I really hope that the conference Constitution of Freedom, announced by the Adam Smith Center for this coming Sunday, will be streamed, so that I can watch and comment in real time. If not, I’ll wait for the recording. In any case, it’s pleasant that the educational part of the libertarian agenda in Russia hasn’t been completely consumed by the political one, although in the future I would like to see similar conferences here in Montenegro, of course)))
I have started on the fourth section of Eric Mackay’s book Libertarianism, dedicated to economic justice and property rights. Like the third, it consists of a short introduction and two chapters showing the views of Nozick and Hayek on the subject—apparently, for Mackay, there are no other libertarians worthy of attention on this issue (though this is likely because Mackay is writing a book on philosophy, not on history, economics, or law, which explains the selection of authors).
The chapter on Nozick examines how he tore into supporters of distributive justice, showing that to achieve some ideal end-state, they would have to launch a mechanism of permanent revolution, and to apply some single distributive model, they would have to reduce everyone to partial slavery. Nozick opposes this redistributive ecstasy with the libertarian approach well known to us, according to which the justice of a particular property right depends on the procedures by which it was acquired, rather than on the size of the property or, for example, the degree of the beneficiary’s loyalty to the party line.
I express my deep gratitude to everyone who sent in donations for the translation of this chapter; now we can start collecting for the next one. And while the money for Mackay (or for Molynneux, you love Molynneux, don’t you?) is being collected, I will return to Friedman; a chapter on the laws of the Chinese Empire awaits us.
About a month has passed since the last news release, so it’s time to briefly share a summary of the progress made.
The fact that we bought a hectare in Montenegro has finally been officially entered into the required registries. To be honest, I didn’t have the brains to personally verify this on the Montenegrin cadastral website; I have to take the word of those who understand its functionality and be content with scans of the documents. As part of the reward for my participation in the project, I reserved the right to buy back two hundred square meters at cost, but for now, anyone wishing to do so can still buy a piece for themselves—the shareholders are already threatening to start selling new land tokens with a markup soon, but they haven’t made a final decision yet.
The development of the land is going briskly in some ways and barely at all in others. The local contractor is taking forever to finish the requested volume of work for the rough laying of the road route. On the other hand, it’s still illegal to build a road until September 15, so it’s hard to make any complaints. However, our landing party is already actively engaged in the complete clearing of the plot from all kinds of unnecessary woody debris and has completed about a quarter of the work. For further road filling and concreting, the installation of electricity and water, digging the sewage system, and actually the construction itself, we have started creating a separate construction company and searching for specialized equipment to purchase, so as not to depend on unreliable local contractors in this regard.
As of today, 11 project participants have relocated to Montenegro. To avoid losing count, a counter was even added at the very bottom of the project’s main website page. We should also start assigning sequential numbers to the settlers, like in the Free State Project, so they can brag. I, for example, would have number 3. So, if someone creates a cool design for a project participant’s booklet (or image), that would be sweet, especially when handing a child a document with number 6.
At one point, we failed to meet with Titus Gebel, the author of the book on charter cities and creator of the foundation promoting them—his “Titus-related” business took him past Montenegro at the time. But now, next week, another interesting meeting is lined up—with Vera Kichanova, a distinguished activist of the Russian libertarian movement, who emigrated long ago and is now, among other things, professionally involved in the topic of charter cities. We hope Britain doesn’t put Montenegro in the red zone at the last moment, the meeting doesn’t fall through, and it proves quite educational for all participants.
One of the serious downsides of Montenegro for freelancers is turning out to be a very unfriendly banking sector. To encounter Montenegrin banks as rarely as possible, we began creating a network of horizontal connections allowing for exchanges like “I need cash euros in Bar, and the counterparty from Budva needs rubles via bank transfer to Sber.” For this, a specialized Telegram chat is mainly used for now; however, our project recently launched a private ad aggregator in the form of a website. I haven’t looked into the functionality in detail yet, but I already see what feature the site is missing: new ads should automatically be broadcast to the chat, because in Telegram a person receives notifications, whereas the website must be monitored manually, which is inconvenient. This is, of course, a makeshift solution for a transition period to build liquidity; it can be disabled later, especially when the need for the chat disappears entirely, except for very complex multi-step transactions.
I watched the conversation between Grigory Bazhenov and representatives of the European University on the topic of inequality.
I didn’t do this immediately after the video was released because the topic seemed boring and leftist to me; it is obvious that if inequality is caused by redistribution through plunder (for example, taxes) and coercion (for example, regulations), then one can oppose the consequence, but it would be more useful to eliminate the causes. And if inequality is caused by the fact that people voluntarily give more money to Alice than to Bob, then one can only be happy for Alice and reflect on whether something can be adopted from her practices so that we can get more too. But then I had a bit of free time, took a look, and didn’t regret it.
The part where it was listed that there is income inequality, wealth inequality, and inequality in the number of limbs was not very interesting. I was struck by one specific strong take that I would like to discuss—regarding inequality caused by the difference in time preference.
Its content is approximately as follows. If one economic agent has a lower time preference, and economic agents can lend to each other at interest, then, all other starting conditions being equal, in the long run, he will plunge all economic agents with a higher time preference into debt bondage, with the further prospect of starving to death. This is, obviously, a mathematical model; however, I immediately recalled historical precedents.
Ancient Athens was formed by a union of Ionian tribes settled in Attica, with an initially fairly high level of equality. Over time, however, the stratification between citizens increased, and some gradually fell into debt bondage to others. This led to civil unrest, and as a result of Solon’s reforms, all old debts were forcibly forgiven, land was redistributed, and debt slavery was prohibited. In other words, the market—due to the difference in time preference—led to extremely unpleasant consequences, which were then corrected by purely etatist methods.
The emancipation of the peasants under Alexander II in the Russian Empire provided roughly equal starting conditions for all members of any given peasant community. However, again, the difference in entrepreneurial abilities and time preference over half a century led to stratification from kulaks to hired laborers, with the latter losing their means of production and often finding themselves in credit bondage. Then there was a civil war, followed by a complete redistribution of property and the writing off of old debts.
The question is: what can free-market anarchism oppose this mechanism with under modern technological conditions? Because if we answer “nothing,” it will mean the unviability of the anarchic model—it will inevitably be replaced by something much more leftist, after which, at minimum, property will be redistributed and debts written off, and at maximum, successful entrepreneurs and their heirs will be hanged from lamp posts.
Let’s look at what mechanisms the free market provided to counteract the mentioned effect in the two previous examples.
Becoming landless, selling one’s household members and oneself into debt slavery was not the only possible development for a landowner with a higher time preference or someone less competitive for some other reason in the ancient polis. Furthermore, as such people accumulated, the polis established colonies. There, land-poor colonists received much larger plots than in their homeland, and with them, a new chance for prosperity. This extensive path to solving the problem of inequality led to the colonization of the entire Mediterranean by the Hellenes. Subsequently, a division of labor arose between the colonies and lively trade began. Now, instead of farming a small patch of land, our Athenian could engage in, for example, molding amphorae or sewing sails—this also gave him a new chance for prosperity.
Similarly, becoming a hired laborer was not the only option for an unlucky peasant in the Russian Empire either. He could become a colonist and move to Siberia, or move to the city and become a worker. Under the conditions of a freer market in the USA, urbanization absorbed a huge number of former farmers without any revolutions, and those who remained began to cultivate much larger areas using much more serious equipment, supplied to them thanks to the much higher-paid labor—compared to that of a hired hand—of their former poor neighbors.
So I believe that an anarchic society under a free market will be able to avoid the scenario embedded in the mathematical model with different time preferences but unchanging market conditions. If the emergence of new markets is not legally restricted, then those with a higher time preference will actually strive to take advantage of new opportunities and obtain windfall profits—while those with a lower preference will stay in a reliable but relatively low-margin business, and everyone will be relatively well off. The second factor weakening intertemporal inequality is personal freedom. You are not a member of a community. You are not the property of the head of the family, who can sell you into slavery to pay off a debt. You are self-owned; you have your own time preference, your own inclinations and talents. You won’t perish. In any case, you are not doomed to perish, and let the scary mathematical model not frighten you.
I hope you didn’t miss me too much while the channel was on pause for a while — I have been very busy.
More than a year ago, as part of his Liberty Education Project, Vladimir Zolotorev began posting a translation of David Friedman’s 2019 book Legal Systems Very Different from Our Own — an extremely detailed answer to the question of how courts could operate not only under ancap, but in any conceivable conditions. For my part, I posted the original and published the translated chapters on my page. In November 2020, however, the translation stalled after the publication of four chapters.
And recently, Dima Kovalenko, who translated those four chapters, contacted me and suggested that I continue the work in his place. I gladly agreed. To get started, I took a relatively short chapter on the legal system of my favorite Athens during the time of classical democracy, and now I am happy to present to you the translation of this chapter. I have also formatted all five chapters into an epub and posted it on my page as well. Footnotes for the four old chapters are currently missing — apparently, they were not translated. I will add them in time. Please test whether the book reads normally for you — I tried formatting it in the newer epub3 format, but if it turns out that it is not sufficiently supported by your e-readers, then there is no point in overcomplicating things and it would be better to return to epub2; the book does not contain complex layout for which the new format would be absolutely necessary.
I would also be glad if someone would take on creating a cover for the book — for now, I am using the original English one, but the final edition will clearly require something else.
A certain Belarusian libertarian, known in narrow circles and who changes nicknames frequently enough that there is no point in remembering them, recently posted a solid article on the subject on Telegraph.
A brief list of the article’s key takes from the author himself (what a clever boy, he took care of everything):
1) There are ethical libertarians and “sausage” libertarians
2) Sausage libertarians are useless or harmful to libertarianism and are prone to drifting toward other political views
3) The opposite of a sausage libertarian is an ethical libertarian
4) An ethical libertarian differs from a sausage one by possessing a libertarian mindset and a libertarian framework
5) Most libertarian activity in attracting new members is focused on attracting sausage libertarians and building a libertarian framework, as well as transferring it to ethical libertarians
6) A libertarian mindset is determined at a young age, and to increase the number of ethical libertarians, one should create it in other people’s children through specific practices.
7) Our enemies deal with the mindsets of other people’s children, while libertarians do not
8) And they should
In other words, the author suggests that we stop denying the insinuations that libertarians supposedly love children and, moreover, have a huge interest specifically in other people’s children—and instead, start confirming these insinuations, but in their own libertarian way. Like: everyone thought that “teaching” was a euphemism for “fucking,” but he actually makes children libertarians.
If, after reading the article, you share its conclusions, I await an influx of libertarians into children’s sports sections and creative studios (well, not state schools, for heaven’s sake), the organization of children’s libertarian hiking trips, the hiring of children for part-time jobs, and other useful practices.
Minarchist
Using the current bedlam as an example, we can see very clearly: states are incapable of dealing with a pandemic because while one man’s war is another’s windfall—for politicians, the more global the mess, the more convenient the opportunity to profit from government procurement, and the more convenient the opportunity to restrict the freedom of citizens. If people themselves are whining for a firm hand, how can anyone resist the urge to shove that firm hand deeper into the citizen’s pocket?
Let’s compare this with ancap, where states are absent, all ultimate responsibility for one’s own health lies with the people, and if you don’t take care of yourself, you have only yourself to blame.
Some would have been entirely voluntarily insured against infectious diseases and accidents; some, having heirs, would have also insured their lives. If ancap has existed on the planet for a long time, then such insured individuals would make up some stable, significant percentage. But since such a misfortune has occurred that quite a few people are beginning to be infected by a previously unknown virus, this will generate additional demand for health insurance, and the prices for such insurance will spike.
Different insurance companies may act using different means. Some simply pay for treatment under policies within the limits of the insurance premium. Others realize that if nothing is done, all reserves will be spent on paying insurance claims, and to avoid bankruptcy—they should incentivize clients not to get infected. They begin offering payment for every day of self-isolation, plus remote supply of everything necessary (especially to high-risk groups). A third group of companies invests in the development of a treatment protocol. A fourth—in the development of vaccines.
But insurance companies are not the only players in the market. Pharma companies, even without insurance, understand that they can make a lot of money now, and they also begin seeking remedies for the new plague, or increasing the production of existing and well-working ones (more accurately, those in demand on the market, which in general is not the same thing).
In short, entrepreneurial initiative, unrestrained by government shackles, revitalizes sectors of the economy related to health care. What happens to other sectors? And what could possibly happen to them? Who will forbid tourists from flying to a quiet, pleasant place for a vacation? They get insured so as not to wander in an unfamiliar place in confusion about where and how to get treatment if something happens—and they fly. Who will forbid restaurants from operating? No one will forbid them. True, people themselves may enter with caution—which means they need to launch advertising about how safe the establishment is: here is a hand sanitizer, here are tables on an open terrace, here are waiters in masks.
And so on. What will be the result? Simply that throughout the world, the pandemic will proceed roughly as it did in Sweden, perhaps just a little bit better.
And, of course, no one will be able to prevent an investigation into where the virus came from. And if it turns out to be the work of some private laboratory, those guys will go bankrupt from lawsuits. Naturally, payments will not go to everyone, but only to those who managed to sue first—well, no one stopped them from searching, it’s only fair. As for other laboratories, realizing that they will now all be suspected, they will be forced to introduce very advanced standards of openness, otherwise, they won’t be able to work peacefully. And what is there to hide, if intellectual property is not valued under ancap? This means one must work not for the sake of rapid patenting, but for the sake of rapid implementation, in conditions where everyone sees each other and everyone adopts what they can from each other. This is a perfectly fair race, and it is strange to think that they would somehow stop participating in it due to the absence of patents.
I’m continuing to work on my book. I’ve finished the section on power, breaking the final long sheet into separate pages for better layout consistency, and to make referencing and commenting more convenient. The new chapters are about meritocracy and anarchy as two basic approaches that can conventionally be used to break down attempts to solve societal problems.
I have also formatted the book in epub, and now the latest version will always be available at this link.
The further work plan has changed slightly; I’m thinking of dedicating the third section to the market, and from there steer towards ancap.
As usual, I’m waiting for your comments and donations to encourage the work. And, by the way, if anyone wants to create a cover for the book, I would be very happy to see your options. A pensive girl illustrates the writing process well, but is clearly not suitable for the final product.
themouse1_ from Bulbaland
The examples provided are particular cases of the platform economy. Similarly, an app developer is forced to adapt to the requirements of the company producing the operating system for which the app is developed. Likewise, a hired worker on a plantation in Brazil a century ago was obliged to buy groceries only from the shop run by the plantation owner, and in Soviet Russia, a collective farmer could only redeem his work-days, again, at a specific village store.
In short, these are not entirely market cases. Can such quasi-monopolistic situations arise in a completely free economy? Yes, but they are unstable. The emergence of a profit source significantly higher than the market average leads to others wanting to imitate such success, and soon competition levels the margin: platform owners, competing for the customer, begin to spend more on maintaining their loyalty.
Libertarianism proposes removing politics from the economy. Will this make John Deere more reasonable? Not immediately. Simply put, they will no longer have the ability to sue the farmer for installing pirated software. Therefore, wanting their authorized service to not go completely under, they will lower repair prices. Moreover, some Japanese or Belarusian tractors will start being imported duty-free, so the consumer will have a real choice and will be able to acquire the solution that maximizes their profit from operating the tractor.
Similarly, without the ability to force a worker to eat expensive slop in the factory canteen, without the ability to forbid installing apps from outside the app store on a smartphone, without the ability to punish a kiosk owner for moving under the protection of another security firm—the owners of all these platforms will find that racketeering practices work worse and worse, and they must get used to acting within the framework of fair competition. It’s fine, they’ll get used to it.
The friendly channel Bitcoin Translated, which specializes in translating important texts about bitcoin, recently posted on its website the final version of the translation of Ian Pritzkers’s book “Inventing Bitcoin”. I don’t like the translation of the title—I don’t understand the habit of translating “-ing” constructions as gerunds in such cases; it doesn’t sound Russian at all. I would have translated it as “Inventing Bitcoin” [in the sense of ‘Let’s invent bitcoin’]. Otherwise, the book is good, clear, illustrated, and fully ready to be absorbed by the brain.
To make this easier via phones, I formatted the book in epub format; download it and enjoy. I will be happy to receive donations from both the Bitcoin Translated team and the readers.
