Libertarians often ask, “what is neoreaction?”

There’s an easy way to consider it from a libertarian perspective. First, consider seasteading and charter cities. These ideas originated in the libertarian sphere. They are concepts of locally run city-states.

For a seastead to work, it needs a leader. That leader may be called President, or CEO, or king, many of the differences between these titles are aesthetic.

That’s it. You have neoreaction right there. A libertarian who believes that a seastead with a relatively stable leader would be an interesting idea is a sort of neoreactionary-lite.

“Neoreaction” involves extending that concept, saying things like:

1) Is democracy really the best form of government for an autonomous city-state?

2) We have hundreds of years of records of how a crown corporation (monarchy) can manage a limited (1-5% GDP) government, maybe we should actually look at this history instead of dismissing it?

3) Larger governments are actually weaker on average. Making a government stronger allows it to be smaller, and therefore to stay out of the general business of society more. Where interventions are necessary, it can do so with authority. (See Moldbug.)

4) Some of the ideals of the Enlightenment are rather arbitrary and certainly not universally optimal. We should evaluate each ideal on its own merits and consider rejecting them, instead of unquestioningly accepting the entire package. Universal suffrage (or democracy at all) is one of the ideas to be questioned.

5) It’s clear that a company works best with a strong, competent, and long term executive. Is there any reason why a government would not be the same?

6) In general, private government is a good idea because it means someone is personally responsible for the long term, not just temporarily grabbing the government, exploiting it as much as possible, and doing anything it takes to get elected.

7) Perhaps hierarchy actually makes society more stable rather than less.

…and so on.

Get it?