020 - Tom Palmer: Liberating Prosperity, Atlas Network & Problems with Free Cities

Today we’re beginning our series of interviews recorded in Poland and we’re starting out with a conversation I had with Tom Palmer during the Weekend Kapitalizmu conference. Tom is an American Libertarian author and theorist, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network. Just prior to recording this episode, Peter Young, The Free Cities Foundation’s CEO was chatting with myself and Tom in our makeshift studio in Warsaw and it such an interesting discussion that I asked Peter to come onto the podcast with us to further the conversation. As a result, after briefly discussing Tom’s work at Atlas Network, he and Peter end up deconstructing some of the concepts underlying Free Cities and we get a very useful insight into Tom’s thoughts on the general validity of the Free Cities model itself. I would like to say Many thanks to Tom and Peter for making this a lively and interesting dialogue Enjoy the conversation. TWITTER: Atlas Network: https://twitter.com/AtlasNetwork Timothy Allen: https://twitter.com/MrTimothyAllen Peter Young: https://twitter.com/petermiyoung Free Cities Foundation: https://twitter.com/freecitiesfound WEBSITES: Atlas Network: https://www.atlasnetwork.org/ Free Cities Foundation: https://free-cities.org/ TIMESTAMPS: 00:10 - Introduction to this episode 02:59 - A brief history of Atlas Network 06:09 - Street vending in Burundi 12:34 - Why should we prioritise dignity in development? 19:15 - The free cities model 25:27 - The difference between a free city and a free private city 29:38 - How did the guilds become anti-competitive monopolists? 36:29 - Can a child become stateless in a free city? 41:51 - Localised tyranny vs a free society 48:58 - How do we deal with the question of children leaving communities? 55:26 - What kind of city do you want to live in? 1:00:15 - What happens to people who choose to leave communities? 1:05:25 - The attractive element of the idea of enterprise zones 1:11:01 - The resurgence of friendly societies and private cities 1:18:22 - Innovation as a driver of human improvement