Автор: Анкап-тян

Marriage

Legal marriage is a tripartite transaction. Can an unregistered marriage (a bilateral transaction) be considered ideologically correct from the perspective of ancap and libertarianism? If so, can it be said that a state that has “banned same-sex marriage” (actually just refusing to enter into certain types of transactions, but not criminalizing homosexuality and relationships—as in Russia, for example) is violating LGBT rights? Under ancap, will there be something similar to a registry office (ZAGS)?

Moskvich

Marriage has many functions, but none of them is defining. Marriage can be a union for joint housekeeping, but there are also guest marriages. It can be a cooperative for raising children, but there are childless marriages, as well as raising children outside of marriage. It can be used to establish the right to legally represent one’s marital partner—but in a traditional society, this right may remain with the partners’ parents.

The most general thing that can be said about almost any marriage is that it is a relationship involving a certain sufficiently long-term and sufficiently broad trust between people, which then manifests in the spheres where these people wish to realize themselves. In housekeeping—so be it. In sex—so be it. In children—so be it. In political activism—here, marriage is an indispensable thing.

Why inform others of one’s marital status? Primarily to notify those around that in a certain human collective, its participants grant each other such-and-such rights. Does such a need persist in a stateless society? Yes, it does, because people generally value predictability. This person is taken; one should not hit on them. Great, that is certainty. From this person, one can demand the debt of another person because they have a joint household. Convenient? Convenient. A child should not be unclaimed; someone is certainly responsible for them. If you see an unclaimed child, you know exactly what to do. Little girl, where are your parents?

Thus, as long as people enter into long-term trusting relationships, they will most likely communicate this at least to their constant circle of communication. But do they need to bother and formalize their relationships with a serious formal contract implying the possibility of forced enforcement? That is unlikely. People frequently conduct commercial activities without drawing up papers, let alone organizing daily life, regulating sex, or undertaking a joint crossing of the Atlantic on a yacht. Marriage is a relationship of trust, and people are usually inclined not to spoil these relationships with paperwork.

Another matter is that others may care about what is happening between people in a marriage. What if it is same-sex, closely related, with teenagers, animals, or dolls. Even in the most tolerant libertarian society, those around want to be sure, at the very least, that the marriage is voluntary, and that there is no domestic violence or other archaic chthonic horrors. But even here, it is completely unimportant to others what kind of paper these relationships are formalized with; they will hit the face, not the passport.

I believe that under ancap, a notary system or something similar will be preserved—for example, instead of notaries, volunteers with a good reputation could act as witnesses. These witnesses will confirm the facts of concluding certain agreements, a tiny fraction of which will be marriage contracts. I do not believe in the mass recording of transactions in blockchains; they either have a terrible shortage of space, or their expansion will quickly run into economic and technological limitations. On the other hand, current registry offices are also big data collection points, but this role is already shifting to various online social platforms, and it is unlikely they will handle it any worse.

E-karma

I read Latynina’s article about the subject with great interest. In some ways, it echoes a recent video by Libertarian Band about the Metaverse, but the article is far more detailed than the video. From an economic standpoint, the e-karma scheme looks decent, although it’s not entirely clear to me how it is protected against bot farms. Here, I lack the IT qualifications to assess the viability of the idea presented, so it would be great if some IT specialist could do so in the comments.

Eric Mack. Libertarianism. Translation of the chapter on Smith and justice.

Alex Dvoretsky chipped in another 6,000 rubles, which means a fresh chapter from Eric Mack is on its way, presenting a fairly original theory of justice by a certain David Schmidtz. I have just started a new and quite time-consuming job, so as is my habit, I am posting the text without notes for now; they will follow later—otherwise, I would have to delay publication by another day.

It was interesting to translate because the author under consideration is anything but a dogmatist (dogmatists are dry and boring in their meaningless uncompromisingness). In my own book, I limited the consideration of justice only to conflicts, stating that justice is the feeling of proportionality between the damage inflicted and the value of the object of conflict. Schmidtz, however, expands this concept, stating that I am speaking only of desert, whereas there are other irreducible elements of justice, such as reciprocity, equality, and need. And by building fair norms based on a single element, a person will most likely begin to contradict other elements of justice. In short, Schmidtz offers plenty to chew on.

Metaverses from Libertarian Band

Libertarian Band has released a very high-quality video about metaverses, integrating this trendy topic into the general frameworks of libertarian strategy—in other words, showing the prospects that open up for us as this phenomenon continues to develop. For some time, this new space will remain a territory of relative freedom, and if we strive to avoid centralization in this sphere from the start, there is a chance to keep this freedom under reliable protection.

At the same time, the ideas regarding the merging of the real world and the metaverse via NFT and RFID seem too raw to me for now, and it is not certain that any breakthroughs can be achieved here at all: nothing can prevent someone from attaching a buffalo NFT token to an elephant, and in this situation, a remote user will not even be able to follow Kozma Prutkov’s advice and “not believe their eyes,” because in their metaverse, they will see a buffalo, period.

2021, results

I have reread the summaries of past years: 2018 (joyful), 2019 (confident), and 2020 (gloomy). Fortunately, I managed to reverse the trend, and I look forward to 2022 with much more enthusiasm than I once did for 2021.

The year was devastating for the Russian opposition, to which I belonged to some extent, although I didn’t pay much attention to politics. Many left the country under the threat of immediate criminal prosecution, fleeing into a void, and I imagine it was not easy for them. I was far luckier: I left the country to build an offline libertarian utopia, and this utopia, Montelibero, has made decent progress in its implementation. There are already two dozen of us who moved to Montenegro to build a local ersatz-ancap, and on New Year’s Eve, for the first time in the project’s history, we will gather together at one table (one bomb could take us all out). Nevertheless, I still hope that we won’t be hit by a bomb, and that next year we will build a sufficiently reliable platform here for receiving and settling libertarians.

Another milestone for the channel was that I finally completely translated Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, and it is the largest of my projects implemented so far. Now, as a bonus, Oleg Teterevlev is recording the audiobook, and as of today, he has reached chapter 45 out of 66. I think the audiobook will also be completed in 2022. The translation of three more books is being carried out in parallel, encouraged by your donations, and will sooner or later be finished as well—at least after The Machinery of Freedom, I am now certain that I am capable of tackling something large-scale without abandoning it halfway.

A third important undertaking that is in full swing is the writing of my own book on ancap. The first part, containing an outline of the libertarian worldview, is completely ready; the second part—about life under ancap—is being written. Who knows—maybe I’ll manage to finish it in 2022 as well.

As for the channel’s metrics, they can be seen below on the postcard kindly sent by the statbot. In terms of the number of readers, I’ve hit a plateau; the channel turned out to be a mid-tier one, and it’s unlikely to grow at a noticeable pace without aggressive marketing. This doesn’t really bother me now, because other interesting activities have been found. Again, while my readers may be few in number, they are proactive: among the settlers in Montelibero, more than half joined the project specifically through my channel, which is, of course, flattering. I hope this trend continues in the future.

Happy New Year to all libertarians. Do not be afraid to take on ambitious projects, stick by each other, and do not forget that against the backdrop of the main enemy, small internal quarrels mean nothing.

A book about ancap – describing the problems of the world

I am continuing work on the second part of the book about ancap. If at first I briefly presented a beautiful picture of what an ideal anarcho-capitalist society looks like, now I am starting to explain in meticulous detail what obstacles might get in our dancer’s way. To start, I’m talking about the general imperfection of the world, and so far I have covered the problem of fuzzy boundaries and the problem of externalities.

Beyond that, I’ve taken a pause to think about whether to dump some more global problems here, or to move on to approaches for resolving them.

Montelibero project news, issue 8

In the previous issue, I mostly talked about how the work on the land of our future settlement is progressing, and now, perhaps, I will start with this topic as it is the most grounded.

We have already laid some of the roads inside the settlement, cleared some stumps, started digging a septic tank, and so on—in short, the routine is underway. Importantly, it rained heavily for almost two weeks without interruption, and we were able to verify that the road was not washed away. However, in one place, we further improved the drainage afterward so that the stream flows along the shoulder rather than wherever it pleases.

Equipment for a small solar power plant is expected to arrive this week—we hesitated for a long time about whether to get involved in this, but electricity prices from the central grid are expected to rise significantly in the foreseeable future, so it seems that autonomous generation is exactly what the doctor ordered right now. This electricity is intended to power the trailer so that we can finally station a security guard there. As for the remaining energy, we are thinking of using it for Bitcoin mining. As an experiment, an old miner was purchased, which is currently buzzing at my home, and after the power plant is installed, it will move to the settlement.

But it’s not just about Bitcoin. Specifically for hardcore gold bugs, the Montelibero fund has released gold tokens, and several ten-gram bars were purchased with the funds collected. Some of them have already been delivered to buyers, while some remain on the fund’s balance. Tokens can be purchased in any fractional shares (worldwide) and exchanged for bars in ten-gram lots (only for residents of Montenegro).

Speaking of tokens. Along with the development of the project’s tokenomics, associated specific risks are increasing: unknown parties have already released several fake tokens on the Stellar blockchain that imitate ours. To avoid falling for such things, I recommend relying only on the tokens you see on the fund’s balance. This incident with scammers has spurred us to try to move to the Liquid Network, as tokens on a Bitcoin sidechain are, of course, far more substantial. If anyone is knowledgeable about this, feel free to drop by the developers’ chat.

However, we are not being promoted by scammers alone. You already know about the Libertarian Band video dedicated to our project. In addition, a local Montenegrin news site and a large Italian community, Instituto liberale – Gruppo nazionale, have written about us. For now, they are writing based on what can be found online, but I believe that reports from the site itself in the media are just around the corner. This motivates us to settle into our construction site as quickly as possible.

Libertarian Band filmed a video about Montelibero!

In my monthly project progress reports, I tend to write more about boring matters, such as how many roads the ancaps have built, but the guys from Libertarian Band examined the entire Montelibero project starting from the basic ideas that formed its foundation, and the result is a quite decent analysis. Although it is felt, of course, that over there in Russia the material is presented in its own context, as a reproach to local libertarian politicians, but from the side, such animation of the material looks rather amusing.

I hope that in preparing the next video dedicated to our project, they will not limit themselves to setting up a wallet and familiarizing themselves with the tokenomics, but will also send a film crew to the site. And by that time, I hope we will have managed to build something, and it will be possible to live in our settlement. However, you are not obliged to wait for a new film to be released; nothing stops you from visiting us as early as tomorrow, meeting the project participants who have already moved to the country, and seeing everything with your own eyes.

Eric Mack, Libertarianism. Chapter “Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s Meta-Norms for Flourishing Individuals” was translated.

I received a generous donation of 1,000 rubles through boosty for the translation of the next chapter of Eric Mack’s book Libertarianism, but unfortunately, only one. However, the chapter itself is relatively modest in length, so I decided to start working on it without waiting for more money to accumulate.

From time to time, one reads that certain ethical systems have deontological or consequentialist foundations. However, sometimes virtue ethics is also singled out as a separate category. According to Eric Mack, the arguments of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl rest precisely on this third leg, deriving from virtue ethics the same familiar principles. Thus, libertarian ethics can proudly sit on this tripod and proclaim truths from it that will be firmly grounded, no matter the listener’s philosophical approach.

I feel compelled to remind you, a little more insistently than usual, that various labor-intensive projects like translations progress much better if you donate—simply because without your money coming in, I’m more distracted by trying to earn it elsewhere. And it’s also worth keeping in mind that I currently have three books being translated simultaneously, and your donations are your vote for which one will be finished first.

How will bankruptcy work under ancap?

anonymous mouse Bazhenova

During the Adam Smith Readings, I was live-tweeting individual theses of the presentations, and I specifically noted the report by Artem Seversky, which was dedicated to the phenomenon of bankruptcy from the perspective of economics and normative philosophy. Artem was also kind enough to publish a text version of his report on Liter (I have advertised it before; it is a blog dedicated to libertarian theory under the auspices of the LPR—the one of the two LPRs that includes Fedyukin, Bazhenov, and, in fact, Seversky).

In short, the report boils down to the following. Bankruptcy is a situation of simultaneous claims of legitimate entitlements to a single mass of assets that is insufficient to satisfy them. Such a situation can arise even if all the transactions that led to it were voluntary and libertarian principles were not violated—and yet, there is legal uncertainty: it is impossible to satisfy all claims simultaneously, which means a certain procedure for their satisfaction must be developed.

Next, Artem points out that for the procedure of satisfying such claims to not violate libertarian principles itself, it must follow certain rules. One must account for the possibility that different claims may have different priorities because they arose from different legal relationships. It is one thing to have an obligation to pay wages or pay for the delivery of equipment, and another to settle with an investor. It will also be necessary to reconcile the different time preferences of creditors: some are willing to accept installment payments if they can get more, while others are eager to recover the debt as quickly as possible. In effect, for libertarians, this means the necessity of recognizing common property, however much they may wish to reduce everything to private property alone. Finally, it should be considered that legitimate claims to the debtor’s property are held not only by those who have already demanded payment, but also by those who have not yet done so—however, if the bankruptcy procedure affects their interests as well, it will also draw them into the general conflict. For example, if a house is seized for an unpaid business development loan, the interests of not only the debtor but also his household members will suffer, and they will have legitimate claims against the creditors. In other words, Artem argues that to develop a bankruptcy procedure, libertarians will inevitably have to arrive at the concept of legal entities, however much they may want to reduce everything to personal responsibility without unnecessary red tape.

So how will bankruptcies work under ancap? Naturally, by using all the theoretical developments created back during estatism, but filtering out at least those norms that imply state intervention. Bankruptcy law currently differs from state to state; similarly, under ancap, it will differ across various societies—some nuances will be in use in some places, others in others, while maintaining certain general framework principles. If the counterparties have not agreed in advance on which norms to apply, they will have to improvise, which will likely mean that in settling the conflict, the court will first need to determine which specific bankruptcy law would be most comfortable for all participants in the process, as well as for the judge’s notions of justice.

Of course, under ancap, some communities may retain norms that violate libertarian principles. For example, in the village of Tatarkovo, it might be accepted that a debtor is liable for a debt, no matter what it is, with all their property and even their own body as part of that property. This circumstance will simply have to be kept in mind by potential counterparties of the residents of Tatarkovo village. We can only assume that as greater trust is established in society and as time preferences decrease, business practices—including in conflict situations such as bankruptcies—will evolve toward greater leniency, at least toward honest entrepreneurs who misjudged the risks.