Documentary: Stateless - Anarchy Emigrates by Todd Schramke

[grarpamp]

https://statelessdoc.com/blog/



Reprogramming Society
To Reinvent Civilization Without States

Acapulco, Mexico was ranked the fourth most dangerous city in the
world in 2015 by the U.S. State Department, which advised American
travelers to avoid the region. In this city that same year,
controversial Anarcho-Capitalist internet personality Jeff Berwick
launched the Anarchapulco Conference.

The three day event was designed to attract other “ancaps”,
libertarians, and crypto-anarchists to Acapulco, with hopes of
encouraging many to become residents of the region and build a new
community of government-evaders.

Nathan and Lisa Freeman decided after attending the first Anarchapulco
that they wanted to dive in. Relocating for both for their ethical
principles and for the ability to raise their children without
government oversight, they left their comfortable middle-class life in
Georgia to live in Mexico.

The next year, Nathan took over the responsibility of running the
conference. His efforts, combined with an explosion in the value of
cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, allowed the event to grow each year,
with the 2018 conference attracting over 1600 people. He juggles this
operation while also remotely working as a partner at a software
consulting firm and fathering three kids.

The eclectic community also includes a couple in their mid-twenties,
John and Lily, who fled across the border after being arrested for
manufacturing cannabis products. Arriving in Acapulco with only $30
and no passports, their lifestyle contrasts dramatically against the
Freemans.

Following the 2017 conference, John and Lily became dissatisfied with
the more “centralized” direction taken by Anarchapulco. So they
decided to create their own event called “Anarchaforko,” an homage to
the ‘forking’ process in the world of software development, one which
has analogously shaped the world of cryptocurrencies.

The film also looks into the life of Erika Harris, who stayed in
Acapulco after attending the 2016 conference. She is perhaps the most
unique figure in the community not only on a superficial level — being
a black woman — but more importantly on a philosophical level.

“These are soul issues. These are organic, cosmic issues,” she says
while feeling the politicization of the freedom movement and its
tendency to embrace the left-right paradigm of the mainstream.

The most common point of skepticism in the blockchain-sphere is the
lack of real-world application. This film contests that point by
dissecting the lives of these renegades, dreamers, and revolutionaries
and asks the question: Is a stateless world possible?