Free Republic

The world’s newest microcountry wants to become its foremost tax haven. Liberland, which sits on 2.7 square-miles of land along the Danube River between Serbia and Croatia, was founded earlier this month and plans to have only voluntary taxes. "We don’t want the state to take money from the people," Vít Jedlička, a native of Prague and Liberland's new president, told Business Insider in a phone interview. "We want to have voluntary taxes." Elected into office by a three-person committee, Jedlička says he started Liberland to “turn the concept of a state upside down.” After working as a financial analyst...

Accessible only by car via miles of winding, dusty Croatian roads, Gornja Siga – current population zero – is an unlikely testing ground for a plan to shape the world’s political future. It is a secluded area where verdant forest meets white sand on a western bank of the river Danube. The only signs of life are a single dilapidated building with a curious flag flying outside, pheasants, deer, the occasional wild boar, and eagles and falcons overhead. Yet last Monday the Eurosceptic Czech politician Vit Jedlicka and two other libertarians declared this 7 sq km of Serbo-Croat no-man’s-land the...