Автор: Анкап-тян

For the greater good

Bitarch asked me to comment on his article about property protection in a society that has eradicated violence, but asked that I not be too critical.

As a reminder, Bitarch’s main idea is as follows. The cost of weapons is decreasing, their destructive power is increasing, and then we extrapolate the graph of the number of weapons over time and find that after some time, one person will be able to destroy all of humanity with a simple flick of the wrist. To prevent this, Bitarch suggests tying people’s hands in advance; they will not be able to make simple movements with them, and thus humanity will be saved.

How to tie their hands? Universal armament is required. In this case, any attempt on another person’s life must lead to the instantaneous destruction of the aggressor. Under such conditions, rational agents will not dare to encroach upon anyone’s life.

But there is a problem: besides attempts on life, there are also encroachments on property, and property rights are a matter of agreement between people and can be disputed. Therefore, Bitarch postulates: using violence to protect one’s property is unacceptable. If you are asked to choose between your wallet or your life—you can choose life, and upon an attempt on your life, destroy the assailant. But if, for example, some squatters occupy your temporarily empty house, you’re screwed. In the best case, you can ask the utility workers to cut off their electricity. And even then, it’s unclear if they will accommodate you if the squatters are paying for the electricity.

How to solve such problems? “However you like,” Bitarch answers, “these are your problems, as long as there is no violence.” And he provides as an inspiring example a tale about how states, under the threat of violence, banned the use of DDT instead of leaving it to the market. With the help of the state club, they defeated DDT, defeated ozone holes, are defeating global warming and coronavirus, are defeating common sense—they will manage violence too.

Etatism is an intellectual disease in which a person places the presumed values of imaginary collective subjects above real individual values.

Stay healthy!

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 63

Another, very tiny, chapter of Mechanics of Freedom is being published, The Conservative Error. In it, Friedman lumps together immigration, global warming, fracking, GMOs, and various other same-sex marriages, asserting that the rejection of human development in these respective directions is rooted in one simple cognitive bias. Moreover, this bias is characteristic of both those who call themselves conservatives and those who call themselves liberals (referring to the US coordinate system, of course). The bias consists of the assumption that one can stop a beautiful moment. No, you cannot.

The translation of Mechanics of Freedom is nearing completion. Parallel to this, I have finished organizing by chapters and posted on my website the English text of Friedman’s 2019 book about legal systems that are very different from ours. Vladimir Zolotorev has so far released translations of three chapters, all of which are duplicated on my site, and I intend to continue in the same vein. If you want to encourage the translation, send donations to Vladimir. But if he gets stuck for long, I will take the initiative.

On the idea of universal civilian armament

Due to the incident near Krasnoyarsk, Bitarch has resumed his reflections on balancing the potential for violence and published an article BitTorrent for Weapons, where he states that one of the most obvious ways to achieve almost complete armament is to make the cost of weapons zero. Since this is unrealizable at today’s level of technology, it should at least be as low as possible, so that volunteers could literally distribute weapons to anyone who wants them without spending too much.

He considers the following technological families:

  1. Compact projectile weapons, where weak shot energy is compensated for by chemistry. Exactly how to deliver the toxin-charged striking element is a matter of taste and technological fantasy.
  2. Dazzling lasers
  3. Neutralizing the opponent with a jet of liquid or a spray (gas canisters, water pistols, etc.)

In a subsequent note, he provides a simple schematic for a flamethrower based on a water pistol, although he does not specify how functional, long-range, accurate, or safe the design is. A video showing the assembly and testing of such a device would be much more effective, and I hope such videos will also be found.

What can I say regarding the proposed mechanism for balancing the PV (Potential for Violence)?

  1. Non-lethal self-defense weapons are a sufficiently developed industry where solutions can be found for every taste, budget, and legal framework. In particular, for Russia, gas canisters are almost without alternative as the optimal choice in terms of safety and price. They combine the advantages of compactness and cost—but most importantly, their use does not carry any serious state sanctions.
  2. Bitarch’s fantasies are geared more toward non-lethal offensive weapons, such as the aforementioned dazzling lasers. It makes sense to use them from a distance against a crowded opponent, which is why they are used during street protests. Similarly, huge gas cylinders from fire extinguishers, various homemade flamethrowers, and so on are needed specifically for street protests. All sorts of ballistae and catapults would also fit here, though they are more of a way to amuse the imagination than to win a street skirmish.
  3. In the Krasnoyarsk incident, the attackers’ main ally was the suddenness of the attack. Weapons would not have helped. Had the victims possessed a serious numerical advantage, or had they a couple of trauma pistols at hand, the opponent could have simply waited for them to fall asleep and then set fire to the tents. So, if such clashes occur in some remote taiga corner, protection lies either in publicity or in identifying the client and intimidating them instead.
  4. The idea of distributing weapons for free via volunteers is an attempt to start from the wrong place. Weapons are already cheap, and practically anyone can afford them. It is a matter of priorities. What is needed instead are inspiring examples of weapon usage—and only then, on a wave of hype, should the idea of arming oneself be pushed to the masses. People do not value what they get for free.

Kappel’s Cross

On the evening of September 18, near Krasnoyarsk, a group of about ten public activists relaxing at a libertarian-conservative camp Krest Kappelya was attacked by a similar number of rioters wearing balaclavas and armed with clubs. The camp participants were seriously beaten, and their phones, some belongings, and tents were seized and destroyed, and their passports were burned. The attackers did not hide the political nature of the assault.

One of those attacked managed to escape, take cover at an empty summer house, and contact the police. As far as I can tell, it is about a three-hour drive from the Emelyanovo district center to the camp site; therefore, the police made excuses until the last moment, unwilling to venture into the wilderness at night, and only deployed after the attack gained publicity. By the time the police arrived, the camp site was already empty, and by morning, details of the attack and photos of the beaten activists began to appear. They made their own way to the nearest settlement and from there were evacuated to Krasnoyarsk.

Information regarding exactly where the camp would take place was not readily available in open sources. On the camp’s VK public page, it was suggested to contact the organizers personally for additional information. Thus, potential attackers would have had to either organize surveillance or have prior data on the camp’s location.

I am posting all these details for the following understanding:

  1. Your political activism can lead to an attack by paramilitaries.
  2. In such an attack, it will be difficult for you to encounter an opponent who is fully prepared for combat. In this case, the attack happened in the dark on people sitting by a campfire with a guitar—an almost ideal setup for the attackers. Even if you happen to have a weapon with you, using it would be problematic, and after the attack, you will almost certainly lose it.
  3. Meetings in deserted places are not conspiracy. If they set a goal to find you, they will find you, but you, conversely, will face problems when trying to escape from a deserted place.

What organizational conclusions can be drawn from this:

  1. Small events for ten to fifteen people are better held in the city or, for example, at guarded recreation centers.
  2. If you gather several dozen people, you can afford a tent camp, but then it is important to organize security yourselves. Sober and armed. Preferably with security credentials.
  3. Local political paramilitaries, like the police, are tied to a specific territory. If you want a quiet, secluded vacation, go outside your region, and if you have federal notoriety, go abroad. Navalny was attacked when he flew from Moscow to vacation somewhere near Anapa, I believe. But if you have only caught the eye of the “E-center” in Krasnoyarsk, a trip to Tomsk will rid you of its attention.
  4. VK is a terrible place for planning any kind of events. Total conspiracy is impossible, but increasing the cost of operational-search activities is within your power.
And generally, the idea of a camp is quite attractive…

The Mechanics of Freedom. Chapter 62.

In a short chapter with the strange title Capitalist Trucks, Friedman answers the question of how a state differs from a condominium, and also advises potential truck buyers on whether to buy a Kamaz.

On the one hand, Friedman’s arguments could encourage supporters of contractual jurisdictions. On the other hand, he also points out their limitations: such communities will inevitably be compact and small in number because the negative effect of scale is very pronounced in democracies. So enthusiasts of charter cities have something to think about. For example, whether their cities need a single system of law, or whether the development of most norms should be left to condominiums and other local organizations.

Overproduction of money as the cause of “overproduction crises”

In your note on the Keynesians’ arguments, it says:

In general, the model turns out to be completely counterintuitive: the crisis is caused by the overproduction of goods (according to ABCT it is caused by the overproduction of money, and when there are many goods, that’s actually great, which completely corresponds to the worldview of any ordinary person)

But the gold standard in the USA was abolished only after the main crisis, in 1933. Does this mean that “overproduction of money” could not have been its cause and the Keynesians are right?

Solo 322 (question accompanied by a donation of 322.8 rubles)

To understand the causes of the Great Depression in detail, it makes sense to read Rothbard’s book America’s Great Depression. But that’s 560 pages, and I personally haven’t gotten around to it yet. So my ideas are based mainly on a much shorter essay by Pavel Usanov, The Great Depression and the New Deal – Lessons for Modernity. It’s only 44 pages, including all appendices and the bibliography; anyone can handle that volume.

For instance, it is stated there that in 1926 Keynes wrote that thanks to the Fed’s activities, there would be no more crises (this prediction would later be broadcast by mainstream economists after every major crisis, specifically citing the fact that the Fed has now learned how to deal with them). Hayek in 1927 and Mises in 1929, on the contrary, predicted a crisis, based precisely on the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, according to which the cause of such crises is the credit expansion of central banks.

Between 1921 and 1929, the money supply in the USA grew from $45.3 billion to $73.3 billion. This was achieved by lowering the Fed’s discount rate, based on roughly the same fractional reserve mechanisms as today. The inflated financial bubble burst in 1929. Something quite similar happened in 1921, when the stock market crash was fully comparable and was caused by the same reasons—the inflation of the money supply during World War I. But then the Harding administration ignored the crisis, and it resolved itself literally within a year. In 1929, the Hoover administration began fighting the crisis through price regulation, injecting liquidity into bankrupt banks, a public works program, and then introducing protectionist tariffs. As a result, the depression truly became Great.

Roosevelt, who came to power under slogans of deregulation and reduction of government spending, on the contrary, only intensified this policy, which later became known as the New Deal. As a result, the Great Depression lasted until the end of World War II, when Roosevelt finally passed away, and a considerable part of his regulatory measures were repealed, while simultaneously enshrining in the Twenty-second Amendment to the Constitution the prohibition of one person holding the presidential post for more than two terms. As an example, I’ll give just a couple of figures: the share of government spending decreased from 44% of GDP in 1944 to 8.9% in 1947—of course economic growth would happen with such a reduction in government appetites!

Now, what happened in 1933, and what abolition of the gold standard are we talking about? We are talking about the confiscation of gold from citizens and declaring settlements in gold illegal within the country. In international trade, gold retained its significance, and the price of gold in dollars was fixed by the government; that is, the gold standard was preserved, but in a very distorted form: there are pieces of paper, it is stated that they are worth so much gold, they must be trusted like gold, but you cannot get gold for them. When the gold standard was finally abolished in the seventies, gold became an ordinary commodity with a floating price.

Roosevelt’s confiscation of gold was not the cause of the growth of the money supply, but rather its consequence. At that time, the government had gold worth approximately $4 billion, while the demands for exchanging dollars for gold totaled $25 billion. To avoid offending anyone, the government refused to satisfy the demands of everyone)))

Making depression great

Is tax-free minarchism possible, where the state earns only from government services?

Anal Magician

This was again a very long question, but it seems I managed to compress it into a single sentence without any significant loss of meaning.

In general, the idea of transitioning to financing the state budget through payment for government services is good because the government thereby declares its intention to be useful—taking money only for what is in demand, and in the volume for which there is demand for its activity. Such a line of thinking among government officials, of course, should be encouraged. Let’s figure out what this might look like.

Purely theoretically, the sale of any services by the state can be either a monopoly or carried out within the framework of free competition with private companies.

Let’s start with services that are a natural monopoly of the state. Yes, such things really exist, and they are linked to the exploitation of the state as a unique brand. For example, a quite significant source of income for young Pacific states in the 20th century was the issuance and sale of postage stamps. Here, private entities cannot compete with the state in any way, because it is precisely the fact that the stamps are issued by the state that gives them collectible rarity. Any fool can color a piece of adhesive paper, but obtaining UN recognition as a state and then coloring a piece of adhesive paper is a completely different matter. I don’t know how much this business flourishes now with the advent of the internet, but stamps aren’t the only thing. The state can sell noble titles, tickets to military parades, and other market-demanded perks. Any such activity of a minarchist government can only be welcomed, even if the money earned is squandered on some harmless nonsense, like maintaining a royal court, rather than on what, according to minarchist myths, should be the exclusive prerogative of the state. What was it—courts, the army, and the police?

Besides government services that are natural monopolies, there is a much broader class of monopolies achieved by the forced exclusion of competitors. For example, a government service such as the sale of entry (or, even more so, exit) visas. While in the case of natural monopolies the buyer themselves wishes to purchase the service specifically from the state, in this case, they would gladly buy this service from a competitor if it were cheaper, and even more gladly prefer not to pay for this service at all—but simply enter the country without any visa. I presume you have already realized that we, the ancaps, cannot approve of dubious services of this sort, unlike corruption, which allows one to avoid their imposition.

Finally, there are services that the state could provide while competing with private entities. State clinics, schools, insurance companies, pension funds, television, and many, many other services. How, properly speaking, do they differ from private ones? In that their nominal owner turns out to be society as a whole, and in theory, all their profits should be spent exclusively on improving the services themselves, rather than being siphoned into the pockets of private owners. Theoretically, this could provide a new quality of service that would be difficult to achieve in the case of a private enterprise. For example, public television could sell only the absolute minimum of advertising, just to cover the channel’s costs. In practice, state companies of this sort will fall victim to the principal-agent problem and will act more in the interests of management than in the interests of society.

To summarize. The only type of government service that remains unconditionally legitimate in the eyes of ancaps is the market exploitation of the state as a brand. Other organizations with rich cultural traditions, such as churches, knightly orders, football clubs, or festivals, can operate on the same principles.

The state provides an exclusive market-demanded good, and that is wonderful!

Will contractual jurisdictions, each of which involves only individuals with similar views, lead to the eternal conservation of all social institutions and the cessation of the development of philosophical thought?

Siberian Extremist

This question had been pending for a while, and it came back to me in connection with the publication of Farid Khusainov’s review of Rodion Belkovich’s book on the history of American radicalism. The main point of the review (though not necessarily the reviewed book itself) is that individual freedom must be defended both from the central government and from enthusiasts of cozy conservative communities. I agree with this general conclusion, but now I want to understand how real the danger is that philosophical thought in a world of closed communities will cease to develop.

Indeed, isolated communities—as far as we can judge by the isolated communities we can observe—are not prone to a riot of ideas. This could be the Amazonian Indians, the aboriginals of the Andaman Islands, or the Amish beloved by Mikhail Svetov. These are very stable societies, capable of existing for centuries without any changes at all.

The example of ancient Hellas is quite telling in this regard. It consisted of many compact poleis, meaning territorial jurisdictions, united into leagues, which were contractual jurisdictions of a higher level; within the polis, there were phyles, demes, and other heteriai, which turned out to be extraterritorial jurisdictions, some contractual and some not. We know ancient Hellas as an example of a society with an exemplary explosion of philosophical thought. But even there, there was an island of stability: Lacedaemon.

It is well known what protected the Spartans from the corrupting influence of outsiders: a radical reduction of external trade contacts. You cannot trade much when your obols—monetary units with a value roughly equal to “one snack”—consist of hefty iron bars. Other poleis traded actively, and through this, they were open to mutual cultural influence. It is easy to see that the same characteristic is observed in modern stable communities: their external trade turnover is extremely low.

Will a world of many ECUs exist without trade relations between members of different ECUs? Highly doubtful, except perhaps as an exception. The extraterritoriality of jurisdictions further facilitates various connections with participants of other communities. And where there is trade, there is a search for profit. Where there is a search for profit, there is entrepreneurship. Where there is entrepreneurship, there is a constant readiness to observe and adapt others’ ideas. Rest assured, philosophical development will not disappear under panarchy.

Philosophers in search of new ideas

Why do minarchists prefer direct taxes to indirect ones?

Anal Magician

The question was very long, and it described in detail that indirect taxes should supposedly irritate people less, so why then do these strange libertarians prefer to deal with what irritates people more.

There are three aspects here.

First, it is easier to evade direct taxes. Once I decide not to pay taxes, in the case of direct taxes, I can achieve success relatively easily because it depends largely on me. Indirect taxes are harder to evade because paying them depends more on the activities of third parties. It is one thing to earn only “under the table,” and quite another to manage to buy all necessary goods “under the table.” The level of hassle is incomparable.

Second, the more direct the taxes, the easier it is to understand exactly how much you are paying. And the lower the uncertainty, the further the planning horizon. The ability for long-term planning increases labor productivity in the long run. In other words, it is easier for people to get rich. The more indirect a tax is, the harder it is to say exactly how much you are paying and, accordingly, how profitable a particular activity is, especially in the long term.

Third, the more direct the tax, the less information about your activities you disclose to the tax authorities. The most direct tax is the poll tax. All that is known about you as a taxpayer is the fact of your existence. If you pay a sales tax, you report the amount you sold. If it is a profit tax, you report your profit, how much you bought for, and how much you sold for. But if it is an indirect tax like VAT, you already have to report in detail from whom and at what price you bought, and then to whom and at what price you sold. The more information about your activities is known, the easier it is for the state to plan how much more they can shave off you.

There is, however, one very indirect tax, which, by paying, tells the state even less than paying a poll tax. This is monetary emission. Therefore, some minarchists allow precisely such a model for constructing the state budget: there is no redistribution of money by the state, there is simply an annual emission of money by the state in a small fixed amount, comparable to economic growth. From this money, a certain extremely narrow list of state expenditures is funded, and if for some reason the money is not enough, the state takes off its hat and goes to beg for donations, or performs a budget sequestration.

The only indirect tax acceptable to minarchists

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 61

I’ve received another donation for the Friedman translation project, as well as a question: will the translated Mechanics of Freedom be available in fb2 format? Actually, I planned to stick with epub, but since that’s the case, there will be an fb2 as well. And since money has come in, it’s a great excuse to post a new chapter.

Chapter 61 has a grand title: A Bet I Lost: Where My Moral Philosophy Begins. Friedman shares memories from half a century ago about how he bet with philosopher Isaiah Berlin and failed to prove to him that moral judgments are more a matter of taste than objective facts.

The venerable philosopher explained to the student David, as simply as two plus two, that as long as we rely on the testimony of our sense organs, the objectivity of any facts is extremely conditional. He then developed the idea that mutually consistent impressions are perhaps useful enough to be considered facts, since they align well with each other and with the impressions of other people. In the same way, mutually consistent moral judgments can boldly be considered moral facts, and those incapable of perceiving them can be considered insane.

As a result, Friedman largely changed his position on morality and is now much more inclined to perceive basic moral statements as akin to facts of physical reality. However, he is aware that he lacks a decent argument against moral nihilism, and it is unlikely that one will emerge.