Автор: Анкап-тян

How are ecological problems solved in an anarcho-capitalist society?

I was arguing with a buddy; he says that in the PRB (Beautiful Russia of the Future), you can’t just take and distribute state land (which is 92% of it) as homesteads, because people will take it, cut down all the forests, sell the wood to China, and then leave. How realistic is this? Will an ecological catastrophe occur?
How are environmental problems solved in an anarcho-capitalist society? I heard there are several books on this topic.

Anonymous Ancap (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00021605 BTC)

If state land were distributed in modern Russia, then after some time, those who invested enough in this land and built a profitable business on it would start having that business squeezed out of them. Foreseeing these obvious consequences, people would be interested in squeezing as much as possible out of the obtained land as quickly as possible, and conducting more or less intensive farming only on a very modest scale, below the radar.

If the same were done in the Beautiful Russia of the Future, where judicial reform has already been carried out, property rights are protected, and there are several precedents of the successful protection of these rights, then it’s a different story. One could clear part of the forest, selling the logs to China, and use the proceeds to purchase wood processing equipment, gradually scaling a normal business, without forgetting to plant new forests to replace those cut down.

Thus, the optimal strategy for an entrepreneur will depend on their planning horizon, which is further the greater their confidence in tomorrow. Confidence, in turn, is strengthened by the presence of institutions that protect property rights.

Now about environmental problems. Ecology is a complex of knowledge and technologies for organizing a comfortable living environment for humans. The greater the solvent demand for such an environment in a specific territory, the higher the probability that the owner of the territory will prefer to invest in increasing the ecological attractiveness of the plot, even to the detriment of the existing business on that plot—because the demand for ecology also allows one to make money.

As for emissions, there is no fundamental difference between a simple garbage dump on someone else’s plot and, say, releasing harmful substances in the form of smoke into the atmosphere. This activity will meet opposition from neighbors, which will be more pronounced the greater their desire to have a healthy ecological environment right here. Were the polluter’s business somewhere on the internet, they could avoid responsibility for a long time, but land cannot run away; it is a large, stationary target. Therefore, anyone who, at their own risk, sets up a smoking factory that bothers the neighbors risks soon being left without a factory, and realizing that it is cheaper to install a filter on the smokestack, they will do so.

One might object, saying that in Africa, the compliance with environmental standards by enterprise owners is not very good. This is because the balance of violence there is not very stable. As long as it is cheaper to protect a factory from an attack than to re-equip it according to the latest word in ecological science, the owner will invest in protection. But in the absence of a state, under conditions of a sufficiently stable and sufficiently wealthy local community, the balance of violence can be maintained for a very long time, which means everything will be OK with the ecology as well.

On the doctrine of deterrence

I would like to present to your attention a translation of an article by Mike Mazarr, dedicated to modern approaches to the United States’ deterrence doctrine regarding other states. The author works at the RAND Corporation and previously served in Naval Intelligence.

The article is interesting in that it departs from rather primitive notions of deterrence based on game theory and focuses on methodological subjectivism, which is so valued by proponents of the Austrian school. Therefore, libertarians should find the content of the article easy and pleasant to digest, and for my part, I have tried to make the reading even easier and more pleasant by significantly simplifying the rather ponderous language of the article.

By the way, I have collected all the translations, which were scattered across my site, into a general section; feel free to use it.

Original article in pdf

Translation of Mechanics of Freedom. Chapters 2.7 and 4.9

I’ve fallen slightly behind on publishing the translation of The Machinery of Freedom, so I need to catch up. I present to you a couple of fresh chapters.

The chapter 99% Readiness is more of a historical interest. In it, David Friedman in the late sixties invented something halfway between BlaBlaCar and a shared shuttle to solve specific public transport problems in American cities with their powerful commuter migration from the suburbs to the business center and back.

Now, the chapter Anarchist Politics: On the Libertarian Party may seem quite interesting specifically in modern Russia, since the local libertarian party is also beginning to experience processes that resemble, in miniature, what Friedman described. Sorry that they are not in order: that’s just how it happened.

Porridge from an axe, part 2. Cooking ancap from left-wing ideas.

Thanks to Bitarch for the idea for the article

I’ve been thinking about how to illustrate the “porridge from an axe” strategy as applied to government people to move closer to ancap, and it seems the only working option is flirting with the idea of separatism. Local leadership, of course, would be happy not to depend on Moscow, and then the task is broken down into small pieces, and campaigns begin for the redistribution of taxes and powers from the center to the localities and so on. But perhaps it would be more interesting to show the strategy by pitching ideas not to officials, but to the people.

As is well known, left-wing sentiments prevail in Russia, and the key idea of the left is equality. Great, let’s cook some porridge out of equality.

Let’s start by exploiting such a wonderful base human quality as envy. If my own cow was taken away, let the neighbor’s be taken too. Not long ago, there was a pension reform where the retirement age for citizens was raised by five years. But not for everyone. Employees of security agencies and several other categories still retire early. To begin with, one could demand that their retirement age also be raised to the same age to ensure equality. If you can’t serve in the FSB at 50, that’s no reason to retire; just transfer to a civilian job and work until the end. The saved funds should be demanded to be divided among all pensioners, so the measure looks sufficiently populist.

Furthermore. If the pension amount for ordinary citizens is determined by how much they paid into the pension fund, then for privileged categories, it is a percentage of their salary. This is an irregularity; down with privileges, let’s have accruals for everyone according to a single formula!

If these measures, which do not put the state directly under attack, can be pushed through, the people will smell blood, and it will be difficult to stop them further. I will outline the remaining steps in dotted lines; the order of their implementation may change anyway.

Abolition of in-kind privileges, such as free public transport, official transport for high-ranking officials, official apartments, and the like. Everything should be folded into the salary for greater transparency and ease of administration.

Abolition of the prosecutor’s office. If the state needs a representative in court, let it hire a lawyer on general terms, rather than keeping a special staff of officials for this purpose. And to initiate lawsuits for various violations, shoulder straps are not needed at all; citizens can handle this themselves, personally or through public organizations.

Abolition of military conscription. Wagner is fighting for Russia anyway, so let it do so officially, along with Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Chopin, and other fine fellows providing their services on the market. For a locksmith with a mortgage, a competitive choice of employers is definitely more profitable than a single PMC, which moreover operates under the table.

Abolition of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. How is the police better than the Cossacks, Serba, and other guardians of traditional values and citizens’ peace? The municipality will figure out for itself whom to hire to guard the peace on the streets. And as for forensic experts—how are they better than laboratory employees who perform paid analyses for citizens? Down with inequality!

Sale of state property. Why is some official disposing of the people’s assets? Seize and redistribute! We sell state property and divide the proceeds equally among all citizens.

And so on. The entire sequential dismantling of the state is perfectly performed under left-wing slogans of equality and justice, and most importantly—there is no need to scare anyone with scary ancap.

In the twentieth century, citizens achieved the most victories under slogans of equality. This includes the movement against segregation in the USA, anti-colonialism, and feminism. And in Russia, social protests are often quite successful. So why not start using this energy in a more useful channel instead of simply branding leftists?

By the way, speaking of bayonets: the right to bear arms is also about equality

Institute of Reputation

I am pleased to present a new video from the Libertarian band team, with whom I have the honor of collaborating. This time, we are analyzing such an important yet murky topic as the institution of reputation.

The video took a long time to prepare because the team was moving to a new studio, and it wasn’t without a few flaws, but overall, I think it turned out quite well. The script for the next video is already ready; I hope we can release it this year.

Give it a like, comment, share the link, and improve the team’s reputation if you feel they are making a good product. I want the video to get more views than the recording of Svetovoy’s lecture)))

Shock content!

Well-known Ukrainian ancap Vladimir Zolotorev gave a lecture in which he supported a minarchist program of state transformations, including nationalization. This is something to see!

In general, I am glad that people, having quickly decided on the question of “Who is to blame,” are focusing on the question of “What is to be done,” while remaining within the framework of more or less realistic ideas about the capabilities of society and social organizations.

Porridge from an axe

or
He who says he hates the state simply doesn’t know how to cook it

Thanks to Bitarkh for the idea of the article

There is a fairly common negotiation strategy that I know as the Napoleon principle: ask for the impossible, and you will get the maximum. I can’t speak for Napoleon, but today it is practiced, for example, by Trump, and it is also loved by various terrorists who have taken hostages. This strategy is good, but it has one small flaw: it only works when applied from a position of strength. Therefore, when some political activist comes forward with maximalist demands addressed to the state, the first thing I do is calculate what they can threaten if the demands are not met, and usually, I immediately get bored. Empty demands are ignored at best, and punished at worst.

If your negotiating position is weak, it is far more appropriate to apply the opposite strategy, which could be called the “porridge from an axe” strategy, because it is well illustrated by this fairy tale:

A soldier was returning home from war and asked an old woman for a place to stay for the night. She let him in. He asked for something to eat, and she replied that she had nothing herself. Seeing an axe, he said: light the stove, bring the pot, we are going to cook porridge from an axe. She was surprised and did as requested. The water boiled, the soldier tasted the water and asked for salt. Then for grains. In different versions, there were other requests for ingredients; finally, the porridge was enriched with butter, served on the table, and eaten with appetite. As for the axe, the soldier either took it with him to finish cooking and eating, or left it with the old woman along with similar instructions.

If the Napoleonic strategy is used by terrorists who have taken hostages, then “porridge from an axe” is used, conversely, by the negotiators who talk those terrorists into submission. The strategy boils down to gradually wheedling out small concessions, and it is based on the assumption that the second party will incur costs not only from fulfilling the request, but also from refusing it. Another assumption is that the second party must have a larger goal and must believe that a series of small deals leads them toward that goal. If the soldier had not lured her with the promise of porridge from an axe, but simply asked for access to the stove, firewood, water, a pot, salt, and so on, he would have received a firm refusal somewhere at the salt stage, as in, “boiling water is enough for you.” Similarly, a terrorist will release hostages bit by bit if he is convinced that this advances him toward his stated goal, and not simply because he was asked.

In negotiations with representatives of the state, it makes sense for libertarians to use exactly this strategy. That is, one needs to find out what goal a specific official is pursuing, and then begin offering them small steps that should lead them toward that goal in exchange for giving up positions on some things that are not principled for them.

We will develop this topic in the next article.

Let’s assume that I dyed the soldier’s hair black and his forelock gold)))

The Tea Club as a Social Movement

Hi, Ancap-chan! At the end of October, you answered a question about the LPR, during which you read their charter. Could you analyze the Charter of the Tea Club for inaccuracies, potential abuses and flaws, and its compliance with principles?

Anonymous Tea-pot (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00119809btc)

As I indicated during the analysis of the LPR charter, complex multi-page charters are quite unnatural for a compact young organization and are practically useless in the absence of an external enforcer who could, based on the text of the charter, make decisions regarding various conflicts within the organization. If a certain group of people within the organization systematically violates the charter, their opponents will have only one pathetic tool—to announce the expulsion of this group. However, it is utterly unclear why a decision on expulsion should be followed by those expelled. They have the opportunity to continue their activities while calling themselves members of the organization, until the emerging split becomes so unacceptable to the majority of activists that they flee on their own in search of a healthier environment.

Thus, the content of a charter can only be seriously analyzed based on the fantastic assumption that all members of the organization will be guided by it in their actions under any circumstances. Meanwhile, organizations are routinely shaken by scandals, large or small, and each such scandal usually brings stronger apparatchiks into the organization’s leadership, weeding out those for whom the substance is more important than the form of activity for which the organization was created.

It should also be noted that it is practically impossible to meaningfully adjust a charter through democratic methods. All of Hayek’s arguments regarding the impossibility of constructing coordinated plans that take into account the interests of various groups via democratic methods are fully applicable to making amendments to regulatory documents, whether they be charters, constitutions, budgets, and so on—not to mention creating them from scratch. Sooner or later, the question arises of entrusting the drafting of the document to experts and then voting on the final text. Thus, the original text of any charter may be successful to the extent of the expert’s talent who drafted it, and further democratic mechanisms for adjusting the charter are simply meaningless, regardless of whether they are written into the original charter or not.

Don’t think that I am trying to dodge the question: I have managed to get through your charter. It is clear that you tried to create your own LPR “with blackjack and hookers,” meaning you started from the charter of the libertarian party and tried to prescribe mechanisms of interaction within the movement that would better correspond to libertarian principles.

According to your charter, the movement is a collection of regional branches, the activities of which are coordinated by elected steering committees within the branches (as in the LPR) and an interregional council consisting of the chairpersons of the steering committees at the interregional level (unlike the LPR, where this is handled by a body elected at the congress). You have also separated the actual management of the branch from the accounting and control functions, whereas in the LPR the accounting and control body exists more as a formality, and the membership records are kept by the head of the branch. I have no idea how this division works in your practice, but separating the CEO from the HR director seems justified for a large organization, but excessive for a small one. You have also implemented liquid democracy instead of representative democracy when it comes to a large interregional meeting. I don’t know if something similar exists in other Russian organizations or how it works, but generally, the world’s attitude toward such a mechanism is quite favorable.

You also pay a lot of attention to the work of arbitration—the negative experience carried over from the LPR is clearly felt. You didn’t dare implement a pure arbitration court, preferring a compromise model with a council of wise arbitrators joined by representatives of the conflicting parties. It is not hard to guess that if the arbitrators are biased, the arbitration will turn into a farce, and the charter does not provide for a mechanism to deny the jurisdiction of a knowingly biased arbitration. So this scheme is also potentially vulnerable to bureaucratic intrigues, just like any other model with a permanent judicial body.

What would I suggest?

If you were a purely libertarian organization, I would suggest you throw away the charter altogether and be guided solely by libertarian principles: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of choice of arbitrator, and so on. But you aim to attract class-libs as well, so it is better to have framework documents, but it would be better to grant branches the right to adopt their own charters and work regulations, and to abandon rigid territorial divisions (simply a group of movement participants united for joint work, started a treasury, got some useful gear, and solves common tasks until they split up). It only makes sense to strictly prescribe the conflict resolution procedure, and it would be great if this turned out to be something like: after an official accusation is made, the parties must amicably settle their conflict within a certain timeframe with a subsequent official notification of the end of the conflict; if an amicable solution is not reached, they have the right to apply to anyone willing to act as an arbitrator and choose a certain number of these volunteers within a certain timeframe; if a choice cannot be made, the conflict is recognized as frozen, and the parties are deprived of the right to participate in any decisions directly affecting each other’s interests; after a decision is issued by the arbitrator, the parties either voluntarily execute it or leave the movement. In general, something like that, the details may vary.

And that’s basically it. You will get an evolutionary system united by goals, principles, and a conflict resolution mechanism—but without coercion toward something people are not ready for. What more could you possibly need?

De-anonymization service as a destroyer of etatism

Bitark’s Column

Ancap-chan, in her post about LPR and security forces, lamented that in a direct confrontation with the state, the libertarian party behaves not in accordance with its public rhetoric about what ought to be, but like ordinary peaceful law-abiding citizens. One can talk as much as they want about the state being a bandit, about the aggressor’s sanction that allows for the removal of government officials without trial or investigation, and so on, but as we see, this does not translate into a real program of action and likely will not.

Why does this happen? Most would probably say that people are “simply intimidated and afraid to push their luck,” “the state is stronger,” and other such nonsense. But the government of the Russian Empire was by no means a cute bunny and far exceeded Putin’s in terms of cruelty. Nevertheless, it was opposed by determined fellows with their own often suicidal doctrine of individual terror. This was an incomparably greater extremism than the behavior of modern Russian oppositionists, who do not even dare to do what is widely practiced in modern Hong Kong—for example, go out into the street in a mask, shine a weak laser in a policeman’s eye, and then flee unidentified.

Political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann constantly speaks of a global trend toward the reduction of violence and the strengthening of security values. According to Inglehart’s values map, Russians are particularly characterized by values of individualism and security; therefore, it is not surprising that their behavior is so different from that of the residents of Hong Kong, who embrace values of development. Thus, we will have to build our struggle strategies based on this fact. If we want to create a mass resistance movement against the stationary bandit, the methods it uses must be as non-violent as possible.

As we wrote in previous articles, the meaning of the deterrence doctrine is to increase the costs of initiating violence for the aggressor. In this regard, it does not matter exactly how the costs are increased for officials and security forces. But since we want to create a mass campaign (so that as many people as possible participate), the methods must be maximally non-violent, and the necessary actions for participants (the level of difficulty) must be the simplest.

Such a means, of course, is a service for the de-anonymization of officials and security forces. Alexander Litreev launched a project with similar goals called “Russian Elephant,” but only the first name, last name, and photo of security personnel who showed cruelty are added there. Not even a home address. Litreev positions his project as “absolutely legal” (which should be read as: “obeying all orders of the stationary bandit”), so it will have no serious impact on the state. It is foolish to hope for victory by playing by the rules of the bandits, which they write for themselves.

To truly increase the costs for stationary bandits, I envision a service roughly like this:

1) It is implemented as a website but operates under TOR, like all darknet sites such as Hydra. This provides maximum security while maintaining ease of use. The TOR browser is already installed for many people (enough to download and launch, everything works “out of the box”) on all platforms (Windows/Linux, Android/iOS). Despite known cases of .onion site hacks followed by the installation of malicious scripts for user de-anonymization, all of these were carried out by the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Uncle Sam, of course, is just as much of a stationary bandit as Pynya, but he will never help Pynya crush his opponents. Thus, even a bare TOR browser without additional anonymization tools (VPN, disk encryption, Linux instead of Windows, accessing the network via an anonymous phone and SIM card), TOR provides practically 100% anonymity against local guardians of stability, i.e., against the FSB. A low entry barrier will allow for the attraction of the maximum number of people, even those who are not technically savvy. This also greatly simplifies development (it is created as a regular website and then hosted on .onion).

2) The website collects a database of officials and security forces of all ranks, posting absolutely all information that could be found—first name, last name, residential addresses, phone numbers, social media profiles, the wife’s place of work, connections with mistresses, car license plate. We are deterring bandits, so obeying their own “law”/order “On the Protection of Personal Data” is the height of absurdity!

3) The site is populated by concerned users. The entire database is in open access, and its snapshot is posted daily for offline download (so it is not lost if the FSB manages to seize the server). Data appears on the site after verification by moderators to exclude the intentional entry of people not involved with stationary bandits.

4) Each profile of an official or security officer will have crowdfunding (like on Kickstarter) to conduct a campaign to “increase the costs of aggression” (retribution) against that person. People will contribute bitcoins, suggest options, carry out retribution, and send a report to the moderators. If everything is correct, the executor will receive all the money from the fund of that official/security officer. Similarly, one can motivate the collection of data on a specific official (home address, car number, mobile number, etc.).

5) Only non-violent methods of retribution are permitted (killing or causing physical harm to health is forbidden). It is forbidden to list the children of officials and security forces as objects of retribution. In this way, the creators of the service cannot be portrayed to the public as ruthless terrorists, and the bandit’s relatives will not be as enraged as in the case of his death, while those who would like to replace him will be pleased. Here are examples of permissible methods of retribution: posting flyers with photos in the entrance, writing on the door, filling the lock with glue, writing on the car, reporting something to the wife’s workplace, filling the apartment with odorant, splashing with zelyonka. Impermissible: smashing a head, breaking legs, splashing with acid, setting the apartment on fire. Always remember: deterrence is not war!

As you can see, this service does not require the use of violence and is easy to use, which gives good chances of attracting a large number of people.

The libertarian eagle is anonymized and safe; the bandit is deprived of such luxury

Democracy – a dethroned god. Review.

Commissioned by the Tea Club

Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book “Democracy: The God That Failed” is not a cohesive treatise, but rather a collection of essays arranged in an order that allows the author’s ideas to be presented fairly consistently. However, such a composition inevitably leads to self-repetition, and an author with more respect for his readers could have reduced the volume of the book by about thirty percent without compromising the result. But there are advantages to this approach: any of the chapters can be read entirely in isolation from the others if desired. I will not analyze the work chapter by chapter, but will touch upon the main ideas of the book, indicating what seemed valuable to me, and what seemed erroneous or underdeveloped.

Time Preference and Family Values

Hoppe begins by explaining what time preference is, and how it tends to decrease in a more civilized society and increase in a more barbaric one. From this, he concludes that those measures for organizing society that increase time preference are decivilizing measures, and therefore harmful—and vice versa.

He also touches upon another factor affecting a person’s time preference, namely the stages of their life. In childhood, time preference is high; a child is unwilling to wait to achieve their immediate goals. With age, it decreases as a person expands their planning horizons, and toward old age, it should theoretically increase again, since there is less time left to live, and, as Keynes rightly noted, in the long run we are all dead, so there is no point in making plans for a period exceeding the remainder of one’s life.

But, Hoppe joyfully notes, there is such a factor as the family. The desire for the prosperity of one’s lineage allows a person to maintain a low time preference into deep old age, for they know that the wealth they have accumulated will serve the benefit of their descendants. However, this requires the organization of people into stable collectives called families. Therefore, any measures that destroy families increase time preference in society, meaning they are harmful and decivilizing. Hence all of Hoppe’s hatred for communists, hedonists, and homosexuals; hence all of his conservatism. For the sake of instilling conservative values, he is ready to welcome any individual oppressions in the form of expelling individualists from patriarchal collectives, which are the bulwark of true civilization.

It is not difficult to see an elementary logical substitution here. Yes, family values reduce time preference in old age, but who said that this is the only thing capable of reducing it? People frequently do not squander their entire fortune by old age, but they do not necessarily leave everything to their children. Instead, for reasons incomprehensible to Hoppe, they continue to manage their capital prudently until death and bequeath it to various foundations, as did Nobel, Carnegie, or Rockefeller. That is, the family is clearly not the only factor that reduces time preference in old age, nor is it the factor that contributes most highly to the progress of civilization. A foundation, as the founder’s will formalized as a legal entity, often handles the expansion of the planning horizon even better than profligate descendants, who might even be tempted to hasten the benefactor’s end to spend everything sooner. Thus, one of the foundations of Hoppean apology for conservatism turns out to be shaky.

Aristocracy, Monarchy, and Democracy

The central part of the book is an analysis of how a society existing in natural freedom first, for natural reasons, becomes accustomed to seeking advice and the resolution of conflicts from its most competent members, then these individuals gradually turn into a hereditary aristocracy, then the aristocrats are subsumed by the wealthiest, who becomes an absolute monarch, and finally, the monarch is abolished by the Third Estate, and an order reigns in society where absolute power belongs to society as a whole, while temporary appointees rule in its name. At each of the described stages, the personal responsibility of the governors for the results of their management is diluted, the quality of services provided by the elite to society becomes lower, and the price becomes higher.

Fortunately, Hoppe notes, despite all this regress, people have succeeded in developing various useful market mechanisms, and now, in order to return the lost freedom, we do not need to return to natural aristocracy in its archaic form; it is sufficient that all services currently monopolistically imposed by the state be traded on a free market.

In Hoppe’s opinion, reforming the democratic state in this direction will not work, because there are too many managers of public property, the temptation to use power for personal gain is too great, and no libertarian party will be able to recruit enough ideological haters of the state to place them in all government positions. Fortunately, the majority always silently accepts the status quo, so in order to present it with the fact of the state’s abolition, there will be no need to win elections according to government rules; it is enough to rock the boat and then, through the coordinated effort of a determined minority, overturn it.

In short, a certain confusion arises. On one hand, there is the progress of society, during which time preference decreases. On the other hand, there is the regress of systems for managing society, as a result of which time preference increases.

I see little point here in nitpicking the author on the fact that the state hardly matured as a fruit of the evolution of natural aristocracy and its noble activity in resolving conflicts. Rather, it is likely the fruit of the evolution of a gang of robbers and their methods of solving issues through lawlessness, then through “understandings,” and then through laws. It is not so important whether Locke or Hobbes invisibly hovered over the waters on the first day of creation (both hovered, of course), as long as in the process of reconstructing the patterns of history, we arrive by different paths at a single conclusion regarding desired future changes in the organization of society.

The Beautiful Ancap of the Future

The most beautiful part of the book is the description of the functioning of a system of private insurance companies, which simply pay insurance premiums to their clients upon the occurrence of insurance events such as robbery or theft, but as a result, are forced to abolish states out of pure commercial calculation, because this means they will have to pay less to clients in insurance. Hayek’s name is not mentioned once, but this description fully aligns with his idea of spontaneous orders.

Here Hoppe provides a valuable consideration that I have not yet encountered in other authors. It is known that many skeptics argue: if two subjects who have contracts with different protection agencies begin to feud, this should lead to a war between the protection agencies contracted to them. David Friedman responds to this by saying that it is not profitable for agencies to fight, and therefore they will push the clients aside, hash it out among themselves, decide who is right, and present the clients with the fact. This looks logical, but generates bewilderment: how is such a model better than the current state model?

Hoppe provides a different logic. He does not speak of any protection agencies; the company’s task is the insurance of the client’s risks. But only those risks over which the client himself has no power are insured. If a company were to unconditionally pay fire insurance to everyone who insures their house and then sets it on fire, it would go bankrupt instantly; therefore, when drawing up contracts, it is always specified which cases are not insurable. Thus, in the event of a conflict, only the party that was not the aggressor in that conflict should be recognized as having the right to the insurance payout. Moreover, if both parties behaved extremely provocatively, it is not even that important who first resorted to open violence—such a case, where the client was asking for damage to the insured property, is obviously not insurable.

Another interesting reasoning is related to factors affecting the calculation of insurance premiums. They are higher the higher the value of the insured property, and they are lower the lower the costs of its protection. Thus, market logic will lead to the fact that insurance companies, wishing to earn a maximum, will fully contribute to the growth of the price of the client’s property, which is achieved, in particular, through its reliable security and reducing the probability of damage—but exactly this will lead to the margin decreasing, and insurance companies will have to master new markets, meaning come to more dangerous and poor places, for example, those where various criminal groups, like states or other thugs, still conduct their bandit activities. Thus, the activity of insurance companies will naturally lead to the expansion of security and the growth of the once-arisen zone of ancap.

Summary

Despite the fact that the author in a number of cases indulges his own tastes and falls into wishful thinking, the book contains a number of extremely useful ideas that were new to me, which I agree with, and which I will use in the future. Even if these ideas do not belong to Hoppe himself, he still deserves my respect as their popularizer.