Автор: Анкап-тян

A case about stealing a business

Miloš

The Setup

A scientist and talented manager, let’s call him SM, headed an experimental laboratory at the sunset of Soviet power, and after 1991, created a private firm to monetize its scientific developments. The partnership proved successful. A clientele emerged, placing commercial orders, and a steady flow of cash followed. The scientists’ earnings increased, and it became prestigious to enter the laboratory, including for the purpose of defending a dissertation. In the new economic conditions, SM strengthened his good name—his personal brand, as they say now.

The scientist was wise and understood that he would not live forever; in the mid-2000s, well into his sixties, he chose his best student (BS) as his successor, who owed the boss a great deal. They verbally agreed that after a few years, the teacher would hand over his scientific post and a share in the business to the student under certain conditions. Until that happened, the successor was appointed as SM’s deputy with signing authority.

Time passed. But the “grandfather” aged slowly. On the contrary, developing an enviable energy, he managed to marry yet again—this time a young (very young and beautiful) student, a PhD candidate from the provinces. SM intensively began arranging the life of his new family: he solved the housing issue on a large scale, started traveling to resorts with his young wife, took up downhill skiing in his old age, and meanwhile devoted less and less time to work. But business was going well: the deputy did not let him down, and money arrived in SM’s account regularly. Commercial orders grew, and the laboratory was strengthened by new staff brought in by BS. For his part, SM did not mistreat the future successor and, as he believed, paid him generously, very generously. Everything was fine; for the boss, a warm, almost “Boldino” autumn had begun.

The Climax

However, complex and unpleasant questions were accumulating in the deputy’s soul, such as “how long must I wait?”. He had the same thoughts as Pushkin’s Onegin regarding the uncle who was, as is well known, of the most honest rules. The best student continued to remain No. 2, although he was eager for the No. 1 position. BS could not ask the boss directly when he would take over. Yet he received indirect signals from SM that the agreements were still in force. The message was: wait, my friend, and happiness will be yours; meanwhile, our business is my personal business.

Not immediately, but BS realized it was time to stop worrying and start acting. He began with something simple: creating his own client base by poaching his boss’s clients. He registered his own company and nudged customers toward the idea that, for tax reasons, the contract for the work should formally be concluded with his company rather than the boss’s firm.

Over time, BS attempted to switch the largest companies to himself, whose executives knew SM personally. They signed the documents, extending the trust they had in the teacher’s name to the student. Perhaps everything would have slipped through here as well, but every now and then BS began to let slip in conversations with old clients that he, BS, was actually conducting all the business in the scientific company, while the “grandfather” was useless. He claimed the boss was pushed around by his young wife, understood little about the business, and it was long past time for him to retire. All of this did not escape the attentive ears of the interlocutors. Some of them informed SM in polite terms about the danger he had failed to notice, being preoccupied with an intensive family life.

The Resolution

Several years passed this way. SM’s wife successfully defended her dissertation and, through patronage, obtained a very good position, remaining as young and beautiful as ever. The same could not be said for her husband, who had crossed the threshold of his seventies. He remained impeccable in providing for the family’s material needs, but he could no longer maintain the greatly increased spiritual and other needs that such a beauty craved and undoubtedly deserved. However, some other men, far from being Doctors of Science, were quite capable of providing these other needs. The professor eventually reached this discouraging conclusion after connecting the corresponding dots. The family life cracked and quickly came to a logical end. The spouses separated, and in doing so, the wife managed to secure the enviable shared living space as a memory of her husband.

The teacher, left alone, was as if waking from a faint, and after a short period of reflection, returned to his laboratory—or, to put it in modern terms, to business. His business. It turned out that his professional skills had not vanished; his favorite work not only comforted him but again began to bring pleasure. But the euphoria of the return did not last long, only until SM conducted a detailed analysis of the orders and contractual relationships. First, suspicions arose that orders were disappearing somewhere, and then he looked at the documents, quickly remembered the warnings of his friends, and met with them. The truth revealed itself to him in all its harsh guise, and he finally understood, turning to the facts, that his deputy was brazenly and effectively openly stealing his business.

A conversation took place between the teacher and the student, if it could be called a conversation. After that, having calmed down and reasoning concretely as businessmen—but without the extremism sometimes characteristic of businessmen (they were, after all, intelligent people)—SM and BS realized they were in a difficult situation and began to think about how to live further. Initially, each saw emotional arguments for an immediate and harsh “divorce.” But upon more detailed analysis, factors emerged in favor of continuing cooperation, whatever that might entail.

Meanwhile, the rift between SM and BS became exposed, consequently alienating the employees. Strangely, the battle line was drawn not between the “old” and “new” staff brought in by the boss or his deputy, but along the moral positions of the parties, mainly on the question of who cheated whom. Furthermore, the confusing scheme of how orders were processed began to affect the quality of the work. Mistrust grew among clients toward the laboratory, its head, and the deputy: from the outside, it was impossible to tell who was right and who was wrong. Other negative factors appeared, which ultimately led to a weakening of the flow of orders and affected the financial situation of the employees.

With each passing day, the situation became worse…

Questions

  1. How should the characters in the case have acted to avoid such a situation?
  2. How can the current conflict be resolved? What would you recommend SM and BS undertake to reach an agreement?
  3. Is it possible to preserve the profitable business created by SM in such a situation? How can this be done?

Constraints. The company owner is already over 70 years old. Even if he returns to the operational management of the business, he will not be able to engage in the company’s development for long. Additionally, it is important to note that the private research firm was created thanks to the owner’s authority and connections based on a state laboratory. One part of the business cannot exist without the other.

Answers

1. How should the characters in the case have acted?

As is easy to see, all the misunderstandings in the given case arose due to vague agreements. The first vague agreement: BS is forced to do all the work for a salary, based on a promise to inherit the business in an undefined future. The second vague agreement: the absence of a prenuptial agreement and, consequently, a conflict of expectations between SM and his spouse. The third vague agreement: the dubious legal status of the entire business, since officially it all remains a laboratory within a state research institute, and it is precisely this legal form that forces the first agreement to remain vague.

It is clear why SM preferred to stay under the wing of the state in the early nineties: it provides enormous savings at a stage when the business has not yet stood on its own feet. Here you have premises in the institute at the budget’s expense, plus a wealth of various informal connections in state structures of different levels, which can be used to pull off various schemes.

In the new post-Soviet economic reality, passing on the position of laboratory head as an inheritance is somewhat archaic. The timely establishment of a more adequate company structure could have provided the tools to prevent the conflict between SM and BS. For example, SM could have received a share in the business in addition to a salary and gradually increased it. The business itself could have been scaled more confidently instead of being confined to the size of a laboratory—but that, of course, is a matter of taste, ambition, and market conditions.

In general, the only task of a business owner that cannot be delegated to managers is controlling that management does not plunder the business. If the business owner does not perform this single task, then he alone is ultimately responsible for the business slipping through his fingers. To the extent that the state can be likened to a commercial company, the people are certainly responsible for the appalling quality of state management and the plundering of state property into the pockets of civil servants—but that is an off-topic in this case.

Thus, if regarding the business, the solution lies in removing it as completely as possible from state regulation, then regarding marriage, such things are not permitted by family codes. According to the code, a prenuptial agreement cannot provide for economic sanctions for extramarital affairs, which makes SM’s position in this deal more vulnerable. However, this is not so important. All agreements could have been concluded in advance. On the other hand, such romantic infatuations in old age are inevitably accompanied by a certain affectation, so it would be strange to expect a sober view from SM during the “mating season.”

By the way, if the company had been separated from the research institute in its time and represented an independent business, the appearance of SM’s spouse on the horizon would have inevitably led BS to demand clear guarantees of receiving the business; otherwise, it would have by default passed as inheritance to SM’s spouse, without all these dances with appointing a new lab head at the scientific council.

2. How can the current conflict be resolved?

I would advise formalizing the separation of roles. SM remains the lab head in the research institute until he decides to retire, and also holds the status of a scientific consultant with a good salary in BS’s company. BS retains his position as head of sector (or whatever it was) in the boss’s lab and remains the general director of his own company. As for what form to keep SM’s company in, I won’t venture a suggestion. Management could be transferred to BS. One of the companies could be liquidated. They could be merged into a holding. It’s not fundamental.

The point of the proposed solution is that each party has tools against the other, but no incentive to use them without extreme necessity. SM continues his scientific work, which should have a positive effect on his mood and zest for life, and the salary in BS’s company will allow him to continue living in style, as he is used to. At the same time, he no longer needs to ensure the business is not being plundered, since the business has already been transferred; only the rent remains. BS retains all clients and operational management, which means he has guarantees of maintaining control over the business and incentives to develop it in every way. He could fire SM, but then he would lose his position in the laboratory.

What am I doing wrong?

Survey on translation priorities

Какие посты первыми перевести на английский?
  • Переведи интерфейс сайта на английский, пусть сами вопросы задают 55%, 32 votes
    32 votes 55%
    32 votes - 55% of all votes
  • Начни с общемировой проблематики, например, про космический мусор https://ancapchan.info/2018/12/16/1180/ * 45%, 26 votes
    26 votes 45%
    26 votes - 45% of all votes
Total Votes: 58
Voters: 54
28.12.2018 - 07.04.2020
* - added by visitor
Voting is closed

Мне поступило предложение начать вещать на англоязычную аудиторию. Это заманчиво, но трудоёмко, поэтому я пока не готова переводить всё подряд. Предлагается выбрать, с каких постов начать. Какие статьи были бы для иностранной аудитории наиболее понятны, актуальны и интересны?
Когда будете предлагать свои варианты, указывайте ссылки на соответствующие посты.

Mega-translator is bewildered

Restrictions on rights

1. Imagine a situation: a local epidemic of some infection suddenly breaks out in a hospital, and the doctors forbid you from leaving the quarantine zone. But in doing so, they are restricting your right to freedom of movement. How would such situations be resolved under ancap?

2. Consider this situation: in the summer, a child is lying/sitting in a car, crying, possibly suffocating from lack of air and heat; the parents went somewhere on business and forgot about them, and a passerby sees this and wonders what to do. Can they or the police break into the car or smash a window without permission, if the car is private property (which is inviolable under ancap)?

3. Is it permissible to cause damage to a person’s property that clearly threatens other people? Examples: a car with the handbrake on starts rolling toward another car, a tower leans due to age and is about to collapse onto neighboring buildings, etc. The nuance: there is no contact with the owner of the threatening property, or there is no time for it (the car is rolling).

I decided to combine three similar anonymous questions into one to avoid writing three similar answers.

In the first case, it turns out that exercising your right to freedom of movement could lead to significant harm to third parties, so you are asked not to insist on its exercise until it can be ensured that the threat has passed. In the second and third cases, causing damage to private property prevents harm to a third party. In all cases, you are simply presented with the fact of your rights being violated.

Where do rights come from? Rights arise from the interactions of some members of society with others. Some people agree to tolerate certain behavior of other people because they believe that those people have a right to such behavior.

Doctors believe they have the right to restrict your movement; they only need to convince others of this, and for this, they can use various methods. The most obvious and correct one: when you are admitted to a hospital, you sign a contract that outlines various boundaries, including force majeure situations like quarantine. Again, to ensure quarantine, doctors usually bring in specialists specifically for enforcement. Who will pay for this? As already mentioned in the post about epidemics, the most obvious interested party is insurance companies. They are the ones interested in ensuring the epidemic is prevented and the volume of insurance claim payouts is minimized; for this purpose, they can pay both those who enforce the quarantine and those caught in the quarantine—as compensation for the inconvenience. Or the insurance company may decide that the danger is small and will not introduce restrictions—those are its risks.

A passerby believes they have the right to encroach upon your private property to save a person; they only need to convince others of this. This is quite simple: they only need to demonstrate the rescued child to other passersby, and they will join the rescuer’s sincere indignation toward the jerk who left the child in the car, and perhaps even help in searching for the car’s owner.

General principles emerge from the generalization of private practice. They work well for typical situations and allow for the saving of mental effort. When two conflicting general principles collide in one head, a mental effort must still be made. It’s nothing terrible; the ability to think is always useful.

The Best Anime Crossover of 2018

This was probably the most anticipated video of the year: Ekaterina Schulmann had promised to give Mikhail Svetov an interview back when I was just starting my channel; six months passed, and the recording finally came out.

The stature of the participants in the conversation is practically equal. Both are popular video bloggers (Mikhail has a couple of tens of thousands more subscribers on YouTube, Ekaterina has a more promoted Facebook). Both are popular public lecturers (Mikhail has visited more provincial towns, Ekaterina speaks more often and is more embraced by the media). Behind Ekaterina are scholarly articles, co-authorship of a textbook, and numerous press publications. Behind Mikhail are two sizable rallies. Ekaterina holds a teaching position and membership in the Human Rights Council. Mikhail holds a leadership position in a rapidly gaining popularity political party and has a ten-day stint in detention. Both are political scientists by education, which means, theoretically, they should, if not speak the same language, at least understand each other well. Finally, both have a loyal army of supporters.

It is clear that the conversation was not a direct clash, otherwise I simply wouldn’t have known what to do with myself or who to root for. On one hand, Mikhail is closer to me ideologically, although we have many disagreements. On the other, Ekaterina is my role model, and it is terribly difficult for me to analyze her words impartially. But these were not debates, but a respectful communication between political allies about various subtleties and nuances, so I could root for Ekaterina without a guilty conscience.

Mikhail prepared magnificently for the conversation and also demonstrated an ability to think at least as fast as Ekaterina speaks, so he managed to interject with instant remarks during the pauses in her speech (anyone who has listened to Schulmann can imagine how tightly packed the words are in her phrases).

The most interesting part began in the last fifteen minutes of the conversation, when they moved from a dialogue about interesting topics to a targeted discussion of disagreements. Here, Mikhail surprised me again. He managed to pierce the armor of his interlocutor’s unwavering optimism by painting a not-entirely-fantastical scenario of clashes between Caucasian ethnic groups in the middle of the RF capital. Then Ekaterina quite skillfully regained her lost advantage during the discussion of Svetov’s signature topic—lustration—which she considers equally unlikely and unhelpful, while seeing more realistic alternatives to it.

After the conversation, Mikhail summarized the interaction on his Twitter roughly like this: Ekaterina is very useful in her place, specifically because the near-Kremlin public listens to her. Moreover, it’s not that she can facilitate a soft liberalization from above, but that she lulls the authorities with her sweet speeches, and when the thunder of revolution strikes, it will come as a complete surprise to the regime. This moment was also quite unexpected for me—exactly when Mikhail turned from a singer of libertarianism into a fervent revolutionary. He really spent the entire conversation unsuccessfully trying to get Ekaterina to agree with the thesis that Russia is about to explode and there will be a bloodbath; he did not succeed (with the Chechen caveat), and as a result, concluded that fine, let the authorities listen to Schulmann, but you, my little friends, listen to Svetov, he knows how it should be.

From the perspective of AES, why does the “pump and dump” price manipulation scheme on exchanges not need to be regulated?

анонимный вопрос

I have already analyzed this topic in quite some detail, so it wasn’t even clear what else to add, but then I wrote a post about behavioral economics.

The “pump and dump” scheme exploits the bounded rationality of economic agents and, of course, information asymmetry—in short, those very “magic bullets” that government regulators love to cling to when they need a justification for regulations.

As long as such a scheme is practiced by private individuals on exchanges not affiliated with them, this is, firstly, behavior that is difficult to distinguish from honest trading, and, secondly, it does not guarantee profit, but carries risks just like any other trading strategy.

If an exchange is caught in such activities, it leads to a loss of volume—serious players prefer more serious platforms. For example, Bitfinex, a fairly old exchange by cryptocurrency standards, was suspected of manipulating the Bitcoin price by using the Tether stablecoin it issues, which may have had incomplete backing. As a result, the exchange that was once first or second in the world by volume has now slipped toward the end of the top ten, and a couple of new popular coins have appeared in the stablecoin market, which first and foremost underwent a full audit for one-hundred-percent dollar backing. Bitmain tried to manipulate the Bitcoin Cash price and almost went bankrupt because of it. Obviously, many are haunted by the laurels of George Soros, who successfully played against the British pound, but this is a bad topic for a long-term game.

The institution of reputation rules better than any regulators.

If you have been threatened with the state

Bitarch’s Column

Suppose someone you know or a business partner has taken offense at something and has begun to threaten you with the leviathan. Let’s say the laws are also on their side, and they are demanding money or something else from you. You disagree with these demands and believe you are in the right, and you would prefer to ignore state laws, but it is profitable for your counterparty to use them against you. What should you do?

If your kind word does not have enough persuasive power to resolve the conflict privately, there is nothing terrible about threatening to also turn to the state on your part. Its laws are written such that everyone is guilty before it, so your threat is something like resorting to the doctrine of mutual nuclear deterrence.

Describe to them in vivid detail all the problems that you both will face if you start official disputes; tell them that you are ready to go to the end, but would gladly avoid all this mutual disgrace if they, following your lead, show consciousness and refuse to use the state against people.

It doesn’t matter at all what you threaten with. The state will roast one person for unauthorized apartment redevelopment, another for paying staff under the table, and a third for swearing in a public place. Something will definitely be found.

Isn’t it wonderful when even your own minor disagreements can be turned into an act of defiance against the regime!

Behavioral economics shatters the idea of libertarianism, no?

анонимный вопрос

The Austrian School of economics asserts that values are subjective; a person always makes choices based on their own personal preferences, which are unknown to anyone else, immeasurable, and unpredictable. Even within such strict frameworks of ignorance, a number of general statements can be made based on praxeology, that is, the logic of human action.

The Neoclassical school took a different path. It consistently and diligently approximated human behavior using mathematical models. Starting with the simplest model of homo economicus—the omniscient, dispassionate utility maximizer—it gradually released new patches to describe the behavior of real people in the language of models, so that it would correlate somehow with actual observed human activity.

Within this approach, various cognitive biases, the influence of different emotions, and so on, were described, extending even to the phases of the moon and blood glucose levels. Did this help in any way to learn how to predict the behavior of economic agents? Only for some special cases, and only at the level of probabilities, which, in general, remains within the bounds of common sense. I believe the achievements of behavioral economics can be helpful in creating realistic human emulators conducting some economic activity in the information space.

At the tenth Adam Smith readings, Rostislav Kapelyushnikov gave a very interesting lecture on how the achievements of behavioral economics in studying bounded rationality are used as a justification for paternalism. The idea is that since a person makes a certain choice anyway, and makes it irrationally, why not gently nudge them toward a choice that is more beneficial both for themselves and for society. In other words, there is still an attempt to decide for the person what is best for them, and behavioral economists give their approval for this, whereas classical economists, who proceeded from the presumption of the rationality of human choice, did not give the state such sanction. Thus, the state received a scientific indulgence for even greater intervention in the economy in terms of regulations.

Does behavioral economics shatter the idea of libertarianism? Rather, it provides new arguments to continue ignoring libertarianism, while practice still turns out to be on the side of freer societies where there is less regulation, no matter how scientific that regulation may be.

https://youtu.be/tA4xNn-xV8c

What will happen to the world ocean under ancap? Will anyone have ownership rights to it?

Ashot

Right now, international neutral waters represent a curious space of partial ancap. While not being anyone’s property, they allow a vessel to remain almost entirely extraterritorial (a vessel is considered the territory of the flag state, and therefore the market has decided in favor of convenient flags—such states have large merchant fleets, sometimes without even bothering to have access to the sea).

That is precisely why, when ancap arrives on land, the changes at sea will be minimal. A vessel will remain the private property of its owner, fishing grounds will be jointly operated by fishing companies (and if they fail to carefully read Elinor Ostrom, the market will punish them), there will be an increased likelihood of encountering pirates in the straits (but a rich set of tools can be used against them), the water will remain salty, and the great garbage patch will remain localized in the Pacific Ocean, existing by the will of the prevailing currents.

As wild fish becomes more expensive, humanity will increasingly switch to farmed fish; as plastic becomes more expensive, there will be a growing temptation to fish it out of the ocean for recycling; as the population grows and seasteading becomes cheaper, a considerable part of the ocean may become the territorial waters of new floating islands; until then, it is unlikely that anyone will start carving it into small plots.

Modern ancaps see the future of the ocean, while states persist on land, something like this

A girl ordered her own murder.

It is interesting to consider this case from the perspective of ancap. At the same time, the parents are against it, and are already upset that the guy was sentenced to 48 years (which brings up the question of the victims; it turns out there is a conflict). And others claim that the girl could have been saved, and that she needed psychological help.

анонимный вопрос

I have already covered the topic of euthanasia in quite some detail. In itself, there is nothing criminal about a killing requested by the person being killed, but in order to prove the voluntary nature of the transaction and the capacity of the client, it is advisable to carry out certain legal procedures. From the circumstances of the case under consideration, it is clear only that there was indeed a request, but the awareness of the actions remains unproven.

Of course, in the absence of a state, it would be much easier for the girl to appear at a clinic accompanied by a notary, so that the latter could record her clearly expressed intention and the results of an examination by a psychologist confirming that she is of sound mind and memory, after which she would receive her lethal injection of heroin from a doctor and pass away peacefully with a blissful smile on her face. If the prediction from the song—that under ancap, we probably won’t need to die at all—does not come true, then personally, I expect to end my life in exactly this way in my old age.

In the case under consideration, there are too many circumstances that are very difficult to imagine when ancap is all around and there are no bans on euthanasia. I will start inventing how such a thing could happen, and you will respond by claiming that ancap is sheer cannibalism; well, screw you.

Well, there is no need to hire the first guy you meet on the street when there are doctors. There is no need to hide the fact of the killing if everything happened by agreement, and this can be easily confirmed. And finally, the parents have no right to demand retribution from a conscientious executor of a legally flawless contract.

Now, if you want me to consider specifically the case linked, where the state is still around, but for some reason my non-deciding opinion is important to you, then okay. I consider the perpetrator of the killing a jerk who didn’t step away from this slippery subject, although he had every opportunity to do so. If he was driven by curiosity, then I would be wary of such curious people—maybe next time he’ll decide to be curious with a knife in my guts. If he thought such things were fucking romantic, then he could have taken a second dose of heroin, and it would have been a double suicide in a beautiful Japanese style. If he just needed money, there are many more ethical ways to earn a living. Nevertheless, this is all, of course, not a reason for a half-century prison sentence; community service in a morgue would be quite sufficient.

I don’t want naturalistic images, just a beautiful tyan in the forest!

I’ve had a dispute here with a supporter of Jacques Fresco’s ideas.

His idea is that the state in the form of bureaucrats is bad (he agrees with me on this). However, his solution to the problem is different. What if it weren’t bureaucrats, but a computer that would calculate everything perfectly? A computer is not susceptible to corruption. His argument against capitalism is that under capitalism, resources are spent inefficiently, which hinders the development of humanity. He says that in a market economy, scarcity is built-in as a motivational mechanism. That is, there is a shortage of something—this stimulates entrepreneurs who try to satisfy the demand for the scarcity and profit from it. I think this topic needs to be analyzed, if it hasn’t been done already.

анонимный вопрос

There is a common point of view that any IT specialist would prefer to replace any bureaucrat with a single simple script. In a free market, this is exactly what happens: artificial intelligence is replacing various mid-level professionals, mainly those who work with their heads rather than their hands: journalists, lawyers, stock traders, designers, and so on. So technically, there are no problems with abolishing bureaucrats, but there is a reluctance among bureaucrats to be abolished, because the state bureaucracy is the strongest union on Earth.

Therefore, if one implements state administration using artificial intelligence without first abolishing the bureaucrats, it becomes an extremely resource-intensive task that is not even close to the ideals of Jacques Fresco. They will surround the implementation process with a mountain of bureaucratic approvals, demand a certificate with a wet stamp for the execution of any e-government command, and will certainly ensure that everything runs on domestic hardware and domestic software with backdoors for the secret services.

It is far more effective to first abolish the bureaucrats, and when a shortage of administration services arises, the market economy already knows how to solve this task—after all, in a market economy, scarcity is built-in as a motivational mechanism. Thus, entrepreneurs will quickly satisfy the market demand for implementing artificial intelligence to solve coordination tasks.

To be honest, in my view, Fresco is something like an Anti-Keynes. Keynes says that the way out of a crisis is through increasing consumption via state regulation; Fresco echoes him: no, people must renounce their unnecessary needs thanks to state regulation, then resources will be in abundance, and our resource-based economy will thrive! Well, it’s simply Escobar’s axiom in its purest form. But it is not necessary to tell all this to the supporters of Jacques Fresco; it is enough to suggest a sensible market way of realizing their dream, as described in the previous paragraph.

This is approximately how an electronic bureaucrat should look from the point of view of current bureaucrats: an analog interface for signatures, stamps, handshakes, taking bribes, and putting on handcuffs. And dressed according to the dress code.