In the past (150-200 years ago and earlier), laws were much more primitive than they are now. Many aspects of life were not regulated at all, many definitions of terms were missing (for example, “everyone must pray loudly in the mornings” — how loud is loud, and where is the boundary of the morning?), and many points were left to the discretion of the subjects of law and the enforcers. Additionally, everyone had the right to carry weapons, and the tax burden was quite primitive. Can it be considered that the society of that time was much closer to ancap than the current one? And if so, why did we take the wrong turn?

анонимный вопрос

On this topic, it is worth first revisiting one of our videos about the stationary bandit, where we explain this simple theory and show how the natural state turned into the strange absurdity we have now.

Specifically, the video indicates where we took the wrong turn. We took the wrong turn every time we traded freedom for security. In the case of the proto-ancap of Ireland or Iceland, we are talking about the external conquest of quite blatant backwaters, so one could say it didn’t matter what the natives chose; they effectively had no choice, and brute force decided. But in the USA, you cannot rely on the factor of external conquest, as they managed to win the War of Independence in a mode of anarchy. But after that, there was indeed a turn in the wrong direction. In a free market, competition among producers is beneficial to the consumer. But to the producer, of course, a monopoly is beneficial. There are more consumers, but they are worse organized. A cohesive minority is capable of securing a disproportionately large amount of influence. Thus, in the USA, the federal government began to swell, introducing economic regulations, and the state of affairs in the states began to look less and less like ancap. They put a finger in the state’s mouth, and it bit off the whole arm.

From a slightly different perspective, but in much greater detail, this process is examined in the book by Rodion Belkovich, Blood of Patriots, which I recently pirated (don’t forget to donate to the CRI after reading, as the author dislikes pirates and needs to be re-educated). In Europe, the same processes took place with even greater permissiveness from society because they never even got a whiff of real anarchy, so they tried to invent an unreal one based on the denial of private property.

Next, check out our second video on the conditions for the stability of anarchy.

There, we talk about the main condition without which nothing will work. Looking at the macro level, it is a matter of prevailing values. The value of freedom must be higher than the value of security; otherwise, it will be impossible to turn toward ancap, and even if one manages to get there, without the personal protection of one’s rights, it is easy to return to slavery.

But how can freedom remain more valuable than security if the value of human life is growing? The thing is, there are living people on the aggressor’s side too, and they also value security. The willingness to inflict unacceptable damage on the attacker during defense is the basis of the deterrence doctrine, about which we also made a video, and I suggest finishing today’s topic with it.