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Comment by tinco | Hacker News Reader

This country is also on the verge of having its first war. The Liberland flag has already been removed by another micro-nation that claims to have laid claim on the land just over a month earlier:

http://www.paraduin.nl/?p=173

Unfortunately, the Paraduin people seem a bit nutty to me. An excerpt from their constitution, which is in Dutch:

"Paraduin is een monarchie. De titel van de monarch is prins(es), voluit Prins(es) van Paraduin. Monarch zijn Prins Ogidius en diens wettige opvolgers. De opvolging wordt bij wet geregeld."

Translates to:

"Paraduin is a monarchy. The monarch holds the title of Prince(ss), in full the Prince(ss) of Paraduin. Monarchs are Prince Ogidius and his lawful successors. Succession is determined by law."

Paraduin itself is something like a religion, they (if there's more than one person, I'm not sure) believe there's a magical parallel universe from which some people are fleeing unto the earth we live on.

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Something like this happend to this oilrig land "sealand".

People think it's easy to found your own country. Just find unclaimed space and be done with it.

But there are many rich people out in the world who would hire armies to kill for such a spot.

That's a very good point. Obviously the only way any country can be bootstrapped is with military power. If Liberland is serious they should immediately engage Paraduin with a show of force. Secondly, I think the best course of action would be to secure funding for buying a protectorate like situation with either Croatia or Serbia. Though I don't know what the political consequences of such a situation would be.

Imagine if from those 160.000 signups they could get 5.000 people to pay $1000 in taxes per year, that could fund a Serbian police/military officer and a small office. Just his presence and his commitment to engage in violent conflict with aggressors could deter any other party. (Killing him would be an act-of-war or at least a criminal act against his country)

> if they could get 5.000 people to pay $1000 in taxes per year,

Not sure they appreciate the concept of shared expenses though, from their objectives "a country where honest people can prosper without being oppressed by governments making their lives unpleasant through the burden of unnecessary restrictions and taxes.".

The key word there is unnecessary. Having some sort of police or military would be considered to be necessary by most.

That's why it's hard to make a country. You have to allocate resources to education, defense, health, public goods maintenance, etc. And inevitably some people will think that some expenses are not necessary.

It seems like killing the only security officer in a country would probably be the end of the war.. Most of the expressions of interest I've seen are explicitly because people think they'll be able to stop paying taxes so I'm curious what kind of voluntary funds they would be able to raise.

I think the point was that killing a Serbian military officer would start a war with Serbia. Of course, the challenging part would be convincing Serbia to back the scheme; if Serbia was going to defend the territory they'd be more likely to claim it themselves.

Serbia has no intention to claim this territory whatsoever. Serbia treats the Danube as the border and that is it. The new Danube stream that is, the one now dividing the two countries. There is an old Danube stream which is almost completely gone decades ago, and Croatia considers it its border. The reason is that there are some other inversely interweaving parts which are pretty and maybe a nice tourist attraction and both countries want them. So, accepting Liberland as their own territory would mean waving the right to those other, more profitable, territories. But TBH, using the old stream as the border would just cause more trouble.

To be fair, I'm a Serb and I fully welcome Liberland. Since the two neighbors cannot decide on their boundaries, I do not see why anyone else cannot take a no-mans land. The issue is that we must define our borders sooner or later, and I am afraid there will be no more space for Liberland. But, that will be Croatia's business then, I hope :D .

Neither Serbia nor Croatia claim the land because they both -- under different interpretations of the underlying agreement -- recognize it as land belonging to the other under an agreement between the two of them.

This also makes it unlikely that either would act as a guarantor of the independence of a new sovereignty that sought to establish itself on the land, or even to recognize such a sovereignty.

If they could get 100k people to use Amazon affiliate links for all their purchases, they'd have another revenue source.

I think that before they start to launch home made missiles they should check if Paraduin is not just some Dutch artists making a communication joke.

"Imagine if from those 160.000 signups they could get 5.000 people to pay $1000 in taxes per year"

Wasn't the point of founding this country to get away from taxes? How ironic

RDL from here lived on Sealand, I believe:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3766509

>But there are many rich people out in the world who would hire armies to kill for such a spot.

This is tribalism (or our modern version - nation states) in a nutshell. For all the hand wringing here about NSA SIGINT, defense spending, etc the reality is that the world is dangerous place. Not too long ago "liberal intellectuals", "russophiles," and "policy experts" were telling us how Russia was just going to eventually become a defacto if not outright EU member, would never invade a neighbor, never target civilians explicitly, never annex land, etc. These people forgot the golden rule of civilization: war happens.

While taking this opportunity to 'demonstrate' your point of view (and how it's justified) concerning military/defense, it is just an opinion. I'd say it's more of a cultural sickness, than a human necessity. At least most people claim to believe in the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, even if they can't find a way to walk the walk (just talk the talk).

Considering the worst mass murderers, despots, and warmongers of history were usually devoutly religious, I really, really don't think you want to play the religion card here. Heck, by far our most Jesusy president, GWB, sent over 100,000 Iraqis to their deaths by starting a major conflict with them with trumped up intel and knowing full well the civilian cost would be huge. Hitler considered himself a good Christian. Putin is a good Christian loved by the Orthodox church. Iran beheads women who supposedly cheat on their husbands yet as a theocracy they follow Allah's benevolence. The religious middle-east in general is humanity's armpit. Need I go on?

>>> Hitler considered himself a good Christian

Well, sort of a nitpick but Hitler and religion is a bit more complicated than that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

> more of a cultural sickness, than a human necessity.

Probably not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

Paraduin is an april's fools joke: http://www.paraduin.nl/?page_id=9

A country establishes itself as a legitimate country in the international community by surviving war.

> Paraduin is een monarchie. De titel van de monarch is prins(es)

I've always found the similarities between Dutch and English fascinating. I can actually understand that!

Simply commenting to confirm the translation is (perhaps surprisingly) accurate.

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