22. The Plan for a Tropical Libertarian Paradise
Michael Oliver, a Las Vegas real estate developer, was a far-right-anarcho-libertarian, anti-communist, anti-tax activist, and advocate of strict adherence to the gold standard. He was also an avid Ayn Rand fan. So avid that he created a shady radical libertarian group, the Phoenix Foundation, which attracted sleazy intelligence agents, laissez faire capitalist extremists, mobsters, and drug and sex traffickers. They supported multiple violent attempts to create independent libertarian countries. All on tropical islands on territory to be seized from brown people. The attempts were a mixture of the hilarious, cringe worthy, sinister, and sad. All of them backfired.
The first such plan was tried out in 1972, when Oliver and associates laid claim to an artificial island atop a submerged reef in the South Pacific. They declared it to be the Republic of Minerva, a libertarian paradise without “taxation, welfare, subsidies, or any form of economic interventionism“. Minerva had its own president and currency, and its founders hoped it would eventually attract up to 30,000 residents. However, Minerva was located in Tongan waters. When the king of Tonga sent a force to wave spears at the invaders, Oliver was forced to flee and take his dreams of a global capital flight center elsewhere.
