Автор: Анкап-тян

How does NAP differ from existing laws?

After all, both can work equally well if punishment is inevitable.
Do prisons (they will exist in ancap, right?) violate the NAP? Or even not prisons, but any restriction of freedom or coercion. I understand that the punished person violated the NAP themselves, but then it becomes a kind of “eye for an eye” principle. Personally, in my understanding, it should not be that way.

Kirill

I have already had to answer the question of how the NAP differs from contractual jurisdictions, and now I am similarly being asked to find differences between heterogeneous things, between a general principle and specific prescriptions, which may be based on this principle, or may not be.

The NAP is a principle stating that no one has the right to initiate violence with impunity—it specifies nothing about what the measure of retribution should be. State laws, by contrast, regulate the measure of retribution both for NAP violations and for many other types of actions, but at the same time, they mandate that this retribution be carried out through the mediation of specialists paid for by taxes, denying this right to those who are, in fact, directly interested in retribution.

Is someone who has been robbed by a private individual willing to voluntarily pay the state so that it keeps the robber in prison for several years? Usually not, so the state reaches into the citizen’s pocket itself and carelessly pulls out the required sum, after which it spends it haphazardly on whatever it feels like, though some of it does end up going to prisons.

Is someone who has been robbed by a private individual willing to voluntarily pay some private company of their choice to keep the robber in prison for several years in the absence of a state? Obviously, they are no more willing than under a state. This means the only person who could pay for the cost of keeping someone in prison under ancap is the person hiding in the prison itself, and I have written about this in sufficient detail. On the other hand, for example, if I have purely property claims against a robber, there is hardly any reason for them to lock themselves in prison; one can always agree on the payment of compensation, like civilized people.

Will that very inevitability of punishment be ensured under ancap? Not necessarily. The damage may be too small to pursue independently. But if someone is engaged in the seizure of other people’s property on a systemic basis, they will almost certainly be caught eventually. They might get lucky, and a substantial compensation will be politely demanded from them. Or they might be unlucky and be shot on the spot. A dangerous trade, to be sure.

But the richer and more prosperous a society is, the more likely it is that the capture of various gangsters and thieves will be streamlined and handled by specialists. After all, until the state over-regulated the detective market beyond all reason, the Pinkerton agency in the US flourished quite a bit.

Time to get out?

Lately, the question of “Time to get out” has been discussed in Vzglyad. First, there was a little article about the results of the latest Levada Center poll on this topic. Then there was an article continuing the theme: who should get out, where to go, and who gains what from it. How does Ancap-chan view this issue? Does she feel drawn to be closer to other chans?

Dad

Am I drawn specifically to Japan, oto-san? Not particularly: I don’t know the language, the customs are strange, and foreigners are not well-liked. It’s a magnificent country to visit and marvel at, precisely because of its exoticism, but I have absolutely no desire to stay there for long. Although, of course, I associate my desired future even less with North Korea or Haiti…

I read the suggested links and was quite surprised that even in a fairly loyalist publication like Vzglyad, mass emigration and significant emigrant sentiments in the country are being discussed not only at the level of “a foreign agent was paid for another lie,” but also more or less thoughtfully.

To be honest, I don’t understand at all how, in the 21st century, one can seriously talk about the desirability of a permanent residency in any particular territory. Mobility has become one of humanity’s most important achievements during the scientific and technical revolution. People are gaining the ability to move further, more often, and more cheaply, and any retreat from this trend is perceived as stagnation or even degradation.

Until the 20th century, the vast majority lived and worked within a single village. In the 20th century, people became accustomed to pendulum migration: to the factory in the morning, back to the residential district in the evening. In the 21st century, it is gradually becoming the norm to live where it is comfortable, inexpensive, and not yet boring, to work remotely where the pay is higher, and meanwhile travel occasionally to where it is more interesting. Well, if there is enough money to always travel where it is more interesting, then one doesn’t even have to worry about finding a place to live cheaply for most of the year. States, with their ridiculous bureaucratic rituals performed when crossing borders, are perceived as a nuisance whose disappearance a person would not regret in the slightest, since besides the issue of obtaining a visa, a person practically communicates with the state about nothing else. At least, that is how the world looks through the eyes of those who feel in tune with the new trends.

As the share of such nomads in the global economy continues to grow, more and more services, which are currently traditionally more concerned with the opinions of residents, will reorient themselves to satisfy their specific needs. That is why scare stories like “what if someone buys a road and forbids crossing it?” look quite ridiculous. He will lose clients, that’s what. Land and infrastructure objects on it are bought to maximize profit, and in the new realities, this means that any visitor should easily navigate local rules; otherwise, they will simply go where they aren’t bothered by such greedy people.

As for permanent residents, who feel no urge to change places, in the coming reality they will find themselves in the role of service personnel who ensure the operation of local infrastructure and create local color. If they create it well, there will be a flow of clients. If poorly, the surrounding area will turn into a sparsely populated hinterland. There will be some kind of life in the hinterland too. Look, someone even lives in the Amazon jungle, and it’s fine.

A normal working day

Ancap-sama, it seems to me that intellectual property law is not as much of a delusion as one might imagine, and the problem lies at most in the terminology (“right” → “privilege”).

After all, for example, when using streaming services, a completely free contract is concluded with the user, which specifies how the content can be used. If you don’t like it—don’t enter into these contractual relations! The problem arises perhaps when buying physical media, as I haven’t seen any contracts there (but usually the relevant laws are cited, which, roughly speaking, are the same contract, as they are voluntary). In conclusion—is it possible that under ancap, after publishing a book, I wouldn’t be able to forbid readers, for example, from reading it on the street during the day? Where would you disagree?

Atomic Tram

Answered by Alex Murin

Let’s start with how copyright is currently protected. That is the entirety of Part 4 of the Civil Code. To properly manage the fruits of one’s creativity, one must know the laws. Currently, the law prohibits copying without permission, assuming that the author did not grant such permission initially. And it assumes that your interests can be protected without your knowledge by some organization, like the Russian Authors’ Society. The law also protects your descendants, who haven’t written a single line of music or a single kilobyte of code.

No one intends to limit the freedom of contract under ancap. If you like such a contract, then you offer the user or the new owner to enter into it. Ask them to write a paper stating that they have indeed read it, understood everything, like the terms, and have paid. If you believe that your book cannot be read during the day in public places, then write that and get the buyer’s consent. Not in the form of “by opening this link, I acknowledge that I am now the eternal serf of the publisher, who bought the author two beers and thereby gained exclusive rights to the work,” but ask them to perform a conscious action: write a paper or an electronic document and sign it. And preferably without hidden pitfalls, so that the buyer understands what they are doing. And without state lobbying, under which the actual author ends up in holey shoes in a cold shed.

And yes, you will have to independently find a court that will compel the payment of compensation to you, rather than giving three hundred rubles to the Ust-Labinsk District Court, by whose order the bold offender will be caught, brought in handcuffs, and put in a cage with robbers. If you like copyright, take the trouble not to create traps when executing such a contract, otherwise someone might consider it a direct attack. Voluntariness must be truly voluntary, not a pit that a user falls into by clicking the wrong button. Or one where the state finds a song remaining in the browser cache, even if they didn’t listen to it.

Addition from Ancap-chan

I have nothing much to object to in this harsh rebuke. Yes, you can demand certain restrictions on the use of your content from the consumer, but you will have to pay for the enforcement of these requirements yourself. So it’s better to think ten times before setting any requirements at all, because it will be far more reliable to win the loyalty of consumers rather than trying to oppose their will with your own. For instance, some Kirill Yeskov or Pavel Usanov writes a new book, publishes it, and warns readers: “Guys, let’s let the publisher make some money, let the book be sold only on paper for about three months, and then I will release the text for free access myself, and you won’t have to deal with piracy technologies.” And it works! And then, when the text becomes freely available, grateful readers even send donations. Because you don’t need to be an asshole; it doesn’t pay off.

Scientists are smart, be like scientists!

E. Shulman

A court in Chechnya, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, forgave debts to Gazprom. Gazprom challenged this decision in court. What are the prospects for this process, in your view? Which side do your personal sympathies lie with?

Dad

I’ll start from the end. My personal sympathies, of course, lie with the residents of those Russian regions who regularly pay for the gas supplied to them, while the inefficient monopolist, enduring losses in the Caucasus, justifies every new tariff increase with non-payments. This time, the regional legislative assemblies, impressed by the fact that Chechnya was once again declared a privileged subject of the federation, also began to compete in demanding the cancellation of their residents’ far more modest debts.

Whether this trolling was successful, or simply competing Caucasian security officials used this quirk to assert themselves at each other’s expense, interesting facts began to emerge immediately following the court decision to write off the debts. It turned out that the debts being written off were pinned on the population without any basis, whereas in reality, the gas was either stolen or squandered (while money for infrastructure repairs was stolen) at a higher level. And now, cases are being opened against those who managed the gas distribution, and in general, it seems that quite a few heads will roll as a result of all this.

In a peaceful region, a utility non-payer will quickly have all supplied resources cut off, and recovery for what has already been consumed will begin. In regions like Chechnya, whoever makes such a decision will be forced to start worrying about their health, so they will prefer to ignore the problem for as long as possible, although with a much greater probability, being unable to defeat the theft, they will lead it.

It is unlikely that as a result of all these investigations, Gazprom will recover any noticeable part of the stolen money. The most sensible thing its management could do is try to get rid of the loss-making asset and sell its Caucasian divisions to those ready to conduct business in the region according to the much more brutal local rules. Gazprom would then only have to honestly supply gas to a regional private gas operator at domestic Russian rates and on a prepayment basis. Let them continue to sell it at three times the price on the spot and try to get at least some money for it.

Since ancient times, representatives of the military aristocracy have considered it shameful to pay for what can be taken by force, for then allies might consider them weakened and turn away, and enemies, for the same reasons, might decide to attack. Therefore, of course, the costs of ensuring the fulfillment of contracts in Chechnya and other bandit enclaves must be monstrous. In such an inefficient system, maintaining even a modicum of stability requires a constant influx of external resources, but those are exactly what are starting to run out.

So, in the foreseeable future, we will see fierce infighting there over dwindling flows of budget funds, over any poorly controlled resource supplies, and simply for the right to dispose of people. Unfortunately, there is also a high probability that violence will spread outward from there even faster.

However, if one does not try to drown the problem in money—which only makes it swell—then all these inefficient practices die off relatively quickly, especially if there is strong opposition to attempts to spread archaic orders to territories where more efficient ones are adopted. And this applies not only to Chechnya, but also to the wonderful, tolerant Europe, which also prefers to appease its internal bandits with handouts rather than presenting them with the fact that this is not that place, and things are not done this way here.

Actually, Chechnya has its own hydrocarbons, but it’s like in Venezuela: the political regime is not the right one for extraction

On ridiculous lawsuits under ancap

Suppose the owner of a private garden with trees files a lawsuit against one of the neighbors, claiming that the neighbor breathes oxygen produced by the garden’s trees but does not pay for it, and demands payment for this oxygen at a price of 1 ancapodollar per liter. What decision is a court following libertarian principles most likely to make?

анонимный вопрос

Answered by Alex Murin

Most likely, the greedy plaintiff’s reputation will suffer greatly, and the court will fine them for attempting to enrich themselves through the court. The burden of proof lies with the plaintiff. Consequently, the plaintiff would have to prove that the defendant is actually breathing their oxygen. For example, by finding oxygen molecules produced by their plants within the defendant’s body. Not to assume it, but to provide real evidence. Since the service was not ordered and no promise to pay for it was made, the defendant had no malicious intent to obtain the plaintiff’s property in the form of oxygen. The plaintiff did not take proper measures to preserve their property—for example, by installing a dome over their garden. Furthermore, the plaintiff themselves breathes, and they breathe air containing oxygen not only from their own garden. The plaintiff somehow obtained the carbon dioxide needed for photosynthesis. Is the gas they received cheaper than the one they released into the common space?

For every plaintiff who loves to reduce things to absurdity, there is a judge who can take the absurdity even further: force them to enclose their garden with a dome and stop giving their expensive oxygen to the general atmosphere and shamelessly stealing carbon dioxide.

An important point: the share of oxygen in the atmosphere from the owner of a couple of hectares of forest is negligible, and a hermetic dome over a couple of hectares of land is a very expensive pleasure.

Addition from Ancap-chan

An important factor is that a court handling a property dispute between two neighbors is obviously an arbitration court. Its task is not the formal consideration of a claim, but the resolution of a conflict. These people still have a vast amount of time to live side by side, and if such ridiculous litigation begins between them, it makes sense to find out what the real grievance is, what the real conflict is—and then, based on this, try to resolve the issue so that conflicts no longer arise.

Ideally, the court’s decision should look, in my view, something like this: 1) carry out a mutual offset of the oxygen supplied by the plaintiff’s garden and the carbon dioxide produced by the defendant’s breathing; 2) oblige the defendant to include the plaintiff among the invited guests when having a barbecue in their backyard to monitor additional carbon dioxide emissions from grilling meat over coals; 3) oblige the plaintiff to compensate the defendant for the additional carbon dioxide emissions from the barbecue with supplies of garden produce.

Breathe deeper, the trees need more raw materials for photosynthesis!

Is incitement to suicide/aiding suicide a crime?

Rachok

In the simplest case, we have a picture like this. A person commits suicide and leaves a note: in my death, I ask you to blame so-and-so, because he behaved toward me in such-and-such a way. This is, in essence, the same as if a person went to the square in front of a tyrant’s palace and committed self-immolation as a protest against his policies. He could have carried out a terrorist attack or an assassination attempt, but he preferred this form of expressing his opinion.

For everyone else, this is a strong argument to investigate exactly what the person the suicide asked to be blamed for their death had done. The relatives and friends of the deceased, of course, will be particularly interested in this. An interesting case could arise with an insurance company. Generally speaking, suicide is not an insurable event. But if the heir of the suicide sues the person named in the suicide note and presents the court with sufficient evidence of violence by the defendant toward the suicide, the court may find the accused truly guilty of unintentional homicide, and in this case, there are grounds to claim insurance. Indeed, is there a great difference between the situations “beat severely, the beaten person died from the blows” and “systematically beat, the beaten person committed suicide”? However, I do not think that under ancap, such complex situations will be codified in advance; most likely, the court will make a decision on the merits in each specific case.

In a situation where there is no explicit accusation from the suicide, it is much harder to prove that driving to suicide took place, but if those who cared about the deceased manage this, the task reduces to the previous one.

As for assisting suicide, I already had a post about a girl who ordered her own murder. Anyone has the right to ask for help in such a delicate matter, but to protect oneself from claims by the deceased’s relatives, measures must be taken to ensure the full legal purity of the contract. It would be most logical if such a service were provided by professionals—for example, doctors performing euthanasia.

As for suicide booths on every corner—that is a hyperbole, of course. It is unlikely that the service would be so in demand.

The End of Minarchism in Switzerland

Bitarch’s Column

Adeptes of minarchism often cite Switzerland as an example of a successfully functioning minimal state that we should all strive for. They consider the confederal structure to be a guarantee against the expansion of government powers. In reality, however, there is a creeping growth of the state with signs of acceleration in recent decades. For example, a law prohibiting the criticism of homosexuality was recently passed, de facto destroying freedom of speech—the foundation of a free society. This puts a final end to the belief in the possibility of the sustainable existence of a minimal state.

A territorial monopoly will always strive for growth, and no measures are capable of restraining it. Only competition for people can reverse this trend. Even if you consider anarcho-capitalism a utopia at the moment, proposing minarchism as a transitional model is even more utopian! Do not waste your time; instead, pay attention to the model of extra-territorial contractual jurisdictions (ETC, panarchy).

A woman with a painted face underneath a rainbow umbrella

There is Singapore. It is a bird in a golden cage. But they live better than in the USA, and there is no corruption. Ancap vs Singapore?

Someone Unknown

Singapore is a state with severely curtailed personal freedoms and a very significant level of economic freedom. In effect, it is a state organized like a commercial company, where all of life is regulated within the logic of business processes. Naturally, this model cannot imply any political competition. For appearances’ sake, besides the ruling People’s Action Party, there is also an opposition Workers’ Party in Singapore. Even from the name, one can assume that its role is something like a pampered trade union, which certainly cannot claim to manage the enterprise, but theoretically can provide management with some feedback if they start messing up the administrative measures.

If something like the Soviet Union could be conditionally called a dictatorship of the proletariat, then Singapore, within Marxist terminology, is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Everything for business, everything for economic growth! A slogan roughly of the same vein as “everything for the front, everything for victory.”

Could a city with anarcho-capitalist orders have emerged instead of the Singapore we see now? Generally speaking, yes. If those same investors, whom Lee Kuan Yew chased with exhortations, had come on their own and established their own order—first buying out the extremely cheap local officials root and branch, and then abolishing state power altogether for lack of need—would we now have in this place a self-governing city with a very compact administration existing on an endowment fund, where the share of small and medium-sized businesses in its extremely dynamic economy would be about four-fifths, it would be slightly poorer, slightly dirtier, there would be three times as many poor people, and ten times as many happy people? Where do I get my estimates? I mostly base them on Hong Kong, taking into account local specifics and the fact that in Hong Kong there is still some form of state.

The main problem with such cities with a free economy is that there are too few of them, they are damn attractive, and therefore overcrowded with crowds of people wishing to settle in this wonderful place. Meanwhile, in order to non-violently replicate a successful model, a free land market is needed. Then there are no problems: investors from a conditional Singapore organize a consortium, buy a convenient territory from some state—and develop it. But for states, territory too often turns out to be some kind of sacred value for which they are ready to sacrifice millions of people, and to hell with these crazies and their hang-ups. And so, people thirsting for freedom and prosperity crowd onto tiny territories, vastly overpaying for such a rare opportunity.

But all economic history tells us that this is perfectly normal: a certain product is first premium, gradually becomes replicated, and its cost drops to an acceptable level, and then it becomes a mere mass-market commodity. Freedom in this case is an example of such a product. There is a demand for it, it is growing, and therefore the supply will expand.

Big brother is watching you!

A question regarding medications for rare diseases.

What guarantees are there that under ancap, people with rare diseases (affecting fewer than 200,000 people) will not be left without medication because it would simply be unprofitable to develop and sell them (given such a small number of consumers)?

анонимный вопрос

Answered by Alex Murin

The strangest question I have ever encountered. And why is it profitable for states to fund scientists who conduct such research? Perhaps because funding scientists is profitable in general? They make useful discoveries, and over the last 100 years, these have become increasingly frequent, useful, and interesting.

A company that develops a new drug gains notoriety. This is currently the best advertisement a pharmaceutical company can imagine. One could hire a hundred PR agents to write that this company’s vitamin C and plantain are the best in the world. But many people sell vitamin C and herbal mixtures. So, most of the time, PR agents would be producing information junk. Instead, one could hire another dozen scientists to develop a drug for a rare disease. Journalists from many publications would gather to see and report on the discovery, the company’s name would hit the top news of all websites for a couple of days, and remain in the top of specialized publications for another month. In addition to that rare pill, the company produces hundreds of other less rare ones. A discovery means new clients, the respect of doctors, and the attention of their patients.

Regarding sales: selling medications is always profitable. Just as it was profitable in primitive society, when a hunter brought the shaman the best piece of meat for a pot of magic potion, so it is in a post-industrial society, where hundreds of pharmaceutical companies make aspirin and millions of pharmacies sell it. Perhaps it would be unprofitable to keep a rare medicine in a pharmacy, but nothing stops it from being ordered. Currently, restrictions on the online sale of medications are created by states.

The role of the state in the production of drugs for rare diseases is not very obvious. In funding scientists? They can be funded by charitable foundations and insurance companies. It is always profitable for an insurer for their patient to be healthy and pay premiums regularly, rather than lying on their deathbed.

By the way, the famous EU Directive 141/2000 (reduction of regulations in the development of orphan drugs) was adopted precisely thanks to private initiative, and not at the suggestion of any state. EURORDIS, an association supporting patients with rare diseases, was one of the organizations that contributed to the development and adoption of such an initiative.

Very rare pills

Will this be within the norm under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CoAlxgwXcM

In this case, the norm has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is anpcap or socialism. There is a broad global trend toward the reduction of aggression, including toward children. When you read someone like Kassil, far more brutal customs are described, both between children and between children and adults. I suspect that in those times, such an episode would not have attracted any attention at all. He didn’t kill or maim; he simply forced a fussy child to get up and led them by the hand—what’s the big deal? A hundred years have passed, and this episode is now perceived as clear coarseness of manners, though still not so egregious as to make one jump out into the yard and immediately intervene for the child instead of continuing the filming, or, say, to lean out of a window with a rifle and demand an immediate stop.

It is very difficult to predict what the norms regarding violence against children will be in the foreseeable future. The trend may continue, and then the ideas currently being promoted—for example, by the Dobroum project—will over time seem banal, or even self-evident. Or the trend may reverse, and then our era will seem to descendants as a time of softness and degeneration.

At the same time, ancap can develop within the framework of any current of this trend. If the world becomes more non-violent, the key principle in relations with children will be the principle of non-aggression. Did the child attack? No, they were just lying there and didn’t want to get up. How can they be hit? How can children be hit at all? If greater violence becomes the norm, the emphasis will shift toward legal capacity. Is the child not a legal subject? Then they are in the zone of the guardian’s responsibility. See a child being hit? Well, ask whose child it is. If the guardian is the one hitting—well, they are probably hitting for a reason. If it is not the guardian hitting, it is an attack on someone else’s property, an impropriety, and should be stopped—for example, by blowing the aggressor’s brains out.

To me, of course, the first scenario seems more natural and probable. The trend toward non-violence is accompanied by an increasing value of human life and is largely driven by this. Ancap presupposes the elimination of the state, which, among other things, is a systemic factor that reduces the value of human life (firstly, it produces violence, meaning violence becomes commonplace; secondly, it makes people poorer, thereby reducing the value of life). This means that under ancap, the value of life will increase, and there will be less violence.

But, alas, the reasons for the trend are not fully clear, and I cannot guarantee anything on this matter. After all, the softening and hardening of manners throughout world history clearly does not follow a simple linear dependency.

P.S. When the post was already ready for publication, news arrived that Anastasia Shevchenko’s daughter died in intensive care. For those who do not know: the mother was accused of membership in an undesirable organization and placed under house arrest until trial, deprived of the right to communicate with her daughter. The daughter was seriously ill and required constant care. The court, choosing the preventive measure, ignored this circumstance.

So: under ancap, this would not only not be the norm, but would become completely impossible. The state kills. It is not just a machine of violence, but also a completely irresponsible machine.