Share
Free Zone
For as long as there is government, there will be sentient beings who wish to set up places free of restrictions that even the most Laissez Faire Government will tend to impose. Hence the Free Zone.
   —Seraphina Kayye
"Free Zone" is a generic term for any region, as small as a single dwelling or as large as an entire star cluster in which there is no government control or regulation of any kind.

The NoCoZo is a huge Free Economic Zone (with some extra provisions on non-initiation of force); which was how it started. Of course, the treaty mainly deals with member organizations/corps/systems, not individuals, but Tier II worlds are also Free Economic Zones internally. Some parts of Keter are Free Zones too, as well as various large areas of the Cygexpa and STC volumes.

Ideally, in a Free Zone there are no laws of any sort whatsoever, and sophonts can do whatever they want, as expressed in the famous cosmopagan statement "do whatever you want, but harm no-one". Free Zones are also variously referred to as PFZs (Permanent Free Zones), AFZ (Autonomous Free Zones), PAZs (Permanent Autonomous Zones), AFZ (Anarchic Free Zones) and FZC (Free Zone - Creative region). Although a few Free Zones have been around for centuries, most do not last long, due to internal squabbling among inhabitants about how best to "manage" the zone).

Other variants on the Free Zone concept include Feral Zone (sometimes harmless, sometimes not), Pirate Zone, (does away with the "harm no-one" bit), Libertarian Homicidist zone (they choose to actively harm others as it is part of their freedom of choice to do so), Free Economic Zone (very popular in the NoCoZo), Datahaven, Autonomous Tax Haven, AI-Free zone (the anarcho-anthropist version), and so on.

 
Related Articles
 
Appears in Topics
Non-Coercive Zone (NoCoZo)Types of Government
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 29 October 2001.

 
 
>