In the previous issue, I talked about how we recovered from the initial shocks of the start of the war and continued a quite steady development. Since then, this trend has continued without any new shocks.
Traditionally, I’ll start with the MTLCity settlement. Two months ago, I posted a photo of the pouring of the first two foundations. Now, the residential building already has one and a half floors, and the adjacent administrative building has one.
These buildings are planned to be completed by the end of the year, and the fund is already looking for a person to manage them.
In this regard, I want to immediately mention the recent speech by Mikhail Svetov on Radio Vera, where he was asked about our project, and he stated that he does not like the idea because libertarians should not live together; on the contrary, they should have the opportunity to live separately, drawing boundaries between themselves, while remaining libertarians and political allies.
I am far from gloating over how poorly and biasedly Mikhail works with sources, given that even now, after more than a year of the Montelibero project’s existence, he is convinced that it is exclusively about creating a small settlement of libertarians. A small settlement is for those who want to have libertarians as neighbors. For those who prefer to have other people as neighbors—there is the rest of the country. Mikhail’s speech talks about what is visible (libertarians may not agree on lifestyle preferences and therefore will not get along side by side), but it does not mention what is not visible (it is just as easy to disagree on lifestyle views and have mutual friction with other people—except if your neighbors are statists, then you face the additional danger of the state getting involved in your neighborly disputes). This is a classic mistake of a bad economist.
In any case, Montelibero is by no means only about the MTLCity settlement, and in the future, I will try to mostly talk about our other projects and activities.
A much greater influence on the project today is exerted not by some construction in Dobry Vody, but by a club on the outskirts of Bar, which has already become a point of attraction not only for the libertarian active core, but also for a broad core of those sympathetic to this ideology. To make it clearer for Mikhail—this is our New Sincerity, just without Rospotrebnadzor and in a less pretentious building.
On June 25, a small IT conference was held at the club with about three dozen listeners, featuring an introductory speech on the history of money and a detailed account of how Bitcoin Lightning works.
On July 15, project participant Valery Utrosin held a meeting at the club to discuss his startup for receiving cashback in cryptocurrency during fiat payments with bank cards. He received a lot of feedback, which he hopes will greatly help him in developing the company.
The club has a mini-coworking space for two to three people, a decent kitchen, a cinema room, and many board games, but for Mikhail, I will highlight the main feature: freedom of association. To enter the club, you literally need to sign a non-aggression pact. New members fall only under the responsibility of those who brought them. If a person is uncomfortable to be around, they may be denied access to the club, and such a precedent has already happened once. In short, there is no need to worry: libertarians know how to handle private boundaries and set them where it is convenient for them.
But, of course, we are not cocooning ourselves among our own in a single location, but continuing our expansion. For example, on Wednesdays in Bar, breakfasts are held in various establishments in the city, where participants of the Montelibero project are guaranteed to be present, and where anyone interested can join—to ask their questions and resolve their doubts about us. At first, these were just informal conversations at the table, but recently, pre-selected topics for table discussions were added.
Project participants have already managed to create several businesses in the service sector, mainly oriented toward the Russian-speaking diaspora, but not only. These include car and yacht rentals, currency exchange, and organizational and legal assistance in obtaining Montenegro residence permits.
Although the main vector of our efforts to promote the project has shifted offline, people who discovered Montelibero on the internet continue to visit us. Recently, we posted an English translation of a Libertarian Band video about Montelibero. It’s not that we expected an immediate influx of English speakers; it’s more about accumulating a certain amount of English-language information about ourselves for the future, which will be periodically needed by those for whom perceiving Russian-language information is not very comfortable.