Programme of the Latvian Minarchist Party

Why this programme

Almost every force on the Latvian political scene starts from the same paternalist, statist view of social relations. They differ only in the details: which regulation matters most, how best to redistribute what is collected in taxes, which industries and interest groups to support and which not.

None of them questions the paradigm itself: that the life of society needs regulating, and that a "collective bureaucrat" will arrange it better than people themselves. None of them puts first a person's freedom and their right to act without coercion.

This page is an attempt to imagine what the programme of a moderate libertarian party of the minarchist kind could look like, if such a party existed in Latvia.

If you have something to say, join the discussion.

In short

We believe that an adult knows better than any government agency how to live, what to spend their earnings on and what to teach their children. That is why the state should do few things, but do them well: defend the country, protect people and their property, settle disputes and keep registers that everyone trusts. Everything else people can arrange for themselves — and usually arrange better.

That is minarchism: there is a state, but not much of it.

What we believe

Personal freedom and personal responsibility. These are one value, not two. Freedom without responsibility means someone else pays for your decisions. Responsibility without freedom means you pay for other people's.

The private comes before the public. Society is made of people, and it has no interests apart from the interests of those who make it up. When private life, private business or private property is to be pushed aside for the common good, it is worth asking whose good exactly that is and who decided so.

Cooperation instead of coercion. Healthy social relations grow out of people acting together, each pursuing their own interests. The baker does not bake bread out of love for the customer, and yet there is bread on the table every day. Every form of creative cooperation, self-organisation and civic participation is a good thing, and we welcome it.

The state is a tool. It has no goals, no money and no wisdom of its own. It has the tasks it has been given and the means allotted to them.

What the state does

The list is short, and we want it to stay that way. What is not on the list, the state as a rule does not do.

External security. An army able to defend the country, and alliances that make attacking it pointless. Guarding the border and clear rules of entry belong here too.

Those who serve are those who chose to: a professional contract army and a strong volunteer Zemessardze (National Guard) with good conditions and equipment. There is no compulsory conscription. A country is best defended by people who decided to do it themselves, and for there to be enough of them, service must be respected and decently paid.

Every adult has access to courses in basic military training and weapons handling. Taking part is voluntary and encouraged: the more people in the country who can protect themselves and others, the calmer it is.

Internal security. A police force that protects residents' life, liberty and property from any infringement — including by the state itself. The job of the police is to protect people, not to watch how they live.

Emergency services. Firefighters, rescuers and ambulance crews protect life and property just as the police do, and the state provides them with everything they need. Private and volunteer services can work alongside the state ones — volunteer fire societies, private crews, volunteer rescuers. The more of them, the better.

Courts. Independent, fast and predictable. Freedom of contract is worth little if enforcing a contract takes years. We welcome private arbitration and mediation: the more disputes the parties settle themselves, the better.

Trusted infrastructure. Property registers, identity documents, notaries. This is dull, invisible work, and everything else rests on it: to own, sell and make agreements, you need to be sure that the entry in the register is correct. This infrastructure should be convenient, digital and work for the people who use it.

Roads and networks. Roads, streets, power and water networks are infrastructure too, and the state and local governments are responsible for them: they own them or commission them. Private contractors chosen in open tenders build and maintain them. Where possible, the user pays.

Emergency powers

The state may restrict people's freedoms — impose curfews, close businesses, ban movement — only in war or under its direct threat. An epidemic, a crisis or a natural disaster is a reason to inform, advise and help. It gives no right to prohibit. Adults who have been told honestly what is happening are able to decide for themselves how to behave.

How to keep the state within its limits

Bureaucracy and the administrative apparatus have an innate property: they grow. No ill intent is needed for this. Every agency sincerely believes its work is important, every new rule solves someone's real problem, and the sum is a system in which every action needs a permit.

This does not stop by itself, so special efforts are needed, including legislative ones:

• Expiry by default. New regulations, programmes and institutions are adopted for a limited term. To extend them, it must be shown again that they work.
• Regular review. Every function of the state is periodically tested with a simple question: what would happen if we stopped doing this?
• New instead of old. When introducing a requirement, the legislature repeals existing ones — in greater volume.
• Everything not forbidden is allowed — for people and companies. Everything not allowed is forbidden — for the state.
• Decisions closer to people. What a local government can decide is not decided by a ministry. What neighbours can settle among themselves is not decided by the local government.

Freedoms

Property

Everyone has the right to dispose of the fruits of their labour as they see fit. Any property is legitimate except that obtained by force or deception. Any way of earning a living is legitimate if it is not built on force or deception. Any form of payment the parties have agreed on is legitimate: cash, bank transfer, cryptocurrency, an exchange of goods or services.

Property is not a privilege of the well-off. For a person on a modest income, protecting the little they have means more than it does for the rich.

Freedom of contract

Competent adults have the right to agree with one another on anything and on any terms — without deception or coercion. This covers employment, renting, trade, loans, joint ventures and family relations. The state does not write the contract for the parties. It makes sure that what was signed is honoured.

For work, this means two things. The state does not set a minimum wage: what work is worth is decided by the employee and the employer, that is, by the market. And the state does not ban trade unions, but neither does it oblige companies to deal with them: forming a union is the workers' right; whether to negotiate with it is the employer's.

For finance, it means that the state does not regulate interest rates and does not tell citizens and companies on what terms to make financial deals with each other.

Equality

The equality we defend is equality before the law. The state treats everyone the same: one law, one court, the same rules for all.

Inequality of outcomes is another matter. People differ in ability, diligence, taste and luck, and free people inevitably arrive at different results. This is not a defect to be fixed: outcomes can be equalised in only one way — by taking from some and giving to others. The state's job is not to make everyone end up the same, but to make the rules the same for everyone.

For private persons and companies the rule is different. Whom to hire, whom to rent a flat to, whom to serve and whom to do business with is for the owner to decide, and the owner owes no one an explanation. The right to say "yes" is worth nothing without the right to say "no". The answer to a foolish or ugly choice is not a ban but competition and reputation: by turning away a customer or an employee, a business owner hands them to a competitor. Quotas and rules on whom one may not refuse to serve do not apply to private business.

Freedom of speech

We believe that the benefits of an open clash of ideas and free discussion outweigh the risks. An unpleasant opinion is better refuted than banned: a ban does not make an idea weaker, but arguing about it does. Restrictions are justified where words become a direct instrument of violence or deception: threats, fraud, defamation.

Freedom of education

The state has no monopoly on education and knowledge. Everyone has the right to decide what and how their children learn: in a public school or a private one, a large school or a family one, following the usual curriculum or their own. A variety of schools, curricula and approaches is a sign of a healthy system.

The education standard and model curricula exist as a starting point and a guide for those who need them. The state does not force anyone to follow them; it helps and supports on their educational path those who need support. Those who feel able to do so choose their own educational goals and the ways of reaching them. The procedure here is one of notification, not permission.

Self-ownership

Competent adults decide for themselves what is in their interest and what is not, what is harmful to them and what is good for them, and how to pursue their own goals. Every adult has the right to decide what risk is acceptable to them and in what situation. The state does not bring up its citizens.

A few concrete things follow from this.

• Drugs. Use and possession for oneself are the personal business of an adult, not a criminal offence. Addiction is a matter of health, and prison does not solve it.
• Weapons. A law-abiding adult has the right to own weapons and to defend themselves, their loved ones and their property.
• Sex work, gambling, alcohol, tobacco. Voluntary transactions between adults are not banned and not burdened with "educational" excise duties and restrictions. Opening hours, shop-window displays and the font size on a cigarette pack are not matters for the state.
• Medicine. A person's body belongs to that person. Any medical intervention is possible only voluntarily, on the basis of informed consent: the person has been told what is going to be done to them, why and with what risks, and has agreed. Refusal is as legitimate a decision as consent.

The freedom to dispose of oneself ends where harm to another person begins. A drunk driver is held fully accountable — for putting others in danger. Seat belts are the opposite case: an unbelted driver risks only themselves, so forcing them to buckle up is not a function of the state.

Children

Everything said above applies to competent adults. Decisions for children are made by their parents: how to raise them, what to teach them, what to believe and how to treat them when they are ill. The family is autonomous, and an official is not the one in charge of it.

At the same time, a child is a person, not property, and has a guaranteed minimum of their own that parents may not deprive them of:

• protection from violence, abuse and neglect;
• literacy and numeracy — so that, once grown up, they can make use of their freedom;
• emergency medical care.

In everything else, parents decide. State intervention in family affairs is an extraordinary measure. It is possible only by a court decision, not at an agency's discretion, and it must be reversible: the family always has a way to have the decision reviewed and overturned. The same procedure applies to adults declared legally incompetent: their interests are represented by a guardian, and a dispute between guardian and ward is decided by a court.

Traditions

Traditions matter. They give people support and structure in life, link generations and make a place a home. Everyone is free to keep the traditions they consider necessary and not to keep those they do not want. A tradition that is kept up voluntarily is alive. One that rests on prescription already needs help, and the state is a poor helper in this.

Money: taxes and the budget

Taxes are payment for the work of the state. Since the list of jobs is short, the bill should be small.

• Taxes cover the minimal functions of the state and nothing beyond them.
• The budget is balanced by law. Living on debt means taxing those who cannot vote yet.
• The tax system should be simple enough for a person to understand it on their own, without an adviser.
• Every taxpayer has the right to see what their money was spent on, line by line.
• Everyone pays their own taxes. Withholding tax at the point of payment and shifting this duty onto intermediaries — employers, banks, clients — is abolished. People receive what they have earned in full and see for themselves how much they give to the state.

The state and business

The state should not own businesses. An official running a company has neither their own money at stake nor their own risk. The losses of such a company are covered by taxpayers, and in the market it gets in the way of those who work with their own money.

It also follows that the state does not support some entrepreneurs at the expense of others: subsidies, tax breaks and special regimes for chosen industries are a redistribution from those who manage on their own to those who know how to ask.

Administrative barriers to entering any field of economic activity should be reduced to a minimum, and ideally to zero. Starting a business requires no one's permission. Licences and approvals are justified only where third parties would suffer without them. Opening a business should be as easy as closing one.

Nature and common resources

Pollution is an infringement on other people's property and health. Whoever has poisoned a neighbour's well, filled someone else's yard with smoke or dumped waste into someone else's pond has caused harm and compensates it in full, through the courts. No special environmental ideology is needed for this; it is enough to take property seriously.

There are also things that cannot belong to anyone: the air, the sea, large rivers. The state protects them — this is part of the same security function. The rules here should be few, measurable and the same for everyone: exactly what may not be discharged or dumped, and what a violation costs.

A forest, a field or a shore that has an owner also has someone who cares what becomes of it in thirty years.

Local governments

The same principle applies to local governments as to the state: a short list of tasks. Local roads and networks, public order, and whatever residents have decided to do together. A local government does not own businesses or hand out privileges.

Within that list, however, a local government is truly independent — both politically and financially. It sets and collects local taxes itself, decides itself what to spend them on, and itself answers to residents for the result.

This creates competition. Parishes and towns where taxes are reasonable and the streets are in order attract people and businesses. Where it is expensive and bad, residents see it and draw their conclusions: at elections or by moving.

Language

Latvia has one state language — Latvian. The state and its institutions work in it.

Everything else is a private matter. Which language to speak at home and at work, to teach children in, to do business in, to write signs in and to serve customers in is decided by people and companies themselves. A language that people want to speak needs no inspectors, and inspection has never yet made anyone love a language.

Society

A small state does not mean a weak society. On the contrary: the less an agency decides, the more people decide — in associations, unions, congregations, clubs, foundations, neighbourhood and professional organisations.

Yes to public debate and to referendums at every level. A question that concerns the residents of a parish is for the residents of that parish to decide. We want the threshold for an initiative to be low and the result to be binding.

Latvia in the world

NATO — yes. External security is the first function of the state, and for a country of our size and geography it is ensured within an alliance. Latvia fulfils its obligations to its allies in full.

The European Union — yes; Brussels regulation — no. We value the EU for what it began with: the free movement of people, goods, services and capital. Within the Union, Latvia should consistently argue for deregulation and for decisions to be taken at the level closest to people.

Open to work and capital. Coming to Latvia to work, study and do business should be easy. The rules of entry are clear and enforced, and the border is guarded. Moving to the country gives no right to be supported at its residents' expense.

Who we stand with

Everyone who works to increase personal freedom and reduce the role of the state in people's lives. We do not have to agree on everything else: if a movement, a party or an individual member of parliament proposes to abolish an unnecessary ban, cut a tax or close a needless agency, we will support it, whoever proposes it.