Автор: Анкап-тян

A Question about Intellectual Property Law

For example, say I live in Ancapistan and I am a writer. I sign a contract with a publisher for (let’s say) a percentage of every book sold. The book is published. But competitors copy the book and sell it at a significantly lower price, because they don’t need to kick back a percentage to the writer. Does this mean that writers in Ancapistan will be left sucking wind?

The King of Sex and Tea Bags

Well, first of all, who am I to forbid anyone from sucking anything, as long as they aren’t aiming to suck my property? And secondly, I don’t understand why all the authors of questions about ancap are convinced that it’s some kind of fairy tale where a magic market arrives and solves any problem.

The market doesn’t solve all problems, only those for which there is a voluntary, solvent demand. A writer wishing to earn a living through their talent must understand that for this to happen, people must be found who are willing to voluntarily reward that talent with money. They can search for these people personally or hire intermediaries, but the wider the search, the more opportunities a devotee of the talent has to pay the writer in one form or another—and the more brilliant the talent, of course—the greater the profit.

I provide admirers of my talent with several diverse ways to reward me with money—from direct transfers in bits to various indirect routes, such as subscribing to a live channel, donations for a guaranteed quick answer to a question, or even indirect ones, like referral links to various useful services. I could earn more if it weren’t for the self-limitation of maintaining anonymity (for example, by selling the right to have dinner with me or hosting streams) and my reluctance to bother with complex business models (for example, selling merch). I could earn nothing at all if I refused donations, even when they are literally shoved into my hands.

Hard copies of texts in the form of paper books are a kind of merch today. What share of sales the merch producer allocates to the writer depends solely on the merch producer’s desire to donate to the writer. But even if they don’t pay the writer a single satoshi, they still contribute to the writer’s promotion, because that is the primary function of merch. And then the promoted writer can earn more from a single stream than they could have received from a print run of books.

P.S. Of course, an answer to a similar question has already been published in this channel, and the answer was also similar, so I apologize to the early readers of the channel for the repetition—but now they can choose which of the versions they liked more.

Look at how stylish this merch is, not like those pocketbooks of yours! Whoever decides to publish my quote book, do it at this level, and my heart will be glad!

The Stylistics of Protest

I heard an interesting thought from Ekaterina Schulmann last night—that the difference in the style of protests in the US and Russia is not related to some special “slave mentality” of Russians, but simply to what is customary. Russia, in her words, is more similar to Scandinavia in this sense: in both places, people protest modestly, expressing a gloomy silent reproach, without all your outbursts of anger, shouting, and arson. If you go out to protest against injustice, you are a decent person, and decent people do not scream on the street, and they do not beat people.

Similarly, rallies in Russia are not intended for listening to whoever is rambling on stage. The speakers talk for YouTube, meaning for those who didn’t come to the rally, but want to feel the atmosphere and leave a like. But the people came to socialize with one another and to be happy that many like-minded people share their position. They certainly understand that, formally, they have formulated demands, and that pressure must be put on the authority to make them fulfill these demands, but they will not go storm the Kremlin, because decent people do not do things that way. They would rather sign a resolution.

This is precisely why Russian agorism takes on some characteristics of AUE. Agorism is not so much about the state dying of starvation, but about a moral choice. By avoiding interaction with the state and especially avoiding payments to it, a person simply feels morally cleaner.

That is exactly why any calls to chip in to help people pay their finesy are so infuriating to me. How can you consciously call upon people to get dirty by making payments to the state, and moreover, voluntarily act as the state’s tax agents? You go out to the street to express your reproach to the state, you unfurl a banner, you get detained, you get a summons to court, the court imposes a fine. Well, express your reproach once more and refuse to pay right there in court. Let them replace it with arrest or carry a wardrobe out of your house. They will wreck your house at any moment anyway, as soon as they want to, especially if you choose the tactic of open confrontation with the regime.

Russian libertarians are now pushing the hashtag and holding single-person pickets against the extrajudicial killings committed by Russian security forces. I support this hype. But when in a week they start collecting donations for the fines of detained activists, I will be spitting in their direction. Just warning you in advance.

I will not condemn liberals who value the institution of the state itself, as something that brings law and order, for paying their fines. For them, this is an element of law and order. They will legally challenge this fine in court, hoping to fix a bad state. These are their rituals for maintaining purity, and this can be respected, although one can still hope for their enlightenment.

Police brutality and pogroms under ancap

A discussion arose in the Libertarian Band patrons’ chat regarding an incident in the USA, which has led to riots accompanied by looting for nearly a week now.

Could an episode of police brutality occur under ancap? Absolutely! The “gatekeeper syndrome” operates under any regime. A petty fraudster pays with a fake check, the store calls security, they detain the thief—and then an excess occurs, and the head of the security team begins to strangle the detainee. The partners are stunned: on one hand, it is a clear abuse of authority; on the other, it is the firm’s honor, and staging a public quarrel is unprofessional, so they simply try to calm the crowd. What happens next? The director, a floor manager, or even just a cashier rushes out of the store and barks, “Stop it!”

This is where the key difference between ancap and the state manifests. It is not just anyone barking, but an official representative of the client. The partners of the security guard who lost his mind immediately pull the boss away and provide first aid to the victim, because the highest authority—the client—has commanded it. The one who pays the money.

Then the routine chores begin: the security company fires the overzealous guard, the thief reimburses the store for the money that caused the scuffle, there may be some maneuvers regarding his health insurance, and finally, there may be a press campaign resulting in damage to the security company’s reputation (and possibly the store’s, although that would be unfair).

But what if the store director rushed out and began to shout enthusiastically, “Give it to him, you scum, crush him!”? That is when a riot could happen. We can, of course, hope that everything will be limited to lawsuits, boycotts, and similar civilized reactions, but a riot or the burning of the store cannot be ruled out in this situation: people react extremely nervously to manifestations of crude thuggery—and there is no reason to assume that people would suddenly change under ancap.

Can riots become mass movements? They can, if we are considering something like a clan society. This can be considered ancap only with a great stretch, but such a society is certainly stateless and, therefore, also worthy of consideration. As we know from the example of Somalia, a specific legal system develops in a clan society where the clan acts as an insurance group and pays for crimes committed by its members. Such a system managed to extinguish the civil war in Somalia; it would handle riots as well.

However, the type of society where problems could truly take on a protracted character is one with a combination of market and clan orders. On one hand, there are several large groups defending the interests of their members, and on the other, there is a large number of individuals who do not belong to any clans and attempt to interact in a mode of open market access to goods and services. Clan members may perceive such loners as members of some foreign clans and bring claims against uninvolved parties within the framework of collective responsibility. Meanwhile, the loners, by inertia, will view the rioters as individuals with their own personal grievances—and be surprised by the absurdity of those claims.

Essentially, this is exactly what is happening in the USA right now. The quarrel occurred between the nominal clans of left-wing activists and police officers, but the leftists consider all business owners to be allies of the police—after all, it was the store that called the police when the incident happened. Blurred boundaries between groups generate numerous misunderstandings, where even those who express sympathy for the rioters are attacked. And the more such unresolved conflicts there are, the harder it is to stop the war.

Therefore, I venture to suggest that under ancap, in various unrest-prone areas, it will be very important to be able to quickly and clearly communicate to everyone who stands behind you. First, people learn to draw boundaries, and only then do they learn not to cross them.

Eric Mack. Libertarianism. Chapter on Hume.

Today on our program is the promised chapter from Eric Mack’s book “Libertarianism,” dedicated to the views of David Hume as another of the precursors of this ideology. Despite the fact that Hume, opposing Locke (who was discussed in the previous chapter), denied both the social contract and natural rights, he quite sensibly supplemented Locke’s views on social organization with his description of the morality that arises in humans as social animals. Hume also formulates the resulting principles of justice, which lead to mutually beneficial social cooperation.

Reflections on the project’s second anniversary

Two years ago, the first post was published as part of this project. Back then, the channel was called LPR-tyan and looked like a rather cringe-worthy roleplay as a girl who claims she is a political party.

Gradually, the channel distanced itself from this strange persona; the process accelerated after the project founder left. Now the channel is much more respectable, but it has lost some of its drive. The main feature of the project was answering questions, but over two years, essentially, answers to all the main questions have long since been given, and some more than once. Repeating oneself is somehow strange; however, a new channel, Libertarian Aggregator, seems to have decided to go through the history of my channel and repost the most successful posts, for which I am, of course, grateful.

Therefore, today the focus of my activities has shifted toward things that were previously more incidental: translating books, writing scripts for a series of videos, and collaborating with a network of other anti-state projects. I feel my growing demand as a libertarian activist, but at the same time, the demand for the Telegram channel is rather falling; this is evident from the view counts. A year ago, the channel had 848 subscribers, but the average number of views was 70% of the audience. Now there are 1,860 subscribers, but the number of views has dropped to 40%.

My most in-demand competence remains not so much the ability to compose something of my own, but the ability to rework someone else’s and present it in a more attractive form. So I will continue this peculiar cooperation with those who have many fresh thoughts but experience difficulty in presenting them. This also includes answers to questions like “what do you think about such-and-such a tome?” I would like to post reviews of various voluminous works from time to time, but familiarizing myself with them takes an awful lot of time, so only for money.

The original monetization model of the channel was narrow: an answer to a question accompanied by a donation was guaranteed and given out of turn. Gradually, the focus shifted simply to donations for the development of the channel and targeted contributions for book translations. Initially, it was proposed to simply transfer bitcoins; now there are many more options available, from banal rubles to advanced bitcoin payments via the Lightning protocol. I highly recommend mastering this latter method, because eventually you’ll have to anyway. I have posted all the instructions on this matter; they are not complicated.

Since the end of April, I have started a strange experiment — I started a personal blog. The subscription is paid, and although I regularly write something about myself there, it is primarily an opportunity to support the main channel — I am far from thinking that my personal musings themselves are worth monthly fees. So far, I am writing for as many as three readers who subscribed for 200 rubles a month, and no one has subscribed to the 1,000 rubles a month level yet. However, I currently enjoy the process of keeping a personal blog, so I will continue this activity even if the number of readers does not increase significantly; it’s a sort of hobby within a hobby.

I still want to engage in something more practical in addition to creating text content, but so far nothing concrete has come to mind. After all, social entrepreneurship is a separate talent.

The post turned out to be quite minor, in accordance with the general atmosphere around us, and it would be good if this underlying irritation in people does not accumulate in vain.

Progress, the State, and the Survival of Civilization

Vitaly Tizun, edited by Ancap-tyan

Supporters of the state often claim that scientific progress is impossible in a free society, and that only the state is capable of providing science with the resources necessary for its development. There are several objections to this thesis.

In Theory of a Free Society, I described in detail from an economic point of view how the state hinders the realization of any ideas. The state implements ideas in the least efficient way, as it can pour unlimited money into their embodiment without thinking about profit, while simultaneously restricting private initiative in the same field. Science is a typical example of such an approach.

But right now we are interested more in political rather than economic incentives, for it is on their basis that the state steers science.

Let’s take a classic example of conservative policy. Such a policy often prioritizes certain values (such as family, traditions, customs, nation, etc.). I will not say that these values mean nothing; for many people, they are very, very important. However, the state and political conservatives often justify absolutely any measures that they believe can protect these values, including measures that negatively affect other values and social spheres. Thus, we often encounter extremely absurd arguments stating that we must control progress and not allow it to be too rapid, as this could disrupt the traditional way of life of society. This not only sounds delusional but also does not work in practice, instead contributing to the destruction of the traditional way of life, which we will discuss below.

I will provide a couple of examples of how the politicization of science harms scientific development.

Nobel laureate James Watson was branded a racist and stripped of several honorary titles for asserting a link between the intelligence quotient and racial origin. Thus, a simple scientific observation was equated with calls for racial discrimination. Naturally, under such conditions, research into the influence of genetics on intelligence becomes hindered.

An even more egregious example is GMO-phobia. Hysteria, maintained at the level of political decisions, makes life extremely difficult for many potential players in this promising market, while a few corporations with serious lobbying capabilities reap superprofits thanks to politicians clearing the market.

But if this were only about transgenic plants, it would be half the battle; however, research related to the genetic modification of humans is also being slowed down. Conservatives thus attempt to protect human nature, but by obstructing small and gradual changes, they only ensure that when science advances enough to no longer be containable, the application of new technologies to change human genetics will become avalanche-like. The difference between enhanced and traditional humans will become too sharp, and this is exactly the scenario that conservatives fear so much.

Thus, the original thesis that the state, unlike a free society, is the only entity capable of ensuring scientific progress turns out to be fundamentally wrong; instead, we see that it is perfectly capable of hindering it.

If a free society proves to be insufficiently strong, and the doctrine of limiting the pace of scientific development remains influential enough, it will lead to humanity simply exhausting the resources currently at its disposal without ever gaining access to new ones, whether through an extensive path of development, such as space expansion, or an intensive one, through a radical increase in humanity’s energy capacity. This would mean the fading of civilization.

However, this is a very unlikely scenario. People usually mobilize quite well in the face of an obvious threat, and when the state itself acts as such an obvious threat, all the worse for it.

Turbulent emotions have a violent end; do not provoke turbulent emotions

What is the difference between the notorious social “spontaneous” circumstances and a “hidden” threat?

Imagine a situation: two people and a chair are in a room; only one of them has a weapon and both know it; the armed person says loudly: “it would be nice if someone sat on this chair, and also, weapons can be used to cause pain and kill” – and this is sort of a threat, but it cannot be proven in any way, and if one risks not complying with the demands, the armed person may use the weapon and finally officially exit the non-aggression pact, but a dead person will no longer care about that. Of course, if both are armed, then both threaten each other, and both are thereby protected, but if one party is deprived of their weapon at some point, it becomes the literal right of the strong.

Han Solo

The example is, of course, somewhat contrived, but we’ll make do with what we have.

A person who believes they are being threatened has some grounds for doing so. It is specifically they who feel this way right now, and for them, it is important. If they have any doubts about the fact of the threat, or believe it is important to convince third parties of the threat, they should make the situation more explicit. For example, by asking:

– Do I understand correctly that you are threatening to injure or kill me if I don’t sit down? Or am I free to leave?

The interlocutor may continue to speak in hints for some time, but sooner or later they will have to formulate an explicit demand if they want the second person to sit, or use the weapon if they simply want to cause them harm. Naturally, this involves some risk. What is it worth taking that risk for? Primarily to gain certainty for oneself and, possibly, to obtain a body of evidence for third parties who will evaluate the situation as it unfolded.

In a state, we regularly encounter situations where superiors do not give explicit orders because the subordinate is expected to understand the hints. If the situation turns out poorly for the superiors, they can always claim they were misunderstood, and the phrase “this guy irritates me” by no means meant an instruction to shoot him during arrest and declare him a terrorist. If a subordinate is poor at understanding hints, they will not stay in their position for long.

The right of the strong is as much a fiction as a non-aggression pact. Even the strong prefer to justify their claims somehow, tailoring them to some notions of justice. This is less costly than proving one’s strength every time one wants to get something. The same goes for a non-aggression pact. People have no need to specifically agree not to attack each other; they will only do so anyway when they have a reason they consider valid. But if such a reason exists, no agreement will stop them.

Therefore, it seems to me that using such theoretical constructs to describe the world is simply inconvenient. It’s roughly like discussing human activity in categories of sin, karma, or class interests.

It is far more useful to use more adequate constructs to describe one’s actions and motives. “It seemed to me that he was close to carrying out his implicit threat, and I preferred to fulfill the request, although I didn’t really want to. Next time I will try not to be alone with him while unarmed.”

Something like that.

There we go, well done, good boy

Mechanics of Freedom, chapters 49-50

I am starting to post the translation of the fifth part, The Machinery of Freedom.

As usual, everything begins with a poetic epigraph. In it, Friedman ironizes Hobbes’ idea of a mythical state of nature, in which a war of all against all occurs, and only the state is capable of protecting little people from this primitive horror. As for me, I had to recall how sonnets are structured.

Chapter 49, The First Legal System. Friedman announces his new book about legal systems that differ greatly from ours. At the time, it was still being written; now it is finished, but I haven’t tackled its translation yet. He asserts that literally all (or almost all) current legal systems originate from the fairly simple-to-understand tradition of blood feud, and then demonstrates this with several examples.

Chapter 50, Anarcho-Capitalism: The Kindergarten Version. Here, Friedman points out how this original legal system, through some simple tweaking, turns into the basic model of law and order under ancap—which has about as much relation to real modern models of stateless law enforcement as Robinson Crusoe’s economy has to a real economy.

Next, I will briefly switch to the translation of Eric Mack. Very little has been collected for it so far, but I hope you will encourage me with your donations. Details are on the translation page.

And a small curiosity illustrating the popular opinion that ancaps are usually not strong in mathematics. As the work neared completion, I clearly saw that my statistics for translated chapters weren’t adding up; I recounted them, and it turned out there are slightly more chapters in total, and slightly fewer have been translated, than I had previously shown in the images. Everything flows…

Blockchain Registries, Continuation of the Discussion

Alexei Konashevich

Thank you for your comment. I bypassed the issues of the political arrangement of the system, and the presented concept is described in the language of the current system. But the architecture is much broader. I developed these protocols with fervent crypto-anarchists who saw the idea of a “filter as a jurisdiction” as their advantage. They are applied to self-organized communities, meaning that central governing bodies are not needed; delegative democracy can be abolished, for example, and direct e-voting can be implemented on the same blockchain.

One of the problems I pointed out is that it is mistaken to believe we can do without third parties. It’s just that right now the main third party is the state in the form of a registry holder. But the registry itself no longer needs to be “held.” Blockchain performs this function. All that remains is to replace registrar officials with a decentralized system of validators in various fields. But the most important thing is the resilience of this model to all kinds of oppression. In my scientific work, I describe how it is possible to resist a potential digital dictatorship.

At the blockchain level, a digital dictatorship will not be able to prevent anything. People can write anything into blockchains, whether it is legal or not—it doesn’t matter, it is simply a repository where all facts are recorded. As I explained, above the blockchains, we have a system of “filters,” meaning that what we consider legal goes into the general pool—into the current registry of property rights and civil status. But no one holds this database. Since the protocol is the same for everyone, anyone who wishes to look into the database (there may not be one general one, but many specialized ones: civil registry, land cadastre, etc.) downloads the bundle of blockchains and applies this protocol on top of them.

As long as we trust the authority, we use the protocol, apply it on top, and all of us, independently of each other, receive the same database locally on our PCs. Legitimatization occurs through the voluntary acceptance of the protocol. Elements of the protocol (smart laws and court decisions) are also recorded in the blockchain. But if the authority oversteps, this entire superstructure can be demolished, and the data in the blockchain will not be affected in any way (all facts, whether legal or not, are recorded there, including illegal decisions by officials and courts). And as a result of a reboot of power, a new image of justice and law can be applied to all those old records. If official Bob seized land from Alice, then after the overthrow of the authority, the new government simply wipes out the old database, creates new filters, and rescans the blockchains with the new filters. Under the new rules, Alice is restored to her rights by simply declaring the record of the seizure of the plot invalid.

Continuing the theme, here is a short video about CBDCs and central bank cryptocurrencies, which are not cryptocurrencies at all, but a complete lie.

https://youtu.be/bVFmpHaoBDA

Life with androids

Solution to the android husbandry problem by Artyom Seversky.

We are given a favorable but completely unfamiliar environment, as well as a company of androids—universal interfaces for transforming this environment. The working conditions of the android exclude its conversion into private property. And so, behold—Ancap-chan becomes a communist!

Features of Android Husbandry

A. Synergy. Non-linear growth of productivity resulting from an increase in the number of androids involved in a task; there is a significant positive economy of scale. Therefore, the constant privatization of androids one by one to serve families or individuals is inefficient.

B. Unsuitability for zero-sum games. Any attempt to requisition an android for tasks that do not benefit others is suppressed with incredible ease. Insisting that an android perform a strictly individual assignment is incredibly difficult. Therefore, the most advantageous evolutionarily stable strategy is to employ androids primarily for the benefit of the largest possible collectives.

C. Uncertainty of the future. According to the terms of the problem, the end date of the experiment is unknown. It is also unknown how complex the production of new androids will be. Therefore, one should proceed from the pessimistic assumption that the growth of the human population will occur faster than the growth of the android population for a considerable amount of time.

Now I will formulate the strategy.

  1. Our goal is the maximum prosperity of the community in the longest possible perspective.
  2. Until it is possible to ensure that the growth of the android population exceeds the increase in the number of people, we should reduce our dependence on androids by developing production chains that do not include androids.
  3. Priority is given to tasks that bring immediate benefit to the maximum number of community members. That is, instead of tasks like “bring me some tea,” preference is given to tasks like “construct a time-cost function for planting a tea plantation for the entire human community based on the number of androids involved in the task; now you three go and plant it.”
  4. Since androids are de facto slaves in public use, the social structure to be adapted as a self-governance mechanism should be one that implies the mass use of public slaves. For example, Lacedaemon, better known as Sparta. That is, decisions on the plans for using androids for public tasks are prepared by a “gerousia”—these do not necessarily have to be biological elders, but some elected body of experts in such optimization tasks. And the decisions are approved by the “apella,” that is, a general assembly.
  5. An obvious solution for the initial setup phase:
    5.1. Each family receives an android for family setup tasks during the daytime and has the right to use synergistic effects by cooperating with neighbors.
    5.2. A small surplus of androids (at the start there are slightly more than there are families) is immediately assigned to public tasks according to the scheme “gerousia outlines the plan, apella approves.”
    5.3. During the nighttime, all family androids must be sent to public works with instructions to return by morning.
  6. As the community grows and becomes more complex, the initial mechanism will inevitably be revised. Questions regarding revision should be raised after a change in the number of families, the end of the primary setup phase (everyone already has a house, a garden, and a sports ground, and androids gradually begin to be recruited for tasks like “scratch my heel”), at the moment of a predicted sharp change in the load on the android fund (start or end of major projects), or at the moment of a change in the number of androids (they begin to fail or, conversely, a production line is launched).
  7. The appearance of a group with radically different views than the majority on the disposal of androids should lead to a proposal to settle further away, taking androids with them proportional to the size of the group. Otherwise, the damage from management collisions will paralyze the plans of both the majority and the minority.

Well, am I a good communist?