Автор: Анкап-тян

Good day, Ancap-san! Have you heard about the parrot whose intelligence was at the level of a 4-year-old child? It would be interesting to know the position of libertarianism regarding the rights of sentient non-humans, especially property rights.

The Anal Magician

For a modern person, broadly speaking, it doesn’t matter who their counterparty is, as long as that party performs valid actions. What difference does it make to me whether I buy bitcoins from a person or a bot? I simply create a buy order, and whether a Black man, a gay man, a Rosgvardia officer, a parrot, or a network intelligence responds to it, I don’t care, as long as they send me the bitcoins upon receipt of the rubles.

The same applies to situations where counterparties encounter each other face to face. If one of them asserts their rights, the second analyzes the claim and either recognizes it or doesn’t. What difference does it make who is asking me to give way—a car (autonomous or not), a person, or a dog? If I consider it a reasonable request, I will yield.

The same applies to property rights. If a parrot reacts to an intrusion into its cage with a piercing “Trespassers will be shot!”, I either decide that it understands what it wants to say, or I remain convinced that some ancap simply taught it various funny phrases. When further interaction with the parrot leads me to the conviction that its will, expressed in human language, indeed corresponds to its desires, I will take those desires into account. In the same way, I would have to find a mutual understanding with some cat that does not intend to express itself in human languages, but has needs and is capable of signaling them.

In general, a parrot could fly to the nearest store for food on its own, and it would face no more difficulties with this than a four-year-old child. It likewise cannot open a door, but it can ask adults to do so. And it can likewise hand a crumpled banknote to the seller and ask for a bag of sunflower seeds. For the seller, both the child and the parrot would be legitimate owners of the banknote, which gives them the right to receive the goods.

The same goes for emancipation. A child can declare their desire to live independently, followed by a conversation about whether they properly imagine the consequences and if they are ready for them. Similarly, a parrot can demand not to be held, and if it can convince a human that it can handle an independent life, then it is within its right to fly away. How do we feel about an adult who holds a child against their will? From the moment the child is able to explain this will to outsiders, we view such a thing poorly. Likewise, a parrot that begins to complain about the restriction of its freedom to the first outsider to come within earshot would not add to the society’s sympathy for its owner.

Of course, not everything is so rosy. Until a person becomes accustomed to regularly contacting sentient non-humans, every such non-human will have to explain their rights anew to every person they meet, until everyone in the neighborhood knows that a sentient parrot lives in this park, and entry to the clearing under this tree is by its invitation only.

But which rights of sentient non-humans would face difficulties in recognition? Primarily those that cause danger or serious inconvenience to humans. For instance, people respect the right of ants to have an anthill in a city park, and are even ready to undertake efforts to protect it—but they do not recognize the right of ants to live in wall niches and steal sugar from the table, a non-recognition of which can easily lead to ant genocide on the part of humans.

The Only One and His Property

Stéphane Molinier, Practical Anarchy. Chapter 4.

I edited the fourth chapter of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molneux. The text is an impressive exercise in rhetoric. The author continues to motivate us to abandon the state in favor of anarchy using the following logical construct: the state is absolutely horrific, therefore, the absence of a state could be cool; if it turns out that coordination in a society without a state is possible in principle, then we should go for it. If this creates minor inconveniences, they can be tolerated, but the whole point is that no, it won’t, but on the contrary, it will only be better, and then it turns out that you endured the evil, ugly state just so that life would also be inconvenient—aren’t you idiots?

Election Commission Strike. New video on Libertarian Band.

A video of atypical content has been released on Libertarian band. One of the team members, Alexei Nefedov, also works in a precinct election commission. He decided to join the strike of election commission members and briefly explains the motives why other members of election commissions should follow his example.

For my part, I will add that on one hand, it is useful for as many election commission members as possible to strike, and on the other — it is useful to create as much workload as possible for those remaining, so that they curse everything and regret not joining the strikers. Call the commission to your home; for once, this is allowed for everyone, so we should take advantage of it and let them run around. Are we agorists or what?

Once more about intellectual property law

Suppose I am a writer. I live in Ancapistan. I wrote a book. I posted it on my website, free for readers. At the top, I put a banner that rotates with every view and brings me a little bit of money. At the bottom, I put a donation button.

A malicious pirate copied my book to his own site. He threw out a couple of chapters he didn’t like. He put his own banner at the top. He put his own donation button at the bottom.

If I take a little shotgun and go to kill him, will the jury acquit me?

анонимный вопрос

This is a supplement to the question proposed by the King of Sex and Tea Bags, but this time without a signature.

Oddly enough, I quite often do exactly what you described. Some Bitarch or Vitaly Tizun posts an article. I take the text, correct the commas, remove paragraphs I don’t like, accompany it with some comment of my own, and post it on my own site, not forgetting to place a “donations” button under the post. As it happened, none of them have come at me with a little shotgun for this; in fact, some even praise me, saying the edited text is easier to read. Perhaps it’s because I credit the author and provide a link to the original post. Therefore, the authors see their own benefit in my behavior and do not object.

But what if I ignored the norms of netiquette, took anyone’s texts, edited them however I liked according to my taste, and posted them in a channel under my own name? One thing would be obvious in this situation: it would also be unnecessary for others to observe the norms of netiquette in their attitude toward me. Perhaps the slandered authors would rain attacks on me in social networks and tediously explain to the public that they are the actual authors of the text, that the originals should be obtained from them, and that they are the ones who should be donated to if the work was liked. And I would continue my strange approach to content creation, focusing on exactly what and how I change in the posted texts. For example, I might post the text of the Iliad, leaving only the first half of the second song, and refer all those who are outraged to Mandelstam. Over time, I would gain a community of connoisseurs of my specific edits. Or perhaps the readers would quickly get bored. That’s the market.

Now, if I focused not on self-assertion through edits, but on simply posting as many “tasty” texts as possible, I would end up with a very ordinary electronic library. In this case, it would be redundant for me to cut out even the author’s name and substitute my own; I would post it as is, but I would take care of fast servers, providing the text in all popular e-reader formats, and other things valued by users. I would try to ensure that I have everything people are interested in, in the most convenient form for reading. I would develop a reader community, interview authors, and so on. And the authors would come to me themselves, suggesting, “Look, I have a fresh book here, take it, and give me a percentage of the donations.” I would say: ok. I would allocate a personal section for the author in my library, make them a moderator there, let them answer readers’ questions and entertain them in every way, and we would split the income in an agreed proportion.

Of course, if I behaved like a textbook “mudesa,” treating authors with disdain—saying, “be grateful that you talentless hacks are published anywhere at all, you should actually be paying me for this”—or, say, inserted scenes into someone’s books that made the author look like an idiot—well, then perhaps I would drive someone to the point of coming at me with a little shotgun. But I could just as easily drive anyone to that for any other reason; here, the activity of posting other people’s texts is no longer the principal issue. And the more vilely I behaved, the more people wondered how I hadn’t been shot yet—the more satisfaction they would feel upon the occurrence of that fact. Of course, those who demand compensation from the killer for my murder would find it difficult to find a sufficiently impartial court, but not everyone in the world is a fan of literature. So, they’d hardly be acquitted, but they probably wouldn’t be judged strictly either.

States are not private organizations

Vitaly Tizun’s Column

When criticizing the state, it is very common to hear that if you don’t like it, you should just leave for another “pen.” The argument is that states are also private competing organizations; they survive on funds paid by their clients (meaning citizens), and every person has a choice among many states, which means we already live in a free society. In reality, this is a very inadequate explanation of what the state is and how it works. Why? Let’s find out!

What does replacing one private agent with another usually mean? You need to terminate the old contract and enter into a new one with another agent. Of course, this process can sometimes encounter some difficulties, but overall it does not carry any unacceptable burdens. In this matter, you most likely will not even have to change your place of residence. And if you do (for example, you decide to change residential complexes or find a job in a neighboring city), the environment surrounding you still will not change fundamentally.

What does changing a state mean? You need to renounce your culture, your language, your loved ones and acquaintances, your familiar living environment, incur significant monetary expenses, fulfill a series of conditions regarding the termination of your previous citizenship (sometimes difficult to fulfill; I know one person who could not renounce Russian citizenship due to the need to “pay the debt to the Motherland”), and also fulfill a series of conditions to obtain new citizenship (you cannot move to another country simply by buying housing or finding a job—meaning, while getting the approval of some local residents, you still need permission from the state), and so on.

The process of changing states faces significant costs. An ordinary person will not move to another country simply because they have a poor knowledge of the local language and lack sufficient funds. Most people will flee their country only if the government starts simply shooting everyone indiscriminately (however, such governments usually also close the borders). In any other situation, no matter how bad it is, the majority of the population remains where they were.

One might say that you simply should not belong to the majority, that you need to develop yourself, strive, learn other languages, accumulate funds for relocation by all possible means, prove your reliability and usefulness to another state, and then everything will work out—and if you don’t do this, it means you don’t really want to change anything in your life.

However, even if you strive and successfully move to the territory of another state, this still provides no guarantees regarding the policy of the new sovereign. Regardless of the circumstances, the majority of the population of any state (the very ones who will never move) will not escape paying taxes and obeying state regulations. The state has the ability to use these people and their resources to pursue its own goals. This gives it the opportunity to make mistakes in its policy, or even adopt very inadequate and irrational decisions, since it always has the means to cover the resulting costs.

A private organization needs to function as efficiently as possible because it lives entirely on the sale of its goods and services. Any manifestation of inefficiency is unacceptable for it, as this would lead to the goods it provides being either more expensive or of lower quality than those of its competitors; it would thus lose clients and its income.

The state, however, does not need to strive for maximum efficiency. A specific government only needs to conduct a policy that is efficient enough to keep citizen indignation below a certain critical level. But no more than that.

States in no way resemble private organizations; they do not compete for people, but exploit the population belonging to them. The state is always slavery. To say that states are market and competing organizations is nonsense!

Ancap-chan’s Comment

Any analogy should not be taken completely literally. Of course, states compete for people, although this does not at all negate the thesis that they strive to exploit them for the purpose of obtaining income—if there were no such goal, there would be no sense in competing. Citizenships of different states have different values, although, of course, different people value different advantages provided by one citizenship or another.

But with equal success, we could consider the preferences of slaves regarding which master it is better to be owned by. It is known that some slaves successfully changed masters according to their preferences, although the bulk of them were unable to do so, or did not even perceive it as a need.

In short, the slogan “if you don’t like it—leave” should never be dismissed. In this regard, I want to remind you of an excellent article by Savva Shanaev, Mathematics in the Service of Libertarianism, as well as my brief comment on this article.

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 51

I continue to publish the translation of The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman.

In the chapter Bargaining in Anarchy, the author analyzes how, in a Hobbesian state of nature where there are no means to compel each other to abide by agreements, these very agreements can arise and be observed at all. In other words, how people exit the state of war of all against all without any state. To explain this, a rather curious concept from game theory is introduced: Schelling points. I don’t know about you, but for me, the material was completely new, so I sincerely enjoyed the process of editing the text.

How will the fire service, police, and ambulance service work under ancap?

Ancom-kun (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00030360 BTC)

The question is long, so I will break it into parts.

1) Will there be a single emergency number? Remembering a bunch of three-digit numbers is difficult, but it is also difficult to reach a consensus, given that there will likely be many mobile operators seeking only their own profit, and moreover, they will be limited very little in a stateless society.

Providing a simplified interface to facilitate access to a multitude of complex and diverse services is a high-demand task. On one hand, it is more convenient for users to remember one single most convenient method of communication—provided, of course, that the intermediary works quickly and reliably. On the other hand, it is also convenient for service providers for someone to take on the trouble of finding out all the necessary details from the client and issuing the assignment in a formalized form, without emotions and scandals. In this way, they save on the call center, and therefore it is more profitable for them to pay for their connection to an aggregator.

Most likely, there will also be several aggregators. One might hold, for example, the number 911. A second provides a mobile application in which placing an order is even more convenient than by phone; most of the information is entered from the screen, and only non-formalizable details are communicated by voice. A third, say, sells a bracelet with a single emergency button, or one that reacts automatically to spikes in heart rate and blood pressure. As for some other mechanisms for ordering services, it is difficult for me to even imagine them now; let the market offer and the people try.

2) What happens if the owner of a territory refuses access to rescuers? It is their territory, and entering it without consent would be a direct violation of the NAP.

In general, everything depends on who called the rescuers and why, without ensuring their access to the rescue object, and whether the contract provides for the rescuers’ obligation to ensure this access themselves.

2.1 For example, a person falls ill with a dangerous and severe disease, but their religious, obscurantist relatives recognize only folk healing methods and refuse to let a medical team into the house.

If a person needs medical assistance but third parties are holding them on their territory and preventing them from receiving help, then that person should call not only doctors but also the police. Or simply state the circumstances via the aforementioned single phone number, and then the aggregator will attract specialists to solve the described problem. Blood relation is not an indulgence for a criminal, and the fact that they are in their own home is not either. Holding a person against their will is kidnapping.

2.2 I came to a party with alcohol and drugs to have fun, but at the height of it, I—a thin and weak youth unable to protect myself—had the misfortune of being in one room with a drunk host who began to threaten me with a knife or a gun over some minor quarrel. Or the same thing, but instead of the host, one of the drunk guests is threatening me, and the host himself is passed out and by definition cannot give consent for police officers to enter.

It is the same here. A person has the right to call for help wherever they are, and the costs of ensuring access to the object of assistance can be compensated later. You simply pay the sobered-up host for a new door to replace the one that was broken down.

2.3 Something catches fire on a person’s territory, but they hope too much to extinguish the fire themselves and refuse to let firefighters in, despite the fact that they store flammable and/or explosive substances—meaning that if they do not trust the professionals, then besides their own house, all surrounding buildings belonging to other people will catch fire or blow up.

Since the firefighters have already arrived, it means their work has been paid for; all that remains is to let them do it. Even if their task is to save neighboring houses and the burning object is not their area of responsibility, they will be forced to extinguish the fire there as well to protect the object that is important to them. Why might they be stopped?

First, if it is a high-hazard facility, it is possible that it needs to be extinguished differently; a regular fire crew may not have the necessary tools, while the owner of the facility does. Then it is quite logical for them to politely ask the outside crew to stay away and ensure the surroundings do not catch fire, while a specialized team arrives. I am not technically proficient enough to describe the specifics, but everyone understands firefighting at the level of “do not put out live wiring with water”; there are surely other nuances.

Second, the owner of the burning object wants it to burn down completely to hide something important.

Third, they are overconfident and believe they can extinguish the fire themselves with less collateral damage to the object.

Who makes the decision on whether to intrude on the territory to extinguish the fire? The firefighters, of course. If they decide to intrude without the owner’s consent, the owner can subsequently sue them. If the owner interferes with their intrusion and as a result neighboring houses are damaged, their owners can sue the owner. If the firefighters do not dare to charge in with axes and hooks, then they are clear.


3) How will they deal with schoolchildren, drunk and mentally ill people, or simply ill-wishers making deliberately false calls, or simply uselessly occupying the line, saying stupid things and insulting the operator, if it is not always possible to track them down even now, and blocking numbers is too cruel since even they might need real help from rescuers? Would it be fair to dump all the costs on those who can be identified, or to block the ability to call from other regions?

It is unlikely that under ancap DDOS attacks will be fought any differently than they are now. If there is a possibility to find the attacker using available means—they are found and held accountable. If not, they simply increase the channel capacity and filter out false messages. Naturally, there will be attempts to charge the found culprits for maximally inflated costs, but a court is an adversarial procedure, so the amount of compensation will be determined individually in each specific case. If the court issues an absurdly large fine that incorporates losses from many attacks to which the found culprit was not involved, then this may cause dissatisfaction among people who learn about it. This carries the risk that attacks will only intensify, as the risk of being caught is quite small, so excessive severity is also disadvantageous for the companies suffering from such hooliganism.

Can there be voluntary cannibalism under ancap? The Armin Meiwes case as an example. How would this be regulated under ancap? Why is it so? Could you provide more detail?

Doctor Hannibal Lecter (question accompanied by a donation of 250 rubles)

Voluntary cannibalism is formally very similar to euthanasia, which I already wrote a post about. The exact same considerations apply here: a person has the full right to dispose of their own body, as long as they do not cause harm to others in the process. Thus, the main difficulty here would also be to convince everyone that the instruction to kill and eat oneself is given voluntarily and with full awareness of the consequences.

Of course, even if everything is legally handled completely cleanly, there will be those who condemn this deal from a moral standpoint. With equal success, they could condemn the already mentioned euthanasia, the production of fur coats, a laboratory developing GMOs, a porn studio, or, say, a coffee shop.

As long as moralists use means of moral pressure such as angry social media posts, picketing the home of the cannibal or their place of work — they are within their rights to non-violently ruin the life of someone who, in their opinion, deserves it and should abandon their harmful inclinations. In response, the cannibal can create a society of cannibals, push cannibal memes, music, Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” and other cultural elements, and strive to make such a way of leaving life a respectable tradition that does not cause any unhealthy hype.

– How do you plan to die?
– In my own bed, surrounded by weeping grandchildren.
– That’s just philistinism! I, for one, want three charming girls to slit my veins and joyfully splash in my blood, while I look at them and smile. And when I die, they will prepare many exquisite dishes from me and hold a festive feast.
– Oh, you’re such a romantic!

Фотография
Armin Meiwes, a guy with peculiar ideas about romance

Technical

On May 31, I received a donation of 250 rubles for a question, but the question itself didn’t arrive. The day before yesterday, a question was asked about when I would finally answer. I apologize to the author of the question for this strange glitch and suggest resending the question so that I can answer. I have a general idea of the topic, but I would like the exact wording.

The American Civil War

A post appeared in the “Life with Others” channel, in which the riots in the USA are examined from the perspective of the concentration of forces. I will briefly summarize its message.

The rioters gathered into a crowd, and they are opposed by individuals, each of whom is defending their own piece of property. As long as the individuals are armed, though not all of them, and the rioters only have improvised tools, a fragile possibility of defense remains; because, firstly, there is no need to loot a specifically protected point when there is an undefended one further down the street, and secondly, no one wants to be the unlucky person who catches a bullet before the crowd tears apart the person who fired it. But if the rioters are also armed, the defenders’ position will become hopeless; therefore, the fact that there is little weaponry in society is more likely to reduce mass violence. It is also pointed out that the attempt at a reciprocal concentration of forces by those defending their property is historically a key factor in the formation of states.

It seems to me that attempting to analyze the situation that has developed in a large state as if that state does not exist is a dubious idea. The riots mainly occur in cities and states covered by the Democratic Party. That is, precisely where the city government and state police are on the side of the rioters. If you stand with a gun guarding your property and they don’t come for you—consider yourself lucky. If you stand guard over your property and you are killed by rioters, they will try not to report it in the news, and mentions will be erased from Facebook, as we see in the example of David Dorn’s murder. But if you happen, for example, to organize a self-defense squad, it will be perceived as the creation of an extremist community of some white supremacists, and it may very well happen that the police, who tried to keep a low profile during the riots themselves, materialize out of nowhere. In this situation, the owners of the looted businesses can only be comforted by the fact that the Democratic Party opposes guns, and therefore rioters are unlikely to be waving firearms—in that case, the picture would cease to be pleasant for the state leadership.

In states led by Republicans, everything is relatively quiet, and if there are cities there covered by the Democratic Party, the National Guard is sent in, and that is sufficient. In general, many have already concluded that the riots in the USA are rather a tool for showdowns between the dominant “roofs” (protection rackets). It just so happens that due to the economic shock caused by the lockdown (which was again stronger in states under the Democratic Party), these showdowns turned out to be particularly vivid this time.

Panarchy theorists suggest that the most peaceful way of resolving this hopeless conflict would be the formation of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions, where Democrats would have their own government and Republicans their own, and citizens would simply live within the model closer to them. Naturally, in this case, the number of competing governments would quickly increase: currently, diverse forces are forced to unite under one flag for the sake of winning elections, but under panarchy, this factor promoting consolidation would become irrelevant.

Nevertheless, such an option remains highly unlikely. Rather, some California (or, conversely, Texas) will announce secession, and then citizens of both Americas will simply be able to effectively vote with their feet. Times have changed, and in the event of the country splitting, no one will have the drive for a new civil war for the sake of a unity that no one needs anymore.

Civil War in the USA in the 21st century