I am beginning to publish the translation of the fourth part of David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. This part was written for the second edition of the book, between 1973 and 1989, and was intended as an extended postscript to the book, which is exactly why it is named as such. It seems that the author did not originally intend to write two more parts after this one.
As usual, the new part opens with a poetic epigraph, in which the author states that he is bored with explaining elementary truths to those who are already convinced of the truth of the teaching, and therefore he would rather delve into the area of unresolved problems and borderline questions of libertarianism.
Chapter 41 is titled Problems. In it, David Friedman explains in detail why it is pointless to try to derive the entire libertarian teaching from a single, simply formulated basic principle that one would then only have to follow. On the contrary, he declares, following Machiavelli: there is nothing that is good or bad in itself, but everything depends on the circumstances.
Chapter 42, My Beliefs. Here, the author continues the reasoning from the previous chapter, analyzing the question of whether, if we cannot derive everything that ought to be from one basic principle of libertarianism, we should switch to utilitarianism and begin to demand the simple maximization of aggregate utility, calculating heterogeneous joys and sorrows in some mysterious way. And although he ultimately rejects this extreme as well, it is felt that economic calculation is dearer to his heart than abstract moral norms. And this brings me back to my own objections against the strategy of persuading statists to stop cooperating with the state based on moral argumentation.
We are all familiar with the specifics of how the state functions. Its foundation is compulsory and indisputable power over its citizens. This particularly concerns the ability to regulate their activities, apply violence against them, and seize their funds through taxation.
Regardless of how the government system and political mechanisms are implemented, many people are always dissatisfied with the current state of affairs to some extent. And while in a market environment dissatisfaction is resolved simply by renegotiating agreements or switching from one service provider to another, it is not so simple with the state. A person cannot change one state for another as easily, since economic, cultural, linguistic, and other barriers will stand in their way. Because of this, such a change is completely pointless, as for the majority of the population of any state, these barriers are insurmountable, which makes states organizations that compete for people only to a very small degree. This fact confirms the monopoly position of states and all the resulting negative aspects.
An individual also lacks the ability to effectively influence the policy the state pursues toward them. In a market environment, they are able to resolve many issues privately, whereas in the political sphere, their own interests mean nothing; they are obliged to submit to the interests of others. And even if a politician whose plans coincide with their wishes wins an election, or if they themselves become a politician, this only provides the opportunity to support their interests at the expense of infringing upon the interests of other people.
As we can see, the institution of statehood and political methods of management, in contrast to voluntary and market relations, are designed such that the forced and compulsory submission of some people by others is simply inevitable. In fact, the activity of the state is equivalent to the activity of a rapist and a robber. Indeed, it emerged precisely as a nomadic robber who decided to settle in a certain territory and impose his power on the local population through violent methods, as told to us by the stationary bandit theory. The essence of the state fully corresponds to its origin.
What do we get from this? We get that any person who supports the institution of statehood and political methods of management is, in fact, a rapist and a robber themselves. For how else can one call someone who justifies the use of violence and robbery, who considers them natural phenomena? Of course, whether violence and robbery are bad or good phenomena is a purely ethical question, and none of the answers to it can be defined as an objective truth. However, we do not need that; we only need to clearly define who is a supporter of peaceful and voluntary relations, and who supports forced submission and robbery.
Naturally, in current conditions, most people are passive assistants to violence and robbery, since they perceive the state as a natural social institution. It is the revelation of this fact that will allow the positions of the currently existing system to be shaken. For it is one thing when people support violence and robbery without realizing it. However, few are capable of openly admitting themselves to be rapists and robbers; this is the lot of only a minority of people who see nothing wrong in such things, while for the rest, the very concepts of violence and robbery are primarily associated with something immoral.
Using all the above arguments, we can form a psychological strategy for promoting the ideas of freedom. The first stage is the revelation of the fact that the state is a criminal organization specializing in violence and robbery. Next, it is necessary to establish a link between the state and its supporters. Since the state is a rapist and a robber, the people who support it are accomplices in the crimes it commits. Few truly want to be criminals and are capable of declaring (at least to themselves) without any remorse that they are rapists and robbers. The facts mentioned above, since they reveal the link between the criminal state and the person who is at least its passive supporter, are capable of causing psychological discomfort and perhaps even a sense of shame for one’s own complicity in anyone who considers violence and robbery immoral. Thus, in any peace-loving and benevolent person, associations of “state – bandit” and “supporter of the state – also a bandit” should develop. After this, there can be no question of such a person supporting the state; it will be, at the very least, unattractive to them, and possibly even repulsive.
Ancap-chan’s Commentary
Rhetoric addressed more to emotions than to logic does not appeal to me, and I see little value in such argumentation, but value is subjective. I fully admit that some well-meaning statist might indeed be unsettled by these arguments. However, even while sharing the belief that the state is an evil, a statist will believe that the state is the lesser evil. The logic of statists is that without the state, we would get not a peaceful market order, but a rampage of banditry, and only unpleasant types in police caps somehow restrain this very rampage. Yes, they themselves are prone to banditry, but checks, balances, public control and other blah-blah-blah.
What seems far more important to me is the ability to demonstrate the functioning of peaceful market mechanisms in those areas that are weakly subject to state influence, or where the state fails to meet the obligations it has undertaken and for which substantial budgets are spent.
In general, I would soften the premises presented in the text. Not “every accomplice of the state is a bandit,” but “one who defends the right of the state to continue spending money knowingly inefficiently in a sphere where there is a working non-state alternative — that person is truly a conscious accomplice of bandits.”
I am glad to present a new video from Libertarian Band, opening the third section of the cycle on libertarianism. This section will describe how a stateless society works. And today’s video describes the conditions under which a stateless society will remain stable.
First, we touch upon the previously analyzed iterated prisoner’s dilemma, then we chew over Hirschleifer’s conditions for the stability of anarchy, which have been mentioned here several times, but for dessert, we provide our own answer.
Further on, I hope it will only get more exciting, so please subscribe.
Utopianism is wishful thinking in the field of social organization. Such a mindset leads to the conviction that the desired picture of the world is, first, achievable and, second, sustainable. One only needs to make a heroic effort, change everything for the better—and then comes the end of history. And they lived happily ever after.
Avoiding utopianism is simple. It is enough to give up, to say that you know how life works and see which way the wind is blowing. The enemy’s corpse will float by on its own; one only needs to choose a good vantage point for observation.
History is a space of realized utopias. Some built their own personal ones, some for others, some failed, but their descendants succeeded for them. Utopias are embodied, but there is no history of the end.
Recently, on a stream, Svetov rashly claimed that a woman has the right to dispose of her own body and get rid of an embryo that causes her discomfort, but in the case of a voluntary and conscious sexual act, doesn’t the responsibility for conception and for the child ending up in such a dependent position lie with the parents?
Margo
As I have already written on another occasion, a right is a claim that is tolerated. A prenatal child does not make claims, therefore “the rights of prenatal children” is a claim made by third parties, which the parents of such children either acknowledge or they do not. Each side can present its own arguments.
Here are examples of arguments from the attacking side:
abortion is murder
childbirth is beneficial for the body
childbirth is beneficial for demographics
And for comparison, here are examples of arguments from the defending side:
my body, my choice
the embryo violates the NAP
there is no money to live on
the marriage has fallen apart, so the “child” project is no longer relevant
Generally speaking, people tend to present similar arguments to parents whose child has already been born, but whom they, in the opinion of critics, are raising in an improper manner.
Svetov’s arguments boil down to the fact that in any case, the resolution of such conflicts cannot be entrusted to the state. But the state cannot even be trusted to take out the trash, so let’s immediately imagine that it has long been gone, while people’s claims toward each other regarding the treatment of children, born or unborn, remain, and they must be resolved in some way privately.
So, some outsider crosses a woman’s path and demands that she not do what she considers her right. She, naturally, asks how this concerns him at all. Any arguments along the lines of “you are responsible for the conception” are dismissed with the objection “yes, I am, but not to you.” Attempts at forceful coercion lead us one way or another to a picture of a legal proceeding, where the defendant has to prove why, specifically in the matter of abortions, his opinion as an outsider on what a woman should do with her own body is valid in any way.
The only argument against abortion that would sound convincing in a free market society is “if you kill the child, I won’t be able to buy it from you.” Only after such an answer to the question “what business is it of yours?” can the woman breathe, take her finger off the trigger, and begin to bargain. Ultimately, a transfer of parental rights occurs with the drafting of a contract for gestation services, and the rest is just a matter of technique. The woman trades the possibility of an immediate exit from pregnancy for compensation, and the moralist acquires guardianship duties over the child and that very responsibility for its further upbringing.
Of course, the moralist would be better off hiding his desire to buy a prenatal child at any cost, otherwise getting pregnant and crossing his path with a brochure for an abortion clinic would become a temptingly profitable business—no one cancelled the cobra effect. So it is more likely that various charitable organizations will mainly rely on non-material motivation, such as “do not commit a sin, give birth to God’s child and give it to be raised in the church of witnesses to the commandment Be Fruitful And Multiply.”
One way or another, anyone who hopes to talk a woman out of an abortion with words about responsibility to the child must be prepared, at the very least, to take that responsibility upon themselves, and ideally, also to compensate the woman for the costs associated with agreeing to their persuasion and condemning herself to several more months of pregnancy.
Of course, abortion is bad and all that blah-blah-blah, but we are not discussing anyone’s moral character here. Only responsibility for one’s decisions.
The clip has no direct relation to the topic of the post, but watch it anyway
I read the essay “Theory of a Free Society,” which was recently released by Vitaly Tizun. I was pleased that for a relatively small volume—only 80 thousand characters—the text is very substantial.
Vitaly dedicates the first part to a critique of the state, demonstrating the incompatibility of this institution with the needs of the individual, regardless of the form the state takes.
The second part briefly describes the principles of organizing a free stateless society. I particularly liked the clarity of the section explaining the interconnectedness of subjects—there is a fairly original argument, which is encountered quite rarely, that many of the perceived weak points of ancap are linked to viewing a single transaction in a vacuum, while in reality, there is an entire network of contractual interactions. It is a pity that the section on the institution of reputation does not address the factor of the cost of applying reputational sanctions. Propaganda is propaganda, but it is also useful to analyze the potential weak points of ancap; otherwise, after reading the text, one is left wondering: why is it that such a wonderful social system, which is completely natural, fits everyone perfectly, and is capable of self-maintenance, nonetheless does not dominate anywhere to this day.
The third part explains which factors will contribute to the stability of ancap and prevent the return of the state, whether through market mechanisms or by means of military seizure. The section on the doctrine of deterrence was clearly strongly influenced by the ideas of Bitarch, and you have already read something similar from me.
The fourth part outlines the main strategies for achieving ancap, and here as well, much echoes the videos of Libertarian Band.
Overall, the work is very solid, and I readily recommend it to those who want to get a fairly confident understanding of ancap in a very modest amount of time.
I helped miss Liberty edit an article on the history of right-libertarian feminism for her channel. It’s very pleasant to switch to a related agenda from time to time, especially since my understanding of the technical details here is quite superficial.
Of course, I’m amused by the abundance of feminitives, but I fully admit that from my side it might look like “right, a lady in trousers looks very strange and almost indecent”.
Still, you were wrong to vote so actively against inviting her to my channel as a columnist: content appears quite rarely on her own channel, but for an author’s column, such frequency would have been just right. But since you supported the separation, then subscribe to each channel individually.
Right-libertarian feminism is often confused with individualist feminism, which emerged much earlier and in many ways laid the foundation for right-libertarian feminism. This should be kept in mind when searching for information about the history of feminism.
At the dawn of anarcho-individualism and individualist feminism, the American Ezra Heywood (1829–1893) made a huge contribution to their formation. He published the magazine “The Word,” in which he featured one of the most famous suffragettes of the time, Victoria Woodhull, wrote about the importance of extending voting rights to women, denounced the slave-like oppression of housewives and female social stigmas, and preached free love. It was for the latter that he was locked up, as his attacks on the institution of marriage were seen as obscenity. This caused mass protests, and President Hayes was forced to sign his pardon. By our standards, Heywood was quite the leftist: he spoke against private property and for rent regulation, against class inequality and for the right to seize unused private lands. However, all early feminists were leftists; nevertheless, their core ideas—that a woman is free to choose the conditions in which she lives and works, free to choose her type of family or not to have a family at all, that she, like men, owes nothing to anyone and must be free from state arbitrary power—are fully shared by modern right-libertarian feminism.
1872 caricature: A wife, carrying the heavy burden of children and a drunk husband, says to Victoria Woodhull (Mrs. Satan): “I would rather walk the hard path in marriage than follow you.” Victoria holds a poster that reads: “Save yourself through free love.”
Right-libertarian feminism is a product of the second wave of feminism. Taking much from individualist feminism, it emerged alongside the Libertarian Party of the USA. The party appeared in 1971 as a result of mass indignation over Nixon’s reforms (price and wage freezes, removing the dollar’s link to gold). In 1972, for the first time in US history, the Libertarian Party nominated Theodora B. Nathan, who promoted a libertarian feminist agenda, as a vice-presidential candidate. Tony Nathan was a party activist almost until the end of her life, regularly ran for the Senate and the House of Representatives from the party, and passed away in 2014 at the age of 91. She founded the “Association of Libertarian Feminists,” which began criticizing the third wave of feminism—a leftist and statist movement—earlier than others. Nathan criticized activists for demanding state intervention in private life and labor relations, failing to see the state as a much more serious problem.
Theodora B. Nathan — ideologist of right-libertarian feminism, one of the first female members of the Libertarian Party of the USA
Back then, in the 70s and 80s, no one perceived right-libertarian feminism as something surprising or contradictory. Until the left hijacked the agenda, feminism was a natural and organic part of the general libertarian discourse. Now, however, the word “right” is associated with racism and other conservative beliefs, and therefore feminism is considered by many to be absolutely incompatible with libertarian ideology.
Tony Nathan was not the only founder of libertarian feminism. At least two others can be mentioned: Wendy McElroy (a Canadian Zalina Marshenkulova on steroids, defender of porn and sex freedom, supporter of Rothbardian ancap, founder of “The Voluntaryist” magazine) and Christina Hoff Sommers (who has been fighting against the left so actively since the 80s that she is more often called an anti-feminist, although she simply advocates for full equality and against state regulations, showing how reforms pushed by left-feminists harm women).
It was a great surprise to me to learn how powerful the roots of right-libertarian feminism were half a century ago, and how this movement has almost vanished today. I have the feeling that this is related to the specifics of the political agenda in the USA. On one side, there are Republicans, who combine a desire to reduce the state with fierce conservatism and patriarchal values. On the other side, Democrats, with their reverence for freedom of expression, but simultaneously with blatant statism. Libertarians, who tried to take the best from both sides, found themselves in an unstable position, and as a result, split in two. Today, among American libertarians, there are many complete freaks, as well as a very pronounced paleoconservative wing. And now Professor Hoppe lumps gays, feminists, and communists into one pile, stating that they have a low time preference and therefore have a decivilizing effect on society and should be physically removed.
Thus, in the USA, the feminist discourse was almost entirely left to the leftists, who turned the movement for equality into a caricature of itself. But now, when libertarianism is on the rise, can we make libertarian feminism great again? Yes, we can.
We have begun translating The Practical Anarchist by Stephan Molinieu, and to start, we present to you the core essence — the chapters concerning courts under ancap (everyone loves to ask about courts under ancap, but there are as many views on this topic as there are ancaps) and private prisons.
Chapter 16, Dispute Resolution Organizations. The author shares anecdotes from the IT sphere, showing that the state is used not to help resolve conflicts with unscrupulous counterparties, but to threaten them with the very possibility of proceedings. This can, of course, also be used, but such application of the court institute looks utterly idiotic. Next are reflections on why contracts are needed and how to resolve inevitable disputes over them without the use of centralized violence.
Chapter 25, Stateless Prisons, paints us pictures of bleak existence for anyone who, having committed a violent crime, refuses to compensate for the damage in a situation where everything around is private. Next, a more or less lenient alternative is proposed, which any remotely rational criminal will not fail to use.
As a reminder, money is needed for the translation. We currently have approximately half of the amount on hand, so your donations to the wallet 1AFkD2bazCs5YZBBrSD7HsRMWLmRbg6QBo would be extremely appropriate.
It’s been a while since we’ve delighted you with fresh videos from the Libertarian Band! Today’s video concludes the second part of the cycle on libertarianism. In the first part, we started with the fact that the state has failed, and then discussed how libertarians try to eliminate it through various means. In the second part, we explained various terms and concepts popular among libertarians. And now we have returned to where we began, talking about what the state is, all its pros, cons, and pitfalls.
In the third part of our long cycle, we will proceed to explain how a stateless society is organized and how it works.
The facts. Alexander Litreev (author of the Krasnaya Knopka app, the Connecto-VPN service, the Russian Elephant project, the Cybersecurity & Co channel, and so on) stopped by Yekaterinburg for a day before speaking at a conference in St. Petersburg to meet up with a girl—and was picked up by the cops with two MDMA pills. Subsequently, he was sent to a remand prison for two months, and if the pre-trial detention period is not extended, the trial will be on April 22, where he faces up to three years.
Currently, the Tea Club, of which Alexander was a member, is raising money for a lawyer; Navalny, for some reason and without looking into the details, is blaming the girl for everything, who, according to the assurances of Alexander’s comrades, is indeed not involved—in short, everyone is heatedly discussing what happened, but as if it were a mundane story, like the one that happened to Associate Professor Sokolov. And there are also comments to the effect that he found a terrible place to buy substances—in Roizman’s city (which is characteristic, as no one mentions the current head of Yekaterinburg, who would even be interested in him).
It seems to me that everyone is fighting the wrong battle here. Since everyone is sure that this is political persecution, this should be used, and the public reaction should also be extremely politicized. Not “freedom for Alexander Litreev!”, but “down with Article 228!”
I believe that for the Tea Club, for instance, it would be a matter of honor now to announce a rally in Yekaterinburg for the repeal of Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and, accordingly, for the complete decriminalization of psychoactive substances. Yes, specifically in Roizman’s stronghold. And if the rally, God forbid, is not approved, then shame the shitty Roizman with everything we’ve got, as if he personally killed the rally and stuffed the pills into Litreev’s sock. Let him use all his influence to get it approved. Let that scoundrel speak at this rally himself and demand that they leave at least the users alone, because a user is not a criminal even in his cannibalistic logic.
Several hundred thousand people are in prison in Russia under this damn article, and it is unknown how many more got off with suspended sentences, fines, or bribed the cops on the spot. The world is moving toward the decriminalization of substances. A state where the same action is completely legal in one jurisdiction and seriously punished in another is normal when jurisdictions are contractual. But until that is the case, we can and must change the status quo toward less cannibalistic norms.
For my part, I am ready to donate to hold the rally and promote this campaign in every way. I urge everyone who believes that Article 228 should be destroyed to distribute this text and join this call. Rallies in other cities will also be useful, but we’ll see how things play out.
It is important now not to waste time before this news hook is replaced by something else. The authorities seriously expose themselves every time they try to apply general criminal articles to political activists. The best way to react is the destruction of the articles themselves.
