Автор: Анкап-тян

Is an attempt to build ancap possible in some country against the backdrop of a temporary weakening or collapse of its power structure?

For example, if Putinism collapses. Roughly what steps would need to be taken for this to happen?

Muscovite

Let’s imagine, for example, a scenario like this. Putin launches an offensive in Donbas with a simultaneous sea landing in southwestern Ukraine. To do this, among other things, he scrapes together the remains of the ground forces, airborne troops, and naval infantry from the Far East. Meanwhile, due to difficulties exporting Sakhalin oil and gas, employees there start being put on part-time hours, and in some places, are laid off. A small isolated donor region (smaller than Montenegro in population) finds itself in a situation of a sharp drop in the standard of living. Moreover, this is a region where the number and influence of public sector employees are relatively small, while the voice of working people, conversely, is very important.

It is known that the greatest discontent occurs among affluent people whose opportunities have been sharply curtailed. So the breeding ground for protest is ready, and these are people who care very little about some Ukraine; they want to work, earn money, and have Moscow stay out of their way.

What happens next? Next, for example, the governor flies to Moscow once again and doesn’t make it. Well, you know, the aviation fleet requires constant maintenance and supplies of imported spare parts, and those are in short supply in the country. New elections must be organized. And it so happens that on the island there are many people interested in breaking away from Moscow, and at the same time, from the sanctions. Moreover, they are supported by at least the Japanese and American shareholders of the island’s oil and gas projects. A representative of the LDPR (where, after the death of the party’s founder, the power vertical couldn’t be properly repaired) runs for election—an ethnic Ukrainian (there are quite a few of them on the island) and an entrepreneur. Attempts to remove him from the election turn into a storming of the regional election commission by the candidate’s support group, after which the candidate announces that the elections will take place with the participation of international observers. The local Rosgvardia has its garage gates blocked with concrete blocks, and it reports to Moscow that it is busy organizing the unblocking; in the meantime, it releases infantry onto the streets without transport, which reduces its effectiveness to zero, and it simply observes the proceedings.

Over the next few days, Japan sends a large number of extremely polite international observers. The LDPR candidate wins the election, after which the island’s parliament adopts a resolution stating that Sakhalin is beginning a transition process toward voluntary accession to Japan with the right to broad autonomy. It is announced that Sakhalin will stop paying taxes to the Russian federal budget immediately; as for Japan, the issue of taxation is postponed until the final stages of the transition period. All customs restrictions against Japan are unilaterally abolished.

The RF, ready to send an army to bring the island to submission, slows down. Firstly, there is no army, only the Pacific Fleet. In principle, that is enough, but secondly, the Moscow leadership is explained that in its current form, Sakhalin is an ideal offshore zone for bypassing sanctions, and such opportunities should not be thrown away. Therefore, Moscow sends its representative to the committee for organizing the transition process, and there he does his part in prolonging this bureaucratic process.

And after that, everyone likes how it turned out. Taxes are radically reduced, Russian businesses eagerly register where there are no sanctions, and Japanese businesses engage in the development of the island. The RF ensures that the rights of the Russian-speaking population are not violated. Japan ensures that the rights of Japanese settlers are not violated. In the end, thirty years later, when everyone has already forgotten that there was such a Putin and that there was such a Ukrainian war, the transition process continues on the island, because there are no fools to complete it. This is not ancap, but a pretty good approximation of it.

I love fairy tales.

Not the Statue of Liberty, but it’ll do for ancap

Morazanograd and Montelibero

I recently read an interesting article by Spencer McCallum on the friendly site panarchy.ru with the tedious title The Community Enterprise: Market Competition, Land and the Environment. Alexey Korshunov, who posted this article, claims that one of the three private contractual jurisdictions in Honduras, Ciudad Morazán—which he refers to in a Russian style as Morazanograd—operates on the principles described in it, and in which he, as it happened, became the first resident. (By the way, not long ago he crowdfunded a ticket to the most famous Honduran ZEDE called Prospera, traveled there, and subsequently posted a report on the state of affairs in this flagship project)

Briefly, McCallum’s article contains the following ideas. The value of a piece of land can be defined as the sum of external effects directed toward that plot from all other property objects. If the landowner is separated from its immediate use and rents it out to several tenants, they are usually extremely interested in maximizing the rental income, and therefore have market incentives to create the most favorable environment possible for the tenants. For this reason, the author argues, where land is occupied by individual houses or, worse, apartment buildings where the apartments are owned by the residents, each owner maximizes their own living convenience; however, where significant areas are rented out to numerous tenants, a lush variety of ways to use these spaces begins to flourish, from cafes and shops to coworking spaces and laboratories. The task of the administrator of a particular business center essentially boils down to providing utilities to tenants and minimizing friction between tenants and the state. A kind of “protection racket” for the healthy person.

Morazanograd is designed to provide its residents with the maximum possible security for Honduras, acceptable living conditions, and a place to earn money. In creating the Montelibero settlement, we are not entirely following the recommendations laid out in the article: instead of leaving all the land under the ownership of the foundation, developing it centrally, and renting it only to residents, we sliced approximately two-thirds into small private pieces for independent development, while the rest was indeed left for rent. Thus, we should end up with a field experiment to see which concept works better. In any case, we are still at the stage of laying the centralized infrastructure, much like Morazanograd, except that we are not building a fence around the settlement, as Montenegro is not a place where one should fear the neighbors.

Dear-to-the-heart Morazanograd construction hassles, we still have all this ahead of us

The Limits of the Competence of a Libertarian Court

You described a situation where, to resolve a conflict between a rapist and a victim, the court takes measures that physically isolate only the former from the latter, but not the former from society as a whole. But what about the fact that a rapist, who has demonstrated in practice a readiness for violence, continues to pose a potential danger to others while remaining free, even if in another city?

In other words, how should one deal with pathological personalities like Alexander Pichushkin, who, due to their mental characteristics, will continue to commit crimes as long as it is physically possible?

What are the general limits of deterrent measures for a court following libertarian principles? Does this mean that forced deportation to another city is permissible, but, for example, life-long house arrest or placement in a psychiatric clinic is not?

Anonymous question

The court can offer any recommendation to resolve a conflict. For example, “since the defendant’s actions are primarily caused by his mental state, the court believes that the conflict will be resolved after the defendant pays the plaintiff such-and-such compensation, as well as undergoes psychological rehabilitation until complete recovery, confirmed by a medical board including a representative of the plaintiff, a representative of the rehabilitation institution, and a representative of such-and-such independent medical non-profit organization.” The problem is that within its decision, the court can only operate with the funds available to the parties of the process, including those voluntarily provided by third parties. If the defendant is not wealthy enough for his assets to pay for his rehabilitation, and the plaintiff or third-party benefactors are not generous enough to make such a broad gesture, then the court’s recommendations will in no way resolve the conflict; there will be no means to execute them.

In such cases, cheaper solutions will inevitably come into play. The simplest is a banal declaration of outlawry, in the Old Icelandic spirit. The first person they meet has the right to kill the defendant, and the court, by its authority, guarantees that other means of resolving the conflict in this case do not work or are prohibitively expensive. And that’s it—then the defendant searches for a stump to hide under themselves, to live there and keep a low profile.

The poorer and harsher a society is, the larger the proportion of court decisions of the “outlawry” type will be, and the fewer hesitations individuals will experience when encountering such an outlaw before exterminating them. If memory serves me correctly, the longest term an outlaw managed to survive in Iceland was sixteen years, and this remarkable epic was honored with a separate saga.

Accordingly, the wealthier and more benevolent a society is, the larger the proportion of court decisions of the “hand over to the guardianship of such-and-such charitable foundation for rehabilitation” type will be. Again, nothing prevents such foundations from picking up those who have already been declared outlaws. What will compel people to donate money to such foundations? An unwillingness to personally shoot outlaws who wander onto the lawn in front of their house. And so—you donate some money to good people and be happy.

Admit it, an unpleasant sight. Why would you want that in your yard?

Routinization of the nightmare

The war in Ukraine has entered a protracted stage and is beginning to slowly slip from the current agenda. The most unpleasant outcome this could lead to is:

  • The front stabilizes, the sides dig in, and losses decrease;
  • The Russian economy slowly degrades under sanctions, but the political structure proves resilient enough, and the state does not collapse;
  • The Ukrainian economy slowly degrades under shelling, and effectively only those fighting and those servicing the war remain in the country; the majority of those left either scatter far from the front line or leave the country, and once gone, gradually get used to their new place of residence;
  • Russians, who failed to flee the RF in the early stages of the war, gradually lose the ability to do so: they are welcome nowhere, they run out of money for tickets, and international flights will cease to exist. Wittingly or unwittingly, they tighten their belts and begin to survive;
  • By the way, regarding the replenishment of the RF army with cannon fodder, there is no need to worry in this scenario: it is enough to give the conscript’s family army rations and immediately deprive them of them as soon as the conscript deserts or surrenders. Son in the army—parents are fed. Many would be willing to accept such a deal.
  • And this continues for years.

To some extent, this scenario could be hindered by the opening of new hotspots of tension around the RF: the remnants of Russian troops will begin to be pushed out of Transnistria and the Caucasus; the RF will try to act on all fronts and will ultimately break down relatively quickly. However, one should not rely solely on the help of Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Georgia. It is better to continue pushing the RF toward a rapid military defeat and political collapse, primarily through the efforts of Russians.

Initially, I proposed exclusively “herbivore” measures, such as burning down military recruitment offices. This creates chaos in the troop mobilization system, entails no collateral casualties, looks effective, and has an inspiring effect on any supporter of freedom. Now, however, I see that in many places they have gone further: there are reports of sabotage on the railways. Again, without human casualties. Relay cabinets, which as I understand it, serve for cargo dispatching, are being destroyed. That is, the throughput capacity of the road is sharply reduced, but trains do not derail. A mass of other sabotage proposals of varying degrees of ingenuity is circulating online, but for the most part, it boils down to provoking failures in the troop supply system.

What interests us much more is the collapse of the country. And here, it is very difficult for me to think of any political activity in the RF that would allow a libertarian to keep their “white coat” on. Propose simplifying business operations and lowering taxes? Advocate for simplifying the circulation of civilian weapons? Call for a complete transition to a highly professional contract army? Are you serious? Now? In Russia? Honestly, now, on the contrary, it would make sense to support the communists in everything. Give them full nationalization of industry! Price controls! Export restrictions on goods outside their production region! Replace Nabiullina with Glazyev! IT specialists to the machine shops! What else do they want? Let them have it. Otherwise, they will just blame capitalism again for bringing the country to its knees. No, let it collapse under Glazyev.

So, honest to God, I cannot think of a more worthy goal for Russian libertarians today than to leave the RF as quickly as possible and leave the country to be torn apart by leftists. As Ayn Rand enjoined. As Navalny suggested to libertarians. Square your shoulders.

Sorry for the choice of illustration from the popular anime Attack on Titan…

Montelibero project news, issue 10

The previous issue was almost entirely dedicated to how we are intricately digging up the ground at the site of the future libertarian settlement so that it remains drier during the rainy season. I would prefer to continue talking about such domestic trifles, but since then, you know, a war has broken out.

Crisis centers to assist Ukrainian refugees were deployed in several cities in Montenegro. Volunteers from our project took an active part in the work of the Bar center. In Budva, a participant of the Montelibero project began helping refugees obtain residence permits on a pro bono basis. We also attempted to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine, primarily medications, but it was unsuccessful: too many borders and bureaucratic hurdles; such things would be easier to handle from countries bordering Ukraine.

Sanctions have greatly complicated life not only for those who remain in Russia feeding Putin’s regime with taxes, but also for those who moved to more decent places in advance. For instance, it has become much harder for us to transfer Russian investments to Montenegro to finance construction, and those of us who worked remotely for Russian companies faced both a sharp decrease in income in euro equivalent due to the fall of the ruble, and additional commissions to turn rubles on Russian bank cards into euro cash. EURMTL — our internal euro stablecoin — is also creaking, since its main feature was always free conversion between tokens and euro cash, and now, apparently, we will not be able to avoid the appearance of cash-out fees.

Another direct consequence of the war was that many project participants, who had previously been slowly planning their move to Montenegro, were forced to urgently speed up and rush here in haste. In one month, the size of the Montenegrin libertarian community doubled, and now there are more than forty of us here. Gathering everyone together in some cafe became impossible, so we rented a separate pavilion that had stood abandoned since the time of Covid and began to tidy it up. Now we have a place for meetings, and soon we plan to start giving lectures on libertarianism there. This is quite relevant because we have already become quite noticeable to the local Russian-speaking diaspora, and people are keenly interested in who we are and what motivates us. In the good old days, when the activity of the libertarian party was flourishing in Russia, in no Russian city with a population of 20,000 people (like Bar) or even 40,000 people (counting Budva) did the number of libertarian activists even come close to four dozen, so we have already created a concentration of libertarians higher than it ever was anywhere in the RF, and this is only the beginning. Forgive me, I’m starting to sound like Svetlov, I need to tone down the pathos.

Despite all the problems described above, construction in the Montelibero settlement continues. Utilities are being laid throughout the site: sewage pipes and channels for everything else: water pipes, cables, and so on.

We are waiting for the results of the parcelization to finally be reflected in the state cadastre so that the land can be divided among the co-owners, but the Montenegrin state is an exceptionally slow thing. It is possible that the first houses will begin to be built even before the property rights to the plots are fixed.

It is still unclear whether a delegation from us will go to Liberticon, but we have agreed with the organizers to place our advertisements, and we also asked one of the Russian expat-libertarians living in the Czech Republic to present our project.

In short, now even the complete closure of the borders with Russia will not stop us; the foundation is already sufficient to continue growing without the influx of new Russian immigrants. But a nuclear war in Europe, perhaps, could seriously damage our plans; we would like to do without it.

The book about ancap – finished polishing the section on human imperfection

I have finished the chapter about the likely approaches in an anarcho-capitalist society to solving problems related to the fact that a real person is by nature not necessarily always fully ready to act as a full legal subject, as well as the fact that their planning horizon may in some cases be extremely short. Now all that remains is to finish the section on the non-ideality of society, and then I can summarize the second part of the book.

As a reminder, the book can be read online by chapters, or it can be downloaded for offline reading in e-book formats. I suspect the latter will be relevant for most only after the book is completed, but just in case, I keep this file up to date. And while I’m at it, I’ll remind you that I am always glad to receive your donations and comments. Regarding this book, I welcome comments even more, as they can help improve the text.

A book about ancap – analyzing the imperfection of man

After venting about the sudden outbreak of war, I took a bit of a break, and now I am gradually returning to my routine. I have started the second section of the second part of the book on ancap—it sounds soothingly boring and mundane, exactly what the doctor ordered.

Right out of the gate, I wrote a short introduction to the section, a chapter on the fact that a person is not fully a legal subject (ancap and children are an eternal theme), as well as a chapter on the fact that humans are mortal, and this also hinders the triumphant march of ancap.

Humans have many other shortcomings, but I will leave the dwelling on them for next time, and perhaps then I’ll get around to discussing what we should do with all of this.

A Positive Agenda for International Politics

Let’s talk about something good.

The international community has managed to cause the Russian economy great pain in a very short time. In principle, this is quite enough to bury the current regime in the RF, should it decide to keep playing out an already lost war. But this will a) take a long time, b) bring enormous losses to all states and private companies that joined the sanctions against the RF, c) in no way help a fundamental solution to the problem of aggression by a nuclear power against a non-nuclear one (the PRC can wait until the governments that so joyfully implemented sanctions against the RF are swept away by an opposition promising a return to normalcy—and immediately after that move to restore its own territorial integrity across the strait).

How to solve the problem faster, cheaper, and more reliably? Simply use not only the stick, but also the carrot. You are already trying to apply this method by offering Russian pilots rewards for flying military aircraft abroad, but, agree, this is small-scale; act on a larger scale. Declare that your sanctions are only against the RF. If any territorial entity declares its separation from the RF, states that it does not support the RF’s invasion of Ukraine, and joins the sanctions against the RF, promise to immediately recognize the sovereignty of this new state, admit it to the UN, recognize its nuclear status if nuclear warheads are located on its territory—and, since this state is not the RF, no sanctions will apply to it.

For decades, the leadership of the RF has told its population that the collective West dreams of dismembering Mother Russia. So, bring this nightmare to life! Let Vladimir, the gatherer of Russian lands, go down in history as the one who left Russia as a principality the size of the Moscow region. It would be elegant. It would be instructive. It would put the PRC in its place.

A compact state, whose activity mostly consists of ensuring the operation of infrastructure and legal frameworks, is something that even libertarians agree to tolerate with some distaste. Yes, it is an outdated interface, but perhaps it is worth preserving temporarily for reasons of backward compatibility until the last statists die out naturally. However, vast empires are a dark past that belonged in the dustbin of history a hundred years ago, and there is simply no reason to preserve the RF (or the PRC) within its existing borders. If even the Ukrainian crisis does not push these empires toward collapse, it is frightening to imagine how great a crisis these empires will cause next time.

Anti-Ukrainian post, update

The previous post sparked a number of critical remarks. To ensure they don’t go unanswered, I am not editing that publication, but rather releasing a supplement.

First, I messed up, and instead of Zelensky, I published another man in overalls, a certain head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, Vitaly Kim. I wish many years of life to this owner of cheerful socks! For myself, I wish for a bit more attentiveness when looking at pictures, although I realize this is hardly feasible.

Second, I was quoted the legal norms based on which the distribution of weapons was carried out. They imply presenting a passport, enrolling in the territorial defense, certain other formalities, and, most disgustingly, an obligation under threat of criminal prosecution to return the received state property within ten days after the lifting of martial law. I believe the wretchedness of these norms will be slightly more than completely negated by their non-fulfillment. Almost certainly, the lion’s share of the issued firearms will eventually be tragically lost in battle according to the documents—much like hunting rifles have a striking tendency to sink according to the documents during duck hunting.

Anti-Ukrainian post

As a series of posts directed against the Russian state was published, about forty people unsubscribed from my Telegram channel, and now I intend to exacerbate the situation by taking a swipe at the state of Ukraine.

The Great Patriotic War is taking place in Ukraine. The national spirit is strong, and the Javelins are fast; if only there were a no-fly zone, the occupiers would have been destroyed in a week, and without it, the task will stretch until summer, provided, of course, that the “snuffbox” factor doesn’t play a role. The state trusts its citizens so much that it distributes combat weapons to them without any documents and has officially declared that the killing of Russian soldiers by private individuals is not a criminal offense. In essence: be partisans, you have our blessing. Foreign volunteers are flocking to the country because human hunting is the most exciting of hunts, as we have read much about in the classics. To top it all off, the Ukrainian government is receiving serious amounts of aid not only in weapons and humanitarian cargo, but also in money.

The question is, why the hell does military conscription still exist in Ukraine? Why the hell are men up to 60 years old not allowed to leave the country? Firstly, this is sexism (well, that’s me lightly touching upon the “agenda”). Secondly, this is direct state slave-ownership. Thirdly, it is simply inefficient. If a man has already reached the border, he certainly does not intend to fight. He intends to get his family to a safe place, and there, in that safe place, he will at least no longer be a burden to the Ukrainian state social security system, will not increase the casualty count of the civilian population, and will hover before Russian embassies with a Ukrainian flag—and then, who knows, he might even return to join the war, but voluntarily. This is quite likely, especially given the fact that Ukraine is able to pay its soldiers quite generously, while refugees can only rely on their own savings and the help of the local Russian-Ukrainian diaspora.

The question is, why the hell has Ukraine kept border guards and especially customs officers on its western border at all? Does the state have nowhere to put its people? Does the state wish to obstruct the free movement of goods under conditions of extreme tension within civil society? Has the state lost its fucking mind? Customs should have been sent in full to the front on the first day of the war, so they could have all perished there. Or at least fired, for goodness’ sake.

In short, I am far from admiring the actions of the current Ukrainian leadership. It could destroy Putin’s occupiers no less effectively while not tyrannizing its own people. This would serve as a much more weighty moral example to the world than the president keeping an automatic rifle at his workplace. Look, Lukashenko also posed with an automatic rifle; some knight he is.