Alex Dvoretsky kindly sponsored the translation of another chapter by Eric Mack, but the donation caught me in the process of translating another chapter by Stephan Molinari, which I was crafting according to the dictates of my own soul (and in the hope that donations would follow post factum). So, I finished with Molinari first, and now I will switch to Mack.

In the chapter Collective Defense: An Example of Methodology, Molinari analyzes the third most popular question about ancap, after courts and roads: how ancaps will defend themselves against an attack by an evil neighboring state. The book was written before Putin loudly enough declared his claim to be the world’s number one villain, so Germany is used as the model villain instead of Russia, and the dictator there faces a difficult choice: whether to conquer statist Poland or ancap France. I would say that in his fantasies about how the defense problem is resolved, Molinari appears more overconfident than Friedman, who, at least, considers the problem serious, and even admits that for this specific need he would, grimacing and wincing, agree to feed the state.