How much freedom can you actually build without legal autonomy, and what's the real price of staying put? Two men who've answered that question differently, swapping questions in Próspera.
- A different format this week. Timothy and Patrick recorded during the Free Cities Conference in Próspera, and with neither of them having much time, they made it a collaboration with Patrick's own show, The Freedom Lover's Life. Timothy asks first, then Patrick turns it round.
Patrick is CEO and co-founder of Veritas Villages and of its parent company Autris. He's Canadian, left partly because of the tax rate and partly because he could see where the country was going, and has spent the years since building freedom-oriented, off-grid communities across Latin America. Coronado in Panama is now sold out, with the adjoining land optioned and permitting underway. Chiriquí, Playa Pacífica in Nicaragua, and now Atenas in Costa Rica, on a property that National Geographic once called the best climate in the world.
At Atennas, thirty hectares, roughly the size of Casco Viejo in Panama City, laid out as a walkable European settlement rather than a resort. Timothy's question is the obvious one: Patrick has none of Próspera's legal autonomy and is building under the laws of the countries he's in, so how much freedom can you actually create that way? And what happens when a hundred people who agree on the non-aggression principle disagree about a third tennis court?
Then Patrick turns it round and asks the question Timothy gets from listeners constantly. Given everything he says about Britain, why is he still living there? The answer takes in stamp duty, exit taxes, a house that has quietly become a liability, and three children who have no idea any of this conversation is happening. Timothy calls it his definitive answer.
From there it opens out: Bill C-9 in Canada, Lucy Connolly, what Ursula von der Leyen meant by savings being lazy, Bitcoin as insurance rather than investment, why South America is becoming the capitalist half of the hemisphere, and whether the places either of them grew up in still feel like the same places.
WATCH HERE: Video version of this episode
Key topics covered
- Coronado sold out, and the option on the second half of the mountain
- Atenas, Costa Rica, and the best climate in the world
- Thirty hectares reserved to build a European town
- Why Avignon rather than a resort
- What a developer builds and what the residents decide
- Running a homeowners association on a blockchain
- Why libertarians agree on principles and nothing else
- Building freedom without legal autonomy
- Why governments want an example before they go first
- Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay: spreading the risk across jurisdictions
- Why Bitcoiners are leaving Brazil for Paraguay
- Bill C-9 and proving your own innocence
- Lucy Connolly and thirteen months in prison
- European lazy savings
- Why Timothy's paid-off house is now a liability
- Stamp duty, wealth taxes and exit taxes
- Why Timothy is still in Britain, and what would change it
- The cost of moving children who don't know anything is wrong
- Recycling theatre and regulating the plastic bottle
- Bottle caps, and deliberate littering as protest
- Why the news stopped saying "and finally"
Addendum: The “lazy savings” remark discussed in this episode was made by Ursula von der Leyen, not Christine Lagarde.
Timestamps (Audio version only. Includes Timothy's introduction)
00:30 Introduction
04:02 Free Cities news: Praxis announces Uruguay
05:12 The Daily Mail does Próspera
08:07 Start of conversation
08:50 Coronado sold out, and the second half
10:05 A business, not an intentional community
10:56 What freedom actually looks like in Panama
12:01 Bill C-9 and the reversal of innocence
13:43 Handing infrastructure to the residents
15:40 The HOA on a blockchain
17:19 Atenas and the best climate in the world
18:54 Thirty hectares for a town
21:33 Why Avignon
23:03 Can you build what you like on your own lot?
25:27 Aspirations of sovereignty
26:23 Why governments want to see it done first
29:26 Why spread across multiple countries
32:44 South America turns right as the West turns left
34:45 How democracies end
35:00 Lagarde, savings and what she actually said
38:03 Bitcoin as the simple option
40:35 Patrick turns it round
41:14 Wealth taxes, exit taxes and the house as liability
47:13 Stamp duty, and paying a tax about to be abolished
49:38 Why Timothy is still in Britain
51:50 Moving children who don't know anything is wrong
54:33 What changed in Canada
56:20 Bins, recycling and regulating the plastic bottle
59:07 Bottle caps
1:00:26 Hate speech arrests and Lucy Connolly
1:04:04 What has and hasn't reached Timothy's door
1:06:59 Asking an AI about Swedish crime statistics
1:09:30 Culture, governance and where it starts to matter
1:13:55 Bringing back "and finally"
1:16:33 Panama, and a Central America trip
Guest: Patrick Hiebert - Veritas Villages | Autris | Patrick on Instagram
The Free Cities Podcast is the official podcast of the Free Cities Foundation, hosted by Timothy Allen. New episodes every Friday. Long-form, in-person conversations with the builders, investors, residents and thinkers shaping the future of Free Cities, charter cities, special economic zones, network states, private cities and governance innovation worldwide.
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