Anonymous question

The state is an order that determines exactly how it is customary to systematically rob people in a given place. Anarchy implies a high degree of decentralization of power in society, where in the worst-case scenario, people unite into situational alliances to restore justice, and once the task is solved, the alliance begins to struggle with goal-setting and tends to dissolve. A certain analogy can be found in modern interstate relations: the NATO defensive alliance almost collapsed from neglect when the threat of the USSR vanished, but immediately revived and is ready to accept new members when the RF began rattling sabers. But for a victim of aggression to receive support under anarchy, they do not even need to formally belong to an alliance, which we can clearly see in the example of Ukraine.

The same applies to ancap: no one will object to a particular market agent becoming stronger: why not, if they satisfy their clients so well. But as soon as they begin to exercise non-market power, clients begin to flee, and competitors begin to consider which side is most convenient to strike from.

Is this mechanism sufficient to ensure that ancap, once established, prospers for all eternity? I cannot guarantee it. Fukuyama deceived us: there is no end of history. The stability of ancap is based on economic incentives that prevent inefficient centralization, but anomalies cannot be ruled out. For example, the proof-of-work mechanism in Bitcoin is a good model of ancap, and we see that over time, the decentralization of mining only increases, yet the history of Bitcoin has by no means been devoid of crises related to miners’ attempts to dictate their will to coin holders. And a poorly balanced PoW, as we see in the example of ether, does not prevent the creator of the currency from ruling it unilaterally at all.

Liberal democracies are precisely an example of such crooked systems, where checks and balances are drawn on paper, but in fact, it still results in a vertical of power or, at best, an oligarchy. Designing a reasonable system of anarchic self-government from scratch and launching it instead of a particular state is a non-trivial task, and it does not occur to me how it could be implemented in the absence of crises. However, since the state is a system of robbery in which positive feedback loops are historically much stronger than negative ones (the more you have robbed, the easier it is to rob more—positive feedback; but the more you are hated—negative feedback), crises in states are inevitable. From time to time, I come up with some story about how, in one place or another, a transition from a rigid state to something like ancap occurs against the backdrop of a crisis. For instance, right here about liberal parliamentary democracy.