The Libertarian Band team, with whom I collaborated a long time ago on creating videos with an introduction to libertarianism (this experience later proved useful to me when writing the book), has after a long break produced an excellent video about the Free State Project.
This is their second video dedicated to libertarian communities (the first, released at the end of 2021, was about Monte libero.
The screenwriter who replaced me works in a completely different style: where I preferred my own, as original as possible, reflections, his focus is on much richer factual detail. In my opinion, it turned out quite entertaining; it’s great that the guys are still active and continue to deliver the basics.
Now, of course, a video about Liberland is overdue; I hope it won’t be more than a year before they enrich their playlist with a corresponding episode.
The Libertarian Band studio released a fairly dense ten-minute video explaining the specifics of mobilization in the RF for those who still believe that it is actually possible to do something according to the law in the RF. By the way, this is actually possible, because “according to the law” in the RF is one of several competing systems of concepts, and where there is competition, there is an opportunity to win that competition. The thing is, the main tool to ensure that things are handled “according to the law” with you is a loud and dirty public scandal or a credible threat of one. The video also speaks quite clearly about this.
At the end of the video, it was also mentioned that a great way to avoid mobilization would be physical relocation to Montenegro and joining the Montelibero project.
Mikhail Svetov held a rather thin six-hour stream with the powerful title “Run,” where at the end he also mentioned that he strongly recommends fleeing, including to Montenegro, where one can join the Montelibero project if desired—despite Mikhail’s own skepticism regarding the project’s goals, as it’s not the time for luxuries.
I regret to state that the suggestions from both respected channels were slightly belated, and now the priority is to flee not specifically to Montenegro, but anywhere abroad at all, as long as you aren’t turned back at the border—then you can figure out how to survive in the new conditions, and perhaps you’ll manage to make it to Montenegro after all, who knows. For example, one of the project participants lived with us for a month in August; he liked it, then he returned to the RF to pack the rest of his things and move for good—and now he’s stuck in Kazakhstan, where he managed to get with considerable difficulty after the mobilization decree. “Packed his things,” my foot…
Nevertheless, we still declare that we will help with settling in those who make it to our remote area, from some Georgia, Armenia, the same Kazakhstan, or, why not, even from Russia. If you can—mobilize all your resources—and come join us.
Libertarian Band has released a video on the ethological approach to defining the concepts of aggression, violence, and self-defense. Ethology, as a science that studies animal behavior and serves as a link between biological and sociological sciences in the study of human behavior, is a fairly precise tool for solving this problem. The ethological approach can provide us with clear answers regarding what should be considered aggression and violence, as well as where the boundaries of self-defense lie.
I recommend everyone watch this video and share it with others, so that there will be less confusion in the future during conversations about aggression, violence, and self-defense.
I read Latynina’s article about the subject with great interest. In some ways, it echoes a recent video by Libertarian Band about the Metaverse, but the article is far more detailed than the video. From an economic standpoint, the e-karma scheme looks decent, although it’s not entirely clear to me how it is protected against bot farms. Here, I lack the IT qualifications to assess the viability of the idea presented, so it would be great if some IT specialist could do so in the comments.
Libertarian Band has released a very high-quality video about metaverses, integrating this trendy topic into the general frameworks of libertarian strategy—in other words, showing the prospects that open up for us as this phenomenon continues to develop. For some time, this new space will remain a territory of relative freedom, and if we strive to avoid centralization in this sphere from the start, there is a chance to keep this freedom under reliable protection.
At the same time, the ideas regarding the merging of the real world and the metaverse via NFT and RFID seem too raw to me for now, and it is not certain that any breakthroughs can be achieved here at all: nothing can prevent someone from attaching a buffalo NFT token to an elephant, and in this situation, a remote user will not even be able to follow Kozma Prutkov’s advice and “not believe their eyes,” because in their metaverse, they will see a buffalo, period.
In my monthly project progress reports, I tend to write more about boring matters, such as how many roads the ancaps have built, but the guys from Libertarian Band examined the entire Montelibero project starting from the basic ideas that formed its foundation, and the result is a quite decent analysis. Although it is felt, of course, that over there in Russia the material is presented in its own context, as a reproach to local libertarian politicians, but from the side, such animation of the material looks rather amusing.
I hope that in preparing the next video dedicated to our project, they will not limit themselves to setting up a wallet and familiarizing themselves with the tokenomics, but will also send a film crew to the site. And by that time, I hope we will have managed to build something, and it will be possible to live in our settlement. However, you are not obliged to wait for a new film to be released; nothing stops you from visiting us as early as tomorrow, meeting the project participants who have already moved to the country, and seeing everything with your own eyes.
The video is well-made, even a bit pedantic: featuring a historical overview, a demonstration of the state’s lack of involvement in the emergence of most educational practices, and a list of key ideas for removing the state from this sphere.
I’ll throw in a few more links regarding ideas on how to organize this very education. David Friedman on the reform of schools, universities, and on unschooling.
And tomorrow, we move from theoretical reflections on private education to practice. The readings of Adam Smith are a bit late this year, and they didn’t surprise us with anything on Guy Fawkes Day, but they will take place tomorrow after all (without Shulmann, as you might imagine!). I’m really counting on a proper broadcast on YouTube; in that case, I will likely provide prompt commentary on what’s happening on my Twitter, and then post my summary impressions to my other channels.
I found the time to watch a fresh video from a team whose activities I continue to follow. I was pleasantly surprised. As is usually the case in their recent videos, it provides a fairly solid analysis of the concept under study—in this case, legitimacy. But besides that, this time it also offers a curious prediction: that the acquisition of legitimacy by various non-state entities (like free cities and other contractual jurisdictions) in the eyes of traditional states will proceed roughly the same way as the legitimacy of the Taliban regime is currently being strengthened.
I have returned to Montenegro from a three-week trip to Albania; during this time, a lot of unread and unwatched material has accumulated, so I will go through it briefly.
Kapelyushnikov – a good introductory lecture introducing listeners to Hayek and his main achievements.
Nureev – an introduction to the problems of implementing Hayek’s idea about the introduction of certain abstract universal rules of fair behavior (did I translate Eric Mack’s book on libertarianism for nothing – there is a chapter about all of this).
Sazonov – a similar report with a presentation on the entrepreneurial theory of property; he had already given it earlier in St. Petersburg, and I summarized it briefly, and even the listeners’ questions partially overlap. At the time, I was wondering whether to include elements of the presented theory in my book – and in the end, I decided not to. Not because I disagree with the author, but simply because I don’t dig that deep into the philosophical foundations of property rights in the book.
Bystrov – republicans trolling libertarians, funny, but not very substantive.
Bazhenov – a minarchist trolling ancaps and agorists, plus an exposition of those same Hayekian principles stating that uniform universal legal norms are necessary for the efficient functioning of a free market. Also, some excursion into the classification of goods by alienability and exhaustibility.
Travin – a talk primarily about the subject of historical sociology, as well as an explanation of why there is room to apply Hayek even in this field.
Zemtsov – a talk about how democracy is understood and valued differently in different places, while there is a clear inverse correlation between the development of democracy and its declared value, for which political science provides no unambiguous explanation, so we are offered to choose from six different explanations.
A video titled Inhibition of Violence was released on the Libertarian Band channel. It completely repeats numerous materials on the same topic posted by Bitarkh on my channel, specifically, the one from literally yesterday. So, it can be recommended as a brief explication of the ideas put forward by Bitarkh, and at the same time, it is an opportunity to admire the cool print on the presenter.
A competing translation of David Friedman’s book titled Mechanisms of Freedom has finally been made publicly available, although only in the pdf format, which is not the most convenient for reading. I skimmed through it and can say that, except for the poems, it is quite good. If I were more of a perfectionist, this would be a reason to go through my own translation again and polish certain parts, but perhaps it would be more appropriate for me to spend time on more urgent tasks.
An article by Alexey Korshunov on the current state of affairs in Honduran charter cities was posted on the Libertarian State channel. Following that, he also posted an analysis of the initiative to create a charter city in Somaliland, where he wonders about the violation of their creation principles without specifying the reasons why this is being done. In our Montelibero, of course, the scale is more modest, but things are moving forward as well; I plan to post a fresh digest of project news soon.
Out of habit, I continue to watch new videos from my former team, but I’ve somehow forgotten to promote them on my own page; that’s untidy, so I’m correcting it.
In the video, which this time is dedicated to propaganda, as usual, there is an extensive historical introduction, and, as usual, it hangs in the air somewhat, because no thoughts are derived from it that the main part of the video could rely on. Next, there is an equally extensive analysis of how it works and what methods it employs, and in conclusion, it is stated that propaganda is not bad in itself, since it can be used for benevolent purposes. For example, promoting vaccination against a fashionable disease and other beneficial methods of state care for the population—what else could libertarians bring up as a positive example? Certainly not Svetov with his propaganda for lustration!
