Автор: Анкап-тян

From Theory to Practice: Social Support Cases in the Montellibero Ancap Community

This is my second article from the first issue of Yozh magazine, which is distributed via a paid subscription model. The issue was dedicated to the libertarian view on social support.

I am writing this post in a libertarian club, sipping a suspended beer. Recently, I needed money, and I sold my promissory notes on the exchange. Several times, people helped me move my things to a new apartment for free. In the early stages of Montelibero’s existence, I received an unconditional basic income. And at the very dawn of the project, when I first arrived in Montenegro, I received a generous relocation allowance from one of the community’s ideologues—he appreciated that I was convincing people to participate in the movement by personal example. Finally, through one of the project participants, I managed to find stable remote work with a decent income that allows me to live and even save a little, without being an IT specialist.

These were only the cases of social support where I was the recipient. I can recall a few others. An acquaintance of mine received a loan from a private charitable foundation to develop her private kindergarten, and I am helping another person obtain investments to open her own jewelry workshop. And when one idiot borrowed a huge amount of money and was in no hurry to pay it back, he was helped to tokenize his debt, and now all his obligations are available for public viewing on the blockchain. Less patient creditors sell his promissory notes at a deep discount. And when someone buys enough of these debt obligations, it becomes market-justified for them to visit the debtor and very gently ask him to reconsider his priorities regarding spending on personal needs in order to buy back his notes at face value as quickly as possible.

The Montelibero ancap community is young. Therefore, major social support here usually boils down to loans or taking an equity stake in a business. Minor support takes the form of in-kind services or one-time gifts. We haven’t yet reached the point of thinking about what to replace (or if it’s necessary to replace) state pension payments for our participants. For now, it is far more relevant for us to help each other find ways to earn a living.

Our task as a libertarian community is to acquire enough resources to transform the world around us to our liking, and at the same time, not allow the state to seize these resources. Additionally, it is very important to us that other communities borrow and replicate our experience, and that those who know about us but are not part of the community view us favorably.

Therefore, it is required, on the one hand, to be proud and self-sufficient, not begging for money from the state or obscure external NGOs, and on the other hand, not to acquire the image of caricatured ancaps who can help only for money.

As a result, we created a quite original internal tokenomics on the blockchain, where tokens are issued to denote any public obligations, which can then be traded freely. On the one hand, this allows for the easy attraction of the community’s free resources for private needs. On the other hand, for the state, especially one as archaic as Montenegro’s, all these blockchains are a dark forest. Quite serious value is stored in the tokenomics, but it is difficult for an outside observer to analyze, despite the full transparency of the blockchain.

In tokenomics, it is easy for a person to confirm their business reputation: they show a link to their contracts, and then to the transactions on the blockchain made according to those contracts. In tokenomics, it is easy to provide some low-liquidity property as collateral to obtain a loan denominated in high-liquidity euro-stablecoins. In tokenomics, finally, one can simply collect micro-donations. For example, when the path to the club began to be overgrown with blackberries, one of the activists organized a community cleanup. A dozen people showed up and worked with pruning shears for a couple of hours, while many others sent donations for this good cause to the activist’s wallet. Then she divided the collected money equally among the participants. Thus, literally in passing, public goods are created under ancap.

One cannot mention all the cases, but the general principle is this: ideological kinship creates trust, tokenomics tools consolidate it, and an entrepreneurial spirit allows it to be used to solve social tasks.

How stateless social support works

This is my article from the first issue of Yozh magazine, which is distributed via a paid subscription model. The issue was dedicated to the libertarian view on social support.

1. Why is it needed?

Although the free market promotes general enrichment, commerce alone will not make everyone wealthy. Some will be unable or fail to save enough to cover suddenly arising urgent needs. Some people’s needs may exceed their credit limit, so the possibility of a loan will not solve the problem.

Such people have a request for the mercy of those around them.

2. Can they count on it?

In a society of strangers, people show mercy more willingly the wealthier they are, the more secure their position seems to them, and the more undeserved the plight of the petitioner seems to them.

In close-knit communities, additional factors play an important role: the gratitude of the community, a further increase in its cohesion, and the fact that an example of mercy will encourage mercy from other members of the community.

3. Who can count on mercy?

3.1. First and foremost — their own. That is, family members, friends, and participants of a close-knit community.

3.2. Those who are merciful themselves. Helping them is also an opportunity to express one’s gratitude. This also includes everyone who is considered worthy of gratitude for other reasons. Usually, these are positive externalities associated with their activities. Thus, artists, service workers valued by those around them, etc., can confidently count on charity.

3.3. Those who know how to express gratitude. This is a currency that anyone at all is able to find.

3.4. And finally, those who tried to take care of themselves rather than living for the day. This is especially relevant if hard times come for many.

4. What effect does this system of incentives produce?

As is easy to guess, these incentives will encourage people to gather in communities, strive to be useful and grateful to others, but not forget to create a safety net for themselves. Serious deviations from the described socially responsible behavior can mostly be afforded by very proud and self-sufficient people who, in essence, refuse social support themselves, and who are we to impose it on them?

5. What forms will social support take under ancap?

Let us stipulate: market behavior cannot be planned, therefore, in describing the future of self-regulating systems, we can only make plausible assumptions.

5.1. Spontaneous support

A person suddenly needs help, they broadcast a request among their circle of communication, and those willing either satisfy the request without further communication or get in touch to clarify the optimal option for themselves and the object of help.

The market is able to provide the necessary tools here: verification of need, convenience of money transfer, selection of providers of in-kind services — either on a gratuitous basis or at the expense of funds transferred by donors.

5.2. Regular support

A person requires constant help, or funds are needed to maintain some costly infrastructure that is not paid for by direct contributions from those who use it.

The market here provides a competitive environment in which the following operate: (a) funds that accumulate one-time and regular voluntary contributions and spend them on charitable projects; (b) contractors ready to implement these projects on a commercial basis.

6. Limitations of social support under ancap

Charity is an exchange of resources for moral satisfaction. In the absence of coercion, support will be received not by those who need it most, but by those whose support provides more moral satisfaction. This triggers competition among those in need of help, in which those who best satisfy the criteria in section 3 win.

Will everyone get help? It is impossible to say for sure, but the probability is higher the wealthier the society and the more developed the market, including the market for charity.

Will the volume of help be higher than under state distribution? It is quite possible that not, but it will certainly be spent more efficiently, and such a distribution will definitely be perceived as more fair.

Network State. Translation of chapters 5.1 and 5.2.

The translation of The Network State is steadily nearing completion. Chapter 5.1 (a short preamble to the fifth part of the book) and Chapter 5.2, where Balaji Srinivasan analyzes the phenomenon of the nation-state in detail: what a nation is, what a state is, how they differ, how they influence each other, what their combination represents, and much more along those lines, are ready.

From some fairly recent thoughts: various strategies of public administration are likened to various programming paradigms.

The next piece will definitely, certainly be the last, and I hope the most interesting—after all, we must finally figure out what the author proposes in a practical sense, after going on for so long and in such detail about the global situation and upcoming challenges!

My partners and I created the MEREXP investment fund and share some of our analytics in a Telegram channel. Could you evaluate the channel?

Lisoz Tech (the question is accompanied by a donation of 15 USDC)

Here is the link to the channel: https://t.me/merexp_analytics

It only started being populated recently, since May 2, and so far it has been doing so on a daily basis (at one point, my own channel had a similarly auspicious picture). The materials can be roughly divided into two categories: reviews of specific markets and articles explaining the advantages of Merexp Analytics.

As far as can be understood, the advantages lie in the fact that the company uses its own proprietary metrics. I particularly liked the breakdown of how these metrics work based on historical Bitcoin data. Admittedly, based on the channel’s materials, it remains unclear how the raw data for all these metrics is collected, but perhaps the company shares this information with its clients.

The fund views Bitcoin as simply another asset in the stock market, which gives the reviews their own charm, since the Bitcoin market is usually written about either in the context of cryptocurrency world news or in the context of technical analysis; here, however, the focus is mainly on the influence of fiat liquidity fluctuations and similar matters.

Strictly speaking, this is already at least the second attempt to launch the fund’s channel; the first happened in December 2023, and by February 2024, publications had already ceased. Back then, the publications were much less regular and concerned Bitcoin exclusively.

It was somewhat surprising that there is no link anywhere in the channel’s materials to the investment fund’s website or its analytical division. This is inconvenient both in terms of presenting materials (for example, the website could contain a convenient archive of review publications broken down into categories by individual markets), as well as a lack of information about the fund that is awkward to present in a Telegram channel format (for example, information about the volume of attracted investments and the fund’s portfolio). Instead of a website, it is suggested to contact the support bot for all questions. This model of presenting material and interacting with potential clients is not very clear to me, although perhaps it is simply a trend. After all, people even manage to do business on Instagram.

The feedback bot was tested by me at the most unfavorable time — on a Friday evening. The response time was 40 minutes, which is very good.

Or perhaps the website and other interactive tools are currently being actively finalized and will soon see the light of day. If so, I even appreciate such an approach: first fully develop one’s key know-how that provides an advantage over competitors, and only then pay attention to how to present them to the public. This is much more honest than first making a beautiful presentation and website, then attracting venture investment, and only then, possibly, spending that investment on the development of metrics and algorithms.

In any case, I subscribed to the channel because the content provided there is quite original. Regarding Bitcoin, it will even be possible to track how the forecasts come true, and if they prove reliable, then perhaps I will start looking for entry points, rather than just buying coins blindly as soon as I receive income exceeding the subsistence minimum.

As a right-libertarian and legal individualist, can I support the Russian Volunteer Corps?

Max Stirner

From the proposed positions, it is strange in general to ask questions about whether one can do something. Of course, one can; the only question is the extent of responsibility.

If we are talking about sanctions from the Russian state, then solving the problem comes down to finding sufficiently safe ways of transferring money, publishing propaganda, delivering equipment, and so on.

However, I believe the question is more about whether other right-libertarians and right-individualists, upon learning of such activity, would feel obligated to obstruct you.

The RDK is a semi-autonomous armed formation within the AFU: in some ways it obeys the central command, it depends on it significantly for supplies, and it seems to be quite autonomous in matters of recruiting and the informational coverage of its activities. But there are other units within the AFU that independently conduct recruiting and crowdfunding. How is the RDK so different that the German Stirner asks about the permissibility of helping specifically the RDK, and not some Azov?

Azov was mentioned for a reason. Both this brigade and the Russian Volunteer Corps face numerous accusations that Nazis serve there. Economic theory tells us that values are subjective. Any person has every right to prefer one nation over all others; this in itself does not provide grounds to condemn them. Do the guys from Azov and RDK exterminate representatives of all other nations for the sake of the greatness of the nation they prefer over all others? No, they exterminate people according to a different criterion, and this criterion is no different from the one guided by other military formations within the AFU.

The only remaining difference between the RDK (and a couple of other smaller units) and other parts is that they physically, on foot, crossed the internationally recognized Russian-Ukrainian border to fight the Russian army on Russian territory. And what, does this make them aggressors? No, they are still participants in a defensive war. Just like the drone operators striking refineries deep in the Russian rear.

Ah, yes, they also have Russian passports, or at least they did at the start of the war. And what, does this somehow change their legal status? No, not even under Russian laws. They still remain AFU servicemen, toward whom all sorts of rights and restrictions associated with the laws and customs of war apply—laws which the RF pledged to observe (but does not). But even if there were a law in the RF according to which any RF citizen who joined the ranks of foreign armed forces was subject to execution without trial, what significance would this have for a legal individualist?

However, I assume that the reader with the nickname Max Stirner is a Russian citizen. Therefore, his question can be reformulated more sharply: does libertarian morality justify war against one’s own state? Actually, libertarian morality justifies war against any state. Even against states led by libertarians, such as Javier Milei, Nayib Bukele, or Hans-Adam II. Fighting against one’s own is even more meaningful, because that is where your main grievances lie, it is that state that causes you direct harm, whereas all others are just some predators roaming nearby, who, of course, should also have no place on earth. However, a successful war requires allies. Most of us do not have them. The RDK does. Let us be happy for them.

Network State. Translation of the fourth part is complete

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 4.6. Conditions for Victory and Unexpected Endings. Here the author considers alternative scenarios where one of the extreme poles wins, rather than the coveted centrism.

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 Montelibero Association, my view

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

  1. Creation of a mechanism for identity verification of its participants and a standardized blockchain record of this fact
  2. Creation of a court, which has already managed to consider several cases
  3. Creation of an open standard for the blockchainization of relationships — personal, property, collaboration, and the like
  4. Creation of a competition commission to select the organizing committee for the Montelibero festival in 2024
  5. 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.

  1. The creation of the Association was a response by a small active part of the community to quite real challenges facing the community.
  2. This solution is unsuccessful by design and is quite naturally rejected by part of the community.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

Network State, Chapter 4.3. Techno-economic Axes.

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.

Another attempt to recommend the Monteliberal YouTube channel to you

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.

Perhaps the channel is going on vacation

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.