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With the declaration that "there are no truly free places left in our world," there are a number of people – some with substantial resources – who are trying to establish some kind of haven where freedom will rein. The latest, in a long series of efforts, is in Honduras.

Mostly the founders of such efforts are libertarians, who are trying to create their own version of "Galt's Gulch," a fiction of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a place to where entrepreneurs could escape, to create and produce beyond the tentacles of the "invasive state."

Honduras, with many officials of libertarian leanings, recently passed a constitutional statute for development zones. It is expected to name the developers of such zones next year.

A recent article in The Economist outlines the efforts of the Honduras project and the problems it faces – not least of which, is the conclusion of some that democracy and freedom are not compatible, and that an entirely new process must be devised to protect the civil liberties and property rights of individuals from the erosion of the relentlessly aggressive state.

Those involved with the proposals include some notables, such as Patri Friedman, a grandson of Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics; John Mackey, the co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods; Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who founded the internet payment service PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook; and Giancarlo Ibárgüen, university president of Universidad Francisco Marroquín.

A more recent effort to establish some kind of libertarian enclave, was that of US activists who in 2001 identified New Hampshire as a state where libertarians would be encouraged to move in order to amass the political support necessary to reshape its policies. They claim that 1,000 people have moved there and another 11,200 have pledged to do so.