Mechanics of Freedom, chapters 2.11-2.13

I am posting three more chapters The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman.

Is William F. Buckley a Contagious Disease? William Buckley is a conservative who ran a loud but unsuccessful campaign for mayor of New York City in 1965, wrote a book about it, and in it, while discussing the city’s problems, mentioned drug addiction using an epidemic metaphor. Polemicizing against this view, Friedman advocates for legalization from ethical and utilitarian positions.

This Is My Life. In this chapter, Friedman advocates for deregulation in pharmacology and the food industry, pointing out that caution kills far more lives than untested treatments or low-quality products.

Children’s Rights. Here it is shown that it is pointless to prevent the early emancipation of a child, and that in conditions where parental upbringing has proven unacceptable for the child, freedom may prove to be the best educator.

“Movement for Equal Legal Rights” instead of anarcho-capitalism

Bitarch’s Column

Recently, I posted a dilogy about “making porridge from an axe.” The second part, about preparing ancap from left-wing ideas, was based on an article that I now want to offer you. Instead of publishing it in its original form, I rewrote it completely, so the presentation turned out somewhat different. Bitarch was dissatisfied, so now I am publishing the original close to the initial text.

Let’s be honest—promoting anarcho-capitalism (Rothbard’s ancap) in its pure form to a mass audience is practically impossible. In the real world, unlike the “pink pony worlds” of libertarian public pages and chats, ancap, along with minarchism, is considered an extreme right-wing ideology that defends the interests of that very 0.1% who are so strongly hated in Western mass culture, media, and universities. In Russia, this is slightly less noticeable due to the remaining memory of the failures of socialism in the USSR, and also a general hatred of the state, which is still difficult to find in the developed world. Nevertheless, the majority of the population, both in the West and here, holds social-liberal (Alexey Navalny, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron) and left-wing (Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, mainstream politicians in Scandinavia) views.

From my experience promoting libertarianism, I can confidently say that for such people, the conditional “average Joes,” one might as well not try to promote classical libertarianism (ancap and minarchism)—you’ll just waste your time! They only respond to panarchy with an emphasis on socially-oriented ECUs or Svetov’s conservative communities. But it’s not all that bad—if you try, you can repackage ancap into a wrapper that is more attractive to the common person.

If you ask an average American what made the twentieth century remarkable, he will most likely name various civil rights movements and their significant achievements as one of the first points. The last century began with the suffragette movement for equal voting rights for women and men, which achieved success quite easily. Then, in the 1950s-1960s, mass actions took place for equal rights for Americans regardless of skin color (the abolition of segregation – Civil Rights Act, 1964). Almost immediately after success in this area, riots and protests in support of LGBT began (Stonewall riots, 1969), which also proved successful. A bit later, in 1973, after numerous anti-war demonstrations, conscription slavery was abolished.

Similar processes took place in Western Europe, but instead of the abolition of segregation (which never existed there), the youth protested, and they were eventually given rights as well. In the USSR, there were no protests on such a scale due to the totalitarian ideology and the suppression of any dissent, and since all formal rights had already been handed down from above, everything was limited to dissatisfaction with the economic situation and the dissident movement for the observance of human rights.

What united all these protests? The answer is simple—the struggle for equal legal rights (i.e., that very negative “freedom from”)! It was only later that similar movements degenerated into a struggle for positive rights (privileges)—quotas for Black people in universities, alimony for women, bans on hate speech in favor of homosexuals, and so on. Initially, however, all these movements only demanded that the state “not interfere”—not forbid women from voting, Black people from marrying white people or entering public restrooms, not persecute homosexuals for their behavior. And surprisingly—all these movements quickly achieved success when they demanded equal legal rights.

And what does ancap have to do with this, you ask?! The point is that it can be presented in exactly the same way as a movement for equal legal rights. The main argument is that currently some people can do things with impunity that others are not allowed to do. For example, why can some thug with a badge (“tax officer”) take away half of another person’s salary and get away with it, but if I do the same, I’ll go to prison for several years? Or why can men with certain patches beat people on the street with batons and face no consequences, while I’ll be sent to prison even for throwing a plastic cup in their direction? Is that fair?! No, it’s absolutely not fair!

The same injustice can be explained to teenagers who wish to emancipate themselves but cannot do so because the state has completely arbitrarily, on a whim, established the age of consent, the age for obtaining a driver’s “license” (actually—another privilege from bandits), and “legal adulthood” (also arbitrary; a person at 17 cannot enter into contracts, but at 18 they can—isn’t that absurd).

To raise the emotional tone of the target audience, it would be a good idea to appeal to the theory of the stationary bandit, and also to call anyone who considers such inequality fair a maniac and a rapist (because that is how it actually is; we aren’t making anything up).

From all this, it follows that one doesn’t even have to talk about ancap—if people achieve equal legal rights, it will happen on its own!

Translation of Mechanics of Freedom. Chapters 2.8-2.10

I am posting three more chapters of Mechanics of Freedom.

The First Step. It discusses the optimal approach to the decentralization of governance in large cities.

Counterattack. This chapter is dedicated to private arbitration—why it is better than state courts, how it works under current conditions, and how it could work without a state.

How It Could Have Been. A fascinating fantasy about private space and what it could have been like if not for the foolish space race with the USSR.

Merry Christmas to everyone! If I maintain the current pace, I will finish the entire second part of the book by the New Year, leaving only a tiny bit—four more parts.

Containment Doctrine for Omegas

At the beginning of December, someone anonymously sent me a text for editing; I rewrote it beyond recognition, and now it is posted in the public channel Deterrence Doctrine. I didn’t publish it here, but recently in my cozy chat, a long argument broke out due to some vague disputes at a Moscow New Year’s party for decision-makers, and so, I remembered it, which is why I’m posting the text here.

You are being bullied in the workplace—how do you solve the problem? If you don’t intend to run away or kill everyone secretly, then you need to develop a deterrence doctrine—that is, establish a line of behavior that makes the pleasure the group gets from bullying you less than the potential costs of doing so.

The clearest and most powerful measure that avoids open warfare is to gather compromising material on everyone who bullies you, store it in a secure location that allows for quick publication, and then casually let the bullies see samples of the material. From then on, they will hate you exclusively in secret, but will communicate with you in a pointedly neutral manner. In terms of implementation complexity, this is roughly as if you were a state creating a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying each of your potential adversaries.

Making acquaintances with some tough guys from the outside is also a decent measure; however, this will require some communication skills, not just the ability to work with information. In this scenario, they might still huff in your direction, but they will try to keep your irritation below the radar: after all, you are unlikely to incite your support group to step in for you over trivialities. In terms of complexity, this is as if you were a state joining NATO.

The most reliable way is, of course, to bulk up, get experience in sparring, overcome the natural omega-like inability to strike first, and then, in response to another episode of bullying, address the participant who seems like a manageable opponent: something like, “You’re only brave when you’re in a pack, or are you too chicken to go one-on-one?” Essentially, it doesn’t matter who wins the ensuing fight; what matters is that it happens at all, one-on-one, and that you manage to demonstrate a sufficient level of resilience. If you cause significant damage to your opponent, all the better. In terms of complexity, this is as if you were Finland and the Soviet Union was bullying you. Finland, as a reminder, turned out to be the only country that, despite losing to the USSR as a result of World War II, maintained its relative independence, and was actually reckoned with because dealing with this little psycho was more trouble than it was worth.

And finally, if you’re too scared to fight honestly, but the hatred is building and you don’t want to pursue a career as the Joker, then buy some pepper spray, ambush one of the harassers, spray them in the eyes, knock them down, and kick them. Then inform all the others that they can, of course, kill you, but if they don’t and simply continue their bullying, you will get to every single one of them. This is as if you were a country training terrorists, and there were no USA in the world, only the EU.

The general line of thinking is roughly this: you need to demonstrate that you are prepared to exert significant effort and incur significant costs to rid yourself of the bullying, and that you have no intention of simply enduring it and crying into your pillow.

But the best thing is simply to stop being an omega. You won’t be bullied not only if people fear the consequences, but also if you are simply likable and useful to the members of the collective. This is as if you were Japan, exporting anime and Toyota.

How are ecological problems solved in an anarcho-capitalist society?

I was arguing with a buddy; he says that in the PRB (Beautiful Russia of the Future), you can’t just take and distribute state land (which is 92% of it) as homesteads, because people will take it, cut down all the forests, sell the wood to China, and then leave. How realistic is this? Will an ecological catastrophe occur?
How are environmental problems solved in an anarcho-capitalist society? I heard there are several books on this topic.

Anonymous Ancap (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00021605 BTC)

If state land were distributed in modern Russia, then after some time, those who invested enough in this land and built a profitable business on it would start having that business squeezed out of them. Foreseeing these obvious consequences, people would be interested in squeezing as much as possible out of the obtained land as quickly as possible, and conducting more or less intensive farming only on a very modest scale, below the radar.

If the same were done in the Beautiful Russia of the Future, where judicial reform has already been carried out, property rights are protected, and there are several precedents of the successful protection of these rights, then it’s a different story. One could clear part of the forest, selling the logs to China, and use the proceeds to purchase wood processing equipment, gradually scaling a normal business, without forgetting to plant new forests to replace those cut down.

Thus, the optimal strategy for an entrepreneur will depend on their planning horizon, which is further the greater their confidence in tomorrow. Confidence, in turn, is strengthened by the presence of institutions that protect property rights.

Now about environmental problems. Ecology is a complex of knowledge and technologies for organizing a comfortable living environment for humans. The greater the solvent demand for such an environment in a specific territory, the higher the probability that the owner of the territory will prefer to invest in increasing the ecological attractiveness of the plot, even to the detriment of the existing business on that plot—because the demand for ecology also allows one to make money.

As for emissions, there is no fundamental difference between a simple garbage dump on someone else’s plot and, say, releasing harmful substances in the form of smoke into the atmosphere. This activity will meet opposition from neighbors, which will be more pronounced the greater their desire to have a healthy ecological environment right here. Were the polluter’s business somewhere on the internet, they could avoid responsibility for a long time, but land cannot run away; it is a large, stationary target. Therefore, anyone who, at their own risk, sets up a smoking factory that bothers the neighbors risks soon being left without a factory, and realizing that it is cheaper to install a filter on the smokestack, they will do so.

One might object, saying that in Africa, the compliance with environmental standards by enterprise owners is not very good. This is because the balance of violence there is not very stable. As long as it is cheaper to protect a factory from an attack than to re-equip it according to the latest word in ecological science, the owner will invest in protection. But in the absence of a state, under conditions of a sufficiently stable and sufficiently wealthy local community, the balance of violence can be maintained for a very long time, which means everything will be OK with the ecology as well.

On the doctrine of deterrence

I would like to present to your attention a translation of an article by Mike Mazarr, dedicated to modern approaches to the United States’ deterrence doctrine regarding other states. The author works at the RAND Corporation and previously served in Naval Intelligence.

The article is interesting in that it departs from rather primitive notions of deterrence based on game theory and focuses on methodological subjectivism, which is so valued by proponents of the Austrian school. Therefore, libertarians should find the content of the article easy and pleasant to digest, and for my part, I have tried to make the reading even easier and more pleasant by significantly simplifying the rather ponderous language of the article.

By the way, I have collected all the translations, which were scattered across my site, into a general section; feel free to use it.

Original article in pdf

Translation of Mechanics of Freedom. Chapters 2.7 and 4.9

I’ve fallen slightly behind on publishing the translation of The Machinery of Freedom, so I need to catch up. I present to you a couple of fresh chapters.

The chapter 99% Readiness is more of a historical interest. In it, David Friedman in the late sixties invented something halfway between BlaBlaCar and a shared shuttle to solve specific public transport problems in American cities with their powerful commuter migration from the suburbs to the business center and back.

Now, the chapter Anarchist Politics: On the Libertarian Party may seem quite interesting specifically in modern Russia, since the local libertarian party is also beginning to experience processes that resemble, in miniature, what Friedman described. Sorry that they are not in order: that’s just how it happened.

Porridge from an axe, part 2. Cooking ancap from left-wing ideas.

Thanks to Bitarch for the idea for the article

I’ve been thinking about how to illustrate the “porridge from an axe” strategy as applied to government people to move closer to ancap, and it seems the only working option is flirting with the idea of separatism. Local leadership, of course, would be happy not to depend on Moscow, and then the task is broken down into small pieces, and campaigns begin for the redistribution of taxes and powers from the center to the localities and so on. But perhaps it would be more interesting to show the strategy by pitching ideas not to officials, but to the people.

As is well known, left-wing sentiments prevail in Russia, and the key idea of the left is equality. Great, let’s cook some porridge out of equality.

Let’s start by exploiting such a wonderful base human quality as envy. If my own cow was taken away, let the neighbor’s be taken too. Not long ago, there was a pension reform where the retirement age for citizens was raised by five years. But not for everyone. Employees of security agencies and several other categories still retire early. To begin with, one could demand that their retirement age also be raised to the same age to ensure equality. If you can’t serve in the FSB at 50, that’s no reason to retire; just transfer to a civilian job and work until the end. The saved funds should be demanded to be divided among all pensioners, so the measure looks sufficiently populist.

Furthermore. If the pension amount for ordinary citizens is determined by how much they paid into the pension fund, then for privileged categories, it is a percentage of their salary. This is an irregularity; down with privileges, let’s have accruals for everyone according to a single formula!

If these measures, which do not put the state directly under attack, can be pushed through, the people will smell blood, and it will be difficult to stop them further. I will outline the remaining steps in dotted lines; the order of their implementation may change anyway.

Abolition of in-kind privileges, such as free public transport, official transport for high-ranking officials, official apartments, and the like. Everything should be folded into the salary for greater transparency and ease of administration.

Abolition of the prosecutor’s office. If the state needs a representative in court, let it hire a lawyer on general terms, rather than keeping a special staff of officials for this purpose. And to initiate lawsuits for various violations, shoulder straps are not needed at all; citizens can handle this themselves, personally or through public organizations.

Abolition of military conscription. Wagner is fighting for Russia anyway, so let it do so officially, along with Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Chopin, and other fine fellows providing their services on the market. For a locksmith with a mortgage, a competitive choice of employers is definitely more profitable than a single PMC, which moreover operates under the table.

Abolition of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. How is the police better than the Cossacks, Serba, and other guardians of traditional values and citizens’ peace? The municipality will figure out for itself whom to hire to guard the peace on the streets. And as for forensic experts—how are they better than laboratory employees who perform paid analyses for citizens? Down with inequality!

Sale of state property. Why is some official disposing of the people’s assets? Seize and redistribute! We sell state property and divide the proceeds equally among all citizens.

And so on. The entire sequential dismantling of the state is perfectly performed under left-wing slogans of equality and justice, and most importantly—there is no need to scare anyone with scary ancap.

In the twentieth century, citizens achieved the most victories under slogans of equality. This includes the movement against segregation in the USA, anti-colonialism, and feminism. And in Russia, social protests are often quite successful. So why not start using this energy in a more useful channel instead of simply branding leftists?

By the way, speaking of bayonets: the right to bear arms is also about equality

Institute of Reputation

I am pleased to present a new video from the Libertarian band team, with whom I have the honor of collaborating. This time, we are analyzing such an important yet murky topic as the institution of reputation.

The video took a long time to prepare because the team was moving to a new studio, and it wasn’t without a few flaws, but overall, I think it turned out quite well. The script for the next video is already ready; I hope we can release it this year.

Give it a like, comment, share the link, and improve the team’s reputation if you feel they are making a good product. I want the video to get more views than the recording of Svetovoy’s lecture)))

Shock content!

Well-known Ukrainian ancap Vladimir Zolotorev gave a lecture in which he supported a minarchist program of state transformations, including nationalization. This is something to see!

In general, I am glad that people, having quickly decided on the question of “Who is to blame,” are focusing on the question of “What is to be done,” while remaining within the framework of more or less realistic ideas about the capabilities of society and social organizations.