Автор: Анкап-тян

Psychos and Guns

Following up on the last post about the legalization of weapons. A topical issue: what about mentally unstable people who own weapons? Won’t legalization trigger mass shootings and such? What about road rage, when firearms instead of fists will be used?

anonymous question

As the practice of mass shootings in the States shows, they are often committed by mentally unstable people for whom this fact was recorded long ago, but it did not prevent them from acquiring a gun, despite the fact that a background check is supposedly required.

So, after the deregulation of weapon acquisition, the situation with mentally unstable people will not get worse. However, law-abiding citizens focused strictly on self-defense will have noticeably more guns in percentage terms. And the more criminogenic the situation was before deregulation, the greater the incentives will be to acquire self-defense weapons. Accordingly, the curve of armed crime will decline more sharply.

As for road rage, practice shows that the best prevention is liability insurance. There is no point in being rude to someone who doesn’t owe you money when you know that the money won’t come out of your own pocket.

A pistol and a glue gun are simply two different tools

Tyan, how do you feel about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher?

anonymous question

Both of these figures entered history by initiating a long trend toward strengthening economic interventionism worldwide, which began at the end of the 19th century. To these two, I would add a third person who was at the helm of the state around the same time: Deng Xiaoping.

Each of these three more or less consistently implemented liberal reforms in their country and served as a prominent benchmark for the governments of other nations.

The most consistently liberal of this trio was certainly Margaret Thatcher. The most significant economic results for their country were achieved by Deng Xiaoping. Ronald Reagan received the most decent country and achieved the most modest results—but he excelled in foreign policy and became the one who practically finished off the Empire of Evil.

Reagan and especially Thatcher get an additional plus from libertarians for popularizing Friedrich Hayek, who received his Nobel Prize shortly before they came to power and prepared the ideological foundation for their reforms.

And as for my personal attitude toward them?

I don’t order Thatcher statues in Georgia, I don’t watch movies with Reagan; my attitude is calm and quite respectful.

Deng Xiaoping and Friedrich Hayek)))

Hi. And how, under ancap, can the harmony of the urban environment be ensured? What would stop one guy from building houses in the Baroque style, while another builds right next to him in the Constructivist style (let’s say)? Or is this not a problem worth thinking about at all?

anonymous question

Strictly speaking, even under a state, in most cases, nothing prevents two developers from building houses in completely different styles next to each other. There is a set of formal criteria regarding something like insolation, number of floors, and parking area; once those are met, it’s done. If the verdict of the chief city architect or some other expert bigwig is required, then corrupting them is simply a matter of time.

At the same time, there are many cases of self-organization in condominiums, where the purchase of land for development or a finished real estate object is accompanied by a set of restrictions common to the entire condominium—on fence height, number of floors, roof color, or even damn curtains on the windows. As long as such easements allow for increasing the value of the property in the condominium, the market supports them. As soon as a restriction leads to a decrease in the price of the properties, the market sets in motion the forces to abolish them, and suddenly the condominium board decides to lift the ban on building a second garage on a plot, or the requirement that roofs must necessarily be red. In the described mechanism of restricting property disposal rights, there is nothing that could not be implemented under ancap.

Here you go, an addition to baroque under state regulation

Memo for Arguing with Schoolchildren

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned a cheat sheet for arguing with schoolchildren, and readers were interested in what kind of cheat sheet it was.

The cheat sheet was developed in the “Austrian School of Economics” community and consists of just five topics. In fact, such things highlight exactly how unique our project is. Any FAQ is a product of collecting, averaging, and generalizing many questions, after which a polished text covering the topic is prepared. In our case, every day we end up with a text answering a specific, rather than a generalized, question. And if any answer seems superficial or inaccurate to one of the readers, they can always send their clarifications and additions.

I recently came to the conclusion that antitrust services are not very effective in handling their task (one can use the recent situation with the collusion of memory chip manufacturers or with video cards as an example). And how can the free market resolve a monopoly?

anonymous question

This question is so common that when a memo for arguing with schoolchildren was being compiled, it was listed as number one.

Indeed, antitrust services are not needed. Monopolies are either formed where the optimal business size turns out to be comparable to the total market size, or where government regulations have created the monopoly artificially (for example, through licensing of activities, exclusive procurement from a single supplier, issuance of patents — in other words, by prohibiting anyone but the monopolist from entering the market).

In the first case, the monopolist successfully meets the demand, the market grows, and over time it turns out that there is now room for several more companies; any attempt by the monopolist to fight them using market methods leads to such a loss of profit that it becomes more profitable for the monopolist to invest in other industries rather than cling to a market share where they are still a monopolist.

In the second case, the monopolist becomes arrogant, raising prices and degrading the quality of services, while the state has to deal with consumer dissatisfaction. Sooner or later, either lobbyists for potential competitors will push through the deregulation of the industry (this is how Novatek secured the right to export liquefied natural gas, which previously belonged exclusively to Gazprom), or a black market will develop, which, without doing anything about the de jure monopoly, will undermine its de facto monopoly. Despairing of fighting the black market through state power, the monopolist will be forced to make concessions — and finally start lowering prices and improving quality.

When it comes to violence, only physical violence is mentioned. But various methods of psychological violence can cause physiological problems with the CNS, with the brain. If one arranges constant quarrels, doesn’t let [someone] sleep, and other “breathing into the tube.” One could say that “one can leave this,” just as one can hire security.

anonymous question

When the actions of one person cause damage suffered by another, and the evidence of damage and its assessment can be demonstrated, this is sufficient to demand compensation for damages, and it is completely irrelevant whether physical violence specifically took place.

It is another matter that damage resulting from non-violent actions is much harder to prove, which is why an external arbitrator may deny compensation for damages in such cases. This is precisely why, in the case of psychological violence, a more successful response tactic may be not a lawsuit, but, for example, retaliatory psychological violence.

Of course, when a victim of psychological violence receives such recommendations, they have reason to despair.
What can be said here? Just as it is very useful to possess a weapon and know how to use it for direct protection against physical violence—and only after successful self-defense to file lawsuits against those who survived—so too, for direct protection against psychological violence, it is useful to train the psyche and know how to use psychological weapons—and only after successful self-defense to engage in ruining the reputation of the unsuccessful abuser, if they haven’t already put their head in a noose.

Back to the question of global warming: the point is not that the climate will change, but rather what will follow: the disruption of climate cycles, the disruption of ecological stability, etc., etc. All of this will undoubtedly affect the agro-sector, plus the growing population. What is to be done about this?

anonymous question, addition to the previous answer

If a certain community agrees on what climate is optimal for it and has the means to establish these conditions, its representative simply takes the climate control remote and sets the required parameters. If there are no means to establish an arbitrary climate, people either migrate to more acceptable climatic conditions or adapt to the existing ones. If there are means but no agreement, then whoever holds the remote will, one way or another, set parameters that satisfy some and dissatisfy others.

To study the causes and effects of climate change, one can ask: a) who influenced the changes that occurred and to what extent; b) who suffered what damage as a result. But in fact, a different question is of interest: is it possible to organize joint activity so that the degradation of the established system of consumption of goods does not occur, and if so, how.

The current level of human development allows for direct steering of the climate approximately at the regional level: creating a large reservoir, for example, or, conversely, dividing a river into irrigation ditches. Which approaches to organizing the operation of common resources work more or less in the interests of the operators is analyzed in a book that I have already recommended: Elinor Ostrom, “Governing the Commons”.

If it is not possible to design a scheme for the operation of common resources according to the principles she derived, then the best thing that can be done is to give up and eliminate regulation entirely: in systems too complex for direct management, only the free market can bring order.

Global climate changes, certainly, still fall into this category.

Hi, Ancap-chan! And once again the notorious question about roads: tell us, how will the movement of cars and pedestrians be regulated in the absence of single and centralized control?

anonymous question

There is already complete anarchy regarding pedestrians on the roads. In order to participate in road traffic, a pedestrian does not take any exams; they simply learn to walk—and then they walk. Infrastructure owners are interested in ensuring that a pedestrian arrives alive, solvent, and ready to spend their money at the place where they will spend it. Therefore, a pedestrian on a private street is fully looked after: they are physically separated from dangers, and efforts are made to move the points where they will spend money as close as possible to the places where, for some reason, there are many pedestrians.

But here is the trouble. Some pedestrians, wishing to make their movement even faster and more comfortable, get behind the wheel and begin to pose a danger to other pedestrians. How should the unfortunate owner of the street handle this situation if it is important to them that all pedestrians reach the spending point quickly and safely, even if some pedestrians have climbed into individual high-speed delivery vehicles? It becomes necessary to somehow reduce the risks of transport collisions by physically separating flows of different speeds and directions, and where this is too expensive, separating them at least logically—not in space, but in time, by organizing alternating movement in intersecting directions.

The same market logic applies here as in any other service sector: the more money there is in the market, the more profitable capital investments in improving service quality become. Therefore, in a remote village, we will see neither a sidewalk nor dividing barriers on the road, while in a metropolis, we see all of this and much more.

All these considerations are already in effect, despite the nominal existence of a “single centralized control,” and in its absence, they will work even better due to the absence of single centralized obstacles.

If you beat up a clerk, he will lie in the hospital for a couple of days and return to work, having lost very little. But if you beat up the president, for example, his diplomatic visit will be disrupted; the damage is great. It turns out that different compensations are due to them as well. How does this correlate with the principle of equality before the law?

Alexey Ryazanov

Values are subjective; this is an axiom of economic theory.
Even the same clerk will incur different costs depending on at what point in his life he gets punched in the face. Therefore, in the case of a drunken brawl in a pub, half an hour later he will be merrily drinking with the person he was just fighting with, but if because of the fight he misses the trip of his dreams with his beloved girlfriend, it will be fraught with consequences for him more serious than the failure of some shitty diplomatic visit.

More or less quantifiable damage from violence is covered by an insurance policy, and the insurance company then recovers it from the person who applied the violence, if it so desires. Here, the president and the clerk are equal: the more expensive the policy they bought and the higher the premium provided for under it, the greater their chance of receiving it. As for moral damages, recovering them is even more difficult for the president. The clerk can be litigious, trying to prove to an arbitrator how seriously he was offended, but the president, as a public figure, will have to weigh his words so that his behavior in court does not cause more damage to his reputation than the violence under consideration. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I were the president, I would limit myself to demanding a public apology and profit from beautiful photos of conciliatory hugs.

here, take an example from the Greeks

I will gladly accept bitcoins from you as donations, and I won’t even consider their absence as moral damage. Wallet 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

According to economic research, sustainable economic growth correlates weakly with the democratic or authoritarian nature of a state and the volume of state intervention in the economy — institutions play the decisive role. So how do we move from modern Russia to a country with a normal court, for example?

anonymous question

As I have already noted in the article on ancap and minarchism, there are two paths for changes in society: the political and the countercultural. For example, the Corn Laws in Great Britain were repealed through political means, while Lincoln’s famous Homestead Act was simply a recognition of a state of affairs already established through countercultural means.

How to act politically is more or less clear: through political pressure. All unjust sentences are contested in higher courts, the judges who issued them are shamed, there are no plea bargains or simplified judicial procedures, and all conversations with the police take place only in the presence of a lawyer… Simultaneously, a project for judicial reform is popularized, and every politician claiming any public visibility must be pressed about their attitude toward this project; if they dare say a word against it, they must be completely denied support. In a similar way, Prohibition was introduced in the States—you can imagine how strong the resistance was. So, one should not underestimate the capabilities of influence groups.

The countercultural method is also more or less clear. A complete refusal to voluntarily apply to state courts, non-recognition of any state court sentences, but simultaneously—the strengthening of the institute of arbitration, private investigation, and contract enforcement. There are examples of the success of such an approach to reshaping institutions, and in recent history: when Great Britain began to recognize the decisions of Sharia courts, it was precisely a surrender to a state of affairs established through countercultural means.

Counterculture on the march

And while others discuss other things, I am talking about bitcoins. There is a political way to establish them as a means of payment: lobbying for their legalization. And there is a countercultural way: simply conduct all settlements in bitcoins whenever possible, and reject offers to pay in rubles whenever possible. The ability to send me a donation in bitcoins from a bank card is a kind of compromise; of course, it’s better to do it directly: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8.