I was distracted from the translation for quite a while, but I have recently returned to it. I present to you the first chapter of David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom – In Defense of Property.
I hope I have enough momentum to continue the work for some time, but the best way to influence my priorities is to financially support those of my endeavors that are most interesting to you. For those who wish to sponsor the translation of The Machinery of Freedom specifically, rather than just abstractly support the project as a whole, I have set up a separate bitcoin wallet: 1AFkD2bazCs5YZBBrSD7HsRMWLmRbg6QBo
As for those who prefer to use a lightning bot in Telegram for donations, you can simply specify the purpose of the payment in the comment.
I would also be incredibly happy if you joined the translation work. It is very simple: go to the section where the original book is posted, choose any chapter that no one has taken on yet — and go for it.
The principle of non-aggression is one of the criteria people use to make choices while living among others. However, its consistent application encounters the fact that different people in different situations have different criteria for what constitutes violence. A rock concert is far louder than a hammer drill behind a wall, but a person will readily go to a concert and tolerate the violence against their ears there, while they are far less willing to tolerate a hammer drill. Half a century ago, people were far more tolerant of engine exhaust or smoking indoors than they are today, but it is by no means certain that this trend will continue.
Since universal, objective, natural criteria for such things are absent, one must use various heuristics, such as, for example, the principle of estoppel, which states that someone who violates a certain norm is not entitled to demand punishment for others for violating that same norm. If you smoke indoors, you are not entitled to demand that others do not smoke. If you litter, you are not entitled to demand that others do not litter. Thus, places are formed where everyone more or less refrains from littering, and places where everyone doesn’t give a damn.
Indeed, strong intolerance toward emissions will manifest in some places; we can easily observe such territories called nature reserves or national parks. There, the owners maintain a very careful “non-aggression” on the territory and demand the same from others.
If there is anything constant in human society, it is diversity. No single principle will ever absolutely prevail over all. Not even the NAP. It is enough for you to implement it around yourself to a level that is convenient for both you and those around you.
In short: I am approved by dishonest people, while honest people dislike or hate me. This is very sad and makes life feel meaningless.
анонимный вопрос
Honest people are not obligated to respect and support other honest people. They are not necessarily intelligent, not necessarily far-sighted, and not necessarily have a material interest in supporting you; on the contrary, they may have a material interest in disapproving of you, they may be conformists, and they certainly do not possess all the information, because no one possesses all the information. In other words, the world is unfair.
Nevertheless, people are usually interested in creating a society where certain behavior is rewarded, and sometimes they even succeed in this. Behavior that is rewarded in such a society is called honest, and this standard of honesty, of course, does not have to coincide with the standard of honest behavior in another society. One society will value and respect a clever intriguer, another one someone prone to observing moral norms at the expense of material gain. Moreover, these two societies may even partially consist of the same people. In other words, people build their own little just worlds, and they do a pretty good job of it, but in this activity, there is a strong negative effect of scale that prevents the implementation of a single universal standard of justice.
You might admire some “honest scoundrel” who skillfully undermines his colleagues, and in an attempt to win his respect, you skillfully undermine his mother. That is when it will turn out that for the mother, the honest scoundrel follows different standards of honesty. You might admire the generosity of spirit of your colleague, only to find out that for work, he requires competence and adherence to instructions from you, and he would rather appreciate your generosity of spirit in a non-work setting. Or, conversely, you might demonstrate that very professional competence at work, yet be disliked in the office because you don’t wash your cup or you laugh at jokes at the wrong time.
The ability to understand what actions who expects from you and at what moment is called emotional intelligence. It seems to me that this is a combination of ordinary intelligence (the ability to analyze) plus empathy (the ability to sympathize). Mirror neurons in the brain are responsible for empathy, and where there is a neural network, there are techniques for training that neural network. Try copying other people’s manners, voice, movements, and intonations. Pay attention to the sensations that arise in you while doing this. Model other people’s behavior in your head, striving to make the model as close to reality as possible. Try copying the writing styles of different people. Over time, you will sharpen your perceptiveness.
Unfortunately, I cannot boast that I possess high emotional intelligence myself. I am the type of person who would rather pass a PE exam by writing a paper on running technique than run a hundred-meter dash for a grade. So, I won’t be able to inspire you with a personal example, but you weren’t looking for an example from me, but rather advice. I am good at giving advice.
As far as I can tell, Roma have an extraterritorial jurisdiction that is not contractual. You cannot simply show up from the outside and enroll as a Romani person. This jurisdiction may enter into informal contracts with other mafia-style extraterritorial jurisdictions, or remain in a state of nature relative to other jurisdictions.
What are the characteristics of the Romani community? It is a fairly ordinary nomadic tribe that has preserved a number of archaic traits, specifically, the fact that they do not consider outsiders to have legal standing. Regarding their own, the Roma are guided by principles of respect for property that are customary and clear to any ancap, plus some quirks regarding the regulation of personal and family life, which, however, are characteristic of many other ethnicities. As for an outsider, they can be cheated, robbed, or even killed; this is not considered immoral, is not prosecuted within the Romani jurisdiction, and the only regulator is utilitarianism: if you get too arrogant, you’ll have to move camp sooner than you’d like.
However, let us transport ourselves to a bright future where ancap dominates a fairly significant territory, and the Roma appear there. To start with, under ancap, land is either no one’s or private. Therefore, for a camp to settle, they will either need to find a piece of unclaimed land, which usually means some distance from populated areas, or rent a plot.
Rent land to the Roma for living? Why not, if you take money upfront and have enough strength to evict them from the place by force. So, if the Roma want to live closer to their foraging base, they will have to deviate from their principles and shell out. This is exactly the same attitude they will mostly encounter among everyone else: only secured transactions. There is nothing terrible about this; after all, some crypto-markets work this way even now. Transactions between strangers always need mechanisms that allow them to be carried out despite the lack of trust between them. The simplest such mechanism is a trusted intermediary—a third party monitoring compliance with the terms of the deal.
Of course, if the Roma behave under ancap as they are used to, after some time the question of liability for contracts, which they tricked trusting citizens into and failed to fulfill, may arise. Since ancient times, the camp’s simple answer to such claims has been: move camp. Technical progress, however, reduces the costs of pursuing a debtor faster than the costs of moving. Nevertheless, chasing nomads and shaking debts out of them is a hassle, so I would suggest that those intending to deal with the Roma under ancap use one simple tool: a deposit.
Deposits are already actively used now, for example, when you check into a hotel. It is collected upon check-in and covers the approximate amount of your possible liability for damages in the room. Checked out without notice, stolen something—losses will be covered by the deposit. Checked out normally—received your deposit at the reception. Exactly the same thing can be practiced when renting a camping site or a building plot to a camp: you take the rent for a month in advance and a deposit equal to the annual fee. Any monetary claims against a member of the camp are either settled personally by the violator as part of an amicable agreement, or if they manage to agree with the plaintiff on an arbitrator, through court—otherwise, the claim amount is simply deducted from the deposit. Lived for a year without exhausting the deposit—well done, for the next year the deposit can be slightly reduced.
And if a particular camp manages to cause losses exceeding the deposit and immediately moves away, the deposit in the next location may turn out to be significantly higher.
The consistent instillation of a culture of honest trade will gradually lead to the morality in the Romani community becoming more universal, and cheating an outsider will become “low class.” All other culture can easily remain, as culture is a good export commodity.
I have very often seen assertions from conservatives, fascists, and other people occupying the upper-right corner of the political spectrum, claiming that libertarianism is a left-wing idea, that libertarians are enemies of tradition and therefore leftists, and that judging right-wing status based on economics is nonsense. Could you tell me how to respond to such people?
Alexey Antonov
Any ideology is described in human language, and then the specific premises underlying the ideology are compared. However, for a clear comparison of many different systems of views, it is common to use a geometric metaphor, assigning ideologies numerical values on coordinate axes. Some use the one-dimensional “left-right” metaphor. Others prefer a two-dimensional one, such as the Nolan chart or other variations of the political compass. The 8values test is popular online, where we already have four dichotomies. In any case, these are all nothing more than illustrations.
Arguing about the most correct way to transfer libertarians from a two-dimensional compass to a one-dimensional segment—whether by cutting the economic scale, cutting the conservatism scale, or recalculating the values on both scales into a single figure—is roughly like arguing about which single word to replace the two epithets “brilliant” and “heroic” with in order to fit them into an ode praising a dictator.
If we approach the issue purely formally, to call oneself a libertarian without shame, a single quality is sufficient: shamelessness.
So, for a more substantial answer, I would phrase the question differently: what qualities and knowledge must a person possess for me to be able to say, without shame, that they are a libertarian.
I must say, my requirements are quite minimalist. It is enough for me that a person is guided by libertarian principles in their own life. Knowledge of the intricacies of libertarian doctrine and economic theory, an entrepreneurial vein, the ability to competently explain why roads are not so necessary—these are all pleasant, but not mandatory, additions.
Accepting oneself as one’s own property, for which you yourself bear full responsibility. Respect for the property of other people. Readiness to appropriate ownerless resources for the benefit of yourself and your loved ones. Readiness to defend what is yours. Avoiding, whenever possible, cooperation with the state, and certainly sabotaging its strengthening.
The main emotion that, it seems to me, a libertarian should evoke in a statist is bewilderment: wait, was that actually possible? In this sense, an exemplary libertarian for me is the Moscow region farmer Mikhail Shlyapnikov. He didn’t want to die from some incurable ailment, moved to a village, issued his own private money, built a strong farm, took local self-government into his own hands, is expanding, growing stronger, and replicating his experience for all who wish. And I don’t really care whether he has read Mises or limited himself to an agronomy handbook.
During land privatization, the right to choose is curtailed due to a lack of knowledge. And the consequences of this ignorance are often irreparable.
The Idea
All state land should be returned to the citizens, and its disposal should reflect the democratic nature of the state.
The Motive
If 3,155,372,300 hectares are divided among every citizen in the RF, it results in 21.84 hectares per person. At a market value of 1 million rubles per hectare, each of us is a potential millionaire. Unfortunately, the voucher privatization model proved itself unsuccessful, therefore I consider the above-described reform the optimal way to bring the market into solving the problem.
The Solution
Technological progress allows us, unlike in ancient times, to automate processes. Many things that were unavailable to the ancients are now possible.
All RF land can be divided into minimal squares (1 sq.m). Every citizen of the RF receives a proportional share of every square for life, without the right of resale, but with the right of temporary transfer under contractual terms.
Legislative Part
Everyone has their own share in every square meter of Russia, giving them the right to dispose of it.
Until all owners of the meter (Russians) have granted the right of specific land use to a User, the User has no right to carry out its specific use.
For example, if you want to build a factory, you must obtain the right to build a factory from all current owners of the leased land.
Upon the death of a landowner, their land is distributed according to a will, or in its absence, to blood relatives. If there are no heirs, the shares are evenly distributed among all citizens.
The land of incapacitated citizens is under the trust management of every citizen; rental income goes toward benefits for incapacitated citizens, and a percentage is paid to the manager as a reward for quality management.
If a person obtains citizenship, they must pay the market price and buy out a proportional share from ALL citizens. This allows them to become a full citizen with the right to dispose of and grant rights to use the land.
Budget funds are spent only on maintaining the blockchain that stores the data.
Costs and lease agreements are also stored in the blockchain to solve the problem of citizens’ incomplete awareness of the real price.
No tax is levied for owning such land, as all people possess equal rights.
Land that was in private ownership prior to privatization remains private.
Consequences
Since land that is closer to a person is more valuable to them, companies will emerge that implement trust management of irrelevant land.
The process will create a huge number of jobs and contract templates, allowing interested people to negotiate and lease land from others.
Environmentalists can hinder the construction of factories without an expertise agreement; factories can hinder environmentalists in the exercise of their domestic disposal of lands.
And other market fantasies.
Answer from Ancap-chan
I’ll start with the simplest. Of course, there is not the slightest sense in keeping a land registry in a blockchain. The whole point of a distributed public ledger is to eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries. But if the land use mechanism includes the possibility of forced alienation of land or deprivation of management rights due to incapacity, then the corresponding entries in the blockchain would have to be made by certain persons with admin privileges. That’s it, the blockchain can be thrown away; the optimal solution here would be a regular centralized database. Errors in the database are inevitable, but they can be corrected through various appeal mechanisms.
Now let’s move to something more complex. The proposed mechanism assumes that there will be two land registries in the country simultaneously, and land will circulate within two fundamentally different mechanisms. The part of the land that will be in private ownership at the time of the aforementioned “privatization” (it would be more appropriate to call this procedure socialization, instead) will remain private. A contract between the seller and the buyer would be sufficient for its sale; in other words, the land will be quite liquid. Suppose that by hour X, such land in the RF will be 10%, and the remaining 90% of land belonging to the state will be in the shared ownership of all 140-something million citizens of Russia. The circulation of this socialized land will be extremely difficult, because it will be impossible to buy; only leasing for a specific project will remain, and this project must be approved by the consensus of all owners.
Thus, the legal turnover of socialized land will be completely frozen, and private land, due to the simplicity of its legal use, will immediately skyrocket in price. Judge for yourself. I want to build a factory. The construction cost is 100 million dollars plus the price of one hectare of land. If I build on socialized land, I will have to conclude an agreement with each of the 100 million disposers (counting only the capable ones who will manage the property of their wards). Suppose, with the help of arch-effective means of communication and persuasion, I manage to conclude this agreement in just one year at a price of just one dollar per vote. In total, we have an estimate: 200 million dollars and a year of time to buy construction permission. Alternative: one month of negotiations with a single owner, and I buy one hectare of land from him for just 50 million dollars. Voila: I save time and money, so I won’t even attempt the legal use of socialized land.
On the other hand, I can always carry out a land grab of this very land and use it quite peacefully. Who can stop me? Only the nearest neighbors, who would themselves not mind using this plot. I will share some money with them so they close their eyes to this. I will also share with the land inspector so that on paper the land continues to remain unoccupied. Voila, I build a factory, spending a measly million dollars on bribes and the same month of time.
Such land grabbing will take on a massive and uncontrolled character, because due to the tragedy of the commons, no one will be interested in doing things the long and expensive way if it can be done quickly and cheaply. The doctrine of deterrence will be applied to the most obtuse opponents.
So, the draconian regulation mechanism that was proposed will lead to the emergence of a very expensive white land market and a very massive black one. As we know from history, the prevalence of a black market sooner or later leads to its legalization. This happened in Great Britain, this happened in the USA, this happened in the USSR—yes, it happened in many places—and there is no reason to believe that this case will be an exception.
And what if you have to negotiate with every Russian not about building a factory, but about building a private house?
Meadowcroft analyzes the prediction formulated by Hayek in his famous political pamphlet “The Road to Serfdom” and shows that the prediction turned out to be incorrect: not only is minarchism unstable, but so is totalitarianism, whereas a mixed economy actually is stable. Using rich material, he demonstrates that today, the conditional norm is approximately 40-50% of GDP redistributed by the state. States that redistribute less strive to redistribute more, in full accordance with Hayek’s logic, while states that redistribute more face serious market inefficiency and social discontent—and after some time return to a stable state. Moreover, developed states that have reached this norm today confidently hold high positions in economic and political freedom rankings.
On June 13, Ved Neumann released a review in which he explained the phenomenon described by Meadowcroft through the hypothesis that the modern state is a form of secular religion. According to Ved, this explains, for example, why the stability of the welfare state is paradoxically provided by its opacity. Further, Ved predicts that the transparency brought about by the information revolution will indeed make this religion marginal, and the modern welfare state will not be able to survive this, being replaced by panarchy.
However, it makes sense to question the very thesis that the state stops expanding once it reaches a certain level of redistribution. Yes, it is true that direct levies cause discontent, and direct monopoly management of the economy undermines the foundation of economic growth. But in addition to the tax burden, there is also the regulatory burden, and many business representatives note that it can hinder work almost even more.
At the same time, by strengthening regulations, the state may even decrease the share of its presence in the economy. For example, with a single education standard and a single state exam, the state can boldly abandon the maintenance of schools: private schools will still be forced to engage in the same brainwashing, as the auditing authorities will demand of them. At the same time, it is unlikely that such a state of affairs will negatively affect the country’s position in freedom rankings—since ranking calculations evaluate access to education, not its content or the freedom to choose subjects.
State standards in many other sectors, from medicine to trade, or, for instance, vehicle technical inspections, can work in a similar way. All certification procedures can be extremely transparent and completely free of corruption (this is precisely what fundamentally distinguishes the first world from the third), but even the most pleasant packaging will only mask the continued movement along the same road described by Hayek.
So, the arrival of new transparency may not kill that very secular religion, but only lead to its reformation. Therefore, we would be better off assuming that no panarchy will build itself, and continuing our regular sermons.
Or—what are the risks of sending bitcoin to a personal card? Because all I hear from everyone is that it should only be cash. Are there real cases where sending to a card led to bad consequences? Does it depend on the amount or other circumstances?
анонимный вопрос
The most direct way to exchange bitcoin for fiat is to sit down together, agree on a deal, then the fiat amount is placed on the table, the bitcoin seller transfers them to the buyer, the parties wait for the first confirmation, after which the seller takes the fiat from the table and puts it in their pocket.
The main inconvenience with this type of deal is the need for very serious trust in the buyer. Nothing stops the cash owner from pulling out a gun after the transaction is complete and demanding their cash back, as well as the private keys to the bitcoin wallet. Using bank transfers instead of cash at least allows you to avoid meeting in person. Therefore, a service such as localbitcoins has gained considerable popularity.
The essence of exchanging through this service is that the parties trust the service itself rather than each other. One party publishes an ad, the second responds to it, after which the seller’s bitcoins (previously transferred to an online wallet belonging to the service) are frozen. When the bank transfer is received from the buyer, the seller notifies the service, and the service transfers the bitcoins to the buyer. If a conflict arises, the service acts as a judge (so-called escrow), requires proof of money transfer and proof of non-receipt on the account from the parties, after which it makes a decision in favor of one of the parties.
From the bank’s point of view, it is a transfer from one individual to another individual. The bank knows nothing about any bitcoins. Reversing such a transfer is practically impossible. Of course, as part of the fight against money laundering, the bank may freeze the transfer, but that is the buyer’s problem—they will not receive the bitcoins, the frozen amount will simply return to the seller, and the seller can make another attempt.
Localbitcoins is a large international service that is good because it allows you to obtain fiat money from any country, wherever you are. But specifically in Russia, I personally find it more convenient to use a Telegram bot with completely identical functionality (I have already advertised it here).
In any such service, there is also the option to buy bitcoin for cash. I haven’t used it myself because the rate is usually much less favorable. Remotely, this is done by topping up the bitcoin seller’s card with cash at an ATM. This method provides the greatest security for buying bitcoins, as the buyer’s personal data does not reach any bank. As for the seller, they don’t care; the fiat still ends up in a bank account.
Bitcoins can also be bought for cash in crypto ATMs, but selling them for fiat in this way is not yet possible. As Lightning is implemented, crypto ATMs with the ability to operate in both directions will likely enter the market.
To summarize. Buying bitcoins for cash is indeed a way to ensure additional anonymity. Selling bitcoins for cash carries the same risks at best, and even more serious ones at worst. As long as your sales volume is small, receiving fiat on a bank card is the most reliable way to protect yourself. When volumes grow, you can accept fiat on cards from different banks. If they grow even further—try using strawmen.
And for the most paranoid, I want to recommend an article from a very peculiar channel Cryptoagora, where even more curious ways of ensuring anonymity when working with fiat are detailed.
Journalist Ivan Golunov spent his time demonstrating to his readers how uglily the Russian state operates. He wasn’t very successful: even among the liberal public, many knew neither his name nor, more importantly, what he wrote about.
Later, however, he himself became a living illustration of how uglily the Russian state operates, and it was so vivid that it required no special investigations. After all, who in Russia doesn’t know that cops can plant, and regularly do plant, banned substances on anyone, either to make quick money or to pad their stats. Nevertheless, the stars aligned in the right way, and Golunov became a global celebrity.
Golunov was printed in newspapers, Golunov was printed on T-shirts, Golunov was printed on posters, people went to pickets across the country with Golunov’s name—and the regime wavered. Golunov was released.
That’s it, it’s over, Golunov did his part, and now, as one ancient Greek recommended to another, he could even die, for he can become no greater. Instead, Golunov opened his mouth and immediately caused frustration among those who had fought so hard for his release, because he recommended that everyone breathe out and calm down.
Calm down? What calm down? The regime wavered; at the very least, Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is under attack. Crush it, damn it!
Crush it, damn it!
And the Muscovites went to crush it. Peacefully, civilly, on a holiday. The regime took the bait, and instead of one Golunov, we now have more than four hundred Golunovs.
Excellent, now we need twice as many people to take to the streets tomorrow, even though it’s no longer a holiday, and continue the fun. The Yekaterinburg protest blazed a trail; all that’s left is to repeat it in Moscow. Only increase the numbers, and with each day—new demands. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. Today they demanded the repeal of Article 228, tomorrow they can add the demand to dissolve the Rosgvardia, then activists from the regions will flock to Moscow, and after a month of escalation, Putin will flee to Donetsk via Crimea.
But unfortunately, most likely, none of this will happen. Golunov will not become a black swan for the regime. Simply, of the four hundred detainees, three hundred will receive fines and pay them, assuming that in three years they will sue the Russian budget for compensation through the ECHR. Cosmetic changes will be made to Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, slightly reducing the sentences and changing, for example, the norm regarding the total weight of the product to a norm regarding the weight of the pure substance. The operatives who planted the bags will be imprisoned. The ones who ordered it will not be touched—you say it yourselves that the police plant drugs constantly, well, Golunov just had bad luck that day, it happens.
Alas, bursts of enthusiasm in Russia are still too short; even successful opportunities do not trigger a chain reaction. For now, the regime reliably controls the situation and is always ready to shove as many control rods into the reactor as necessary. But, as we know, in Russia, even this can sometimes have unforeseen consequences.
