(I would like to ask this question someday to the evangelist of libertarianism for all of Russia, Svetov, but an ordinary person cannot live on Mikhail alone!)
Doesn’t a Homeowners Association (HOA) seem to you as a quite decent, relatively closely related to anarchism in general, socially appealing, and also relatively organizationally easy way to start your own local community?
In general, your logic is completely correct: since ancap is the natural state of society, it manifests most fully precisely in the primary cooperation between people, where state interference is absent or minimal. That is, in HOAs, dacha and garage cooperatives, shadow entrepreneurship, joint procurement organizations, and similar associations. In short, everywhere where people unite voluntarily, are guided by rules they developed themselves, delegate exactly those rights that they themselves possess, and exactly the minimum they deem necessary…
Of course, an HOA is not the most successful example of such an association, as they are more regulated than many others. Nevertheless, HOAs know how to quite effectively resist the state’s encroachments on their autonomy: they choose their own service providers, policies for the use of common property, and so on. It was the HOAs who complained the loudest when mandatory capital repair fees were introduced, and they largely managed to ensure that these fees were not thrown into a general pot but remained in the account of the HOA itself.
The following important step toward strengthening local self-governance suggests itself. The election law allows persons elected by residents’ meetings to be part of Precinct Election Commissions (PECs). Currently, the vast majority of PEC members are employees of municipal infrastructure institutions: schools, kindergartens, and the like. Some are “by place of work.” Some are “from parties.” But de facto, these are all employees of the same collective. Meanwhile, imagine a PEC that includes six apartment buildings, each with an organized HOA, and a representative from each HOA sits on the commission! And another four or five people from parties, as is customary. If such a thing were to start—people would begin electing municipal deputies en masse, and from there, it’s not far to human governors.
In general, my message is this: primary cooperation around one’s own selfish interests is the most reliable and well-trodden path to building a civil society, and whether some piece of the state will manage to be preserved in the process, or if it will be possible to get rid of it entirely—that is already largely a matter of faith.
The market will decide, amen!
