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.
