Current Libertarian Platform*: The Libertarian Party of California (LPCA) in 2025 bases its platform on core libertarian principles of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets, as outlined in various sources from the Libertarian Party and its California affiliate. Below is a description of a relevant Libertarian Party platform tailored to California, reflecting its current […]
2015-2017 National Platform The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of every form of domination and exploitation, whether based on social class, gender, race/ethnicity, age, education, sexual orientation, or other characteristics. We are committed to the transformation of capitalism through the creation of a democratic socialist society based on compassion, empathy, and respect as well […]
adapted from Murray Bookchin, Municipal Libertarianism Any agenda that tries to restore and amplify the classical meaning of politics and citizenship must clearly indicate what they are not, if only because of the confusion that surrounds the two words. Politics is not statecraft…Citizens are not constituents or taxpayers. Statecraft consists of operations that engage the […]
If many pragmatic people are blind to the importance of decentralism, many in the ecology movement tend to ignore very real problems with “localism” — problems no less troubling than the problems raised by a globalism that fosters a total interlocking of economic and political life on a worldwide basis. Without wholistic cultural and political […]
Above all, I have tried to show in my previous writings how confederation on a municipal basis has existed in sharp tension with the centralized state generally, and the nation-state of recent times. Confederalism, I have tried to emphasize, is not simply a unique societal, particularly civic or municipal, form of administration. It is a […]
Decentralism and self-sustainability must involve a much broader principle of social organization than mere localism. Together with decentralization, approximations to self-sufficiency, humanly scaled communities, ecotechnologies, and the like, there is a compelling need for democratic and truly communitarian forms of interdependence — in short, for libertarian forms of confederalism. I have detailed at length in […]
The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking (as witness the recent tendency of radicals to espouse “market socialism” rather than deal with the failings of the market economy as well as state socialism). Doubtless we will have to import coffee for those people who need […]
Murray Bookchin Few arguments have been used more effectively to challenge the case for face-to-face participatory democracy than the claim that we live in a “complex society.” Modern population centers, we are told, are too large and too concentrated to allow for direct decision-making at a grassroots level. And our economy is too “global,” presumably, […]
Anyone can propose a bill at any time. All proposals are reviewed equally, without bias. Proposals that improve the general welfare (according to the prediction market’s evaluation of the publicly known metric for the general welfare) will be adopted. The mechanism by which bills are reviewed is open to all. Anyone can investigate and present […]
Most democracies have an Executive Officer, such as the President of the United States, typically elected either directly or indirectly by the people. In a DAO Democracy, assuming we retain the Executive Branch in more or less its current form, the simplest approach would be to appoint, as President, that person the prediction market said […]
Another problem with evaluating collective welfare is membership in the collective: who do we add and who do we remove? We consider criteria that are suitable for membership in a nation (in contrast with membership in the local chess club, or a student in a school, or a shareholder in a company). Traditionally, for democracies, children of […]
We now give an example of how to buy and sell DCWi in a prediction market. First, a trader purchases a pair of conditional bearer bonds from a bank for $1 in the year 2016. The first says “Pay to bearer $1 times DCW2016” The second says “Pay to bearer $1 times (1-DCW2016)”. Because DCW2016 is between […]
– Ralph Merkle State of Satisfaction. Annually, all citizens are asked to rank the year just passed between 0 and 1 (inclusive). If you wish, you can think of this as a poll of each citizen’s individual welfare, where 0 means the welfare of the citizen that year was the worst possible, and 1 is the […]
– Ralph Merkle Futarchy, proposed by Robin Hanson, is a proposal to govern by prediction markets. The proposal seems like an excellent approach for improving upon existing democratic forms of governance. The general concept: To aggregate knowledge from across a community of people, using a method that’s known to be effective: prediction markets. Use that […]
Land Use and Public Property We recognize the right of property owners to control, use, transfer or dispose of their property in any manner that does not violate the rights of others. We believe that rights to land and any related water, oil or mineral rights are entitled to the same respect and protection. We […]
Derived from Abdullah Ocalan The right of self-determination of the peoples includes the right to a state of their own. However, the foundation of a state does not increase the freedom of a people. The system of the United Nations that is based on nation-states has remained inefficient. Meanwhile, nation-states have become serious obstacles for […]
Social Liberty