Автор: Анкап-тян

How does libertarianism relate to environmental protection? If there are no certain prohibitions at the state level, will we not jeopardize the endangered species of flora and fauna with extinction?

Anonymous question

First of all, of course, I would like to recommend a short video by Mikhail Svetov dedicated specifically to this issue.

The main idea of the video is that to save rare species, a free market is needed that allows for profit to be derived from their preservation. Unfortunately, a short monologue did not leave room for an analysis of how to overcome the tragedy of the commons—that is, a situation where privatizing a resource is either impossible or disproportionately expensive. To delve deeper into this issue, I recommend reading the book by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, “Governing the Commons”. It examines numerous cases of how public property, which by all theoretical considerations should have been ruthlessly plundered, was successfully preserved without government regulation.

Ostrom formulates a set of criteria that must be met for the effective management of a common resource:

  1. The group of common resource users is limited
  2. Usage rules are determined based on the characteristics of the resource
  3. Usage rules are developed by the users themselves or with their consent
  4. Monitoring of compliance with usage rules is carried out by persons accountable to the users
  5. Sanctions for violating usage rules are graduated in nature.

When these conditions are met, the joint use of a common resource does not lead to its degradation. Note that government intervention is directly contraindicated here as well, as it violates at least points 3 and 4.

So, the “invisible hand of the market” actually managed to solve even the tragedy of the commons. Hurrah for the market!

There are 2 private railway networks in the Bay Area: BART and Caltrain. To transfer from one to the other, you have to buy another ticket. In Europe, however, a different approach is popular: state ownership and a universal ticket, which turns out to be more convenient. So, what happens—did the “free market” suck it dry?

Anonymous question

To start with, of course, I would like to recommend the articles and recordings of speeches by Farid Khusainov – as it happens, I can boast my own “tame” expert on railway topics. He talks extensively and in detail, including the difference in approaches between the American and the continental model of railway organization. But I will approach this from a completely different angle.

Yes, indeed, the state can theoretically make a certain service so profitable for the consumer that any market solutions simply cannot withstand the competition. For example, why shouldn’t the state transport passengers by rail completely for free? After all, it is not absolutely necessary for the state to make a particular service profitable – it will rob profitable private businesses with taxes and invest the money into a loss-making one.
For instance, in Venezuela, gasoline costs pennies due to state subsidies, and many would like to use such a service, but few would want to move to Venezuela for that reason=)

From what I understood from a cursory analysis of the transport situation in the Bay Area, it’s not two transport companies interacting there, but more than two dozen, and so far the market has only decided in favor of a single payment interface, but not a single ticket. It is possible that some intermediary company, having analyzed the sales statistics of all companies, could introduce a single ticket to the market that works for all or most transport companies, and the money from its price would be distributed between the companies in a proportion agreed upon between them. It is possible that such a product would even be successful. But it is also quite likely that it wouldn’t take off.

To summarize, I want to say that the state’s exit from the economy will undoubtedly make people wealthier overall and technological progress faster overall – but in individual sectors that are privileged under interventionism, deterioration is possible when transitioning to a free market. This is the price of eliminating regulatory distortions.

Ancap or Minarchism?

Anonymous question

Minarchism is legal, so officially I cannot and do not put forward anything beyond minarchist demands. Ancap is more logically consistent, so in any theoretical studies it easily beats minarchism; however, I have to clarify every time that this is pure theory, comrade major, no extremism.

There are two points of view on the method of transition to ancap. One method is political, through minarchism. There are examples in the world of libertarians coming to power and implementing successful, albeit incomplete, minarchist reforms; all that remains is to ensure that this becomes mainstream, and then political pressure can be continued on minarchist states toward full ancap.

The second method is counter-cultural, bypassing minarchism. There is not a single example in the world where minarchist reforms were not followed by a rollback toward greater statism; therefore, it is postulated that the model of a limited state is by definition unstable, and there is no reason to hope that it will remain in this state, let alone voluntarily further cut its own powers. Instead, it is proposed to develop mechanisms of direct non-governmental interactions and to expel the state primarily from the mind. And once the viewpoint that the state in any of its manifestations is nothing more than a harmful parasite, and that people get along perfectly well without it, becomes mainstream, then this parasite will simply fall off because no one will feed it.

This is somewhat similar to two different approaches to fighting trolling in the comments: you can ban them, or you can stop feeding them.

You’d ban someone like that, yeah…

What criminal and civil courts would look like under libertarianism (taking into account that the state is assigned only the role of enforcing court decisions)?

Anonymous question

Everything is simple with civil courts: commercial arbitration already looks the way civil courts should look under libertarianism. The parties agree on whom to invite to adjudicate, that person adjudicates, and then the parties execute the decision. Whoever refuses bears reputational costs, and in a minarchist state, it wouldn’t end there; the state would send bailiffs to enforce the arbitration decision.

With criminal law, it is slightly more complicated.

When the person who used violence does not hide, the task is reduced to the previous one: they and the representatives of the victimized party agree on who will judge, then the court’s decision is executed—voluntarily or forcibly.
If the person who used violence is unknown, first the party interested in the investigation either investigates the matter independently or hires detectives, and only after the NAP violator is found, there may follow either a trial or retribution.

A court cannot be imposed on anyone, because a court decision whose jurisdiction is not recognized by all litigating parties is legally null and void. But if instead of a court, retribution simply took place, then the party that carried out the retribution will now have to prove itself that this was not a violation of the NAP. They will litigate with those who are ready to condemn them for the retribution, present the collected evidence of the NAP violation by the victim of the retribution in court, and will be acquitted. Or not, if the evidence proved insufficient.

Thus, if a criminal hiding from justice realizes that they are already breathing down their neck, they are extremely interested in reaching the nearest prison in time and buying refuge from retribution there while negotiations regarding a trial are underway.

And if you are in prison voluntarily, you would prefer to rent a comfortable room

Anglo-Saxon or Roman law?

Anonymous question

Oh. Usually, however, continental law is contrasted with Anglo-Saxon law.

In the first case, the judge determines the decision for each specific issue; he may base it on precedents as well as various codes, but he is also entitled to establish his own precedent. The only thing a judge is strongly advised not to neglect is general legal principles, many of which were discovered precisely within the framework of Roman law.
As for the second case, the judge’s role is reduced to determining which article of a particular code describes the situation under consideration, and then making a decision according to that article.

Effectively, the ideal judge in continental law is a computer expert system. Only in cases where legislative uncertainty is found does the judge have to turn to precedents (so-called law enforcement practice) or even establish a precedent himself.

It is easy to see that continental law is permeated with a spirit of distrust toward the judge and his sense of justice, provoking cynicism and the thoughtless stamping out of decisions. Of course, all other things being equal, I would prefer precedent law, especially in complex matters.

However, one of the most important features of Ancapistan is the complete decentralization of law. If the parties recognize the jurisdiction of the court over them, it is completely irrelevant whether the court judges by codes, precedents, Sharia, or a table of random numbers—the decisions of such a court must be obeyed. If even one party does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court over them, then it is no longer a court, but some legally null procedure.

Which industries/spheres will remain in the hands of the state in the Libertarian Russia of the Future? Or will everything be private?

Anonymous question

The question itself already contains part of the answer. Since we are talking specifically about a Libertarian Russia, this already implies a minarchist scenario. Within this scenario, diplomacy, the protection of citizens from external aggression, and the enforcement of court decisions remain in the hands of the state.

Why diplomacy is the easiest to explain. If there are states in the world, it means there can be interstate agreements, and therefore it is necessary to maintain a certain state structure that will prepare and sign these agreements.

In a similar way, one can understand why the protection of citizens from external aggression becomes a matter for the state. It is easy and pleasant when external aggression is carried out by some bandits who are not part of the privileged club of state bandits. A private company can handle them without any diplomatic consequences. However, it would be difficult for a private company to explain to someone like Kim Jong Un that he is wrong: to him, they would look like some terrorists with whom negotiations cannot be conducted, if only because there is no one to talk to: the state considers only another state as a counterpart.

The most questionable justification is why the state should be allowed into the sphere of enforcing court decisions. But even here, one can refer to possible incidents with foreign companies, who might perceive violence against them by private actors as lawlessness and run to complain to their own government.

In any case, this is how minarchists envision the desired future, and I, generally, am not against it — but only until non-state practices begin to be actively implemented in these three areas as well.

By the way, who under minarchism will decide how many migrants to let in and on what terms? The democratic majority? Whoever pays more?

Already(web)

Regarding state borders, under minarchism, the state retains the function of protecting borders from armed invasion, as well as negotiating with other states regarding where these borders actually lie. Therefore, if foreign armies are viewed as a type of migrant, their presence on the state’s territory will be determined by intergovernmental agreements, which, in turn, will be based on the opinion of those who hired that government. In a democratic minarchist state, this will be the democratic majority.

As for all other migrants, the regulation of their movements does not fall within the state’s sphere of competence at all. How many labor migrants, tourists, or refugees to let into a minarchist state is decided by the owners of the infrastructure used for their movement. How many to let across the threshold of an establishment is decided by the owner of the establishment. How many to hire is decided by the employer. And so on.

If a man could read a woman’s thoughts, would he be able to understand anything?)

Anonymous question

Sometimes it’s worth answering questions that aren’t about politics too)

I think he would have understood a lot, but how exactly he would have understood these thoughts would have surprised the woman quite a bit. For a man, roughly speaking, “50 Shades of Grey” is about a failed deal, not about pride and prejudice, and “The Fountainhead” is about architecture, not about the meaning of life.

Dispute over state borders

Mikhail Svetov released a new video in which he briefly formulated thoughts he has repeated many times in his lectures: open borders violate freedom of association, a world without borders is a world where there is nowhere to run, and his other well-known set of paradoxical conclusions. But before I could formulate what exactly is wrong with his concept, it was done by Vera Kichanova — a girl who herself was the media face of LPR for quite a long time, then emigrated, and after some time, Mikhail Svetov, returning from abroad, took the vacant spot.

Thus, we have an ideological confrontation between two media heavyweights, and it is certainly worth our attention.

Vera notes two logical contradictions in Mikhail’s video: first, the state creates closed borders, not open ones, while open borders exist by default, without any state; second, freedom of association is primarily the right to associate, not to fence oneself off, and closed borders violate this right.

In essence, several understandings of the word “borders” are participating in the discussion. First, a border as a line across which people, goods, and money move. Second, a border as a line demarcating territories with different orders. Mikhail warns that uniform orders will be established everywhere (a world where there is nowhere to run) and for this reason calls for closing borders to the movement of people (and mercantilists echo him, suggesting to simultaneously limit the movement of goods and money). Vera, on the other hand, proposes to completely eliminate borders of the first type, but has nothing against the second, because that is precisely the manifestation of freedom of association.

Forgive me if I expressed this quite complexly, but the topic is not the most trivial.

Vera and borders