Автор: Анкап-тян

Is it legitimate to sell weapons to a mentally ill and potentially dangerous person?

If it is illegitimate, when exactly does it become illegitimate: at the moment of sale, or when that same unstable person commits a crime?

Ancapman

We are, of course, considering ancap, because under a state, this issue is resolved through political games surrounding regulations, and we are interested in what is the correct way.

Ancap is a free market plus the decentralization of law enforcement. The market means that the seller decides for themselves to whom and for how much to sell a gun. Anarchy means that conflicts are resolved on an ad hoc basis.

A psycho wants to buy a gun. The gun owner wants to sell it. A bystander fears that the psycho will shoot someone and would like the gun not to be sold to him. In other words, he has a conflict with the seller. But how will this bystander know that the buyer is a dangerous psycho? Do we have a society of total control, which is dreamed of by the author of the book Practical Anarchy, Stephan Molignon?

Of course, it is easy to imagine a society where all the dangerous psychos are known. This is a village or a small town where everyone knows everyone. This one isn’t a psycho, but a harmless hippie; he’s skating on the promenade. But this one is constantly shouting at his wife, and it seems there are fights. And when someone tries to reason with him, he becomes even more agitated and spews incoherent threats. Maybe he shouldn’t have a gun? And the owner of the only gun shop in the area would prefer not to take on extra responsibility. Or he sells it carelessly, and then tomorrow at the barbershop, he’ll be asked if he’s an idiot.

But people, you know, sometimes choose to live in megacities for some reason. Will megacities remain under ancap? I fully assume so: people cluster because many types of offline businesses have a significant positive effect of scale, and they will continue to have it even in the absence of state regulations.

In a megacity, generally speaking, all people look the same to each other. A gun can be sold in a thousand places. No one will voluntarily chip in to maintain a complex system of weapons registration and total medical examination, which means there won’t be one. Therefore, let’s simply accept as a fact that under ancap, any solvent psycho will always find a way to buy a gun, including anonymously, and even that loudmouth from the small town can easily do it simply by going to a megacity.

How to protect oneself from the consequences? In a small town, it is much easier for a dangerous psycho to be refused an apartment rental. He will be forced to move from time to time until he settles in the outskirts, where landlords won’t constantly receive complaints about their tenant. In a megacity, it may be unclear who to complain to about a violent neighbor, because generally, you simply don’t know who owns the neighboring apartment. But if it’s very irritating, you can, again, move yourself to a more decent district where more attention is paid to the peace of the residents.

Well, if the violent psycho does get a gun and intends to use it, the situation becomes very simple: get your own and neutralize the psycho. Or someone else who gets there first will do it. There is no time here to reason whether it was legitimate to sell that person a gun, or who to blame for the resulting situation. The probability of accidentally getting hit by a bullet is significantly lower than the probability of accidentally getting hit by a car or drowning, but that doesn’t make people give up cars or swimming.

In general, the question about psychos and guns was already asked to me about five years ago. Goodness, five years! How long I’ve been running this channel!

Montelibero Project News, Issue 16

You know, things have been quite interesting in Montelibero lately.

Four households have already formed in MTL-City. The first three are builders who settled in newly constructed apartments—one of them bought his, while two are renting. The fourth household is the family of the Mayor of MTL-City. Previously, he accepted construction work remotely, but now he will be able to oversee the construction from the roof of his apartments while sipping kafa.

And on September 23, MTL-City will host a libertarian festival. We recently did a reconnaissance trip, estimated where to place the various locations, and realized that about three hundred people could comfortably hang out there—two hundred on the main stage area, and another hundred could easily disperse among the other activities. Several presentations are planned from the stage during the day. First, I’ll briefly talk about how these two and a half years have gone for Montelibero (ah, fuck, speaking on stage in front of a crowd, I’m going to screw it up!!!), then we’ll bring out Svetov to shift everyone’s attention to him and quickly gloss over my failure, and then a few more people for the sake of prestige (like a Montenegrin deputy). In the evening, there will be a concert on the same stage until the end, while the biggest bores will retreat to a quieter place for a panel discussion. Parallel to all this, there will be presentations of local Montelibero businesses and other initiatives, a separate area for children, and all-pervasive networking.

Due to the festival, large-scale construction in MTL-City is temporarily winding down: no new foundations are planned to be laid, and we are focusing on the finishing of what has already been built. However, the builders certainly intend to ramp up afterwards. The construction company recently underwent rebranding; it is now proudly called Tokenopolis and is entering the broad investment market. Those who believe that investing in the Montelibero investment fund is excessively conservative and yields too modest a return can buy tokens of a business already established in Montenegro without intermediaries and receive a more significant profit.

The investment fund itself is currently undergoing reorganization. It has accumulated various social burdens that conflict with the fund’s direct goals, namely generating profit. Therefore, a search has begun for ways to remove this non-core burden from it.

One of the ideas is to create a separate, purely charitable fund. The fund was established at the beginning of the summer and is called the Third Montelibero Fund; it has already invested in the autumn festival and plans to gradually take over both the niche of sponsoring various non-profit projects promoting libertarianism and the function of a mutual aid fund. As is known, such funds were quite common in the 19th century until the state usurped the field of social insurance. But mandatory state social insurance in Montenegro for immigrants is essentially meaningless. This means there is room for activity. I recently invested a symbolic ten euros in the fund to see how it works from the inside. I will keep you updated on its development.

Another idea for transforming the investment fund is the creation of some kind of libertarian association, in which the fund would join as an ordinary member alongside other people and organizations. This idea is currently being actively discussed; many objections have been raised, and there is even a slight chance that this will lead to a split in Montelibero even before Mikhail Svetov arrives in Montenegro.

One way or another, the fund has fulfilled its primary task: at the start of the project, it was effectively the only way to invest money or, conversely, to receive investment. Now, enough alternatives have appeared: a number of quite independent businesses that formed without the participation of the MTL fund and received financing from Montelibero participants. And heightened competition is a powerful stimulus for optimization, which is exactly what we are observing.

Legal systems that differ significantly from ours. Translation of the chapter on Islamic law.

I have been procrastinating for a nightmarely long time on the translation of David Friedman’s book about various exotic legal systems. But then I was sent a link in my DMs to Scott Alexander’s parody Legal Systems Very Unlike Our Own (Because I Just Made Them Up) — I felt ashamed and sat down to translate.

So, the fifth chapter of the book, on Islamic law, has been translated. As expected, it turned out to be similar to a refined version of Jewish law, and due to its inherent decentralization, libertarians can borrow quite a lot from it for their own purposes.

Please don’t forget to donate to this and all other translations, and I will try not to drag out this process too much.

Libertarianism, weapons, and the presumption of trust

Mikhail Pozharsky released a very good video with an incorrect title: Why we are afraid of weapons.

It would have been more correct to call it “Why they are afraid of weapons.” Or even better, “Why we are not afraid of weapons.” I am talking about us, libertarians, or, to be less broad, about the people of Montellibero, regarding whom I am absolutely certain about their attitude toward weapons, and it is indeed as Mikhail describes.

Indeed, by recognizing the right of one’s neighbor to be armed, we thereby show trust in them. The best gift for a child is a knife. What kind of child is without a knife? In all classical children’s literature, all children have knives. Well, alright, the male half.

I didn’t have a knife in my childhood. But my first boyfriend won me over by offering to show me, right from the start, the nagayka whip he had made for himself. He was the one who gave me my first knife; how could I not melt from such trust?

And although he was from some leftist sect, and we broke up after a couple of months, this episode played its important role. Every time I hear this “you want to give weapons to everyone so that they all kill each other,” I am sincerely surprised: first of all, why “give away” suddenly? Let them buy them themselves, or accept them as gifts from people who care for them; and secondly, why would they suddenly kill each other? Are they stupid or something?

This basic presumption of trust in people is very characteristic of libertarians. If a person is convinced that people are a gathering of vices, then they cannot become anything other than an etatist, hoping for someone’s firm hand to bring everyone to heel. They say there are also religious libertarians who, considering man a vessel of sin, rely on the Lord and imagine themselves as His instrument, but that is some overseas heresy that I cannot judge with certainty; I only know that it is not characteristic of the people of Montellibero.

In general, thanks to Mikhail for the good formulations; the video is food for thought.

There was also something there about psychopathy, but let Bitarch and Voluntarist reflect on that; it’s their theme.

What to do with the “free rider” effect in the case of ancap in the sphere of defense, security, and law?

Evgeny Fishkin

I have had to answer something like this many times, but it’s easier to answer briefly once more than to search for links to old posts.

General recommendation: increase the level of decentralization. The more decentralization there is in a particular sphere, the fewer free riders there are—there are no incentives left for them.

Decentralization in the sphere of defense means arming oneself. To a neighbor with a rifle, you are no longer just a neighbor, but also someone who will provide friendly cover fire. There is a non-illusory danger of an attack by a serious enemy—this is a great excuse for regular team-building activities. Have a few shots, then go drink beer.

Decentralization in the sphere of security is, conventionally speaking, about keeping private keys yourself rather than on an exchange. Installing an alarm system in your apartment so that security you’ve hired arrives on call, rather than some state police. And so on.

Decentralization in the sphere of law means settling things yourself, and if you cannot, turning to those you trust, rather than those appointed by other people. Most conflicts are resolved out of court even with a state, although, one would think, here is a centralized conflict resolution service provided to you, why not use it? Inconvenient? Exactly!

Why doesn’t this picture surprise us? Because it is natural behavior when there is no state.

Bitcoiners discuss Montelibero, continued

A month ago, the guys from the projects HypeCoinNews and Bitcorn tried to launch a joint podcast Bitcom in Bitcoin, inviting Soz for the first episode to tell them about Montelibero. There was a false start, and they had to discuss Montelibero among themselves. I later commented on one of the takes from this conversation on my page.

And so yesterday, they finally released the recording of the conversation with Soz.

I was briefly reprimanded for the inaccuracy of my comment: by freezing BTC in the Liquid sidechain, I receive LBTC coins in exchange, which I can then use to buy LMTL tokens or any others, and the fund, after selling me its tokens, is free to dispose of the received LBTC as it sees fit, including selling them for euros. But since the liquidity of this market is extremely low, the comment remains essentially valid: using this mechanism to accumulate resources offline is inconvenient.

And then the conversation continued for over an hour about other things (if anyone is ready to make timecodes, it would be very helpful—drop them in the comments). I listened and felt envious: I have to give a talk about Montelibero at the upcoming festival, and it certainly won’t be better than Soz’s, no matter how hard I try(

I’ll probably add one more thing to what Soz said about “broke people.” In principle, a broke person just needs to arrive in the country and start earning; they can completely ignore legalization. The culture of under-the-table payments is extremely developed here. Documents aren’t demanded at every step (and if they ask once every six months, there are no sanctions for saying your documents are at home). Difficulties only arise when trying to leave the country. But if you’re broke, why would you be traveling abroad! Stay in Montenegro, enjoy its—no joke—immense natural and cultural diversity, participate in the activities of the local community, and just don’t worry. Roma people make up five percent of the population here; learn from them the correct attitude toward the state (though it’s better to learn the attitude toward private property from us).

On the right of nations to self-determination

I recently happened to listen to a debate between two Russian emigrants about how to behave toward the Russian people. As it turned out, they sparked a heated discussion in one of the Montelibero chats, so I decided to join in with my own opinion.

Briefly, the positions of the parties:

Mikhail Svetov. The people must be loved; the people are victims of the regime; speaking out against the regime now is pointless, one must wait for the right moment; the people need a leader, a kind master, who will take power and rule guided by love.

Mark Feigin. We have no time to coddle the people, they have already squandered every opportunity; if the people do not overthrow Putin themselves, then there is no reason to be offended if others continue to decide everything for them; reparations will be taken, and the country will be dismantled; by the way, if it is dismantled, that’s not bad—there is a chance for the emergence of a Russian Taiwan, where Mark himself could settle his weary bones.

What causes the greatest repulsion in me throughout all this rhetoric is that everyone talks about some “Russian people.” But the right of nations to self-determination is not about some outsider labeling a particular community of people as a “nation” and allocating a piece of land for them. It is about people defining themselves as a nation, beginning to behave as a nation, and achieving their recognition as a nation. People have such a right—to self-determine as nations.

The people of Montelibero, for example, have already self-determined. Any person can affiliate themselves with our people, ensure that the people recognize them as one of their own, and in time decide on an “aliya”—physically relocating to the home of their people. If they are truly ours in spirit, a warm welcome awaits them.

Mark Feigin, with his dreams of a Russian Taiwan, unexpectedly turned out to be closer to us in spirit than Mikhail Svetov with his dreams of a kind Moscow master. But Mikhail possesses a very valuable ability to pique people’s interest in libertarianism, even if they previously had no clue about it. Later they will figure out the subject and gradually move away from Mikhail’s position, but as an appetizer, Svetov is good.

Therefore, we are very glad that Mikhail Svetov is planning to visit us at the end of September for the Montelibero festival (the website has just been created, please bear with us, it will be updated). And since he is coming, he will, of course, give a presentation. The topic has not been decided yet.

I will also be speaking, providing a brief overview of what the people of Montelibero have managed to achieve in a little over two years, and what still lies ahead for them.

But such presentations are only a small part of the program; after all, it’s not a conference, but a festival. Let’s have some fun—it motivates one to live.

Fucking circus

It is quite difficult to add anything original to the explosion of all sorts of analytics and meme-making that has occurred over the last couple of days regarding the tank getting stuck in the circus gates.

The most realistic version of what happened seems to me to be the one proposed by Alexei Shustov, (who, by the way, recently released a new edition of his book After the State, I still can’t find the time to read it and post a review), so I am now spared the need to provide my own version.

The most balanced suggestion, in my view, on how this incident should have been utilized, was encountered with Roman Popkov. In short: it was an excellent demonstration for reasonable skeptics that the Putin regime can indeed be realistically overthrown by direct violence; for this, it is sufficient to have a small army. I remember when I spoke with Peter Young from the Free Private Cities fund, I mentioned that I consider Zelensky’s biggest mistake in this war to be the refusal to recruit a full-fledged contract army from Russian citizens.

I will add, however, that generals always prepare for past wars, and now Putin will almost certainly remove from the front those couple of divisions that are theoretically supposed to protect Moscow. Thus, repeating the Prigozhin maneuver will now require far more substantial forces. Therefore, something else will likely need to be invented. Well, at least this will slightly weaken the RF at the front, which is something.

If Ukraine still does not start ramping up the rhetoric about the need for international support for the collapse of the RF, then I simply do not know what other signs its leadership needs. Not that I have a high opinion of it, but the move seems completely obvious today. Simply announce that Ukraine will immediately recognize the statehood of any subject of the RF that secedes from it. It is not so important whether Ukraine can guarantee the protection of each such new state. It is important that this becomes a routine part of political rhetoric, a common place for any decent politician. Does a subject of the RF have the right to separate from the RF? Of course it does, because the Moscow regime is criminal and illegitimate. Period. Nothing more to discuss.

Only I fear that nothing will change in the Ukrainian fucking circus either. They will simply continue to grind down the Russian army in the designated corner and beg the West for equipment; no other lines were written for them.

Do you think it is possible in the future for technologies to emerge that will divide humanity into superhumans and serfs, for whom this will not be accessible?

For example, through gene editing, mind uploading, immortality-granting drugs, etc. Where will this lead? Does libertarianism have any original answer to this?

Will such technologies spell the end of the ideas of freedom?

For instance, Mises believes that tyranny collapses precisely because, due to nepotism, the mediocrely capable oligarchs are replaced by their untalented children, leading to such inefficiency that the state becomes unable to perform even the role of a bandit. How do we fight tyrannies in the future if imperfect mortal bandits are replaced by perfect and immortal ones?

Nenavision

Suppose that our technology provides only individual, non-heritable non-aging, and no other superpowers. Simply, there is now an option for an insane amount of money to ensure the absence of age-related degradation of the body.

Let us also assume that access to non-aging is granted only by money. If there were some actor capable of denying access to the technology, one could speculate about a ban on immortality for dictators.

Finally, let us assume there is some factor that prevents the technology from becoming significantly cheaper over time—meaning the proportion of non-aging people in the population will grow very slowly. Otherwise, we would have to consider a rather short transition period before moving to a completely immortal humanity, but the question is about something else entirely.

So, we have a non-aging Putin, and a hundred non-aging billionaires across the rest of the RF. Will much change in the style of governing the country? No. The degradation of politics, and subsequently the economy in the RF, is caused not by Putin’s physical degradation, nor by the shortening of his planning horizons, but on the contrary, by the consolidation of his power and the centralization of all decision-making processes in himself. A dictator may rise on a wave of fighting a certain crisis for which he is most competent, and may even beneficially influence the situation in the country, but other crises require other competencies, and without the rotation of power, the state will quickly lose the early achievements of the dictatorship. Well, except perhaps that the dictator will not lose his passion for feasts and harems over time, so he might become less interested in playing tank games and reading Ilyin.

The same applies to business empires. Will Buffett suddenly understand the power of Bitcoin if he physically strengthens and no longer fears death from old age? No, he will still have his set of time-tested criteria for asset evaluation. Business empires will practically cease to be inherited—well, that means the children of their creators will immediately look for themselves in something else. Perhaps this will even be for the better if the son of a successful investor becomes a talented musician rather than an unsuccessful investor.

In general, I assume that the appearance of such technology will lead to the division of humanity not into superhumans and serfs, but into societies where there is political dynamics and societies where there is none. This division already exists, but currently the border between them fluctuates actively: yesterday’s dictatorship democratizes, yesterday’s democracy slides into shitty putinism. It will become more static: Putin’s Russia or Saudi Arabia will remain stable abscesses, while political regimes with a rotation of power will value their rotation much more.

The same goes for ancaps. A conditional Mikhail Svetov, upon achieving immortality, will not become a more effective conduit for libertarianism; he will inherit all the qualities that limit his effectiveness already now. The attractiveness of libertarianism as a system of views will not change much just because a few chosen ones are able to ensure their immortality. Although, perhaps, ambitious guys might become more intolerant of left-wing ideas because of this, because the more the state takes away, the further away that coveted immortality becomes. Therefore, the attractiveness of economic growth and the investment climate may increase relative to the attractiveness of egalitarian ideas.

Now, if we endow our immortal being with a bunch of other superpowers, then, of course, the changes will be far more serious

Preventing nuclear war under ancap

Hi! I really dislike your answers regarding the prevention of nuclear war. You say that ancaps will shift the costs onto the nomenklatura, but these answers are far from reality. A bounty of 11 million euros was placed on Lukashenko’s head, yet there weren’t even any attempts to eliminate him.

Suppose there is a nomenklatura sitting in a very deep bunker under a densely populated city. They are protected by loyal security services.
What will libertarians do if this nomenklatura starts a nuclear war against Ancapistan (=what do they threaten with to prevent it)? It would be preferable to provide some specific military measures.

Nenavision

Okay, let’s imagine such a picture. Zelensky arrives at the front to hand out another box of medals, and there he is suddenly kidnapped by an enemy sabotage and reconnaissance group and taken to the RF. Next, they push a peace treaty on him, which he agrees to sign publicly. At the solemn signing ceremony, he inevitably gets within handshake distance of Putin, after which he clenches his jaw, breaks a fake tooth—in short, some trash in the spirit of Frank Herbert happens, only Vladimir Putin turns out not to be as lucky as Vladimir Harkonnen, and also dies.

In the RF, power is seized by a club of angry patriots, who move into a bunker under Moscow, surround themselves with loyal security services, and give the order for an immediate general mobilization, as well as bring the Strategic Missile Forces to a state of highest combat readiness.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the central government is paralyzed by another Maidan; control over the supply of the front, as well as other state functions, are taken over by volunteers; the Maidan declares the complete abolition of taxes and complete freedom of private initiative, as well as general armament—in short, literally a month after the incident with the kidnapping of Zelensky, Ukraine becomes an ancap society in a first approximation.

Great, a minimally plausible picture of a deadly deadlock between a fanatic dictator and an ancap society with clear territorial borders has been established. How do the ancaps defend themselves against Girkin? They have no nuclear bomb, no medium-range missiles, no strategic aviation, no unified command, and no time to waste.

The ancaps react to the threat in their favorite manner: everyone does what they are best at. For the most part, this means occupying themselves with matters far more important than war. For example, importing goods from the EU into Ukraine duty-free, and also exporting them duty-free through the leaky Russian border in the area of a conditional Shebekino, and selling them there for bitcoins.

The front gradually collapses because the mobilized realize that there will be no criminal prosecution for desertion, provided their own don’t shoot them in the back immediately. Armaments and ammunition from warehouses gradually and mysteriously disappear into someone’s private stores. Several highly motivated groups prepare for partisan warfare, while the less flexible prepare to stand to the death on their tiny section of the front, but for some reason the enemy prefers to attack where they are not.

Girkin realizes that he no longer needs general mobilization, and that he can do without nuclear weapons as well. He focuses on organizing an effective occupation administration, plus he is forced to pay more and more attention to the internal agenda. He has to climb out of the bunker more and more often, travel through the regions, solve purely civilian issues—and after three months he is finally killed by Ukrainian partisans, somewhere on the way from Vladivostok airport to the city. The first car hits a mine, then the motorcade is shelled by mortars, and then the survivors are cleaned up with small arms. This episode becomes the occasion for previously scattered attacks on representatives of Girkin’s occupation administration to turn into a full-scale hunt.

Power in Russia is taken by Sobyanin, who orders an immediate retreat to the 2014 borders and begins bargaining with the international community for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Crimea as well, replacing them with UN peacekeepers. Along the way, he releases Navalny, stating that he would be happy to see his former opponent in the post of Moscow mayor, as he is not in doubt that this time he will definitely win the election. But that is a completely different story.

A column of light armored vehicles is an easy target