Автор: Анкап-тян

I’m a vibecoder to my mom

I’ve moved to Serbia, rented an apartment, spending almost all my money, and ideally, I should be looking for a job, but it’s quite tough here: to legalize my stay in the country, I need legal employment, and the main condition for being hired almost everywhere is having a residence permit: nobody wants to deal with the local bureaucracy and fight for a residence permit for a potential employee. So for now, I’m procrastinating: I walk around the neighborhood a lot, I’m researching where to buy pots and pans, I overthrew Vučić, signed up as a game master for a city-wide vampire game, and vibe-coded a publisher for Telegram, which is essentially what this post is about.

Telegram has many different formats for publishing: there are regular messages, to which you can attach a single picture or a YouTube video using a clever life hack; there are trendy rich messages, available to premium account holders (I was recently gifted one, but I don’t use it) and bots; there are albums of up to ten media files—and each format has its own limitations: some have truncated text formatting, some have expanded, some have a maximum text volume of 1024 characters, and some have 32k—in short, it’s a mess. So, to avoid getting lost in this zoo, I gathered the ability to publish in any available format into a single application.

To do this, however, you need to start a channel, create a bot, give the bot administration rights to the channel, and enter the channel and bot data into the app settings. You can create many channels, and you can either give each one its own bot or use the same one everywhere, but in my publisher, you can save profiles for each of the channels.

It seemed to me that this pet project is already quite worthy of being presented to the public. So download the app from GitHub, check how it works, and throw suggestions into the issues about what to add where. The interface is unrefined, even the icon is still standard, but I’m tired of endlessly tweaking the code and just want to share it.

Of course, donations are very welcome if you find that this thing has been useful to you.

And, to save time, I’ll mention other cool things I’m involved in and could theoretically earn something from.

  1. My book about ancap, published on paper at the Svoboda publishing house. There is also a little bit of Friedman’s “The Mechanics of Freedom” left in my translation, along with other good things. I have also been hired to typeset Tallock and Buchanan’s book “The Calculus of Consent”; we will send it to print soon, and I will announce it once it is available for sale.
  2. A VPN service, for which I was hesitant to advertise, doubting how worthwhile it actually was; however, as far as I can tell, people occasionally register via my referral link, and they don’t seem to message me privately complaining that they bought crap.
  3. A Telegram sticker pack with me, in which the main contributor became Soz.

Makhnovshchina 2

In the first part I attempted to demonstrate the specific logical twist that allows libertarians (in our hypothetical past, these are urban workers and primarily the technical intelligentsia, who simultaneously embraced the radically liberal ideas of Gustave de Molinari—who had given lectures in Russia not so long ago—the economic theories of the Austrians Menger and Böhm-Bawerk, and Kropotkin’s anarchism) to take an active part in the Russian Civil War on the side of those wishing to redistribute property, namely the practical rural anarchists under Makhno’s command.

How can the city and the countryside interact on equal terms under conditions of external threat? The village is capable of providing the army with people, horses, and food. The townspeople are far fewer in number, but they can provide the army with technological equipment, from spring-loaded carriages for tachankas to rails and wagons, plus repair everything from rifles to locomotives and artillery. It is precisely the city that provides artillerymen, engineers, and telephone operators. But Yekaterinoslav, while highly industrially developed, is still just one city, and it is incapable of producing the full range of military equipment. It doesn’t even produce ammunition or textiles. This means that the free land needs not only to somehow establish an exchange between the city and the countryside but also to trade with distant places, taking into account the hostile environment. Not everything can be obtained from this very hostile environment as a trophy in battle.

The historical Makhno entered into a military alliance with the Bolsheviks, falling into a critical dependence on their ammunition supply, while paying with the blood of his fighters. Ours, convinced by the libertarian preaching that freedom is not for sale and that the market is better than bondage, will attempt direct trade with the Entente powers and beyond, utilizing access to the port of Berdyansk and the railway leading there from Yekaterinoslav. This will help not only to purchase missing industrial goods in exchange for grain but also, for example, to revive the pipe factory by establishing the sea transport of its products to Batumi, and from there to the Caspian oil fields. Makhno is made to understand that the guarantee of peace is interdependence, not just the readiness to slash anyone who invades the native steppes with a saber. Neighbors should be interested in you living and prospering, rather than in quickly wiping you off the face of the earth.

An emissary is sent to Denikin, explaining that American President Wilson is declaring the right of nations to self-determination, and therefore the slogan of a single and indivisible Russia should be pushed into a corner, since he is your ally. If you want, raise slogans about protecting civilization from Bolshevik barbarism. If you want, defend the idea of indeterminacy and the reconvening of the Constituent Assembly. But you will have to forget about our free land, just as about Finland, the Baltics, Poland, two Ukraines, the Far Eastern Republic, and many other lands that will find it useful to do without the authority of Petrograd or any other city. In short: your truth is yours, ours is ours, don’t tread on us. Roughly the same is brought to the attention of Lenin’s government. Namely, we aren’t interfering with you in Petrograd, and you aren’t interfering with us in Hulyai-Pole, and if we need to exchange bread for calico, we are always happy to do so. It is more complicated with Petliura’s Ukraine, since we cannot prevent the peasants in his zone of influence from defecting to our side, and we inevitably find ourselves his enemy. But he will have so many problems with the Volunteer Army, which is neutral to us, that one needn’t worry about him especially much.

Will the Volunteer Army defeat the Bolsheviks if we do not operate in their rear? Perhaps not, but it will certainly be much harder for the Bolsheviks, and they definitely won’t take Crimea (we are on the way to Crimea, and we will let the retreating Denikinites pass, bartering artillery for bread from them). And later, the Reds will also get a thrashing from Pilsudski. The latter might, of course, poke his nose around here too, but that is unlikely: a prosperous land where there has been no war for a year, and where there is trade, including with Pilsudski’s allies, is unlikely to seem like a convenient target to him, unlike the capture of Smolensk. Again: Pilsudski needs buffer territories between himself and Russia—and here we are.

What will we get in the end? The collapse of the Russian Empire into a dozen sufficiently stable sovereign regions with all sorts of self-governance models. Against this backdrop, Gulyaipole will not be the most exotic — after all, there are also the Bolsheviks and some place like Mongolia with Baron Ungern. None of the regions will have the ability to subjugate the others, which was a completely natural state for the world at that time: the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Chinese empires all collapsed.

Here, perhaps, a paragraph with a very brief description of the free region’s self-governance model is needed. The land has become heavily depopulated and has ceased to be a scarce resource for a time. Anyone who wishes can take a piece and cultivate as much as they can manage. In the cities, at large enterprises, workers’ assemblies appoint and control guild masters and other management, which results in a certain amount of chaos, as is typical in egalitarian democracies. Small enterprises are either sole proprietorships or cooperatives. There are many consumer cooperatives — a useful form of organization, whether for hiring a janitor or for joint purchases in a village. The gold karbovanets is in circulation, though large denominations are initially quite scarce. For small transactions, anything and everything is used at first, but gradually the market for small change is taken over by tokens issued by the Yekaterinoslav tobacco factory, which guarantee exchange upon presentation for a pack of cigarettes. Following the development of foreign trade, foreign industrialists also appear. However, there is no central authority that could protect their interests. They must negotiate with elected representatives of workers’ collectives and other authoritative figures regarding the terms under which they will be allowed into the market. This usually implies a collective agreement with workers and cartel agreements to coordinate prices with adjacent enterprises. The commune, damn it! The army remains voluntary, yet it sits on a good ration and, in peacetime, engages mainly in border patrolling, so there is a certain surplus of those wishing to serve. Thus, gradually becoming accustomed to a peaceful, civilized life, marred only by skirmishes with Soviet Russia due to Soviet peasants fleeing to the free region, we experience the twenties.

And what next? Will Hitler be able to cope with a much stronger Poland? Will a much weaker Soviet Russia invade Finland? Will Japan go to war with the United States without the Reich as an ally, or limit itself to Asian conquests? Will Great Britain and France retain most of their African colonies? Will the foolish state of Israel appear? Most likely, the world in the twentieth century will be a much less insane place, much more like a natural continuation of the nineteenth century, where the Great War remains the most terrible monument to human arrogance.

Nevertheless, even this branch of development will not avoid the rise of statism and even, for example, the Great Depression. However, if in the actual twentieth century the communists of the whole world had a shining beacon in the form of a thoroughly mythologized Soviet Russia, then in our hypothetical reality, the anarchists of the whole world will also have such a beacon in the form of Hulyaypole. This world will certainly be no less complex and interesting, and therefore thanks to Nihilist for the question; it gave me great pleasure to speculate on this topic.

Makhnovshchina

Could you please review a YouTube video about Makhnovshchina? In particular, I am interested in the context of the Civil War. Let’s imagine that you are a libertarian living in Russia during those years. For whom would it be more logical to root: for the Cadets with their parliamentarism, market economy, and civil liberties, or for the Makhnovists with their anarchism, land redistribution, and collective self-governance?

Nihilist (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00012BTC)

Here is the video:

The question is interesting, but it’s not too difficult to give a short answer: of course, it would have made sense for libertarians at that time and in those places to support the Makhnovists specifically. Under the conditions of a civil war, it is impossible to build a normal free market anyway, but functional institutions of anarchy are more or less realistic.

Nevertheless, that key thesis regarding the Makhnovist movement, which is repeated twice in the proposed video — the state always defeats those who refuse to be it — requires an adequate response. Therefore, let’s try to estimate what joining the Makhnovist movement could have provided for libertarians.

To start with: where could they have even come from? Obviously, from the city. The works of Menger and Böhm-Bawerk had already been published in Russian and served as the foundation for the scientific critique of Marxism. So our hypothetical libertarians are a sort of reading club that could have continued to peacefully study all this theory, if practice hadn’t arrived right on their doorstep. In the conditions of the general revitalization of political thought before the February Revolution, they could have been arguing in journals with Milyukov and Struve about how to organize Russia, but when Soviets began to appear across the country, it became obvious that the workers’ striving for self-governance could not be ignored.

The main libertarian thesis regarding historical private property during periods of turbulent social transformation is this: Yes, the peaceful exchange of property titles is an obvious basis for continued ownership. But the forced seizure of property is an equally obvious basis for restitution. And in conditions where a thoroughly corrupt tsarist regime distorted all relationships through its abuses, including those concerning property, no one can truly establish to what extent each transfer of property titles was voluntary and to what extent it was forced. This means that defending all historical property rights indiscriminately means primarily defending injustice. And the grand war for the redistribution of property and social relations themselves occurring right now on our doorstep fully confirms this thesis.

Therefore, with all due respect to the representative of the Kadets, Mr. Struve, a member of the Special Council under General Denikin, the truth is more likely on the side of Batka Makhno. The peasants are fully entitled to redistribute the land so that everyone cultivating the land disposes of the fruits of their labor, and the workers are fully entitled to organize their own labor self-management. But this is precisely restitution, not the permanent order of things, and gradually property rights must stabilize so that they may thereafter pass from subject to subject exclusively through peaceful means. The permanent revolution that Comrade Trotsky dreams of is for those for whom war is a mother, whereas for us, peaceful labor is closer—unlike that Trotsky, who neither plowed the land nor worked in a factory. But Comrade Trotsky is right about one thing: we must permanently rid ourselves of anyone who would attempt to establish political power until those who desire it move on, otherwise all the conquests of the revolution will go to waste, for power is coercion, and the forced transfer of property rights will give rise to new demands for restitution.

In short, when in our hypothetical reality in October 1919 the Makhnovists entered Ekaterinoslav, they discovered a well-organized grassroots libertarian workers’ movement there, and their subsequent interaction was conducted on quite equal terms. How did the libertarian workers propose to organize the interaction between the city and the countryside?

I will write about this in my next post so as not to delay the publication, as I have already had a long pause due to my move to Serbia.

Horn of Plenty

Alex Rozov in the comments of my channel, and before that, in the channel “Myth Eaters”, proposed an interesting problem:

There is a myth that the nymph Amalthea, daughter of Ocean, in the form of a goat, suckled the infant Zeus in a cave on Crete. Amalthea had a horn of plenty, from which, upon a magic word, the fruits of the earth poured out in an endless stream… When Amalthea cast off her goat skin and disappeared, the horn was lost somewhere.

Suppose Amalthea’s horn was suddenly found where it was lost: on Crete.

How will this affect world politics and the economy?

Well, let me try to fantasize.

So, after another earthquake, a landslide revealed an ancient cave, and a couple of days later, some hiker tourists climbed in. In the cave, they discovered a stone bed, a table, and on the table, a goat’s horn in excellent condition. Since everyone on Crete has been badgered about Zeus’s caves and the myth of his foster mother, the hikers chuckle, thinking, “here’s another one, and even the horn is in place. Hey, Horn, what will you give us? At least give us a couple of oranges.” The Horn provides. After recovering from their initial shock, the hikers begin spamming requests and quickly find out that the Horn doesn’t pour beer and doesn’t give meat. It said “fruits of the earth,” so it will be fruits of the earth, period. A command recorded and played back from a phone works perfectly: the Horn does not require personal presence to execute an order; it only needs an instruction on what to serve. It also turns out that outside the cave, the Horn loses its magical properties. This is precisely what determines that the Horn will not leave Crete, and its further fate will be tied specifically to this island. Otherwise, of course, tourists would have no trouble smuggling a goat’s horn out of Greece, since it’s not exactly a golden treasure.

What happens next? Tourists disciplinedly turn to the Euphoria of Antiquities, and some legal complications begin. The object is clearly older than 1453, which means it undoubtedly belongs to the state. Theoretically, its place is in a museum, and tourists are entitled to a reward for the find. But the object is useless outside the cave, and the cave is located on private land. Unlike mainland Greece, in Crete, deep in the island, most land is either private or municipal, rather than state-owned. Thus, local archaeologists begin studying the cave, while the horn itself is also being studied by various other specialists who, of course, are interested in the physics of the materialization of the earth’s fruits. The owner of the cave, a certain Manolis Petrakis, sets up the “Amalthea” restaurant nearby, where he treats guests to vegetarian cuisine, and starts wine production right there, because in Greece it is difficult to think of a more high-margin way to process the fruits of the earth than making wine with a beautiful legend. Thus, during the day, eggheads study the horn, and at night it provides the location owner with raw materials for processing.

Next, large-scale business by local standards enters the game. The state, Mr. Petrakis, and the agro-industrial company AGROCRETA agree to create a special public-private partnership, the “Amalthea Consortium.” The concession agreement states that the state grants the consortium the exclusive right to use the Horn for 30 years and ensures permits for infrastructure installation, in exchange for which it receives a fixed annual payment of 50 million euros and 20% of the consortium’s net profit. Mr. Petrakis provides his real estate for the consortium’s use for 30 years, receiving a fixed annual payment of 2 million euros and 10% of the consortium’s net profit. The AGROCRETA company invests money, manages the consortium, bears the entrepreneurial risks, and receives 70% of the net profit from this.

Now the consortium’s task is to build logistics from the cave to the port of Heraklion, located 50km away across rugged mountainous terrain, which at its peak had a turnover of about 3 million tons per year. The “Princess Xenia” highway in Montenegro took 7 years to build, and with a length of 41km, it cost almost a billion euros. OK, the consortium doesn’t need a highway, just a good road for serious freight turnover. But even so, one must budget at least 4 years and at least 500 million, and, of course, the construction will be contracted to the Chinese. In the meantime, they will have to lay down gravel, then pour concrete up to the nearest local road, and be limited by its modest capacity.

Thus, from the very beginning, the consortium management will face the question: what to produce?

While all traffic is provided by ATVs and helicopters, they will have to work on special orders, such as “deliver 100kg of coffee beans to Mr. Papadakis’s craft roaster, full analogs of the lot sold at an auction in Costa Rica for 50 dollars per kilo” — but such a delivery will satisfy all the hipsters on the entire island for long, and the rest simply won’t understand why they should buy such expensive coffee when Lavazza is available in the supermarket.

When the first trucks start coming, they can already be loaded, for example, with cocoa beans, because there is a more than solid price per ton of raw material, and the global market is quite large. As freight turnover further expands, one could think about natural rubber, but here is the problem: you can’t eat it. The stupid artifact is enchanted to provide the owner with fruits of the earth for food, not for just anything. So, rubber, mahogany, and the like will unfortunately have to be left to the local producers, but on saffron or natural vanilla, one can make up for it completely, simply by driving all other producers out of the global market, because why would they even be needed.

But when, finally, a full-fledged highway designed for the heavy traffic capable of fully loading the port will be built, the main cargoes will essentially remain the same cocoa and coffee, and the consortium’s capacity will only be enough to bite off a certain share of the global market for these goods; logistics will not allow for more. Of course, in addition to this, all of Crete will have access to cheap durian, coconuts, and other exotic items that previously were expensive solely due to the long logistical arm. But there is no point in shipping these tropical goods beyond the EU, as tariffs begin there, and Asia can fend for itself—Heraklion is not made of rubber.

And if anyone fears that an endless stream of rice, wheat, and potatoes will pour from Crete, they are fearing in vain. This will only happen in years of local crop failures, military crises, and the like. The Horn must not leave the cave, and no matter how much you expand or reinforce its vault, it will still be a hole of a fixed width, through which a conveyor belt travels one way with empty packaging and the other way with filled containers, then reloads onto trucks, goes to the port, is loaded onto container ships, and is distributed around the world. From one single port, and there are thousands of such ports in the world.

In order for the Horn of Plenty to truly crash all global food markets, and the energy market along with it due to biodiesel, a new transport revolution will be required. Someday, perhaps, this will happen, but I see another event as far more likely. It is not for nothing that at the very beginning of the story, scientists began to study the horn. It is they who will eventually find that physical principle on which it operates. And when a universal synthesizer stands in every home, the goat Amalthea will finally be able to consider her mission on Earth accomplished. Where to look for her after that? I suppose on the Jupiter moon of the same name, but for a description of that stage—turn to the Strugatskys.

Debates on enemy platforms

I have a friend who is a freshman. His university has introduced mandatory, useless subjects at the expense of the rest of the learning process. I am mainly talking about “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood.” It is terrible propaganda, a twisting of facts, and the omission of others, all heavily seasoned with emotions and the speaker’s personal opinion.

I have the opportunity to attend this lecture without being a student and to publicly leave the instructor exposed, as the fairy tales coming out of his mouth are easily shattered by logical inconsistencies and objective reality.

The question itself: Is it worth the candle?

Anonymous question

Your doubts are completely justified. The question of whether it is worth the candle arises when the inevitable costs of an activity are large enough, while the potential gain is small. For example, if you played cards at night before the Industrial Revolution with tiny stakes, it is quite possible that even the person who hits the jackpot would not recoup the cost of the burned candles from their winnings. If, in a police state where the public expression of non-enthusiastic views is punished by imprisonment, you were to hold a debate with a state propagandist before an audience of a couple of dozen people, even a total rhetorical rout of the opponent might not be worth the subsequent lost years. However, blowing up a drone manufacturing plant might justify the risks of criminal prosecution in the eyes of many.

Of course, to make the game worth the candle, it is not necessarily about raising the stakes. You can limit yourself to reducing the costs. For example, participating in online debates under a pseudonym. Or moving to a less repressive state. Or engaging in a public dispute with a state lecturer on the subject of paleontology. In other words, playing cards with small stakes, but after the Industrial Revolution, when candles have become cheaper and you can burn even cheaper electricity instead.

In your particular case, where resources are scarce and you don’t want to take too many risks, but you want to harm a specific person who represents the hated state, and in such a way that they have a chance to understand their mistakes, it seems to me that a minor terrorist attack, also known as hooliganism, would be the optimal solution. The simplest thing would be to break a car window. And the stone used to break the window could be wrapped in a piece of paper with a profound saying. You know, something like, “Sudden arrival is the foundation of Russian statehood.” The person is left with nothing, and at the same time suffers an intellectual defeat, which is exactly what you wanted.

Of course, the recipe will have to be modified to fit the context, and obvious precautions will have to be taken: don’t get caught on camera, leave your phone at home, and don’t leave traces of your DNA on evidence.

Libertarianism and the leftist agenda, outlines. Why one might dislike the market.

I got a bit stuck here trying to start the book. It turns out that my prejudice against leftist ideas is so strong that I simply cannot manage to begin describing the object of acquaintance without immediately injecting criticism into the text, which, of course, one should not do, as it contradicts the purpose of the book.

Therefore, I have set those attempts aside for now and approached it from a different angle. What are the reasons one might dislike the market, market supporters, the description of the market in libertarian sources, and so on?

Libertarians consider the key positive quality of the market order to be that it is a space of voluntary transactions. During a market transaction, everyone parts with what they value less and acquires what they value more. And here, of course, a criticism arises, which I would divide into two categories.

First. Within a market transaction, a person parts with money and acquires a brick, which will now definitely not fly into his car. Or a vaccine for a virus that accidentally escaped from a laboratory. Or a permit for something he could do without a permit anyway. Or the enforcement of a ban preventing others from doing what the person parting with money would like to forbid them from doing. Or a slave. Or a political post in the state…

Within a market system—the leftists claim—anything can become a commodity. And these artificial constraints of yours, like NAP and self-ownership, which for some reason are supposed to remove certain categories of things from the category of commodities, are non-functional nonsense because there are no proper instrumental criteria for them; it is all a matter of personal ethical norms and general taste, since you yourselves claim that all values are subjective.

The second grievance against the market consists of the claim made by its adepts: money in the market is earned through the utility provided to other people. And if that is the case—the leftists claim—then for you market proponents, the wealthier a person is, the more useful they are to others. Consequently, their opinion is also more valuable. And thus, any online scammer, popular singer, lottery winner, or recipient of a billion-dollar inheritance can respond to any objections against their incredibly valuable opinion by saying: if you are so smart, then show your money.

The further conclusions are quite obvious. Since money is the measure of everything, and people commit evil for its sake, then down with money. Since the market allows everything to become a commodity, it is the rejection of the market that restores human dignity to people, for now, a person is not for sale. Since money inflates intellectual empties, then without money, the voice of the true intellectual will be heard more clearly.

I will stop here, because I am restraining myself and trying to refrain from criticizing everything said above. For now, I would rather know your opinion on whether I have gone down the right path in my reflections.

Review of examples of an agreement not implying external enforcement

This order is accompanied by an advance donation in the amount of 33 EURMTL.

Not long ago, I received an order from Rinat Enikeev for a review of the Onym messenger, and now he has asked for a review of a set of documents called “Founders’ Agreements.” He is primarily interested in how “orthodox” these agreements are from a libertarian perspective, as well as any other thoughts I might have on them. For roughly the same purpose, he even passed them to Stefan Kinsella. Stefan noted the document’s flowery style and the lack of definitions in the text, but mostly analyzed the points that were personally closer to him, i.e., those concerning intellectual property.

To start, I will provide links to the documents under consideration in the order that makes the most sense for reviewing them:

1. For whom and why the hell. Here, Rinat explains that the proposed agreement will not be of interest to just any potential co-founder, but only to those who are prepared to invest only labor and time into the common cause, but not money.

2. Principles. This outlines the main idea: to build an agreement that excludes any hierarchy and coercion among the participants. The only source of obligations is ongoing consent, not any kind of external order.

3. Agreement for two. The actual text of the agreement for two participants.

4. Agreement for three. The text of the agreement for three participants. It differs from the previous version by a slightly more complex procedure for the division of property.

I would say that what we have here is an ambitious attempt to make a smart contract function in the real world. As long as there is consent among all participants of the agreement, they act together in some way. As soon as disagreement arises, they have procedures in place to express it, and then ultimately arrive at some new agreement, even if that agreement manifests as the termination of their joint activity.

However, just as blockchain is not the Internet of Things, a smart contract in the physical world is only implementable as long as the objects it regulates behave according to the logic of the contract. As long as the founders operate with certain information objects that either represent knowledge (and are therefore freely copied) or can be cryptographically restricted—as long as the proposed agreement describes something close to reality. But when an enterprise’s property is a certain physical object, it can be, say, taken, appropriated, and sold, and then the person simply ceases to communicate with the co-founders. What should the co-founders do in response according to the agreement? Wipe their hands of it, leave all the property on the balance sheet of the old company, and found its fork without the runaway co-founder.

Another problem associated with such agreements is the extreme difficulty of dividing profits in any way other than equally. Theoretically, of course, the one who made the decisive contribution might suggest they would like to receive a more significant share; however, in a situation where a partner can freeze all proceeds simply by refusing to communicate, the producer will have to contend with the free rider and pay them simply for the status of being a co-founder.

In other words, despite the nobility of the premises behind their drafting, such agreements scale very poorly. As long as there is consensus, a written agreement is not required. As soon as consensus disappears, anyone can violate any clause and disregard any procedures, especially if it reaches a serious conflict rather than just resulting in a loss of interest in further participation.

To put it aphoristically, such agreements prioritize freedom over property and, therefore, in essence, do not protect property at all. But we are talking about creating a commercial enterprise! And such an enterprise is generally created to convert time, effort, and entrepreneurial talent into property. If following the agreement creates systemic threats to such conversion, it is unlikely to be actively applied.

However, I do not consider the work done to be useless. It’s just that I feel we shouldn’t push the codification of life to extremes. Rather, I would find it useful to frame the individual mechanics of the proposed agreement as recommendations on how to protect freedom within the conditions of contractual activities. For example, it is useful to use multi-signatures. It is useful to divide equally under conditions of uncertainty regarding individual contribution. And if it is difficult to divide incomparable sets of things equally, it is not necessary to monetize them first; one could use the “one divides, the other chooses” mechanic, or in the case of N participants—”draw lots to see who divides, and then draw lots to see who gets what.”

In my view, the very striving to minimize coercion in the sphere of voluntary transactions is quite commendable. But the higher the initial trust, and the more details one can neglect, the shorter the contract will be, and the better it will be in my eyes. “We live together until one of us gets tired of it.” Or “I contribute this much money and a little help with labor, you make the main labor contribution and a little bit of junk, we split the profit in such-and-such a proportion, and you can kick me out, but then you must return my investments.” Or “I write as I see fit, you donate as much as you see fit.” Or even “We try to avoid each other, but if we run into each other in public, we tolerate one another and do not express dislike.” In my eyes, these are all good agreements that are easy to remember and easy to follow. However, I absolutely do not rule out that some people will find them completely unsuitable because the nuances and procedures are not specified.

The wind is growing stronger

Yesterday I rewatched the animated film “Spirited Away.” It turns out that this plot is quite interesting to examine through the prism of immigration.

At first, you enter an incomprehensible society with incomprehensible rules, which holds many dangers for an immigrant simply due to a lack of understanding of local customs.

Then you find a proxy: someone who can explain how everything works here, will stand up for you if necessary, give advice, and introduce you to the right people.

Then you meet people and look for work.

Then you get a job and gradually begin to confidently handle your work tasks.

Then it turns out that your foreign background provides you with certain advantages that are useful to the locals, and then you are accepted with respect, without being required to undergo full assimilation.

Further along the plot, the protagonist triumphantly returns to their homeland, enriched by new experience, but let that hope warm those who still believe that the government in their home country has not yet completely turned into pigs. As for me, instead, I am simply preparing for a new immigration, where everything will start all over again.

A healthy person’s immigration

Unfinished project

The other day, someone shoved a book at me, saying, “Oh, you’re pregnant, here, read something interesting.” More accurately, they shoved a link to a LiveJournal where I am banned, and when I protested, they handed me an epub file. I poked around distrustfully, assuming it would be something about pregnancy or parenting, and, strictly speaking, it was indeed about that, but not at all in the way I expected.

I’ll say it straight away: the book is written in an obnoxious style. In places, it is pure, unedited neuro-slop, which was physically difficult for me to wade through. But I had to, because the novelty of the approach used in the book to represent the human phenomenon proved to be very significant to me personally. So, fine—if a person is a biologist, you shouldn’t expect them to also be a genius of elegant prose.

To put it very briefly, it tells the following story. A human is an unfinished project, and that is its main feature. A human’s primary skill, deeply embedded in its nature, is delegation. It delegated part of its digestive functions to fire, and by doing so, got rid of a complex digestive system, with the saved energy going toward brain development. The large brain created difficulties with childbirth, so humans began to be born premature, and their brain, as well as the rest of the body, began to be completed in the external environment—and over a staggeringly long period, which means that upbringing was delegated to society. Not just the content, but the neural structure of the brain itself is shaped by social experience. The brain’s key functions became social: understanding the intentions of others and modeling them within one’s own brain. Bipedalism freed the hands for the use of tools, which in turn freed the mouth for facial expressions and speech. Speech allowed meanings to be preserved in symbols. Writing moved the collective intelligence beyond synchronous contact. Information processing is being delegated to computers and AI. This is supposed to free the brain for something new. For now, we can only guess what that might be. We are an unfinished project.

And this is all, of course, very interesting, but as they say, one man’s meat is another man’s poison—or rather, libertarians will always talk about libertarianism. A human has delegated so much, and on so many levels, that it is literally impossible to view them in isolation from either the external environment they created or from society. And this blurs the main frameworks that guide libertarian discourse. If a human is a product not so much of genes as of their habitat, and primarily of society, then the concept of self-ownership begins to look somewhat contrived. The axiom of action that lies at the heart of praxeology begins to look somewhat contrived. “A human acts by choosing means to achieve ends”—but why on earth? Action has a cause; no one has canceled the principle of causality. But the idea of a “goal,” taking into account all this countless delegation, already seems quite blurred. A human is excellent at reflection, and they can easily invent a goal for their past actions post-factum, and once invented, become completely convinced of it.

On the other hand, in light of all these concepts, the idea I proposed in “The Libertarian Theory of War” regarding spirits as speculative collective subjects takes on new colors. It turns out they aren’t so speculative after all. In many ways, they are no more speculative than a human being. For instance, there is the author of a book. This is a speculative subject that I model in my own brain based on the text of the book. And if the book is co-authored, the author in my brain still remains a single speculative subject, while their collectivity remains entirely off-stage. The same applies to characters, who might embody many prototypes. These are collective subjects. But in the exact same way, any human is also a collective subject that I construct in my brain in the same manner, endowing them with, among other things, the traits of many of their prototypes, which, in my opinion, they inherited certain features from. Putin is literally Hitler, yeah.

I am leaving my reasoning unfinished. I think there is no need to explain why.

Free Cities Conference 2026, Day 2

Following the pattern of the previous post, I am posting the main theses of the second day of the Free Cities Conference 2026.

1. Seasteading Panel

  • Speakers: Joe Quirk (moderator), O’Shane Balloon, Jorge Schmidt (maritime lawyers), Chad and Nadia Elwartowski (the first seasteaders).
  • Topic: Legal realities, obtaining flags, and seasteading security in international waters.
  • Key points:
    • Chad and Nadia’s experience: After building the first floating home prototype in Thailand’s contiguous zone (14 nautical miles from the shore), they faced a harsh reaction from the Thai military, who accused them of threatening sovereignty (which carried the risk of life imprisonment or execution).
    • The role of the flag: Being in the contiguous zone (from 12 to 24 miles) allows coastal states to exercise customs and immigration control. Registering a vessel under a flag (e.g., Panama) does not provide full extraterritoriality, but it moves the seastead from the status of a “pirate” or undocumented vessel to the protection of an internationally recognized registry. Without a flag, any state has the right to inspect the vessel under universal jurisdiction.
    • Taxes and citizenship: A Panamanian flag does not automatically grant citizenship or the right to reside on land. Regarding taxes, Panama uses a territorial principle (taxes are paid only on income earned within the country). However, O’Shane Balloon reminded that US citizens are taxed on worldwide income, and even working in Antarctica is taxable since it is not the territory of a foreign “state.”
    • Security against pirates: Security is the first step in blank-slate governance on the water. The flags of some countries (e.g., Mongolia) explicitly allow weapons on board, making it legal to hire private security firms.

2. IP Debate

  • Speakers: Alex Voss (moderator), Stephan Kinsella (patent attorney, IP opponent) and Brian O’Hearn (lawyer, IP supporter).
  • Topic: Should free cities protect intellectual property?
  • Key points:
    • Stephan Kinsella (against IP):
      • Patents and copyright are government privileges and monopolies arising from royal decrees, not natural rights. True property rights are only needed to resolve conflicts over scarce (physically limited) resources. Ideas are not physically limited and can be copied freely, which historically makes humanity wealthier.
      • Large corporations use patents not to protect inventors, but to create cartels. Free cities should minimize IP protection (exclude software, remove criminal penalties, shorten terms) without fearing sanctions, since patent law is strictly national in nature and does not prevent residents from patenting their inventions directly in the USA or EU.
    • Brian O’Hearn (for IP):
      • IP is one of the last lines of defense for the individual and their intellect against corporate monopolies merged with central banks. Without copyright protection, large corporations will take any developments for free.
      • IP rights are symmetrical (everyone has the right to protect their invention). Brian suggested segmenting the patent system by industry (for example, granting long patents to the expensive pharma industry and short or zero patents to software). He cited J.K. Rowling as an example, who would never have become a billionaire from being a single mother without copyright protection.

3. Per Bylund (economist)

  • Topic: How to make free cities entrepreneurial superpowers.
  • Key theses:
    • The essence of entrepreneurship: It is the creation of subjective value for the consumer, rather than simply satisfying “unsatisfied demand” (demand is formed only when a supply is created).
    • Invention vs Innovation: An invention is the creation of a new thing, which may not have value in itself. Innovation is bringing a product to market and creating real utility for the consumer (for example, the Pet Rock in 1975 was not an invention of a stone, but became a successful innovation).
    • Advice for free cities:
      • Do not subsidize entrepreneurship artificially (criticism of the models of Klaus Schwab and Mariana Mazzucato, which redirect resources to serve the state instead of consumers).
      • Ensure clear and simple property rights (excluding IP) and make the costs of doing business the diametrical opposite of what the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does.
      • Perceive the free city as an “exchange platform” (similar to a Sears catalog).
      • Focus on B2B clients rather than B2C, as consumers are fickle, while businesses are oriented toward objective profit, and it is B2B that forms the basis of the Austrian economic model.
      • Do not plan industrial clusters from the top down — they should emerge organically through competition and the selection process of the entrepreneurs themselves.

4. Institutional Investment Panel

  • Speakers: Alex Voss (moderator), Trey Goff (Prospera), Lada Moberg (macro investor), Patry Friedman (Pronomos Capital).
  • Topic: How free cities can attract large institutional capital.
  • Key points:
    • Venture Capital vs Real Estate: Venture Capital (VC) is suitable for the early stage, when investors believe in the founding team and the story. As the project grows (Growth stage), real financial metrics and proven unit economics are required. Large real estate and infrastructure funds enter based on the collateral of hard assets, which reduces risks. Real estate in free cities acts as a “value soak,” absorbing the positive externalities of good governance.
    • Political Risks: The risk of expropriation by the state is extremely difficult to assess in the private sector, which is why commercial insurance against political risks is insanely expensive. Only state structures (for example, the US International Development Finance Corporation — DFC) can effectively insure such risks, as they are backed by the diplomatic and military power of the state.
    • Crowd Effect: Investing is a herd process. Once at least one large “boring” investor (for example, the US DFC) is attracted, it will serve as a powerful signal of safety for the entire global financial market.

5. Francisco Litvay

  • Topic: Special Economic Zones as a tool of Flag Theory.
  • Key points:
    • Flag Theory: The distribution of key spheres of life (citizenship, residency, company, banking) across countries that offer the best conditions.
    • Second Passport: No SEZ has the right to issue its own citizenship. The closest path is investing in a business within SEZs of countries offering citizenship by investment (Egypt — from $350k, Turkey — from $400k, Caribbean programs — from $1.5 million).
    • Tax Residency: Madera (Portugal) gives 10 years of 0% tax on foreign income and low VAT; Prospera (Honduras) offers tax resident status for a fixed $5,000 per year if staying on the island for at least 7 days; Indonesia introduced 5–10 year visas for investments from $350k to $700k in a new financial center.
    • Business Advantages: Uruguayan Zonamerica (0% tax on service exports); export zones of Paraguay (1% value-added tax, cheap energy); UAE (popular free zones for obtaining residency); ADGM/DIFC (UAE) and Cayman Enterprise City — the best zones for crypto projects and fintech.

6. Max Medina (architect)

  • Topic: Invisible Architecture: why all cities are the same and how to design a free city.
  • Key points:
    • Invisible Architecture: The shapes of buildings are determined not by architects, but by invisible rules, regulations, economic factors, and sunlight standards.
    • Design Principles: A symbiosis of nature, people, and technology. Ecosystems (coral reefs and rainforests) should serve as inspiration as multi-layered, ultra-efficient bio-cities.
    • Projects in Prospera:
      • Pioneer Village: A modular settlement capable of growing over time like a coral reef.
      • Circular Factory: A factory for producing modular homes with a roof that mimics mountains. It includes a beer garden where clients can drink beer while robots assemble their homes. Local Honduran women manage the robots.
      • Beta Residences: A prototype for modular housing (currently a hotel) that allows the house area to expand twofold as the family grows by simply moving partitions. Construction costs turned out to be 60% cheaper than similar options on the island.
    • Designing for the Moon: Experience working on lunar base projects with NASA and Elon Musk, based on a triad: survival, community, and purpose.

7. Jeremy Kaufman

  • Topic: The Free State Project in New Hampshire.
  • Key Points:
    • The main political question: what is more important — rules or people? The Free State Project proved that people come first.
    • Starting as an assurance contract on a Yahoo forum in the early 2000s with the goal of gathering 20,000 libertarians in one state, the project became the most successful freedom movement in the USA.
    • New Hampshire’s Successes: The state has no income tax and no sales tax. Libertarian activists now control about 25% of the state’s legislative body. The state has the best gun laws, the lowest murder rate in the USA, flying cars are legalized, and a universal school voucher system (school choice) has been introduced.
    • Displacement Strategy: Democratic opponents are so intimidated by the activity of libertarians that they themselves discourage progressive leftists from moving to the state via social networks, helping the project select the right population.

8. Mark Lutter

  • Topic: The transition of charter cities from idea to reality.
  • Key points:
    • Rules Determine Prosperity: The difference between North Korea and South Korea (with identical culture and geography) lies solely in the rules.
    • The Lesson of Shenzhen: It was not just an industrial park, but a zone of over 320 sq. km with colossal autonomy. Economic reforms only reveal their potential with a sufficient population scale.
    • Urban Expansion Company: A new initiative of the Charter Cities Institute (CCI). Instead of endless and complex negotiations with governments to obtain sovereign concessions, the company is starting to build physical satellite cities in Africa using a development business model.
    • Business Model: Purchasing large tracts of land (the first project is about 700 hectares for 40,000 residents), providing basic utilities (roads, sewage, water, electricity), and selling plots to residents for independent construction. This allows bypassing construction regulatory barriers and providing affordable housing for the middle class.

9. Patrick Lamson-Hall (Fitted Projects)

  • Topic: How to plan working free cities: 5 lessons.
  • Key points:
    • The movement is very well-versed in the theory of governance, but weaker in urbanism, which has been in crisis for the last 100 years due to the failure of utopian projects.
    • Lesson 1: A city is not a building. Clear specifications make a building better, but kill a city. A good city should develop emergently. Rigid zoning deprives a city of flexibility (for example, preventing a cat cafe from opening in place of an unwanted barbershop). “Good cities build the stage, they don’t write the script”.
    • Lesson 2: Aesthetics and function are subject to the market. People go to cities for jobs, not just for beautiful isolates. Any elite enclave depends on service personnel, and if you don’t integrate them into the city’s economy, you lose their purchasing power.
    • Lesson 3: Location is the most important decision. Two critical things that cannot be underestimated: proximity to a good international airport (fixing this mistake costs billions) and proximity to a mature labor market.
    • Lesson 4: New urbanistic concepts rarely work. Be skeptical of eco-cities (Songdo) or projects like “The Line” that optimize transport systems instead of human convenience and require coercion to function.
    • Lesson 5: Focus on public space. The developer should take their hands off the private sector and focus on public space (streets, parks). A street grid is the most durable solution (the Roman grid of Turin is still visible after 1000 years).

10. Max Borders (Human Respect Labs)

  • Topic: Full-spectrum free jurisdictions.
  • Key points:
    • Accountability Loops: The relationship between “citizen-client” and “service provider” must be regulated by clear feedback loops. All disputes should be resolved by private arbitration, not elections.
    • Role of culture and philosophy: Entrepreneurial initiative alone is not enough; it is necessary to form a culture and an “empire of the mind” (solidarity/asabiyyah) so that the community can survive during times of hardship.
    • Direction of liberalism: The speaker divided the participants into “gnostics” (out-of-touch theoretical purists) and “droids” (pure pragmatists who ignore philosophy). The movement needs “directed liberals”—pragmatists who have a value compass but know how to move step-by-step from A to B.
    • Human Respect Labs: A grant program (microfinancing up to $30,000) to support early projects of liberal innovators and communicators.

11. Dušan Matuška

  • Topic: Lessons from the “bitcoinization” of Roatan island.
  • Key points:
    • Lesson 1: Trust takes time. It took 2 years of work to overcome the negative legacy of local “large-scale” crypto scammers (for example, a pastor from French Harbor who sold shitcoins to his congregation).
    • Lesson 2: Start with financial literacy. It is pointless to offer bitcoin as a means of saving to people living paycheck to paycheck. First, you must teach them how to budget.
    • Lesson 3: Quality is more important than quantity. Chasing the number of merchants accepting BTC is a mistake, as high staff turnover often means new baristas do not know how to use wallets. It is more effective to make the business owners themselves bitcoiners, who then train the staff.
    • Lesson 4: Do not say the word “Bitcoin” immediately. To overcome the fear of school principals regarding crypto, Dušan’s team first taught the history of money and the collapse of fiat, which opened doors for 10-week educational courses.
    • Replaceability: The project must be sustainable and independent of the founder; it is important to train local ambassadors.

12. Panel “Ocean Living on a Budget”

  • Speakers: Chad Elwartowski (Ocean Builders), Mason (Atlas Yachts), Mitchell Sutner (Arcpad).
  • Topic: What you can buy on the water for $3k, $30k, and $600k.
  • Key points:
    • Budget $3,000 – $30,000: For $3,000, you can rent a luxury floating villa for a week (Maldives/Philippines), and for $30,000, you can build a simple floating house of plywood and fiberglass yourself using the True North Yachts method for closed lagoons. For $500 in the Philippines, you can buy a 0.75% share in Reef Resort with dividends paid in crypto.
    • Budget $300,000 – $600,000: With this budget, you can acquire an Arcpad D (deep-sea seastead) costing $300k, with a lifespan of 80–95 years (version C successfully withstood four typhoons in 2024 in the Philippines without any damage). From Mason (Atlas Yachts), for $275k you can buy a 42-meter floating condominium (studio catamaran), and for $375k–$650k — full-scale family floating homes with solar energy and desalinations systems.
    • Operating expenses: Practically zero. Atlas Yachts aluminum hulls require no maintenance, and on stationary Arcpad platforms, a low current is applied to prevent corrosion and the buildup of biomass, which additionally protects the metal and attracts fish. Waste is processed by incinerator toilets (only ash remains). The only regular fee is the annual vessel flag registration fee (about a couple hundred dollars).

13. Joe McKinney

  • Topic: Sovereign Tribal Governments and SEZs in the USA.
  • Key Thesis:
    • Purely contractual free zones often collapse during power shifts, as constitutions must become “living” by overcoming inevitable conflicts (similar to a marriage or Lincoln’s reconstitution of the USA after the Civil War).
    • Native American Tribal Sovereignty: This is a powerful, centuries-tested legal tool for decentralization in the USA. Tribes possess inherent sovereignty that predates the USA itself and is enshrined in the Constitution. They can establish their own courts, commercial codes, and zones.
    • Catawba Digital Economic Zone Case: The first digital SEZ created in partnership with the Catawba tribe, allowing fintech companies to register bypassing state jurisdiction. The overturning of the Chevron doctrine in US courts has further strengthened the position of tribes against federal agencies.

14. Timothy Allen

  • Topic: Results of 200 hours of conversations on the “Free Cities Podcast”.
  • Key Thesis:
    • Top 3 Insane Government Regulations:
      1. Car License in Liberland: Croatian police fined Liberlanders for driving a motorized construction wheelbarrow without a driver’s license.
      2. The Veritas Villages Panama Paradox: Government-approved HOA rules created a bureaucratic loop, complicating any simple household changes within the community.
      3. £114 Million Bat Tunnel in the UK: As part of the HS2 high-speed rail project, a protective tunnel was built to protect 50 bats, costing more than £2.2 million per bat.
    • Top 3 Libertarian Fails:
      1. Self-destruction of the Libertarian Center in New Hampshire: After expelling two problematic residents by vote, the community became obsessed with endless ideological “purges” and inquisitions until no one was left in the center.
      2. Massimo Mazzone’s Perfect Hack: In Ciudad Morazán (built on 100% libertarian principles), ordinary Honduran workers live and work without arguing about Hayek and Mises, which is why the society prospers — the key to success is the absence of libertarians.
      3. Joe Quirke’s Harmful Ideas: Joe’s book “Seasteading” makes wealthy people abandon comfortable lives, spend millions, and nearly die twice on barges.
    • Top 3 Kidnappings in SEZs:
      1. Hostages in Bir Tawil: Christoph Hoyermann declared a free city in Bir Tawil. Local Bedouins with Kalashnikovs took them hostage for 20 hours because someone jokingly hoisted a flag with a penis on it.
      2. The Coup in Sealand (1978): Sealand’s founders were lured to Austria, while a landing party arrived by helicopter on the platform, capturing the Prince’s 26-year-old son and sending him to Holland on a trawler.
      3. James Bond in Sealand: Prince Michael’s son hired a stuntman from James Bond movies; they flew in on a doorless helicopter with shotguns, retook Sealand, and locked the traitor in the local prison.
    • Conclusion: 2026 became a turning point — we moved from abstract theory to Booking.com, real cups of coffee, and playgrounds in free zones.

15. Titus Gebel (closing of the conference)

  • Topic: Closing remarks, secrecy, and the future.
  • Key points:
    • A record number of participants — 260 people — attended the conference. Holding the event within the actual free city of Prospera (rather than in Prague or Switzerland) proved that the movement has materialized.
    • Pipeline secrecy: Answering participants’ questions, Titus explained why the foundation does not disclose the list of future projects: it is too politically vulnerable, as opposition in host countries instantly spin a populist narrative of “betrayal of the homeland” and blame Peter Thiel for everything.
    • The example of Shenzhen: Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were a successful attempt to decriminalize the market in communist China based on the model of a free Hong Kong. Even if states try to lock capitalism within small zones, this trend can no longer be stopped.