I haven't thought about this for a while, but I'm fascinated by projects like seasteading or Liberland.

No surprise that my preference would be to "design" a free country, but there are some interesting difficulties in doing so. One of those difficulties is avoiding being overrun by criminals and refugees immediately, which would happen if it just started as a free for all.

Assuming I'm the initial owner of the territory, I would design a land auction and gradually privatize the country, while using the proceeds to fund a trust that will support initial security and court services.

I would get many ideas from Liechtenstein, because I am an ancap but also a conservative. In the sense to preserve what good things and ideas are there to be conserved. And Liechtenstein survived the test of time with its good ideas, naturally it's not an ancap paradise but the closest land on that regard nowadays IMO.

This should only be attempted as an exercise in removing every law & department, one by one, replacing each govt entity with a private sector alternative or three, until there is no govt left.

If you just stopped offering all the services that the govt offers at once, there would be chaos. This is why most associate anarchy with chaos. That's how it's always been implemented before... But Argentina's Milei has proven that you can cut back quite a lot in a single year without societal upheaval.

So just do this, year after year, department after department, until they are all gone. Every last department, with criminal courts being the the last one.

That means you centrally plan nothing at all, let the free market optimize all markets, and have no policies to enforce, nor enforcers to command.

If I had to give a word to what I'd want to design, it would be pragmatic-libertarian. I'd want to setup a constitution with libertarian principles, except minimized and explicit whitelisted scope of the state, such that it would constrain the growth of the state both economically and socially. Any growth in scope would require some extremely high quorum. It would start out with just enough pragmatism, such that the bears don't move in. I'd want to sort out how to make a public-court that chose winners and losers based on responsibility, perhaps rather than precedence -- not sure yet. The bias would be towards defending property rights, not optimizing for 'fair'. The constitution would also have a call-back such that any law that was too long, broad, or complex would be void.

I think a thin tax layer as a base, like a flat per-person rate, plus maybe taxes on vices or taxes that are a form of pseudo-penalties for behaviors that trespass against the property of others. Example: You spill pollution in your neighbors' stream, the penalty is high for such an act, sufficient to compensate the neighbor and fund the state. Notice that property rights are defended, and responsibility is incentivized.

Theocracy.

I think you should have broken this up into a series. Each on of these questions is thought provoking enough to spend some time writing on. All of them at once seems a bit overwhelming for an SN post. In my opinion anyways.

A state is a monopoly on force, so in a practical sense one would explicitly and overtly optimize for that role, avoiding the incentive misalignment and theater of every other role states tend to mire themselves in.

Not-yet-awake AnCap's can get over it and think of it as a DRO within a defensible territory. Welcome to true anarchism....

There is no public or private property, there is only the state territory. As an individual you would have no "rights" owed to you, your presence in the territory is conditional on your acceptance of the service-level-agreement. That said, unlike most countries today, you are granted safe (free) passage to leave so long as you aren't a fugitive.

Governance of the State/DRO is a shareholder meeting election of an executive suite with a charter not dissimilar from megacorps today. You don't get a vote just for living in the territory (being a customer), you need to have equity, acreage as a franchise rather than private property equating to shares.

This incentive structure would lend itself well to defense of the territory from external forces while not deterring trade. Peaceful collaboration internally through arbitration and codes of conduct under the SLA would be the path of least resistance. The overt absence of freedom at a macro level paradoxically producing an optimally free and prosperous society at the micro level.

That’s a great idea, but I find it very challenging to design a country from scratch. I don't think my imagination is vivid enough to create such a design.

Only property owners can vote, easier to audit election results.

No income tax (instead tax consumption) No tax on capital gains No estate or inheritance tax

I need to think about this more...