Автор: Анкап-тян

The Stability of Panarchy

Is the long-term stable coexistence of different political-economic systems in different (or even the same) territories possible, provided that the state monopoly ceases to exist?

For example, a large ancap city neighboring a network of anarcho-eco-communes, and nearby, indigenous rainforest dwellers with their own variation of a stateless arrangement. What are the prerequisites and what are the obstacles to stability in a global sense?

meta-anarchist

Ever since progress (interpreted primarily as scientific and technical, but inevitably affecting social relations as well) became a significant value for a certain critical mass of people, the stability of any political-economic systems has been under constant threat. Liberal regimes of the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries differ from each other so much that their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them.

Therefore, in the long run, no current configuration of communities will, of course, be preserved. More stable societies (like the selva aborigines mentioned in your example) will be eroded by less stable ones. Less stable ones will borrow certain practices from more stable ones. Different societies will have slightly different dynamics in population change—both through natural growth and through co-optation into neighboring societies.

One thing can be said with reasonable confidence: if concepts of property in neighboring communities prove to be compatible, then, at the very least, conflicts between them will be minor and episodic, without any nonsense like wars of extermination. How property is defined within a community is not that important; the main thing is that when interacting with neighbors, the peculiarities of their worldview are taken into account.

For instance, if raids for brides are launched from the forest, if people from the fields visit suburban gas stations to get fuel for free, and if city dwellers place new residential quarters in the fields and turn a piece of the forest into a park—then irritated dialogues with the general message of “what exactly did you have in mind?” are inevitable. After some time, a mutual adjustment is inevitable: raids will become ritualized and turn into a folklore festival for the city dwellers; fuel will be gifted to the communists in exchange for their eco-products; suburban housing will adopt some features of communal living; and the park on the border of the selva will be used for raids once a year, and for peaceful walks and picnics the rest of the time.

As scientific development progresses, humans tend to decrease, rather than increase, their impact on nature. If food can be grown in a test tube in a cupboard, it is much more convenient than growing it in manured fields. If metals are extracted from seawater, it is far more pleasant than digging up mountains in search of ore. If additional space can be packed into a fourth dimension and put in a pocket, then the wild and untouched selva will begin right at the doorstep—there will be no need to clear-cut it.

Thus, there are long-term factors that will promote the outward expansion of the city, and there are factors of the opposite direction. There are factors promoting the expansion of ancap culture as the culture of a wealthier society, and there are factors promoting the expansion of communist and primitive relations (the abundance of goods makes such downshifting attractive to many). There will be no stability for us. Let us weep!

The Publication of “Mechanisms of Freedom”

When I mentioned that the competition is not sleeping, and that an alternative translation of Friedman’s book is already undergoing pre-press preparation, I forgot to provide a link to the fundraiser for its printing. Those who would like to participate in the project, send a donation there.

At the time of this publication, 59,350 out of 80,000 rubles have been collected.

Also, as far as can be judged by David Friedman’s website, he wants to post Russian translations of his poems (most likely including mine), but the link does not work yet.

Defining freedom from the position of ancapism?

анонимный вопрос

I really like the definition of freedom given by the writer Alexander Rozov:

Freedom is the opportunity to openly do what someone else dislikes

A. Rozov, Deportation

For clarity, I would perhaps add one more word to it: “openly and with impunity”, but this is, in essence, simply a clarification of the term “opportunity”.

But this is a general definition that allows one to understand the degree of a person’s freedom in any society, even a totalitarian one. However, the question concerned ancap specifically. And in ancap, there is an important limitation on freedom called the non-aggression principle:

No one has the right to initiate violence with impunity

NAP formulation by Ancap-chan

Thus, the definition of freedom for ancap can be reformulated as follows:

Freedom within ancap is the opportunity to openly and with impunity do whatever one wants, except for the initiation of violence, even if someone else dislikes it.

It remains to clarify that from the perspective of ancap, violence is interpreted as unauthorized damage to property.

Of course, property boundaries, as well as the boundaries of acceptable property damage, can only be defined with some finite precision in any society. Therefore, interpretations and discrepancies are possible regarding specific manifestations of freedom under ancap. For example, the freedom to listen to music, starting from a certain volume level, turns into the freedom to cause damage to third parties, meaning it goes beyond the scope of freedom under ancap. At the same time, determining a threshold volume level in advance is pointless; the clarification of the current boundaries of freedom occurs through the resolution of emerging conflicts.

The boundaries of the acceptable are the fruit of long conflicts

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 58

Chapter 58, Welfare and Immigration: The Second Part of the Argument, concludes the fifth part, The Mechanics of Freedom. While in Chapter 14, Friedman argued that labor immigration benefits both the migrants and the citizens, he now focuses on the fact that migrants may pursue the simple goal of living on welfare. He asserts that free migration is precisely what gives the government an incentive to reduce benefits, whereas high immigration barriers allow the level of redistribution to remain high. Thus, for proponents of a small state, it is entirely justified to either start by reducing benefits and then open the gates, or start by easing migration, and then the demand for reducing benefits will inevitably emerge.

It seems to me that Friedman relies too heavily on economics here, failing to consider the factor of populism in democratic countries.

And so, having finished the fifth part, I dove straight into the sixth, and first translated the poetic introduction, so the poems in this book are now seemingly dealt with.

How will the issue of preventing the degeneration of the Race be solved under ancap?

Genes that contribute to obtaining a higher education are weeded out by natural selection. Without intellectually developed people, it is impossible to maintain a technically complex economy. What is to be done?

анонимный вопрос

In the article you refer to, Alexander Markov already provides an answer to the question of what needs to be done. I quote:

…it makes sense to think about the development of high-tech, efficient, and humane methods for correcting unfavorable evolutionary trends. This includes methods related to genetic engineering, gene therapy, and the selection of gametes or early embryos.

By the way, these are exactly the methods I fantasized about when discussing ways to get rid of pathological aggression.

It remains to be understood how ancap can help in the development of the aforementioned methods. And here the answer is quite obvious. The main thing holding back the development of human genome correction methods today is government bans. No state — no bans.

But ancap is not just the abolition of the bioethics factor that puts a spoke in the wheels of progress. It is also the abolition of social taxes that the middle class pays for child benefits for the lumpen. In the absence of forced redistribution, the rich and educated have more economic incentives to have children, and the poor and uneducated have fewer.

Finally, in the absence of a mandatory state educational standard, people will not need to spend time studying various garbage subjects, such as patriotism lessons. Fewer costs for education (whether measured in time or money) means more is freed up for children.

Thus, in a stateless capitalist society, several factors emerge that weaken the effect mentioned in the article, and in the long run, abolish it entirely. There you have it, gentlemen proponents of racial superiority, an additional argument for ancap.

What should Belarusians and Tsikhanouskaya do?

Bogdan Fokin

I’ll say right away that in this instance, I most want to play the Shulman: curl up in a hole and scream from there that I am not an expert, go to the experts. But let me just stipulate that I am not insisting on being right in this matter, and am merely expressing a modest opinion.

I am proceeding from a simple comparison of the tactics of the Ukrainian Maidan and the Armenian revolution. The Armenian tactic ensured victory at the cost of less bitterness between the parties, as a result of which the conflict quickly quieted down, and reforms are now proceeding without as many problems.

So, Tikhanovskaya’s headquarters should formulate the simplest possible decentralized tactic of wearing down the security forces through peaceful urban guerrilla warfare, with coordinated street closures in geographically dispersed districts, strong moral pressure on election commission employees—so that they publish materials showing falsifications—and strong moral pressure on the relatives of security personnel to force their helmet-wearing kin into unobtrusive sabotage, and so on.

After this tactic is announced, there is a high probability that the headquarters will be crushed and its leadership imprisoned in its entirety. But a decentralized tactic will allow things to proceed without a headquarters thereafter.

The diaspora worked well in Armenia. Belarusians have one too; it should be utilized. This means pressure on foreign leaders so that they do not recognize Lukashenko’s victory, but rather recognize Tikhanovskaya’s victory.

Unlike in Venezuela, high-ranking Belarusian security officials do not seem to be as heavily involved in business, but are simple government employees, so it will be easier to win them over to the side of the legitimate lady president.

The left symbol has been played, now the central one enters the fray

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 57

I received a small donation for the translation of Friedman; I took the hint, so here is a fresh chapter.

I published Chapter 56 earlier, together with Chapter 34, since their themes are closely related. So those who wish to read in order can refresh their memory on the topic of national defense and then proceed to Chapter 57.

Original appropriation, a brief excursion into moral philosophy. The chapter is dedicated to answering the question of what grounds libertarians can even have for appropriating that which is not produced, specifically, land. Two approaches are explored: according to Brodie (if it cannot be done, but is very profitable, then it can, provided compensation is paid) and according to Locke (by mixing honey with tar, the owner of the honey claims rights to the entire barrel).

By mixing Locke’s argumentation with his own, the author concludes that the resulting product is barely edible, but in principle capable of serving as a libertarian basis for the appropriation of unproduced resources.

The competitors are not sleeping!

While I was fussing with the translation of Friedman, slowly and sadly posting one chapter at a time, Sergei Ankapov completed his own translation, and is now raising money for a print edition. Since my version of the translation is also close to completion, I will, of course, hurry up now, and soon you will have two options to choose from: a free amateur one and a paid official one, with a preface by the author (although, if the preface is worth it, I will also pull it over to my version in time).

That’s how competition works: because of me, it will be harder for Sergei to raise money, and I will simply be ashamed that I didn’t manage within a shorter timeframe, and thus partially undervalued my own work.

На изображении может находиться: текст «THIRD EDITION EDITION MACHINERY of FREEDOM Guide to a Radical Capitalism DAVID FRIEDMAN»

New video from Libertarian Band – about abortions

The long series of videos about libertarianism on the Libertarian Band channel, for which I wrote the scripts, had a rather blurred ending. The series consisted of sections that—as it happened—contained exactly five videos each. The first section told about libertarianism in general, about different approaches to building a libertarian society, and about ancap as the goal of the movement. The second examined the basic concepts used by libertarianism and their interrelationship. The third discussed the mechanisms operating in a stateless society. Having analyzed law and morality, I wanted to finish by showing how they intertwine when applied to a topic as slippery as children. It was intended that this would conclude the ancap section and shift the focus to agorism.

However, the script was rejected by the rest of the team and completely rewritten, narrowing the topic to abortions alone. Further on, apparently, instead of agorism, an entire series on the NAP will be deployed, but also with a different scriptwriter. And you’re telling me about some split in the LPR. Who even cares about a split in some LPR?

The video turned out well—thorough and rich in factual detail—but it looks somewhat like a book being finished posthumously by the deceased’s heirs. But since I haven’t actually died, I now have the wonderful opportunity to present this video to you.

How do anarcho-individualism and libertarianism relate?

анонимный вопрос

To get a vivid idea of anarcho-individualism, I can recommend listening to such an anarcho-individualist as Alexander Tatarkov. He speaks quite a lot about his worldview. As for us, we will discuss the differences with libertarianism.

The main postulate of an anarcho-individualist is that the individual determines for themselves how to build their life and their relationships with others, and any norms coming from the outside have the status of well-wishes for them; they have every right to fulfill them, take note of them, ignore them, demonstratively violate them, and so on. Naturally, the anarcho-individualist agrees that they bear full responsibility for their chosen line of behavior, but reserves the right to avoid this responsibility. The only thing in which an anarcho-individualist limits themselves is that they do not engage in the construction of power institutions; this is a taboo. Violating this taboo turns them into an ordinary Machiavellian.

It is not difficult to see that an anarcho-individualist, without violating their principles, can coexist with others in a state of Hobbesian war of all against all, sit in a lotus position achieving enlightenment, join any cooperative activity, or engage in ancapism as a private entrepreneur.

The main postulate of libertarianism is the principle of self-ownership. A person belongs to themselves, which is quite close to the views of anarcho-individualists. But this also means the recognition of the institution of property, for if property is completely denied, there can be no talk of self-ownership, and if property is partially denied, it implies the permissibility of encroachments on self-ownership, such as coercion. Therefore, a libertarian, unlike an anarcho-individualist, limits themselves not only in the construction of power institutions but also in encroaching on someone else’s property.

Since libertarianism was invented, the phenomenon of property itself has been analyzed and is now usually interpreted as a whole bundle of various rights. A maximalist approach to property, where it is interpreted as an absolute unrestricted right to dispose of an object, is very convenient for drawing caricatures of libertarianism or criticizing it in other ways. There are a vast number of such attempts in the information field; among the most interesting, I would name the text by Laksi Katala, Fundamental Problems of Anarcho-Capitalism.

Anarcho-individualism is a convenient basic framework in which a person acts when building their relationships from scratch with an unfamiliar environment where the rules are unknown to them, or where rules have not yet been developed.

Libertarianism is the next logical step toward building a peaceful, prosperous society, where people generally recognize each other’s legal capacity, and thus can develop frameworks for determining property rights and their transfer.

I should note that libertarianism is not entirely synonymous with anarcho-capitalism. To understand the differences, I refer the reader to the corresponding chapter of Friedman’s Mechanics of Liberty: Is Anarcho-Capitalism Libertarian?