Автор: Анкап-тян

Could you criticize Stasik Ay Kak Prosto in this video?

https://youtu.be/ymVOQpFkQSY

The video contains several assertions.

  1. From the perspective of world-systems theory, civilization constantly goes through the same cycles: a new center of global business activity rises, money flows to money, a huge bubble inflates, and soon any production at the center of the bubble becomes unprofitable, and money begins to be made directly from money, through the turnover of various securities. Eventually, the bubble bursts, and soon a new one begins to inflate around a new center. The US will burst as the global hegemon, and China will take the stage.
  2. Any attempts to imitate the global hegemon can no longer be successful: it is pointless to try to increase one’s investment attractiveness, open markets, reduce tariffs, and build institutions—it is impossible to break out of the status of the periphery during the inflation stage of a financial bubble.
  3. Cryptocurrencies have become exactly the same overvalued financial asset, and when the bubble bursts, they will similarly lose the lion’s share of their value.
  4. The shortage of graphics cards caused by increased demand from miners cannot be covered by expanding production because the era of globalization is ending, trade wars are beginning, and the local Chinese market does not need that many graphics cards; fear, honest gamers, you will be stuck with five-year-old junk.

I will answer briefly by points.

  1. As strange as it may sound, stocks are not just numbers in brokerage accounts. These are investments that go to the companies that issued the shares, and they, in turn, by no means spend everything on management bonuses and buybacks—some is indeed invested in production, specifically in the periphery, where it is cheaper. At this moment, it is important for peripheral countries to be attractive for these very investments.
  2. If it is pointless to imitate the hegemon, then how will a new hegemon emerge? If world-systems theory reflects real processes adequately enough, then someone must launch a new cycle with themselves at the center. This means there is a mechanism for leaving the periphery. And it is logical to assume that for this purpose, one really should not simply imitate the hegemon. One should not imitate the hegemon in its current dying state, but rather look back to the time when it was young and healthy—while, of course, adapting to current technological realities.
  3. What does a burst bubble mean? Many companies suddenly lose value and find themselves unable to find a buyer for their goods. Demand is mainly for consumer goods, which become more expensive relative to capital goods. The proud owner of crypto, who previously invested in mining, begins to invest in potatoes, selling first the miners (and they become cheaper), and then the crypto itself (its price also falls). The market becomes saturated with cheap used graphics cards, demand for new ones decreases, it becomes unprofitable to invest in their production, and no trade wars are even needed—gamers are stuck with five-year-old junk. I will only note that miners and crypto will get cheaper relative to conventional potatoes during the deflation stage of the bubble, but relative to a conventional dollar—that is far from certain; it might enter a tailspin of hyperinflation.
  4. Will globalization end as a result? For adherents of world-systems theory, it is somewhat strange to discuss this. Where will a new global hegemon come from if there is no globalization? Without it, hegemons will be local. So, since everything goes in circles for you, global trade turnover will not disappear anywhere.

I am not attempting to judge here how correct the theory itself is. The theory is relatively young, more or less explains the observed facts, and makes verifiable predictions. As it becomes clear which predictions turned out to be false, they will either be patched, or this line of thought will be considered a dead end, and a theory based on completely different premises will be used—why not.

A couple of lectures on crypto

Ekaterina Schulmann in her program introduces a distinction between news, meaning that which attracts attention, and events, meaning that which has consequences. For example, when I announced the debates between Litreev and Milov, it was news, but the debates never took place because Navalny returned to Russia, and everyone stopped caring about trifles.

A bit later, I announced a doublet of lectures by Alexei Nefedov and Alexander Kotov as part of the Ural libertarian lecture series. There was no broadcast of the lectures on the day they were held, and I soon conveniently forgot about them. But this event had consequences: after a considerable amount of time, the Ural libertarians channel quietly uploaded the recordings of the lectures, and I finally watched them.

1. Alexei Nefedov. Bitcoin and the Theory of Money.

The lecture first analyzed why money appears in human collectives at all, what function it serves, which types of money achieve wider distribution, and which rely solely on state coercion. Then it briefly described how Bitcoin is designed and why this construction ensures its wide adoption and price growth. Finally, it explained why Bitcoin never actually became money, but instead turned into a defensive financial asset.

The parts about economics were clear and interesting enough for me. Where it concerned technology, I didn’t dive too deep, trying not to be intimidated by phrases like “quantum superposition.” I learned some specific new details, such as how the rules for the Bitcoin network’s operation are changed, or how the price forecast was built based on the stock-to-flow model.

It seemed to me that it would have made sense to expand the topic of altcoins a bit more, but Alexei is a Bitcoin maximalist and apparently believes that if you don’t talk about them, they will disappear on their own.

2. Alexander Kotov. Technological Solutions to Social Problems.

I hoped to hear ready-made recipes in the lecture, but it turned out to be more philosophical than practical. Interestingly, Alexander believes that state actions are not the cause of problems such as, for example, censorship in social networks, but that these are purely social problems. It seems to me that in the absence of a state, these problems would at least be less acute, because attempts to silence opponents are linked precisely to the task of political dominance, which is nonetheless a state phenomenon. Nevertheless, several interesting recipes were mentioned in the lecture, for example, regarding moderation in large social networks that would significantly reduce social tension—through subscriptions to rating agencies that would act independently of the social network’s administration and provide services directly to its clients.

The lecture turned out to be quite sobering; it became much clearer to me why there is such low mass adoption of decentralized social networks, and now I am not entirely sure that I want to bother with it myself—at least as long as centralized solutions provide some room for maneuver.

At the end, Alexander demonstrated how a hardware wallet works; it was curious but not very clear, however, it is evident that it is a fairly paranoid piece of hardware that is unlikely to allow the user to lose their money in a very stupid way. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money to be that obsessed with security, but it was interesting to watch.

Violence Prevention (no, this is not a Bitarkh article)

One of the central ideas of ancap is that all arising problems and disputes should be resolved ex post facto—through a court (assuming that courts under ancap work perfectly fine, no questions there). But real problems are easier to prevent than to “clear the rubble,” and this may require prohibitions. What do you have to say about this? Suing for compensation and a pile of penalties is all well and good, but doesn’t this resemble the famous phrase “come back once they’ve been killed”? Perhaps, if only for the possibility of preventive measures (but not those that infringe upon reasonable rights and freedoms!), it is worth having at least a minimal “protection” state?

Minarchist

The central idea of ancap is more that the problems whose resolution has been usurped by the state today should be solved privately, and only when there is a market demand for their resolution. This means that the same problem may be solved differently at different times, in different places, and in different situations. In one case, a condominium finances the work of police patrols; in another, an insurance company compensates the victim for the costs of an attack; in a third case, people rely on the success of self-defense and do not intend to spend money on insurance or security. Each time, the situation is based on a multitude of individual choices, and generally, it doesn’t matter whether economic calculation, religious prejudices, or ethical preferences were behind them.

There is nothing terrible about a certain community providing solutions to a number of typical tasks for itself using a “protection” state. What is terrible is if this state provides protection forcibly, based on territorial criteria. But as long as state services are provided within the framework of individual contracts that imply free exit from them—then by all means.

Moreover, if someone’s culture implies a number of prohibitions, the observance of which is expected from everyone, including outsiders, then it will be quite natural for the carriers of such a culture to conduct prevention privately. An example is in the image below.

It is another matter that under ancap, the role of prisons differs somewhat, but that is a completely different story

Online Anonymity: Recipes from Libertarian Band

Libertarian Band has released the second video in their series on agorism, and since I am no longer involved in production, I am personally very curious to see what they’ve put together this time.

It’s about methods for ensuring anonymity. Judging by the thoroughness of the presentation, Bitarch acted as the consultant. The set of recipes looks even more hardcore than in Svetov’s video on a similar topic.

In my view, the video feels like a “how to assemble a class five body armor” guide, with a hint that the real pros actually build tanks, but this will do for a start. In other words, it’s clear that if you want to, you can secure yourself very effectively, but it’s not very clear how to actually walk around town with all that. Perhaps it would have been better to structure the material differently: here are the possible threat levels, and here are the recommended protections for each threat, what the consequences of ignoring the recommendations are, and what the probability of getting caught is.

In this regard, from a purely screenwriting perspective, Svetov acted more competently, because he didn’t talk about abstract online anonymity, but tied it to a specific case involving a Chechen who beat up some “cosmonauts” at a rally. Perhaps in this case it would have made sense to tie it to the case of Bitarch himself. Like, if you want to be unrestrained in your expressions while communicating on VK and not have anything happen to you for it—here is a set of tools to satisfy this urgent need.

And so it goes: all it took was to look at the material of a favorite channel from the outside, and instead of an advertisement, it turned into a critical review.

Prospects for political activity in Russia

Democracy in Russia has not yet been formally destroyed completely. No one can be elected to any legislative body above the municipal level without permission from the current regime, because they will not even let you get onto the ballot. But at the municipal level, independent candidates are still able to get on the ballot. For this very reason, a fairly large number of opposition figures have been elected as municipal deputies over the last few years.

This has had very little impact on the decisions made at the municipal level. Independent deputies are usually in the minority. They are typically not allowed into even remotely important commissions. They are not given the floor at meetings. In practice, they can only achieve something in the districts they were elected from, but the powers of deputies at this lowest level are completely negligible. To top it all off, as a result of every sufficiently large protest action, deputies are collectively sent behind bars, because they either participated in it, called for participation, or could have called for participation.

Today in Moscow, municipal deputies from over fifty regions gathered for the “Municipal Russia” forum to get to know each other, socialize, and discuss possibilities for horizontal interaction. Now, instead of a conference hall, they are carrying out the planned program in police vans and at police stations.

Any attempt to engage in unauthorized political activity in the legal or illegal field today in Russia is interpreted by the regime as a crime against the regime and is punished quite arbitrarily—from preventive detentions without a formal report to killings. For a reason I do not understand, many opposition figures claim that if they had not heroically held back the advance of the Leviathan, things would be even worse now. This assertion is in blatant contradiction with the observed reality, in which the tightening of the regime occurs strictly in response to protest demonstrations. The suppression of grassroots activity is a resource-intensive activity, and those who would prefer to spend resources on palaces rather than batons hire the baton-bearers strictly as needed. In the absence of protest, they would spend roughly the same on palaces, but they would not breed so many security officers and so many laws allowing those officers to commit any kind of robbery.

The best thing we can do in this situation is to leave the country and succeed in a new place. This will not bring down the regime in Russia in any way. A submissive Uzbek will be brought in to take your place—there are eighty million of them, and they have it even worse; that will be enough to fill the vacating positions. But that is not important. If you are behind the wheel, you follow the principle of giving way to the fool. Give these fools the road in politics. If you honk your horn, they will run you over and keep driving. We only have a chance if we are the majority. Therefore, we need to concentrate where that majority is easier to secure. That is exactly why we chose the sparsely populated Montenegro.

From now on, I will regularly report on how the project to create a libertarian outpost in the Balkans is doing. Forgive me, but this seems much more important to me than attempts at political activity in Russia.

Political activity in Russia looks like this

The Influence of FSP on New Hampshire

Author: Dennis Pratt. Translation: Dirk Diggler. Editing: Ancap-chan

After the announcement of the project to gather libertarians in Montenegro to adopt the experience of the Free State Project, an English-language chat was created in addition to the Russian-language one. Among others, Dennis Pratt joined, introducing himself as the Chef de Village of Porkfest—which is likely something like a commandant. We were slightly concerned that some strange friction might arise because we borrowed their name, but on the contrary, the guy was happy for us and shared his article, written over a year ago under the impression of his own move to New Hampshire. We thought it would be interesting to translate it, so I am glad to post the translation on my website. I hope this will allow people to get a rough idea of the direction our project could take.

March 8

Things are quite interesting with this holiday. It began under the slogans of equality. Then, in the Soviet Union, it gradually turned into a day of chivalry and gentlemanship. And now it is once again becoming a date when it is customary to advocate for women’s equality, while knights and gentlemen with batons disperse women’s street protests.

I cannot say that I am greatly troubled by these problems, because I live in the best of worlds—the internet. Here, equality is embedded in the very foundation of existence, and it cannot be otherwise. This leaves its mark on my attitude toward inequality in the physical world. I perceive it with ethnographic curiosity. Like, “Goodness, in offline life, a mother of underage children cannot be subjected to administrative arrest—what an interesting native custom.” True, sometimes they are. Perhaps that is how judges fight for equality. Well, may they have a hiccup.

In our amazing world, people have the means to achieve independence. Those for whom independence is important can usually achieve it. And they can usually get help in doing so. Therefore, the most important thing that can be done to achieve equality, in my opinion, is to show others by your own example that, yes, it was possible. So that they want it too. So that they look for how it is done. So that they keep trying until they succeed.

And this is how my favorite bot congratulated me. Bitcoin, by the way, is an excellent means of achieving independence.

Monday begins on Saturday

There was a lot of commentary about the Strugatsky brothers, especially on Facebook, so I think I’ll write about one more of their books that I’ve managed to read since my first review. I am talking about the novella “Monday Begins on Saturday,” which is cult status for junior school-age research fellows.

The book uses a simple allegory of magic as a science. This livens up the plot, allows the inclusion of various folkloric elements, and simultaneously gives the authors an opportunity to safely offer mild criticism of the Soviet system of research institutes (NII). And some things in this criticism seemed quite curious and even symptomatic to me.

Who are the negative characters in the book? Almost exclusively those wizards who try to implement the achievements of magic into the national economy. They do it clumsily because they are all untalented cynics with hairy ears, intent on riding and endlessly milking a single topic, and so on. And who are the positive characters? Those who investigate deep fundamental questions, such as the connection between the piercing properties of a gaze and the philological characteristics of the word “concrete,” but categorically refuse to defile themselves by introducing advanced concrete-drilling techniques into production. And this is the whole essence of Soviet science, which does not know the word “startup” and believes that science is a way to satisfy a scientist’s personal curiosity at the expense of the state—a phrase I have heard repeatedly from scientists, though I don’t know who the author was.

As a result, there is nothing surprising about the fact that in the world of “Monday,” magic is completely absent from the daily lives of ordinary people. It is something that sages in ivory tower research institutes engage in. They might practice it a little at home, but ordinary citizens receive nothing from magic except costs, resulting from accidents during tests and the sheer sloppiness of the wizards.

Furthermore, wizards absolutely loathe the press. And why wouldn’t they? The press tries to inform people of at least some benefit that magic brings, and as a result, deals mainly with opportunistic implementers while neglecting the philological characteristics of the word “concrete.” Naturally, such feedback cannot help but offend a true wizard.

What, under ancap, will there be only applied magic? No fundamental magic at all? Of course there will be, and plenty of it. Those wishing to satisfy their personal curiosity will receive grants for satisfying personal curiosity from funds established by admirers of others’ curiosity, or directly. That is more honest. That means less meaningless bureaucracy, which all self-respecting sorcerers dislike so much. And that way, there will be less fussing over ear depilation.

This post was conceived on Saturday and published on Monday, all according to the canon.

The positive hero flew in to steal a valuable device—a constant leitmotif for the Strugatskys, which I already mentioned in my review of Distant Rainbow

Predatory Things of the Century and Their Digital Immortality

Once, depending on my mood, I wrote a short review of three books by the Strugatsky brothers, among which was Predatory Things of the Century. In that book, among other things, there was a description of a certain secret order of patrons who found pleasure in stealing masterpieces from museums and then secretly destroying them in a solemn atmosphere. In the sixties of the last century, the Strugatskys managed to predict modern society quite well. And yesterday, on the MyGap channel, I stumbled upon an almost literal embodiment in our world of that very order of patrons.

A blockchain company burns a painting worth 95 thousand dollars on a live stream. What is the difference from what the Soviet sci-fi writers predicted? The difference, naturally, is that the company bought the painting honestly, and there was no need to burn it in secret; on the contrary, it became a public action. What can you do—while having an amazing intuition for social trends, the Strugatskys happened to be quite out of their depth in economics.

Burning a painting followed by the issuance of a unique token containing its digital copy and denoting ownership of it demonstrates how value arises from rarity. If the token were linked to an undestroyed painting, it could be thrown away, and one could simply settle for factual ownership of the painting without any certificate. It is precisely the fact that the token is left all alone that gives it value; otherwise, it would be an unnecessary tag.

I can easily understand how all of this blows the minds of the adepts of material production, who are convinced that humanity has fallen victim to digital delusions. But there is nothing to be done: the substance of value is not contained within things themselves. Value is in the consciousness. And consciousness is fickle, quickly loses interest in routine, and clings to everything fresh, rare, and unusual. The more sophisticated the consciousness, the harder it is to find such rarity. The more abundant the society, the harder it is to lure consciousness with the ghost of scarcity to suggest that this particular entity is rare and valuable. And so we have lived to see these patrons. What’s next on the Strugatskys’ plan? Sleg?

A bit of economic crash course in cute animation

How useful do you think it would be to translate this into Russian?

L29Ah

In some places, there is quite a large amount of text, so subtitles alone are unlikely to suffice; the images will have to be redrawn. But the videos are truly pleasant, and it would be great if someone took them on. I’m posting the first two as they are, but the third one, about Keynesianism, was previously provided with Russian subtitles by one of my regular readers and donors, Viktor Parkhomets.

https://youtu.be/ODJPUdnRY8M