Liberland is also entirely tax-free, something its interior minister, Ivan Pernar, a controversial Croatian former MP who was kicked out of parliament for spreading conspiracy theories, explains to me.
“Usually, people who believe in freedom, decentralised finances and so on, they tend to be from the upper class of society,” Pernar tells me. “If you make zero selection and you say whoever comes on [the] boat is welcome, we would end up like [the] UK. We don’t want that.”
“So it’s liberty, but… some people have more liberty than others?” I ask. One of the main ways to gain power and influence in Liberland appears to be through money, I suggest.
“Of course,” says Pernar. He says that if you had “a bunch of bums in your country without anything”, others would have to contribute to their benefits. He goes on to compare the poor to animals. “Don’t feed the animals, because if you do, they will be accustomed to that and they will lose [the] ability to feed themselves. The same is with people.”
To Liberland’s wealthy backers, helping the poor – or indeed any form of taxation or centralised redistribution of wealth – is an affront to their individual liberty. This view is shared, unsurprisingly, by people in this world with far more money and influence than Pernar.