem to have conflated libertarianism with some other philosophy like the Ayn Rand stuff
      - zzzeek 3y ago
        Can I own a town and buy my own police force or not ?
        anon84873628 3y ago
        Sure, it depends on the disposition of the polities around you and how strong the police/defense force is. You could also run it with any system of government you like, libertarian or otherwise. A lot of people in this thread are laughing at the Liberland folks for being doomed to fail, not realizing that "might makes right", etc. Well how would we be reacting if they became terrorists instead? Defended the area with homemade bombs? What if Jeff Bezos built a private army and decided to secede from the US? The morality or intellectual interest of a people's claim to a territory (along with their chosen system of government) is completely orthogonal to their ability to enforce it. For the other end of the spectrum just look at Ukraine, as others here have pointed out. And btw I'm personally not even a libertarian...
watwut 3y ago
The moment the experiment would turn illegal level of abusive or a murder would happen or whatever, the goverment would be seen as responsible.
emptyfile 3y ago
[dead]
tw04 3y ago
>Idiotic decision by Croatia, here I'm talking both as a Croatian, as well as someone supporting this kind of "liberal" experiments. Instead of seeing this as a fun experiment that wouldn't cost Croatian tax payer anything, the most politically controlled nepotistic organization full of "uhljeb's", Hrvatske sume, decided to act this way (under direction). I feel as though you're taking a rather naive view of the situation. Currently Croatia isn't claiming the land as their own because it's part of a larger dispute, and if they do lay claim to it, they lose a larger chunk of more important land to Serbia. Do you REALLY think if they allow ethnic Croatians to start building permanent settlements on the property in question, they can continue to claim that it's not theirs in the broader land dispute? This isn't "a fun experiment that costs taxpayers nothing". It is a GREAT way to lose permanent rights to a much larger swath of land so that some people who think they're free from government oversight can play make believe. I'm not sure what the actual benefit to the people of Croatia is but I'm open to ideas.
- lolinder 3y ago
  > Do you REALLY think if they allow ethnic Croatians to start building permanent settlements on the property in question Do we know the ethnicity of these settlers? The founder is Czech, and the resources I've found suggest that local Croats and Serbs are a tiny minority of those involved.
- Kosirich 3y ago
  I feel as though you're taking a rather naive view of the situation. Currently Croatia isn't claiming the land as their own because it's part of a larger dispute, and if they do lay claim to it, they lose a larger chunk of more important land to Serbia. You are right, I was being purposely naive in order to show the narrowness of thinking. The "gray area" of the law could have worked in this case for both side. Croatia government didn't have to do anything besides close one eye, which they do ALL THE TIME, for people "who know the right people". Feel free to google search the term "ilegalna gradnja" with Croatian location, to get a feeling of scale of it and how little a settlement like the one that was demolished really matters. There are too many of illegal settlements, usually in form of houses and luxury villas, that haven't been demolished for years, even even local governments pleaded to have them destroyed. To be crystal clear, I didn't suggest giving land to anyone, just make an exception that is made constantly for the "right people".
ufo 3y ago
From Croatia's point of view, these squatters would only make it even more difficult to resolve the border dispute. Croatia wants this land to belong to Serbia (in exchange for more land on the other side of the river), and having these people there might throw a wrench at the negotiations. Furthermore, if the negotiation goes Serbia's way then Croatia would have to deal with a bunch of squatters trying to set up a sovereign micronation on Croatian land.
harpiaharpyja 3y ago
The world would be a pretty different place if the organizations that make up the government of countries always did what was in the best interest of their country...
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
As a Croatian, I can't do whatever I want (esp. building) with various bits of land I actually own, why should these people get special treatment? I'm all for liberalisation of land use, and think Croatian bureaucracy and petty corruption are slowly destroying the Croatian state economically, but people acting independent of the law, because they claim they're special, doesn't wash. The tourist angle is a red herring. Tolerating unlawful occupation isn't smart at all.
- Zak 3y ago
  What makes this weird is that Croatia says this land belongs to Serbia, but sent police there to enforce Croatian laws against people there.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
    What you're saying is repeated constantly through this discussion, but it's very misleading. There is a border dispute and that land is a part of the dispute. Another reading of the situation is that Serbia can claim that the land is a part of Croatia because they've allowed people to inhabit it and it's contagious to Croatian land, given that 'Liberland' has no legal basis. Given that Croatia has no good options here, they've chosen the least harmful option.
    - Zak 3y ago
      It doesn't seem like the "Liberland" people have any claim to the territory, but I don't think that makes my point misleading. If Croatia says the territory belongs to Serbia, then Croatia has no business sending police there outside of very narrow circumstances such as people there launching attacks into territory Croatia does claim. On the other hand, Croatia would probably be within its rights to enforce a border with this territory, as would Serbia. That would rapidly become unpleasant for anyone trying to live there.
      - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
        The Liberland people are exactly claiming the land, that's the whole point of what they're doing. Croatia, even if it claims the land is Serbia, consistent with its border claim, it still administers it as a practical matter, that includes keeping people out of where they shouldn't be.

acadapter 3y ago

Yes, they messed up in this. Croatia did a mega police operation, in order to get rid of people that brought them tourist revenue and didn't bother anyone. Now all the money will go to Serbia, as the participants hold their events and "Floating man" festivals in Apatin instead.

tail_exchange 3y ago

What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Allowing some entity to establish a government in your lands just to see what happens doesn't seem like a wise move to me. This would only legitimize their claims to the land and legitimize them as a sovereign state. It's a good way to end up losing this land and creating yet another microstate.

logicalmonster 3y ago
> What's would be the purpose of such liberal experiment? I don't see what is there to learn about it. Not that the only group of people who want to bother nobody else need any justification for living their lives as they see fit, but how else is humanity going to learn about the different ways we can organize society if we don't try them out? It would be phenomenal for humanity if people with ideas outside of the box organized as they saw fit without outside interference and we all get to see what works and what doesn't.
- tail_exchange 3y ago
  Isn't that why we don't have just a single country with a single set of laws? What experiment is being performed in Liberland that cannot be done in other countries that already exist?
  - chromoblob 3y ago
    It is indeed like you say. You are making a hyperbole, but essentially we have a single type of country.
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    >Isn't that why we don't have just a single country with a single set of laws? Historically this is not the reason. And as a justification for continuing to have many countries it would only be convincing if people were free to choose which "experiment" to join or start. The reality is, we are all guinea pigs that get thrown into some random country where some experiment has already started and we have no right opt out. If this is indeed someone's experiment, I would say it's highly unethical :)
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > What experiment is being performed in Liberland that cannot be done in other countries that already exist? Existing countries are captured by various interest groups who use their control over the government to their benefit. In a democracy this is generally various industries or government factions that control a large voting bloc or resources politicians need like campaign contributions. In a non-democracy the existing rulers want to remain in power and continue to rule as they see fit. If the experiment you want to run is a country with an extremely limited government, you would either need a stable country where that is already the case (not currently available), or a way to overcome the entrenched interests in some existing country (good luck), or you need a new country not already beleaguered by entrenched interests.
- LAC-Tech 3y ago
  [flagged]
- 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wodenokoto 3y ago
> Allowing some entity to establish a government in your lands just to see what happens doesn't seem like a wise move to me. It is land that Croatia very actively considers someone elses land. That is why Liberland was established there in the first place. Two countries are arguing "not mine, its yours" about a plot of land. If anything, this can be used against Croatia to argue that it is in fact Croatian territory
- lolinder 3y ago
  The reason why both countries refuse to claim ownership is actually really interesting: both sides agree that the Danube should be considered the border, but the Danube has changed course over the centuries in a way that left a lot more land on the east than was there before. Naturally, that means that Croatia insists on using the historical path of the Danube, while Serbia insists on the modern one. For either side to claim the land on the west of the current Danube would be to cede the larger quantity of land to the east.
- josefx 3y ago
  > It is land that Croatia very actively considers someone elses land. It doesn't consider the land to be "someone elses land" it considers the Serbian definition of the shared border faulty. Letting people that cite the Serbian definition of the border settle there is the last thing they want, since it actively undermines their own definition of where the border between it and Serbia should be over its entire length.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Liberland doesn't cite the Serbian definition of the border, they accept both definitions at once. If either definition were given preference there would be no terra nullius. If Croatia were serious about their border claims then they should see Liberland as strictly Serbia's problem. Edit: I suppose that actually allowing an independent state to settle there would ruin their chances of ever trading it with Serbia for the eastern land, but the chances of that are slim to none anyway.
    - 3y ago
helpfulContrib 3y ago
There are great artistic and cultural reasons to let this happen. After all, look what happened with Kugelmugel - another of these liberal experiments: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/austria/articles/kugelmugel-the-micronation-in-viennas-prater-park https://theculturetrip.com/europe/austria/articles/kugelmuge... Spoiler: the bigger states always win.
- acadapter 3y ago
  Denmark's Christiania had quite a long time of "hippie semi-anarchy", but it was formally reintegrated into society about 10 years ago. However, this was a product of the Boomer generation, when they were young. It might not be possible in today's more authoritarian world.

standardUser 3y ago

Most people would not consider it 'smart' for a sovereign nation to voluntarily give up territory. Maybe they could have responded less aggressively, but if you're waiting around for governments to start giving away land, keep waiting.

acadapter 3y ago
It's not a situation where someone is "giving up land". Croatia doesn't claim the land from its own legal perspective. The Croatian ambition is to use a historical path of the Danube river (from something like ~150 years ago) as the border. This way, Croatia could control larger pieces of land which today belong to Serbia. The line of control, after the war, is the modern-day river, which follows Serbia's claim. However, despite Croatia's claims, there's also been some gray-area Croatian forestry going on there, through Hrvatske Šume. And since the Liberland movement started to claim the parcel as "no man's land", Croatia started patrolling it with police and arresting people occasionally.

uxp8u61q 3y ago

They experimented, and they discovered what happens if you try to claim land that isn't yours. They also discovered what happens in a libertarian world when someone stronger than you wants your stuff.

claytongulick 3y ago
> They also discovered what happens in a libertarian world when someone stronger than you wants your stuff. How is this in any way unique to libertarians? Maybe take a look at civil forfeiture abuses in the US? Not to mention other county where the rule of law is more of a polite suggestion.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zzzeek 3y ago
  It's not unique but only apt as libertarianism advocates for dominance of the strongest
  - anon84873628 3y ago
    You seem to have conflated libertarianism with some other philosophy like the Ayn Rand stuff
    - zzzeek 3y ago
      Can I own a town and buy my own police force or not ?
      - anon84873628 3y ago
        Sure, it depends on the disposition of the polities around you and how strong the police/defense force is. You could also run it with any system of government you like, libertarian or otherwise. A lot of people in this thread are laughing at the Liberland folks for being doomed to fail, not realizing that "might makes right", etc. Well how would we be reacting if they became terrorists instead? Defended the area with homemade bombs? What if Jeff Bezos built a private army and decided to secede from the US? The morality or intellectual interest of a people's claim to a territory (along with their chosen system of government) is completely orthogonal to their ability to enforce it. For the other end of the spectrum just look at Ukraine, as others here have pointed out. And btw I'm personally not even a libertarian...

watwut 3y ago

The moment the experiment would turn illegal level of abusive or a murder would happen or whatever, the goverment would be seen as responsible.

emptyfile 3y ago

[dead]

tw04 3y ago

>Idiotic decision by Croatia, here I'm talking both as a Croatian, as well as someone supporting this kind of "liberal" experiments. Instead of seeing this as a fun experiment that wouldn't cost Croatian tax payer anything, the most politically controlled nepotistic organization full of "uhljeb's", Hrvatske sume, decided to act this way (under direction). I feel as though you're taking a rather naive view of the situation. Currently Croatia isn't claiming the land as their own because it's part of a larger dispute, and if they do lay claim to it, they lose a larger chunk of more important land to Serbia. Do you REALLY think if they allow ethnic Croatians to start building permanent settlements on the property in question, they can continue to claim that it's not theirs in the broader land dispute? This isn't "a fun experiment that costs taxpayers nothing". It is a GREAT way to lose permanent rights to a much larger swath of land so that some people who think they're free from government oversight can play make believe. I'm not sure what the actual benefit to the people of Croatia is but I'm open to ideas.

lolinder 3y ago
> Do you REALLY think if they allow ethnic Croatians to start building permanent settlements on the property in question Do we know the ethnicity of these settlers? The founder is Czech, and the resources I've found suggest that local Croats and Serbs are a tiny minority of those involved.
Kosirich 3y ago
I feel as though you're taking a rather naive view of the situation. Currently Croatia isn't claiming the land as their own because it's part of a larger dispute, and if they do lay claim to it, they lose a larger chunk of more important land to Serbia. You are right, I was being purposely naive in order to show the narrowness of thinking. The "gray area" of the law could have worked in this case for both side. Croatia government didn't have to do anything besides close one eye, which they do ALL THE TIME, for people "who know the right people". Feel free to google search the term "ilegalna gradnja" with Croatian location, to get a feeling of scale of it and how little a settlement like the one that was demolished really matters. There are too many of illegal settlements, usually in form of houses and luxury villas, that haven't been demolished for years, even even local governments pleaded to have them destroyed. To be crystal clear, I didn't suggest giving land to anyone, just make an exception that is made constantly for the "right people".

ufo 3y ago

From Croatia's point of view, these squatters would only make it even more difficult to resolve the border dispute. Croatia wants this land to belong to Serbia (in exchange for more land on the other side of the river), and having these people there might throw a wrench at the negotiations. Furthermore, if the negotiation goes Serbia's way then Croatia would have to deal with a bunch of squatters trying to set up a sovereign micronation on Croatian land.

harpiaharpyja 3y ago

The world would be a pretty different place if the organizations that make up the government of countries always did what was in the best interest of their country...

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

As a Croatian, I can't do whatever I want (esp. building) with various bits of land I actually own, why should these people get special treatment? I'm all for liberalisation of land use, and think Croatian bureaucracy and petty corruption are slowly destroying the Croatian state economically, but people acting independent of the law, because they claim they're special, doesn't wash. The tourist angle is a red herring. Tolerating unlawful occupation isn't smart at all.

Zak 3y ago
What makes this weird is that Croatia says this land belongs to Serbia, but sent police there to enforce Croatian laws against people there.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  What you're saying is repeated constantly through this discussion, but it's very misleading. There is a border dispute and that land is a part of the dispute. Another reading of the situation is that Serbia can claim that the land is a part of Croatia because they've allowed people to inhabit it and it's contagious to Croatian land, given that 'Liberland' has no legal basis. Given that Croatia has no good options here, they've chosen the least harmful option.
  - Zak 3y ago
    It doesn't seem like the "Liberland" people have any claim to the territory, but I don't think that makes my point misleading. If Croatia says the territory belongs to Serbia, then Croatia has no business sending police there outside of very narrow circumstances such as people there launching attacks into territory Croatia does claim. On the other hand, Croatia would probably be within its rights to enforce a border with this territory, as would Serbia. That would rapidly become unpleasant for anyone trying to live there.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
      The Liberland people are exactly claiming the land, that's the whole point of what they're doing. Croatia, even if it claims the land is Serbia, consistent with its border claim, it still administers it as a practical matter, that includes keeping people out of where they shouldn't be.