A controlled transition. Not another forever-state.

Central governments should hand most responsibilities to regional and local authorities, including tax collection. Each locality keeps most of the taxes paid by people and firms on its territory, runs most services, and may trade services with neighbours.

Localities gradually receive more law-making power and full budget autonomy, including tax policy. To raise revenue they must attract residents and businesses — with better rules and, above all, lower taxes. Moving a company from one town to the next is easier than leaving a country. That pressure is how bad law dies.

Decentralisation also means more even development across Europe — not only in capital cities. Regions that never voted for the densest left-urban agendas would no longer be forced to live under them because of electoral majorities elsewhere.

Across Europe, people can “own” land yet build almost nothing without state permission. The process is slow, expensive and often fails. Vast tracts fit for homes and workplaces are labelled untouchable, shrinking supply and driving prices of the few buildable plots sky-high.

Responsibility for safe building belongs with owners. Land can be sold with covenants — for example that a neighbour will not build for a century — so planning becomes decentralised and contractual among those actually affected.

Liberalise land use. Is land truly private if the state draws the plan? The owner sets the plan unless it harms neighbouring owners — in which case compensation for lost value is negotiated between free people, not bureaucrats.

Once localities set their own taxes and laws, they compete for capital. Tax rates fall. Budgets shrink. That can only be sustained by selling state-owned land and privatising state facilities and companies.

State monopolies in energy, roads, industry and anything else held at gunpoint are not public services. They are privileges. Selling them opens the field to people who are not already inside the cartel.

Local authorities completely deregulate private education. The free market allows only the best educators to stay in business. Great methods dominate; bad ones are forced out. Regulation of privately provided education should be removed in its entirety.

Libertarian-aligned local governments work this reform together. They calculate the yearly state spend per student — call it X euros — and give a school voucher of X to parents, or to students of age. Families choose where to spend it.

State education is extremely inefficient, both as teaching and as finance. A huge number of private schools will arise. They may charge more, the same, or less than X. If less, the change is returned to the family. State schools may remain, but almost everyone will switch. Teaching improves, time and cost collapse, and teacher wages rise because private schools must attract them.

Nationally set standards for passing school are frequently extremely outdated, focused on skills needed neither in personal life nor by future employers. They should be abolished.

Final-exam providers will appear. They want as many schools as possible to use them, so they design exams that cover what employers in a sector actually value. If they certified incapable students, the market would destroy their reputation overnight. Schools competing for vouchers are highly motivated to get their students through those exams. Reputation is profit.

After a great majority of students attend private schools, vouchers are replaced with a tax deduction worth the same amount, given to the parent or student enrolling with a private provider. Remaining state schools are made private.

After a huge influx of companies moving to or starting in the deregulated, low-tax area, demand for highly skilled labour will beat supply. Firms will be eager to sponsor capable students in return for a commitment to work there afterwards.

Charities paying for those who cannot afford it will arise too. That number will be small to begin with — mostly students without one or both parents.

A similar voucher system replaces police and fire departments in the sphere of property protection, while they remain for state-owned road-rule enforcement for as long as roads are state-owned. New companies and existing private security firms grow quickly by offering better service at a lower price.

Insurance companies will sell all-in-one plans covering life, property and rights, then organise private defence and firefighting firms for their customers, taking a small commission. Every free person has an interest in their own safety. They will pay for it — and they will leave a firm that fails.

It takes millions just to licence a new drug or clinic under today’s rules. Existing players bribed their way into barriers that make it impossible to start unless you are already inside. With cheaper competitors locked out, they feel no need to innovate.

On a real private market, anyone looking to make a profit is motivated to sell only reliable care — or they are out of business almost overnight. Competitors advertise every mistake. Private companies would issue safety certificates, racing to licence new providers cheaply and fast, because their reputation is their business. Insurers would send customers only to the reliable ones.

Once a majority uses private defence firms instead of state police, vouchers are abolished and replaced with a tax deduction of the same worth. People pay the firms themselves with money they now keep. Many employers will offer defence and property-protection plans as part of pay, buying in bulk at a discount.

Remains of state police are mostly privatised, keeping only what is needed to keep order among private firms and on remaining state property.

The state creates a voucher program for healthcare, similar to school and defence. Prior deregulation will have filled the market with new, cheaper, more reliable providers. Insurance companies sell plans, take a small commission on the vouchers, and organise networks.

It would be extremely costly for those insurers to send customers to unsafe providers. That is how high safety standards are kept on a deregulated market — not by a slow ministry, but by firms that die if they are wrong.

After a great majority of the population switches to private providers, healthcare vouchers are abolished. As with defence insurance, many private employers start providing healthcare cover as part of pay — as they already do in countries with partly privatised healthcare.

The state creates a handful of publicly traded private road companies, each taking some of the state roads. Every citizen is given an equal share. They can sell the stock, hold it for dividends, or buy more.

Road companies will want driving to be simple. People avoid roads where they must pay a fee by hand every time they enter. That leads to “road coverage plans”: firms that strike deals with road owners and pay according to use. Owners scan number plates and pass proof to the plan provider.

If a road is always jammed, it is in the owner’s interest to add lanes, change limits, and fix junctions — so more people use it, and more money comes in. That is a better allocation of capital than a ministry can ever manage.

Together with road privatisation, each provider should set its own driving rules. It is in their interest not to gain a reputation for letting dangerous people cause accidents. There is no need for an inefficient state system of driving-rule enforcement to continue.

Owners will likely keep rules close to today’s, for simplicity, and make small adjustments where they help.