I love finding new paths for voluntary initiatives.

I am co-author of Founding Startup Societies, an in-depth guidebook on how to bootstrap and grow free communities. It draws on my experience in more than 50 countries over the past five decades, including pioneering micro-voucher projects for eLearning and helping tech parks break free from telecoms monopolies. My current work is on “endowment zones.” These areas share rising land value gains as new policy reforms and AI-based tools take root in areas burdened by state failure. Such experimental zones will help spread alternatives that offer broad-based wins in learning, healthcare, basic service delivery, and self-governance.

My career in free zones began with launching the Earthport project in the mid-1970s, an initiative backed by Bucky Fuller, Freeman Dyson, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Siamak Khorram, and Larry Smarr. It sought to create an international freeport on the equator for commercial space launch ventures. I also served as an early publisher and managing editor of Reason magazine, where I co-founded (with Robert W. Poole, Jr.) the Local Government Center, the first research organization specializing in large-scale transfers of municipal functions to contractual providers. For the Sabre Foundation, I led projects on enterprise zone, land trust, and self-help ventures at local, state, and federal levels in the United States, including projects to form self-funding community land trusts through fiscal incentives. I also researched opportunities, with support from the Paul F. Glenn Foundation, for creation of World Cities as potential Singapore- and Hong Kong scale havens offering fresh starts to economic migrants and refugees.

I have been active as cofounder or lead advisor at Openworld, the Startup Societies Foundation, and a range of technology-oriented consultancies and startup ventures. Many of these projects introduced legal and regulatory regimes benefiting technology park and enterprise zone developers. Others supported entrepreneurial schools and telecenter operators in obtaining microvouchers and land grants (Kyrgyzstan), in creating online work-study projects for students (Somaliland), and in crowdfunding – with Shannon Ewing’s immense help – microscholarships and peer learning (Sri Lanka). I have longstanding interests in peer learning innovations and have contributed to the design of pilot eLearning projects with Openworld Learning (a U.S.-Russian eLearning venture), the Center for Advanced Engineering Studies at MIT, and Digiperfect in India. I am presently embarked on a “Neighborhood Share” initiative, in which AirBnb/VRBO hosts set aside a percentage of their earnings to seed local work-study projects that make areas more inviting to visit and live in.

My most recent published works are on ways that catalytic philanthropy can spread next-generation free zones, and on AI-enabled cooperation among sovereign individuals across cultural, political, and species divides. These included chapters in a book on Freedompreneurs published by Duncker and Humblot in Berlin (2025). Earlier writings include Emergence of a New Hanseatic League (Chapman Law Review), Stimulating Community Enterprise (Joint Economic Committee of Congress), Privatizing the City (Heritage Foundation Policy Review), Online Free Markets and Entrepreneurship in the Muslim World (Institute of Economic Affairs), and Frontiers for Free Trade (American Astronautical Society). I have been an invited speaker at the White House Fellows Program, Harvard Business School, New Worlds Conference, Templeton Foundation, International Space University, World Bank, and the Municipal Finance Officers Association.

I hold an interdisciplinary degree in Social Studies with high honors from Harvard University, where I concentrated on outcome measures as a means for health service providers to grow more accountable for results. As a Visiting Fellow with the Lehrman Institute, I researched tax policies to promote divestiture of public sector functions to homeowners associations and other durable neighborhood self-help organizations.

My wife, Valnora Leister, and I now reside in Virginia and participate in a range of civic causes, including tiny house and ecovillage ventures. Personal interests include kayaking, flying, architectural design, and retro-futurist spacecraft model building.

See pending projects here.

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