How are you going to build anarcho-capitalism? What is the plan of action?

Militiaman

I would rather speak not of a plan, but of a strategy of action. A plan is good when there is certainty: a specific achievable measurable goal, the ability to clearly specify means, break actions into stages, and so on. For example, Navalny’s campaign headquarters acted according to a plan when starting his presidential campaign: open so many headquarters by such-and-such date, distribute so many newspapers, collect so much money. Strategy differs in that only the goal is known, along with certain characteristics of the environment and some restrictions on the means used—and one must understand how the goal can be achieved at all under these conditions. An example of a strategy is “smart voting,” a recent initiative from the same Navalny headquarters. The goal is to bring down the Putin regime. The strategy at this stage is to break the monopoly of United Russia in elections. And to this are added various justifications and explanations of details.

So, the goal is anarcho-capitalism, that is, a society based on voluntary market relations, respect for private property, decentralized contract law, recognizing the value of cooperation and the disadvantage of aggressive violence.

The starting position is the state, meaning a situation in which there are categories of persons capable of committing aggressive violence with impunity through the silent acquiescence of the majority, and although it is assumed that the boundaries of this violence are defined, they are quite vague and volatile.

The strategy consists in undermining the legitimacy of the state as an institution. In relatively prosperous countries, people have to start by justifying why the state is a bandit rather than a provider of benefits. In Russia, this is already obvious to many, but it is still important to make the idea a commonplace that trying to replace a bad state with a good one is either a dead end or, at the very least, cannot be the ultimate goal.

In order for the perception of the state as a desirable or, at least, inevitable state of civilized society to cease being mainstream, one can work in several directions, according to one’s tastes and competencies:

  • developing and popularizing tools that allow one to get by without the state in spheres where it claims dominance;
  • constantly demonstrating the failures of the state and the victories of private initiative—the state must look like a total loser;
  • mass discredit of the main myths of state propaganda—from the efficiency of democracy to the efficiency of propaganda itself;
  • demonstrating the invulnerability of society before the state, or, at least, the extremely low efficiency of the state’s struggle against ancap ideologues;
  • undermining the resource base of the state by evading plunder and through the direct privatization of state property;
  • demonstrating the moral unacceptability of working for the state, from “don’t get ahead of the locomotive” to universal condemnation.
It seems Tommy does not approve

Animal rights

And what about animal rights? If a dog eats me, will it be acquitted?

анонимный вопрос

What will happen to animal abusers in a Free Society (stray dogs and cats)?

Roman

Hi. Regarding Varlamov’s recently released video, a question: how does ancap view circuses and animal abuse? Is it possible to limit torture and abuse through the court if animals are not subjects?

Vadim

Three questions about animal rights arrived almost one after another, which gave me a reason to talk about this topic out of turn. True, I have already answered a question quite close in meaning, it’s a pity that you are not very keen on watching old answers and instead ask as if nothing happened. So, mostly, read the answer in the old post.

I read Varlamov’s post about the Zapashny animal abusers with great respect. Varlamov is not calling for the Zapashnys to be banned; he condemns the ban on Cirque du Soleil. Against animal abusers, he calls for voting with your feet, as the institution of reputation works much more reliably than state bans. Today they will be banned, and tomorrow they will start organizing underground performances that crowds will attend. No, let the market decide on humanism, not the tsar.

I first read that circuses with animals are disgusting at a rather tender age from one of my favorite writers (even though he was a communist) — Jack London. I don’t know if the original authorship of this thought belongs to him, but at least he did a very good job for the moral condemnation of such things, and I thank him for that. I hope Russia will not need hundreds of years for the rooting of corresponding ideas. To be honest, I even find it unpleasant to watch clowns in a circus (too many jokes about violence and humiliation), but aerial gymnasts, for example, are a different story!

And in conclusion, I will briefly answer the first question, which stands out a bit from the general row. A dog that has mauled a person will neither be tried nor acquitted. If the dog was not someone’s property, and no one had undertaken to protect the residents of that territory from wild animals, then there is no one to hold accountable for the fact that the dog mauled someone. How the next person who encounters it deals with it is their personal business. If the humanism toward animals that I raved about in the previous paragraph forces someone to start protecting it from people, it will be equivalent to turning the dog into property and taking responsibility for its further behavior.

I don’t want pictures of animal abusers, I want the cute John Griffith Chaney!

Is it possible to sell libertarianism to people who fear that robots will take their jobs and hope for UBI? How can ancap improve a society in which 75-90% are unemployed?

…And Justice For All

answered by Alexey Nefedov

The majority of libertarian arguments regarding UBI were presented in his 2016 article by economist and LPR member Yuri Kuznetsov. In it, he shows that replacing the system of conditional benefits with an unconditional income eliminates the stagnation poverty trap and increases the overall efficiency of the redistributive system by reducing bureaucracy.

Ekaterina Schulmann also touched upon UBI and the fears of neo-Luddites in one of her programs on Echo of Moscow. She pointed out that those countries with poor institutions should be more concerned about mass unemployment due to robotization. They won’t get any UBI; instead, they will face a transition to subsistence living. Thus, Ekaterina Mikhailovna gives citizens a simple recipe: engage more in politics so that they are perceived as political subjects.

In Russia, on the one hand, there are poor institutions, and on the other—a strong demand for social welfare. If global robotization suddenly begins, it is more likely that several million more public sector jobs will be created here than UBI will be introduced. Public employees are too valuable for securing administrative resources during elections and similar matters.

And here are arguments for UBI from another LPR member, Mikhail Pozharsky. UBI means not only less bureaucracy but also a common set of rules for everyone, which is a crucial part of liberal doctrine.

However, both Kuznetsov and Pozharsky still remain within the framework of minarchism. Uniform rules are imposed on everyone, and we shall see how long this model can last. Furthermore, the so-called unconditional income still remains conditional, since the condition for its payment is citizenship of the country that established UBI for its citizens.

Can ancap improve a society where unemployment is at 90%? Yes, if unemployment is caused by state regulation, and otherwise people are offered work and are willing to take it. No, if work is not needed by ninety percent of people because they already have enough to live on.

Will there be UBI under ancap? Yes, if during the dismantling of the state, those who contributed to the UBI fund decide to continue doing so on a voluntary basis. Is this likely? Yes, if it is not burdensome and brings respect and prestige. What should be done to bring this bright future closer? Either increase the productivity of one’s labor or improve one’s ability to show respect and prestige. One can combine these strategies.

Was there capitalism in Russia in the nineties?

анонимный вопрос

I remember defining capitalism as a social arrangement in which the dominant form of relations between people is commodity-money relations. A more classical definition, which was common in the Soviet Union, states that capitalism is a social arrangement in which the means of production are privately owned. It is quite obvious that in the nineties in Russia, there was no pure capitalism according to either of these definitions, but rather a transitional form of society, where old socialist (or despotic, in my understanding) relations were dying out, and capitalist ones were replacing them (as for the features of feudalism in the “sovok,” they did not disappear under the new order and have persisted to this day).

However, it must be remembered that, generally speaking, the term “capitalism” is more journalistic than scientific; therefore, when speaking about the existence of capitalism in a certain country at a certain time, we are speaking more about the society’s correspondence to certain values at that time. That is, capitalism rather in the sense of Weber (the spirit of capitalism as rationality and the Protestant work ethic) or Schumpeter (the spirit of capitalism as entrepreneurship and creative destruction).

Now, in the Russia of the nineties of the last century, the spirit of capitalism according to Schumpeter was present in abundance. It was a time of enormous opportunities and that very creative destruction. As for the spirit of capitalism according to Weber, it was nowhere to be found. What work ethic? Man is a wolf to man; if you want to survive, you have to know how to hustle. Capital was created primarily by plundering the Soviet legacy, by that same creative destruction, and by the ability to adapt the fragments of the old to new conditions better than others, rather than by the capacity for hard work, painstaking saving, and careful investing.

Consequences of marijuana legalization

According to research, in Colorado, after the legalization of marijuana, “…the black market, contrary to expectations, only grew after legalization; after legalization, the state rose to first place in marijuana use among teenagers, and the school system received no positive changes.

There was a surge in crimes such as robberies and car thefts. The growth in crime rates in 2016 exceeded 11 times the average among the 30 largest US cities. The number of murders increased by 10%”.

Taken from here. Please comment.

анонимный вопрос

To answer the question, I had to familiarize myself with the English-language report on the consequences of legalization provided in the bibliography at the end of the article.

The funniest part turned out to be the black market. Why did it grow? Because entrepreneurs from other states came to Colorado legally to stock up and then tried to move the product into their own states, where it remained illegal. This is obvious, as weed remained significantly more expensive there due to its illegality. Naturally, some of the traffic was intercepted, money was spent on this, and all of it entered the reporting; as a result, we see a paradoxical situation: it seems like legalization, but the volume of illegal operations is growing, and more funds are spent on suppressing them. In other words, federal agency expenditures increased to combat a business that is legalized in the state, and we are told about an increase in expenditures to fight the black market in the state. Just legalize weed in the other states, and these expenses will disappear; until then, suffer in silence.

When analyzing mortality, the report focuses on road deaths. When passing the marijuana legalization law, it was assumed that by increasing the number of people driving high, the number of drunk drivers would decrease, as it is safer to drive high. What came of this? I quote: “But while traffic deaths in general have declined in Colorado, the percentage of marijuana-related fatalities increased, the report said.” In other words, exactly what was wanted happened, but since the report was written by a commission fighting substances, they emphasize that more deaths are now passing through their department, and this, allegedly, is bad. Well, the fact that the state is not monolithic and contains different interest groups is a long-known fact; however, for citizens, the only important thing is that overall road mortality in the state has decreased.

The economic effect of legalization is such that in 2017 alone, marijuana sales volume amounted to one and a half billion dollars. In addition to regular taxes, marijuana is subject to special taxes, and through these alone in 2017, municipalities and the state collected 247 million dollars from citizens, or 2.3% of the state budget’s total revenue.

How did the state dispose of this money? Part of the money turned out to be spent on providing medical care to marijuana users, which can be considered at least somewhat legitimate spending, although this money could simply not have been taken, and people would have paid doctors themselves without the mediation of officials. But the majority went to various crap like funding schools or the police—that is, protectionist measures to develop some industries at the expense of others and direct embezzlement. Well, the efficiency of the state in such matters has been known for a long time and is similarly unsurprising.

Finally, I looked into what’s happening with crime. The source used in the article gives an account from a police sergeant about a “green rush” in the state, where adventurers from all over the country come to grow marijuana and make money from it. And since the state surrounded this business with regulatory hurdles, as it loves to do, people grow weed illegally—for example, they rent a house, tear up the floors, and set up a farm under the roof. Naturally, with full legality of the business, no one would think of bothering with such bullshit when it is cheaper to rent a piece of land than to set up underground farms in houses, while also violating the property rights of the owners of those very houses.

As for the 10% increase in the overall crime rate, I want to note that the influx of tourists and entrepreneurs is unlikely to be accurately accounted for by state authorities, unlike the crime rate, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the rate per 100,000 people remained roughly the same as it was.

Summary. Most of the problems mentioned in the article are either contrived, related to remaining legislative restrictions in this industry, or due to specifics of statistical accounting (some things became more visible, such as doctor visits, and some less, such as the number of state residents). As marijuana is legalized in all states, everything will settle down quite quickly, and people will become richer and happier.

Если вы пришли сюда по ссылке из других соцсетей, напоминаю, что на мой канал можно подписаться в телеграме, а для обсуждения деятельности канала там же, в телеграме, создан уютный чатик.

Minarchists are wasting their time

Bitarch’s Column

In Western Europe, especially in German-speaking countries, minarchist (classical-liberal) parties have existed for many years. The ideology of the LPR and, in particular, Mikhail Svetov, is very similar to the ideas of the Swiss FDP.Die Liberalen, which is not surprising, as he praises Switzerland in almost every lecture as the country closest to libertarianism.

In reality, he only provides facts taken out of context, omitting the prevalence of ever-increasing regulation and taxes that are not symbolic at all. This is not surprising—the influence of FDP.Die Liberalen on Swiss politics is not that great, and in recent years it has garnered only slightly more than 15% of the votes in parliament. Compared to other countries, in many of which minarchist parties are not represented in parliament at all, this is a decent result. But to build a libertarian society through election victories, this is completely insufficient. A similar picture exists in Germany—the results of the local FDP are even slightly more modest than the Swiss ones, remaining at around 10% for many decades.

Evaluating the prospects of the LPR in Russia, it is worth noting that in our society, the ideas of minarchism are even more marginal than in Europe. This party is unlikely to even enter the State Duma, let alone have any significant influence on state policy. Minarchists in Europe failed to achieve this over decades of active political struggle, and it is completely foolish to hope that it will be different in the RF.

To promote libertarianism, the path of party struggle clearly cannot be the only one. Hoping for a gradual transition to a free society through minarchism is also meaningless. In my opinion, a more realistic approach is to educate people with the ideas of a free society and the model of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions (ECJ) as a transitional model to a free society with a full NAP.

The Question of Emancipation

According to the principle of self-ownership, a person owns their body and its derivatives. Does it not follow from this that the mother (or both parents) owns their child?

анонимный вопрос

Under ancap, under what conditions does a sentient being/program that is not human cease to be property and obtain rights equal to human rights?

Dmitry

Indeed, according to the principle of self-ownership, both a child and an artificial intelligence are the property of their creators. But the very concept of property is a convention. And exactly what rights the right of ownership entails is also a convention. Some sentient beings agree to tolerate certain behavior of other sentient beings if, for some reason, they believe those others have the right to do so. Generalizing the countlessly diverse behavior of the most varied sentient beings, wise lawyers formulate legal principles which, in particular, state:

  • which set of rights is called the right of ownership
  • what constitutes a human
  • that a sentient human possesses the right of ownership over themselves
  • that since a child almost inevitably grows into a sentient human, it makes sense to recognize part of the rights of a sentient human in advance
  • how a growing child will obtain those rights that they were not yet entitled to at birth
  • how a sentient being that is not human can obtain rights equal to human rights

The conclusions of different lawyers may not coincide. Different people may share the opinions of different lawyers to varying degrees. Some people are ready to use violence for the sake of asserting their ideas about legal doctrine, while some are not.

And ancap, as applied to the issue under consideration, is simply such a legal doctrine which asserts that there is no one whose opinion on this matter is uniquely and a priori correct, and subject to imposition on all others through the unlimited application of force.

The moment you declare that ancap is the principle of self-ownership raised to an absolute, or the principle of non-aggression raised to an absolute, or the principle of freedom of contract raised to an absolute—you are deviating from the principles of ancap. Keep your absolute away from children (and other borderline legal phenomena).

Keep the absolute away from children!

How will the consequences of catastrophes and natural disasters be fought under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

So, we have a situation: a bridge has collapsed, a house has burned down, a mine has caved in, a typhoon has hit, people have suffered, and Putin isn’t around, so there is no one to promise every victim a couple of million rubles from the budget.

The most reliable and systemic solution, upon which ancap theorists place their main bet, is, of course, insurance companies. Knowing that there is no state and that they must rely on themselves, people have far more incentive to insure their risks. Thus, the insured receive payouts, the uninsured lament their stinginess, and everything takes its course: some insurance companies handle the situation with dignity, some are forced to refinance urgently, and some go bankrupt, thereby cleaning up the market. New insurance premiums trickle in, and even more so, because the issue of risk has temporarily risen to the top of the rankings, policies are easier to sell, and everyone strikes while the iron is hot.

But it is not enough to pay money to those who applied for payouts; first, the rubble must be cleared, evacuations carried out, fires extinguished, and so on—in short, the further spread of the disaster must be stopped. This is profitable for insurance companies, but the free-rider effect arises: for example, one company may start the work while another does not, thereby incurring lower costs. A logical solution appears to be the advance creation and maintenance of rescue services by insurance companies, with funding, for example, proportional to policies sold, or simply equally, depending on their agreement. Effectively, for insurance companies, this is something like the reinsurance of risks.

Finally, it may happen that help is needed urgently, but specialized services are far away, or the scale of the disaster is such that specialists certainly cannot cope. In this situation, volunteers, of course, come to the rescue. Volunteers come to help people even in Putin’s Russia, with all its paternalism and all the dangers awaiting those who engage in crowdfunding from the side of the state—so in the absence of this factor, the readiness to come to the rescue will only improve.

Ancap is not some new, unseen social order where everything will be completely different and no old mechanisms will work. Simply mentally remove the state, and in most cases, you will find that it is either not needed at all or is very easy to replace.

Putin will not come and will not put out the fire

Could private security companies, in the process of competition, engage in physical combat against competitors or torture those who will not use their services?

анонимный вопрос

I think no one doubts that they have the technical capability for such actions, which means they cannot be ruled out. Of course, such excesses will occur; the only question is what they will lead to.

First, let’s consider an example of a monopoly security structure like the “police.” If a competitor emerges, wishing to provide security services to someone other than the police, the police will, of course, enter into a physical struggle with them. This might look boring: initiating a case, conducting an inspection, arrest, investigation, trial, fines, and imprisonment. It might look exciting: chases, shootouts, a coffin, a cemetery. One way or another, the competitor is eliminated, simply because most citizens are convinced of the benefit of a state monopoly on violence, as Hobbes himself proclaimed and Shulman herself confirmed. Will the police torture those who do not use their services? Worse. They will torture those who pay for their services, simply because they can, and there is nothing to oppose them with. More precisely, it is proposed to oppose this lawlessness with the activities of specialized alternative security enterprises: the prosecutor’s office, the internal security department, and so on. In other words, even in current reality, no one is ready to agree to a full and comprehensive monopoly on violence by a single actor. It is proposed that the watchmen be watched.

Now let’s consider a gangster “protection racket” like those that, according to legend, flooded the streets in the nineties. If a city is large enough, there may be several competing rackets. In what cases do rackets enter into physical clashes with competitors? First, the clashes must be inexpensive (plenty of cheap fighters). Second, the disputed business must be quite lucrative. But if a certain business is potentially capable of bringing good money to a racket, it can afford to choose the racket that works better and cheaper, because otherwise, one can always turn to competitors. Thus, competition between rackets will inevitably lead to a reduction in extortion, meaning that physical clashes with competitors will become increasingly unjustifiable. Again, the faster fighters are spent, the more expensive they become. And so, bloody clashes become a rarity, and instead, the bosses settle everything “according to the code.”

And what about torturing those who are not clients? Of course, it is profitable for a racket to spread rumors about punishments for the stubborn. In reality, however, conducting such activities will become completely redundant over time, especially since just a couple or three well-publicized precedents—and few will risk being completely without protection, and bothering someone else’s client is already against the code and fraught with danger. Again, if someone is without protection, it does not mean they are completely harmless, or that there is no one to stand up for them. Simply put, in general, the people standing up for them will be amateurs, but amateurs can also be rare psychos. So why risk it?

The fighters are cheap, but already a bit worn out