Concentration of political power through Liberland Merits (LLM)

Government & Politics
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So I was chatting today with a handful of participants on Signal, and we came to the subject of meritocracy. Since Liberland should be pretty much transparent, there are some questions to be asked, but the thing is actually that we shouldn’t even have gotten into this situation.

Blockchain identity “Stone1”: He, or she, or they hold around 1,430,771 of politically locked LLM and votes are politically aligned with the core/most powerful group.

That voting influence amount is 286 times bigger than someone who purchased citizenship for 10,000 USD. It’s like someone donated 2,860,000 USD to Liberland which I don’t say didn’t happen, I just want to put that in perspective. Blockchain says Stone1 is a member of the Senate, and we don’t even know who we’re talking about. Not to mention the power of the Senate, read the excerpt from the Constitution:

The Senate shall wield strictly negative powers only. It may veto proposed legislation before enactment, suspend or repeal existing laws or generally applicable executive instruments, cancel ongoing Referenda, and dismiss public officials. It shall not annul individual judicial judgments, reopen adjudicated disputes, or impair vested private rights arising from contract, property, or final court decisions.

This is in collision with Constitution’s Section 1.5:

The state form of Liberland shall be that of a constitutional republic rooted in direct meritocracy, embracing such parliamentary elements as align with the Nation’s steadfast devotion to the libertarian ideal.

Here’s Gemini AI’s response to “Does libertarianism forbid things like veto powers of individuals or groups that may cancel elections, referendums, suspension of laws in countries?”

Yes, libertarianism generally opposes state veto powers, canceling elections, and suspending laws because these authoritarian mechanisms directly violate individual liberty and the principle of limited government.

Core Libertarian Views on State Power

  • Individual rights: Libertarianism holds that every person has an absolute right to life, liberty, and property.
  • The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): This fundamental rule states that no individual or government has the right to initiate force against peaceful people.
  • Limited government: Libertarians believe the only proper role of a state is to protect citizens from aggression and fraud, not to override public choice.

Why Vetoes and Suspensions Violate These Principles

  • Arbitrary coercion: Giving a group or individual the power to cancel elections or suspend laws introduces unchecked coercion and political whim.
  • Destruction of the rule of law: Libertarians advocate for stable, predictable legal rules rather than the arbitrary rule of political leaders.
  • Rejection of dictatorial tools: Emergency powers and peremptory executive actions are viewed as direct threats to personal freedom.

In my opinion there can be no argument defending this state of affairs right now.

To be serious about Liberland development, I can only hope that the Ethereum blockchain upgrade is bringing a serious financial reset as well as flawless documentation and the spirit of open-source development. Additionally we obviously need to rethink the Constitution and expel conflicting things from it. Be a bit more “hardcore”, because things right now do look just ridiculous for anyone who looks closely. It’s the only way to get huge crowds interested in citizenship of Liberland, therefore a possibility to even relocate there on the island. No amount of marketing and conference speeches can bring that kind of power. Blockchain is all about technically applied decentralization of power, but it’s not there automatically: there are good, and there are bad chains. Same as there are good, and there are bad constitutions.

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“because things right now do look just ridiculous for anyone who looks closely”

…for that reason…

“No amount of marketing and conference speeches can bring [quality e-residents/active LL companies & engaged citizens]”

PS: check “Superfans” from Pat Flynn.

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Looks interesting, any free copy around? :wink:

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Some extracts/podcasts in various languages are available for free. I read & implemented the book.

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Even before I first engaged with Liberland in 2023, I knew—based on existing documents and the initial draft of the constitution—that voting power was tied to the number of "Merits" one held (the famous voluntary tax). It seems odd at first, but why not? Meritocracy isn't a bad idea, after all. However, I didn't realize at the time just how many Merits some individuals—particularly in the Senate—had accumulated. While 1.5 million is a huge amount, our president’s holding of over 3 million Merits gives him voting power equivalent to more than 600 voters (at 5,000 LLM each). Furthermore, there are rarely more than 70 actual voters in elections. And even though our president graciously sat out the last election, there are still senators holding over a million LLM. The key thing to understand is that Liberland’s design makes it less of a free country and more of a corporation. Vit is the CEO, and Senate seats are held for life—and passed down to one's children (much like the House of Lords). In fact, you can even join the Senate by making a donation of $1–2 million, according to the latest documentation. Yes, you can elect members of Congress, but on major issues, they ultimately only offer an opinion without any real decision-making power. If the executive leadership wants voting rights to come at a cost, Congress can't stop it. There are also supposed to be elections for a new president once at least 50% of the citizenry is in place—though the maximum figure isn't defined. Even assuming a cap of 6,000 citizens, we’ve only gone from 800 or 900 a decade ago to perhaps 1,500 today; so, that election isn't happening anytime soon. Furthermore, the entry price for citizenship suddenly jumped from $5,000 to $10,000, as did the value of the LLMs. You just have to keep in mind that Liberland is a company (based in Hong Kong, if I’m not mistaken); you can become a shareholder or the cleaner, but you’ll never be the one making decisions. At least we can voice our opinions. It’s not as if we held citizenship by birth. Once you realize it’s a for-profit company, everything becomes clearer. Anyone is free to join—or not—today (at a cost of $10,000). The problem is that all of this was essentially kept under wraps back then, and getting out of the "project" and recovering one's investment is virtually impossible. On the other hand, some people—myself included—benefited from the "citizenship" program and paid nothing (aside from airfare and the like) to acquire citizenship. And you have to admit, that’s pretty great. In practice, however, it only gives us a document identifying us as members of a sort of "Rotary Club"—allowing us to go camping in a swamp, just like non-citizens—plus a virtually useless vote (at least while it remains free).

Even before I first engaged with Liberland in 2023, I knew—based on existing documents and the initial draft of the constitution—that voting power was tied to the number of “Merits” one held (the famous voluntary tax). It seems odd at first, but why not? Meritocracy isn’t a bad idea, after all. However, I didn’t realize at the time just how many Merits some individuals—particularly in the Senate—had accumulated. While 1.5 million is a huge amount, our president’s holding of over 3 million Merits gives him voting power equivalent to more than 600 voters (at 5,000 LLM each). Furthermore, there are rarely more than 70 actual voters in elections. And even though our president graciously sat out the last election, there are still senators holding over a million LLM. The key thing to understand is that Liberland’s design makes it less of a free country and more of a corporation. Vit is the CEO, and Senate seats are held for life—and passed down to one’s children (much like the House of Lords). In fact, you can even join the Senate by making a donation of $1–2 million, according to the latest documentation. Yes, you can elect members of Congress, but on major issues, they ultimately only offer an opinion without any real decision-making power. If the executive leadership wants voting rights to come at a cost, Congress can’t stop it. There are also supposed to be elections for a new president once at least 50% of the citizenry is in place—though the maximum figure isn’t defined. Even assuming a cap of 6,000 citizens, we’ve only gone from 800 or 900 a decade ago to perhaps 1,500 today; so, that election isn’t happening anytime soon. Furthermore, the entry price for citizenship suddenly jumped from $5,000 to $10,000, as did the value of the LLMs. You just have to keep in mind that Liberland is a company (based in Hong Kong, if I’m not mistaken); you can become a shareholder or the cleaner, but you’ll never be the one making decisions. At least we can voice our opinions. It’s not as if we held citizenship by birth. Once you realize it’s a for-profit company, everything becomes clearer. Anyone is free to join—or not—today (at a cost of $10,000). The problem is that all of this was essentially kept under wraps back then, and getting out of the “project” and recovering one’s investment is virtually impossible. On the other hand, some people—myself included—benefited from the “citizenship” program and paid nothing (aside from airfare and the like) to acquire citizenship. And you have to admit, that’s pretty great. In practice, however, it only gives us a document identifying us as members of a sort of “Rotary Club”—allowing us to go camping in a swamp, just like non-citizens—plus a virtually useless vote (at least while it remains free).

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I first heard about Liberland back in 2016 and in 2017 I purchased my first merit. I did not look closely at how merits worked back then only that you needed them to become a citizen. When I read that the Croatians were constantly arresting people including the president I realized that now was not the time for me to support them until they actually had people on the ground there. Eventually I forgot about Liberland and in 2024 I read somewhere that they actually had people living on the ground there and I saw that this was the time for me to step up and actually join Liberland. It was actually a bit hard for me I remember correctly to find any groups at first. I did find the telegram group and that’s how I met you Marko and I started doing some deeper research into the Congress and the documentation for Liberland. Having personally been involved in the Volusia County Libertarian Party and rewriting their constitution, by-laws and party platform in 2016-2017 period, along with my position of being chairman of the Legislative Affairs Committee, I wrote myself over 30 constitutional amendment proposals to the Florida State Constitutional Revision Commission to the Florida State Constitution in 2017 and 8 charter amendments to the Volusia County Charter Review Commission in 2015. I know what a libertarian style constitution should look like and the Liberland Senate has always been that peculiarly strange component that I could never really wrap my head around as it is the antithesis of what libertarianism is supposed to be.

I have tried to look the other way sometimes but you can’t though because a senator said to me that “Congress is meaningless and does nothing” even though the Congress has 2 senators sitting on it. The senators are the President, Vice President, Finance Minister and the Secretary of State.

You can see quite clearly my evolution on the senate in this very forum. I have at times tried to rationalize the senate even earlier this year but no matter how you look at the though senate even if they claim to only have “veto power” they don’t , and that is because all of the senators are also cabinet members, this is where the real is power is. To my knowledge Congress has never passed a budget at all how can we overlook something so basic that passing the budget is approved by the National Legislatures in ALL countries around the world national budgets even are passed in even the most authoritarian places like North Korea (rubber stamp of course) with their national legislatures to pass their government budgets. So why does Liberland not use a similar structure then? Why does Liberland after 11 years not have a legally binding constitution? A Supreme Court after they have made numerous claims of theft to their property from their own citizens?

I cannot find an answer to these questions except that they want to operate as a corporation and not a country as you pointed out Marko even though they claim to be one. The president has stated many times that this is will be the new way from countries to operate, no it cannot be because the UN Declaration of Human Rights states in various places what a country must do to respect certain rights. While the UN is not an institution I wish to uphold often in the case of voting rights I agree with them. Multiple amendments to the US Constitution use the phrase “cannot be denied or abridged” in terms of voting rights.

The 24th Amendment to the US Constitution says this

“Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

It clearly says that the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged just because one did not “pay” your taxes. This logic also extends to other areas as well in my opinion like requiring a subscription to keep your voting for example. The proposed requirement that you must spend time physically in Liberland just to keep your voting rights is absurd unless it is tied to ALL of your citizenship rights, this is another way to subrogate one citizens’ voting right to another who either has the resources to go there or the money to sway influence.

I thought at first if we were to limit the voting power of higher merit holders we could make the system more fair to those with less merits but even that proved to be impossible with the amount of merits held by the senators though.

There are no concrete rules we operate like the UK did in ancient times with a powerful house of lords, a weak House of Commons (Congress in our case), a powerful monarchy and no constitution. At least the subjects back then knew they had limited rights though, for Liberland the marketing says that we are free and that is not very true at all unfortunately.

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I found out who is “Stone1”. People deserve to know who is in power. It’s Boguslaw Wozniak, the vice president.

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Apart from the suggestions regarding the draft of the Constitution (which anyone can still submit via justice@ or via the dedicated Google Doc - arguably the long list of remarks is why it is still in process), are you saying that there should be a disclaimer for future citizens so that they know their voting power is small compared to the absolute power and that the power increases linearly with the merit holdings?

Honestly, the concept of meritocracy and merits (LLMs) seems to be the no.1 thing in most presentations and also one of the core elements of the whole movement. However, it is true that it is currently not present in the signup flow itself (apart from the intro video).

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If such disclaimer was posted that would not look pretty much contrary to the whole concept of Liberland (at least one libertarian one that is pushed as a narrative everywhere). People tend to put the democratic decisioning close to libertarianism conceptually.

What I would suggest is that the weight of LLM vote falls the more LLM you hold and find some sensible balance like someone’s vote can be maximum 10 times stronger than other’s.

Or, complete reset of merit system which is I guess much less probable and harder to implement.

Both of suggestions are I guess just a pipe dream, but talking from a position of someone who thinks Liberland should be having much more citizens by now and that the number of citizens is crucial asset of Liberland, I think this is one of the most important changes that should be implemented.

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I pointed this out months ago the only way we can really pull back the obscene voting power is to have a logarithmic scale where the more merits you have the voting scale weights itself so it is not as disproportionate. The issue getting the handful of people with million plus merits to agree to this. It’s like fighting multibillion dollar corporations with entrenched monopoly protections as a meager consumer trying to find a way out their rigging system when you don’t even know the extent of the number of brands/companies they own when you could be unwittingly support the very same mega corp you are trying to escape from/boycott.

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