04/17/15
A new (small) country was created four days ago, called Liberland.
http://liberland.org/en/about/
Perhaps Objectivists can influence its laws to be laissez-fair capitalism.
Here's an article:
http://time.com/3825100/man-claims-new-country-europe/
http://inserbia.info/today/2015/04/czech-proclaims-new-sovereign-state-between-serbia-and-croatia-liberland/
EDIT:
The website has a forum section which is editable by those who register on the site. The forum is very active at the moment. I encourage Objectivists to answer from the Objectivist perspective the issues people discussing about what politics Liberland should have.
04/19/15
I have started a Facebook page for the Objectivist Party liberland.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Objectivist-Liberland-Party/1563957040543589
The goal of this page is to have one place to refer people about the ideology of Capitalism, as viewed from the Objectivist point of view. In contrast, someone has created a Communist party for Liberland and already collected 2000 likes. Yet, my page has collected only 5 :)
04/19/15
The liberland.org website has added a Philosophy page in which the founders make it clear that they base the politics on Murray Rothbard:
http://liberland.org/en/philosophy/
As Objectivists we can point the 150,000 people who registered on the website that M. Rothbard politics is not the correct one for laissez-fair capitalism.
EDIT1: Note that the Facebook page for Liberland is https://www.facebook.com/liberland
EDIT2: Here's an email I sent to info@liberland.org
On your Philosophy page you have declared that you choose Rothbard as the foundation philosophy for Liberland. It is Ayn Rand, and not Rothbard who provided the proper model for the only moral political system: laissez-fair capitalism.
Ayn Rand defended capitalism and described proper functions of government in her book "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". The proper functions of government are police, military and judicial courts.
In contrast, anarchism promoted by Rothbard can not be a model for capitalism. Here are some excerpts of Ayn Rand's writing to this point:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anarchism.html
I hope that after reading Ayn Rand you will agree with her reasoning and reconsider your position on the foundation philosophy of Liberland.
04/20/15
Update: Liberland has removed its philosophy page which had advertized M. Rothbard as the father of Liberland politics.
The reason is probably not my email which got lost in the pile of emails that they are receiving now. I think it is because of my exchange with Jan Šebelík who, judging from his writing on Facebook, personally knows the founder of Liberland and is involved in the administration. Here's the record of our communication:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1564067937199166&id=1563957040543589
Jan Šebelík: I donť understand substantial differences between Ayn Rand and, for example, Murray N. Rothbard.
Me: Ayn Rand developed a philosophy of Objectivism starting with foundations and ending with politics, Rothbard has developed only a political system. Their systems are very different. For example, in Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism police is a private matter. To this Ayn Rand has objected:http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anarchism.html
Jan Šebelík: Well, I have The Fountainhead at home, waiting for my wife finish reading. Atlas Shrugged was translated to Czech recently. I plan to buy it as e-book.
04/23/15
Liberland administration came up with a first draft of Constitution which shows that they intend to have income taxes. Here's a letter I wrote to them by email:
To the writers of the Constitution of Liberland,
In item "§12(3) to lay and collect taxes other than personal income tax and/or corporate income tax…" you are building a government which commits immoral act on its citizens. Those who make more income do so because they produce a higher value than others. Why penalize the achievers?
he proper functions of government (as Ayn Rand explained in her book "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal) are the judicial court, military and police. Does the government provide different services to those who make less money? Is an engineer who makes more money than a restaurant waiter more protected by the police than the waiter? Does the military protect them differently? Does the judicial court provide a different service for these men? No. They provide the same service for all citizens, and it is unfair for one person to pay more for the service than another.
There is a name for this evil philosophical idea of penalizing achievers: it is called egalitarianism. An Objectivist philosopher Dr. Binswanger explains what is wrong with it in this great Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2014/01/07/president-obama-stop-damning-the-achievers-for-their-virtues/
How then can the government get the necessary funding for its proper functions? Ayn Rand explains:
"In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance."
and,
"The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens' income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—as an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing."
How to actually implement the collection of voluntary funds is open to creativity. Ayn Rand suggested two methods in her article "Government Financing in a Free society" in her book The Virtue of Selfishness: government lottery and government-insured contracts.
I hope that you will reconsider your position on taxation and will indeed create a country that respects citizens freedoms.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Thank you, Boris Reitman
I hope it won't get lost in their mailbox. I pinged Jan Šebelík who seems to be affiliated, maybe that will alert them.
04/23/15
Looks like I misread the item about taxes by not realizing that "other than" means that all taxes are allowed except income tax. http://liberland.org/en/constitution/
04/25/15
Dr. Yaron Brook has met with the Liberland administration! I bet that as a result of this meeting Liberland politics was influenced for the better.
Here's a photo with Dr. Yaron Brook at the dinner table with the founder of Liberland, and others.
https://www.facebook.com/liberland/photos/pb.1635821913310282.-2207520000.1429978394./1801276816764790/?type=1&theater