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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Democracy is the most humane and just form of government that the ideology of collectivism can offer to people. However, over many centuries of democratic existence, this system has been noted for many irremediable flaws: sluggishness, the impossibility of reliably reconciling group interests, extravagance, a tendency to slide into authoritarianism or unrestrained populism, and much more. The problem lies in collectivism itself; it is precisely because of it that democracy is structured as it is and possesses the flaws it has.
The emergence of the ideology of liberalism led to the creation of such a strange and unstable hybrid as liberal democracy. It succeeded in correcting some of the excesses of democracy, but playing with minority rights gave rise to its own problems. The basic construction of any form of government remains flawed: the imposition of a single order upon everyone.
People simply do not need to be forced into the Procrustean bed of the state in order to successfully coordinate their actions. Any legal relations can be established by them independently, without imposition by third parties, and exactly for as long as required.
And now, more about all this in detail
As is well known, it is impossible to live in a society while being free from it. The division of labor provides too many benefits to give up. Therefore, during the development of civilization, people have accumulated a vast amount of reasoning on how people in a society might better arrange themselves to reap the maximum benefits from cooperation while incurring minimal costs. One of the central places in all these discussions is occupied by the phenomenon known as democracy. This method of social organization has many theoretical defenders and is one of the few that some societies have voluntarily and consciously attempted to impose on others for their own good. Even ancient Athens, during the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC, when capturing another enemy city, would invariably establish democratic rule there, as they considered this system to be the best; thus, the idea of exporting democracy is by no means new. You can read more about this in Thucydides. In his famous retelling of Pericles’ funeral oration, you can also read the most colorful panegyric to democracy ever written.
Thucydides, son of Olorus, the first historian to claim scientific rigor
Democracy as a way of governance is a completely natural development of the idea of legal equality. Any community of legally equal individuals logically comes to seeking compromises through more or less democratic means. This includes, firstly, the right of each person to express their opinion and campaign for it, and secondly, the obligation to submit to the opinion supported by the majority and to defend that opinion as if it were their own. For what reason would a minority, whose opinion was not accepted democratically, implement the majority’s decision instead of, for example, stabbing the majority in the back at a moment of weakness? For the hope of receiving compensation for their cooperation, as well as the expectation that next time, with their opinion, they will be part of the majority, and their decision will be just as implemented by the entire community. If that hope appears illusory, then democracy turns into the tyranny of the majority, and the minority either endures it or, once their patience is exhausted, opposes its decisions—ranging from leaving the community to sabotage to direct war.
Since we are talking about the tyranny of the majority, let’s talk about it a little. It seems like an excellent system! The minority is exiled, physically exterminated, deprived of rights—in short, it stops bothering the majority, the majority turns into unity, unity means harmony of interests, a high level of trust within the group, which means decisions are implemented quickly and effectively, what more could you want? Just let the good people kill all the bad people, and we’ll live happily ever after. Or, okay, you don’t even have to kill, it’s enough to build a wall, introduce visas, censuses, conduct purges, well, you get the idea.
Well, admit it, putting Mikhail Svetov here would be too cliché
The problem is that successful practices become entrenched and habitual. Having successfully gotten rid of internal enemies, society does not achieve harmony, but instead begins to search for new ones with unquenchable enthusiasm. Why try to compromise over any trifle if someone who does not share the opinion of the majority is an enemy? How can one compromise with an enemy? And indeed, revolutions begin to devour their own children, winners in civil wars begin to compile ever more proscription lists, churches fight against ever new heresies—and there is no peace for people for whom the whole world is a struggle. Again, the expulsion of internal enemies multiplies the number of external enemies, which means the ranks must be closed even more tightly and more resources must be spent on defense, or better yet, to strike preemptively, of course… It seems that an excess of intolerance does not benefit society.
A concept such as liberalism can serve as a defense against this collectivist madness. Liberalism stems from the simple idea that private interests are more important than common ones. Therefore, liberal democracies no longer imply arbitrariness in the formulation of majority decisions, but limit such decisions by certain inalienable human rights. The main drawback of the idea of the existence of inalienable human rights, however, lies in the ease with which these rights are taken away; therefore, what looks like a liberal democracy on paper may, in practice, turn out to be either an electoral autocracy (that is, the same dictatorship of the majority) or some other political hybrid. But suppose people are firmly determined to defend the rights of minorities. What follows from this? Successful practices are replicated, and soon it turns out that being part of an oppressed minority confers privileges. There you go. We tried so hard to prevent the dictatorship of the majority that we are one step away from a dictatorship of minorities, who figure out among themselves which of them is the most oppressed and, accordingly, the most deserving of positive discrimination. The majority finds itself forced to vote obediently in the interests of the minority, fearing that otherwise it will be blamed for all sins. It seems that an excess of tolerance in society also yields some creepy results.
I spent a long time deciding what to use to illustrate privileged minorities in a liberal society: LGBT or Islamists. LGBT won by a narrow margin.
By the way, about the dictatorship of the minority. A constant problem for democracies is the doubt that decisions are truly made taking into account the will of the majority of citizens. For instance, in the 19th century in the US, about three-quarters of eligible citizens voted during elections, whereas in the 20th century, it was only about half. It does not matter whether this is due to the lowering of voting requirements or the decline in the overall level of trust in democratically elected authorities. What matters is that those in power turn out to be people representing a minority of voters, yet claiming to speak on behalf of the majority, and this works against the legitimacy of the decisions made.
But even if the overwhelming majority turns out to vote, say, under the threat of a fine for non-attendance as in Australia, the Arrow’s paradox comes into play whenever there are more than two alternatives, stating the impossibility of correctly determining the majority choice. The only way to escape the effect of the paradox is to reduce the choice to two alternatives—that is, to abandon the choice between several candidates for representatives and limit it to referendums with simple “yes” or “no” options, which works relatively well in Switzerland.
One also cannot fail to mention the meritocratic argument against democracy, which in its vulgar form can be formulated as “the voice of Professor Preobrazhensky is equal to the voice of Sharikov.” The “one person, one vote” system in societies with a large number of Sharikovs quickly and reliably turns Rhodesia into Zimbabwe. In the long run, this is disadvantageous for the Sharikovs as well, but they are not good at thinking in the long term. Thus, while voting restrictions are also not good because they violate the principle of legal equality, universal suffrage is no better.
Ian Smith, a fighter for voting restrictions, a defender of Rhodesia against Zimbabwe
By the way, speaking of long-term planning. It would be strange not to mention Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s arguments against democracy in this regard. In his book “Democracy: The God That Failed,” he examines the gradual evolution of societies from natural aristocracy (where decision-making is delegated to those who constantly demonstrate their ability to solve problems) through monarchy (where the right to make decisions is usurped by a sovereign, but the sovereign’s systematic incompetence leads to their overthrow) to democracy (where the right to make decisions is usurped by a faceless bureaucratic layer, and the entire people are formally put in the place of the sovereign). A monarch has a planning horizon comparable to their lifetime and even longer, as they intend to pass their estate on to their descendants. A democratically elected leader, however, thinks no further than the next election term and is most concerned with reelection, which is easily seen by the growth of social spending in the budgets of democratic countries during election years. It is precisely the shortening of the planning horizon and the blurring of responsibility for decision-making under democracy that leads democratic countries to increase their social obligations immoderately and carry huge state debt during peacetime. Monarchs, after all, usually went into debt at least because of wars.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe and his nostalgia for natural aristocracy
Supporters of dictatorships also like to complain about democracy’s slowness, which is especially relevant during wartime. In fact, the very institution of the dictator, known to us since the time of Rome, is a patch designed to fix exactly this bug. But using the example of Rome, we also see how a purely temporary solution (a dictator was elected for only one year) tends to become permanent: dictatorial powers are constantly extended, and republican foundations decay.
Instead of democracy
We have considered a multitude of arguments about how society should not be organized, but let us try to answer the request formulated at the beginning of the article: how should people organize themselves into a society to reap the maximum benefits from cooperation with minimum costs.
Maximum benefit means the ability to form groups of any size, relative to the scale of the task. Minimum cost means the freedom not to join those who are implementing a task for which a person does not intend to spend time, effort, and resources. Minimum cost also means the most modest possible expenses for finding a community engaged in solving the necessary tasks, and the ease of joining it. In other words, the recipe for cozy yet productive interaction consists of not imposing solutions that are personally needed by you on everyone, and implementing your solutions only among like-minded people. Entrepreneurial initiative and peaceful competition of alternatives take the place of democracy.
Thus, instead of communities united by territory, we get communities united by tasks and needs. Humanity turns out to be not a territory divided by states, but a conglomerate of commercial companies and public organizations. Commercial companies, by forming consortiums, can develop certain industry standards, jointly discuss emerging problems, and, if necessary, create internal arbitration bodies. Public organizations can unite into leagues, associations, confederations, and so on. Within these umbrella organizations, some common rules, interaction protocols, and other good traditions will also be developed. But at the same time, each specific commercial company will retain its own staff, its own management style, its own structure, its own technologies, and its own market. And each public organization will preserve its own unique atmosphere, its own specific tasks and developments for solving them, and its own methods of self-organization.
Thus, in such an organization of society, every specific individual, by setting a goal for themselves, has a rich choice of means. First, they can achieve their goal entirely through their own efforts (for example, making a salad from vegetables they grew themselves). Second, they can acquire a solution on the free market from a commercial company (for example, going to a restaurant). Third, they can turn to a public organization addressing this task and either use its help (ask for free soup) or join it and solve the task together (engage in distributing free soup). In each of these options, the voluntariness of relationships is maintained and legal equality between people is preserved, while at the same time all the benefits of the division of labor are achieved, which makes any even remotely significant increase in human welfare possible.
Such a state of society could be called something fashionable, like a “system of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions,” except these are not even jurisdictions, but simply spontaneous orders naturally arising in a developed, free human community. In a poorly developed, unfree society, all these spontaneous orders also arise, but their development is suppressed, and therefore occurs more slowly, though it is impossible to stop it completely.
Friedrich von Hayek, the father of spontaneous orders
All that remains is to formulate the last thing: what must be done so that this method of organizing society becomes dominant. In fact, the question itself contains most of the answer. One needs to practice voluntary interactions more and avoid coercive ones; invest more in the activities of public organizations and try to feed the state and other bandits less; buy from those who produce the best product, rather than from those whom one is prescribed to buy from. And, of course, inspire others toward similar activities, both through words and by personal example. And this is a task no less great and messianic than the promotion of the idea of democracy.
