participant-3927, 3:31 AM, March 23
This is an article from 1972 about a project calle PREFORM aka Free Isles.
participant-3927, 3:32 AM, March 23
PREFORM WAS THE FIRST
Preform (also Free Isles) was initiated by some inspired and energetic young persons in Santa Monica and the general Los Angeles area in 1963 and continued actively into 1965. Seeing no hope of the United States becoming truly free any time in the near future, these libertarians set about planning a new country with laissez-faire capitalism. The story is recorded in the PREFORM-INFORM NEWSLETTER, which evolved into the present-day VONULIFE.
participant-3927, 6:04 AM, March 23
Found this book (available on kindle): “Vonu: The Search for Personal Freedom”, El Rayo
participant-4603, 8:57 AM, March 23
This is a great classic article that I do reference in the Startup States book, and I think it’s one of the first places that anyone looking to set up a brand new country should go to, as it does highlight what was going on more than 50 years ago. People have been trying this for a long time, and I do think Operation Atlantis, as well as the adventures of Mike Oliver, along with even Hemingway’s brother, make for great case studies.
I do sense that, for the most part, many of those earlier attempts were rather sincere and were not necessarily swashbuckling type programmes, but rather a realisation that even back then it was difficult to beat back and rein in the leviathan. I mean, back then Ayn Rand was very much alive in the flesh. I think Greenspan was still hanging out at her apartment, and the libertarian party was in its infancy. To think that there was still the Cold War and decolonisation was still unfolding.
participant-3927, 1:24 PM, March 23
1963 Launch: Rayo was in his early twenties (born circa 1941) when he and his wife, Dana, started the
PREFORM research group in Southern California.
Background: Before transitioning to the “Vonu” lifestyle, Rayo was a student and researcher interested in chemistry and systemic logic. His age during the
PREFORM-INFORM years (1963–1965) reflects the youthful, experimental nature of the early “New Country” movement.
The “Vonu” Shift: By his late 20s (the late 1960s), he fully committed to the “invulnerability to coercion” lifestyle, eventually disappearing into the wilderness near
Cave Junction, Oregon, where the
VONULIFE newsletters were later distributed.
Rayo’s writings from this period are often characterized by the rigorous, almost clinical tone of a young scientist applying his training to the problem of political escape.
participant-3927, 1:24 PM, March 23
I got this summary from Gemini
participant-3927, 1:25 PM, March 23
The “Vulnerability” Problem: Rayo critiqued Galt’s Gulch as being too vulnerable. In the book, the valley remains safe because it is hidden by a “refractor ray” (science fiction), but Rayo noted that in reality, the state eventually finds every “gulch.” Therefore, he focused on
mobile living and
strict privacy (Vonu) rather than a static hidden colony. Rayo focused on
low-tech survivalism and “voluntary insignificance”. He believed being a “Great Man” like Galt made you a target; being an “invisible man” made you free.
participant-3927, 1:26 PM, March 23
And that
participant-3927, 1:39 PM, March 23
But the biggest problem with Rayo was his anarchism. It only seemed to me from first glance that his free isles was a central government. Gemini says that the isle could elect to forbid abortion or free speech.
participant-3927, 1:43 PM, March 23
There is also no freedom in mobile living, if you have to raise children. Kids need to have geographic stability, and availability of group classes. It takes a village to raise a child.
participant-3927, 1:46 PM, March 23
Also, you can’t find a wife in this lifestyle. Rayo was already married in his twenties, he found his wife while studying in university.
participant-3927, 1:53 PM, March 23
**A Critique of “New Country” Projects:**Through the
PREFORM research, he intellectually “deconstructed” the idea of starting a new country, concluding that any physical, static colony would inevitably be crushed or corrupted. This moved libertarian thought toward
mobile and
digital forms of escape
participant-3927, 1:59 PM, March 23
Also, if you have to give up Amazon, the iPhone, Uber and other pleasures of modern living, to avoid tax, it’s a net loss.
The more modern version of this escapism idea is the “Nomad Capitalist” guy, as well as the Latin Life podcast where I did a guest interview.
participant-3927, 3:23 PM, March 23
Note, I have also dismissed the Galt’s Gulch idea for the same reason. We don’t have technology to hide it as effectively as was done in the book. However, even in the book it was not a country, it was a club. One couldn’t hide a country, no matter the technology, and hiding it won’t be needed anyway. Even historical China, as isolated as it tried to be, interacted with the world and was known to the world.
participant-3927, 3:42 PM, March 23
We no longer need a Galt’s Gulch, which was was a place to enjoy life and to conspire. If the end-game is a new state, the “gulch” can’t remain secret forever, if it ever to become a country. But we also have today a technology to conspire using encryption, while most things, such as things said on websites and Telegram groups, do not need to be private.
participant-4603, 4:16 PM, March 23
Right, exactly, there’s no sense in taking a hit to one’s quality of life. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all about having a better, enhanced quality of life.
I’ve repeatedly made the case to others that I don’t want to have to live in the woods and slaughter my own chickens and do all of those sorts of things. To me, that is not freedom.
participant-3927, 10:27 PM, March 24
I will be doing tomorrow a podcast (in Russian) with the leader of the movement for a sovereign St. Petersburg (Maxim Kuzahmetov). The campaign is for the city and the surrounding region totalling 90,000 square km to be independent from Russia. (That’s 4 times the size of Israel, for comparison.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Ingria
participant-3927, 9:21 PM, March 25
At time code 43 min, Tim Allen notes that the tech gives the state more means to enforce statism. That is the point that I have been making too. Contrary to what crypto evangelists think, technology won’t let you to beat the government’s statism. The same technology that helps you evade it, will help it to monitor you and regulate you. Yaron Brook this, that in the long term technology gives the individual more power than the statist state. I doubt it.
participant-3927, 12:34 PM, March 26
Ok, as historical study, however please note that Stoicism is a bad philosophy. The ARI did a piece on this in the attempt to curb its growing popularity. It points out that Stoicism promotes determinism, and has a flawed theory of value.
https://newideal.aynrand.org/the-false-promise-of-stoicism/
participant-3927, 12:38 PM, March 26
What I recall from my own study, its mysticism, a form of faith (it has the demiurge); and, its anti-life, it’s against love, attachments, friendships, all in the name of not getting hurt. It’s a kind of inverted hedonism — accepting the principle that pleasure is the most important thing, and treating pleasure as the avoidance of pain.
participant-4603, 4:24 PM, March 26
An inverted hedonism… Never thought of it that way.
participant-4603, 4:24 PM, March 26
Definitely, not good about determinism.
participant-2294, 1:57 PM, March 27
A 100% nonhedonistic philosophy is not compatible with human nature
participant-2294, 2:04 PM, March 27
And Ayn Rand always had a cigarette in her mouth in photos, so I’m right 😂
participant-2294, 2:14 PM, March 27
Stoics and Neostoics are a very small niche, and generally decent people. I do not give priority to criticizing their philosophy.
participant-2294, 2:16 PM, March 27
For a Californian think tank, their way of choosing priorities is questionable. I believe they will fade into insignificance.
participant-3927, 2:51 PM, March 27
A lot of people are searching for a philosophy, since they realize that neither Christianity nor Postmodernism is good. So they look back in history and find people like Marcus Aurelius who seemed to be successful and worthy of listening to. But Ayn Rand went further back, to Aristotle, fixed up his philosophy to modernize, and the result is Objecticism. However, people don’t accept Objectivism since it is too radical. They prefer someone like Aurelius (although he wasn’t a philosopher, only a practitioner of stoicism).
participant-3927, 2:55 PM, March 27
Ayn Rand wrote that the values manifest as physical pleasure. ( I don’t remember we the exact quote, I might be misremembering the formulation. ) But describing it as hedonism would be wrong, and probably an equivocation.
participant-4603, 3:00 PM, March 27
She sure did. Something about Prometheus.
participant-3927, 6:50 AM, March 28
The Socialist Histadrut organization (from Hebrew: getting settled), which was founded in 1920s in Palestine, was an example of market phenomenon. It raised funds through donations, brougth people from abroad to employ in its factories. Any one could do this, but the Histadrut did it better. There was no element of force, or threat of force: people joined Histadrut voluntarily and could have left. It taking caer of its employees is no different from Facebook, Amazon, and Musk’s companies which arrange the lives of their employees. A friend who worked in Facebook for half a year told me that he can’t remember the last time he had to use his wallet. Capitalism is a political system that permits voluntary socialist or communist associations.
But after the Israeli indpendence, Histadrut became a crony of the goverement, a monopoly supported by the government. That was a big mistake.
participant-3927, 5:25 PM, March 28
Summary by ChatGPT: After independence, the Histadrut became a state-backed power that forced other businesses and workers to follow its rules. It could dictate wages, working conditions, and hiring practices for companies it didn’t own, and workers couldn’t negotiate higher pay or different terms on their own. Independent companies often had to comply to get contracts or hire employees. This use of state-backed authority to control others—rather than voluntary action—was coercive and undermined freedom, making the system closer to fascist control than private enterprise.
participant-3927, 5:37 PM, March 28
That was in relation to other businesses which Histadrut regulated. As for businesses that Histadrut owned, they were de-facto state owned. Histadrut got the majority of government contracts. Other companies could bid, but they had to abide by the standards set by Histadrut, in order to qualify.
participant-4603, 9:09 AM, March 29
I remember back when I was an undergrad learning a lot about the early history of contemporary Israel and leaning back in my chair at the lecture hall and thinking, man, if only the early organisers had been more into the free market, but what would have happened?
I mean I understand why they weren’t. I do get it, especially where they were coming from and what they were up against and trying to do. It’s just interesting to think if only there had been more of an Austrian economics or Ayn Rand type bent to those arriving in the land in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Then again, I guess those folks would find their way to New York.
participant-3927, 10:34 PM, March 29
That’s why Anthemism is so unique. Except United States — yet even that is questionable, for the founders did not have Ayn Rand’s philosophical amunition — no one has tried to create a new country on the
correct premises.
participant-3927, 10:38 PM, March 29
I think that Zionism was the bigger drive than Socialist Zionism. Herzl was much less of a socialist than the Jewish settlers of Palestine. Would Golda Meir come to New York if she was a capitalist? I doubt it. She came to Palestine not so much for socialism, but to build a Jewish national home — for Zionism.
