Автор: Анкап-тян

Albedo Stellar wallet

This review was done for a donation from @ignatyashin (bought 1.4 EURMTL of my ANCAPCHAN tokens)

All of Montellibero’s tokenomics operate on the Stellar blockchain. A number of third-party tools plus proprietary developments are used for operations with it. There are several different blockchain explorers, online transaction builders, and a couple of services for a purely Montelliberian feature—BSN (Blockchain Social Network), but users of the tokenomics primarily interact with wallets.

Historically, the first wallet we started using was Lobstr. Its advantages are: a) the ability to link a so-called federation address to the public key, which is convenient due to its human-readability; b) a contact list; c) convenient order book display for trading on the decentralized exchange integrated into the blockchain; d) the ability to top up via fiat. Disadvantages are: a) it supports only one account; b) it charges a fee for swaps.

Next, the community turned its attention to the open-source Solar wallet. It could handle multiple accounts and didn’t mess with the user’s money, but trading from it was not very convenient, and soon the developers stopped supporting it. Now, our people have forked it, and a wallet called Sunce has been created on its basis. It can already work with multi-signature and is equipped with a contact list, but trading from it remains just as inconvenient.

The main wallet for Montellibero remains a custom-developed Telegram bot, @MyMTLWalletBot. Pros: it supports multiple accounts, multi-signature, swaps, an address book, and some other specific Montelliberian features. Cons: you never know at what moment Durov will decide to completely ban the use of any blockchains in Telegram other than TON.

And now, another wallet, Albedo, has been presented to me for review. Let’s see what interesting things it can offer.

This is an open-source wallet which, judging by its GitHub account, has been slowly developed by five developers for five years. Moreover, the team clearly has some connection to the stellar.expert blockchain explorer. The wallet is written in JavaScript, which implies its use via a web interface. Furthermore, it is theoretically possible to embed it into your own website, for example, as a large golden “donate” button that would immediately generate a payment transaction and prompt to sign it. However, I didn’t have enough brains to build such a button for myself—well, to each their own. Usually, there was always some kind of kind subscriber who helped implement one useful tool or another in WordPress.

If we set aside the idea of integrating the wallet functionality for now and open the wallet’s own website, the first thing offered, of course, is to create a new account.

Scrolling past the routine blah-blah

Next, we are prompted to protect the account with a password (which will be used to locally encrypt our keys), after which we can either create a new account, log into a previously created one, or import one created elsewhere.

If you create an account, a pair of public and private keys is generated, but the wallet is completely empty, so for the blockchain, this account does not yet exist.

You can click on the phrase “public network” and select “test network.” A sandbox will open for playing around. There, you will have 10,000 test Lumens (XLM, the native token of the Stellar blockchain), the ability to open trustlines to some test tokens from a given list, exchange them for each other, and so on. The alternative—while staying in the public network—is to find a few Lumens somewhere and send them to your new account, for which the “Receive” button is used.

I simply imported my main account into the new wallet right away and gained access to all my tokens. It’s convenient that the wallet also imports custom token icons. For example, Lobstr doesn’t see the icon for my ANCAPCHAN token, which is somewhat disappointing, but here everything is fine.

In the account properties, you can set your name, fill out the address book, and connect additional accounts to the wallet if needed.

By playing with the buttons at the bottom, you can discover that the wallet also allows for fairly advanced operations that are not needed very often. When swapping, an allowable slippage percentage is set. When sending, you can perform an immediate send with conversion or send tokens for which the recipient does not have a trustline, so they will receive a notification and either accept the tokens or refuse them. An interesting option: you can immediately generate a link to receive a specific amount of specific tokens; this is convenient if, for example, you are pouring a beer for a customer and then present the bill this way. Our Montelliberian wallets cannot do this—a useful feature. If you already have a Stellar account, you can scan the code and see that you will be prompted to send me 10 EURMTL.

Most likely, some functionality was not considered by me; for instance, I didn’t find out about the multi-signature. However, the mere ability to issue fixed invoices already makes the wallet worthy of attention.

The wallet can also be installed on a phone as a web app. Open the site albedo.link in Chrome, click the three dots in the right corner, and in the menu that opens, select “Add to Home screen.” That’s it—you have a shortcut through which this web wallet will open immediately.

The author of the review request also asks to provide a channel for user support if anything remains unclear while working with the wallet. Perhaps I will use this channel to figure out how to organize the “stellarization” of my website.

Stop fighting with Russia, it is time to fight with Ukraine

To mark the third anniversary of the start of the SMO, I want to reflect on whether it is ultimately beneficial for libertarians for the hostilities between Ukrainian and Russian troops to end immediately, even on terms that are quite unfavorable for the Ukrainian state. From the phrasing used, the reader can already guess that I will be arguing that this is indeed beneficial for libertarians.

Ukraine has always had an abysmal state (confirmed by several Maidans) and a civil society that is developed relative to the RF (confirmed by those same Maidans, as well as the fact that the front is held largely through the efforts of volunteers—both among those fighting and those providing supplies). Civil society has neither piety nor illusions regarding the state. And over these years, Ukrainian civil society has learned to fight very well. But right now it is terribly preoccupied: fighting another state, Russia, in a situational alliance with a treacherous but slightly less dangerous enemy—the state of Ukraine.

What happens if no one on the Ukrainian side concludes peace with Putin? The flow of resources for conducting military operations in favor of the Ukrainian side will weaken, and the tension of the conflict will gradually fade on its own as the warring parties exhaust themselves. When both armies are completely bled dry, peace will happen eventually, and there will not be much benefit in this peace for Ukraine’s civil society, even if the terms for the Ukrainian state are better than those currently offered.

What happens if a ceasefire with the Russian side is reached and turns out to be relatively stable? A huge number of very angry and highly skilled military representatives of Ukrainian civil society will return from the Russian front to within drone-flight distance of Ukrainian officials. How soon will these gluttonous grabbers (I mean the officials, of course, not the veterans) begin to die en masse, playing with grenades or some other stupid way? How soon will the current Ukrainian president join the ranks of the clumsy idiots who ignore safety protocols? Does he really want that? Therefore, Zelensky will do everything possible to delay the moment of concluding peace. He should not be helped in this. One can even support the pressure on him to finally conclude any deal with Putin. One can even support Mikhail Svetov: I do not know his true motivations, his public argumentation is poor, but he pushes for peace—and good for him.

Just as Milei’s victory in Argentina gave libertarians arguments in favor of political methods of shrinking the state, a potential military coup in Ukraine after concluding an agreement with Putin will give libertarians arguments in favor of armed methods of shrinking the state, and my bloodthirsty heart rejoices in anticipation.

A request to readers. If anyone knows of a specific Ukrainian unit conducting its own crowdfunding for modern, high-efficiency tools of warfare applicable also for combat operations against its own state—please provide links to their materials. I want to read, form an opinion, and donate.

How does libertarianism propose to solve the problem of blackmail?

Suppose one company threatens another with sanctions if they do not enter into a contract, and the sanctions could be genuinely serious and severely damage that company’s budget; how do you see the solution to such hypothetical problems?

Matvey

Let’s introduce different terms depending on what kind of sanctions are envisioned, because the reaction to the threat will heavily depend on this.

Let’s define robbery as the demand for a predatory deal under threat of physical violence, extortion as the demand for a predatory deal under threat of economic sanctions, and blackmail as the demand for a predatory deal under threat of disclosing information that the target of the threat would prefer to keep hidden.

The reaction to robbery depends on the balance of power, the determination to resist, and an assessment of the situation regarding the possibility of receiving outside help. For instance, under current conditions, it often turns out to be cheaper to comply with the robbery demands of a state, although sometimes one can try to negotiate a way out, provided, of course, that state officials respect at least some principles—for example, those considered official laws of that state, or any others. (For example, in Montenegro, an attempt to negotiate a way out is the most obvious response to any attempt at state robbery.) Cases of forceful resistance to the state are also possible, and if such cases are frequent, political scientists say something like “state X is a failed state.”

Robbery demands from private individuals are far more likely to encounter forceful opposition, as such opposition is much more likely to be supported by bystanders, and in some relatively sane state jurisdictions, even by representatives of that very state, especially if the robber acts completely recklessly.

Extortion is perceived by many economic agents as lawlessness and a direct invitation to bypass the sanctions. If the bypass proves successful—that is, if the losses of the party applying the sanctions are almost higher than the losses of the party bypassing them—then the sanctions will be quickly lifted, perhaps even with apologies. However, if the author of the economic sanctions is the state, its officials may, in turn, consider the evasion of sanctions as lawlessness and move from extortion to robbery. Fortunately, the state is not a single organism, but a multitude of actors with their own interests, and bypassing sanctions usually implies that certain officials are interested in making it work.

Finally, in a blackmail situation, the target must solve a difficult dilemma: agree to let all interested parties find out something about them that they would prefer to hide (which is usually something unsightly), or enter into a predatory deal, usually without guarantees that the blackmail will end there. We often encounter such stories in detective novels, and it is easy to see that a wide variety of outcomes are possible. The most boring stories are those where the blackmailer honestly fulfills their part of the deal, and the target of the blackmail, accordingly, escapes with a mild scare. A note to potential blackmailers: act exactly this way. A note to potential targets of blackmail: do not abuse deals with your conscience; in the long run, honesty and openness pay off more.

Please review this video by Alexander Tatarkov

The request is accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00003084 ₿

It’s been a while since I listened to this author. He is still as wordy as ever and still doesn’t provide timecodes, but it seems I’ve become slightly more tolerant of this genre, so I resubscribed to Alexander’s channel. Sometime in my free time, I’ll listen to what he’s managed to say over the last three years. If you are subscribed to him and can recommend any specific episodes, drop the links in the comments, preferably with a brief introduction.

Essentially, for two hours, Alexander spends his time explaining a single thesis: that Putin’s regime looks like a clumsy cosplay of Hitler’s. Examples cited include the style of propaganda, Freikorps, concepts of Lebensraum and Lebensborn, ressentiment, and the fight against sects, same-sex relationships, and migrants.

There is no particular moral here, just a simple observation that this is another confirmation of the heuristic that farce tends to repeat tragedy.

In general, I like collections of historical anecdotes, but Tatarkov’s thoughts specifically always have a lot of room; there’s no point in listening slower than at 1.5x speed.

Libertarian Theory of War, Section 2.3. Waging War

Another section of the book on libertarian theory of war has been completed—specifically, on the conduct of war. Surprisingly, it is once again almost entirely dedicated to the final stages of preparation for war and the actual beginning of combat operations. This is because these are the moments when actions can still be planned in advance. After that, either the plans will work, or everything will go wrong, you will get bogged down in a stupid war of attrition, and the next section—on how to get out of the war—will become relevant.

Freedom of association

A long question came in from Georgy Nemov:

I was discussing private jurisdictions with a friend, and when we got to the freedom to leave an association, he threw out the argument that this is impossible because, in such a case, the police wouldn’t even be able to detain a suspect until the circumstances were clarified.

I replied that the freedom to leave stems from the NAP, and therefore the jurisdiction agreement could certainly stipulate conditions under which a suspect of aggressive violence may be detained. And that there is no contradiction in this.

But his answer made me think. He said that in such a case, communities would use suspicions as a pretext for the forced retention of members. And that the freedom to leave either exists or it doesn’t.

How do you think this can be combated? Or will it be necessary to outsource the execution of punishments and searches to various bounty hunters?

Well, let’s figure this out.

Jurisdiction is “legal authority.” If a person is within someone’s jurisdiction, it means that the norms established by whoever exercises that jurisdiction apply to them. These norms concern both the measure of responsibility they must bear for their actions and the measure of protection they can count on while being in that jurisdiction.

Let’s imagine a world in which jurisdiction can be changed within the framework of explicit voluntary agreements. Let’s also imagine the worst-case scenario, in which the norms of different jurisdictions diverge significantly.

Anna, who is in the jurisdiction of the Ancap company, interacts with Boris, who is also in the jurisdiction of the Ancap company. Within the regulatory field of Ancap, Boris’s actions toward Anna are qualified as a violation of her rights, and Anna calls Ancap employees to handle the matter. While the employees are on their way, Boris contacts the Bandits company and agrees to switch to their jurisdiction, and notifies the Ancap company that he is terminating his contract with them.

Anna explains to the arriving Ancap employees that she suffered damages as a result of Boris’s actions, and she demands compensation from Boris. Boris claims that there were no damages, and in general, he is already in the jurisdiction of the Bandits. The Ancaps contact the Bandits, and the latter explain that in their jurisdiction, Boris’s actions, even if Anna is not lying, are not considered an offense, but if anyone outside should apply any sanctions against their client, they will certainly consider that an offense and will pursue it harshly.

The Ancaps conduct a quick investigation and are convinced that Anna’s testimony is quite credible. Now they face a dilemma. They can pay Anna the compensation for damages themselves and then forward the bill to the Bandits. Or they can shrug their shoulders and state that their competence ends here since Boris is not in their jurisdiction, so there will be no compensation. In this case, Anna contacts the Bandits, switches to their jurisdiction, and demands that they deal with Boris. Now the Bandits have to stand by their words, because even if Boris manages to slip out of their jurisdiction, they just promised that the violation of their client’s (Anna’s) rights by an outsider (Boris) must be harshly pursued by them, the Bandits.

Scenarios can be varied this way or that by changing the relative power and degree of ruthlessness of the jurisdiction providers — and different pictures will result. It is known that historically on Earth, jurisdiction providers with forced entry based primarily on place of residence became dominant. To erode this dominance and move toward extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions, an increase in the decentralization of money, easing of migration, and an increase in the armament of individuals are required. In other words, a movement toward the sovereign individual, who agrees on norms with equals, rather than receiving them from above.

We are working on this.

Forgive me that the answer turned out to be on a broader topic than the one indicated in the question.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Trump released Ulbricht. During his first term, he refused to do so, speaking along the lines that both your Bitcoin is a scam and Ulbricht is your criminal, and generally to just leave him alone, he has more important things to do.

What has changed in 8 years? Has the Libertarian Party become more influential and managed to pressure Trump more than before his first term? Of course not. Compare the results of the LP presidential candidate in 2016 and 2024. It is exactly the opposite. Around the world, the influence of political parties has decreased and the influence of memes has grown. Of course, organizational structures matter a great deal, but today they do not require century-old roots; startups are in charge. Milei was not made president by the Libertarian Party, but by the meme of the chainsaw man. Trump is not the leader of the Republican Party, but Donald the Wall Builder, Donald the Swamp Drainer, Donald the Peacemaker, Donald the Immortal, and Donald the Fascist, of course, as well.

A man who creates a 15 billion dollar capitalization for his personal memecoin in a few days can no longer leave Ulbricht in prison.

In the book on libertarian war theory, which I have been writing with great effort for God knows how long, I pay great attention to conceptual subjects (especially collective ones), referred to for brevity as spirits. Spirits express the emerging community between people, describing the motives that unite them—in short, they are used as a crutch to reduce the complex motivations of each group member to simple models. Not “Vasya wanted a thrill, Petya was showing off to Masha, Kolya planned to loot, Oleg joined for the company,” but “they were seized by the spirit of freedom.”

Memes rule. He who skillfully uses memes feels the zeitgeist. Force the right memes, attach those upon whom much depends to them; let the memes support them, while they, in turn, find themselves dependent on the memes.

Ancaps are not obligated to fuck children. But supporting a joke about it is their sacred duty. Ancaps are not obligated to fight for their freedom right this second. But the thought of being able not only to run for freedom, hide for freedom, and lie for freedom, but also to fight for it, should fill them with trepidation. This means that the spirit of freedom has taken root, and its demands are growing. Someday it will demand fighting. First, you buy Trump’s memecoin, and then you discover that the call “Fight! Fight! Fight!” is not an empty sound.

The moral philosopher and children

An interesting dispute occurred here on Twitter between two libertarians whom I quite respect.

On one side, @dobroum presented a universal moral philosophy, one of whose conclusions is the assertion that any violence against children is inadmissible, as well as the rather banal “it is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick,” meaning that a family should be complete, everyone in the family should love one another, the father should earn enough to support the whole family, and the mother should prioritize raising offspring above any other hobby. And divorces, kindergartens, and single mothers harm children.

He was opposed by @VoiceInTwit, who argued that there are no universal parenting methods, that violence from children is quite acceptable to suppress with forceful means, and that in the real world one has to deal with imperfect situations—and if a moral philosophy with its universal principles cannot handle such situations, then its value is small.

Even from my retelling, it is not difficult to understand whose side I am on in this dispute. However, I should note that although this looks like a confrontation between the theorist Dobroum and the practitioner Voice, in fact, the situation is the opposite: the practitioner Dobroum (has children, raises them non-violently) against the theorist Voice (has no children of his own). Due to my own lack of children, my judgments will suffer from the same deficiency.

Nevertheless, a specific case of non-violent child-rearing only proves the fallacy of the thesis “non-violent upbringing is impossible,” yet this thesis is not being put forward in the debate. Instead, the thesis “non-violent upbringing is not always appropriate” is being advanced, and here the practice must move into the realm of theory to defend the opposing claim that “violent upbringing is always inappropriate.”

Alas, the attempt to justify the non-application of violence to children through a universal NAP runs into two obstacles. First, as Voice notes, in a situation where the NAP is violated by a child, they are deprived of the protection of the non-aggression principle. Otherwise, the NAP proves to be non-universal (violence can be used to suppress violence, but if violence is used by a child, it cannot be). Second, the problem of fuzzy boundaries arises in full force: not being competent from birth, an infant remains a will-less object of manipulation by adults for quite a long time; otherwise, they would not survive. There is no clear line between manipulation without consent and violence. An infant can be undressed without consent, whereas for an adult, this is usually a criminal offense. Meanwhile, universal moral principles should work, shouldn’t they? Unfortunately, with children, the use of crutches is inevitable: no matter how you look at it, they acquire legal personhood only gradually.

At this stage of the dispute, the advocate of non-violent treatment of children must take off the hat of a moral philosopher and become a practitioner again, bringing utilitarian arguments that those who have experienced childhood trauma statistically turn out to be stupider and unhappier by adulthood, after which one can fully immerse oneself in a discussion about how applicable statistics are to individual cases. And here, all the cards fall to the hands of the one who is skeptical of playing with statistics, because it was with those very same statistical arguments that we were fed before the forced COVID vaccination, as well as the stripping of the right to bear arms.

Raising a child is the responsibility of those who are doing it. And everyone does it, from parents to cartoon creators to a random passerby expressing their moral judgment to a child. A parent cannot and should not shield a child from any adverse influence. Likewise, a parent cannot claim an exclusive right to do whatever they please with their child—a random passerby may not limit themselves to rendering a moral judgment, but may also use force if they deem it necessary.

So, about the use of force. I very much hope that even the most non-violent moral philosopher still teaches her girls to use it. This includes explaining in which situations it is appropriate to use force, even if it is not being directly used against you personally right now. Otherwise, there is a danger of raising pacifists or helpless victims instead of defenders of freedom. However, it is not such a great danger, since a parent is never solely responsible for upbringing. And that is a good thing.

2024, results

The statistics bot sent over the usual postcard about how the channel is doing. It is evident that it has grown slightly, which is due to a couple of cross-promotion campaigns organized by the magazine Fronda, for which I am grateful. I write an author’s column in that magazine, and I hope that for some, this will be a reason to subscribe to it. Another ongoing collaboration this year is writing articles for thematic collections in the magazine “Yozh“.

This year, I completed two long-term projects: the translation of David Friedman’s book “Legal Systems Very Different from Our Own“, as well as Eric Mack’s “Libertarianism” (and also Balaji Srinivasan’s “The Network State“, which by my standards didn’t quite reach “long-term project” status, although the translation did drag on quite a bit). In 2025, I expect to finish the last long-term project — Stephan Mol liqueur’s “Practical Anarchy“, and I will think thrice before taking on anything new. I am writing my own book, “Libertarian Theory of War“, terribly slowly, and the finish line is not yet in sight.

My personal discovery of the year was the website “Anarchonomicon“, run by a Canadian catgirl, pagan, white racist, and connoisseur of violent methods of problem solving — everything we libertarians value and are inspired by. An indirect result of this was me creating a Substack account, although so far I only read there; I haven’t dared to write or comment yet.

In Montelibero, I help promote the ideas of decentralization by participating in the movement to attract P2P investments into local businesses, as well as in organizing Tikhiy Omut — a libertarian club owned by its members. My contribution to filling the decentralized directory https://monte.wiki/ and the decentralized social network BSN is still completely insufficient, but I hope to increase it over time. I am also slowly adding Montenegro to OSM maps.

I hope that this year I have been a good girl and deserve some gifts.

I congratulate all readers on a year in which there should clearly be a global turn toward greater freedom. Stay on trend, join promising endeavors, promote your own projects, grow wealthy, and assert yourselves. A successful ideology deserves successful carriers!

A little more about folk dances

Several remarks were made regarding the previous post. As a rule, they ignored the fact that the post was an answer to the question “what do I think about the idea of masking military training with all sorts of harmless simulations?” and assumed that I was answering the question “how to secretly create an army from the state” or “how to secretly upgrade personal self-defense skills from the state.” My answer boiled down to the fact that if one is going to practice something like that, one should at least mask modern military affairs, rather than the tricks of the century before last, not to mention even more archaic ones.

The most famous case where people, under conditions of a ban on armament, masked military training with folk dances, was given the name “Boxer Rebellion” by Europeans. The rebellion was moderately effective against its own government, but not against the advanced foreign powers that intervened in the fray.

No one doubts that a small volunteer army, even a highly motivated one, will be completely helpless in field battles against even slightly competent state troops possessing heavy weaponry, especially long-range weaponry, especially high-precision weaponry, and especially if these troops are indifferent to causing collateral damage. But the point is not about armies in general, but about individuals.

First, someone who has mastered the skills of using various types of drones is already in a position to wage their own personal guerrilla war against personal enemies, whether they be government officials or private individuals. Explosive devices suitable for dropping from drones or attaching to FPVs are available for purchase in small quantities on the darknet or through other methods used by local gangs for their own skirmishes. We might simply not recognize a modern-day Gavrilo Princip, because he would have no need to approach within identification distance to use his weapon.

Second, in a situation where you decide to assist a state defending against an external invasion, what would you prefer to answer at the recruitment point where you go to sign up as a volunteer? “I am a good shooter” or “I am a good drone pilot”? Which answer will allow you to live longer and be of more use?

There is no doubt that folk dances are beautiful, and even a little useful, but they are very wasteful