Casey Given: Guiding the Free Cities Narrative
“Showing the bottom up potential of Free Cities is tremendous. I think of the brilliant Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto who talks about dead capital and how there’s knowledge distributed throughout the world.
There are geniuses living in poor countries all over the world, but oftentimes they’re not able to really make much of their lives because of their dead capital, because their institutions don’t allow entrepreneurs to realise their potential. Not just for themselves, but for their communities and for the world. So many great inventions could be made that poor institutions are suppressing.
So I think that really emphasising that kind of opportunistic, social mobility messaging is what can make Free Cities really thrive.“
This week on the podcast I had an excellent conersation with Casey Given.
Casey is the president and executive director of Young Voices which is a nonprofit agency that aims to cultivate the next generation of libertarian thought leaders in policy, journalism, and academia, or as Casey himself describes it, “A talent agency for heterodox thinkers”.
Casey has an interesting connection with the Free Cities movement through his undergrad student days and UC Berkley where he hosted a number of prominent seasteaders at the university’s libertarian club which he founded.
In this conversation, we discuss Young Voices’s strategy for creating change in the media, both the legacy version and the new media landscape of soundbites and social influencers. I’m also lucky enough to get some excellent advice from Casey on the best way to get the Free Cities narrative out there and into the mainstream.
All in all, this is a great conversation if, like me, you are sincerely interested in having a direct impact on hearts and minds. Many thanks to Casey for being so candid and accommodating with his time.
Enjoy the conversation.