Тег: MTL-fest

MTL-fest 2024, expectations, part 1

In just a couple of weeks, MTL-fest 2024 will begin. The first MTL-fest took place last year, and it seems it will continue annually. There are quite clear expectations from the festival:

  • crowded hustle and bustle
  • interesting stories
  • exchange of practical experience
  • networking

Regarding the crowded hustle and bustle, there were about 250 people in 2023, and it’s unlikely there will be fewer this time. Moreover, the festival is now becoming a three-day event.

As for interesting stories: there were five speakers last year, and six are expected this year. The headliner then was Svetov; this year it’s Pozharsky. From related projects, there was Edlicka from Liberland last year, and this year there will be Biellas from Liberstad and Polozov from FSP. From the Montenegrins, there was a lawyer; now a bitcoiner is expected. Among the theorists, there was Usanov; there will be Shustov. From MonteLibero, Stas Karkavin is expected, and he looks somewhat more organic in public speaking than I do.

There was no separate block for the exchange of practical experience last year; instead, a musical block was planned, which didn’t take off at all. But now, the entire third day of the festival will be dedicated to practice.

In terms of networking, I want to understand the main thing: what benefit, specifically, can diverse libertarian projects scattered across the globe bring to each other? To pinpoint this benefit and learn how to extract it.

For those who have already planned a trip to Montenegro for MTL-fest—I can only be happy for you. For those who can suddenly drop everything and come—suddenly drop everything and come. Those who want to but cannot will have to make do with broadcasts and recordings of speeches, reports and interviews, stories from those who return from the fest, and the application of the experience they bring back from the festival. That is quite a lot.

On October 4, the first day of the festival, the official program will consist of a screening at MonteLibero Space of a documentary film about the defeat of the Hong Kong independence movement. Parallel to this, it is planned to gather at Tikhiy Omut and informally chat about the fate of libertarian emigration in general and MonteLibero in particular.

In the next post, I will briefly talk about what I expect from the speakers’ presentations on Saturday, October 5, the main day of the festival.

Why is the Montelibero project so vague?

Montelibero activist Stas Karkavin gave an interview to Plot publication, where he answered a series of questions about the community, which, in turn, prompted some reflections on my part.

When I first came across bits of information about the activities of the Free State Project in New Hampshire, I was initially surprised by the looseness of the community: they seem to have a large festival, PorcFest, and some influence on local politics, manifested in the election of project participants to local representative bodies—but there is no clarity. It is unclear how many people participate in the project, who its public faces are, where to read a coherent chronicle of its implementation, and how to acquire a franchise.

But when we started creating Montelibero, it quickly became clear that these characteristics are not so much a bug, nor a feature, but rather boundary conditions. The harder one tries to force the project into the framework of a single organization, or even just to count everyone, the more strongly its participants will resist. Simply because they are volunteers, and therefore owe nothing to anyone.

A bit later, after reading James Scott’s “The Art of Not Being Governed,” it became clear to me that this tactic of evading being recorded, counted, assigned to a supervisor, and provided with supervisory instructions has been inherent in humanity since the Neolithic Revolution and is an invariant human response to the potential possibility of power being applied to them.

For this reason, unlike Stas, I do not believe in the Montelibero Association—a normal libertarian would not voluntarily sign up for any jurisdiction, regardless of how “contractual” it calls itself—especially if this contract cannot be terminated at the first whim. A libertarian does not need power over other people, even in the form of participation in power over a public resource. He needs it so that power cannot be arbitrarily applied to him.

At the same time, a libertarian is perfectly capable of voluntarily associating with people on specific issues that interest them. For example, on the website of the aforementioned FSP, one can see a calendar with a schedule of various events organized by a wide range of organizations, businesses, and initiative groups. It looks quite spontaneous and decentralized (if we don’t count the fact that all this information is presented on a single website, which is, of course, a potential point of failure). Similarly, over time, I expect a similar calendar on the Montelibero website, so that anyone interested can quickly check: if I’m traveling from Budva to Bar tomorrow, is there anything interesting happening there—at the First Club, Tikhiy Omut, Tortuga bar, or a couple of other less-exposed locations.

At MTL-Fest, which will take place this year from October 4 to 6, Stas will speak on behalf of Montelibero. This does not mean that he is the head of Montelibero, that he knows everything, or that he is authorized by everyone. No, it simply means he is from Montelibero, he is a good storyteller, and he has agreed to speak. Similarly, there will be presentations by Sondre Bjellos from Liberstad and Yuri Polozov from the Free State Project—and both are speaking on behalf of their projects, but they will only be able to tell a small part of what is happening there, and some people from the respective projects may likely find these accounts inaccurate. No big deal: if they seem inaccurate, there will be something to discuss.

In the coming days, I intend to briefly talk about all six speakers at MTL-Fest: who the presenters are to me, and what I expect from their presentations.

Following the MTL-fest, part 2, Pavel Usanov

Pavel Usanov is an economist from St. Petersburg, a proponent of the Austrian School, who teaches at the European University and runs his own Hayek Institute. He posts many of his lecture courses on his YouTube channel. He came to the fest in the following way. Initially, they wanted to invite Grigory Bazhenov—also an economist, but a mainstream one, and also a teacher, I don’t remember exactly where, I think at HSE, plus he works for the Union of Independent Fuel Producers. Grigory also has a video blog that is roughly four times more popular than Pavel’s, which makes the fest organizers’ priorities quite clear. However, at some point, Bazhenov backed out, citing a department meeting, and so he was replaced by Usanov.

The proposed topic for Bazhenov’s lecture was: “Monetary Policy under Libertarianism: Between the Gold Standard and Crypto.” When the speaker was changed, the question of a new topic arose. Knowing that Pavel is primarily an economic historian, I suggested a modified version: “Non-Governmental Monetary Systems: Theory and History.” That is what they agreed upon. I wanted to get a good introduction to our Montelibero tokenomics, from which it would become clear why our current financial system has the specific shape it does.

On the Montelibero channel, the lecture is currently available only as a fragment of a stream, but Pavel has already posted it on his own channel.

In the lecture, one can indeed see an introduction to our tokenomics: Pavel states that whether we like it or not, today money as a universal medium of exchange is still the dollar and, to a lesser extent, the euro; Bitcoin is great for its potential, but that potential still needs to be realized. Thus, in Montelibero’s tokenomics, everything is measured using stables in euros, dollars, and bitcoins; we decided not to invent any proprietary exotic currencies like the Liberland merits to serve as money.

The day after the festival, Pavel and I recorded a separate video, this time about my book, and he also posted it on his channel. I hope that after some time, he will also record a short review of it. At least he has a book review section there.

Overall, he turned out to be a very simple and sociable person, and this is clearly not the last episode of his cooperation with Montelibero. I am not certain that Grigory Bazhenov would have done better; however, time will tell.

Following the MTL-fest, part 1, Liberland

Vít Edlička, the self-proclaimed president of the self-proclaimed republic of Liberland, intended to speak at the MTL-fest on the topic of “how to build the freest state in the world.” Liberland is located on a territory called Gornja Siga, which from Serbia’s perspective should be in Croatia, from Croatia’s perspective should be in Serbia, but in fact, it is on the Croatian side of the Danube, and it is specifically with the Croatian authorities that the Liberlanders experience the most problems.

Shortly before the fest, Edlička and a couple of other Liberlanders were arrested by the Croatian side, followed by deportation to Hungary. And on September 22, one day before the MTL-fest, Croatian security forces went as far as to invade the territory of the settlement, destroying all the buildings there and confiscating all movable property. Thus, Vít’s account of his project was enriched with fresh, hot facts.

Croatia’s position is roughly as follows: yes, the border location is not settled, but we are responsible for the security of the external perimeter of the Schengen area, which we recently joined, and therefore we strive to curb any provocations, including provocations from some quasi-state.

Liberland’s position, in turn, boils down to the fact that since Croatia is part of the Schengen area, it no longer has full sovereignty over the border and cannot act lawlessly according to its own whim. For the destruction of someone else’s property, as well as the baseless detention of people outside its state borders, it will have to answer in court. Liberland also insists that a territory claimed by no current state is terra nullius, and the emergence of a new state upon it does not contradict any international norms; and if that is the case, please respect our state sovereignty as we respect yours, gentlemen Croatians—and in general, why fight, let’s be friends, don’t you want a powerful tourist cluster right next to you?

There is nothing that irritates those in power more than a reminder of legal norms. After all, legal norms place the parties of a conflict on the same level: the democratically elected government of a sovereign state in the EU and some clowns with a couple of wooden sheds and a houseboat. Therefore, naturally, the Croatian side will ignore any legal procedures as much as possible, simply leaving any statements from Liberland unattended. Nevertheless, this entire story is capable of raising a lot of stink, provided, of course, that the public does not forget to throw manure onto this fire.

Here is the contact page of the Croatian Ministry of the Interior, which organized the invasion of the territory of the sovereign Free Republic of Liberland. Here is the same page in English. You can send complaints to various addresses from the list provided there, which will be especially useful if you represent an official media outlet. Also, of course, reposts would help.

MTL fest 2023, impressions

Yesterday I had the chance to attend MTL-fest. The festival was held in MTL-City literally on a construction site, and the preparation for it was completely decentralized, based on the principle of “whoever wants it most, takes a piece of the work and does it.” So, naturally, there were some glitches, but as a result of this approach, the festival certainly gained its own eclectic charm.

I ran into Svetov in person; we chatted, although I didn’t manage to hand him the book yet, as everyone was too busy. Usanov, however, did not go empty-handed. We are still thinking about recording a separate video with him. Unfortunately, my level of spoken English didn’t allow me to give enough attention to the English-speaking speakers.

Surprisingly, I managed not to fuck up my own presentation; thanks to Dan Lesnov for forcing me to do two preliminary dry runs. To be honest, speaking immediately after Svetov is a questionable pleasure, because about twenty people immediately swarm him and start throwing questions; he continues to speak, moves further away, and the audience suddenly shrinks.

If you look at which parts of the festival were more crowded and which were less, it’s clear that libertarians have well-honed the skill of organizing conferences and all sorts of small-scale trade: people mostly hung out in the lecture hall, at the food court, and at the fair. However, as it turned out, this theme blends poorly with a music festival. Firstly, the loud music interfered with the lecture hall, and secondly, almost no one came specifically for the DJ program; everyone preferred either to listen to the speakers or to sit further away and chat—to dance in front of the stage, apparently, requires a completely different audience.

As expected, there was a severe lack of shade: a whole day outdoors is not for Montenegro. There was a moment when I felt a heatstroke coming on, so I had to lay out the foam mat I brought with me and lie in the shade for a while. Also, at the food court, there was a certain bias toward alcoholic beverages: beer, cider, and various strong liqueurs were offered, while coffee and mors were only available at one spot, which had the longest queue. The mineral water I brought with me saved the day.

However, all these small rough edges do not negate the main point: the festival went very energetically, about 270 people attended, and the lineup of speakers for a first time was beyond expectations—and at several venues, the fest was described as annual and far from the first. In other words, there was no feeling of a modest debut in the air; the fest was immediately perceived as part of an unshakable tradition, which is cool!

Various pictures and short videos from the fest can be seen in a separate channel. I hope that text reports will also start appearing there soon.