Автор: Анкап-тян

Will there be an opportunity to crush competitors under ancap?

For example, telling factories not to work with others, otherwise they will lose profits from their main customer (a much larger capitalist).

Japan (NathanTikhonov)

Of course, nothing prevents one economic agent from negotiating various additional terms before concluding certain deals, including those that have no direct relation to the subject of the transaction. For instance, a very common type of deal is an agreement on joint household management, accompanied by a condition of exclusive sexual services, and there is no reason to believe that in the absence of a state, deals of this type would be immediately wiped out entirely.

But, as we clearly see in the example of the institution of monogamous marriage, an exclusivity clause, even when clearly stated, is observed quite sloppily, yet not every violation of this clause leads to the immediate termination of the main contract. The fact is that the contracting parties are interdependent. Even if one party to the deal is significantly stronger, to punish the second party for violating the additional terms of the agreement, they would have to incur certain costs, and this would weaken them. Moreover, the direct damage from the violation of an additional condition may be quite small, or even non-existent, while the contract itself may remain very profitable for the strong party. In other words, empty tyranny is wasteful.

Therefore, the economically stronger party, although they may puff out their cheeks and demand special attention, will find themselves forced to turn a blind eye to the fact that not every whim of theirs will be satisfied; otherwise, their habit of petty vindictiveness will quickly correct the fact that they happen, by some misunderstanding, to be the strong party in most market transactions. Thus, through excessive arrogance, once influential companies sink into insignificance.

Why did you sprawl on your knees before the communists, but spit in the soul of everyone who is a self-respecting Nietzschean and NS?

Is this some kind of flirting with the post-Soviet audience? You trash Nietzsche, yet your leader (one of them) — Mikhail Svetov — is essentially a Nietzschean. My father read this and declared that you are accomplices of the Rothschilds on Earth. Now I don’t know how to win him over to my side. And yes, your leader said that “libertarianism is an ideology without a cultural agenda.” But judging by your answers, there is a cultural agenda after all, and it is not very appealing to certain layers of society. You want Communists to have “Paradise on Earth,” therefore they are your allies. And my communist father is a wonderful person. So, everyone on the right goes into the trash, then? Why don’t you understand that we are your allies in the fight against Euro-Bolshevism and the cultural-Marxist tolerast oppression? Or are we just extremist psychos in your eyes, unworthy of life? Let me remind you: about 100 million people became victims of communism in the 20th century. And you’re groveling before them?

As it happens, I oppose quite a few of Mikhail Svetov’s theses, but there is one thesis that he formulated very precisely and concisely, and I have no complaints about it: “the end does not justify the means.” Communists will be allies exactly to the extent that they are willing to use correct means. It is the methods of the communists that are the subject of discussion, while they can set whatever goals they want — as long as voluntariness is respected, there are no complaints against them. They can even revere Stalin and Che Guevara for their visual images, and as long as they are not plotting mass repressions, let them smoke pipes or cigars for their health and grow mustaches of any lushness. They can even claim that the cruelty of these historical figures was forced because the times were such, but that is already a warning bell: if they dare to mention that times are hard now as well, and for the sake of class interests it would be worth deviating from the principles of justice, that is already a reason to put them in the crosshairs.

Similarly, I have no complaints about the ideas of national socialists to free themselves from the power of Jewish capital and develop national production and culture, as long as this is done on a voluntary basis. Do not buy finished products from Jews, but buy their businesses from them. If the majority of representatives of your nation adhere to this tactic, it will lead to the business becoming national, and no Kristallnacht will be required, let alone gas vans — you will be respectable fellows, honoring the interests of your group no worse than the notorious Jews. At the same time, you can voluntarily chip in for the benefit of low-income representatives of your nation to justify the proud name of socialists. You can joke about the Jews burned by Hitler if you aren’t disgusted yourselves, but if talk begins that it wouldn’t be bad to repeat it, that will be a reason to put you in the crosshairs as well.

Yes, and give my regards to your cat

It is known that environmental regulations have been able to radically improve air purity in New York since the 1970s. But how would this work under ancap? What would replace regulations and how would the purity of water and air be ensured?

анонимный вопрос

What needs to be done to achieve clean air with the help of the state? You need to launch a public campaign, convince politicians that ecological regulations can generate both political capital and a decent amount of embezzled money—and eventually, the state will squeeze those who pollute, reducing their income, and bestow favors upon those who want clean air. This is, of course, if you live in New York, and not in the city of Sibay in the Republic of Bashkortostan.

What happens to the environment in a free market? Where existing technologies mean that you either pollute and make money, or you don’t pollute and make jack shit, you will pollute. And around you will live those who also pollute and make money, or are otherwise tied to your business. Those for whom the smoke is harmful simply leave for wherever it is cleaner and start their own business there, linked to the sale of beautiful views and clean air. For example, in the USA in the 20th century, New York and other Detroits and Los Angeleses were polluting, while connoisseurs of healthy recreation mass-developed Florida, which rapidly transformed from a land of swamps into a land of beaches.

The market very reliably compels people toward peaceful coexistence when everyone minds their own business and does not try to suppress competitors by force. When the state began to actively fight for clean air in cities, businesses found places to pollute and began moving to third-world countries; the country paid for this with the emergence of the Rust Belt—cities where it was impossible to find any other more or less profitable activities besides polluting. Of course, I am simplifying greatly, and it wasn’t just about ecology—the state was advancing on many fronts.

Of course, business can be criticized for often starting to solve problems as they arise, meaning that for some time a problem remains unsolved. But the state, with its manic-depressive style of reacting, either forces you to swim in an empty pool or demands that you march along the bottom of one that has already filled up. If ecological regulations are introduced before the emergence of sufficiently cheap emission cleaning technologies, you will either get corruption or destroy businesses, and a vast number of people will suffer needlessly from poverty. Conversely, if you try to centrally suppress ecological protests, a vast number of people will also suffer needlessly from poor ecology.

At the same time, business in a free market, even without any state regulations, will look for ways to pollute less, produce less waste, spend less energy, and so on. A dirty enterprise is located on the outskirts; skilled workers must be lured there with good money, the produced goods must be transported to consumers in far-off lands, waste must also be hauled away, and so on. If it were possible to produce the same thing with comparable costs right next to the mass consumer, it would provide a significant competitive advantage, which means investing in technologies that reduce ecological damage.

The main means of improving the environment is the prosperity of the people. As long as people are poor, they will turn a blind eye to everything that hinders the satisfaction of their most urgent needs. Only after becoming wealthy do they begin to think about how to organize a comfortable life. Trying to organize their life for them immediately, at their own expense, while preventing them from becoming wealthy, is a crime.

If you live here, it means you need this for some reason

How to determine what private property exists? Why then can I not demand compensation from people who downloaded my photo and are using it?

Maksim Barbukhin

Alex Murin answers

Usually, people agree among themselves on what constitutes private property. Under communism, people agree that there will be no private property. Under various versions of democracy, private property can be a thing, movable and immovable assets, and everything you buy from the state, to which by default all ownerless or public property belongs. Libertarianism assumes either a total rejection of the state or a reduction of its role to a minimum. Consequently, private property can be anything people have agreed upon within a separate contractual jurisdiction. It is generally implied that a person cannot be property, as acquiring a person as property is most often associated with a violation of a basic principle—the prohibition of aggressive violence. Although some anarcho-capitalists view a child as the property of their parents until full emancipation.

Regarding copyright, most libertarians oppose the very concept of intellectual property. This is how things happened historically. This concept first appeared in Great Britain in the early 18th century, and this right protected only the interests of publishers. Over time, legislation in this area changed. Various concepts were devised as to why this is beneficial for authors. In fact, such a right remained as a protection of publishers’ interests as it always was. You lose nothing if someone happens to download your photo. When information is copied, it does not disappear from the person who copied it.

But libertarians also adhere to the principle of freedom of contract. No one will stop you from selling photos, books, including e-books, or music. Similarly, no one has the right to stop you from creating a community, jurisdiction, or municipality where you locally agree to recognize copyright and intellectual property and fulfill the contract among yourselves.

Default copyright protection most often leads to the emergence of artificial monopolies. This has happened more than once when authors were forced to collaborate only with a specific publishing house that paid just enough for the author to barely survive. Or various inventions simply did not become serial products simply because it was not profitable for certain monopolists in the market.

Addition from Ancap-chan

Of course, you can demand compensation from someone who downloaded and used your photograph. To do this, you need to find the person who did it and sue them. In court, you will have to prove that the defendant actually downloaded and used your specific photograph, and also justify why the compensation you are demanding is of that specific amount. The judge, in turn, will investigate under what license the photograph was distributed, what benefit its use brought, and whether you truly did not transfer the photo to the defendant with the right of arbitrary use. It is not certain that the amount of compensation you eventually receive will cover the costs you will face in this case, but what wouldn’t one do for the sake of principle!

However, the vast majority of people, finding themselves in a situation where there is no state to protect their right to control the copying of information, will simply ignore such a difficult-to-implement right and will seek self-actualization in other ways.

It’s sad to live without a patent for privilege…

Without state regulation, will the city be built up with solid concrete anthills without parks and greenery?

Bitarch’s Column

There is a well-known assumption that if government regulation regarding zoning, green spaces, parks, building height, etc., were abolished, developers would begin to squeeze profit from every square meter of land, building continuous masses of hundred-story skyscrapers.

In fact, it is by no means always profitable for a developer to sell as many square meters as possible in a building where there is no park or greenery nearby. The average price per square meter in such a building would be much lower than in an identical building with appropriate landscaping of the surrounding area. This is confirmed by the example of New York, where the cost of housing with a view of Central Park is significantly higher than similar real estate a block away. Anyone who tries to build over that area would be dragged through the courts by residents of nearby houses, as it would crash the value of their assets.

Skeptics might object—look at Hong Kong, where there is indeed minimal government regulation and the development looks like “concrete anthills.” In reality, firstly, the state intentionally built such blocks to provide “affordable housing” to its voters. Secondly, Hong Kong is a special free zone with a tiny territory in the midst of vast totalitarian China. Accordingly, the demand for real estate far exceeds the supply, and people are willing to sacrifice environmental comfort for the sake of economic and personal freedoms. For a country as huge as Russia, or for European countries, the problem of lacking free space is not nearly as acute.

I wanted to insert a photo of New York’s Central Park first, but no, here is a concrete anthill without any zoning.

My dad is a national socialist. I am also a national socialist, only libertarian. The cat is also NS, but he can’t speak. How do I explain to my dad that the market is not an invention of the Jews, but the path to the birth of the overman?

анонимный вопрос

I have bad news for you. On the one hand, the market was not invented by Jews; long before them, the Phoenicians made their mark in this field in this region. On the other hand, the ancient Persians—the most natural Aryan overmen, whom Nietzsche cosplayed with his Zarathustra—rejected the concept of the market and criticized their Greek neighbors precisely for having a special square in the center of every city where people gather to deceive one another. We are speaking, as you may have guessed, of the agora and, accordingly, of the market.

So, the market is not the path to the birth of the overman. It is the path to the overthrow of arrogant overmen by ordinary enterprising people.

The overman does not approve of the market

Polystate

Bitarch’s Column

The Polystate is an idea by American writer Zach Weinersmith. In the book Polystate: A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government, a simple but radical idea is proposed.

Currently, under conventional democracy, we live by laws established by the party chosen by the majority. Weinersmith believes this is wrong, and that a citizen who voted for a certain force should live by the laws of that force. They should pay taxes to it, rather than to the winners or competitors. For example, supporters of communists would pay more, while libertarians would pay less. However, the pensions and social benefits for communists would be higher, while libertarians would have to save for their own retirement.

Voted for the left — go to the army. For the right — pay for contract soldiers. In essence, this creates several states within the territory of one country. Zach’s system can be compared to choosing a mobile operator or an internet provider. Some have more coverage but lower prices, and vice versa. On the other hand, new opportunities arise. For instance, you could choose not to pay taxes for the storage of nuclear weapons. In theory, this would help citizens truly delve into political programs and encourage parties to maintain a consistent line.

Polystate (in English)Download

I found out that my father is a communist. How am I supposed to live now?

анонимный вопрос

The foundation of communist ideology lies in the same values of justice, equality, rejection of slavery, and the pursuit of cooperation between people as the foundation of libertarian ideology. Therefore, there is nothing terrible about someone being inspired by these wonderful ideas.

The difference between communists and libertarians is that communists do not believe in people. They believe that, left to their own devices, people will be unable to establish orders that lead them to prosperity, therefore communists must lead them and bring them to victory through armed struggle. Meanwhile, the soft-hearted libertarians, conversely, are filled with a strange, irrational confidence in the benefit of spontaneous orders established in the course of natural human activity; they say that the market will put everything in its place, that aggressive violence is unprofitable in the long run, and that the institutions practicing it are becoming obsolete.

Communists talk a lot about how desirable the nationalization of the means of production is, but when you show them someone like Sechin, it immediately turns out that such nationalization does not suit them. They usually prefer a situation where the enterprise is managed by those who work there. And this is already a normal, understandable starting position for a calm dialogue about the economic efficiency of various enterprise management models, and their compatibility and stability.

Communists talk a lot about the fight against exploitation, and libertarians about how taxes are theft. Nothing prevents us, in communicating with communists, from stating that taxes are exploitation. In doing so, we would not be sinning against the truth; we would simply be translating our thesis into a language understandable to them. Their ideal is a classless society. Our ideal is a stateless society. From the perspective of communists, the state is a tool by which the ruling class oppresses the others. I would say that this is a similarity to the point of confusion.

Therefore, one should not laugh at communists, or reject the entire complex of their ideas outright from the start. It makes sense to debate with them about the permissible means of achieving the goal. Does the love for investing full power in a charismatic leader contribute to the achievement of equality? Can the habit of seizing property from people without clear and unambiguously interpreted criteria as to why this is being done lead to civil peace? Can a classless society be achieved by appointing a hegemonic class? At what point does beneficial cooperation become harmful exploitation, and can the identification of this boundary be entrusted to the exploited themselves?

So, having a communist father is, generally speaking, not a bad thing. It means you always have an excellent topic for conversation. Practice on him; it will be useful in life. And within the family, communism is indeed in most cases the optimal system, so things are probably quite good in your family with a communist father. Well, or your father is an incorrect communist, which is also not surprising—the world is generally full of incorrect communists. It is these incorrect communists who create incorrect communist regimes, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, but someday they will surely succeed if they start using the correct methods. You know, things like respect for human dignity, for property acquired through honest labor, for freedom of contract, and many other things dear to the heart of every true communist.

Париж горит

I have already given a brief overview of some Telegram channels here, explaining why I subscribed to them and why I recommend them to others. Today will probably be the most exotic recommendation.

Paris Burns is a channel run by hardcore classical anarchists. There is little reasoning there; it is more of a report on practical activities. Direct reports on the life of the yellow vest movement in France, news about the case of Azat Miftakhov and other anarchists persecuted by the state, reports from crypto-forums and squats, practical techniques for online anonymization, and much, much more. I don’t encrypt my activities with the same thoroughness as these guys, but if the state starts picking on not only left-wing anarchists but also ancaps, I will have someone to learn from.

If you have a lot of strength and energy, I separately recommend browsing the channel for the “stigmergy” tag and considering whether to participate in a fun direct-action quest. If the idea seems attractive, contact the special bot, where they will explain the details, and then you can finally decide for yourself whether you are ready to join in.

Have you encountered similar strange announcements in public places?

How do the libertarians intend to build the RNG (Russian National State)? How should it be structured and within what borders? And what is this for?

анонимный вопрос

Answered by Alex Murin

Not all libertarians intend to build a Russian national state. However, the principle of contractual jurisdictions or communities does not preclude the construction of one.

First and foremost, the principle of federalism presupposes a confederation and voluntarism. Numerous communities enter into agreements regarding the voluntary joining and leaving of the confederation. And people reclaim their natural right to live by the rules they have devised for themselves.

Those wishing to build an RNS can unite, acquire land, or combine their holdings, choose a form of governance, and create laws there. For a jurisdiction to be considered libertarian, they must renounce the initiation of aggressive violence (“don’t tread on me”) and recognize freedom of contract (anyone can become a citizen of the RNS by agreement with other participants in the jurisdiction, and anyone can terminate their RNS citizenship upon fulfilling all obligations under property contracts). The border will be defined by the boundaries of the holdings of the individual owners participating in the RNS and the owners of legal entities—contractual jurisdictions. As for what you decide within the jurisdiction, that is your right as free people united with a common goal, as long as you do not step on the tail of some rattlesnake (another community-jurisdiction).

Comment by Ancap-chan

Since 2014, Putin has been killing the idea of the Russian World. There will be no Russian national state. Libertarians, even less so, will not build it.

There are many other ideas and interests around which people will unite. The only Russian thing around which it makes sense for them to unite now and in the foreseeable future is the Russian language, somewhere abroad. This somewhat facilitates communication, although it far from always facilitates understanding.

And nations… Just forget about nations, you funny, touching little Hitlers.

Misha is smart; be like Misha.