Many have expressed optimism regarding the recent series of searches of LP members, claiming that this is a mark of quality and a sign that the party is on the right track. I would say that today, repression against political activists is not a sign of fear among those in power, but rather a businesslike scurrying, carried out with a cold heart and without much thought. The grass has grown—it is time to mow. Meanwhile, the grass may comfort itself with the thought that the more it is mown, the thicker it grows.
To be honest, I had a vague hope that since the LP differs from other parties in its radical rhetoric of freedom, this would also be reflected in its behavior in the face of repression. It was not. Protest as performed by the LP is just as legalistic as that performed by Navalny. When security forces burst into a libertarian’s home, they leave just as intact and with the loot as if it had been an ordinary Navalny volunteer or an employee of Open Russia.
So, if anyone believes that Russian libertarians are grim, armed anarchists who will not let themselves be stepped on, or that an attempt to break into one of their homes will immediately trigger a spontaneous rally under their windows—they will have to part with these harmful illusions. Libertarian ideas are not so deeply rooted in the libertarian community that rhetoric regarding the state has translated into practical actions against it.
After all this, I even feel somewhat awkward discussing what the libertarian doctrine of action is in the event of one aggression or another: such discussions begin to look very irrelevant.
Therefore, in this post, I am not providing recipes, because I do not know them. I do not know how I would behave if I were a member of the libertarian party, against whose elected leader blatant state aggression has been undertaken. For me, this is a serious reason to continue refraining from joining the party. I fear that if I begin to declare my views openly, then when the state reaches me—which will happen quickly—I will find myself alone before its functionaries, and at most, I will receive a few pickets in my support.
Please be responsible for your words; there is already too much empty chatter in the world. If you do not feel the resolve to bite the boot that tramples you, do not raise the banner with the motto “Dont Tread On Me.” It is better to hide your libertarianism than to openly discredit it.
Yesterday’s post about whether violent actions to enforce payment for a completed contract violate the NAP, sparked a discussion, so I am returning to the topic.
As Ekaterina Schulmann loves to point out in her lectures, the world is extremely unfair, and societies where there is little trust, bear additional costs due to this, which exacerbates their poverty and further reduces trust—while trust cannot be restored by simple preaching. This observation applies not only to the citizens of a particular state in general, but also to other groups. In the context of the transition to ancap, we are most interested in the agorist society, those engaged in counter-economics, and therefore voluntarily or forcedly cut off from state services for ensuring contract compliance.
For example, any shadow entrepreneur can easily encounter a situation where they have incurred costs while fulfilling the contract terms, after which they are refused payment. In such a situation, you cannot not only file a lawsuit, but you cannot even bring the situation to public attention, because the activity is shadow, and publicity is even more disadvantageous than the losses from unpaid work. Without publicity, the institution of reputation does not work.
Take sex work in modern Russian society as an example. It is illegal, so in case of non-payment under a contract, these funds cannot be recovered through the court, and you cannot even draft a written contract with specified sanctions for non-payment, as it would be evidence. Therefore, even an individual entrepreneur usually has to cooperate with someone to whom she can turn for protection in such cases, so that they can achieve payment through force or the threat of its application. These are additional costs that society bears due to a lack of trust, suivante which allow such a business to remain stably profitable; without the purchase of contract enforcement, sex workers quickly become sex slaves.
In legal business, this manifests itself less often, but it is quite easy to imagine, for example, how a drunk debauchee is kicked out of a bar where he is unable to pay for the damage he caused (see also my old article on vigilantism). Here, a conditional mutual offset of damages is far more common, and not an invoice for payment post-factum, although variants are possible.
Nevertheless, it must be clearly understood that all cases where direct violence is practiced instead of civilized proceedings with installments, penalties, and seizure of property, etc., are precisely excesseses, and the more trust there is between people in society, the fewer such excesses.
In the post Libertarianism ex machina, I referred to Alexander Auzaan’s lecture, where the conditions necessary for the stable existence of a stateless society are discussed. He calls the balance of the potential for violence as the key condition. When a sex worker or a bar owner hires security, they level the balance of the potential for violence, countering the potential aggression of customers with the potential aggression of security. The second condition mentioned in the lecture is a stable community composition. This factor allows the transition from a classic prisoner’s dilemma to a repeated one, launches the institution of reputation, makes it possible to predict others’ actions—and gradually develops trust in society, even if the various additional measures proposed by Ekaterina Schulmann are not used—namely, joining various social organizations to build experience in peaceful, creative interaction (though with them the process is significantly accelerated).
The Internet allows such stable communities to form even without being tied to a specific compact territory: the transmission of information is extraterritorial, and communities are based precisely on the exchange of information. Transaction guarantees, through mechanisms of collateral, escrow, insurance, and other non-violent instruments—these are services that appear on modern markets at fairly early stages of their development, and immediately radically reduce both the level of costs from contract violations, and the level of potential violence necessary to operate in such a market.
So do not violate the NAP—it is not only unsightly, but also unprofitable, there are better tools.
To start, I would like to recommend a recent column by Bitarch about contract enforcement. It provides several historical examples of how, in a free market, contract enforcement happened not through violence, but through the refusal to cooperate, and indicates that this is an inevitable consequence of a sufficiently balanced potential for violence in society — and ancap is presumably just such, otherwise a dominant aggressor would not be long in appearing. Therefore, relatively stable markets usually already possess all the necessary tools for peaceful conflict resolution — such as arbitration, rating systems, and sanctions.
Nevertheless, reputation works well only where it is easy to refuse cooperation by replacing a defaulting counterparty with their direct competitor, and where all other market participants also monitor such situations and strive to deal with counterparties who have a good reputation.
However, if you have a short planning horizon, and it is not very important to you what long-term negative consequences the person who did not pay for your work will face, but you would like to quickly receive the money under the contract and spend it on urgent needs — then it is important to have threats in reserve that are more serious than “I will no longer do business with you, and I will try to make sure everyone follows my example.” For example, the ability to shove a barrel into his liver, after which you offer to part with the car keys as collateral that the contract money will be paid tomorrow. Or, as you indicated in your question, simply beating him up.
At the same time, it is important to understand what exact reputation you are creating for yourself with such actions. If you are satisfied with a reputation as hot-tempered but forgiving (beat them up and forgave the debt) — well, go ahead, crack some knuckles, then write off the losses, and you’re even. If you prefer the reputation of a tough guy who isn’t to be trifled with, you can try beating them up first, and then declare that this was the interest on the debt, while the principal must be returned by a certain date, or new interest will be charged. But this is already a serious claim that you are capable of completely determining the rules of the game in this area (since you have de facto revised the terms of the contract unilaterally, which is no less of a blunder than a breach of contract by the party withholding payment), and many may find a reason to challenge such a claim, even if you were previously, in essence, irrelevant to them.
So I would recommend avoiding violence whenever possible and limiting yourself to threats of violence. Demonstrate to the contract violator your ability to cause them unacceptable damage, and then offer, as an alternative to such a miserable scenario, to revise the terms of the contract by providing the possibility of payment in installments — or, if that is clearer to you, putting them “on the clock.” And, again, it is better to get their consent to the new terms in an explicit form, because what use is it to you to let go of a person whose only desire is to get as far away as possible without actually paying the bills. It is far more profitable if they leave happy, understanding that they got off easy, that it is actually realistic to pay the debt under the new terms, that their business reputation will not suffer, and that they don’t need to run from anyone.
And in conclusion, if you are concerned specifically with the formal compliance of certain actions with the non-aggression principle, I will describe the conflict from that point of view.
You weren’t paid, you act in accordance with the clause of the contract regarding delays: usually, both a penalty and a specific arbitration body are specified there. The NAP is not violated.
You weren’t paid, you beat up the non-payer, after which you proposed to consider that the parties are even, and the beaten person agreed. There was a mutual violation of the NAP followed by a reconciliation of the parties.
You weren’t paid, you beat up the non-payer, after which you demanded the return of the debt — there was a violation of the NAP on your part, unless, of course, the beating was written into the contract as a disciplinary measure in case of payment delay or even as the payment itself (the classic description of labor relations known to us, ending with the words “you shouldn’t have chased after cheapness, priest”).
You weren’t paid, there is no hope for arbitration, you insist on a revision of the contract through threats, after which the new contract is fulfilled by the counterparty — there is no violation of the NAP (but if you overdid it, the situation may only become more complicated; this is a favorite plot of action movies, and they don’t make action movies about peaceful and cloudless market relations).
No sooner had I posted the text about how crowdfunding is the most obvious way to finance the production of public goods in a free market, as an illustration came along.
The St. Petersburg branch of the LPR is renting an office, and to raise funds for its lease, they decided to hold a regular stream. Today at 20:00 Moscow time on the YouTube channel Ancap-podcast the show “Brewing Moonshine” will take place, during which the host intends to drink a glass of moonshine for every 1000 rubles in donations. I don’t know if they’ll be distilling it on the spot or pouring ready-made, but it could turn out to be amusing.
I was offered 300 rubles to post this announcement, and I decided to briefly deviate from my rules, according to which a resource review should not stand alone, but be accompanied by my answer to a donation-backed question. Today we are holding the funeral without the deceased.
I think I’ll drop by to listen to the stream too, although I intend to drink martini with tonic while doing so, if you’ll excuse me.
In discussions between libertarians and statists, the question “Who will build the roads under ancap?” comes up almost every time. There are many possible answers to this, but I have not encountered a beautiful, universal solution for the problem of providing public goods in a stateless society. At least not until yesterday, when in a stream by the “Antigovernment” community, Savva Shanaev introduced an idea by Alex Tabarrok that is little known in Russia: “Dominant Assurance Contracts”.
Public goods include a wide variety of benefits that anyone can use regardless of whether they paid for them or not — roads, bridges, street lighting, storm sewers, lighthouses, protective dams, herd immunity resulting from universal vaccination, law enforcement, strategic deterrence, waste recycling, sewage treatment, public parks, and much more. The main problem with their provision is the free-rider effect. When it is impossible to charge for the use of public goods, no one will simply pay for them, viewing them as a “given” or hoping that someone else will pay.
The stationary bandit (the state) constantly exploits this to prove its necessity. State propaganda claims that only the state can build roads and bridges, and therefore a territorial monopoly and taxation are needed to fund them.
However, there is a simple and clear way to provide public goods in a completely free market. It has already been implemented on the well-known platform Kickstarter, and without the state, it will be used far more often than it is now. The principle of its operation is roughly as follows.
For example, residents of a neighborhood are tired of breaking their legs and damaging their cars in potholes on the road. An activist contacts a road paving company and gets an estimate. Then, they go to a crowdfunding platform and create a fundraising campaign, specifying the required amount and the deadline for collection. They send letters to the neighborhood residents asking for any possible assistance in funding the road repair and provide a link to the crowdfunding campaign. Anyone can go there and see how much money has been contributed so far, how much more is needed, and when the collection ends. If the required amount is collected by the deadline, the campaign is considered successful, and the road repair company receives the order. If the full amount cannot be collected by the specified date, the money is returned in full to the residents. It is their choice; it means they truly do not need the road repair, and it is absolutely unethical to rob the population of the entire country through taxes to repair their road. Those who cannot stand living without a road move to neighborhoods with a more demanding population, and over time, a natural separation occurs based on the level of demand for infrastructure quality.
On November 4, I was very sad. I am used to watching the broadcast of the Adam Smith readings held in Moscow every year, but this year the organizers deprived me of this opportunity for the first time, so I wish them a speedy removal and replacement. As I understand it, although the Adam Smith Center is formally responsible for this, in fact, the organization was entrusted to the same team that organized the summer debates between Shulman and Solovyov, as well as the lecture by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. These guys always disregard the broadcast and insist that no one else should conduct it. Monopolists, for goodness’ sake. Monopoly is expensive and bad. Always. Even if it is a monopoly on libertarianism or on organizing libertarian conferences. (Update: as I have been told, the team is actually different. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the refusal to provide a live broadcast remains a wrong move)
Fortunately, the Adam Smith Center does not have a monopoly on organizing libertarian conferences. On November 10, the second conference in the TED Talks format dedicated to monopolies took place in Moscow. The conference is conducted by the Moscow branch of the Tea Club. It is known that the LPR has rather strained relations with the Tea Club, but it is precisely thanks to their competition that we have more high-quality educational content online, so we can only welcome their rivalry.
Alas, the Tea Club also failed to provide a broadcast, but on the other hand, they began publishing recordings of the speeches on November 16 and finished on November 27. The recordings are collected in a playlist; I watched them all at once today and, as per tradition, will briefly go through all of them.
Dmitry Kornienko. How the state teaches history. This discusses specifically the experience of the Russian state, without invoking foreign examples. Mention is made of an important difference between Soviet education and modern Russian education: the monopoly on knowledge has disappeared, although the monopoly on education has remained. One can lie, but students will know that you are lying and have no reason to remain silent about it. Thus, the tasks of forming a unified understanding of history have become more difficult, and, in essence, the state monopoly is ceasing to cope with them.
Igor Drandin. Monopoly on discourse. Igor has extensive experience in the unpleasant role of being the liberal punching bag on federal TV channels; he shares the secrets of this non-trivial profession and speaks about the pros and cons of appearing on television. The most compelling argument presented by Igor is that TV debates are a very tough school of debating, and it is foolish to refuse such training if enemies practice this exercise daily. For instance, Navalny lost in debates to Girkin, Svetov to Kagarlitsky and Roizman—they lack the skill, as blogging and lecturing train one for something entirely different. Meanwhile, in public politics, the skill of debating is just as useful as the skill of speaking at rallies. I will note, however, that television itself is unnecessary for acquiring such skills, and it would be great if Drandin himself could find a way to pass these acquired skills to those politicians who did not participate in TV debates.
Vyacheslav Shirinkin. Monopoly on a favorite band. Not all monopolization processes are linked to the state. Vyacheslav talks about various psychological aspects related to people’s love for exclusivity, as well as how to break into a market with a high barrier to entry.
Vadim Novikov. To be or not to be for antitrust in Russia? Unfortunately, the recording turned out to be ruined, and the sound is very poor. The main thesis of the report: there is no point in tackling complex cases until the simple ones are sorted out. First, defeat protectionism in foreign policy, then try to defeat it in the domestic market.
Roman Yuneman. Electoral monopoly. A candidate who won the elections to the Moscow City Duma shows in detail how the tool used to take away his victory is unlike an engine for fair elections, and why it is now important not only to contest the election results of a specific district in court but also to prevent the flawed practice of electronic voting from spreading across the entire country. The report is especially useful for the heralds of technological progress as a sort of sobriety check: if the goal is to counter falsifications, then simple mechanisms are better than complex ones.
Let’s imagine the following situation arising in an imaginary ancap society. In my opinion, someone has caused damage to my property, but in the opinion of that someone, he caused me no damage. And the circumstances of this case are such that it is very, very controversial; it is difficult for an objective party to determine who is right. As a result, this leads to a situation where, across a large sample of different courts, half of them side with me, and the other half side with the party I am accusing. To my suggestions to pay at least a portion of the compensation demanded by me (and by the courts that sided with me), the opponent categorically brushes them off, because, in his opinion, he did not cause damage to my property, and therefore does not owe me a single penny.
Under the conditions of a state, such a problem is reliably solved by a hierarchy of courts. Yes, someone will remain dissatisfied, but that is the whole essence of the institution of the court. In the conditions of ancap, however, we arrive at a complex conflict where my bailiffs and my opponent’s security must, in effect, start fighting each other, since both conflicting parties are equally right. What solution does ancap offer for such situations? And how should I personally behave in such a situation?
The function of a court is to help the parties resolve their conflict. The only way to do this is for both parties to the conflict to recognize the jurisdiction of a particular court in a specific case. If the case is complex and convoluted, we cannot know in advance the position of any specific pre-designated court until it completes the proceedings. Therefore, all the parties to the conflict need to do is find a court that has a good enough reputation, is acceptable in price, and is willing to take on the case. Then, both parties enter into an agreement with the court that they are ready to execute its verdict in this case, and only after that does the court even begin to delve into the subject.
Since the case is so murky, the final court decision will likely be quite a compromise, such as one party receiving partial satisfaction of their claims while paying some compensation to the other party. But, however, we cannot know this in advance.
Naturally, each party to the conflict will be interested in the impartiality of the court; therefore, they will probably consider it important to include a clause in the contract stating that they reserve the right to withdraw from the process before the end of the proceedings if they can demonstrate the court’s interest in a particular outcome.
If one of the parties refuses in advance to recognize any verdict other than one that completely relieves them of obligations, they are thereby refusing the court as such, which means they intend to continue an open conflict with the second party. In this case, the party that agrees to the court can wave this readiness around, saying, “I am not the one starting a war here, I am merely defending myself,” and thereby gain new allies while gradually stifling the aggressor with sanctions, forcing them into peaceful negotiations.
By the way, peaceful negotiations, without any external arbitrator, are also a way of resolving a conflict, so a court is not a mandatory procedure for this at all.
As has been noted repeatedly by many, the state of affairs in international politics very much resembles ancap
While the channel was on pause, I reflected on its future, and now I want to formulate more clearly how it will be managed.
Every week, roughly on weekends, I intend to publish not exactly a longread, but a sufficiently detailed article on topics that interest me, which are not necessarily related to your questions. Alternatively, this could be an interview or something else equally labor-intensive.
On weekdays, no more than one post per day will consist of answers to questions accompanied by donations. I have already accumulated a huge pool of answers on a wide variety of topics, and continuing to fill the info-space at the same pace would mean inevitable self-copying, paraphrasing, and so on. I answered free questions because I needed it—it is easier for me to reason within a specific given topic than to fantasize about what else interesting to convey to the public. Now I am happy to continue answering, but only if you need it, and the best way to demonstrate your interest is to back it up with money. Free questions will now move for me into the category of sociological data on what people are generally interested in, and theoretically, they may form the basis for articles.
Bitarch’s column will be maintained as texts from him appear, not tied to specific days, but somewhat depending on the depth of my processing of the original text.
Mutual promotion with other projects is possible, but on my part, it will always be a review of the corresponding channel, indicating whether I subscribed to it myself, and I would like the same approach from the opposite side, although, of course, I have no control over the info-policy of other channels.
I am ready to post reviews of other channels as a bonus to an answer to paid questions asked by them, as was tested with the “Pravy Argument” channel. Reviews will be posted on a permanent basis and not deleted after a fixed period, as usually happens with advertising on various Telegram channels.
I do not intend to personally place my own paid advertising on other channels, but I am ready to accept payment for such things as a donation, as was the case with advertising on the “Whales are swimming to the LSD crash pad” channel. In this case, if necessary, I can provide promotional text adapted to the audience of the corresponding channel.
For example, a friend invited me to a party at his house. I brought apple juice with me. Suddenly, the police burst in, and it turns out that juice is prohibited in his contractual jurisdiction. 1) Did I start violating the NAP from the moment I took it out? 2) How does the effect of another jurisdiction apply to me if I have not entered into contracts with it? 3) What happens if I am a user of another jurisdiction that the first one does not recognize and simply engages in vigilantism?
A similar question: will self-ownership help if a person runs onto someone else’s field? Can I shoot them without a trial or investigation?
What could be called laws under ancap is the codification of successful practices. Such codes, which generalize successful practices on various topics, are in demand in a stateless society because they save effort by allowing one to avoid analyzing every case from scratch. Saving effort will mean saving money, and a cheap court, all other things being equal, will naturally win in the competitive struggle against an expensive one. But even if an expensive court provides a higher quality review of the issue, there will also be demand for a cheap one; this is a natural market segmentation by price.
Thus, by recognizing the jurisdiction of a particular company over oneself regarding a certain circle of issues, a person under ancap usually has the opportunity in advance to find out which sets of norms are used within that jurisdiction.
Furthermore, humanity has a rich experience in resolving conflicts between persons belonging to different jurisdictions. In most cases, it was a convenient practice to recognize the laws of the party on whose territory the conflict occurred. Deviations from this principle were usually stipulated separately. This could be related, for example, to the particularly important status of certain persons, or to the disputed status of the place where the conflict occurred. Thus, the concept of diplomatic immunity and international maritime law emerged.
Now let’s move directly to your questions. Let’s replace apple juice with a more understandable irritant. You brought sausage to a vegan party and began to eat it with appetite alongside the salad. Naturally, for vegans, this is a very irritating situation. And they know in advance that something like this would upset them greatly. Therefore, the party announcement usually states right away that it is a vegan party, no meat will be served, and bringing it along is prohibited. Thus, your actions violate the agreed-upon conditions of presence, and you are fully entitled to be evicted from the party.
Worse, if the announcement states that the party is vegan, no restrictions are explicitly written, you are not a vegan and do not hide it, but you were invited anyway. Respecting the hosts’ right not to serve you meat, you decide to provide for yourself—and you run into a legal conflict. Here, both the hosts, who failed to explain the rules to you, and you, who failed to understand the local defaults, are in an awkward position. Usually, such mishaps are resolved by one of the parties making concessions, but if the party hosts do not concede, you will still be evicted, because this is a place where their interpretation of disputed norms takes priority. I had a similar case during a Kupala night celebration when I started kissing a guy; it turned out he was taken, and his girl confronted me for it, which caused my bewilderment: I sincerely believed that different rules apply on Kupala night—but I yielded; the world didn’t end over that guy, basically. Similarly, our hypothetical vegans might yield to you, albeit with a sense of deep bewilderment at your tactlessness.
Now let’s move from elaborate tales to conclusions.
You are not obliged to follow the norms that you did not pledge to follow.
You may be forced to comply with them if it is a fundamental point for the enforcing party, but not for you.
You have the right to demand compensation for such coercion, but it is not a fact that you will receive it.
The more the parties are interested in future cooperation, the more likely it is that they will make mutual concessions regarding a specific current case.
In light of these theses, how can we resolve the second case, with trespassing—that is, the violation of property boundaries, even without explicit damage to that property?
A person is not obliged to be aware that you are against them walking across your field. It is better to put a sign on the border saying “No Trespassing,” so that the person knows that a famous Willy No-Trespassing lives here, and he is not to be trifled with (for additional reading, I recommend the well-known text about Piglet’s grandfather, floating around the internet).
You can force a person to leave the field if this is fundamental for you. And if they have read the sign and ignored it, you can carry out the enforcement using lethal force, without wasting time on additional persuasions.
Compensation may be demanded from you if, for example, there was a beaten path across your field, the boundary was not marked, the sign turned out to be unreadable and hidden in the grass, and then you pop out like a jack-in-the-box with a Winchester in hand and start shooting. State your rules in the most explicit form possible.
The more you are interested in future cooperation with the trespasser, the more likely it is that you will allow them on your field, even if they wandered in without permission. For example, it turned out to be a traveling salesman with a magical gift of persuasion, and now he will be your permanent supplier of tin foil hats.
I received information from the author of a service that allowed anyone to send Bitcoin donations while paying in rubles from a bank card. Unfortunately, the service closed because the author’s Yandex wallet was blocked, and other ruble online payment tools do not have the necessary functions in their API. This, alas, is a typical situation for agorists—the state seeks to tax every transaction, and if it cannot, it prefers to crush everything in sight. As for Yandex, although it is formally private today, it is unable to resist the whims of the state.
So I had to update the instructions in the Donations section, removing the description of this option. However, taking advantage of the occasion, I added some updates to the Lightning description page—there, on the contrary, a new service appeared for exchanging those same Yandex rubles for Lightning; I don’t know how long it will last.
On the other hand, the VPN from Vee Security, which I advertised some time ago, is quite alive and has no intention of fading away.
I hope everyone who wanted to has taken advantage of the recent dip in the Bitcoin rate and stocked up for the future.
