Is incitement to suicide/aiding suicide a crime?

Rachok

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

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

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

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

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

The End of Minarchism in Switzerland

Bitarch’s Column

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

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

A woman with a painted face underneath a rainbow umbrella

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

Someone Unknown

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

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

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

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

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

A question regarding medications for rare diseases.

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

анонимный вопрос

Answered by Alex Murin

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

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

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

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

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

Will this be within the norm under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think about agorism? Are there differences between anarcho-capitalism and agorism?

Classical Liberal

The difference between ancap and agorism is quite simple. Ancap is a state of society in which institutionalized coercion is absent, while agorism is a strategy for achieving ancap. In one of my early posts “Ancap or Minarchism?” I called this method counter-cultural, as opposed to political, but I am ready to agree that the term is subpar and a mouthful; in the future, I will use the word “agorism” specifically.

Agorism assumes that the only effective strategy for achieving ancap is direct action. If you want ancap, live according to ancap; do not try to bargain with the state or use state-approved mechanisms for interacting with the state, because this practice, which is questionable in terms of protecting rights, strengthens those very mechanisms and the state along with them.

Agorism is the black market, private education, crypto-economics, horizontal ties, and voluntary mutual aid. As is easy to see, in recent years, agorists have achieved considerable success in developing the necessary infrastructure and do not plan to stop.

However, it is also easy to see that the greatest intellectual contribution to the development of agorist mechanisms is still made by people living in relatively free states, while agorists in somewhere like China keep quiet as mice. Thus, for agorism to emerge as an ideological direction and develop steadily, rather than representing spontaneous, easily suppressed acts of defiance against violence, a certain basic level of political and economic freedoms is necessary, and this level is achieved precisely by political methods.

On the other hand, for example, the economic transformation from a planned to a market economy in Russia happened largely thanks to the black market that had already developed in the late Soviet Union; without it, private property would have had to be created from absolute scratch, which would have been far more difficult.

Finally, I will note that for a market to emerge, a certain minimum level of trust in society is required, without which the costs of ensuring security simply eat up all the benefits of most transactions, making market relations marginal, while subsistence farming and various forms of coercion come to the fore. The best mechanism for establishing trust is the successful experience of joint activity. And here, political activity, some form of cooperative economics, charity, and even sports competitions or mass celebrations are equally suitable.

So both agorism and political libertarianism successfully work toward the same goal. The more political rights there are relative to underdeveloped economic rights, the more relevant agorism becomes. The more economic rights there are relative to underdeveloped political rights, the more relevant political activity becomes, although it may also take on very peculiar forms—which is no surprise if parties are not registered and not included in ballots. And in a situation where there are neither political nor economic rights, I’m sorry, but the most direct path is flight from this hell, or an armed uprising.

*Another pitfall of agorism: the similarity of methods with left-wing anarchists can lead to migration toward their ideology. Be careful with that.*

Liberal Archipelago

In my favorite Hyde Park Library, a book was recently uploaded that few people are likely to read, if only because of the disgusting format (a scan of a paper book) and its massive size (nearly five hundred pages). I am talking about “Liberal Archipelago” by Chandran Kukathas. However, you will surely have enough patience to read the book’s preface written by Vadim Novikov.

I won’t lie, I also only managed to get through the preface and skimmed the rest of the book, mainly to make sure that it was at least written in a digestible style. Yes, the style is fine; it’s readable.

What is interesting about the ideas presented by Kukathas? He analyzes liberal notions of justice (Rawls’ veil of ignorance principle and the like) and concludes that while this is all theoretically very attractive, in practice, it will still be impossible to impose uniform concepts on people. And it shouldn’t be done. According to Kukathas, the most critical basic freedom is the freedom to exit a community. The most critical liberal virtue is tolerance. If you truly and sincerely believe that your ethical principles are the best, prove it through peaceful competition rather than imposing them by force.

This refers back to my recent post about the US Civil War. Yes, slavery offends the sense of justice. But the attempt to rid the Southern states of slavery through laws passed in Congress led to secession, secession led to war, and as a result, no one escaped unscathed.

Kukathas concludes that a society consistent with liberal principles would be one where the question of power is resolved by a social contract, but where this contract is entered into by each specific person within each specific community they belong to and from which they can freely exit. This is the same idea of contractual jurisdictions frequently discussed by libertarians. So, if you need more arguments in their favor—you know what else is worth reading.

How is it with female genital mutilation in the Beautiful Russia of the Future?

анонимный вопрос

Answered by Alex Murin

Female genital mutilation, like any forced medical procedure performed without necessity, is a crime against a person. The main problem is that it is most often committed by relatives against a legally incompetent girl. In Russia, cases of female circumcision have been recorded in Dagestan. If we try to analyze this from the perspective of the NAP, it is an assault on a person with the intent to cause injury, putting their life at risk. Circumcision is most often performed at home by people who lack even basic medical knowledge.

The non-aggression principle presupposes the protection of a person of any age. Consequently, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future, the girl’s relatives will be held accountable: either in the form of compensation for damages or via deductions from income earned in a private prison.

I believe that the position viewing a child as the property of their parents is untenable; the child and parent are in a guardianship relationship. The intentional infliction of harm on a ward is a more terrible crime than aggressive violence against a person who could fight back. At the same time, it would be logical for a court to declare the guardianship of such relatives illegal. The victim, unable to support herself, has the right to choose a more worthy guardian or to live and study in institutions maintained by private funds.

Over time, the tradition will fade into the past. Currently, it is sustained by the impunity of those performing the operation. The reason for this impunity is total nepotism in the regions where the practice is widespread. There, a child simply has nowhere to turn for protection. The police will not accept a report of grievous bodily harm because that’s just how things are done there. An independent municipal court or an arbitration court is more likely to side with the victim to maintain its reputation.

This tradition is unlikely to find support among insurers. Infection is very often introduced during female circumcision. The most common complications of such a procedure are inflammation, scarring, and difficulties with urination and the discharge of menstrual fluids. Insurers would have to pay for the treatment of every unsuccessful case. Another motive deterring relatives would be a manifold increase in insurance costs.

The damaged reputation of those practicing such atrocities could also influence the eradication of the tradition. While we currently cannot influence the security forces and clan leaders of the North Caucasus, without state support, they will have to reckon with the general law enforcement practice across the country; otherwise, people will not agree to live in their jurisdictions.

And yes, an exception is possible. If a woman wishes to obtain a certain status or respect among Muslims who adhere to such a tradition, she has the right to go to a clinic and undergo the procedure voluntarily. It is quite difficult to stop her; she is the owner of her own body.

Addition from Ancap-chan

In a situation where such a practice is widespread throughout a community (and circumcision can also be male, which is no less of a piece of filth), it is pointless to try to take the victimized child away from the parents through a court and hand them over to other relatives, as they most likely hold similar views. It is even more pointless to try to fine the parents, as they share a budget with the child, and the child, in addition to the mutilation, would be punished financially.

But upon growing up and gaining independence (and in the BRF, even a traditional society will be forced to grant a woman this independence), the woman can then pursue her parents in court for her mutilation, be branded an ungrateful beast, but uphold the version of justice that she herself shares.

The state, of course, also knows how to deal with traditional society, but such a medicine is worse than the disease. In a libertarian environment, traditional society will erode much faster and more reliably through the rebellion of individuals.

Do you think a full-fledged ancap could emerge in the process of colonizing planets?

анонимный вопрос

A vast number of science fiction works are dedicated to the theme of relations between Earth and its alien colonies. Significant attention is also paid in such works to the organization of society within these colonies. In essence, it all comes down to which specific sci-fi assumptions form the basis of a given plot.

Let us try the opposite approach: to understand what minimum sci-fi (and preferably realistic) assumptions must be made so that the society emerging in Earth’s alien colony is anarcho-capitalist. Well, let us reason it through.

In theory, of course, by the time alien colonies appear, ancap should already exist on Earth; accordingly, it would be quite natural for a colony to maintain this specific type of social relation. But that is too trivial an assumption, albeit quite realistic.

For the sake of interest, I would, for example, assume the opposite: that for some mysterious reason, the technologies for colonizing other planets are all available, yet ancap has still not taken root. It is not entirely clear to me how this could be, as there are no grounds for states to have survived for so long. But we are talking about science fiction, and this is our sci-fi assumption.

Moving on. For anarcho-capitalism to exist in a colony, a free market must be established there. If, for instance, the entire colony consists of a single firm trading with Earth, then the relations within it will likely be monetary-labor relations, and we will get a completely different society. Thus, sufficient autonomy of the colonists is necessary; after all, if they depend on centrally distributed resources in everything, there can be no anarchy. This means either the planet is terraformed, or it was originally habitable, or the technologies for arranging living space around oneself are very inexpensive and accessible to almost everyone.

As a result, we have a surplus of living space, which allows people to coexist only when it brings benefits, and not simply because it is crowded and there is nowhere else to go. This is very important for the emergence of the proverbial autonomy of the individual and the dominance of voluntary relations—coercion in such an environment is simply unnecessary and highly ineffective.

In general, with the colonization of such a planet, we get a situation similar to the experience of the USA, but without Indians and slaves—those two ancestral traumas of the United States that contributed to the expansion of federal government powers and led to internal wars.

We will dismiss the sci-fi assumption regarding the possibility of interplanetary wars with disdain: it is good for a blockbuster, but far too improbable. This also works in favor of ancap: there is no need to maintain a defense against space invasion, because out of fear of something like that, a state might accidentally emerge, and then you’d have to root it out of people’s minds…

How to bring ancap as close as possible in countries with a post-communist economy?

Everything looks quite smooth in the USA, but conditions are different in the former USSR. Often, loss-making state enterprises, mono-towns, an economy tied to the military-industrial complex, and micro-district housing developments hinder individualism and state non-interference — eliminating or minimizing the state and closing loss-making enterprises in a short timeframe would lead to unemployment and the demise of all public sector workers, while the survivors would hang the reformers, disregarding the NAP. Does Russia have a chance for successful libertarian reforms?

анонимный вопрос

Answer by Alex Murin

And why rush? Ancap and libertarianism are an ideology. If people share it, they will be guided by it. If they don’t, they won’t. You cannot force people to live without a state. These are free people; they decide for themselves how to live. It is only in mono-towns and at loss-making state enterprises that people more quickly come to the realization that the government is not their friend. Instead of shops with beautiful displays, kiosks with cheap beer begin to appear; instead of excise vodka, people switch to moonshine. Instead of saying “I am an honest taxpayer,” people prefer to hide their income and conduct cash transactions without documentation.

High-rise development, where neighbors do not know each other and the concept of “one’s own” ends at the apartment threshold, is a serious problem for a free society. Until people become owners of their land and understand that their home is a fortress belonging only to them, it is difficult to speak of freedom and self-government. But we have another factor playing in our favor — poverty. A person who has nothing to lose is more likely to stop supporting the one who robs them year after year than a person who has their own house or firm, who is not ashamed to say “my grandfather and father voted for the Republicans, and I support them too.” There are many paths to a free society; we chose the path through poverty and extreme social inequality. And I would not want to specify deadlines; I would rather indicate the direction.

Addition by Ancap-tyan

During the collapse of the state, we should all take an example from Venezuela. While official propaganda there glorified the victories of the socialist economy and inflation hit record highs, people invested in what was beyond the state’s control — in bitcoin. The volume of bolivar transactions on the localbitcoins service noticeably exceeds, for example, the volume of euro transactions. However, Russians do not particularly need my advice, as the volume of ruble transactions on localbitcoins also exceeds the volume of euro transactions. So, even when the state demonstrates extreme inefficiency, it is by no means necessary to lose everything because of it. When a chance arises to change something in the country, it is better to have resources than not to have them.

Of course, bitcoin is not the only possible investment beyond the state’s control. Even more important are investments in horizontal ties. You may not be a civil society if you believe that political methods are currently ineffective, or if you despise political methods as such. But as atomized loners, you will not survive without the state. Therefore, the well-known communist slogan calling for the unification of the world proletariat should also be taken into account and creatively reworked for yourself, simply by removing the restrictions on the class composition of your community.

Finally, if for some reason you are a public sector worker receiving pennies for meaningless and ineffective work for the state, it would be foolish to discourage you from this job — you would have left it long ago yourself if you could. But you should not obsess over it. They say that in the late Soviet Union, which consisted of public sector workers just a bit more than entirely, terms absent from socialist political economy, such as “shabashka,” “kalym,” and other names for counter-economic phenomena, enjoyed extraordinary popularity. And so it is now — a good leftist under socialism strengthens not the marriage, but the personal budget. You can receive a salary from the state, but it is better to spend your main efforts on side jobs.