After the Russian State Duma yesterday, in “special operation mode,” passed a law stating that every citizen of the RF has already received a summons, and if they don’t see it, that’s their problem, my news feeds across all social networks naturally exploded with screams of “run.”
Instead, I would like to understand if there is any point at all in urging my audience to do things that may have long been irrelevant to them. So, I set up a poll; it’s been a while since there were any polls here, quite a lapse.
And, taking the opportunity, I congratulate everyone on Cosmonautics Day. A kind of greeting from a peaceful life.
At the end of my book on ancap, I have carefully collected definitions of the concepts from the libertarian lexicon discussed in the book. I will take the necessary ones from there:
Non-Aggression Principle – no one has the right to the unpunished initiation of violence.
Property Right – a claim to the exclusive or preferential use of an object, recognized by others.
The NAP has been observed by people since the deepest antiquity and is based on the concept of justice. Let me remind you how I define it:
Justice – a feeling of proportionality between the damage caused and the value of the object of conflict.
The sense of justice was actually passed down to us from pre-human ancestors; at least, its presence has been experimentally confirmed in monkeys.
So, we can state with reasonable confidence that the non-aggression principle is implicitly embedded in human nature through evolution. On the other hand, historically, the number of people to whom the non-aggression principle applied and whose private property was respected was limited to the inner circle. The more foreign a person feels, the less others care about their claims, and consequently, about their rights.
Any thief knows that stealing from one’s own is the lowest thing to do. What stops him? Certainly not respect for private property—he is already a thief. Nor fear of retribution—he successfully overcomes that when committing risky crimes against the property of strangers. What stops him is precisely the sense of community. These are “their own.” Don’t touch. It’s beneath one’s dignity. In short, ethics versus morality (you know where to look for the definitions).
What, then, made people begin to respect the rights of complete strangers? First and foremost—the development of global trade.
Historically, trade was long considered a contemptible occupation because a trader was perceived primarily as a fraudster and an extortionist. Secretly find out where it’s cheaper, praise the goods to people, sell them for more—fraudster. Or buy while the goods were plentiful, then sell high when the goods became scarce—extortionist. Therefore, it is always psychologically more comfortable for a trader to sell overseas curiosities rather than local consumer goods. No one knows the purchase price of those, meaning they won’t be caught in fraud, and they are always in short supply; people have no memories of this same product being sold significantly cheaper, and therefore the trader is not perceived as an extortionist. It’s simply an expensive, premium segment product.
The higher the trade volumes, the less the trader trembles over maximizing profit from every penny-transaction, and the more they value the throughput of their retail points. And suddenly, they no longer haggle over every bunch of radishes, but publicly state fixed prices for the entire range. Similarly, purchases are conducted under increasingly long-term contracts. An honest merchant’s word begins to be valued in the widest circles, which further reduces trade costs and expands world trade even more.
For a person living in a closed society, it is enough to observe moral norms within their own circle and perceive strangers as natural enemies toward whom everything is permitted. For a trader, everyone turns out to be a potential client, or a potential advertising agent. This reshapes their morality. Those who rely on deceiving strangers lose in the long run to those who care about their reputation.
And now, after all these reflections, I can briefly formulate what ensures the observance of the NAP and the protection of private property. They are ensured by evolutionarily developed mechanisms of human adaptation to life in a global world.
In this regard, it is not surprising that those who wage wars today do so precisely under the banner of fighting globalism.
The fraudster and extortionist, the engine of progress
It has been, dare I say, six months since the previous issue, so this will be less of a news update and more of an overview of the project’s current state.
Montelibero has entered a fairly mature phase where many previously intuitive practices are being codified. If you browse through the Sunday posts in the main Montelibero Telegram channel (by searching for the #sundaypost tag), you’ll see constant updates like “offer for such-and-such token published,” “terms of such-and-such program changed,” and so on. The project has gathered the low-hanging fruit from when people invested based on raw enthusiasm and is now refocusing on more thoughtful investors who require conventionally formatted documents, without which investments look dubious.
Construction in MTL-City is moving slower than planned—in the last issue, I wrote that the first multi-apartment building was promised by the New Year; well, now they promise it by summer. It is fully built and is currently being finished. Four apartments owned by the fund have already been promised for rent to two families of project participants (what can you do, these are very small apartments, which is why two were taken per family), and a fifth apartment has been put up for sale to settle with equity investors—after all, one cannot hand them half a square meter of housing in kind. Additionally, the construction company began buying back tokens, from the sale of which it funded the construction, at 40% above the placement price. This leaves me with mixed feelings. Of course, it’s good that investors were allowed to make a profit, but it’s lousy that housing is becoming quite expensive for the end consumer. Because of this construction boom and the Bitcoin dip, I no longer have the opportunity to build for myself.
Each studio here will cost the end buyer more than 30 thousand euros (and these are fully market prices, which is the most annoying part)
Concrete road, drainage gutter, electricity, lighting. Fiber optics are also hanging on these poles now; the photo is just older
Nevertheless, news that all utilities in MTL-City are fully completed, down to the provision of fiber optic internet, cannot help but be pleasing. By May, they also promise to finalize a large reservoir, which will allow water to be purchased in bulk and distributed throughout the settlement. All utilities are promised to be tokenized, with meter readings almost being written to the blockchain.
A tank with a capacity of 60 cubes; something similar exists in the ruins of Old Bar.
And just to fully touch the hearts of tech novelty enthusiasts, one of the project participants, Ralf, who, by the way, represents us in the German diaspora (the second largest after the Russians), has started producing hot water using a Bitcoin miner. The prototype has already been assembled; scaling is expected next. There is hope that, as a result, hot water can be obtained cheaper than if heated independently with a standard domestic boiler.
Boiler prototype
The club, which I wrote about a lot in recent issues and which has become the center of life for all Bar-based project participants, has also been tokenized. Buying club tokens allows anyone to support the project and provides access to a closed chat where further development paths are discussed. The club has not yet reached break-even, but at least the creator managed to recoup a significant portion of their initial investment through the sale of tokens.
On March 20, the club celebrated its anniversary. About fifty people attended the buffet in honor of the event, and we had a wonderful time; I even won a free cocktail in a quiz on the club’s history, sharing the victory with another Montelibero elder, eleven-year-old Saveliy, who arrived in Montenegro just three days after me.
More black balloons than gold ones, that’s about me
As I feared in the last issue, the flow of Russian emigrants to Montenegro has slowed down. Moreover, Montenegro itself continues to complicate the conditions for obtaining a residence permit, which also does not contribute to optimism. And just today, the old president lost the elections (actually, it is very correct when an incumbent loses an election), and the new one strongly wants to pull the country into the EU, which inevitably should lead to increased regulatory pressure. It is a pity that Milo Đukanović ran in the elections personally, unable to entrust it to some sufficiently popular like-minded person. What, there are none? Well, then they deserve it, however bitter that may sound from the lips of foreigners. However, Montenegro is a parliamentary republic, and parliamentary elections will be in a couple of months. We will see then what the ruling coalition looks like; I hope it’s a fragile one.
In my book about ancap, there is a chapter that I have to reference most often—the one about conflicts, morality, and law. And it looks like I will be correcting it slightly soon.
You know, for a long time now, I have been bothered by the tendency, well-known among libertarians, to call those who initiate violence “NAP violators.” Especially, of course, those who call the NAP a contract.
Let me recall my formulation of the NAP: no one has the right to initiate violence with impunity. This principle is primarily about the fact that there are no privileged individuals who have the right to initiate violence with impunity. So, who violates it? It is violated by those who give people such a right.
Let me recall my definition of rights: rights are claims that have been accepted. In other words, NAP violators are those who have accepted the claims of certain individuals to initiate violence with impunity. To put it bluntly: it is not Putin who violates the NAP, but those who believe that he has the right to give orders for killings.
The only one who has the right to cancel punishment for the initiation of violence without any judicial proceeding is the victim of the violence. Only the victim can forgive the attacker—after compensation for damages or simply so. But even the victim of violence cannot, without violating the NAP, claim that the attacker had the right to attack. Yes, they attacked, and then a reconciliation between the parties occurred. This does not create a precedent. The next attack will similarly require punishment. From everyone who agrees with the NAP.
This is precisely where the roots of libertarian morality lie.
Hi, here’s the situation. I’m currently reading a couple of recent books on ancap in English — “White, Right and Libertarian” and “A Spontaneous Order: The Capitalist Case for a Stateless Society” (I started with the first one because of the meme title and Hoppe, who wrote the foreword, but then decided to start the second one since it came out earlier and it seems better to read them in order of release). At first, I was just reading, but then, to keep from losing my mind in current conditions, I decided to do a written translation (and to start developing my English more thoroughly). My proposal is: post the translations on your website. What do you think?
Anonymous question
I have nothing against it; send them chapter by chapter as you translate, and I will publish them. Include your wallet, and then readers can donate to you for the translation if they wish, although I cannot guarantee that. I don’t rule out that I might feel the urge to make some edits.
Is it possible to buy advertising on your channel?
Administration of the “SPL” telegram channel
I work for donations. You can always send whatever amount you deem appropriate and ask a question like “tell me your opinion about the SPL telegram channel,” or “such-and-such a post came out on the SPL telegram channel, what do you think of it?” or something along those lines. The point is that instead of a standard advertising text, my own unique post with a personal opinion would appear in the channel, which is much cooler.
Recommend works where the author criticizes ancap throughout the whole book from any position.
Potaro
Of course, Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick. Throughout the book, the author proves that even if ancap were to suddenly appear for some mysterious reason, it would immediately, according to the logic he describes, begin to mutate into a state.
On March 9 of last year, I celebrated the first arson of a military enlistment office since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yesterday, the arsonist was sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony.
As far as I can understand from the article, the arson took place the day after my publication suggesting that military enlistment offices should be burned; that is, theoretically, Kirill Butylin could have been inspired by it, although it is far more likely that the idea occurred to him independently.
According to the article, Kirill was detained at the border between Lithuania and Belarus on the day of the publication of video materials he had filmed on the Vatahunters channel. It is unlikely that he was tracked down based on these materials; it seems that he nevertheless left traces directly during the process of the sabotage.
I am forced to admit: I underestimated the danger of sabotage against the regime. It seems that it is capable of conducting investigations against internal enemies quite effectively—at least until its technical base and the motivation of its employees have degraded sufficiently.
Kirill’s chances of being released before the dismantling of the Russian regime are slim. Unless Ukraine, during its long-announced offensive, manages to capture enough prisoners to redeem all captured Ukrainians and still have an exchange fund left for Russian collaborators. As you understand, the probability is vanishingly small, as Russia’s exchange fund is enormous: hundreds of thousands of civilians alone, and anyone can be made a hostage at any moment.
In general, the only piece of advice regarding the war that remains timelessly relevant is emigration. Countries that still admit Russian citizens still exist, although it seems that it will be harder for each subsequent wave. Do not delay.
Following protests, the Georgian parliamentary majority withdrew the foreign agents bill that had been passed in its first reading. Is this like a victory? Well, not exactly. Over these few days, many people were beaten, arrested, and their property was damaged. We can talk about a tactical victory after all the detainees are released and all the victims are paid compensation. But generally, of course, it would be great to achieve the dissolution of parliament and new elections—what trust can there be in the creeps who allowed such bullshit to happen?
In Montenegro, the seizure of assets (so-called nationalization) of businessmen who acquired pieces of property under the previous administration is in full swing. Moreover, this is being done by a technical prime minister whose government has already been issued a vote of no confidence. This has already led to one city being almost completely cut off from the rest of the country, and if the government cannot solve the problem before the start of the tourist season, I very much hope that this will finally paralyze the government, the prime minister will be exiled back to Ulcinj, or wherever he crawled out from, and they won’t be able to form a new government at all.
Everything has long been clear in the RF and Belarus: the opposition there is either in prison, has fled abroad, or has kept its mouth shut and is waiting to be imprisoned or drafted into the army, which is nearly the same thing.
It’s the same in Ukraine, except you can’t even leave the country due to martial law—on the other hand, the government has the full support of the international community.
I won’t speak for the USA and the rest of the world, since I’m not particularly interested in the details, but there is also a feeling there that politics is becoming radicalized, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to reach compromises within the state as part of the political process.
This can lead to various consequences.
In states with developed federalism, people can cluster by interests, reducing the degree of political confrontation within the federal subjects and increasing it between them. In this case, central decisions will be increasingly sabotaged. This is conditionally the US scenario.
In unitary states or fictitious federations like the RF, regimes will either gravitate toward dictatorship (the Belarusian scenario) or lose the ability to make any decisions at all—since any decision in favor of one side of a political confrontation will lead to massive and increasingly radical protests from the opposing side. This is conditionally the Georgian or Israeli scenario.
As a result of the processes described, we will get the following picture.
In the world, on one hand, there will be an increase in the number of authoritarian dictatorships, as well as democratic political entities with the dictatorship of the overwhelming majority. On the other hand, there will be an increase in the number of anocracies, where state power is paralyzed, and real decisions are made outside the legal political process.
And besides all this splendor, there will be a huge number of expats who have no political rights but live in countries whose politics suit them even slightly more than the countries they migrated from, and who play an important role in the economy of the countries where they live, and therefore their silent demand of “just don’t meddle in our affairs” will also have to be taken into account.
I, of course, urge all my readers to contribute to increasing the number of the latter in every way. Political power is evil. To become an expat—that is, to voluntarily renounce political power over others in favor of self-governance—is the most libertarian path in the current situation.
This is the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazović; he was burned in effigy at the Kotor carnival last Sunday. You should burn your politicians too.
This chapter, Stateless Society and Violent Crime, had already been roughly translated by a volunteer, and I have now simply proofread the translation.
Here Molynieux, sparing no colors, continues to paint that totalitarian hell he is trying to sell us instead of ancap—with a global network of “dispute resolution organizations” (DROs) to which, however, he grants powers of total control over the smallest aspects of life. According to the author’s design, this should make it impossible for a person to exist without “cover,” as the intimidated DRO businesses would not dare sell even a damn hot dog to someone who finds themselves struck from the lists.
No bitcoins, total KYC, and other wonders of totalitarianism—this is what happens to otherwise decent people when they get fascinated by moral philosophy. Children, do not be like Molynieux. Moral philosophy corrupts, as does any pursuit of absolutes. If you feel an attraction to it—keep your hands above the blanket.
What guarantees against abuses by DROs does Molynieux offer? Here you go, this is everything he writes on the matter:
Ah yes, but what if an “outcast” has been treated unfairly and is being blackmailed by a DRO or a PCR?
Well, remember that anarchism is always a two-way negotiation. To attract people to sign a contract with your DRO or PCR, what checks and balances would you include in it to soothe their fears on this issue?
In other words, he believes that DROs will figure out for themselves what guarantees of their own integrity they could provide to attract clients—and this is in a situation where not being a DRO client means becoming a total marginal. Quite hypocritical, much like expecting states, with their monopoly on violence, to compete in the attractiveness of their laws to attract potential citizens—rather than striving to extract maximum money from citizens while providing minimum services.
Fortunately, the proposed model simply will not work as described. For example, here is the simplest way to bypass it. A person simply declares that they have created their own DRO, which provides insurance services personally to them—and to everyone else, they honestly offer contracts with prices so exorbitant that no one would ever insure with them. That’s it; we have a “non-outcast” with a zero-value contract, which they concluded with a zero-value firm, and which they honestly observe, since they indeed pay themselves for all insurance cases.
If Molynieux believes that such a system bypass should be suppressed by the large, venerable DROs—otherwise, various outlaws will exploit this bug, and they could not be distinguished from honest individuals by the formal criterion of having a DRO contract—then we arrive at the idea of business licensing, which is already state regulation. Well, fine, let’s call this regulation “guild-based”—does that make life any easier for people? Today the DRO guild decides who to let into its market and who not, and tomorrow every random person will start regulating entry into their own business plot.
If Molynieux agrees that self-service in the sphere of dispute resolution is legitimate, then this kills all his totalitarian pathos. A person who is de facto outside the insurance system would still be able to conduct ordinary economic activity, which means there is no point in the myriad of procedures devised to ensure not even a mouse slips past the system. “All the better,” countless hotels and diners would say. “Our business costs will decrease, and if some snobs want to insure themselves against every sneeze—be their guest; we choose risk and champagne.”
In short, one should not take any static model and give it a total character. People will seek ways to improve their own personal situation. The result at any given moment will be largely determined by the balance of profits and costs of one behavior or another. But it is extremely unlikely that at any point in time the result will resemble the DRO system as Molynieux describes it—it is based on too narrow a conception of who should be considered respectable, and therefore will inevitably be in conflict with numerous more libertine anarchists, to whom this system appears as a totalitarian hell.
As a reminder, posts in the channel will be more frequent and interesting if you encourage the author with donations.
Since everyone is remembering how it was today, I will also go through some old materials. What I wrote about the war is easiest to find via the tag #war. Rereading it now, I realize that, in general, I expressed the key wish for the Russian people in the very first post on the day the invasion began: to scatter across the world, ridding themselves of their statehood. Now, a year later, I am glad to realize that a huge number of former Russian subjects are implementing this program, and I very much hope that they will live in peace and prosperity. Of course, I do not consider myself a Russian nationalist, and therefore I did not limit myself to anti-Russian posts, but also scribbled an anti-Ukrainian one, where, in essence, I wished for representatives of the brotherly people the same thing: the opportunity to freely move far away from the war, where they could build their peaceful lives far from interstate disputes. And this is despite the fact that, overall, I view the activity of the Ukrainian state in destroying the RF rather positively.
For those who wished to stay in the RF and become heroes, a recommendation was also provided, and I am glad that quite many followed it (or thought in a similar direction) — I am talking about burning down military enlistment offices. For expats, the most important tasks were identified as defeatist chatter and helping everyone fleeing the war. I can state that here too, in general, it was a total hit.
As for the positive agenda for international politics laid out by me, alas, it penetrates minds with terrible friction. What can one do — for the average bureaucrat, it is somehow too radical. Nevertheless, I note with satisfaction that the topic of the dismemberment of the RF is gradually ceasing to be marginal. Everyone is simply waiting for it to happen somehow on its own. And I am waiting too, for that matter. After all, territorial collapse goes much easier when the breaking-off scraps of the empire quickly receive international recognition, and for that, you shouldn’t come to me.
A month after the start of the invasion, it became clear that this was for the very long haul, which was the subject of my most pessimistic post, about the routinization of horror and about how not a single useful niche for activity remained for libertarian politics in the RF, and that both libertarian parties should get out of there in full force — it is a moral duty. Alas, only one party out of two left in full force; the other left hostages for the regime.
In April, the theme of future reparations began to play out on social media, and here, unexpectedly for myself, I took the same position as Mikhail Svetov, although within the framework of completely different argumentation. In short, reparations are an evil primarily for Ukrainians.
On July 1, I indicated that a transition from diversions to individual terror would soon be quite likely. At the end of August, the first fairly loud terrorist attack occurred, about which I did not fail to reflect. Perhaps, this was a collection of my most controversial reflections in connection with the war.
Before the elections, I published a rather beautiful idea, which, however, as far as I know, no one utilized. Then mobilization happened, and after putting out a couple more posts, I lost interest in further reflections on the war. Everything has been said, all conclusions have been drawn, sides have been chosen, there is no one left to persuade. Which village was captured today by Russian troops has finally become less important than the fact that the Montenegrin government nationalized the Kamenari-Lepetane ferry crossing.
It’s time, high time for aliens to invade or a machine uprising to occur, so that we can all with a clear conscience retrain from military analysts into xenopsychologists and artificial intelligence experts.
A sad picture of the state’s offensive against private business, which occupies me far more than the war somewhere in the east
Not long ago, I told you about a major international terror attack carried out by the authorities of several countries against a small crypto exchange, Bitzlato. It seemed that everything in this story was already clear: the company was crushed, and the depositors’ money was lost.
However, the exchange team decided to preserve the service. Since the servers were seized and the bot’s code was compromised, they are currently rewriting the code; starting March 1, they promise to organize the possibility for every user to withdraw half of their deposit, and later gradually provide full access to the remaining funds.
I like the fighting spirit in the news published by the project team. No “bleh, meh, we are not to blame, force majeure, there’s nothing to be done, bye-bye.” Instead, the seize-ers are clearly called seize-ers, and they are almost openly sent away in the manner of the Russian warship—remember that ancient meme?
Yes, using centralized services is dangerous, but completely avoiding trust in certain intermediaries is a very costly endeavor. And that is why I especially value those centralized services that have, in one way or another, passed the “test of character.” Not every company can manage this. For instance, the Bitfinex exchange managed to reimburse depositors for losses from a major hack in its time, while the btc-e exchange could not survive a raid by bandits in uniform. I very much hope that the Bitzlato service will pass its test of character.
