Автор: Анкап-тян

I have my own libertarian boxing club; can I publish our article about fighting corporations with you?

Daniil

From what I understand, the main point of the club is as follows: weapons are, of course, cool, but they are rarely managed to be used for self-defense, and safely—even more rarely. Meanwhile, for a libertarian, it is not only useful to know how to defend oneself in a wide variety of situations, but this skill, when applied, also advertises libertarian ideology in its own right.

The proposed article describes how, within the framework of private security production, the world does not revolve solely around private security companies—since this field is very strictly regulated by the state, and therefore such companies, firstly, provide their services at a disproportionately high cost, and secondly, the spectrum of services does not cover all types of demand.

Instead of private security companies, the revival of such a soft and humane means of reasoning with unfriendly counterparties as hiring a team of trained musclemen with powerful fists is proposed. Of course, in most cases, this cannot be seen as an alternative to hiring a professional security firm, but for organizing some libertarian events, such heavy artillery as professional security firms is not required. Yes, actually, hiring trained fighters to guard a hall is either excessive (usually, admonishment and the threat of calling the police are sufficient) or insufficient (if the aggressor is the police themselves).

On the other hand, it’s stylish. After all, a press wall provides no direct benefit either; one can take photos against a bare wall—but people still order them to be printed. Thus, proper ancap security should not be neglected for roughly the same reasons.

The article ends with a call to join the club (which presumably wants to mutate over time into such a fighting corporation) and to subscribe to the channel People of Good Will. I went to take a look at the channel, and there is a curious Code of the Person of Good Will. The Code is imbued with the values of republicanism, which Rodion Belkovich talks about so convincingly, and generally paints a rather attractive image. So read it; it is beneficial for the soul.

Nothing special, just a small summary and a request for feedback

I continue to write the introductory part of the book about ancap bit by bit, describing the main principles of libertarianism. I think that later I will reformat the text a bit, but for now, it’s becoming quite a large chapter in one piece.

Usually, when I answer a question, I do it in a detailed manner, with examples, metaphors, and other rhetorical gems. In the book, I try not to ramble, and now I’m wondering if I should, and whether it’s becoming too dry. I would like to know your opinion.

On May 20, I fly to Montenegro. This may affect the regularity of posts for about three days, or it may not. I usually don’t schedule publications, so such things are not very predictable.

Since living in Montenegro will be more expensive for me than in Russia, I will have to pay more attention to making money. If you want me to be less distracted from working on the channel, send donations. It will be especially helpful to chip in for the book — the more financial enthusiasm it generates, the faster I will write and the sooner I will finish. The same applies to current translation projects.

Since I will need to register a company to obtain a residence permit in Montenegro, I will try to take advantage of this and organize the acceptance of donations directly in Telegram — Durov created this possibility quite a long time ago, but I didn’t use it because connecting a Telegram store requires a legal entity — and that’s exactly what I will now have.

Also, in the comments of the donations page, I was asked to set up a Monero wallet. I downloaded the wallet from the official website, synchronized the blockchain, and now I’ve even started mining, although that is just for fun, of course. So, here is the Monero address for donations:

84CVRC5iqexHMzLSrUwhcUgw5LkqrkbV5FGWugs6EgQX1YQEM7Kvrvm2sBVjfGwrrhfhvL6j3PdcuaiB6R6Y9ULQPjKWotH

Most likely, I will use the flights to read the Strugatsky brothers’ “Snail on the Slope,” which was ordered for a review long ago — what else is there to do on a plane besides reading books? It’s getting a bit embarrassing; payment for the review was received back in April, which is quite untidy.

Possibly, I will post some fresh travel impressions if they don’t clash too much with the general theme of the channel. If they do — I’ll post them on Boosty.

Free Private Cities, book summary

In the Russian Frontier channel, which I recently promoted, a brief summary has begun to be released of Titus Gebel’s book “Free Private Cities.” The ideas covered in the book are currently being used in the construction of a contractual jurisdiction such as Prospera. It is possible that some of them will be applied in Montellibero in the future.

So those who are too lazy to read the book itself can subscribe to the channel and gradually absorb the material along with its author.

Currently, the summary of the first chapter is available.

How do you feel about Vatoadmin and his criticism of AES?

In one of the streams, he mentioned to an interlocutor that economic schools are irrelevant and that everything best from those schools has been integrated into the mainstream. Do you agree? Has he gotten too fat?

P.S. It’s a pity the site crashed. I hope all is well with you. I haven’t figured out crypto yet, but I’ll donate somehow.

Some Kazakh

Thank you for the explication from Vatoadmin, because I would have been too lazy to sift through his streams in search of specific quotes. As for the thickness, he is still far from Kakha Bendukidze; let him keep trying.

Now, to the main part of the question.

Economic mainstream today, indeed, has long ceased to be some kind of cohesive theory. It is simply a set of views on economics, none of which are perceived by economists as complete nonsense. At the same time, taken together, they can be internally contradictory—to this, an economist will say that each economic tool has its own area of application, and that is perfectly normal—and the task of economics is precisely to study when a wise regulator should apply what.

The Austrian school is indeed part of the mainstream. It primarily describes exactly how economic agents behave in a free market, and also shows with disdainful curiosity what distortions are introduced by this or that form of coercion. The mainstream also describes how economic agents behave in a free market (and often does so using an apparatus that grew out of the Austrian school), and then asserts that the market can and should be regulated, that it is done in such-and-such a way, for such-and-such goals, and produces such-and-such results. Or it doesn’t, in which case one must study what went wrong and make corrections to economic policy next time.

Regarding the Austrians’ dislike of using mathematical apparatus to describe complex phenomena, I would explain it roughly like this. A mainstreamer will imperturbably calculate how many human bodies and how many horse bodies a White Walker needs to lay out a pattern in the snow, how much time he will spend on it, and by how much the temperature in the forest will drop as a result of performing this ritual. An Austrian simply postulates that White Walkers are an evil that has no place in the forest, and he will not require mathematical models for this.

Now tell me, how can a decent economist not despise such primness?

The Russian Frontier and Its Prospects

I subscribed to the channel Russian Frontier. Today, the author posted a review of the Montellibero project, in which he notes our ideological closeness in everything except for the assessments of the investment climate in Russia. He suggests that today, the creation of contractual jurisdictions in Russia is not officially regulated in any way, which means one can and should enter this market—until the state shows a keen interest in them, after which they should be repurposed into something else, even swingers’ clubs.

Indeed, there is still a niche in Russia today (and perhaps it will remain for a long time) for the relatively free pursuit of agriculture and trades—in regions where there is a relative surplus of land. In other words, it is impossible to expand in the conditional Krasnodar Territory, but in Altai, like Justus Walker, or even in the not-so-distant Moscow region, like Mikhail Shlyapnikov or Herman Sterligov—why not? Thus, an enthusiast can indeed create a strong farm with quite original customs, and it is unlikely that this farm would even be seized, since the basis of its prosperity is labor and entrepreneurial talent, not capital.

Of course, such benevolent ignorance from the state will continue only until a specific entrepreneur gets into politics or at least makes loud media statements that clash with the general background. And if such entrepreneurs start getting in the way not as an exception, but literally every second person, then a standard solution will be quickly devised for them that will either abolish them or distract them significantly.

How well are such solutions replicated? It seems not very well. Most likely, associations of free farmers will be weeded out more eagerly than loners, and the positive scale effect of any given association in this particular industry is small. A milk producer in Belgorod will in no way help a honey producer in Bashkiria; each deals with a unique environment of varying degrees of aggressiveness.

How well do such solutions scale? This is likely dangerous. As soon as a farm advances significantly from the exploitation of labor to the exploitation of capital, it becomes a tempting morsel for a takeover.

So, I would view the Russian frontier as a good training ground for those who have sufficient competencies to build a sole proprietorship. At the same time, cultural originality can provide such a farm with media visibility—which can attract investors, product buyers, and even serve as some kind of vaccination against raids that are not too motivated. So, donning the guise of a contractual jurisdiction for such a farm is also an excellent idea; it’s worth considering.

But once some experience and capital have been accumulated, it makes sense, instead of expanding the current project, to invest in a farm in countries with more reliable protection of private property. Fortunately, globalization allows one to avoid making a hard choice between the Russian and Montenegrin frontiers. In the best case, this will simply be diversification, and in the worst—also a platform for evacuation.

And I still hope that the experience accumulated on the Russian frontier will simply create a desire to be applied to something greater, and then welcome to Montellibero.

An intriguing find

I accidentally stumbled upon a collection of videos featuring Vladimir Zolotorev on YouTube. It is some sort of tiny channel called Libertarian Site, but since 2019, a fairly large number of videos have been posted there, presumably quite useful ones, though so far I have only watched Vladimir’s most recent lecture, where he discusses the nature of the state and other related matters—not very structured, but fascinating. I suspect that other videos with him are constructed in a similar vein, so their main value, it seems to me, is the demonstration of exactly how a person’s thinking style changes when they begin to share a libertarian worldview. A worldview is a contagious thing, so even without being presented systematically, it will still influence you. Watch and be indoctrinated)

As for my book, which is currently being written, I would still like to save the reader’s time and provide an understanding of libertarianism as briefly and consistently as possible. Maybe it will work…

I started writing a book

The book on ancap that I recently announced will be gradually posted in the corresponding section on my website. Since this is my first such experience, I cannot guarantee that the text will not change significantly in the process, so you are unlikely to see regular announcements like “5 out of 70 chapters written” — I will certainly be shuffling pieces of text back and forth until the very end, adding some things, removing others, and reworking some ten times over.

For now, you can read the ultra-brief foreword, which promises that the book will be written without overly academic jargon, and right alongside it — the section dedicated to the principle of self-ownership, which turned out to be quite academic. So, after reading what I produced, I fell into a pensive mood: is it necessary to dig this deep, or should I try to lower the level of abstraction?

I look forward to your comments on this matter, and it is quite possible that I will take them into account.

I could have looked for a picture of an even more pensive girl, but this one reflects the process quite clearly

And how would it be under ancap?

The vast majority of the questions I receive boil down to the formula “how will such-and-such sphere of life work under ancap?” In fact, I have already provided answers to many similar questions, and some more than once. I have built up a huge body of texts that few people are likely to bother re-reading. Now, I am increasingly thinking about consolidating them into a relatively compact and coherent material.

Many people also ask for a link to some basic introductory course on libertarianism, without the jargon, for those who want to go a bit further than Wikipedia and understand what libertarianism is, how well it suits them personally, and if it doesn’t suit them very well, whether libertarians should be considered dangerous enemies, harmless weirdos, or useful companions.

In principle, I have already translated one such opus—Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. In progress is the translation of another opus with a similar message—Stefan Molinieu’s Practical Anarchy. But both works have at least one obvious downside: they are translations. This is an appeal to a different cultural background, which generates arguments that may seem strange and clumsy. There was hope for Mikhail Svetov, but a lot of time has passed since his announcement of a book on libertarianism, and there has been no progress.

Presumably, the work will consist of three parts. The first—a brief description of the libertarian worldview and a justification of why we need ancap. The second—tentatively titled “How under ancap”—a collection of examples of how this can be implemented. The third—how to bring ancap closer.

Forgive me for not planning to go to prison for the sake of writing a book, so the process may take some time. But on the other hand, I intend to post individual chapters as they appear, even if I am not entirely satisfied with the result and consider reworking them in the future. So you will have an idea of the paths my thoughts are taking.

Drop suggestions in the comments about which chapters are absolutely necessary in the second part of the book, besides courts and roads.

Boris Yurovsky. How to get away from the state

I want to recommend a pretty good video from the “Unknown Economics” channel, run by Ukrainian economist Boris Yurovsky. His channel features many detailed theoretical reviews of economic theory—I didn’t even notice how I gradually switched to him from Pavel Usanov’s channel, who is more of an economic historian. But not long ago, Boris Savvich started a series of videos on the topic of libertarianism, which is outside his primary field, and in my opinion, he handled it quite достойно.

The video I’m recommending is the final one in this series and is dedicated to the transition from etatism to libertarianism. As usual, it is a review of other authors’ ideas, quite clear and benevolent. If you like it, check out the other videos in the libertarianism series, and from there, you might reach the economic theory reviews; it happens as unobtrusively as becoming addicted to male approval.