If things continue this way, the difference between the libertarian right and the libertarian left will continue to become increasingly blurred, because the very direction of the global economy, as shown in the article, facilitates such convergence. We are simply beginning to describe the exact same society as the desired result, only viewing it from different angles.
Recently, following the lead of Professor Auzan, I began referring to certain mysterious conditions for the stability of anarchy according to Hirshleifer. Since this concept has started to surface frequently in discussions, it would be a good idea to examine it in more detail.
Therefore, Andrey Meshkov undertook the translation (and I edited the translation) of the article by University of California professor Jack Hirshleifer, Anarchy and Its Dissolution, where these conditions are introduced. Those interested may also consult the original article (for instance, they might be interested in the bibliography, which we decided not to include in the translation).
The article describes a mathematical model of an anarchic system, its primary interaction mechanisms, and draws conclusions about the model’s behavior. Of course, these conclusions are applicable to real society only to the extent that the model reflects society, but this applies to any method of mathematical modeling. Hirshleifer’s model is not the only one; it is simply considered the most advanced to date, and yet simple enough to be convenient to use.
As a reminder, all translations in which I have participated are collected in the corresponding section of the website.
Quite few people live there, and therefore the demand for goods is naturally low. Capital will not flow there because it is not profitable, and schools and hospitals are nowhere to be seen in the village. What is to be done about this?
анонимный вопрос
Actually, it is precisely in all sorts of “bear corners” (remote backwaters), where there are not only no schools and hospitals, but also no police or tax authorities, that ancap is currently most evident. In these sparsely populated regions, where useful resources are distributed sparsely over a large area, instead of classic land ownership rights, there exists more of a tradition of living off certain lands. Exactly what the small entrepreneur does there is a secondary matter. Maybe they fish, maybe they hunt game, maybe they gather cedar cones. Their subsequent task is to transport and sell the harvest, avoiding all sorts of oversight as much as possible.
Such extensive farming is quite capable of supporting a sparse working population. It is not necessary to live in the harvesting grounds year-round, and even less necessary to live there with a family. In a city or a large settlement, there are the benefits of civilization; therefore, it is more convenient to receive medical treatment, educate children, and surf the internet there. A great deal of material on this topic can be found on the Khamovniki Foundation website.
If we are talking not about hunting and gathering, but about agriculture, then here, again, the population density must be very modest, since with modern means of mechanization, a large village is simply not needed: there would be too little arable land per person. So here too, relatively small settlements make sense, and for the benefits of civilization—one goes to the city. We can see roughly how this looks in the example of the USA, where the land market is quite free and well-developed.
It is not always convenient to turn a farm into a shift settlement where only workers live while families remain in the city. Therefore, of course, situations where full families settle on a farmstead will remain quite common. This will be their own responsible decision, and the market is well capable of providing them with the means to quickly get from their wilderness to civilization. Firstly, products from the fields must be transported out, meaning that roads will not disappear even under ancap. Secondly, in the absence of regulations, light aviation becomes an exclusively cheap and mass-market thing, and here again we can cite the USA as an example, where things stand roughly this way.
Such a tiny tractor costs less than a normal pickup
I also spent quite a long time trying to figure all this out, but today, it essentially doesn’t matter. All anarchists differ from one another only by shades of their attitude toward private property, and all are more or less equally hostile toward the state. There have been repeated attempts in history to abolish private property first, and the state later. But even when such attempts were successful, it only led to all property ending up in the hands of the state, and in such a state, there remained no room for any kind of anarchist. Therefore, any sane anarchist now, even if they are an anarcho-communist thrice over, would prefer to start with the elimination of the state.
The state is not reducible to the current government, whatever it may be. The state is based on people’s conviction that not all people should be endowed with equal rights. In the view of statists, it is necessary for a certain part of the people to possess rights that others do not have, namely the right to violent coercion. This is needed to lead the mindless herd in the right direction; otherwise, humanity, deprived of guides, will do something bad to itself, such as cause a global catastrophe. A person who believes that humanity needs a guide who forcibly restricts others in their peaceful activities will reproduce the state even after the current government has been abolished. Moreover, such a person may even call themselves an anarchist right now—they might simply believe, for example, that the guide should be collective.
The more an anarchist focuses on how to organize their own life, the more of an anarcho-individualist they are. The more they are concerned with how collective interaction will be organized, the more of an anarcho-communist they are. The more they believe in entrepreneurship as the engine of any development, the more of an anarcho-capitalist they are.
Which specific label a person applies to themselves in addition to anarchism depends mainly on which books they have read, whom they have associated with, and which channels they subscribe to. In reality, the shade of their ideology depends on how much they believe in people. If they believe people are by nature evil and greedy, their anarchism will boil down to ideas about putting together a tough gang that won’t let itself be pushed around. If they believe people are more inclined toward cooperation and entrepreneurship, then their anarchism will lean toward reflections on horizontal interaction and free trade. And if they consider people to be simple and predictable, they will discuss the automation of management and the replacement of bureaucrats with scripts.
I have nothing to fight over with other anarchists. I will try not to let myself be pushed around. I will try not to get lost in the marketplace. I am not afraid of automation. I believe in people, and they mostly bring me joy.
In the modern world, the level of aggression continues to decline, and the level of publicly demonstrated tolerance for systemic aggressive violence is lower than ever. Therefore, news that in some godforsaken hole in the world, some strange people have been fervently warring for years, prompting many non-combatants to undertake distant and dangerous migrations, is a powerful irritant. One feels the urge to appear, kick everyone into gear, force them to shake hands, and engage in something more useful than self-extermination.
Then, of course, you remember that this is exactly why the USA, RF, and Turkey invaded inhospitable Syria, and you realize that “enforcing peace” is some kind of creepy scenario. Especially when it is done at the expense of taxpayers, while the profit goes to the suppliers of cannon fodder and the seize-rs of oil fields.
Attempts to figure out who is more “right” in this conflict essentially boil down to determining whose system of values is closer to yours, so that you can go on rooting for the least obnoxious team, wishing that they would finally just dominate everyone else.
The Turks appear to be the main assholes in the conflict, playing a role in the region similar to that of the Russians in the post-Soviet space, though I fully admit this may be an aberration of my perception.
The desire of the inhabitants of any given region for self-governance is, of course, completely legitimate in my eyes, while the desire of central authorities to actively manage local affairs is with equal obviousness illegitimate—regardless of whether we are talking about Syrian Kurdistan, Chechnya, or West Virginia. However, the same can be said regarding the desire of regional authorities to rule locally by curtailing the powers of local administrations, and accordingly, regarding local administrations that violate individual autonomy.
As far as I can judge by official data and anarchist propaganda, the situation with individual autonomy specifically in Rojava is quite decent, and for such a heavily war-torn region, it is downright exemplary. There exists a relatively functional grassroots democracy and secular legislation, and the problem of the region’s complex ethnic composition is solved through quotas in self-governance bodies, which is quite natural for such situations.
The gender equality declared by Rojava’s laws always deserves a special mention, placing this entity in the same league as a civilized neighbor like Israel. This state looks like the most obvious ally for Rojava after the USA and Russia finally withdraw their contingents from the region, and Turkey also curbs its foreign military activity. Of course, this is merely a well-wish that good people should stick together, not a real prediction.
Are there any good purely political or military scenarios for Rojava in all this mess going on there? No. The autonomy skillfully maneuvers between several predators, but it lacks the strength to defend its freedom and security relying on its own forces, and it is unlikely such strength will appear.
All that remains is to hope that Rojava can ensure the most favorable PR for itself. Here, it seems to me, they could partially adopt the experience of Georgia, which managed to strengthen itself quite well in its region through liberal reforms, transparency, and openness to guests. Currently, Rojava has the image of a left-anarchist commune, and for Europeans, these guys are associated with squats, looting, eternal irritating street activism with a vague message about destroying capitalism—and similar hooliganism. It doesn’t seem that such customs are actually actively in use in Rojava, which means there is no need to remain within the confines of such a suspicious image. Socialist communes do not fare well in attracting direct foreign investment, whereas the presence of a large number of assets held by foreigners, in the absence of one’s own strong army and friendly neighbors, is capable of providing a more or less reliable protection.
Cuties with guns are great, but if you show lesbian cuties guarding their peaceful mining farm, the liberal community will simply melt
Since anarcho-capitalism does not emerge through social engineering, it is obviously pointless to make promises in the vein of “once ancap is established, all courts will operate according to these rules we have set.” We can show how courts operated in historical stateless societies, how they operate now in the non-state sphere, and how they could be organized if the state were consciously outgrown.
The issue of historical non-state legal systems is studied in detail in the book by David Friedman and Peter Leeson Legal systems very different from ours. Someday I will work on its translation, but for now, one can see from the table of contents alone just how many different legal systems existed that did not require state intervention in their operation.
What functions should a legal system perform?
A system of landmarks. With a legal system in place, people can plan their actions, knowing what the procedure should be in the event of a conflict.
Conflict freezing mechanisms. If a conflict occurs, it can always be attempted to be solved by direct force. The presence of a legal system, however, allows for the start of a conflict resolution procedure instead of an immediate fight. For example, summoning the opponent to court, to a duel, or giving them the business card of one’s insurance agent. The faster a lawsuit is initiated, the less damage will be caused, and the cheaper the process will be.
Mechanisms for determining parties in court. A legal system can determine whether a person must defend their interests in court personally, whether they can be replaced by a representative, organize a class action, and so on.
Restrictions on investigative methods. A legal system determines which evidence is considered valid (for example, a blockchain record) and which the court must ignore (for example, testimony given under torture).
Procedure for choosing a judge. A legal system may require that both parties explicitly agree on the figure of the judge (arbitration), or it may prescribe a specific rigid procedure for applying to a pre-known court (for example, at the place where the conflict arose).
Limitation of judicial powers. A judge may have the right to conduct an investigation, or may be required only to consider the evidence provided by the parties. He may have the right to summon witnesses under threat of sanctions, or may be limited to voluntary cooperation.
Limitation of sentencing variability. The more predictable the outcomes of the proceedings, the lower the costs society members bear from uncertainty. Therefore, a legal system usually includes a certain schedule of penalties rather than leaving such things entirely to the discretion of the judge.
Sentence enforcement system. A legal system may assume that both parties deposit funds in advance to secure possible compensation for a claim, may assume that the plaintiff collects the court-awarded amount independently, or may, for example, provide a system of coercion to execute sentences (for ancap, i.e., a society with an even distribution of the balance of violence potential, such coercion can only be non-violent).
Under ancap, various market agents can provide either a full range of legal services or individual specialized services. For example, a detective agency may provide only the search for evidence for court, a collection service only ensure recovery, a law firm represent the client’s interests in court, and the court itself organize the proceedings and issue decisions according to a pre-agreed legal system.
The development of legal systems is an evolutionary process, and it is impossible to predict in advance which solutions will be in demand in the market and which will not. Whether legal systems will be created by individual authoritative lawyers, consortia of legal service providers, or borrowed directly from existing systems is also impossible to predict.
Can Transhumanism Help Eliminate Aggressive Violence?
Ancap-chan, based on the ideas of Bitarch
The Problem
There is an opinion that the means of fighting aggressive violence offered today are treatments of symptoms rather than the problem itself. What is the point of punishing the manifestation of genetically inherited tendencies; wouldn’t it be more reliable to fix the genes?
Aggression is determined by the hormonal background. Several different hormones are involved in the regulation of aggression.
Hormones are released as a response to changes in the body occurring under the influence of both the external environment and internal processes. For example, aggression can be caused by violence, or simply by hunger.
The predisposition to aggression is partially inherited. The predisposition to hormonal pathologies, which can lead to a sharp change in aggressiveness, is also partially inherited.
Inherited factors can manifest to varying degrees under the influence of the environment, meaning that the predisposition to aggression can be reduced or developed through upbringing.
Aggression is a complex behavioral construct linked to other character traits, such as exploratory activity, independence, and the willingness to protect loved ones.
Specific genes responsible for the predisposition to aggression have not been identified. Even less so have genes responsible for the predisposition to specific types of aggression, particularly the predisposition to initiate aggressive violence. It is clear that there are several genes, located on different chromosomes, not only sex chromosomes.
Throughout human history, there is a clear trend toward the reduction of intra-species aggression. This can be fully explained by Konrad Lorenz’s classical model: the higher the ability of members of a species to destroy their conspecifics, the faster the genes responsible for the predisposition to intra-species aggression are washed out of the population during lethal conflicts. With the mastery of tools, human armament increased sharply, and natural selection went to work, weeding out the most aggressive. However, this happened very recently by evolutionary standards, which is why humans still have disproportionately high levels of aggression compared to their ability to kill people. This, essentially, is what is interpreted as the problem.
What approaches can be taken to solve it at the current level of technological development?
Today’s Approaches
Medical. If aggressiveness is treated as a disease, it is effectively cured by barbaric methods such as lobotomy or haloperidol. Along with aggression, everything human in the patient is “cured,” which is hardly different from murder; therefore, an individual approach to each patient using more delicate means must be developed. Complex treatment with an unguaranteed result cannot be practiced on a mass scale, so let us leave this approach only for the most pronounced pathologies.
Educational. Since the genetic predisposition to aggression can be weakened by good upbringing, it makes sense to focus on raising children without the use of aggressive violence. As a result, a child without pathologies will channel their natural aggressiveness into wonderful things, such as research activity or social activism. And for a child with a pathology, it will at least be manifested in a weakened form.
Sexual Selection. This means of reducing aggression in the population is already working quite well. If, for a potential partner, feats performed to win them over are not as important as benevolence and care, then carriers of genes with low aggression have a better chance of having offspring — after which aggressive individuals go off to burn through their lives and get along perfectly well without reproducing.
Acceleration of Natural Selection. When the direct shooting of aggressors in self-defense becomes common legal practice in society, the genes of aggressors are washed out of the population more radically than through sexual selection. The problem here is that the application of lethal self-defense also requires a certain predisposition to aggression; therefore, this approach works well in societies with brutal traditions, contributing to their rapid civilization — after which its effectiveness begins to decline.
Now let’s fantasize a bit to understand what transhumanists might offer us.
Tomorrow’s Approaches
Embryo Selection. A DNA sample is taken from the fetus and analyzed for a predisposition to pathological aggression; if the result is positive, the pregnancy is terminated. This is already how more obvious hereditary diseases, such as Down syndrome, are fought. Convincing the mother to make another attempt at conception is a solvable task, provided there are not too many cultural constraints in society prohibiting the termination of pregnancy.
Gene Modification in Adults. A virus is created that integrates into human DNA and either switches off the genes responsible for the predisposition to aggression or reduces their expression. The technology of gene modification itself has already been created and is actively developing, but which specific genes should be corrected and how is still poorly understood. Direct switching off of genes most obviously linked to aggression currently leads to many undesirable side pathologies in experiments. Moreover, we are talking about a whole complex of genes in different chromosomes, and modern tools are unable to provide such precise and large-scale correction. Thus, I evaluate the prospects of this specific branch of development as modest. But if the methodology can be refined even to the level of modern pharmacological methods of aggression regulation, it could replace them in psychiatry and also be used as a means of rehabilitating criminals instead of the idiotic practice of imprisonment.
Gene Modification at the Embryonic Stage. The method is the same as in the previous point, but it introduces changes to the genome that will subsequently be inherited. The task is much easier since changes need to be made to literally one cell, rather than processing the entire brain of an adult. However, while the forced application of correction to adults can somehow be justified by the fact that they committed offenses, ethical problems arise with children. I assume that the implementation of these methods will occur with a significant delay compared to the previous point, despite the relative simplicity.
Cyborgization. Since aggression is regulated by the hormonal background, it is not absolutely necessary to mess with the genome if the hormonal background itself can be regulated. Currently, this is done with medication, but in the future, implanted hormonal regulators could be used. It is hard to say which branch of development humanity will ultimately follow, but subjectively, the prospect of solving the problem by simply installing an app on a specialized gadget seems very attractive; furthermore, this methodology has minimum ethical barriers — I would gladly acquire such a device for myself.
Conclusion
First of all, I state that the complete eradication of aggression from humanity, similar to the betrization described by Stanisław Lem, is not only technically unrealizable at the current level of capabilities but also undesirable, since aggression is linked to many qualities useful to humans.
Essentially, aggression is a reaction to a stimulus, in which an attempt is made to eliminate the stimulus. Aggression can be opposed, firstly, by patience, that is, a reaction to a stimulus in which an attempt is made to adapt to its effect without eliminating the stimulus itself, and secondly, by flight, that is, a reaction to a stimulus in which an attempt is made to avoid the action of the stimulus. If the entire richness of human reactions to stimuli were reduced to patience and flight, it would close off not only the possibility of self-defense but the general ability to remove obstacles, especially if this involves any small amount of risk.
There is uncontrolled pathological aggression. It is usually associated with brain injuries and diseases or serious hormonal imbalances. The forced treatment of such diseases, in my view, is a special case of self-defense, especially since such aggression is usually identified when a person is already violating the NAP. The more the result of the treatment resembles a natural level of aggression, the better; but if medical intervention produces side effects that make a person’s life difficult (for example, if they are completely deprived of manifestations of aggression), this would be an undesirable but justified result. I am also prepared to consider the presence of a predisposition to pathological aggression in a fetus as sufficient grounds for abortion or genetic correction at the embryonic development stage — provided there are reliable, proven methods of diagnosis and correction.
As for the natural level of aggression, it is already gradually decreasing in humanity, and in recent years, this has been accompanied by a significant decrease in violent crimes. Therefore, measures to force this decrease seem completely unnecessary to me. Non-violent upbringing of children is already becoming an ethical norm. Sexual selection is already working fully in favor of caring partners rather than dominant ones. Civilian weapons, for all their utility, already look somewhat archaic. Not yet at the level of crinolines and frock coats, but somewhere at the level of evening gowns and three-piece suits. Cute, sophisticated, but unusual.
And finally, I will note once more that the optimal solution seems to me to be the ability to arbitrarily regulate one’s own hormonal background. For example, through the use of an implant. It would certainly be useful for suppressing outbursts of aggression, but I suspect that I personally would use it for the opposite: in situations where my level of aggression is insufficient. For example, before using a weapon for self-defense. Or in order to stop procrastinating and sit down to write a long-postponed post.
Chapter 3.2, Police, Courts, and Laws in a Free Market, was translated a long time ago by Elena Makeeva by order of the LPR. I have finally edited it; in time, the same fate awaits the other four chapters translated for the LPR.
This chapter examines a central piece of Friedman’s picture of society under anarcho-capitalism: the concept of private competing law enforcement agencies, which will take on the role of police and partially insurance companies. It also describes the interaction of such agencies with private arbitration courts.
Chapter 3.3, The Stability Problem, concerns the question of whether this beautiful system of private law enforcement agencies will be stable, or whether they will inevitably form a state. Naturally, Friedman argues that everything is stable—otherwise, there would be no point in building such a complex system—and then provides the justifications for this thesis.
I have also reworked the table of contents in accordance with Friedman’s internal chapter numbering, as he numbers them here, doesn’t number them there, and does something completely random elsewhere…
The proposal to allocate a column for Miss Liberty on my channel split opinions almost down the middle, with an unusually high proportion of readers participating in the vote—usually, not many people bother to like or dislike. Therefore, she decided not to unsettle the audience with off-topic posts and started her own Telegram channel Right Libertarian Feminism.
Stop by, read the introductory article, subscribe if you feel like it, and invite your friends to subscribe if you think they would be interested.
As Mikhail Svetov, the creator of nap.world, claims, medium is the message. The one who speaks is part of the message. Therefore, it is not enough to examine the proposed text of the non-aggression pact; one must look at the person proposing it.
Mikhail’s rhetoric is hate speech. Even in his New Year’s greeting, he wishes torment and death to all “bad people.” It is important to understand: the proposal to conclude a non-aggression pact is not a declaration of peace. It is a declaration of war. A war against everyone who does not sign the pact. To Mikhail and his supporters, everyone outside the NAP agreement is not a legal subject.
Most likely, you are under no threat as long as you do not draw their attention. But if you initiate violence, or even publicly approve of someone else initiating violence, that’s it—you become a permissible victim. Lies will be told about you. Your counterparties will be discouraged from cooperating with you. If you have done something illegal, a report will be filed against you. But they will not physically lift a hand against you.
What does this remind us of? To me personally, it resembles the tactics of radical feminists or SJWs. They will find any instance of harassment or racism and broadcast it loudly. They will peck at you for any approval of such things. They will twist the facts about you and do everything in their power to make you persona non grata.
Feminists started before Svetov, and we can see where such tactics lead. They lead to the world becoming less sexist. Harassment turns out to be dangerous. Sexist jokes are laughed at less. Sexist advertising sells worse. The vile feminists, whom one wants to recoil from in disgust, make the world better. For them, it remains just as dirty, patriarchal, and unjust. It becomes better for us, the more moderate ones.
The Bitarch proposes using antifragile tactics (according to Taleb) to fight the state—that is, tactics that only grow stronger through opposition. If everyone whom the state prosecutes for victimless crimes declares that the state is a bandit and that they do not recognize its jurisdiction, it will undermine the legitimacy of the state, and the wider the repression, the stronger the delegitimization. Is this an antifragile tactic? Yes. The first such cases will receive wide publicity, and the prisoners will be seen as political. As the movement develops, attention will not be as intense, but this will be compensated for by the scale of the movement. However, such blatant disrespect for the court will more often lead to longer sentences, so it will be difficult at first to decide to bring politics into one’s case.
But what if an irreconcilable community actually forms around the idea of signing the NAP and intimidating everyone who hasn’t signed it? Let’s look again at Taleb, the book Skin in the Game. He shows how an inflexible, irreconcilable minority, evenly distributed in society, gradually imposes its rules on a flexible majority. In the US, political correctness became a norm recognized by the majority. In Russia, the example of implementing an accessible environment for the blind is more obvious. You won’t find a blind person on every street, but every traffic light beeps, and everyone trips over tactile paving: this is a norm imposed by an inflexible minority. Those who shame NAP non-signatories have a chance to achieve the same effect.
First, they will purge the ranks of decision-makers. Then they will intimidate the liberal opposition. Next, they will begin to harass those who approve of the actions of security forces—and then the security forces themselves. And at this stage, the idea of massively refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of state courts looks like a completely natural progression.
In short. The nap.world project as executed by Svetov is aesthetically repulsive to me, but if he gathers enough fanatics, the world around me really might become better. And after that, it would be good if they lusted themselves. Like the djinn from Andrzej Sapkowski’s story “The Last Wish.”
