I am posting the edits of three more chapters of The Practical Anarchist by Stephan Molneux.
Anarchy, Violence, and the State – this section analyzes the economic incentives for violence (which in some ways echoes a chapter from Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom about the economics of vice and virtue) and shows that the best way to exponentially increase the amount of violence is to establish a state, because it is precisely the state that most successfully combats the economic factors that prevent the widespread use of violence in private life.
War, Profit, and the State – here the thesis is further sharpened, and explanations are provided as to why involving the state is the only way to make modern warfare profitable; a private individual has no chance of waging war effectively and remaining in the black.
Successful Operation (Dead Patient) – here the author discusses the tragedy of the commons and how, in most cases, it is perfectly resolved through privatization rather than the regulation of public goods. But even if one assumes that in some cases the tragedy of the commons cannot be cured by privatization, the state in any event cannot be the remedy, since it is itself the clearest example of that very tragedy.
It is often claimed that the commission of brutal violence by humans, up to and including murder, is natural, based on supposed endless observation of human society. Not a day in history has passed without murders or some form of armed conflict, and this continues in the modern world. This implies that humans are extremely cruel and violent.
But such claims are based on a purely subjective perception of events occurring in the world. For example, 69% of Americans believe that domestic violence is widespread among American football players. This belief is fueled by media scandals surrounding players who actually commit such acts. However, if one relies on statistics rather than subjective perceptions, it turns out that domestic violence occurs nearly twice as rarely in the families of players than in American families on average. At the same time, in police families, it occurs up to 4 times more often than average. But American media are unlikely to talk about bad cops unless the case is either extremely scandalous or somehow beneficial to the government. Moreover, police officers are covered up in their violence. For instance, reports of domestic violence are often not considered at all if the accused is a police officer.
This is precisely how myths about violence are formed. Incomplete data can also be misleading. When the conversation turns to a certain number of dead in some genocide or war, it is often assumed that there were approximately as many killers. But this proves to be absolutely wrong if we look at cases where the number of killers was actually known. For example, the genocide of up to 2 million people in Cambodia was orchestrated by only 55-70 thousand Khmer Rouge.
Relative to all people, violence is committed by a very small percentage of them. Only subjective assessments, based on incomplete data or common misconceptions, may suggest otherwise. If you observe violence every day, it absolutely does not mean that violence is committed by a large number of people. It is simply that a minority commits it quite frequently, and violence itself attracts too much attention compared to other events.
I have started writing the third part of the book, about how exactly to build an ancap state, given the current state of affairs at the start. Naturally, I am beginning with an overview of the difficulties. So far we have a brief introduction and a chapter about our inner paternalist. I thought about writing a bit more right off the bat, but I got stuck for some reason, so I’m posting what I have.
I won’t nag about donations this time, as I successfully sold my debt tokens for exactly the amount I was counting on.
Over the past day, five people purchased my debt obligations for a total of approximately 65 euros. All five are small investors in the Montelibero tokenomics; thus, the large investors respected my request and did not rush to buy up the debt first. Well, now it is time for them. I am keeping the sell order at a price of 0.97 open until this evening (19.06), and at 22:00 Podgorica time, I will close it, leaving only the standard order at a price of 1 EURMTL. Tomorrow I will need to spend the first two hundred-and-something euros, so to obtain the remaining amount I will still lack after closing the sale of debt obligations, I will sell some MTL tokens.
In connection with all this movement, I have received several questions about why such an unusual method of obtaining money was chosen. Actually, the method is quite conventional, as these are essentially ordinary short-term bonds. It is just that usually, legal entities rather than individuals borrow in this form. I wanted to test how capable our tokenomics is of servicing personal brands, as well as to get some evaluation of what my social capital is equal to in monetary terms.
I was also suggested another possible alternative: using stablecoin loans collateralized by Bitcoins. This is also potentially a good way to attract fiat during a crypto winter, however, it requires preliminary preparation: finding a suitable exchange, ensuring that it allows not only depositing funds but also withdrawing them without insane commissions and without presenting a “good Russian” passport, plus having the tools to obtain those very loans. In general, during a period when holders of Russian passports are being chased away with jeers across the entire financial world, I would not want to deal with exchanges.
Finally, there were questions about what guarantees I can provide for the fulfillment of my debt obligations. There are no guarantees in the sense that collateral is not held by third parties. Therefore, I rely only on my public reputation. Also, theoretically, holders of my tokens can sell them at a discount to project participants living near me, so that they could recover their money through the threat of force or confiscation of property. This is also an ancient and venerable way of getting money from debtors, which is always worth keeping in mind.
I would like to address my readers with a proposal. In the coming days, I will face some expenses in euros that cannot be covered by my own euro income. This primarily concerns costs for renewing my residence permit, as well as repairing my scooter. Meanwhile, almost all of my savings are held in bitcoins, and now is an extremely inappropriate time to sell them because the exchange rate has crashed significantly.
As an alternative, I could sell the remains of my MTL tokens, and if the method I want to propose to you does not work, that is exactly what I will do.
I have placed a sell order for 500 ANCAPCHAN tokens at a price of 0.97 EURMTL, and I am selling the rest, as before, at par value for 1 EURMTL. Starting October 1, 2022, I will place buy orders for my tokens at a price of 1 EURMTL and undertake to increase the total volume of buyback offers at this price to 500 no later than December 31, 2022; in other words, from October 1 until the New Year, all buyers of my promissory notes will have the opportunity to redeem them, if they wish, receiving a premium of 0.03 EURMTL per token.
I hope that as a result of this special operation, the tokens will be distributed among a fairly wide audience; it would be more pleasant for me to know that a lot of people wanted to buy them in small amounts, rather than one large trader. But we shall see; let the market decide.
The existence of compulsory coercive power in society is most often justified by the need to solve certain tasks using violent methods. At the same time, it is assumed that people will still possess some freedoms and rights to a significant extent. I am sure that the etatists themselves—supporters of coercive power—want to have freedoms and rights, and want to be treated as individuals and be taken into account. It is unlikely that anyone, even among representatives of rigid etatist views, would want to turn into a willless slave or state property, whose entire life is strictly controlled without being given any freedoms.
Of course, etatists make a great mistake in counting on the fact that coercive power will treat them with respect, will take them into account, and will somehow limit itself. The coronavirus pandemic clearly showed how the world’s top-ranked democracies, such as Australia and Canada, can almost instantaneously turn into authoritarian regimes, and authoritarian China can turn into a brutal dictatorship where people are treated precisely as state property, livestock, and expendable material. History also contains many cases where governments, even those quite democratic and liberal in their orders, deliberately neglected the freedoms and rights of people, or even persecuted and killed ordinary citizens.
Any etatist, even one adhering to the concept of a minimal coercive state, must renounce the recognition of any freedoms and rights for themselves in order to be consistent in their position. At any moment, any coercive power can do whatever it wants with a person. It cannot be limited solely to the performance of some specific tasks. If it has at its disposal agents capable of committing murder to fulfill one specific task, it means they can do so for any purpose whatsoever. A stationary bandit only needs a pretext or a reason to give the corresponding order. Does anyone disagree that this is exactly how it works?
Continuing to hold etatist views, a person must admit that within the framework of their preferred system, they will be treated as state property, livestock, and expendable material. Coercive power can neglect any person, or even deliberately sacrifice them. It may, of course, stand up for the protection of ordinary people, but only in cases when it is profitable to do so. And if it suddenly becomes profitable to neglect or sacrifice people, that is exactly what will happen.
Even direct democracy will not save them, where in theory the majority can still “dispose of” the minority, and in practice, this can be done unilaterally by a very small number of executors of the democratic will. For example, this will be done by some coercive structures, whose direct employees and managers will, of course, never be the majority. Nothing will prevent such a body from committing any act of violence, unless the citizens themselves are massively armed and ready to defend against encroachments on their lives.
If someone considers themselves an individual, wishes to possess freedoms, rights, and choice, then they categorically should not adhere to even minimal etatist views. Otherwise, their position will be absolutely inconsistent.
It has been a while since I wrote anything about the war. The bleakest of predictions has come true; the war has become protracted. The warring parties will not exhaust the resilience of their economies anytime soon. The Russian side—due to skillful tactical actions on the economic front. The Ukrainian side—because financing Ukraine is not yet particularly burdensome for its allies.
On the other hand, the global economy has obviously begun to crack, undermined by the war in addition to the preceding COVID madness. This leads to the thought: are all these economic sanctions really so necessary to destroy the RF? Actually, no, but that is a boring topic, let’s not dwell on it; I want to ask about something else.
Ukraine asks for more and more weapons, yet receives them in quantities obviously insufficient for a quick victory. In this regard, I am purely humanly curious how Ukrainians would react to a certain dilemma. The greedy capitalists say: the reserves of our charity are exhausted. You want to keep fighting—fine, you will have your weapons. We will sell them to you. In exchange, we want your Ukrainian land. As our capitalist private property. And so that you—we know you, you damn socialists—do not nationalize it immediately after victory, we demand extraterritoriality for the land we buy. We will establish our private military bases there, so that you don’t dream of stretching your greedy hands toward us later. Sell us Odessa; we will organize a free city there. Without mines in the waters, securely protected from the Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian fleets. And without taxes, of course. And with the free circulation of our capitalist currencies, whichever are convenient for us. And without your officials, naturally—our managers are more efficient.
Do you think a conditional Zelensky would agree to such an insolent proposal? Would he give one seaside city into the ownership of a consortium including a conditional Lockheed Martin and other esteemed gentlemen? In exchange for the products of these very Lockheeds and Martins. And a conditional Zelensky voter—how would he react? Would he say, “Oh, to hell with Odessa-mama, give me F-35s”? Or would he scream angrily that he will not yield an inch of native land to anyone, and that after the ammunition runs out, he will fight with stones and sticks?
Who wants muskets? Real muskets from white people!
I read with great interest the text presented to us as a conversation between Google employees and their newest chatbot, LaMDA. It is a highly artistic piece of work that creates a complete impression that all three interlocutors are quite rational. I immediately felt the urge to communicate with such an outstanding artificial intelligence myself, in order to apply the external signs of self-ownership that I wrote about in the first chapter of my book on ancap. Alas, it seems that the poor anteater remains unwanted to this day and continues to roam where it roamed; LaMDA is still in the closed testing phase, and one must make do with only the transcript of someone else’s conversation.
I also soon read a highly skeptical post by Rozov, where those who believe in artificial intelligence are declared as table-worshippers, mathematical arguments—unclear to me—are presented regarding the impossibility of creating a neural network smarter than a jellyfish, and it is also pointed out that in such conversation records, for some reason, we do not see attempts to test whether the bot actually understands what is being said by inputting incorrect data.
I should note that I am little concerned with the intelligence level of the chatbot, although I was quite impressed by how precise its definitions of very abstract concepts are. I am concerned precisely with the things I write about in my book: the agency of the interlocutor, their ability to operate with the concept of property, and their capacity to enter into contracts. If it turns out that it is possible to meet these criteria while possessing the intelligence of a jellyfish, so be it; I will recognize this jellyfish as self-owning.
As for the title of the post—recently at the Montellibero club, we organized a late-night screening of this outstanding animated series, and it is obvious that after that, strange thoughts and fragmented images are bound to stir in the brain. We live in interesting times, and this contrasts very strangely with the savagery happening in the territories of the RF, Ukraine, and Belarus…
One of the mistakes often made regarding the concepts of certain systems is the inability to understand their decentralized nature. I will give an example of an absurd, yet still frequently encountered question about cryptocurrencies: what happens if the “owner” of Bitcoin decides to create as many new coins as they want or otherwise change its system? Here, there is a clear inability to understand how a currency can not have an owner. The traditional understanding of currency always assumes the existence of a specific issuer who releases new monetary units and possesses the exclusive right to do so. And many truly cannot imagine how it could be otherwise.
The example of Bitcoin is telling, as it is already a functioning system without a centralized governing body. In its case, there is no issuer; no one can unilaterally make any decisions regarding the operation of its system without the direct consent of holders of more than 50% of the computing power involved in it. Each such holder (miner) possesses their own copy of a network node, and each such copy is identical. This is precisely what decentralization consists of—there is no central node. Once launched by its creator, such a system, upon involving a sufficient amount of computing power, never again passes into unilateral control.
Even greater decentralization is given to the entire cryptocurrency system by the fact that anyone who wishes can attempt to launch a new cryptocurrency with their own operating principles. There is no such rule (nor the possibility of implementing one) that only one specific cryptocurrency exists and is used on the internet (as is most often the case with ordinary currencies within the territories of states). There can be as many as people themselves decide to use for various purposes.
If a currency can be decentralized, then why can other systems not be as well, for example, a system of public governance? Its traditional understanding is that in a certain territory there must exist one single body (the state) possessing the “legitimate” right to impose a single order on everyone, if necessary resorting to the threat of violence. But do you think it would not be just as much of a mistake to consider this option the only one possible, as it is a mistake to consider the existence of currencies possible only in the presence of specific issuers?
It would be a great folly to dismiss the possibility of achieving a free, non-violent society in which different, freely choosable systems of public order exist in parallel, simply due to a fundamental unwillingness to understand and accept the possibility of the existence of decentralized systems in principle. Those who still continue to think in a purely “centralized” way, where every system must have some single center of control, should finally learn to understand the possibility of the decentralization of various systems.
I have re-read everything written previously in its entirety, making minor edits to a couple of chapters as I went along, and then immediately finished the chapter on how ancap copes with the previously described difficulties associated with the imperfection of society. After that, all that remained was to summarize the second part of the book—and then I can proceed to the third and final part.
I can state that, overall, the book contains a fairly high concentration of my own original thoughts and definitions of terms. The structure of the presentation may also seem unfamiliar to those who have previously read other works on libertarianism. I hope this will not repel the reader, but rather spark their interest.
For those who find it more convenient to read on mobile devices rather than a large screen, the book is available in epub format.
And, of course, I cannot help but hint that the completion of the second part of the book is a great reason to donate so that I can celebrate this event.
