Тег: Relationship

How do you feel about Saakashvili?

anonymous question

Saakashvili is not a libertarian, but he provided political cover for Bendukidze’s libertarian reforms, which is why he earned the respect of the entire global libertarian community.

He is a lawyer, like Putin, but treats current norms and procedures with much greater respect; therefore, he acknowledged his party’s defeat in fair parliamentary elections and stepped down peacefully. This was a risky move; specifically, he and his party colleagues were subsequently subjected to political persecution, and some even to criminal prosecution. Nevertheless, during his rule, public sentiment changed so significantly that now, in this parliamentary democracy, ministers resign under the pressure of public opinion, as in any decent European country. And this is the merit not of Bendukidze, but of Saakashvili himself.

It would be strange not to mention Saakashvili’s Ukrainian epic. He didn’t succeed there. But no one did. He was far from the only foreigner attracted by the prospects that opened up for the country after the Revolution of Dignity, and all of them, after some time, were pushed out of Ukraine, whether softly or harshly. So I would not hold this failure against him: Saakashvili is not a magician, but simply a clever market-oriented person who respects the rule of law, is skilled in both administration and street activism, but is not very adapted to weaving bureaucratic intrigues.

It would be great to invite him to speak at the Adam Smith Readings. While the venue was provided by HSE, such an opportunity did not exist, but now I have more room to maneuver.

Mikheil Saakashvili

For more room to maneuver, the girl could use some bitcoins: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

How do you feel about the libertarian videoblogger Egor Zhukov? He runs the channel “Zhukov’s Blog” and recently made a video about protest strategy.

anonymous question

I recently already answered about my attitude toward the vlogger Svetov; it seems that over time, I will need to answer regarding all more or less prominent libertarian figures.

Zhukov is quite reasonable in his ideas, but their presentation is not strong enough. Simple editing, fast speech, a general impression of cheapness — unfortunately, this reflects on the overall impression. Navalny or Svetov look more respectable. Alas, such details matter to the viewer.

His latest video, about Scandinavian socialism, is already quite solid, so the person is growing, and that is encouraging.

Regarding the series of videos on protest strategy specifically, it seems to me that he pays excessively much attention to analyzing others’ successes or failures, and while reproaching other protest organizers for a lack of creativity, he himself provides almost no examples. In essence, he is remembered only by one specific proposal — the “Flowers for the Police” action, but for some reason he didn’t analyze the results of this action, which would have been informative.
So, the main shortcoming of Zhukov, as with Svetov, seems to me to be that they are not the strongest team players, and within the framework of solo projects, their ceiling will be reached sooner or later.

Well, at least not against a carpet background…

Hmm. I should take a look in the mirror here…

I look in the mirror and see: experience working in the DemoCoalition in 15-16, experience cooperating with Navalny’s headquarters, Open Russia, Golos, and other organizations in a wide variety of regions — okay, I seem to know how to work in a team. If Russia becomes a parliamentary republic, perhaps I can even make it into a coalition government.

And there is already a small community around this channel — after all, LPR-tyan’s posts are not just answers, but also questions, and they are asked by engaged readers.

Well, cheers to the feedback! Bitcoins are welcome: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

What happened with Crimea in March 2014—is it legal or illegal, good or bad?

anonymous question

What happened to Crimea in March 2014 was the seizure by one state of part of the territory of another state. Theoretically, such a seizure can lead to either a benefit or, conversely, a loss for the residents of the seized territory. Off the top of my head, I can recall only one precedent where the residents of a territory severed from another state now live wealthier and freer than the residents of the state from which the territory was severed. This refers to Texas, severed from Mexico. As for the territories that the Soviet Union took from its neighbors, all of them now live poorer than the countries from which the territories were severed. Moldova is poorer than Romania, the Kaliningrad region is poorer than Germany, Karelia is poorer than Finland… So history is not on the side of the residents of Crimea, although it is still too early to assess all the consequences of the reconfiguration of state borders for Crimeans.

However, there are also, imagine that, the residents of the Russian Federation itself, and the annexation of Crimea has already made them noticeably poorer, and there are no prospects for a reversal of this process.

Please note that in my analysis I absolutely do not touch upon international law and other interstate complications, because the problems of bandits don’t fuck honest people and shouldn’t. If Russia were minarchist, and the Crimeans had asked to move from socialist Ukraine to a freer Russian jurisdiction, I would have warmly welcomed the Crimeans’ decision—provided, of course, that they were ready to pay for the services they purchased—while the Ukrainian government’s attempts to refer to the sacred right to personally rob its serfs would have been met with a contemptuous “pffft.” But in our case, we are talking about two equally wretched bandits, and I can only hope that they both drop dead, choking on Crimea.

So you look at it—and you wouldn’t say it’s a disaster zone

I hope the answer was unconventional enough; honestly, I’m tired of all the legalists jumping around with papers about what one bandit once promised another bandit. I will gladly accept a reward in unconventional currency to the bitcoin wallet 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

Do you share the personal views and values of Mikhail Svetov? What do you disagree with him about?

anonymous question

Misha has greatly expanded my circle of supporters, and this naturally influenced my personal views and values, so yes, I share them for the most part.

What parts of his agenda can I not fully agree with?

First, there is a whole series of claims about what a party should be. He is very afraid of a corporate raid, and therefore wants to introduce something like taxpayers’ democracy within it, with a vertical structure. I am more often afraid of it turning into a gutted bureaucratic structure, so I usually practice decentralization in decision-making and private initiatives.

Secondly, he has controversial claims regarding, for example, what is more dangerous in modern states — open borders or closed ones (he believes open ones are more dangerous). It is clear that state borders as such are dangerous, but to view a state border as almost a collective private property is some kind of strange selective trust in the state.

Thirdly, he introduced some concepts into common usage that are unconventional for libertarianism, such as “communities,” which smell more of sour cabbage than of freedom. Now he more often replaces this word with the term “contractual jurisdictions,” but it still implicitly follows from his words that under libertarianism, a person has one single jurisdiction for all occasions in life, which is categorically not necessary. In general, this is a case where his personal conservatism, it seems to me, slightly permeates the ideology.

What I also deeply regret is that other libertarians are not particularly promoted through the SVTV channel. There was Pozharsky — then Pozharsky was gone. There was Bazhenov — then Bazhenov was gone. In fact, all the co-hosts are gone, and it was a very good, unobtrusive way of demonstrating new faces to the public. But Misha is not the strongest team player. Perhaps that is exactly why he would prefer the party to have an organizational vertical, so as not to negotiate, but simply to give orders.

Thank you for reading me; my guest was Mikhail Svetov, a member of the LPR FC. Like, subscribe to the channel, and send bitcoins if you like what I do. 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8
Until next time!

Geolibertarianism, why not? Example: a voluntary land tax given to private charitable organizations that provide proof of the distribution of money to those in need. Competitors may forcibly buy out the territory through court for x100 of this month’s payment.

anonymous question

If a model is implemented specifically with the coefficients you propose, charitable organizations will be swimming in money and spending it on whatever they please. Judge for yourself. In today’s Russia, buying housing is comparable to the cost of rent for a quarter of a century. In Europe, it is comparable to ten years of rent. And here you propose to allow the forced buyout of your real estate for only the cost of an eight-year tax in favor of the poor, which is technically the same as rent. This means that every landowner regularly incurs insane costs for owning their property, and in order to make a profit, is forced to pass these expenses on to consumers. Consumers will howl and say they’ve had enough of such prices, after which they will start turning to the notorious charitable organizations for subsidies. The volume of forced redistribution from the market-efficient to the market-inefficient, amounting to 12% of the value of all real estate per year, is a hell of a lot.

Accordingly, if the x100 coefficient is increased by an order of magnitude, the system will become an order of magnitude more lenient toward efficient market participants. And if the coefficient tends toward infinity, we get ordinary ancap, where the forced buyout of land is impossible.

As I understand it, geolibertarianism has two justifications. First, there is a desire to play it safe in case the volume of private voluntary charity turns out to be lamentably small from the perspective of geolibertarian apologists, and the result wounds their aesthetic sensibilities. Second, there is a desire to protect against those who are unwilling to part with land in favor of those ready to manage it more efficiently than the former owners.

In other words, geolibertarianism is based on the fear of the injustice of freedom. Well, it’s a sort of “half-measure” statism, only unlike classical minarchism, here the rape is proposed in a different hole.

What do you think about free money?

anonymous question

Free money is a very interesting scam. The essence of freigeld, an invention of Silvio Gesell, is that absolutely all money used in a certain, usually local, economy is de facto borrowed at a fixed interest rate from a “central bank.” At the same time, as is customary among leftists, he explains the meaning of the word freigeld as money that is free from — you guessed it — loan interest!

Naturally, all attempts to implement this scheme were eventually suppressed as fraudulent — central banks find it more profitable to use a more sophisticated scam instead of a direct one: modern fiat money, which has been written about extensively, and that is a topic for a separate story.

A modern follower of Gesell, Bashkir economist Rustam Davletbayev, implemented the freigeld system in the village of Shaymuratovo, where the village’s primary enterprise had problems with ruble liquidity. By creating a local currency, it effectively took on banking functions, bypassing the Russian banking licensing system, for which, of course, it faced attacks from the prosecutor’s office.

I see nothing wrong with issuing private money and lending it to people at interest if there is a market demand for it. It’s just that in a situation where the state vigilantly monitors the money production sphere, one must either camouflage themselves, as Gesell’s followers do, or issue money that the state simply cannot block, as Nakamoto’s followers do. Technically, there is no fundamental difference between whether demurrage occurs periodically, causing money to be plannedly depreciated by a certain percentage, or whether money emission occurs periodically, increasing the total money supply by a certain percentage. Both lead to the fact that the value of the money held by holders decreases, while the one who issues the money makes a profit. As long as people use such money voluntarily, this is a perfectly fair reward.

By the way, in personal communication, Davletbayev is a sweetheart)

If you like this channel, you can sponsor it in bitcoins — this is money uncontrolled by the state with programmed decentralized emission. Here is the wallet: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

Accepting donations in shaymuratiks or other varieties of freigeld is much harder and completely unprofitable, because they cannot function as a store of value, so bitcoins are better after all 😉

Silvio Gesell

How do you feel about Navalny? Does he have a chance to change anything?

Anonymous question

Imagine if I had hung a huge poster of Svetov on my wall and constantly discussed with my boyfriend what a cutie he is. In the best-case scenario, my boyfriend would have decided I was a cultist and got far away from me. In the worst-case scenario, it would be like RB-tyan. She has a poster of Navalny on her wall, a Navalny t-shirt on her chest, a Navalny sticker on her phone… As a result, instead of a beautiful Russia of the future, she and her boyfriend constantly discuss how cool Navalny is and what new video he has released. Now, as long as they do this, Navalny has no chance of changing anything: he himself becomes more interesting than his agenda. When RB-tyan starts being asked which books to read, that’s when the chance will appear.

But he is such a cutie!