I’ve unexpectedly ended up hanging out in Albania, so my posting pace has slipped a bit. On the other hand, dropping out of the usual flow is very conducive to slow-paced creativity, so I relatively quickly finished the two remaining chapters of the market section in my future book: specifically on the market and on capitalism. In the next section, I will finally begin describing ancap—assuming, of course, that I don’t get swept away somewhere again.
I have processed another large donation and finished translating the fourth part of Eric Mack’s book “Libertarianism.” The chapter being posted is interesting because it is the first time Mack polemicizes with the discussed views of a particular author rather than simply transmitting them. Previously, there was nothing like “Locke is wrong here” or “Spencer is wrong there,” but he makes such assertions about Hayek. Apparently, this means he considers Hayek sufficiently his contemporary for it to make sense to argue with him.
Mack classifies Hayek’s argumentation against social justice, highlighting five arguments against it, and notes at the end that in his further reasoning, Hayek still departs from his own principles and argues that society does have the right to provide its members with a basic income, and that this is fair. In short, Nozick, in Mack’s presentation, appears far more consistent.
Strangely enough, this concludes the main positive exposition of the principles of libertarianism by Eric Mack. One more part will be devoted to the critique of libertarianism, and one bonus part contains a set of surnames completely unknown to me, who tweaked the ideology in their own key—I suspect, somewhere toward the left. I will deal with them starting from the next donation.
I have finally received the recommendations from the State Department Smart Voting regarding which specific single-mandate candidate I should vote for in District 96 in the north of the Irkutsk region: that is where our little warm western Montenegro is located. It turned out to be a certain Andreev Andrey Anatolyevich, from the CPRF. For Navalny’s pawns, this information is quite sufficient, but those who enjoy thoughtfully analyzing the varieties of shit can visit the shit directory kindly created by Khodorkovsky and check the details of all candidates there.
As for the voting by party lists, I intend to balance my vote for the communist single-mandate candidate by voting for the LDPR list—especially since, as far as I can tell, Smart Voting mainly recommends communists for the single-mandate districts, and I don’t really want to give them an overly populous faction.
One should not take elections in modern Russia with animal seriousness; it is nothing more than a way to piss in their slippers. It won’t make them feed us better or bully us less, but we know that when we piss in their slippers, it infuriates them. Is that not enough?
I have put together the first two chapters of the third section of the book about ancap. The section is called “The Market” and, of course, the first chapters are dedicated to anything but the market. In the first one, I ramble on about labor productivity, and then suddenly switch to inequality, and I’m currently pondering whether to remove the final passages. The second chapter is dedicated to planning, and this is the first place in the book where I appeal to specific named authorities, Mises and Hayek, which also creates a certain dissonance, as it might overcomplicate the text.
Overall, I am dissatisfied with the writing pace; I thought I would announce three chapters at once, but the chapter about the market isn’t coming along yet, so I have to report on only two.
Old friend
The question refers to a translation I published quite a long time ago of a work on functional overlapping competing jurisdictions. However, it demonstrates a lack of understanding, quite traditional for a modern person, of how functional jurisdictions differ from territorial ones. A conditional Ural Federal District is a territorial jurisdiction. A conditional Ural University is a functional jurisdiction: although it has a certain territory, the university’s jurisdiction is defined not by territory, but by the function it performs. Its jurisdiction includes the process of its students obtaining higher education and certain related issues. Universities can play at isolationism, up to the extraterritoriality of campuses and their own security services, or they can remain dull agencies under the subordination of the Ministry of Education.
The FOCJ model was proposed by the authors primarily for the EU, as a development of the idea of federalism, in order to take away some powers from the states comprising the EU, but transfer them not to the level of the European Union, but to functional jurisdictions. A rather flexible model is proposed, with the possibility of forming FOCJs from the bottom up, and exactly in the sphere that covers the scale of the problem being solved.
Relationships between FOCJs can be competitive if they perform related functions; they can be reduced to relationships between a customer and a client, as, for example, between an FOCJ serving nuclear power plants and an FOCJ serving the power grid; they can be conditionally neighborly, like the police and the fire department in one city; or they may be completely absent, as between a consortium for the certification of boiled sausage production and an association of kosher food producers.
Since the interests of different FOCJs can indeed come into conflict, legal proceedings between them are possible. Within the original model, it was not intended to shift the judicial system onto FOCJ rails, so most likely one arbitration or another, such as the Stockholm Arbitration, will be used. Police interference in FOCJ activities is also possible if some higher jurisdiction, such as a relevant ministry, sees abuses or simply errors in reporting.
In some ways, FOCJs look like an under-panarchy, since they may imply not only contractual relations with those people whose lives they regulate within their function, but may even collect targeted taxes from them if the state delegates these powers to them. In other ways, they are ahead of the panarchy model, because under panarchy we have something like contractual extraterritorial states regulating a more or less arbitrary set of life areas, while the powers of FOCJs are strictly limited by their function, which makes them similar to Friedman’s ancap model.
El Salvador now has a second national currency alongside the US dollar — bitcoin. Thus, since the autumn of 2008, in just under 13 years, bitcoin has grown from a project posted by an anonymous person for open discussion into a currency equal to the dollar. Although, so far, only in one country.
Now the world should wait for El Salvador to implement something like Estonian e-residency: then anyone wishing to do so will be able to remotely open a business in El Salvador and conduct completely official settlements in Salvadoran currency, because Salvadoran laws will mandate it.
To mark this giant step in bitcoin adoption, discounts have been announced: some lucky individuals managed to buy in today at a price of around 43 thousand US dollars per bitcoin. But it is still not too late: at the time of this post’s publication, bitcoin costs only 47 thousand dollars.
After an indecently long break, I am returning to the translation of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molinari. I have already begun to miss his style, so I decided to ignore the lack of donations and translated another chapter just because; you’ll have plenty of time to chip in later.
Chapter Seven continues the first part of the book dedicated to methodology — the author approaches the explanation of his subject quite thoroughly, yet quite vividly. In particular, here he shows where the main strength of the existing world order, in which everything is divided among states, lies — in the fact that we cannot imagine it being any other way, although if we were to start designing the best possible world order from scratch right now, it wouldn’t occur to anyone to voluntarily build all this crap. On the contrary, the solution we devised would likely resemble something anarchic — simply because these recipes work perfectly in private life. In short, give it a read; it is presented quite well and convincingly.
Next, I am switching back to the translation of Libertarianism by Eric Mack, because a donation of sufficient size has arrived for the translation of another chapter, from which we will learn what Hayek thought about economic justice.
Yesterday, I put on a video by Milov to listen to before sleep, but I fell asleep before reaching the scandalous phrase about the inner libertarian. I had to start it over in the morning.
In short, Vladimir’s thesis boils down to the idea that it is not always appropriate to take the side of big business when it is in conflict with a state defending certain political interests, especially when big business is lobbying for its own interests. And if your inner libertarian only knows how to say “everything private is good, everything state-owned is bad,” then kill it and grow another, more adequate one. Because values are subjective, and nothing is “good” or “bad” in a vacuum; these terms are always attached to a specific interested party—specifically, who exactly benefits and who exactly suffers.
Is it good for the German gas consumer that their country will receive cheap fuel supplies with massive excess transport capacity? Obviously, it’s good, and from Montenegro, I can only be happy for them. Is it good for a Pomeranian worker that a new employer comes to their land and creates many high-paying jobs? Yes, it’s wonderful for them! Is it good for a Ukrainian worker that their local job maintaining the pipeline is under threat of abolition or at least salary cuts? Nothing good about that. But is it good for them that they can travel to Germany without a visa to maintain the pipeline being built there, already earning a German salary? You bet! True, they will have to compete with Germans, and here, if the German tries to use state protectionism, the Ukrainian will suffer.
Is it good that gas is extracted in Russia and a transport network is built allowing its delivery to various corners of the world? This is an incorrect question. The question does not specify the subject for whom we are making assumptions—whether it is good or bad for them. For Putin, it’s good—the geopolitical club is long, heavy, and shiny. For the rotational workers laying the pipes—it’s great. For Gazprom shareholders—it’s questionable, because the commercial profit from the project is unclear; it’s less about money and more about geopolitics. For Russian citizens counting on some taxes from this Gazprom—don’t count on other people’s money and you’ll sleep sounder; and what are you even doing in Russia? Get out of there, following me and Vladimir Milov. The inner libertarian sticks its head out and gives the budget workers the finger.
In short, a huge thank you to Vladimir Milov for promoting libertarianism. Navalny is in prison and can no longer, as before, send us to forced labor, so Milov has to take the heat. It’s okay, he’ll manage.
Out of habit, I continue to watch new videos from my former team, but I’ve somehow forgotten to promote them on my own page; that’s untidy, so I’m correcting it.
In the video, which this time is dedicated to propaganda, as usual, there is an extensive historical introduction, and, as usual, it hangs in the air somewhat, because no thoughts are derived from it that the main part of the video could rely on. Next, there is an equally extensive analysis of how it works and what methods it employs, and in conclusion, it is stated that propaganda is not bad in itself, since it can be used for benevolent purposes. For example, promoting vaccination against a fashionable disease and other beneficial methods of state care for the population—what else could libertarians bring up as a positive example? Certainly not Svetov with his propaganda for lustration!
I continue translating Friedman’s latest book. This time, I’ve gone in order. I translated the introduction and the first chapter, regarding law in the Chinese Empire. An attentive reader may notice that I haven’t fully completed the work, and about half of the footnotes are missing from the text. That is the case; I got exhausted. Tomorrow, I plan to quietly upgrade the text—both for online reading and in the ebook. I also still hope that someone will take on creating a Russian-language cover for the book.
What I like in the book are the constant comparisons: look, here’s how it was for the Chinese, exactly like in modern America. And this—just like in 18th-century England. And then there are attempts to show for what purpose the legislation was made exactly this way, what worked, and what didn’t quite.
