Thomas Walker-Werth: Free City Planning, Frontier Governance & Colonising Outer Space
“I wrote an article trying to apply John Locke’s principles of property to something like Mars. His basic principle is that if you mix your labour with a natural resource then you own the result. It’s the same moral principle that Ayn Rand identified that you have a right to the product of your productive effort.
So if you go to Mars, and you start making a bit of Martian land valuable and turning that natural desert into something productive like a city or a mining operation, then you should own that. That doesn’t mean that reaching Mars means you own the entire planet, it just means you own the bit of it that you made useful.“
Today’s podcast was one of my favourite interviews from our recent trip to LibertyCon in Lisbon during which I was fortunate enough to get time to speak with Thomas Walker Werth.
Thomas is an associate editor at The Objective Standard and a former town planner in the UK which means he has much to say about the designing and organising of Free Cities.
During our conversation we take a deep dive into the reality of what it’s actually like planning a town as well as making some predictions about the prospect of designing places to live in outer space, particularly Mars. Thomas has uniquely informed opinions on the morality and practice of governance in these future frontiers which, prior to our conversation was not something I had ever thought about.
Other topics covered include: New urbanism, 15 minute cities, post modernism, flying cars, environmentalism, collectivism and we discuss the role that Elon Musk might play in the future of alternative governance models.
I loved this conversation. Full of facts and figures and intelligent observations. I feel as if I learnt alot and I hope that you too will get to take away as much as I did.
Enjoy the conversation.