To avoid bothering readers with news about every single sneeze, I present a large chunk of the translation of The Network State all at once.
Chapter 4.4. The Foreseeable Future: here the author simply had some fun with a couple of interesting technical predictions. They have a rather indirect relationship to the theme of the book.
Chapter 4.5. American Anarchy, Chinese Control, and International Centrism. A monstrously large text where the author mostly, of course, writes about the USA, analyzing step by step exactly how the degree of confrontation between supporters of the establishment and supporters of decentralization will increase in the States, and reports that this, generally speaking, is not funny or romantic at all (to be honest, while reading, it seemed to me that the author created a straw man out of Bitcoin maximalists, and they by no means propagate societies of total distrust, but who knows what kind of freaks actually hang out in these Americas of theirs). The alternative in the form of the Chinese recipe for a digital gulag obviously does not entice him either. As usual, he hopes that foreign countries will help him, and primarily bets on Israel and India. However, in his view, this is merely a base for building many startup communities, some of which will grow to the high status of network states.
Chapter 4.7. Toward a Recentralized Center. And here Balaji Srinivasan only has to emphasize once more that institutions are not scary, centralization is normal, you just shouldn’t obsess over the fact that the old things don’t work, and it would be more correct to actually launch a market process for building new institutions.
I will try not to take too long with the translation of the final, fifth part of the book, which presumably contains the recipes for what the author proposes to do.
The channel is still on vacation, but the largest investor of Montelibero stopped by for a visit, and I had an evening to chat with him, so it felt strange not to publish my reflections on this.
My previous overview of Montelibero concerned tokenomics. Now I want to examine such a mysterious entity as the Montelibero Association. I first mentioned it in the sixteenth (and apparently final) news issue — since then, I no longer write about Montelibero as a whole, only about specific aspects.
The reason for the Association’s appearance was that the Montelibero community had accumulated problems:
Goal setting. The stated goal of the Montelibero project was initially libertarian transformations in Montenegro. However, those coming to the country are somehow more concerned with issues of their legalization in this state, earning a living, increasing the quality of that very life by developing internal culture within the community, and so on. Ancaps do not want to build an ancap for others; they are perfectly satisfied building an ancap for themselves, plus some minimal costs to keep the state from getting in the way.
Lack of activists to create public goods. Who will build the roads is not a particularly acute problem, because it is easy to outline the circle of main future beneficiaries of road construction. But who (or rather, for what incentives) will write the wallet code for our tokenomics, who will organize a large annual festival and many smaller intermediate activities, who will pay for hosting, who will handle the filling and promotion of information resources — and so on? Administering the collection of small targeted contributions for any such trifle would be too expensive; it is more profitable to aggregate administrative expenses somehow.
Insufficient clarity of collective decision-making mechanisms. For example, who and how will decide whom to send to deliver a report at a conference if the conference organizers contact one of the Montelibero participants and invite some representative of Montelibero?
One could simply dismiss such problems, claiming that the “market” is meant to solve them. But the “market” is precisely a generalized name for the entire sum of voluntary private initiatives. And so, one such initiative sounded roughly like this:
Since a loose community without fixed membership responds poorly to such challenges, let’s create an organization with fixed membership from its participants, gather activists into it, implement liquid democracy there, and within the framework of the association, they can engage in creating various cool infrastructural things for the entire community, as well as make collective decisions that can then be communicated to the whole community.
Half of last summer, the Association was at the stage of preliminary discussion. It was officially created at the festival. Now it has slightly over a hundred people in its membership. I will try to briefly list its main achievements:
Creation of a mechanism for identity verification of its participants and a standardized blockchain record of this fact
Creation of a court, which has already managed to consider several cases
Creation of a competition commission to select the organizing committee for the Montelibero festival in 2024
Creation of internal factions united by a common direction of interests (creates associations with secular Civil Society)
Even at the stage of preliminary discussion, the Association faced serious difficulties, and some of them became even more apparent after its activities began.
Firstly, the very idea of officially joining something, obeying the decisions of a collegiate body, and so on, proved alien to many ancaps. A working group around a specific project — as many as you like! Membership in a club — by all means! But the Association, by design, looked like something too similar to a political party, and therefore was rejected regardless of the arguments in its support.
Secondly, the Association has internally contradictory goals. On one hand, to engage in constructive activity, it needs a high concentration of activists. On the other hand, to communicate legitimate decisions to the entire large community, it must be as numerous as possible. On a third hand, principled opponents of the association perceive any attempts by the Association to communicate its decisions externally as encroachments on their freedom and try to delegitimize them in every way.
Liquid democracy deserves a separate mention. The Association’s council, to simplify the model slightly, consists of twenty of its participants with the highest number of votes delegated to them by other members of the Association. This creates an incentive for those wishing to enter the Council to campaign for their own sympathizers to join the Association, preferably passive ones, so that all their activity in the organization boils down to joining, verification, and delegating their vote.
As a result, a contradictory situation has emerged.
On one hand, the Association carries out some useful activity. For example, the court it created resolved several conflicts that were previously in limbo. However, in one of these conflicts, the defendant (a member of the Association) did not recognize the jurisdiction of the court over them, thus questioning the claim that the Association is a contractual jurisdiction. A potentially even more useful project is the development of a standard for the blockchainization of relationships. Finally, it is the Association that plans to carry the festival on its shoulders.
On the other hand, all this looks like an attempt to create a monopoly out of nowhere, combining completely diverse activities under a single brand, even to the detriment of efficiency. For instance, the development of the blockchainization standard and its accompanying toolkit requires a compact working group, not a bureaucratic structure. To create a tradition of resolving conflicts in court, examples of successful conflict resolution are needed, not attempts at forced court appearances under threat of loss of Association membership. Cumbersome democratic coordination procedures repel enthusiasts rather than attract them. Attempts to inflate the prestige of membership through economic incentives for Association members and restrictions for non-members lead rather to the opposite effect: any anti-statist knows that if someone tries to impose a certain free service on you, threatening sanctions for not using it, you should run as far away from such gifts as possible.
Now my conclusions.
The creation of the Association was a response by a small active part of the community to quite real challenges facing the community.
This solution is unsuccessful by design and is quite naturally rejected by part of the community.
Attempts to infiltrate the Association from the outside for the purpose of correcting its design flaws are harmful: it is a sin to try to replace the market with politics.
Attempts to destroy the Association for the purpose of returning to the past are counterproductive, since even if the price seems acceptable, as a result, the community will still have to solve the same problems that the Association tried to solve.
The only strategy that seems reasonable to me: ignore its very existence as some unified entity, without rejecting the people who are part of it in any way. Membership in the Association is neither good nor bad; it has no more meaning than an earring in the ear.
As for the little problems, they will have to be solved by our own efforts; no kind uncle will come and help, and no evil uncle will come and hinder. He doesn’t exist, this collective uncle.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone, and at the same time, happy end of Maslenitsa; and to those who love filming queues in fast-forward mode—happy opportunity to indulge in your favorite pastime. So many holidays in one day—isn’t that great, isn’t that panarchy!
As for me, another chapter of The Network State has been quietly translated. Balaji Srinivasan continues to discuss the trends of the near future, and if in the previous chapter he discussed socio-political trends, now he touches upon the techno-economic consequences of the digitalization and internetization of everything.
For instance, he notes that the sharp lowering of the publishing threshold increases variance: alongside traditional, polished, and weighted but uninteresting positions, a multitude of the most unusual chthonic entities crawl into the light. And besides the shaking of discourse via social networks, there is also the shaking of financial stability through countless cryptocurrencies.
Another interesting aspect discussed by the author is that the total digitalization of everything leads to digital entities becoming primary, while physical ones, in essence, materialize on demand if there is a need.
He also briefly touches upon the mystery of why we do not observe as frantic a leap in productivity in the physical world as we do in the digital world. Then, providing a whole brood of hypotheses, he suggests choosing between them independently.
In short, the chapter is quite saturated with ideas and generalizations, so I don’t see much point in summarizing it; it’s easier to just read it.
While the channel is on vacation, I’m not bothering with original materials, but so you don’t get bored, I’ll be posting some external content from time to time.
Soz recorded and posted a very high-quality video on MTL-TV, where he explains why the use of multi-signature wallets is extremely useful for literally everyone who holds large sums in cryptocurrencies, and how easily and conveniently this is organized in the Stellar blockchain in general and in the Montelibero tokenomics in particular. I highly recommend it, and I also want to use the suggested recipes once I have a bit more free time.
And don’t forget about the Ankaposhnaya segment on the same channel; they’ve already reached the part explaining the market and seem to have no intention of stopping.
Another translation order has come in, and it’s also quite urgent. This means I may need to take a break from running the channel.
Therefore, for now, I can recommend listening to the podcasts on our Montelibero channel MTL-TV, especially, of course, the new “Ankaposhnaya” section; it’s not so much about Montelibero as it is about various libertarian theories—after all, that’s why you gathered here to read, isn’t it?
Montelibero is a decentralized community, which is why the channel has no single host; it is managed by whoever needs it most at the moment. First it was Soz, then Birkin, now it’s Ivan from the Ogurism channel, and later perhaps someone else will take over.
Also, to keep from getting too bored, you can boost the channel for now. Previously, this would only have given me the ability to post stories, but I find it barbaric to work on content that is destined to disappear quickly—such is my vain nature. But now, a well-boosted channel can also be styled more exquisitely, and it’s better to have that option than not to have it.
A substantial piece of text is ready for a book on the theory of war, covering various aspects of war preparation. It took a very long time to write; it is evident that excerpts from different periods differ in style, but I do not want to delay publication; I will still have time to proofread it.
Let us consider this as a substitute for the routine post on the anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukrainian territory by Russian troops, and after all, I promised to speed up after Navalny’s death. So, I am speeding up.
The translation of the fourth part of The Network State has begun. As expected, after finishing with the “past present,” the author has moved on to discussing the future.
In Chapter 4.1, Possible Versions of the Future, Balaji Srinivasan begins by clarifying the factors that prevent him from making precise forecasts, then provides a brief description of the envisioned future scenario, and finally estimates where his idea of network states would fit into this scenario. In doing so, he uses the disgustingly clumsy term “re-centralized center.” My ability to adapt the text during translation is limited, so I can only state that the term is terrible and difficult to understand, but nothing comes to mind yet to replace it with. What does the author even mean? As far as I can judge based on an incomplete reading, the word “center” refers to the center of the triangle he drew in the third part of the book describing a tripolar world—suggesting that our salvation lies in not falling into the extremes that accumulate at the poles. And he has yet to explain “re-centralized.” Perhaps it means that every startup community must have its own leader, otherwise it won’t take off. I would be glad to be wrong.
In Chapter 4.2, Sociopolitical Axes, the author briefly notes that to assess the future, it is not enough to look at well-known and long-established trends; it is also worth looking at those that are only just forming. As examples of sociopolitical factors that could seriously affect the future, he provides three completely diverse examples: Indians (while everyone is looking at China, India is quietly closing the gap, and in the next decade should make its presence felt quite loudly, both as a state and as a diaspora, i.e., a Network, in the author’s terminology), the confrontation between the “un-prime” and the “trans-hum” (Klaus Schwab was listed as a transhumanist), and the identity stack (there are several interesting thoughts on where identities come from, as well as a non-obvious take that one identity will inevitably be the leading and defining one).
The chapters in the fourth part of the book are not very long, so I will try to post them in groups rather than one by one, to avoid cluttering the feed.
There is one negative aspect to Navalny’s death: a good man has died. But there could never have been a happy ending in his fairy tale.
Otherwise, alas, things have rather improved.
The Russian regime has lost the potential opportunity to use a well-known political prisoner as bargaining material or a tool for blackmail.
The Russian opposition has an additional reason to abandon the idea of peaceful protest. Some of its representatives, acting by inertia, will go out into the streets of Russian cities to publicly express their grief, face persecution, and leave the RF.
I have an additional reason to increase my efforts in writing a book on the theory of war.
Other political regimes may throw a bit more fuel onto the fire of war with the RF (it would be good if without new mindless sanctions against those Russians who are easier to reach, but here life rather forces one to be a pessimist).
The translation of the third part of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State has been posted. Unlike the second part, it is quite short and is dedicated to describing the current tripolar world:
The author argues that the world today is ruled by three ideas: the American liberal agenda, brutal and pragmatic Chinese communism, and the idea of personal sovereignty, which has found its maximum expression in Bitcoin. Additionally, he touches upon the tripolar configuration of the first half of the 20th century in the context of analyzing the primary strength of each of the current poles.
In general, while the second part dealt primarily with the past, in the third part the author has moved to the present, and further on, presumably, he will deal with the future.
In Stefan Molynieu’s “Practical Anarchy,” which I have never fully translated, there is a chapter Stateless Prisons, where as an alternative to the loathsome state penitentiary system, an equally loathsome non-state one is proposed, based on what resembles cancel culture in the US, the social credit system in China, or, for instance, the “foreign agent” label in the RF. The idea is to make an undesirable person an outcast with whom everyone is afraid to deal to avoid secondary sanctions. The mechanism is described using the example of retribution for something sufficiently loathsome to the vast majority of readers (sexual violence), but there is no reason to believe that the exact same mechanism cannot be used to punish anyone for anything: it is enough to incite moral panic around certain actions, and suddenly the very mechanisms that yesterday cancelled rapists are today cancelling smokers. Or those leaving an excessively large carbon footprint. Or those infringing on intellectual property. Or formally the same rapists, but with an expanded interpretation of rape, extending even to initially voluntary sex with post-coital disagreement.
What I love about moral philosophers is that they adore pushing ideas to the point of absurdity with the utmost seriousness, thereby teaching others precision in phrasing, provided these others do not wish to resemble holy fools.
So let us talk about the institution of reputation more carefully.
Anya caused damage to Borya. Borya is a peaceful man; he wants restitution for the damage, but he does not wish to extract it by force. Additionally, he is offended, no longer wishes to have dealings with Anya, and generally does not want to see her in his social circle. Unless, of course, she apologizes, first making amends for her guilt.
Anya considers Borya an asshole who fully deserved all the damage received. She also does not wish to deal with him and simply rides off into the sunset.
Anya has no incentives to compensate for the damage. What is needed for her to have some? One of two things. Either Borya must spend significant resources on damaging Anya’s reputation, or these resources must be spent by someone else, in which case Borya only needs to send a low-cost control signal that triggers a chain reaction of cancelling.
How do you organize a system that allows for the cheap cancelling of people under conditions of decentralized law? Only through mass hysteria, which sharply lowers the threshold of arousal in people, after which they decide to abruptly sever relations with a person previously unfamiliar to them. Admit it, it’s convenient: you say a person is, say, a pedophile—and that’s it, no one will shake their hand. But who will verify this claim? No one can. Verification is a costly process. Adding it to the scheme kills all the profit from the idea of cancelling.
Fine, “no one can” is too strong a statement. One could add certain moral authorities to the scheme who verify the labels being applied. Borya called Anya a fraud—that is just noise. Guru Vasya called Anya a fraud—Anya becomes an untouchable. Borya’s only task is to grease Vasya’s palm. In other words, this scheme is also easily corrupted.
Of course, I am not suggesting the abolition of the institution of reputation. I am suggesting that one should not expect that under ancap it will be possible to cancel people without extremely destructive consequences for ancap itself. Yes, you can release information about Anya’s actions into the network, accompanied by reliable confirmations. Those intending to enter into a serious deal with Anya may come across this information and adjust their initial opinion of her reliability as a counterparty, after which, for example, they may demand payment upfront. But that is the maximum you can hope for. She will still be sold bread at the store, no matter how angry Stefan Molynieu is about it.
It’s not Anya, it’s Gina. Ancap Borya wants to cancel Anya the way Disney cancelled Gina. No fucking way he’ll succeed.
