Katya Latysh (The question is accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00008354 BTC. There is also a second half to the question; the answer to it will be in a separate post.)
In my specific case, the principle of noblesse oblige worked. First, I was asked to play the role of Ancap-chan, and then she just stuck to me. It turned out that by starting with a good style and a sufficient amount of common sense, one could create a convincing image, and then refine it through reading literature and countless reflections. Fortunately, kind readers constantly threw me topics for reflection: how does this work under ancap, and how does that work under ancap.
I also think it was a great stroke of luck that I began my acquaintance with libertarian literature with economic works rather than the writings of moral philosophers. I think it was something light, like Callahan’s Economics for the Ordinary Person , from which I immediately moved on to Mises’s Human Action. When I tried Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty and Hoppe’s Argumentative Ethics, I found the line of thought there to be excessively dogmatic, preferring to operate not so much with abstract deductively derived principles as with economic logic. In this regard, David Friedman and his The Machinery of Freedom were a true discovery for me, and (also thanks to the fact that David and I do not live together) I have fervently loved him for more than a year now, which is practically a record for me in terms of the duration of feelings. From him, I would very gladly have a child (a small homage to your second question): the potential father not only has a magnificent pedigree but also possesses restrained self-irony, an extremely sane approach to raising children, and on top of that is a connoisseur of historical reenactment (though that is personal).
Now I will try to abstract myself from personal experience and generalize slightly. It seems to me that the optimal path for developing oneself as a libertarian is roughly as follows.
- Upon learning that such an attractive ideology exists, immediately realize that so far you only know a few of the most striking positions. Get acquainted with some overview work that provides a fairly general outline of libertarianism. I think I managed to give a maximally brief overview of this kind in the first (and so far only) part of my future, currently untitled book about ancap. Of course, other works with similar goals are also suitable; they don’t have to be text—they could be videos of some successful lectures. A popular economics course would also help significantly, but without the shamanism regarding various macro-indicators, and instead something as close to ordinary life as possible. This is important for establishing an economic worldview, because economics is, in essence, the logic of how incentives work.
- Realize for yourself the key point: libertarianism is about the person, their activity, and their interaction with other people. Any logical abstractions, such as “society,” “the state,” “violence,” “inequality,” “justice,” “the market”—these are nothing more than tools of analysis. They have no independent value and certainly no agency. It is not the state that robs and kills, but people who have become arrogant from the realization of how cool a gang is protecting them. It is not “the market” that decides, but people within the framework of market relations. It is not socialism that leads to poverty, but people practicing socialism. This means that libertarianism can be practiced here and now, without waiting for a libertarian revolution or a decree on ancap.
- And after that—mostly practice (filling gaps in theory as they are identified by turning to experts and reading specialized literature). A conscious preference for voluntary relations and a conscious avoidance of robbery. Settling conflicts privately, without turning to gangsters. And if you have to turn to them—at least realize that this is precisely a gangster racket operating according to concepts deeply alien to a free person, and there is no need to pay attention to the beautiful facade on which various words are written, such as “state,” “law,” “Spartak is champion,” “Kosovo is Serbia,” “dick,” and whatever else they write on facades.
Perhaps, after some time, you will feel the urge to begin broadcasting your libertarian agenda as widely as possible. This is, of course, an impulse that is hard to resist, but it is very desirable to do this in such a form as to not look ridiculous; otherwise, you will become a walking anti-advertisement for good ideas. For this reason, for example, I do not appear in videos and prefer to avoid discussions in oral form, as that would be a much more pathetic sight than texts. Similarly, it would be counterproductive, for instance, to boast of a deep understanding of economics without having any reasonably well-placed capital or a streamlined business: counterparties will reasonably suspect that the knowledge is detached from life and will prefer the advice of celebrities.
I hope I managed to answer the first question, and Bitarch will answer the second; I will most likely also add something of my own.
