Bitarch Explains
People often ask how a libertarian society can be built by coming to power through elections. I will not dwell in detail on whether a libertarian party can come to power through elections at all, because this is the weakest point of the entire idea.
What options for building a libertarian society can the LPR choose? Mikhail Svetov often mentions them in his lectures, so I will try to explain them in plain language and provide my own comments.
1) Federalization. Mikhail constantly praises the USA and Switzerland for their model of national organization, reminding us that the RF is also de jure a federation (but not de facto—due to the violation of the constitution by the state’s first person). In this case, it will be possible to test various models of libertarianism in different regions and transfer best practices from one to another. The advantage of this approach is that in the event of an error, the consequences will be limited to one region rather than spreading across the entire country.
2) Homesteads. The idea is borrowed from the history of the settlement of the USA, when settlers from Europe occupied vacant lands, and later the government recognized their property rights to these plots. Svetov proposes to distribute the uninhabited territories of Siberia and the Far East in this way, granting settlers the right to autonomy, as if they were colonizing Mars (and accordingly, the opportunity to experiment with various libertarian models). Successful practices from these regions could then be gradually transferred to the main part of the country. Although, judging by the comments on this idea, people are not very eager to move to regions with such a harsh climate and a total lack of infrastructure.
3) Minarchism. A gradual transition to ancap is carried out through the gradual reduction of state functions across the entire country at once (as if the RF were a unitary state, which it is de facto now). Svetov means exactly this path when he calls himself a “forced minarchist.” This immediately raises the question of the stability of minarchism as such, which is further amplified by the centralization of power. A single unsuccessful reform could easily incite the people’s rage and end the LPR’s time in power, which would then create a negative image for the entire libertarian idea in the eyes of the general public for a long time.
Personally, I would propose another option—federalization of the country (simply follow the current constitution of the RF, it’s already in there) and the creation of competing extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions within regions that have approved the experiment by referendum. As the model is refined and “pitfalls” are eliminated, the geography can be expanded, gradually making all of Russia libertarian.
To the last paragraph, I would like to add that an extraterritorial jurisdiction is extraterritorial precisely so as not to be limited by some narrow list of regions. Today, there is one extraterritorial jurisdiction in the world—the jurisdiction of the United States of America. This state does not care whose territory its citizen is on; they continue to exercise their jurisdiction over them. But it is, of course, not contractual.
Ancap-chan