*Adventure Capitalism*

The author is Raymond B. Craib and the subtitle is A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age.  This is really two books in one.  The first is a quite useful and well-researched history of various libertarian attempts to ease the costs of political exit, or sometimes to obtain exit altogether.  He is well-informed about the 1972 Michael Oliver attempt to set up the libertarian “Isle of Minerva,” nearby to Tonga.  The King of Tonga nixed it, but even Rothbard and Tuccille mocked it.  And remember Jimmy Stevens and the Phoenix Foundation and their plans near New Caledonia?  This stuff was never the libertarian mainstream, or close to it, but it dominates this book (that said it is a fascinating story and well-researched).

Nonetheless these odd goings-on are treated as “the history of libertarian exit” when in fact plenty of other plans were afoot, how about say free movement within the European Union? The dismantling of capital controls?  Fighting to have the Berlin Wall come down?

The narrative then continues through seasteading, charter cities, Balaji, and so on.

The second book contained herein is simply a use of smear terms and sneering, Nancy MacLean style, to indicate that these various ventures are bad, playthings of the evil wealthy, anti-democratic, even loose affiliates of these ventures were bad people, and so on.  Usually there is not even an argument, rather it is assumed that somehow the reader is on board with an anti-exit perspective.  In this regard the author is simply a defective thinker.

I’ll leave the final evaluation up to you.