After a very long pause, I am posting the edited version of Chapter 43 The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman. The translation itself was done long ago by Elena Makeeva by order of the LPR. I had to bring the terminology of the early translation into alignment with the one I use in the new one. The old translation seems to have aimed to present the material as simply as possible. In doing so, a number of terms were not translated but paraphrased—much like if I were to write “words close in meaning” everywhere instead of the word “synonyms” in a linguistics article. I had to sacrifice ease for the sake of more rigorous terminology used in economic theory.

The chapter is titled Answers: The Economic Analysis of Law and is of a completely monstrous size. This is not surprising, as Friedman essentially tried to squeeze into one chapter the material from his separate work titled Law’s Order, a reference to which is provided in the appendix to the book, and which, unfortunately, is currently available only in English.

The peculiarity of Friedman’s approach is that he derives law from economics, rather than from libertarian principles, as the latter are unable to provide clear answers to many specific applied legal problems (greetings to all supporters of the opinion that any legal norms can be derived from a single simple NAP).

I received a request to organize a way to subscribe to regular donations to support the project. Unfortunately, I am not very familiar with the tools usually used for this. Therefore, to start with, I suggest that everyone interested in ensuring sufficiently broad and regular funding for the project message me privately on Telegram or Facebook. Then we will discuss how best to organize this so that it is convenient for you to pay and I do not need to reveal my identity.