On April 30, the Kakha Bendukidze Forum took place in Tbilisi — organized by the same committee that previously held the Adam Smith Readings in Moscow. Judging by the photos, about a hundred people attended, but it seems that such a modest number was due to the room’s capacity limit; there likely could have been more. The broadcast was of very poor technical quality, with the sound dropping out periodically. The 26 people who gathered to listen to the broadcast in Budva, I assume, had the opportunity to fill this tedious silence by discussing what they had managed to hear. I hope a normal recording, without glitches, will appear soon.
Eight reports were presented, of which two were of the greatest interest to me: an overview of Russian economic trends by Natalia Zubarevich (in short — don’t hope, at this rate it won’t collapse on its own for a long time, this fat one will take a long time to wither) and an overview of private city development trends by Vera Kichanova (in short — it’s too early to bury Prospera, and there is also a project called Montellibero). I don’t even know why I’m highlighting these two reports specifically — let’s just call it sexism.
Also around the same time in Montenegro near Tivat, at a two-month event with the strange name Zuzalu, Montellibero was presented by one of our project’s activists. One of the event’s sections was entirely dedicated to charter cities and network states. There was a broadcast, but I found out about it after the fact. The recording hasn’t been uploaded to the archive yet, so I’ll have to wait. Once I do, I’ll try to make a brief overview of the interesting things Titus Gebel, Patri Friedman, and other less-known guys managed to tell — of whom I only happened to chat with Peter Young at the Montellibero club.
Meanwhile, in Russia, there is complete stability: recently, the police snatched two members of the LPR; one was robbed and put in a cellar for 12 days, and nothing is known about the second one at all. I continue to consider the position of the LPR leadership a crime. Instead of organizing the evacuation of libertarians from Russia, they continue to hang around there pointlessly and at risk to their lives, and recently even decided to hold another party congress in September. I urge my readers remaining in the RF to leave these idiots in their hopelessly miserable state and finally complete their relocation to where libertarians are much more needed. After all, the conquest of the world is in full swing here.
In a recent Montelibero news post, I mentioned that among the project participants, there are surprisingly few—not to mention active members—of either of the two Libertarian parties of Russia, or even people somehow connected to them. Perhaps this thought is worth expanding upon.
Of course, at the start of the project, no one could say exactly what it would turn into over time. One founder saw it as a center for agorism. Another as a platform for the future transformation of Montenegro along libertarian lines. For me, it was a platform for the evacuation of Russian political activists from the Putin regime. As a result, we do indeed have a center for agorism, and the strategic goal of transforming Montenegro is written in our project description, although we haven’t made much progress in that direction. As for the evacuation platform—we indeed became one, but more and more people joining us are not political activists, but ordinary libertarians who aren’t interested in any such politics.
And, you know, it seems that this is actually a good thing. Judging by what reached me during the period when I was still relatively close with political libertarians, the bulk of their party activity boiled down to bickering over the charter and dividing power within the party (which happened to be splitting in two at the time). Here, frictions occasionally arise regarding the coordination of joint activities, but there is none of this endless expelling of people from the movement. You approve of the market, you don’t approve of state intervention, you don’t practice coercion—well, great, we are on the same path, and you can get acquainted with the smart books in your spare time, if you get around to it.
I was recently asked what, exactly, distinguishes our community from any other hangout, since here in Montenegro, there are several other emigrant groups that likewise do not practice violence and fully approve of freedom. I had to think about it, and as a result of my reflections, I found the only fundamental difference: we have tokenomics. That is, essentially, we simply actively practice the formalization of our market relations and obligations in an explicit form, and it is precisely this that gives us the opportunity to develop very actively.
The question arises: what if some other community manages to implement tokenomics for themselves, how will they differ from us? And here I note with surprise that, in essence, they won’t. Tokenomics (unlike cryptocurrencies) operates on trust, because linking tokens to real-world objects is impossible without trust. And trust among community members is possible only because they share a common value, such as a love for the market—specifically, for voluntary transactions. Any inclinations toward ideas that it’s useful to deceive “suckers” will be immediately rejected by the community (along with the carriers of such ideas), because our mutual obligations are not secured by any state violence, and deploying the tools of private violence is expensive and troublesome, and just not worth it. If some other community manages to reproduce similar relations within itself, we can boldly recognize them as our equals, and at the same time recognize their tokens. Thus, a completely seemingly auxiliary tool unnoticedly turns out to be a unique feature and almost the basis of identity.
As for political methods of solving problems, it’s truly better to leave them to the parties. And for them, we are apparently doomed to remain a completely non-political project, whether for selling land or some other politically meaningless activity. Let’s wish these guys luck in their mission, but if any party member wants to move from politics to economics—our doors are open.
I have now distanced myself quite a bit from the current Russian agenda, which is why I hardly ever speak on this topic. However, the Global civil war between supporters of the unlimited expansion of the state and supporters of its limitation affects even little Montenegro, so it is worth dedicating at least one post to this.
Statists use a specific vulnerability of economic theory to political pressure—externalities—to attack personal freedom. Anyone can become a carrier of a virus and infect others, meaning that by their very presence, they potentially represent a significant negative externality for those around them. And while attempts to restrict human freedom under the pretext that people breathe and emit terrible carbon dioxide, which will soon boil the Earth, meet with serious misunderstanding, it turned out to be noticeably easier to frighten people with a deadly and immediate danger, rather than one decades away.
In Montenegro, society is holding its defense quite steadfastly. It is helped by serious disagreements between the president and the prime minister, which prevent truly unpopular decisions from being made. But it is hindered by pressure from the European Union, on which loans and the flow of tourists bringing money into the country depend. Therefore, the state advances very cautiously and immediately takes a step back upon encountering serious resistance. This provides the EU with the necessary image: that we tried, but these obscurantists started blocking roads, and we had to find a compromise. For example, in the autumn there was an attempt to gradually make entry to large supermarkets available only by certificate, but after a couple of weeks, all restrictions were cancelled. Closer to winter, they promised to require certificates for entry to Christmas markets, but a couple of weeks later, they conversely announced relaxations: practically all restrictions are lifted during the Christmas holidays, celebrate to your heart’s content. Naturally, society has to fight for every relaxation through street actions.
In Russia, everything is much worse. Society was almost completely paved over last winter; no one is surprised by imprisonments for single-person pickets, social media posts, and other arbitrariness, about which most of my readers have a much more direct understanding, so I will not dwell on it. However, it seems that the attempt, at the end of the second year of the war for public health, to introduce a permit system for movement has nonetheless encountered fairly widespread grassroots resistance.
The Libertarian Party of Russia (the one of the two that the state seemingly hasn’t completely crushed) has announced the launch of a public campaign against QR-codification. I have read the list of proposals, and they look reasonably sound. As is usual in the RF, the level of support for an initiative is determined primarily by the number of signatures on change.org, so the first thing to do is go there and sign, and then figure out how else the campaign can be helped.
And, of course, we welcome everyone who cannot bear this entire frontline atmosphere to cozy, damp, and rainy Montenegro. At least the borders are still open.
The elections for the Electoral College in the USA were quite dirty, and whatever decision the electors eventually make regarding the presidential candidacy, its legitimacy will be highly questionable.
In the LPR, the division into two independent parties has finally taken shape. Both held their conventions, elected governing bodies, adjusted their charter documents—and intend to compete for people wishing to join a libertarian party.
The LPR is a benchmark for the US governance system. Just as it was in the LPR until very recently, the USA is split roughly in half, which means that each side is forced to spend disproportionate effort imposing its agenda on the other side, while the latter merely waits for the right moment to undo it all after the next elections. Several billion dollars were spent on the US elections; this would have been enough to reorganize a single dysfunctional government into a system of two contractual jurisdictions, each of which could freely compete for taxpayers.
In the LPR, there are regional branches that have almost entirely moved to one of the party forks, and there are swing states where two fully functional branches eventually formed. A similar outcome should occur in the USA: large cities will almost entirely move toward the dem-fork, the heartland toward the rep-fork, and in some places, there will be enough of a checkerboard pattern that changing jurisdiction won’t even require moving to the next block, because representatives of both are located in the same block.
I want to wish the USA not to stop at the achieved division but to continue deepening it without descending into civil war. I want to wish the LPR rapid development spurred by competition. I want to wish the readers to see the seeds of a beautiful future in what is happening, rather than the sunset of civilization.
When Alexander Litreev was swept up for substances at the end of February, I published a post where I urged people to focus not so much on the specific case, but on the repeal of Article 228 itself. The suggestion was to hurry with pressuring the state through mass actions before the news cycle was replaced by something else. Alas, the news cycle was indeed replaced, and mass actions now can only occur as a result of state sabotage, as happened in the Moscow metro on the day the access system premiered.
So, while the country was gradually settling into home self-arrest, Litreev’s support group worked quietly for his release and succeeded: Alexander has been freed. But the direction of undermining state drug policy has not been forgotten, and today the Tea Club movement released a very good, detailed longread about how the state fights drugs and how it should be done.
I am aware that the Libertarian Party is on strained terms with the Tea Club, but in this particular case, I would consider it a major oversight on the part of the LP not to promote this article—even if it requires pulling it onto their own site and removing mentions of the TC and the signatures of all authors who are not party members. As Ekaterina Schulmann likes to repeat, for political success, one must unite around common interests, not common sympathies. So please, help your editorial board make the right decision.
It would also be great if Egor Zhukov forwarded the article to his recent interlocutor, Evgeny Roizman. In my February post, I naively stated that even within his cannibalistic logic, a drug user is not a criminal. Not by a long shot. On the air of Zhukov’s program “Conditionally Yours”, Roizman claimed exactly the opposite. He also indicated that he was completely unaware of the Portuguese experience—which the article describes.
Thanks to the coronavirus, another promising direction for pressuring the state has emerged. One can demand the full or partial repeal of Article 228, and one can also demand amnesty for everyone imprisoned under this article due to the threatening epidemic situation. When officials have “yes” and “no” options, it is easier for them to refuse. When there is a choice between repealing the article and granting amnesty to those imprisoned under it, the chance of amnesty increases sharply. Immediately following amnesty, one can insist on a moratorium—what is the point of releasing a bunch of people from prisons only to start filling the vacant spots under the same article. And from a moratorium, it is a short step to repeal. But even if repeal doesn’t happen, it’s not that scary—we have already lived for many years in a regime of moratorium on the application of the death penalty.
Many have expressed optimism regarding the recent series of searches of LP members, claiming that this is a mark of quality and a sign that the party is on the right track. I would say that today, repression against political activists is not a sign of fear among those in power, but rather a businesslike scurrying, carried out with a cold heart and without much thought. The grass has grown—it is time to mow. Meanwhile, the grass may comfort itself with the thought that the more it is mown, the thicker it grows.
To be honest, I had a vague hope that since the LP differs from other parties in its radical rhetoric of freedom, this would also be reflected in its behavior in the face of repression. It was not. Protest as performed by the LP is just as legalistic as that performed by Navalny. When security forces burst into a libertarian’s home, they leave just as intact and with the loot as if it had been an ordinary Navalny volunteer or an employee of Open Russia.
So, if anyone believes that Russian libertarians are grim, armed anarchists who will not let themselves be stepped on, or that an attempt to break into one of their homes will immediately trigger a spontaneous rally under their windows—they will have to part with these harmful illusions. Libertarian ideas are not so deeply rooted in the libertarian community that rhetoric regarding the state has translated into practical actions against it.
After all this, I even feel somewhat awkward discussing what the libertarian doctrine of action is in the event of one aggression or another: such discussions begin to look very irrelevant.
Therefore, in this post, I am not providing recipes, because I do not know them. I do not know how I would behave if I were a member of the libertarian party, against whose elected leader blatant state aggression has been undertaken. For me, this is a serious reason to continue refraining from joining the party. I fear that if I begin to declare my views openly, then when the state reaches me—which will happen quickly—I will find myself alone before its functionaries, and at most, I will receive a few pickets in my support.
Please be responsible for your words; there is already too much empty chatter in the world. If you do not feel the resolve to bite the boot that tramples you, do not raise the banner with the motto “Dont Tread On Me.” It is better to hide your libertarianism than to openly discredit it.
No sooner had I posted the text about how crowdfunding is the most obvious way to finance the production of public goods in a free market, as an illustration came along.
The St. Petersburg branch of the LPR is renting an office, and to raise funds for its lease, they decided to hold a regular stream. Today at 20:00 Moscow time on the YouTube channel Ancap-podcast the show “Brewing Moonshine” will take place, during which the host intends to drink a glass of moonshine for every 1000 rubles in donations. I don’t know if they’ll be distilling it on the spot or pouring ready-made, but it could turn out to be amusing.
I was offered 300 rubles to post this announcement, and I decided to briefly deviate from my rules, according to which a resource review should not stand alone, but be accompanied by my answer to a donation-backed question. Today we are holding the funeral without the deceased.
I think I’ll drop by to listen to the stream too, although I intend to drink martini with tonic while doing so, if you’ll excuse me.
Judging by the charter that Svetov wants to adopt at the congress, that is exactly the case.
Anonymous question. A donation in the amount of 0.00099851btc
was attached to the question.
This question turned out to be today’s record holder among questions with an attached donation in terms of the time I needed to answer: usually, if an answer is paid for, I answer on the same day. The fact is that I have no relation to the Libertarian Party of Russia, so I had to scour both of your charters — the one currently in effect, and the one Mikhail Svetov expects to adopt at the LPR congress, which will take place on November 2 in Moscow (I was sent links to the cloud, but for safekeeping, I preferred to move the documents to my own site). The reading was not easy, so I apologize in advance to those who may find the answer a bit boring; it is a very specific question.
So, if we rely on the letter of the charters, then both now and in the wonderful Svetovian LPR of the future, you have a typical oligarchic party where all real power is held by committees that control the mechanisms of their own reelection. The changes proposed to be made are, in essence, cosmetic:
regional branches are prohibited from engaging in entrepreneurial activity (very strange for a party that, in theory, should treat entrepreneurship as a fetish).
on the other hand, regional branches are allowed their own symbols, albeit in agreement with the federal committee (I didn’t even know that previously your charter had only one symbol for the entire party; this norm was violated left and right).
the general meeting of a regional branch loses the right to expel members from the party (all power to the committees!).
the general meeting of a regional branch loses the right to consider an appeal against expulsion from the party by the branch’s steering committee (the power of the committees is indisputable!) .
the moratorium on the return of previously expelled members to the party is increased from three to five years (this reminds me of the constant extension of Disney’s copyrights for Mickey Mouse — it feels as if someone was expelled from the LPR whom they really don’t want back, and now they are extending the term during which this cannot be done).
previously, the federal committee was dissolved if more than a third of its members left; in the new edition, it is more than half (if the dominant faction has an absolute majority, the opposition is in principle unable to block the committee’s work).
a limit is introduced on the maximum size of the committees (increasing the administrative weight of each committee member)
the federal committee will be able to suspend the powers of individual members and dismiss the party chairman (expansion of the dominant faction’s power).
appealing to the ethics committee becomes paid. If you win the case, the deposit is returned. If you lose, the money goes into the party coffers. No sanctions are provided for those who made an unlawful decision upon which an appeal was won (very convenient, for example, to kick out the entire opposition from the party before the congress, and by the time the ethics committee reinstates everyone, the train has left, all decisions at the congress have already been made, profit).
I probably didn’t notice all the changes, but I hardly missed anything fundamental. Another feature of Svetov’s charter is that it contains two charters: the first part works until the party is registered, and the second part replaces the first in the event of official state registration of the party.
The volume of the documents is quite large. The current charter has 44 pages; the one proposed by Mikhail Svetov has 78 pages. Usually, when people draft such detailed agreements for joint activity, it speaks of an immense lack of trust they have for each other and a certain external force to which one can always appeal if something goes wrong in the joint activity. A charter is important specifically for an external judge who knows nothing about what is happening in the organization and for whom the map equals the territory. Organizations that are created naturally for the maximum efficiency of joint activity, and which do not intend to rely on someone’s external legitimacy, do not typically describe internal norms in such tomes.
A natural organization is characterized by first relying exclusively on informal agreements, then introducing some written norms as it grows, and then consolidating them into charters. An unnatural one, complying with the Russian law on political parties, is forced to take a template charter and demonstrate to the state that it lives by it. In fact, however, it will still operate within the framework of certain informal agreements.
And now I will allow myself to deviate from the charters and quote a fragment of a lecture by Mikhail Svetov, given by him on October 16, 2019, in Novosibirsk:
The Libertarian Party of Russia today is the only organization that seriously says that the regions need to be given broad powers, transferred in such a way that it would be impossible for Moscow to take them away again.
Mikhail has been talking for several months, and especially often in the last month as part of his unprecedented tour across the country, about how the regions should impose a new federal treaty on Moscow. So impose it!
A regional branch of the party brings together local politicians who interact directly with local politicians representing other political forces. It is with them that they form coalitions and alliances, agree on the distribution of candidates by district and the order of speeches at rallies, or arrange to borrow equipment or use an office. Moscow in all this real regional political activity is a disorganizing factor that can only contribute to the disruption of agreements carefully built on the ground, but is almost never able to help. This is especially relevant for parties without centralized funding from above. If the main source of the party’s money is membership fees from ordinary members, then how shell-shocked by the vertical of power must one be to pay any attention at all to the whims of the Moscow leadership! He who doesn’t buy the girl dinner doesn’t get to dance with her.
The Libertarian Party of the Russian Federation does not need a charter. It needs a federal treaty. I will allow myself to quote again a fragment from the same lecture:
What is the libertarians’ criticism of democracy? That democracy adopts equal inconvenient laws for everyone. There is no such law that is equally suitable for Muscovites, Novosibirsk residents, and residents of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Well, if it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist. Thank Mikhail for the useful lecture and do as he suggests. If you can manage to impose a new federal treaty on Moscow within the party, it will be the first step toward imposing it on Moscow within the state. If you can manage to limit such a mild and intelligent leader as Mikhail Svetov, it will be the first step toward limiting such a brutal and unpleasant type as Vladimir Putin.
Civil society in Russia has been trying to rock the boat and change the government for something more human-like for quite some time now, in order to stop the country’s slide into an authoritarian hole. Alexei Navalny has long and firmly been the frontman of the Russian protest.
The core of Navalny’s agenda is the exploitation of the public demand for justice. Lawlessness, corruption, and the looting of the state budget—covering all these topics ensured Navalny’s well-deserved popularity. Nationalists tried to speak out against the infringement of the rights of the Russian-speaking population, but this aspect of justice proved not to be particularly in demand among the masses. Old-regime democrats peddled the theme of Russian foreign policy aggression, the tightening of civil liberties, and the escalation of political repression—but they only earned the label of “demshiza” (democratic crazies). Libertarians protested against increased regulation and higher taxes—they were completely ignored. Everything flowed in its own way until Svetov arrived.
In the eyes of the average citizen, Navalny’s agenda boiled down to the idea that once he comes to power, he will imprison all the crooks and thieves, thereby restoring justice. Svetov increased the level of populism even further, adding: those we don’t imprison, we will fire without severance pay and strip of their political rights. Such a demand for revenge, due to the use of the sophisticated word “Lustration,” did not resonate with people immediately, but aggressive advertising did its job. The Libertarian Party received a huge influx of fresh blood and rightfully took its place in the protest pantheon to the right of Navalny himself.
An interesting situation emerged where the theme of freedom practically vanished from the public discourse of the LPR, replaced by that very theme of justice, since this rhetoric brings more political points. The main task of the LPR now, judging by the rhetoric, is to overthrow the regime together with its allies; after that, they can distance themselves from Navalny and other fellow travelers and begin advocating for their own specific agenda of reforms. To what extent the Libertarian Party will preserve libertarian values within itself by that time is not yet very clear; however, it is becoming obvious that libertarianism is much broader than what the party does (and what is generally appropriate for a political party to do).
Previously, the activities of the LPR consisted not so much of politics as of education; now the situation has changed, and politics has come to the forefront. This is wonderful, as the division of labor usually contributes to greater efficiency of that very labor. At the same time, of course, it should be expected that those who are not interested in political activity at all, and who were members specifically for the sake of education, or who viewed it as a hobby club, will leave the party. This is logical, since many ancaps fundamentally believe that engaging in politics is pointless, and it would be far more appropriate, for example, to promote a libertarian lifestyle.
I believe that minarchists and panarchists may also receive some indirect profit from the spread of ancap ideas among the apolitical masses, and ancaps are unlikely to lose from having a conditionally friendly political representation—after all, they have nothing against using the state’s weak points to weaken it. Therefore, I urge you not to interfere with libertarians getting into politics, not to quarrel with LPR members, but also not to believe that this party is the only beacon of hope, and that any libertarian activity must be somehow coordinated with this political organization.
However, entering politics under libertarian slogans outside of the LPR is already a serious claim that the libertarian market niche is large and capable of accommodating more than one libertarian party. Perhaps this is true, but here you will have to be ready for fierce competition, which may prove counterproductive, as it diverts resources away from competing with pro-government organizations.
Libertarians in Navalny’s right hand, and coffee in his left. That is how we shall conquer!
One often reads that agorism not only fails to help abolish the state but actually directly harms the libertarian movement. The main argument against agorism boils down to the claim that the black market in no way contributes to the disappearance of the state. On the contrary, by reducing the share of legally employed people, the growing black market increases the tax burden on the white market, as well as the number and severity of various inspections. Thus, the competitiveness of the state’s economy declines, people become impoverished, and the poor are prone to socialist views. Therefore, it is respect for the law and civilized political activity that allow for gradual movement toward freedom, while all forms of rebellion only give the state excuses to tighten the screws.
To everyone deeply interested in this issue, I would recommend reading Konkin’s “New Libertarian Manifesto”, as well as the discussion between Konkin and Rothbard regarding this manifesto. And for symmetry, it is worth looking at Rothbard’s “For a New Liberty”, which serves as the manifesto of the Libertarian Party of the USA—although the latter work is significantly more voluminous than the first two.
Both sides presented various interesting arguments in their discussion, which took place in the early eighties of the last century. However, nearly forty years have passed since then, and we can see what has changed in the USA.
The Libertarian Party continues to slowly increase its electoral support, received nearly 5% of the voters’ votes in the 2016 presidential election, and has a few small electoral victories. However, the trend of the USA turning into a socialist state has not been broken; there is incredible monetary emission and an increase in national debt, and the powers of intelligence services are expanding—in short, the state is advancing in full force.
Meanwhile, agorists have invented Bitcoin, are operating full-throttle in the darknet, printing weapons on 3D printers, and mastering biohacking. At the intersection with panarchists, they are launching Bitnation.
And finally, there is the phenomenon of New Hampshire, where agorists and supporters of political methods combined their efforts, even if without much concern for coordinating their actions. Political activists there are actively elected to legislative bodies and engage in deregulation. Meanwhile, agorists organize direct action campaigns to demonstratively violate idiotic laws—and this also sparks public campaigns for their repeal. It is precisely the simultaneous action on two fronts that led to New Hampshire becoming the freest of all fifty states.
A similar tactic is used by the Georgian Girchi party. On one hand, it is a political party; it participates in elections and is ostensibly a legal subject of politics. On the other hand, it is a gang of hardcore agorists who openly grew marijuana right in their central office and then publicly sold joints in the square in the presence of the police. This led to the legalization of marijuana in Georgia. Now they have organized a brothel in their central office—everything points to the fact that sex work will soon be legalized in the country as well. Thus, we see that coordinated actions of politicians and agorists yield an even more effective result than if they worked separately.
Meanwhile, agorism by itself simply slowly delegitimizes the state and increases the share of people who have, more or less, slipped from under its short-sighted eye. And the political process by itself helps broader masses learn the word “libertarianism.” Both are very useful, but neither compares in effect to the joint application of these two recipes—agorism and minarchism. And we have barely seen the implementation of panarchist developments, with their functional contractual jurisdictions. I suspect that an offensive on three fronts at once would be even more effective.
In Russia over the last year, the positions of the Libertarian Party have strengthened quite significantly. I would like the agorists not to lag behind; otherwise, it will be like in Ukraine, whereas I would prefer it to be like in Georgia. The Russian Libertarian Party has its own Rothbard—Mikhail Svetov. All that is left is to find its own Konkin.
