So, the distributed translation of “Mechanics of Freedom” is slowly picking up pace. The first part I received was the third chapter of the book: “Love Alone is Not Enough,” and after some edits, I have just published it.
As a reminder, you can speed up the process or simply express your gratitude by sending bitcoins. On the donations page, I provide various ways to do this.
And, of course, you can always choose a chapter for yourself to translate.
анонимный вопрос
Don’t they love it? I would say it is more like touching courtship. When three or four channels I follow posted their ads, I was somehow too lazy to go and see what they were writing, but here I finally got around to it, so well done, they used a winning tactic.
I have exactly one complaint regarding the “Libertarianism in Schemes and Memes” channel, which Grigory Bazhenov voiced to them some time ago: where are the schemes? I looked, and they really aren’t there. A shortcoming.
A picture posted in schemememes brought me 15 new subscribers. Guys, make yourselves comfortable; I will try to avoid long delays in publications in the future.
As for “memes for Russians,” I am still too lazy to drop by. But if they post something interesting there, let me know and I’ll take a look. For now, schemememes reliably protect them from my attention, for which the protected ones, I hope, will thank them.
I answered a question about my attitude toward TON, after which a TON expert came to my chat and shared a lot of juicy details. Then a Lightning Network expert appeared in the chat and explained why TON is not needed. I followed his recommendations and convinced myself that it is already possible to send bitcoins to each other in Telegram instantly and with negligible fees. I think this new knowledge deserves a detailed instruction, because theoretically many people are familiar with Lightning, but in practice, few understand how to actually use it. I will provide the simplest recipe based on Telegram, simply because it is the most relevant for me.
The simplest way to buy bitcoins with fiat is using a Telegram bot. I have left a referral link, so not only can I get a small profit from you using it, but I will also know how many readers found it useful. By launching the bot, you become the owner of an empty online wallet, which is where you will buy your bitcoins.
By clicking “BTC/RUB Exchange,” you will see the current exchange rate. This is only a rough guide; the rate in the bot may differ significantly. Click “Buy” and you will enter a board of private ads, grouped by types of bank cards or other electronic fiat money.
Suppose you have a Sberbank card. Click the corresponding button and you will see a list of ads for selling bitcoins:
Choose a suitable ad, click on it, start the transaction, and specify the amount in rubles you intend to purchase. If the advertiser agrees to your offer, you need to transfer the money to the specified card, after which bitcoins will be credited to your wallet in the bot.
Important: all communication with the seller is conducted only inside the bot, because its administration provides arbitration in case the deal falls through. The seller’s bitcoins are blocked on their account until they receive your rubles. As soon as they arrive, the seller releases the bitcoins, and they are transferred to you.
The Lightning Network technology boils down to people opening payment channels (something like off-chain deposits) for a certain amount, then exchanging receipts, and later, when someone decides to close the channel, a netting occurs, and the remaining balance in the channel is returned to the blockchain. There is quite a complex mechanism inside, but it’s not necessary to delve into it; I don’t delve into it myself.
To open a channel, you need a lightning node, and since maintaining one yourself is a hassle, it’s easier to use a public service. I was recommended the exchanger https://zigzag.io. Open it, select bitcoins in the “you send” field, and also bitcoins in the “you get” field, but with a lightning bolt on the avatar:
Then you need to specify the address to return the change to (the “BTC refund address” field) and where, specifically, to send the money (the “BTC lightning invoice” field). For the change, you can specify the same wallet from which you are sending the money, or any other one you have.
To find the destination wallet, you need to launch the @lntxbot in Telegram. Then send a private message to the bot:
/invoice
and it will generate a string of gibberish:
Copy it and paste it into the “BTC lightning invoice” field, click “Exchange” — and you will see something like this:
Simultaneously, a message about the receipt of funds will come from the bot to your private messages:
That’s it, you have opened a payment channel.
The most important command that you will need in @lntxbot after this looks like this:
/pay
After this, I receive the amount you have chosen. Of course, you can easily transfer money to any other Telegram user (even if they haven’t launched the bot themselves, the money will go to them, and they will see it only after they launch it).
You can ask the bot about other commands using the /help command
So, you have some money left in the lightning network, and instead of sending it to me, you decide for some reason to withdraw this balance back to the blockchain. Go to Zigzag and perform the reverse operation:
Specify the same bitcoin address on both the left and right sides, click “exchange,” and now the exchanger will generate an invoice for you. Then go to the private messages of @lntxbot and write:
/pay
That’s it, the payment channel is closed, and the money not spent in the lightning network returns to your wallet. As for dealing with bitcoin wallets, entire volumes have been written on that; you’ll figure it out yourself.
I’ll be glad if the article was useful to you. Be sure to try how it works. If previously a large commission size stopped you from donating to certain causes, making small tips unjustifiably expensive, you can now make people happy without such torment. First, deposit a sum into lightning that is sufficiently large relative to the miners’ commission, and then spend it in arbitrarily small portions whenever it strikes you. It is the large volume of small donations that distinguishes truly popular projects, not a couple of dozen large donations.
Allow yourself this pleasure — to be patrons.
So, I am officially beginning the translation of David Friedman’s “The Machinery of Freedom.” All the English text is posted on the website in the section “The Machinery of Freedom – original”. This includes the text of the second edition, as well as chapters prepared by David Friedman for the third edition, which I took from his website.
Translated chapters will be gradually posted in the section “The Machinery of Freedom – translation”. For now, as a teaser, I have translated and posted the introductory materials, and I am currently working on the first chapter. I have also posted five chapters translated some time ago by Elena Mokeeva commissioned by the Libertarian Party of Russia, but these still require editing to bring them to a consistent style. Anyone interested can take on the translation of a particular chapter and then send me the results of their work; I will edit it and add it to the project. Before starting a translation, it is best to contact me via DM to avoid collisions.
When the translation is fully completed, I will compile it into a single PDF for those who prefer reading on paper, and into an EPUB for those who prefer reading from a screen. The text will also remain on the website, posted by chapter—this is convenient for referencing specific chapters in discussions.
If you think this is a worthwhile endeavor, I kindly ask you not to keep your opinion to yourself, but to support the project with bitcoins or direct participation; together we will finish faster. As new chapters are posted, I will be sure to announce it in the channel.
For donations, my bitcoin wallet is still a great option:
1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8. I have also recently discovered the magical world of the Lightning network, which will be the subject of a separate article, so you can send me money directly in Telegram using a special bot. Lightning is great because it allows for the instantaneous transfer of small amounts with extremely modest fees. But you will read more about this a bit later.
Andrey
I received a detailed review of my answer about TON in the chat , and with the author’s permission, I am publishing it here.
if nothing but Telegram is required to use the coins
Yes, having Telegram will be a sufficient, but not necessary condition for using the coins.
But there will be a need for the ability to buy gram quickly and conveniently for fiat
I don’t think that buying Gram will be harder than buying popular altcoins like Ethereum, especially since the development team has enough resources to organize such exchanges. And considering that identity verification tools are already built into Telegram, this will be even easier from a regulatory compliance perspective.
why is it needed as money, since there are bitcoins themselves
I would still prefer to keep my (long-term) savings in bitcoins, but for everyday use, grams are definitely more convenient. The question “why grams when there are bitcoins” sounds roughly like “why fiat when there is gold”.
Low emission rates
According to the white paper, inflation is expected to be (no more than) 2% per year (the number of existing grams will double in 35 years), through the emission of new grams as rewards for validators.
Indeed, the number of bitcoins is fundamentally limited, and inflation decreases with each new halving, but ultimately the work of miners will be paid for not by the emission of new bitcoins, but by transaction fees, which could lead either to their increase or to a decrease in mining difficulty, and thus, to the overall security of the blockchain.
Firstly, for the sake of high transaction speed, it is intended to keep a very modest number of nodes
It is intended to keep about 1000 validators creating blocks, and as many “full nodes” as desired, which, in particular, will be able to point out validator errors, which, if confirmed, will result in the loss of the deposit and the transfer of part of it to the full node as a reward (the remaining part is irrevocably “burned”). As Nikolai Durov himself writes, despite the large number of full nodes in the bitcoin or ethereum networks, they are privately combined into large pools, which ultimately leads to the fact that, for example, 75% of all new blocks are created by fewer than ten miners/pools. Since it becomes even easier to create pools under a PoS consensus mechanism (those interested simply chip in for a deposit on one server, which then returns part of the reward to them), validators correspond almost exactly to mining pools/large miners. So a system of 1000 validators looks even more decentralized than the current state of affairs in existing cryptocurrencies.
Moreover, at the protocol level, the validator with the largest deposit is prohibited from having more than the deposit of the validator with the minimum deposit multiplied by a certain constant L. Thus, the system itself encourages “pool” participants to choose not the largest validator, but validators with smaller deposits, maintaining decentralization.
If these funds can be managed without Telegram, then it is unclear what Telegram has to do with it.
Funds will be manageable using a set of tools as diverse as those for bitcoin—a “wallet” can be created using existing programs or even by writing your own. Telegram is only involved in that, firstly, TON is being developed by the Telegram team, and secondly, a light client for this entire ecosystem will be built into the Telegram app, which will automatically create a user base of several hundred million people. The network itself is planned to be renamed simply to Open Network a few years after launch.
And, of course, it is currently difficult to consider a currency that depends entirely on a single creator as decentralized
In principle, Ethereum also depends quite heavily on Vitalik Buterin. In fact, in the early stages (while the project is being “refined”), it is indeed planned that the deciding vote in the case of changes to some configurable parameters (of which there are many, by the way, to avoid hard forks) will belong to the TON Foundation, as well as owning the majority of validators. But this is ensured only by the amount of currency in the TON Reserve, which sells and buys grams (in exchange for dollars) according to a pre-set algorithm to reduce possible exchange rate fluctuations. As soon as the majority of grams are sold (which is actually equivalent to the project “taking off,” as the number of sales depends on the rate), the TON Foundation will lose its privileges.
Overall, the essence of the TON project is to create a platform for decentralized and (partially) centralized services that would be impossible to control from the outside—so, besides cryptocurrency, TON will have a built-in proxy system, for example, allowing the creation of tunnels like VPN and TOR and, if desired, collecting payment for traffic passing through them using the built-in cryptocurrency or a micropayment system. Services can provide their offerings using all the conveniences of centralization (more efficient request processing), while users will be protected from contract violations on their part thanks to decentralized smart contracts in the blockchain—and without any (government) courts. That is, the idea is to create a new market uncontrollable by states, and from there it will work itself out.
анонимный вопрос
The main factors ensuring Bitcoin’s current dominance:
These main factors are enough so that, should you wish, you could easily sell your goods for Bitcoins or, conversely, buy goods with your Bitcoins. Or simply hold bits and enjoy the price growth.
Gram, issued as part of the TON project, will be successful if it can satisfy roughly the same criteria.
So I am quite skeptical about TON, but Gram can certainly be used as a speculative asset; hyperinflation definitely does not threaten it.
My post from the day before yesterday was reposted in a transhumanist channel, where they also posted a couple of remarks:
1. Transhumanism is closely linked to scientific and technological progress, and that requires huge financial injections; even states have problems with this, as sufficient funds for science are often not found, and under ancap, where everything will be decentralized, it could become even worse (I may be wrong, I am not as familiar with ancap ideas as the ancaps themselves), even corporations might lack funds, especially considering their drive to maximize profit. Building things like the LHC could be impossible under ancap, given the required funds and, essentially, the lack of profitability. And there wouldn’t be enough philanthropists for such scales. However, considering that under ancap, capitalists will gain access to the resources previously owned by states, this should give them more opportunities, although it’s still not a fact that it will be enough.
Here I want, firstly, to refer to my old post about funding fundamental science under ancap, and secondly, to point out that transhumanism does not need things like the LHC: research in biotechnology, bioinformatics, and other transhumanist agendas does not require a super-concentration of resources on a single mega-project, which means that funding can be decentralized, gradual, and quickly transition from the fundamental science stage to the applied stage, with rapid implementation of results in business. As far as I know, the most expensive research in this field was the sequencing of the human genome; it was carried out worldwide for many years by numerous laboratories without disrupting current scientific activities, and this is still much simpler than building some unimaginably complex installation in one place.
2. Regarding cyberpunk, that is incorrect. Cyberpunk is not tied to the fact of the existence of states; moreover, cyberpunk often depicts states as having either disappeared or lost all power, with corporations taking their place. And it is under ancap that a cyberpunk scenario of the world being governed by corporations is more than likely. One could even say that cyberpunk often captures precisely the world of anarcho-capitalism.
I am proceeding from Oppenheimer’s definition of the state, that is, an organization that uses systematic, regular, legalized, and continuously applied “political methods” to extract wealth from the producing society. Cyberpunk corporations differ from corporations in current reality in that they are states in the Oppenheimer sense, they are simply extraterritorial. This system differs from anarcho-capitalism precisely by the legality of political methods, whereas under ancap they are marginal.
1) Crowdfunding;
2) Volunteering by individual authors and voluntary gratuitous development by commercial companies to “pay back society”;
3) A non-disclosure agreement, where compliance ensures continued cooperation and violations lead to a refusal to provide new content (for example, a cinema enters into such an agreement with a film studio and undertakes not to release the film during the first week of screening; in exchange, the studio provides the newest films, and if the agreement is violated, cooperation is terminated);
4) Network effect — a pharmaceutical company develops and tests a new drug, other companies naturally begin to produce generics, but the first company has already gained sufficient recognition for the safety and effectiveness of the drug; accordingly, people are more likely to trust their health to it than to an unknown (and potentially dangerous or useless) generic. The network effect applies to almost all inventions.
5) A desire to change the world for the better. For example, Elon Musk fundamentally decided not to patent his developments in the field of electric vehicles so that they would become mass-market faster due to competition.
6) Cross-subsidization — a company may fund the development of an intellectual product through the sale of a physical good, since this intangible product may indirectly increase the value or create advertising for the physical good. For example, a CNC machine manufacturer may release a free CAD, thereby increasing interest in themselves and the chance of machine purchases.
7) Advertising, product placement — do you think actors in movies accidentally open a can of Coca-Cola or Pepsi?!
Of course, the list of monetization methods is not exhaustive, and people are constantly inventing new opportunities. For instance, selling achievements like “dinner with the author” is not exactly crowdfunding, but the creation of a rare resource out of thin air for which people are willing to pay, while they are not willing to pay for text, video, or music.
The most brilliant monetization method, in my opinion, is selling merch. People pay for the high honor of wearing advertisements for their favorite author or, say, a company — is that not a miracle?
I wouldn’t want to look like a cobbler without shoes, so I hope to eventually implement something more interesting within my own project than simply publishing a bitcoin wallet for donations. Here, everything is complicated by such a fundamental condition as maintaining anonymity, which is why I haven’t bothered much with all these things until now.
I will be glad if you share your thoughts on project monetization with me. The easiest way, perhaps, is to do it through the same form that you use to ask questions. And, of course, send bitcoins. This is especially important if you’ve never had any — buy some to donate to me, and you’ll have some left for yourself. The downward trend seems to have ended, which means a price increase awaits us; don’t miss this opportunity.
Donation wallet: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8
…And justice for all
Under a state, you’ll be fucking exhausted waiting for transhumanism, but under ancap, it really will happen soon. There is a market demand for transhumanism, but state regulations slow its arrival. Judge for yourself: even harmless genetically modified plants are banned in a whole number of countries, let alone the modification of the human genome?
Again, transhumanism will open up cosmic expansion for humans, and it’s not so easy to draw state borders in space. This is also a strong argument for the state in favor of banning research into adapting humans to extraterrestrial conditions.
In short, it’s possible to imagine ancap without transhumanism, but transhumanism without ancap—only in cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is exactly that kind of fiction where the main fantastic assumption is the preservation of the state upon the arrival of transhumanism. Granted, in most examples of the genre, these are no longer territorial states, but a cockroach-like system of extraterritorial protection rackets, but their essence doesn’t change much.
As for a society where there is no need to die, I have no particular fears. In essence, the only institution that would wither away in such a society is inheritance. And we didn’t really want it anyway. On the other hand, the individual planning horizon could grow significantly, and that is always a sign of a healthy and prosperous society.
Recently, Sergey Ankapov contacted me via Facebook direct messages, inquiring about my ability to assist in organizing the translation of Franz Oppenheimer’s book “The State.” Unfortunately, I didn’t know any translators who were free enough to join the project. And just yesterday, I found out that not only is a translation planned, but also a print edition of the book, and fundraising is underway for this. I know that many people value print editions specifically, so I consider it my duty to inform you how you can help the project. Most of the amount has already been collected; all that’s missing is you.
Also, recently, as part of the “Hyde Park Library” project, the book “The New Autocracy,” which thoroughly dissects the modern Russian political machine, was posted. The book is recommended by Ekaterina Schulmann, who participated in its creation. An activist was found who decided to take on the translation of the book, although the idea of translating a book about Russia, written primarily by Russians, from English into Russian seems a bit strange to me. Regardless, he is assembling a team of like-minded people to tackle this work collectively.
And for dessert. I have begun working on the translation of David Friedman’s book “The Machinery of Freedom” — the most fundamental work on the doctrine of anarcho-capitalism. Unfortunately, the pace is quite slow, as time for work on the project is allocated on a residual basis. I think this can be changed. In the near future, I will create a section on the website where I will post the English text by chapter, and as the translation progresses, I will add the translated parts there. Anyone who wishes can take any untranslated fragment, send me the translation, and I will edit it and add it to the site. Your donations will also be very helpful: practice has shown that I work with significantly more enthusiasm when I see that you are willing to pay for what I produce.
The book will be translated based on the text of the second edition released in 1986, with additions published in 2014 that have not yet gained widespread recognition.
