In honor of Sunday, a day of unserious questions is declared=)
Unserious answer 1
When Mikhail Svetov transfers to the St. Petersburg branch of the LPR.
Unserious answer 2
When Alexander Litreev’s video blog reaches 100 thousand subscribers.
Serious answer
You did it when you asked your question. Any location has as many names as are used. There is the Nemtsov Bridge in Moscow, there is the Navalny Park in Novosibirsk, and now there are the Lustral Columns in St. Petersburg. At the same time, you can name the bow of every yacht on every column: this one is Photinia, and this one is St. Princess Olga…
I have already touched upon this topic approximately in the post dedicated to the dispute between Mikhail Svetov and Vera Kichanova.
Then I was asked to clarify Svetov’s position regarding borders with peaceful and prosperous countries—does he really propose closing off from them as well? I had to devise a logical twist that makes Svetov’s proposal relatively acceptable for a minarchist society, and quite universal in the sense that no official is given the right to rank countries: these ones are good, and we are welcome to no one from here.
Mikhail Pozharsky’s article from July 1st is clearly inspired by the same dispute, but he dug deeper, while also addressing Hoppe’s concept that the transition from monarchy to democracy is social regression and a departure from libertarian ideals. Of course, the democratic state is terrible, as is any other state, but the claim that autocracies are generally healthier reveals Hoppe to be a person not very familiar with life under an autocracy.
I would bring another party into this dispute—political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, who has repeatedly mentioned in her presentations such a characteristic of society as the degree of citizen involvement in decision-making.
If we plot the volume of redistribution carried out by the state on one coordinate axis and the degree of citizen involvement in decision-making on another, and map existing states onto this grid, we will see that the resulting cloud of points is fairly uniform; that is, movement along each axis is generally quite independent. Therefore, both the demand for a reduction in state redistribution in the most direct democracy and the demand for the democratization of authoritarian states are equally justified. There is no need to necessarily link the reduction of taxes and regulations with a transition from democracy to authoritarianism; this assumption seems unfounded.
conservative owl
Raising the same topic for the third time, I begin to remind me of that very Ekaterina Schulmann, who also sings seemingly the same thing, but always in a different tune. And yes, here is my usual chorus about donations: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8
As I have already written, in the dispute between Svetov and Kichanova, I am more on the girl’s side, but I generally understand Misha’s position, and I think I will be able to clarify the issue that concerns you.
Mikhail defends the visa regime as a protection of freedom of association. That is, entry for anyone is prohibited by default (this is a manifestation of the freedom not to associate), but if there is an invitation from a citizen of the country, the visa must be issued unconditionally; otherwise, this is again a violation of the freedom of association. The inviter shares responsibility for the behavior of the invitee along with the invitee themselves—this is a standard institution of suretyship. Thus, the right to decide who to let into the country and who not to let in is held not by an official, but by a specific citizen, and he is the one accountable to other citizens for how he exercised this right.
I don’t recall Mikhail publicly stating his position exactly in this form, but this seems to me the only interpretation that does not contradict libertarianism. In general, such rules of access to the territory of a country would not be shameful for even a state that has firmly set itself on the path of minarchist reforms to adopt as a temporary solution.
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
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!
First of all, of course, I would like to recommend a short video by Mikhail Svetov dedicated specifically to this issue.
The main idea of the video is that to save rare species, a free market is needed that allows for profit to be derived from their preservation. Unfortunately, a short monologue did not leave room for an analysis of how to overcome the tragedy of the commons—that is, a situation where privatizing a resource is either impossible or disproportionately expensive. To delve deeper into this issue, I recommend reading the book by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, “Governing the Commons”. It examines numerous cases of how public property, which by all theoretical considerations should have been ruthlessly plundered, was successfully preserved without government regulation.
Ostrom formulates a set of criteria that must be met for the effective management of a common resource:
The group of common resource users is limited
Usage rules are determined based on the characteristics of the resource
Usage rules are developed by the users themselves or with their consent
Monitoring of compliance with usage rules is carried out by persons accountable to the users
Sanctions for violating usage rules are graduated in nature.
When these conditions are met, the joint use of a common resource does not lead to its degradation. Note that government intervention is directly contraindicated here as well, as it violates at least points 3 and 4.
So, the “invisible hand of the market” actually managed to solve even the tragedy of the commons. Hurrah for the market!
Mikhail Svetov released a new video in which he briefly formulated thoughts he has repeated many times in his lectures: open borders violate freedom of association, a world without borders is a world where there is nowhere to run, and his other well-known set of paradoxical conclusions. But before I could formulate what exactly is wrong with his concept, it was done by Vera Kichanova — a girl who herself was the media face of LPR for quite a long time, then emigrated, and after some time, Mikhail Svetov, returning from abroad, took the vacant spot.
Thus, we have an ideological confrontation between two media heavyweights, and it is certainly worth our attention.
Vera notes two logical contradictions in Mikhail’s video: first, the state creates closed borders, not open ones, while open borders exist by default, without any state; second, freedom of association is primarily the right to associate, not to fence oneself off, and closed borders violate this right.
In essence, several understandings of the word “borders” are participating in the discussion. First, a border as a line across which people, goods, and money move. Second, a border as a line demarcating territories with different orders. Mikhail warns that uniform orders will be established everywhere (a world where there is nowhere to run) and for this reason calls for closing borders to the movement of people (and mercantilists echo him, suggesting to simultaneously limit the movement of goods and money). Vera, on the other hand, proposes to completely eliminate borders of the first type, but has nothing against the second, because that is precisely the manifestation of freedom of association.
Forgive me if I expressed this quite complexly, but the topic is not the most trivial.
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.
