Suppose someone you know or a business partner has taken offense at something and has begun to threaten you with the leviathan. Let’s say the laws are also on their side, and they are demanding money or something else from you. You disagree with these demands and believe you are in the right, and you would prefer to ignore state laws, but it is profitable for your counterparty to use them against you. What should you do?
If your kind word does not have enough persuasive power to resolve the conflict privately, there is nothing terrible about threatening to also turn to the state on your part. Its laws are written such that everyone is guilty before it, so your threat is something like resorting to the doctrine of mutual nuclear deterrence.
Describe to them in vivid detail all the problems that you both will face if you start official disputes; tell them that you are ready to go to the end, but would gladly avoid all this mutual disgrace if they, following your lead, show consciousness and refuse to use the state against people.
It doesn’t matter at all what you threaten with. The state will roast one person for unauthorized apartment redevelopment, another for paying staff under the table, and a third for swearing in a public place. Something will definitely be found.
Isn’t it wonderful when even your own minor disagreements can be turned into an act of defiance against the regime!
The Austrian School of economics asserts that values are subjective; a person always makes choices based on their own personal preferences, which are unknown to anyone else, immeasurable, and unpredictable. Even within such strict frameworks of ignorance, a number of general statements can be made based on praxeology, that is, the logic of human action.
The Neoclassical school took a different path. It consistently and diligently approximated human behavior using mathematical models. Starting with the simplest model of homo economicus—the omniscient, dispassionate utility maximizer—it gradually released new patches to describe the behavior of real people in the language of models, so that it would correlate somehow with actual observed human activity.
Within this approach, various cognitive biases, the influence of different emotions, and so on, were described, extending even to the phases of the moon and blood glucose levels. Did this help in any way to learn how to predict the behavior of economic agents? Only for some special cases, and only at the level of probabilities, which, in general, remains within the bounds of common sense. I believe the achievements of behavioral economics can be helpful in creating realistic human emulators conducting some economic activity in the information space.
At the tenth Adam Smith readings, Rostislav Kapelyushnikov gave a very interesting lecture on how the achievements of behavioral economics in studying bounded rationality are used as a justification for paternalism. The idea is that since a person makes a certain choice anyway, and makes it irrationally, why not gently nudge them toward a choice that is more beneficial both for themselves and for society. In other words, there is still an attempt to decide for the person what is best for them, and behavioral economists give their approval for this, whereas classical economists, who proceeded from the presumption of the rationality of human choice, did not give the state such sanction. Thus, the state received a scientific indulgence for even greater intervention in the economy in terms of regulations.
Does behavioral economics shatter the idea of libertarianism? Rather, it provides new arguments to continue ignoring libertarianism, while practice still turns out to be on the side of freer societies where there is less regulation, no matter how scientific that regulation may be.
Right now, international neutral waters represent a curious space of partial ancap. While not being anyone’s property, they allow a vessel to remain almost entirely extraterritorial (a vessel is considered the territory of the flag state, and therefore the market has decided in favor of convenient flags—such states have large merchant fleets, sometimes without even bothering to have access to the sea).
That is precisely why, when ancap arrives on land, the changes at sea will be minimal. A vessel will remain the private property of its owner, fishing grounds will be jointly operated by fishing companies (and if they fail to carefully read Elinor Ostrom, the market will punish them), there will be an increased likelihood of encountering pirates in the straits (but a rich set of tools can be used against them), the water will remain salty, and the great garbage patch will remain localized in the Pacific Ocean, existing by the will of the prevailing currents.
As wild fish becomes more expensive, humanity will increasingly switch to farmed fish; as plastic becomes more expensive, there will be a growing temptation to fish it out of the ocean for recycling; as the population grows and seasteading becomes cheaper, a considerable part of the ocean may become the territorial waters of new floating islands; until then, it is unlikely that anyone will start carving it into small plots.
Modern ancaps see the future of the ocean, while states persist on land, something like this
It is interesting to consider this case from the perspective of ancap. At the same time, the parents are against it, and are already upset that the guy was sentenced to 48 years (which brings up the question of the victims; it turns out there is a conflict). And others claim that the girl could have been saved, and that she needed psychological help.
анонимный вопрос
I have already covered the topic of euthanasia in quite some detail. In itself, there is nothing criminal about a killing requested by the person being killed, but in order to prove the voluntary nature of the transaction and the capacity of the client, it is advisable to carry out certain legal procedures. From the circumstances of the case under consideration, it is clear only that there was indeed a request, but the awareness of the actions remains unproven.
Of course, in the absence of a state, it would be much easier for the girl to appear at a clinic accompanied by a notary, so that the latter could record her clearly expressed intention and the results of an examination by a psychologist confirming that she is of sound mind and memory, after which she would receive her lethal injection of heroin from a doctor and pass away peacefully with a blissful smile on her face. If the prediction from the song—that under ancap, we probably won’t need to die at all—does not come true, then personally, I expect to end my life in exactly this way in my old age.
In the case under consideration, there are too many circumstances that are very difficult to imagine when ancap is all around and there are no bans on euthanasia. I will start inventing how such a thing could happen, and you will respond by claiming that ancap is sheer cannibalism; well, screw you.
Well, there is no need to hire the first guy you meet on the street when there are doctors. There is no need to hide the fact of the killing if everything happened by agreement, and this can be easily confirmed. And finally, the parents have no right to demand retribution from a conscientious executor of a legally flawless contract.
Now, if you want me to consider specifically the case linked, where the state is still around, but for some reason my non-deciding opinion is important to you, then okay. I consider the perpetrator of the killing a jerk who didn’t step away from this slippery subject, although he had every opportunity to do so. If he was driven by curiosity, then I would be wary of such curious people—maybe next time he’ll decide to be curious with a knife in my guts. If he thought such things were fucking romantic, then he could have taken a second dose of heroin, and it would have been a double suicide in a beautiful Japanese style. If he just needed money, there are many more ethical ways to earn a living. Nevertheless, this is all, of course, not a reason for a half-century prison sentence; community service in a morgue would be quite sufficient.
I don’t want naturalistic images, just a beautiful tyan in the forest!
His idea is that the state in the form of bureaucrats is bad (he agrees with me on this). However, his solution to the problem is different. What if it weren’t bureaucrats, but a computer that would calculate everything perfectly? A computer is not susceptible to corruption. His argument against capitalism is that under capitalism, resources are spent inefficiently, which hinders the development of humanity. He says that in a market economy, scarcity is built-in as a motivational mechanism. That is, there is a shortage of something—this stimulates entrepreneurs who try to satisfy the demand for the scarcity and profit from it. I think this topic needs to be analyzed, if it hasn’t been done already.
анонимный вопрос
There is a common point of view that any IT specialist would prefer to replace any bureaucrat with a single simple script. In a free market, this is exactly what happens: artificial intelligence is replacing various mid-level professionals, mainly those who work with their heads rather than their hands: journalists, lawyers, stock traders, designers, and so on. So technically, there are no problems with abolishing bureaucrats, but there is a reluctance among bureaucrats to be abolished, because the state bureaucracy is the strongest union on Earth.
Therefore, if one implements state administration using artificial intelligence without first abolishing the bureaucrats, it becomes an extremely resource-intensive task that is not even close to the ideals of Jacques Fresco. They will surround the implementation process with a mountain of bureaucratic approvals, demand a certificate with a wet stamp for the execution of any e-government command, and will certainly ensure that everything runs on domestic hardware and domestic software with backdoors for the secret services.
It is far more effective to first abolish the bureaucrats, and when a shortage of administration services arises, the market economy already knows how to solve this task—after all, in a market economy, scarcity is built-in as a motivational mechanism. Thus, entrepreneurs will quickly satisfy the market demand for implementing artificial intelligence to solve coordination tasks.
To be honest, in my view, Fresco is something like an Anti-Keynes. Keynes says that the way out of a crisis is through increasing consumption via state regulation; Fresco echoes him: no, people must renounce their unnecessary needs thanks to state regulation, then resources will be in abundance, and our resource-based economy will thrive! Well, it’s simply Escobar’s axiom in its purest form. But it is not necessary to tell all this to the supporters of Jacques Fresco; it is enough to suggest a sensible market way of realizing their dream, as described in the previous paragraph.
This is approximately how an electronic bureaucrat should look from the point of view of current bureaucrats: an analog interface for signatures, stamps, handshakes, taking bribes, and putting on handcuffs. And dressed according to the dress code.
I have already answered once briefly about my understanding of the inner workings of the LPR. By design, a party is an organization engaged in organizing the political struggle for seats in government bodies. Those who join the party solely because of their libertarian views feel somewhat uncomfortable in it; to them, all this political struggle may even seem like utter foolishness. This creates completely unnecessary friction within the party.
Nevertheless, no bottom-up organized party can achieve success without numerous supporters who will provide funds for its activities in the background. And not so much through direct donations, but through the purchase of merchandise or tickets to public lectures. But their main task is to serve as agents for promoting libertarian ideology in society.
All these people, far removed from the political struggle, nevertheless want to know that they represent a strong and numerous community. The party, however, cannot and should not organize an entertainment program for them; that is not its task. From this, a demand naturally arises for the appearance of many diverse libertarian associations: shooting, cryptocurrency, educational—or even just small social circles without any specialization, which, for example, inevitably arise among the audience of one blogger or another.
The party, however, needs to determine whether a particular group is part of the party structure or is autonomous. And if it is autonomous, to what extent the party can afford to be associated with it. After all, it is through such associations that it is very convenient for the state to dilute the libertarian agenda. Yesterday some Enteo is smashing exhibitions, today he calls himself a libertarian, tomorrow people, hearing about libertarians, think they are all psychos like Enteo.
Hence all this party vigilance regarding whether a particular opinion leader calling themselves a libertarian is worthy of the name, and if someone says something, for example, about the ideas of one of the prominent party ideologues, whether to consider this still an intellectual discussion or already an intra-party split. Don’t judge these guys harshly; maintaining a single coordinated party position on key issues is indeed an important task for the political struggle.
But at the same time, the richer and more diverse the libertarian community is, the harder it will be for a conditional Enteo to draw attention to himself. Decentralization saves from the hijacking of control much like it saves a blockchain from fraudulent transactions. And in this case, there will no longer be a great need for a single centralized validator of publicly expressed views, such as a party, and only pure political activity will remain with it. As for now, I’d better stand aside, since my views in many ways do not coincide with the party program, so why stress good people and insist on the official status of the project? A confederative principle of interaction in our case is exactly what is needed.
People often ask how a libertarian society can be built by coming to power through elections. I will not dwell in detail on whether a libertarian party can come to power through elections at all, because this is the weakest point of the entire idea.
What options for building a libertarian society can the LPR choose? Mikhail Svetov often mentions them in his lectures, so I will try to explain them in plain language and provide my own comments.
1) Federalization. Mikhail constantly praises the USA and Switzerland for their model of national organization, reminding us that the RF is also de jure a federation (but not de facto—due to the violation of the constitution by the state’s first person). In this case, it will be possible to test various models of libertarianism in different regions and transfer best practices from one to another. The advantage of this approach is that in the event of an error, the consequences will be limited to one region rather than spreading across the entire country.
2) Homesteads. The idea is borrowed from the history of the settlement of the USA, when settlers from Europe occupied vacant lands, and later the government recognized their property rights to these plots. Svetov proposes to distribute the uninhabited territories of Siberia and the Far East in this way, granting settlers the right to autonomy, as if they were colonizing Mars (and accordingly, the opportunity to experiment with various libertarian models). Successful practices from these regions could then be gradually transferred to the main part of the country. Although, judging by the comments on this idea, people are not very eager to move to regions with such a harsh climate and a total lack of infrastructure.
3) Minarchism. A gradual transition to ancap is carried out through the gradual reduction of state functions across the entire country at once (as if the RF were a unitary state, which it is de facto now). Svetov means exactly this path when he calls himself a “forced minarchist.” This immediately raises the question of the stability of minarchism as such, which is further amplified by the centralization of power. A single unsuccessful reform could easily incite the people’s rage and end the LPR’s time in power, which would then create a negative image for the entire libertarian idea in the eyes of the general public for a long time.
Personally, I would propose another option—federalization of the country (simply follow the current constitution of the RF, it’s already in there) and the creation of competing extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions within regions that have approved the experiment by referendum. As the model is refined and “pitfalls” are eliminated, the geography can be expanded, gradually making all of Russia libertarian.
To the last paragraph, I would like to add that an extraterritorial jurisdiction is extraterritorial precisely so as not to be limited by some narrow list of regions. Today, there is one extraterritorial jurisdiction in the world—the jurisdiction of the United States of America. This state does not care whose territory its citizen is on; they continue to exercise their jurisdiction over them. But it is, of course, not contractual.
Out of common sense, it would be right and fair to punish such a stunt immediately and force the poster to be taken down. Under a state, that is exactly what would happen. But what would happen under ancap?
Anonymous question (paid in the amount of 0.0005 BTC)
First of all, I want to apologize for not noticing the donation transferred on Thursday immediately, and therefore I am only answering now. I will try not to disappoint in the future.
Under a state, we actually see huge erotic images all over the city in the most prominent places, from billboards right in the middle of sidewalks to banners covering the entire side of a high-rise building. The image usually features some minimally dressed girl enjoying a Coca-Cola or checking how comfortable it is to sit on the hood of a sports car. I don’t know about feminists, but I like such advertising, especially now, because it reminds me of summer.
If tomorrow marketing research in focus groups shows that sales can be increased by advertising of a homoerotic nature, or scenes of violence, or something along those lines, then either we will soon see and gladly welcome fresh advertising imagery, or this will be preceded by lobbying work to obtain permission from the state to display such things, if it currently prohibits it directly.
But your question, in essence, concerned something slightly different. What if someone decided to place not an advertisement, but an image of a deliberately repulsive nature, which does not call for buying anything but simply evokes disgust? In a state, even if the current laws do not provide a ban on such things, the image can be dismantled by a simple order from some law enforcement agency, or, if it is a civilized state, there is a chance for a private lawsuit to succeed.
Quite some time ago, I wrote about some possibilities for harmonizing the urban environment under ancap; now I will consider a slightly different aspect.
In the absence of a state, a scandalous image will remain as long as the owner is willing to pay for it. Some will organize protest actions, call for a boycott, some will try to buy the building in order to destroy the image, some (the vast majority!) will limit themselves to flame wars on the internet, some might even risk pelting the owner of the object with eggs — and some will release souvenirs and begin to glorify the city’s new symbol. Imagine, a magnet of the Eiffel Tower, which was considered disgustingly ugly and people demanded its demolition in the early 20th century! Now imagine a magnet of our city’s fucking cunt-thing! Not much time will pass, and it will be impossible to imagine the city without this monument. The free market is always eclectic, and nowhere offline is this manifested as vividly as in the appearance of cities.
There is the Earth. Around the Earth is a certain near-Earth space where people regularly launch satellites. A satellite may fail on its own or disable another satellite, either as a result of targeted commands from its owners or as a result of many unpredictable natural factors.
What rules would govern the interaction of interested parties in this sphere under ancap? In essence, roughly the same as now. The legal frameworks in which property disputes regarding satellites and their mutual influence occur already largely correspond to free market principles: entities are equal and act on the basis of clearly defined agreements.
What would be the reaction now if someone began consciously shooting down other people’s satellites? The affected parties would try to prove this fact, the broader community of those potentially involved in the conflict would also be interested in such an investigation, and further, everyone would be interested in depriving the aggressor of the ability to continue the attacks, as well as recovering damages for the affected parties.
So, with the transition to ancap on Earth, little will fundamentally change in space. Except that currently, sections of the geostationary orbit are divided among states based on geographical criteria; were there no states, other agreements between players in the space industry would come into effect. Perhaps the simple principle of homesteading.
Well, alright. A considerable amount of time has passed, a huge amount of debris has accumulated in orbit—how will the market solve this problem? In general, what is trash for some is a valuable resource for others. Someone has already paid to launch mass into orbit. The temptation arises to use materials raised by someone else instead of launching one’s own. For now, this is commercially inefficient. The more debris there is in orbit, the lower the costs of extracting raw materials from space debris compared to launching.
Finally, it is worth noting that the accumulation of debris occurs only in sufficiently high orbits, while in low orbits, debris soon leaves orbit on its own and harmlessly burns up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. Thus, for low orbits, extending the lifespan of a satellite is more relevant than the accumulation of satellites that have already become debris.
Thus, in the space industry, one can see all the approaches humanity has developed in the fight against the problem of waste: increasing the service life of products, littering less, and recycling waste.
I first learned that such people existed in 2014, meeting them at an anti-war rally. It feels as though their best days are behind them, and they are gradually migrating toward ancap.
To some extent, ancom is achieved when almost the entire basket of typical consumer goods loses its scarcity due to the growth of labor productivity. You click a robot, it rushes off like a sprightly little boar, and brings back some beer. There is no point in owning something that is universally available.
All sorts of craft products can certainly be made for the sake of self-expression. Minimal societal administration is required. As for projects requiring resources that remain scarce, those remain under the purview of business, but most people are completely uninterested in that—they have domestic abundance and total legalization. So, if this version of ancap looks like ancom and quacks like ancom, why not call it ancom.
