Автор: Анкап-тян

Let’s imagine that some crazy landowner in the city put up a giant-sized poster with, say, an image of an erotic nature.

Out of common sense, it would be right and fair to punish such a stunt immediately and force the poster to be taken down. Under a state, that is exactly what would happen. But what would happen under ancap?

Anonymous question (paid in the amount of 0.0005 BTC)

First of all, I want to apologize for not noticing the donation transferred on Thursday immediately, and therefore I am only answering now. I will try not to disappoint in the future.

Under a state, we actually see huge erotic images all over the city in the most prominent places, from billboards right in the middle of sidewalks to banners covering the entire side of a high-rise building. The image usually features some minimally dressed girl enjoying a Coca-Cola or checking how comfortable it is to sit on the hood of a sports car. I don’t know about feminists, but I like such advertising, especially now, because it reminds me of summer.

If tomorrow marketing research in focus groups shows that sales can be increased by advertising of a homoerotic nature, or scenes of violence, or something along those lines, then either we will soon see and gladly welcome fresh advertising imagery, or this will be preceded by lobbying work to obtain permission from the state to display such things, if it currently prohibits it directly.

But your question, in essence, concerned something slightly different. What if someone decided to place not an advertisement, but an image of a deliberately repulsive nature, which does not call for buying anything but simply evokes disgust? In a state, even if the current laws do not provide a ban on such things, the image can be dismantled by a simple order from some law enforcement agency, or, if it is a civilized state, there is a chance for a private lawsuit to succeed.

Quite some time ago, I wrote about some possibilities for harmonizing the urban environment under ancap; now I will consider a slightly different aspect.

In the absence of a state, a scandalous image will remain as long as the owner is willing to pay for it. Some will organize protest actions, call for a boycott, some will try to buy the building in order to destroy the image, some (the vast majority!) will limit themselves to flame wars on the internet, some might even risk pelting the owner of the object with eggs — and some will release souvenirs and begin to glorify the city’s new symbol. Imagine, a magnet of the Eiffel Tower, which was considered disgustingly ugly and people demanded its demolition in the early 20th century! Now imagine a magnet of our city’s fucking cunt-thing! Not much time will pass, and it will be impossible to imagine the city without this monument. The free market is always eclectic, and nowhere offline is this manifested as vividly as in the appearance of cities.

How could the issue of Earth’s orbit being polluted with space debris be regulated under ancap? After all, you cannot establish private property over space.

anonymous question

There is the Earth. Around the Earth is a certain near-Earth space where people regularly launch satellites. A satellite may fail on its own or disable another satellite, either as a result of targeted commands from its owners or as a result of many unpredictable natural factors.

What rules would govern the interaction of interested parties in this sphere under ancap? In essence, roughly the same as now. The legal frameworks in which property disputes regarding satellites and their mutual influence occur already largely correspond to free market principles: entities are equal and act on the basis of clearly defined agreements.

What would be the reaction now if someone began consciously shooting down other people’s satellites? The affected parties would try to prove this fact, the broader community of those potentially involved in the conflict would also be interested in such an investigation, and further, everyone would be interested in depriving the aggressor of the ability to continue the attacks, as well as recovering damages for the affected parties.

So, with the transition to ancap on Earth, little will fundamentally change in space. Except that currently, sections of the geostationary orbit are divided among states based on geographical criteria; were there no states, other agreements between players in the space industry would come into effect. Perhaps the simple principle of homesteading.

Well, alright. A considerable amount of time has passed, a huge amount of debris has accumulated in orbit—how will the market solve this problem? In general, what is trash for some is a valuable resource for others. Someone has already paid to launch mass into orbit. The temptation arises to use materials raised by someone else instead of launching one’s own. For now, this is commercially inefficient. The more debris there is in orbit, the lower the costs of extracting raw materials from space debris compared to launching.

Finally, it is worth noting that the accumulation of debris occurs only in sufficiently high orbits, while in low orbits, debris soon leaves orbit on its own and harmlessly burns up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. Thus, for low orbits, extending the lifespan of a satellite is more relevant than the accumulation of satellites that have already become debris.

Thus, in the space industry, one can see all the approaches humanity has developed in the fight against the problem of waste: increasing the service life of products, littering less, and recycling waste.

How do you feel about anarcho-communism?

Madame likiliki

I first learned that such people existed in 2014, meeting them at an anti-war rally. It feels as though their best days are behind them, and they are gradually migrating toward ancap.

To some extent, ancom is achieved when almost the entire basket of typical consumer goods loses its scarcity due to the growth of labor productivity. You click a robot, it rushes off like a sprightly little boar, and brings back some beer. There is no point in owning something that is universally available.

All sorts of craft products can certainly be made for the sake of self-expression. Minimal societal administration is required. As for projects requiring resources that remain scarce, those remain under the purview of business, but most people are completely uninterested in that—they have domestic abundance and total legalization. So, if this version of ancap looks like ancom and quacks like ancom, why not call it ancom.

How to catch Pokémon in Pokemon GO under ancap? Everything is private property!

анонимный вопрос

Strictly speaking, under ancap, private territory is not everywhere, but only where someone has privatized it. However, since we are talking about a specific game, it is clear that we are primarily talking about a city, and there, every little scrap of land belongs to someone.

As I have already written in response to the classic question about roads, and later expanded upon when responding regarding traffic regulation, the goal of a land owner is to derive profit from it. To make a profit from land in a city, one must provide the infrastructure so that a customer with money can easily and conveniently arrive specifically at their location and spend their money there. Or, so that workers and materials can reach a real estate object just as easily, if it is a production site rather than a point of sale.

It is clear that if the owner of a certain object wants to attract the widest possible circle of customers, it is completely impractical for them to filter out those from the general flow who wish to catch a tasty Pokemon on their territory and to hinder them in doing so. Quite the opposite: if such a game is popular at the moment, those wishing to ensure a flow of customers should compete to order the best Pokemon assortment for their specific location from the Pokemon producing company, and ideally, one or two should be completely exclusive. Thus, giving wine to every successful Pokemon catcher in a synagogue is cool, but it’s even cooler if one can obtain a unique Jewish Pokemon there, who refuses to fight on Saturdays and always answers a question with a question.

Similarly, those who would prefer that Pokemon not be caught on their territory could simply contact the Pokemon producing company with a demand to remove the entire zoo from a specific location. For example, there are all the grounds for Pokemon not to inhabit a theater, since switched-on phones disturb the actors and other spectators.

I will not venture to predict in detail exactly how the legal battles will unfold between the producers of such games and their clients on one side, and the owners of various establishments on the other. It is clear that if a requirement to turn off or hand over a phone is hanging at the entrance for some reason, it will be quite difficult to contest in court the soft coercion to comply with this requirement and being escorted off the territory in case of refusal.

However, all of this is exotic, since Pokemon are more often found in parks and other public spaces, as one of the goals of the game was simply to get people to go for a walk. I doubt that staring at a phone while walking would be prohibited in a private park; they would likely not even prohibit sex there—why would they, when instead they can sell condoms and rent out blankets?

Shalom!

How will things stand with abortions under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

I have already answered the question regarding the legitimacy of abortions from a libertarian perspective, but now the topic is slightly different.

Despite the fact that most libertarians see nothing blameworthy or punishable in a woman having an abortion, there will clearly be significantly fewer abortions in a society dominated by anarcho-capitalism than there are now.

It is very simple. An abortion is not a benefit for a woman. It is always a kind of forced evil that a woman resorts to because she views continuing the pregnancy as an even greater evil. But under ancap, she will have far more alternatives to abortion.

Judge for yourself. One could place an advertisement stating that a child is being carried, the approximate birth date is such-and-such, and she is ready to sell guardianship rights and waive her parental rights. Of course, this advertisement could be phrased using various euphemisms, but the essence would be roughly the same: I am willing to endure pregnancy and childbirth if I am sure that my problems end there, although I would also like compensation for the costs incurred.

Of course, a commercial surrogate motherhood contract can be concluded now, although in a number of countries this practice is prosecuted by law. But even where it is legal, the subject is fraught with a heap of regulations, which greatly increases the costs of the procedure; consequently, many women will still prefer abortion as something more guaranteed and less troublesome. Moreover, processing paperwork is a lengthy matter, and the sooner an abortion is performed, the less damage is done to the woman’s body.

Finally, there are also medical grounds for abortion, such as when the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life, or the child is proven to be a carrier of a hereditary disease. Removing bioethical barriers to research could somewhat accelerate the resolution of problems in this area compared to current reality, but that is already starting to be guesswork.

The picture is blissful, like Jehovah’s Witness brochures. Choose ancap, save the children!

The Walking Dead — ancap? And is it possible to create Ancapistan during a zombie apocalypse?

анонимный вопрос

Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to answer the first part of the question. My knowledge of the series is entirely exhausted by the information that there is a sad boy named Carl somewhere in there. So I will not go into specifics; let’s talk about the zombie apocalypse in general, without tying it to a specific series.

I would define a zombie apocalypse roughly like this: it is a phenomenon of an unstudied nature in which the bodies of dead people become deadly to the living. In such a general formulation, humanity has encountered the zombie apocalypse repeatedly. Every epidemic of some plague became a zombie apocalypse. According to one version, the great zombie apocalypse in England in the 17th century even contributed to the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of liberalism, since it increased the cost of labor.

A typical cinematic zombie apocalypse differs from historical analogues only in that the dead body pursues living people with all the appropriate cinematic special effects: it approaches with a tragic gait, waves household equipment terrifyingly, and scrapes its nails against stone in powerless rage if the victim manages to climb to a height. Hygienic measures against zombies are generally about the same as during an epidemic: burn the corpses.

Alright, these are all very sweet reflections, but how will zombies help in the construction of Ancapistan? For this, we will have to introduce another fantastic assumption. A zombie does not just lunge at everyone indiscriminately. No, he purposefully and inventively sets out to take revenge specifically on the person he considers responsible for his death. By analogy with the philosophical zombie, I will call this subspecies the “legal zombie.” Agree that, compared to the fantastic assumption that brisk corpses exist at all, such a specification of their motivations looks like a quite modest and realistic addition.

Such a zombie is a living… pardon, non-living embodiment of the non-aggression principle: no one has the right to initiate violence with impunity. Let’s add that a legal zombie also lunges at anyone who prevents another legal zombie from carrying out their revenge. Having finished the retribution for their death, the legal zombie finds peace.

I assert that in the world of a legal zombie apocalypse, Ancapistan will be built quite quickly. A living person is such a more pleasant companion than a zombie that the very idea of contributing to the appearance of a new zombie would already be horrifying. Therefore, people will soon learn mutual politeness, develop a readiness for charity and cooperation in difficult situations, and will even evacuate from the Titanic into lifeboats only after ensuring that a seat was voluntarily provided to them.

But we don’t have to wait for the arrival of a legal zombie apocalypse; we can learn mutual respect, cooperation, and compassion for the weak in advance, and be ready to pounce on any violator of the NAP. Why postpone for the afterlife what can be done today?

Thank you for your attention.

Happy Constitution Day!

At the heart of documents such as constitutions lies a rather peculiar paradox of thinking. On one hand, law is equated with legislation, and any order from the reigning sovereign becomes law. On the other hand, there is a glimmer of understanding that the consistent implementation of such an approach creates conditions that are not very conducive to living and, in particular, greatly hinders long-term planning.

And here is what the creators of the idea of the constitution did. They proposed: let us establish a law that declares the people as the sovereign, and the actual ruler as merely the executor of the sovereign’s will. What would this achieve? This: we will explicitly write the limitations of the ruler’s powers in this very document. And since the ruler is not the sovereign, he cannot repeal them, meaning they must be observed—after all, the law is what is written on the paper.

Over several centuries of implementing the idea of constitutional limits on state power, it became clear how this works.

If relatively simple mechanisms for its amendment are embedded in the constitution, then it will be changed in accordance with the desires of interested parties in the government.

If, instead of concrete norms, the articles of the constitution provide references to laws that the government must adopt to comply with the constitution’s wishes, these laws very quickly become such that, in the name of the sovereign “people,” representatives of that very people—who have nothing to do with the exercise of state power—are repressed, while representatives of the “state” service organization are gently moved out of harm’s way.

Finally, if the constitution contrasts sharply with the wishes of sufficiently influential actors in the government, its norms are simply ignored, since a constitution usually does not contain norms specifying exactly how the sovereign has the right to hold the government—established by the sovereign—accountable when the government refuses to observe the constitutional restrictions established by that sovereign.

In short, the idea of a constitution is an interesting attempt to limit absolute power without departing from the principles of legalism, and this attempt had some success. However, no constitution has ever worked on its own. A constitution always works only on the general belief that, first, a constitution should exist and, second, it must be observed.

So, as long as we still live in a state, it is worth remembering that a constitution is a limitation on state power, not on civil rights. A citizen cannot violate the constitution; only a person vested with state authority can violate it. Since the constitution works on faith, shove this sacred scripture in the faces of government officials more often. Tell them: all laws are what you wrote against us, and only the constitution is what you wrote against yourselves. Therefore, I will demand that you observe the constitution, and specifically as I, the sovereign, understand it—that is, literally. And if any law, secondary act, job description, or oral directive from your immediate superiors violates this very constitution, then I, the sovereign, perceive this as a conspiracy against myself, the sovereign, and I will put a stop to it; so it is better to push aside all other scrap paper and talk about how you must observe my constitutional rights.

As lawyer Mikhail Benyash said in an interview with Mikhail Svetov: be as naive as children, demand the observance of the constitution.

For this post, a thank-you donation was received from John Griffith in the amount of
0.00258215 BTC

In whose interests, besides the parents’, is it to conduct research on the genetic modification of humans to increase their abilities?

After all, these investments might not pay off by providing a skilled workforce in the future—if the person does not want to work for the company that “created” them.

анонимный вопрос

Indeed, an interesting topic. One entity invests funds and effort to create another entity, while the created entity has no debt to the creator, except perhaps a moral one. The question arises: what would compel the creator to invest resources into their creation?

At the same time, for some reason, you have no doubt that there won’t be a problem with parents; they will certainly be interested in investing in the creation of children who are more advanced from their point of view. But why, exactly?

For example, I am thinking about having a child and reading the price list for genetic modifications that can be made. Remove the predisposition to cancer and AIDS? Of course, I’ll take it; it’s much more reliable than health insurance and, if spread over a lifetime, far cheaper. We clean out hereditary diseases. Is it necessary? Of course. Tendency toward obesity? I’ll probably correct that; it will also pay off. Height? Eye color? Why bother? Well, only if these settings come in a general package, as not every parent will buy these modifications separately.

In other words, parents will primarily be interested in those modifications that save them—the parents’—expenses on raising the child. Secondly, those that in the long run could increase the child’s chances of success in life, although you can never guess what will be in market demand. Lastly, any matter of personal taste.

Why does a parent have a child and invest in them at all? For the joy of the upbringing process and satisfaction from the results of that upbringing. A child is a creative project that, if the devil doesn’t joke, might even bring commercial success.

Could such a creative project be undertaken, for example, not by a parent, but by a large company? Why not, but the motivation for the company’s founders would be the same: to get maximum satisfaction from the results of the upbringing. At the same time, in order for the free people produced by this company to also bring it some monetary profit, they must do so voluntarily. This means loyalty must be cultivated in them.

If a gene for blind love can be found, then perhaps the loyalty problem can be solved this way. But for some reason, I have a strong suspicion that this gene will turn out to be linked to genes responsible for intellectual development, meaning the overall life success of such a child would be small (especially since a child-production plant is unlikely to provide every graduate with significant starting capital).

Please leave the fantasies about growing competent specialists and subsequently keeping them in forced slavery to the communists; we are considering ancap here, and ancap is self-ownership.

So, if we are talking about market models for such enterprises, I would rather suggest looking toward existing private schools and universities. There, likewise, a gifted student can enter a school for free and even have a scholarship, while the institution is funded by an endowment fund. Former students who have succeeded in life contribute to the fund entirely voluntarily. The only difference in our case would be that gifted children are not sought out initially, but produced.

It seems to me that this is a quite pleasant future in which children are predominantly wanted, and they will be far less likely to disappoint those who invested in them.

Sweet children, but that’s not how it works under ancap

Why is the ancap utopia better than the socialist one?

Studying libertarianism, I still haven’t understood why the “ancap” ideal model of social organization is better than some socialist utopias from the 18th-19th centuries.

In utopias, there are hypothetical people with a different morality—free, equal, happy, and always ready to help one another. A number of conditions that are clearly fantastical in modern realities are taken as given; there is no clear program for transitioning to such a wonderful society.

It is roughly the same with you, but there is exploitation, economic dependence, and so on. A number of rather debatable assumptions are taken as given—about the NAP, about the idea that something resembling affluent consumerism will emerge from the free competition of guys with guns, and about the need to convince people that “collective subjects” do not exist.

There is no transition program to the “better” social order (let me remind you that the caricatured mass-culture perceptions of leftists as lovers of mass shootings came,
firstly, from Cold War era propaganda, and secondly, from the practice of building an industrial society in Russia).

Why prefer inhuman ancap fantasies to the humane utopian fantasies of men from the 18th-19th centuries?

Vasily Vasiliev

Oof. Well, let me try to answer.

Why prefer the utopia of anarcho-capitalism specifically? It does not require the emergence of some special humane “new man” for its implementation, it is ready to work with any starting situation, and it quickly and guaranteed makes people’s lives wealthier and more prosperous than they were at the start. And, what is not unimportant, this is easily verifiable in practice.

Suppose we have Somalia. A country devastated by a socialist dictatorship and numerous wars. The state is abolished. People begin to organize their lives independently. They have a very short planning horizon, so they are quite ready to obtain resources from neighbors through direct violence. This means they have to spend significant resources on self-defense. Neighborhoods bristle with checkpoints; movement requires convoys. Hobbes arrives and strolls around business-like. “So, what do we have here? A war of all against all? Well done, boys. Now, who here isn’t fighting? Get to fighting, damn it, immediately!”

Fine, the last pre-war canned meat will soon run out, something needs to be eaten, but there’s not much to take from the neighbors either. Sooner or later, people will have to disperse and divert some individuals from the exciting process of shooting neighbors from ambushes to the conduct of boring and banal farming. And suddenly, someone is herding livestock, someone is growing vegetables, someone is running a gas station, someone is maintaining mobile communications and the internet, and someone is pirating. The difference in starting conditions (some have the sea nearby, others a savanna) leads to the division of labor. The division of labor gives rise to trade. Trade brings peace. Peace increases the planning horizon. The elegant fruits of tactical thinking fade into the past. Yesterday’s brave warrior today drives tourists on safari, because it is more profitable than arranging a safari on the tourists. Yesterday’s pirate today peacefully catches fish and takes divers for rides, because he’s had enough of fighting. And his pirate tales give him a charisma bonus and generous tips. Hobbes cries quietly on the beach: his beloved Leviathan never emerged from the sea due to a lack of demand.

What could hinder this rosy scenario? Firstly, the actions of neighbors who stubbornly wish to install a state on this territory. So far, society resists such attempts, but this consumes strength, and the path to ancap becomes thornier. Secondly, long-standing and venerable traditions of redistribution. If you’ve risen a bit—be so kind as to share with your clan comrades. They covered your skin during the war, and in general, don’t stick your head out. Over time, this tradition will evolve into insurance companies and various mutual aid funds operating on a voluntary basis, but initially, simply due to poverty, such redistribution will greatly slow the development of the institution of private property.

Ancap will establish itself more easily the harder it is to maintain a subsistence economy on territory liberated from the state. If all the resources for survival are right there, then why trade with neighbors? You have to shoot at neighbors; they are enemies, they are coming to take our beer and women. So, in the jungles of the Amazon, ancap will not be seen for a long time even without a state, but where living conditions are more diverse—where could it possibly go?

And what is wrong with socialist utopias? That there is no natural transition to them; a revolution is absolutely necessary, which will forcibly establish freedom, equality, and brotherhood—even if without mass shootings, the French managed quite well with the guillotine.

They seem like savages—yet they have trigger control

Libertarian channels

Written jointly with Bitarch

There is never enough time. Fortunately, quite a lot of information on libertarianism can now be obtained in audio format. The most popular delivery channel for such content is, undoubtedly, YouTube. Except that by default, it assumes you are sitting and staring at the screen, rather than strolling down the street with headphones, and the mobile app refuses to work in the background. More precisely, it graciously agrees, but only in the paid version.

Fortunately, for Android, the market has solved this situation, and those who wish can install NewPipe — a free open-source YouTube client capable of background mode and saving videos locally to the phone for subsequent offline viewing. You can download the installation file directly, or, if you want to receive app updates, install the alternative app store F-Droid in addition to the alternative YouTube client, and install NewPipe through it. Then you’ll have to export your YouTube subscriptions as a file and import that file into NewPipe, and after all this series of tedious manipulations, finally obtain the coveted ability to cheat Google. By the way, to hell with the background mode, but NewPipe also cuts out the annoying ads, which definitely makes all the effort worth it. In short, I recommend it.

Now, Bitarch recommends a selection of channels worth subscribing to. I am not familiar with all of them, so I will only comment in italics in a few places.

Dobroum (Alexander Elesev) – an interesting evangelist of non-violence, lives in the States, broadcasts in Russian, has gathered a community around himself; in particular, Bitarch himself came from there, which is why the channel holds the honorary first place)))

Stefan Molyneux — in English, but very easy to understand, has subtitles – haven’t listened, took note, I know that Svetov referred to him from time to time.

Alexey Sherstnev – as far as I understand, this is a guy from the Zolotorëv circle, while Vladimir himself, alas, is not represented on YouTube, but occasionally appears on television.

Pavel Usanov – well, this is overall my favorite channel on YouTube)))

SVTV (Mikhail Svetov) – the frontman of LPR, mentioned here many times, whom one may disagree with, but cannot afford to ignore

Zhukov’s Blog (Egor Zhukov) – a guy who for some reason is not liked in LPR, a witness of Gene Sharp, a preacher of the wonderful idea of giving flowers to the police, and generally a talented self-taught person, much like myself)))

InLiberty – didn’t even know they had a video channel, I’ll have to subscribe

Ruslan Sokolovsky – the most famous Pokemon catcher in Russia and an involuntary cryptocurrency practitioner

BitNovosti — mainly about cryptocurrencies, occasionally podcasts about ancap come out.

Mr. Deadline is kind of hinting that you should listen to videos in the background, so as not to kill Time