Автор: Анкап-тян

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

Montellibero’s criticism from bitcoiners

A podcast was released on the Hype Coin News channel, for which two bitcoiners wanted to invite our Soz from Montelibero to tell them about Montelibero. However, the guys failed to account for the Montenegrin polako — Soz was late, and the entire podcast took place without him. As a result, it became a conversation between a person who knows something about Montelibero and a person who knows nothing but is trying to understand.

The main question that concerned the interlocutors for most of the podcast was “why are they using some shitcoin, what’s it called, Stellar, when there is a normal, orthodox Bitcoin?”

I have two answers to this question.

The first is usability. For instance, I cannot provide a link to a post from the Hype Coin News channel, nor to the channel itself, because it is private. As for how to subscribe to it — God knows; I subscribed somehow a long time ago and no longer remember how (which is why I am simply posting the podcast right here). It is roughly the same situation with attempts to operate tokens on the Liquid Bitcoin sidechain. Yes, the MTL fund has a Bitcoin sub-fund there, but all I managed to do there was buy L-MTL tokens with Bitcoin and occasionally nudge the head Bitcoin guru manually so that he would manually transfer the dividends to my Lightning wallet. This is not a full-fledged tokenomics, but rather a reservation for Bitcoin maximalists.

But if one sets a goal, it is possible to write a custom wallet (such an attempt is discussed in the podcast) with decent usability, and the first answer would become irrelevant. So, I have prepared a second, more fundamental answer.

What do our bitcoiners see as the main advantage of Bitcoin as a platform for tokenomics? That by issuing tokens, you provably freeze Bitcoins as collateral. But if an investment fund freezes all receipts, it turns out that it is investing in Bitcoin, and only in Bitcoin. However, the MTL fund needs to invest money into one business or another. Thus, its tokens will ultimately be backed not by the original carrier of value transferred to the fund, but by obligations. It doesn’t matter what entered the system. Some bought MTL tokens with Bitcoin, some with rubles, some even with the god-forsaken Lumens. Most of these funds were then converted into euros, and those euros were used for purchases on the external market. And entries appeared on the fund’s balance sheet regarding which assets it acquired. More precisely — tokens of the assets acquired by the fund. The fund does not have a single euro — neither in bank accounts nor in cash — because such entities cannot be put into a blockchain. Instead, it has tokenized euros (which the fund’s treasurers are obliged to exchange for cash upon first request, and these are specific people, and as many as needed can be brought in). Plus tokenized businesses that bring dividends. Plus tokenized investments that one hopes will increase in price — for example, land or Bitcoin itself.

If we used tokenomics based on a Bitcoin sidechain, it would be absurd. I freeze my Bitcoin in the sidechain and receive an MTL token. Then, for the fund to invest the funds, it would need to find someone who will accept this Bitcoin frozen in the sidechain and give euros for it. And where can you find such a person?

It is clear that bitcoiners would like to see something like the Bitcoin Beach project, where there is a large local economy, and everyone within this economy keeps records and makes settlements in Bitcoin. Need land — buy it with Bitcoin. Need a tractor — buy it with Bitcoin. Need to pay taxes to the damn state — pay with Bitcoin.

Yes, in such a world, tokenomics could be based on Bitcoin. What stopped us from doing something similar? Nothing, it is simply a completely parallel task. When the Bitcoin Beach franchise comes to Montenegro, we will be able to fit into it. But for now, it is more convenient for us to use another solution, one that is cheaper and simpler.

Tokenomics is perpendicular to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is about the ability to store and transfer value without trust. Tokenomics is about the ability to monetize trust. One does not hinder the other.

As a dessert, I suggest refreshing your memory with a couple of my texts on tokenomics: part 1, part 2.

Montelibero Project News, Issue 15

Exactly two months have passed since the previous issue, let’s go through the news.

On May 24, a libertarian flag was raised over MTL-city. I hope this is not just a morale-boosting action, but also a declaration of intent to protect the territory from state encroachments; otherwise, the Montelibero flag should have been raised instead of the Gadsden flag with the snake.

I wrote that in MTL-city they promised to deliver the first apartments by summer. Well, we can conditionally consider the promise fulfilled: on May 28, the first apartment owner in MTL-city moved into their home. He worked on the construction site himself, including finishing his own apartment, which is why he moved in first, even before the full formal completion of the work.

In the last issue, I lamented that with current construction prices, I wouldn’t have enough money, and now I am forced to put my small plot of land up for sale.

The plot of 202 sq.m is conveniently located right in the geometric center of MTL-city. Communications are brought in from below, which means greater convenience for connection to the sewage system. The main road runs along the plot, which facilitates access—no need to maneuver through narrow internal paths. There are two oak trees on the plot that create extensive shade (very relevant in summer), and if there is a desire to build on a large scale, they can be cut down and sold for firewood. The plot is also burdened with a debt of 2,055 euros for the payment of general infrastructure construction. Price: 8,000 euros (including the encumbrance, it will be 10,055). Installments are possible. Contact via DM.

Montelibero was presented at two major conferences: Zuzalu (a posh gathering in Luštica Bay, with honorary citizen of Montenegro Vitalik Buterin, Dritan Abazović, who is spending his final days as the Prime Minister of Montenegro, and other famous guys like Titus Gebel) and Edcon (a two-day cryptocurrency conference, also with Buterin and various Ethereum startups). As a result, we have a number of business contacts plus an increased probability that MTL-city will have fewer problems with the legalization of buildings.

The Montelibero Wallet, which is a Telegram bot, has made significant progress in its functionality. It already supports multi-accounting, trading is possible through it (though Lobstr still has a more convenient interface for this), it is equipped with special tools for MTL fund shareholders, but most conveniently—it is now possible to deposit/withdraw funds in USDT (TRC20) or Bitcoin (Lightning) through it. That is, if before I deposited bitcoins on-chain to the fund’s wallet, and then the fund officially issued BTCMTL tokens against them, processing the decision via multi-sig, and this took a day—now the entire procedure of depositing Lightning in exchange for SATMTL tokens takes about five minutes, without involving live people in the exchange, and without commissions.

In anticipation of the yachting season, a yacht club was launched by Montelibero participants. Participants meet on Saturdays either in the first Montelibero club or in the Bar marina, and have the opportunity to order a yacht trip at discounted prices or undergo skipper training. EURMTL is accepted as payment.

The Montelibero podcast channel has become active; it currently features conversations about individual interesting employment cases in Montenegro (there are episodes about a chef and an electronics technician so far) and weekly reviews of the project’s news.

Nostr, first impressions

After the release of the post about regular automatic payments via Lightning using the Nostr protocol, it was quite logical to try and understand what this protocol is, what it can be used for, and what its prospects are.

To start, I familiarized myself with a selection of materials from Tony and the official description on GitHub from the protocol’s author. In short: Nostr is a protocol for the decentralized exchange of small texts (more precisely, scripts in JSON format).

  • Any server owner can run their own relay, which will receive such messages, store them, and forward them.
  • Any developer can write their own client that connects to one or more such relays, receives messages from them, filters and beautifies them if desired before showing them to the user (for example, loading media where there were links to it in the message), and sends the user’s messages to the relay.
  • Any user can download a client, configure which relays it connects to (if the client allows), and enjoy life.

On GitHub, it is easy to find Nostr libraries for several languages, clients (one could make a fork adapted for Montelibero), and relays (again, one can run their own relay for Montelibero’s needs).

To set up a Nostr account, it is sufficient to generate a pair of private and public keys; after that, the private key is stored, and the public one can be shared far and wide (here is mine: npub1jj4xxj47j9yjthhrd2kwklx5vl9j45ruvhl0ftdfamf7v6nx799ssf45q3), just as the creators of asymmetric encryption intended. Keys can be generated directly within a particular Nostr client (I generated mine in the Alby browser extension), via a special service, or for security, one can use a completely custom script if they have the expertise (I do not). However, I managed to link my Nostr public key to the name ancapchan@getalby.com (so-called NIP5 verification), create my own Lightning address ⚡ancapchan2018@gmail.com (which masks the address ⚡ancapchan@getalby.com), as well as link this browser extension to my website, so now, if you have it installed, its icon on the ancapchan.info website changes from yellow to blue, and when you click it, you will see an invitation to send a donation:

In general, Lightning is natively integrated into the Nostr protocol as a means of transferring value. For instance, social network clients based on Nostr offer “zaps” instead of likes, which are accompanied by the sending of a small amount of satoshis. In addition, money in the system can be used for paid relays that offer additional functionality, such as spam filters.

Overall, the protocol seems promising to me. I hope it will soon acquire a sufficiently convenient infrastructure, more people will join, and it will gradually be able to draw the attention away from current centralized solutions. I also hope that the collective intelligence of the developers participating in the Montelibero project will be enough to create their own Nostr-based solutions: their own relay, a bridge to Telegram, and much more that hasn’t even occurred to me yet.

What is the libertarian response to a claim along the lines of: “In a free market, you will be sold into slavery?”

Mr. Coupon

That’s correct, they can indeed be sold. For this to happen, slaves must be perceived as a commodity:

  • by the seller
  • by the buyer
  • by those around them.

If you are enslaved, but all potential buyers do not perceive slaves as a commodity, then congratulations, you will not be sold; you will remain a slave to whoever enslaved you. For example, the state.

If you are enslaved, but the enslaver themselves does not perceive slaves as a commodity — congratulations, you won’t be sold either; you will remain a slave to whoever enslaved you, meaning, for example, the state.

If you are enslaved, they want to sell you, a potential buyer is ready to buy, but all those around do not consider slaves to be a commodity — congratulations, a free market for slaves will not emerge, the transaction is unlikely to take place because it will be considered illegitimate, and you, again, will remain in slavery to whoever enslaved you, for example, the state.

But if everyone around considers not only the purchase and sale of slaves to be illegitimate, but the very acts of enslavement themselves — well, then — alas for you — you will not only not be sold, but you are unlikely to be enslaved at all; you will somehow survive without a master.

There is no one to enslave the poor fellow: feed him, give him a bunk, provide him with work. Even Navalny was given a bunk! And free housing!

A Boosty replacement for true bitcoiners

Until recently, a fairly significant source of income for my channel was my Boosty page, a service that allows for the collection of recurring payments. To be fair, Boosty is a way to earn from premium content, but since my premium content is free, I simply posted diary-like snippets there—not that I believed they were worth the money, but that’s just how Boosty works: you have to offer different content for different subscription levels.

Either way, that story is in the past because almost all of my ruble-based tools have been blocked, and I wouldn’t want to gift your donations to the bank once my last card is blocked. So, I started looking for a replacement, and I found one.

I have added instructions on how to use this new tool to the donations page. Donations are sent in Bitcoin using the Lightning and the trendy Nostr protocols. I borrowed the idea from the 21 Idea project, and as a trial, I set up a daily payment of 100 satoshis for it. So far, the first hundred has been deducted; we’ll see how it goes from here and how well the parameter editing works—I want to play around more with the frequency and amount of the payments.

Overall, however, I have no reason to believe that anything is seriously glitching, so you don’t have to wait until I’m done experimenting and can set up recurring donations right now. It’s currently the low season at my main job, so I have more free time, and I could devote much more attention to my channel if it gave me a way to earn.

Currently, the Bitcoin blockchain is heavily congested, so if it weren’t for Lightning, very little would be moving at all. I recommend getting some satoshis for fast Bitcoin payments as soon as possible; their popularity will clearly continue to grow rapidly. Moreover, payments on Lightning are more private than on-chain.

Why did you decide to build the basic theory through rights, rather than through freedoms?

Did it turn out that way? Is it easier to explain to liberals with remnants of religious consciousness? Are there some non-obvious pitfalls with liberties that aren’t present in an explanation through rights?

Λ (taken from the chat)

Freedom is the natural state of a human being outside of society. Robinson is free on a deserted island until Friday appears, and he has no rights, because there is no one to whom he can make claims, and no one to whom he must yield. When society emerges, it means the restriction of liberties and the appearance of rights. Since the book on ancap is dedicated specifically to life in society, it discusses rights rather, as they are generated by society itself.

A free person before the emergence of the need for ancap

Another introductory video about libertarianism from Svetov

Mikhail Svetov has released another introductory video about libertarianism.

Apparently, the very first video on the SVTV channel, “Five Minutes About Libertarianism,” through which many people indeed first learned about this ideology, had ceased to satisfy him in some way.

Let’s compare what has changed.

The old video is a tongue-twister of tightly edited libertarian talking points, weakly linked into a single logical line. Key points: libertarianism is about the fact that the end does not justify the means, about the victim’s right to protection from violence, and about the right to love and hate. Libertarianism is a moral compass. The video contains mentions of Mikhail’s personal tastes, which are unrelated to the topic.

The new video is read in the measured tone of a storyteller, equipped with simple but quite captivating animation, and is far more logically precise.

I, of course, do not like the very beginning of the video, where self-ownership is presented as something inherent and given by someone unknown, while the non-aggression principle is for some reason called a contract. Why not the other way around: a contract on self-ownership and an inherent natural right to resist violence? This is, in general, important, because according to Mikhail, violating the non-aggression contract removes a person from the legal field, and here the question arises: what exactly is the legal field?

By the way, the visuals in this part directly contradict the text. An aggressor threatens violence, thereby supposedly exiting the legal field; an external defender appears, and what does the aggressor do? He drops the knife and surrenders. That is, he resorts to a legal procedure! He demonstrates that he is no longer an aggressor, and that shooting him from all barrels is no longer so attractive in the eyes of an outside observer. In other words, the aggressor does not exit any legal field. Or rather, he exits it precisely at the moment of aggression, when it is permissible to pump him full of lead. At least, that is how it can be understood from the video.

In short, Svetov has never been distinguished by the rigor of his conceptual framework, but for a politician, this is an excessive requirement; his job is to attract an audience. The video should presumably handle this quite well, and I can boldly recommend it for distribution.