I read Vladimir Zolotorev’s book Can something that wasn’t broken be fixed? In it, Vladimir develops his cycle of previously published articles on the nature of the state, shows that it works perfectly in its normal mode, performing exactly what it was created for, and reflects on realistic options for its reduction or abolition.
In effect, he has created something like Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, but using a different conceptual apparatus: Rothbard analyzed the state primarily from legal positions, while Zolotorev does so from the perspective of praxeology, spontaneous orders, and social evolution.
A fairly large section of the book is devoted to explaining how society works (one might not even need to add the adjective “stateless” to it, because that is its natural state; rather, for the current state of affairs, it would be more appropriate to speak of “society with a state”).
The last part of the book presents considerations on the abolition of the state. The key to this is to stop viewing the state as an organization. From this, it becomes clear why political methods of fighting the state do not yield results under normal conditions; rather, they strengthen it, making it more efficient. Ridance of the state in its modern form lies more in the sphere of losing social consent for legalized robbery. At this moment, power is lost, and the state disappears de facto.
Next, a small window of opportunity opens for political methods that allow for the reformatting of the political process itself. This can be done in two directions.
First, the subject of political bargaining can be shifted from budget expenditures to budget collections, that is, turning taxes into fees. Alexander Rozov writes extensively about this in a colorful fictional form in his Meganesian cycle.
Second, the state can be turned into a joint-stock company, not in a figurative, but in a literal sense. Subsequently, the management of this newly formed JSC will optimize the company’s structure within a market paradigm and will join the ranks of all other existing corporations in the world.
All the material and specific recipes are given using the example of Ukraine, so the book should not be perceived as a completely literal manual for action in Russian realities, but it is still more relevant material than recipes based on American material.
Zolotorev’s work was released as part of a collection of works by three different authors. I am posting it in full, but if someone extracts only Zolotorev’s part from the general PDF and translates it, for example, into epub, I would be very grateful, as it would be more convenient to read.
Our team has released a new video. We continue to develop the theme of NAP, and while in the previous episode we limited ourselves to formulating the principle as it applies to today’s realities, now we are considering the question of why, exactly, violence is a poor tool. It would seem that so many people have used it for so many years, so why give it up?
Separately, I really enjoyed the atmospheric gaming inserts in the video — the team has returned to its signature touch, and that makes me very happy.
The next episode will feature a set of recommendations for the unobtrusive implementation of NAP (I already have this script ready), and further, there are planned recommendations regarding obtrusive implementation, a topic I am still exploring.
I read in a left-anarchist channel reflections that our very own Elon Musk has completely dropped his mask and is now collaborating not just with the state, but with the military establishment itself; shame on him, and shame on everyone who speaks of him approvingly.
This reminded me of the words of another liberal idol, Ludwig von Mises, who said that the entrepreneur’s task is to vigilantly seek ever-new ways of satisfying customer demand, and if guns find more demand than butter, there is no sense in blaming the entrepreneur for producing guns.
But with Musk, it is much simpler; he is not choosing between guns and butter, but is steadily moving toward the future he considers desirable. In the brave new world that Musk is building, there is no problem with delivering eighty tons of cargo to the other side of the planet by rocket in an hour. And it makes no difference what cargo one starts with. A customer was found for the development of cargo suborbital transport—so we will build it. And once the technology is mastered using military budgets, it can be brought to the private market to send cargo cheaply. And then, with a bit more polishing, send people.
In reality, for most military tasks, sending dozens of tons twenty thousand kilometers in an hour is overkill. However, for emergency response, this option will be very useful. Thus, I foresee a predominantly peaceful use of this technology being developed with military funds.
If taxes have already been collected and the question is how to spend them, then let them at least be spent by a private actor on dual-use technologies with prospects for wide civilian application.
My favorite Telegram channel, Libertarian State, published a brief set of principles they promote in two parts. Part 1. Part 2. I have read them. Short, clear, and concise; I find much of what is presented to be useful, but there is only one serious problem: the channel’s target audience is incapable of implementing these principles.
In this regard, I believe it is useful to outline my own approach to building a libertarian future, which is something every one of my readers is actually capable of implementing. This is, of course, agorism. Even before I became acquainted with Konkin’s ideas on counter-economics, I called this approach counter-cultural, contrasting it with the political one. What is wrong with the political approach?
There is no point in spending effort trying to change the political course of the state. First, you would have to start with the support of a negligible minority. Second, politics is a path of inevitable compromises, and in the best case, your ideas about reducing the state will be implemented only partially. Third, just as it shrinks, it will grow back: there is not a single example where liberal reforms were not followed by a reversal, and in general, the trend is toward further strengthening the role of the state. And finally, for successful political activity, you need to build complex associations, but any organization united by a simple interest is incredibly easy to destroy. You will endlessly bog down in internal conflicts over whose version of Rothbard is truer, and who violated which point of the charter at what moment.
Instead, it is proposed: first, remove the state from your head; second, remove it from your life; third, remove it from the lives of your loved ones; and fourth, expand the circle of these loved ones.
The most important is the first. At this stage, you firmly understand that there are no tasks for which a decent person would need the state. You have to turn to it out of necessity, for some silly permit, but you certainly should not expect to succeed by cooperating with it.
After serious progress in the first stage, you will inevitably begin to progress in the second. You will always wonder: can it be done under the table? Can it be done without a permit? Can it be done without reporting? Your competencies will develop in this specific area, rather than, for example, in the area of collecting certificates to receive social benefits.
If you are successful in bypassing state hurdles, you will inevitably help your loved ones do the same. Thus, you will become a useful person for a small circle of people. And, naturally, this circle will expand over time, and you will acquire interesting connections and influence.
At some stage, you might, for example, be imprisoned. An activist acquaintance might also be imprisoned. So might an honest state loyalist. Or a security official who lost an internal power struggle. The state devours everyone; you will not be its priority target. But it will have fewer chances of reaching you. You know the detours. You will flee abroad, change your identity, lie low, or in the worst case, dismantle the case.
Admit it, this prospect is more interesting than spending several years becoming, for example, a municipal deputy, sitting in meetings as part of a minority, and managing to achieve nothing during your term of office.
Let us consider the organization of law and order according to David Friedman — in my opinion, his approach is the most developed and yet remains entirely within the framework of ancap, that is, a society with a free market where everything is traded, including law. Various law enforcement agencies and various courts operate in the market, guided by various legal systems. The task of a law enforcement agency is to protect the private property of its clients and assist in resolving conflicts between clients and other entities. The task of a court is to develop decisions that resolve conflicts between the court’s clients. Finally, a legal system is the product of the work of lawyers, representing a certain set of principles and templates for conflict resolution.
When the owner of a certain territory kills a stranger on it, this may cause a conflict with a wide variety of people or organizations. First, these could be companions of the deceased who are convinced that the execution was unjust. Second, his relatives or friends who were not present during the clash but are interested in finding out what happened. Third, the law enforcement agency of which the deceased was a client. Finally, any concerned individual who dislikes it when people are killed for no reason. In short, the killer has no reason to believe that no one will care about this incident.
In medieval Iceland, in the event of such excesses, the killer had to immediately tell the nearest neighbor what happened, taking him as a witness. It can be assumed that such a norm would also take hold under ancap, since the killer is directly interested in this: by telling everything, he can claim that it was an accidental conflict, or even one provoked by the victim, but if the story is hidden, it is unequivocally an intentional murder, for which much more serious sanctions are due.
Thus, after the murder has been announced, all that remains is to conduct an investigation. Much time has passed since the age of the sagas, technology has advanced, and it is possible to establish with slightly greater certainty how truthful the killer’s story is, even if there are no direct witnesses to the incident. Of course, the killer has no reason to obstruct the investigation, because that would predispose the court against him. But he can, of course, try to forge evidence to create a false impression.
Does the fact that the murder took place on the killer’s territory give any preferences in court? Only if it is established that the deceased violated the rules announced by the owner of the territory and refused to leave the other’s property. Therefore, naturally, the killer is interested in claiming exactly that. Whether he succeeds in creating the necessary appearance is a purely technical question.
An interesting question. People more often ask how things in the sphere of so-called public goods will work under ancap. Commercial real estate, however, is a private good. Under a state, the right of private property is to some extent conditional, because it depends on whether the state changes its mind about recognizing this right, or decides to nationalize a particular object. Under ancap, the right of private property is also conditional, and depends on how strong of a negative externality the property owner creates for those around them.
So, if I am to answer the question directly: commercial real estate under ancap will operate in such a way as to create minimum negative externalities and maximum income. Those entrepreneurs who solve this optimization problem better than others will prosper.
How will private detectives work under ancap? After all, it seems one cannot violate someone else’s property.
Anal Magician
As I already mentioned in the answer to the previous question, private property is a conditional concept. Well, this is my favorite mantra that rights are claims that are tolerated—you’ve probably already learned it by heart. Therefore, a private detective first conducts an investigation as far as possible without violating anyone’s property rights and without disturbing anyone—for example, using open data, recordings from public cameras, analysis of evidence provided by the client, and so on. If during the investigation he becomes interested in something located on someone’s property, he seeks ways to obtain the owner’s consent. If consent is not granted, he usually manages to find workarounds.
And in a situation where absolutely all leads point to a unique piece of evidence controlled by some owner who is unwilling to grant access, this becomes a strong suspicion that this owner is, in the worst case, the sought-after criminal, or their accomplice, or in the best case, a sympathizer. And here the owner may well be faced with a choice of what will bring them the lower cost: strong suspicions of complicity in a crime or granting the detective the right to investigate on their territory.
Let’s also add such a tool as a reward for assistance in the investigation—if the notorious owner understands that they will receive a reward for their inconvenience, then why not put up with it.
Suppose ancap has arrived, and on the street one person killed another. In the current system, the police would handle this case. But who will handle this case under ancap? Private detective agencies? But they must be paid, and what if the person had no relatives or friends?
anonymous question
Well, this is already an example of a traditional question about ancap: how public goods will be ensured. Fortunately, you specified the location of the murder: the street. The purpose of a street is to ensure the mass movement of people within a settlement. Exactly how the street owner monetizes the solution to this task is a separate question. In this case, we are interested in the fact that unpunished murders on the street hinder the task of mass unobstructed movement along it. If the street owner does not solve this problem, people will either have to invent ways to protect themselves on this street or stay away from this sinister place. In the second case, traffic drops, and this directly hits the owner’s income. In the first case, the costs for residents increase, they become less solvent, and the street owner’s income drops indirectly. So, he has economic incentives to solve this problem, even if he is not bound by an obligation to provide security on his street directly.
Of course, if the street owner manages to hide the incident, it will save costs. But you know these people: they are always sniffing something out, they are always suspicious… Once this episode surfaces, all sorts of speculations will begin that dozens of corpses are being hauled away every night and it’s time to flee this cesspool. To hell with that, transparency is more profitable.
A city known for the fact that security on the streets was provided by a volunteer. Well, that’s also a way, of course, but usually the heroism of one person only masks the failures of others.
To understand what will happen to currency under ancap, it is enough to visit the site coinmarketcap.com, which provides the price history of more than seven thousand cryptocurrencies. Since there is no copyright on cryptocurrency, literally anyone can create one, and this site reflects far from all of them, but only those that are traded, more or less, on exchanges, or were traded for some time.
What do we see when studying the price history of various currencies relative to Bitcoin? In many cases, it is a short-term speculative rise, followed by a long and painful decline with occasional spikes, sometimes ending in complete oblivion. The issue is not even unrestrained emission, but the fact that the consumer does not need an excessive variety of types of money. As we know from Alexey Tereshchuk’s catallactic theory of money, money are goods used to reduce costs in indirect exchange. If there are many candidates for the role of money, under conditions of freedom of choice, the consumer will use those that can reduce their exchange costs more effectively than others.
How many types of money are needed to fully satisfy the needs of the market? Money has various parameters by which they can be compared. For example, the possibility of anonymous transfer, or conversely, the impossibility of such, or the size of costs to make a payment, or preservation during storage, or preservation of value over time, or the development of infrastructure for working with this type of money, and so on. Each such factor is interesting because it allows reducing the consumer’s costs when using money in different ways. It is very unlikely that one single type of money will be found that leads in all possible criteria. Therefore, in the course of natural currency selection, at least as many should remain as there are leaders in individual functions of money.
However, of course, this does not mean that new and new attempts will not be made in the market to displace the old leaders. They will be. Most of them will end in failure. There will also be initially fake attempts, where the creators of the currency build hype around it, profitably sell it to all who wish, and then relax, and the currency fades into oblivion.
The well-known Russian Orthodox republican Rodion Belkovich has appeared in my channel twice so far.
The first time was when I was answering the question of whether we are already living under ancap. The question was obviously inspired by Belkovich’s speech at last year’s Adam Smith Readings, where he thoroughly trolled the audience with this paradoxical assertion.
And then suddenly, a rumor reaches me that Belkovich is traveling across the country presenting this very book of his, like Svetov in the pre-covid era, and intends to visit Novosibirsk on October 4th. By today’s standards, any kind of public lectures are quite exotic; I’ve completely grown out of the habit. In short, for those who wish to drop by, here is the Timepad address for lecture registration. The book presentation will take place on October 4th from 14:00 to 15:00 at Voskhod 28, 4th floor. And from 15:00, he will be debating republicanism with local colleagues. I don’t know how reluctantly the organizers will be forced to set up chairs and, accordingly, what the capacity of the hall will be, but I hope everyone will fit comfortably. Because I remember almost fainting from the stuffiness at Svetov’s, and I don’t want that again.
In the lecturer’s gaze, one can clearly see a desire to water some tree…
Ancap is not only profitable, as economists claim. Not only just, as legal scholars insist. Not only virtuous, as ethics specialists believe. Today, I want to raise a toast to the beauty of anarcho-capitalism.
A person is free. A person is responsible for themselves. They have a right to whatever they voluntarily agree upon with others. They are ready to stand up for themselves. If they come to the aid of others, it is only because they wished to do so. If they ask for help, they always intend to reward those who help. If they accuse, they always indicate why it is their business. If they accidentally cause harm to someone, they always inquire about the amount of compensation.
Just imagine the image of the person that arises before you when you read such a description. Is he not wonderful? Does one not feel a desire to be like him? That is how the aesthetics of ancap work, and they should not be underestimated.
A person who positions themselves as an ancap but cannot stand up for themselves, takes offense at things that do not concern them, burdens others with requests, does not pay back debts, is quarrelsome and incapable of negotiation—is ridiculed. They do not correspond to the aesthetic image that arises in everyone who hears about ancap.
Place the image of an ancap next to the image of some honest statist. You will always find some aesthetic flaw. For example, the statist will insist that taxes be squeezed out of a person, even if it buries the business. Or they will insist on an obviously unfair accusation because that is the requirement of the law. Or they will demand tons of paperwork for something that normal people do much more simply, and who would be ready to give a bribe, but the honest statist does not take them. It is immediately apparent that the honest statist is a tragicomic figure, evoking hatred, pity, or laughter, depending on your position relative to them.
Or take a consistent communist. He will wear standard clothing from a public warehouse, eat set lunches in a canteen, put his children in nurseries, and burn himself out at the job where the general assembly sends him—even if he dreams of something completely different. This is a tragic figure; there is even a certain grandeur in his asceticism, but once you imagine him focusedly marching across your own destiny in those very same standard boots from the public warehouse—something about the aesthetics of socialist realism begins to turn one’s stomach.
Not only is the image of the anarcho-capitalist beautiful, but so is the system of interaction under ancap. If you need something, do it yourself, buy it, or borrow it. But if it isn’t lent or sold, do it yourself—or abandon the goal. Compare this with the statist “if you need it, vote for the one who promises to do it for you using the taxes collected from you.” Or with the communist “if you need it, convince the other members of the community that you need it, and then they will vote to allocate it to you.” When a description of interaction involves compulsory social redistribution, it is first and foremost unsightly, if only in its clumsiness.
In principle, an aesthetic of relationship descriptions comparable to the ancap one exists in the model of pure violence. If you need it, do it yourself or take it. If you couldn’t take it, do it yourself or abandon the goal. When ancaps are accused of being proponents of unlimited violence, it is precisely because of this similar aesthetic. Some simply do not understand the difference, but most (I believe) simply consciously manipulate your aesthetic perception to repel you from the image of the ancap.
Of course, there is a difference, and a quite obvious one. What does an ancap do when they want to build a small piece of ancap around themselves? They simply make deals, without asking permission from outsiders and without paying any taxes. According to Hobbes, however, within the framework of the war of all against all, he would more likely go and impose a tribute on someone. That is, he would build a small piece of a state around himself.
Alright, I admit, the Fed messed up. Let’s assume the Federal Reserve really did inflate financial bubbles during the war and even after, which led to the depression of 1930-39. But what about the panics of 1873 (and subsequently the long depression of 1873-79), the devastating 1893 and the prolonged depression until 1896, and the short-term 1908. There wasn’t even a hint of a Fed back then.
Moreover, I am placing more emphasis on the depression of 1893, as it was the most terrifying in scale and damage (surpassed perhaps only by the Great one). The unemployment rate reached 17-19% at its peak! And all this happened during the administration of Grover Cleveland, who is considered the most libertarian US president. He was for: low taxes and non-interference in the economy. And against: high tariffs (which were simply enormous at the time!), business subsidies, pensions and material aid to victims (for example, he refused to allocate $100,000 to farmers in Texas affected by crop failure in 1887). And he gave a f… that is, he vetoed unconstitutional (as he believed) laws that Congress wanted to push through. By the way, what do you think of him?
And as the older brother who explains everything in much more detail, but whom few will read, this time we have the book by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. I will be taking illustrations from there.
The Crisis of 1873-1879
We see that during this time, the decline in business activity was accompanied by a decrease in the money supply, a drop in prices and — attention! — an increase in real income. In other words, production grew at a frantic pace — and this despite deflation (the reasons for deflation are well known: the US was returning to full convertibility of dollars into gold after issuing a huge number of unsecured greenbacks during the Civil War years). Thus, deflation does not necessarily lead to a slowdown in production. In general, calling this period a depression is somehow strange; rather, it was simply a structural reorganization of the economy under conditions of rapid economic growth and a decrease in the money supply. In the twenties of the 20th century, there was also frantic economic growth — but it was accompanied by the inflation of the money supply, which I wrote about when answering the question about the Great Depression.
The Crisis of 1893-1896
The crisis was preceded by a significant increase in the money supply, from 210 to 308 million dollars in Treasury accounts over the period from 1879 to 1888. This was due to the growing number of supporters of “soft money”: the return of greenbacks, i.e., unsecured treasury notes, or the unlimited issuance of silver dollars (it was precisely at this time that silver began to depreciate sharply because its mining rates increased). Meanwhile, the bimetallic standard assumed a fixed ratio between the price of gold and silver. Anyone interested can read about what arbitrage opportunities this hides in popular form in chapter four of the fanfiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. What happens when the state persists in maintaining the bimetallic standard can also be read in Saifedean Ammous’s The Bitcoin Standard, which summarizes the experience not only of the USA, but also, for example, the Chinese Empire.
Add to this that, although the USA did not yet have the Fed at that time, there was unregulated banknote emission by approximately 8,000 banks under conditions of fractional reserve. Therefore, once all these factors of monetary expansion had worked for long enough, any shift in market conditions was sufficient to trigger a banking panic. This happened in 1893. Under fractional reserve conditions, this inevitably meant the bankruptcy of many banks. The money supply shrank sharply, followed by a decrease in the volume of investments.
At the same time, although unemployment grew to significant levels and incomes fell at the peak of the crisis, the market adjusted very quickly to the new conditions, and soon it fell again. So here too, we see a trend: the crisis passes quickly if the state does not twitch and does not try to cure it with regulation. The illustration shows a classic V-shaped crisis structure: a rapid decline, a rapid recovery. Real income recovered to pre-crisis levels as early as 1895.
The Crisis of 1908
The same thing: credit expansion (the money supply grew from 261 million dollars in 1897 to 339 million dollars in 1906), a banking panic, the V-shaped nature of the crisis, and just over a year to recover to pre-crisis indicators.
Grover Cleveland (President in 1885-1889 and 1893-1897)
As is easy to see from the dates of the presidency, the crisis of 1893 could not possibly be Cleveland’s fault, because he had only just taken over from his Republican predecessor, Benjamin Harrison. Thus, he should rather be credited with the rapid exit from the crisis, and the record number of vetoes he placed on bills passed by Congress contributed exactly to this: he prevented the inflation of government spending (Warren Harding reacted to the crisis of 1921 in exactly the same way later — and with the same success), advocated for the reduction of tariffs, killed a bill on the emission of additional silver dollars, and solved the problem of the Treasury’s gold reserve by attracting private capital — a syndicate of several financiers simply bought up a sufficient number of bonds.
Cleveland turned out to be the only president in US history who managed to serve two non-consecutive terms — and this characterizes the intensity of the passions that prevailed at the time around the question of what is more beneficial: Laissez Faire or economic regulation. Unfortunately, Cleveland’s fight against the growth of statism ended up being lost: while under him the Democratic Party, in contrast to the Republican, remained practically libertarian, later the Democrats were consumed by the merging supporters of Mikhail Svetov the Populist party, and since then, instead of a choice between freedom and statism, US citizens choose between a giant enema and a shit sandwich.
