Alex Dvoretsky cheered me up with another donation, so I am releasing the translation of the final chapter of the bonus section of Eric Mack’s book on libertarianism. The chapter is devoted to a problem faced by all indirect consequentialist approaches to creating a pleasant society to live in. For people in a society to limit themselves to voluntary interaction, voluntary self-restraint and widespread adherence to the rules of fair behavior are required. But for every specific person, there will always be a justification for deviating slightly from these rules for a bit more gain. And they know that others have similar justifications. Where would the confidence come from that everyone will follow the rules? And without this confidence, who will follow them?
This is exactly why raw consequentialism is unable to create a stable libertarian society — a catalyst in the form of a belief in the necessity of following the rules is required; that is, their observance must be seen as inherently valuable, and not just as a means to achieve general well-being. Only then will general well-being follow.
I have left to translate the last part of the book, dedicated to the critique of libertarianism. There is an introduction and four chapters; perhaps I will finish within a reasonable timeframe, before Mikhail Pozharsky, who inspired me to translate, dies of boredom.
Last time I promised to announce the final editing of six chapters at once, but for some reason the process dragged on (maybe due to insufficient motivation?), so for now, here are three.
In the second part of Practical Anarchy, Molynneux proceeds to argue why anarchy is better than the state. In the introduction, he lists six main questions that make sense to ask when analyzing any critique of anarchic solutions from the perspective of statism. Next, in a fairly extensive FAQ on anarchism, he answers the most typical objections (roads, national security, and all that). And in the chapter on four arguments against the state, he actually provides not four arguments, but four possible ratios between “bad” and “good” people in society, showing why, regardless of the ratio, the emergence of the state only makes things worse. I am not fond of the idea of dividing people into good and bad, and it is entirely possible to put forward a coherent system of objections against the state based, for example, on the analysis of economic incentives—but preachers of moral systems have their own audience, and Molynneux knows best how to work with them.
The very existence of power that is forceful and “mandatory” for everyone leads to the emergence of corruption. Regardless of what anyone says, all governments in the world are corrupt; it is simply that not all are ready to admit it and call this phenomenon by its true name, often hiding behind a term such as “lobbying.” And this is not surprising—if a certain public body possesses the “legal” right to a monopoly on establishing and controlling orders in society, including through the use of force, then various interest groups will always turn to it in an attempt to achieve their goals at the expense of infringing upon the rights and freedoms of other interest groups. This is inevitable even in the most liberal democracies, for in them as well, nothing prevents a particular interest group from inducing a sufficient number of officials to adopt a decision necessary for them.
As long as coercive power-based governments exist, corruption and the infringement of the interests of some people in favor of the interests of others are unavoidable. Only in a free market can different interests stably coexist parallel to one another, for it is sufficient that each interest has at least a minimal group of “consumers.” Politics, however, can at any moment issue a law according to which all alternatives to a certain single interest will be discriminated against or even completely liquidated within a specific territory. And such a law will be backed by the threat of violence in the event of non-compliance.
It is quite funny that the RF is still fully attempting to go on the offensive, still holds a substantial advantage in the air, and continues to throw new goals of the war into the information space—while on social media, discussions are already in full swing about how Russia will pay reparations to Ukraine, whether one should push for them, and whether those who were initially against the war should have to pay them.
I’ll throw in my two cents as well. It seems to me that the absence of reparations is primarily in the interests of Ukrainian libertarians, but also Russian ones. Meanwhile, statists on both sides should heartily approve of reparations.
The thing is, reparations are money that a state pays to a state. But the state always collects this money from its subjects. How did the rise of the Moscow Principality begin? It began when the Moscow Prince Ivan received the privilege from the Horde Khan to pay reparations on behalf of all Russian principalities. In the process of collection, much stuck to his hands, and Moscow grew strong. When a conditional Leonid Volkov begins collecting reparations for Ukraine, Moscow will also only grow stronger from this, because what on earth is federalization and the transfer of powers to regions when you need to squeeze money out of people and pay the Ukrainian president?
But let’s assume that the international anti-corruption fund, led by the valiant Ivan Zhdanov, manages to find and lobby for the seizure of such a quantity of property from major Russian corrupt officials that it will be enough to pay reparations, and no extraordinary taxes will need to be levied from other Russian citizens. What will the kind Ukrainian president do upon receiving reparations from the kind Russian president? He will begin, on behalf of the state, to commission various works to restore what was destroyed during the war, strengthen the Ukrainian state army, police, customs, tax authorities, provide additional funding to the national bank, and so on. In short, he will strengthen the social state. Is this a good thing? “Of course, it is,” the government officials who will distribute all this money will answer the Ukrainian libertarians, as well as their relatives who, by a happy coincidence, receive government contracts.
Naturally, any caring person has many moral grounds to help Ukrainians in the war, in life in emigration, and in the restoration of the ruined economy after returning home. But for this, they do not need state coercion; it is more likely to get in the way. For instance, states block the bank cards of RF citizens (making it harder to donate), create a mass of restrictions for emigrants, which complicates their settlement in a new place and hinders providing them with help, and at the stage of post-war assistance, they will surely surround private initiative with a bunch of hurdles. Therefore, partisan activity against all states proves to be in demand: against the state of Ukraine, which prevents some refugees from leaving it freely; against the state of the RF, to sabotage military conscription, the work of state institutions, disrupt military supplies, and demotivate private individuals from supporting the war; against other states that hinder emigrants from finding employment, settling in, and conducting monetary transactions. But all of this is not reparations—do not whitewash this cringe-worthy word.
P.S. I forgot to add one more important point. The best outcome of this war is the complete destruction of the Russian state. But in that case, there will certainly be no reparations: the subject from whom they can be taken will vanish. And this is another very important reason why Ukrainian libertarians should dream not of reparations, but of a far more pleasant outcome.
Of course, the absence of reparations does not cancel the possibility of prosecuting private individuals and bringing claims against them for specific damages.
The events of the coronavirus pandemic clearly demonstrated how some of the most democratic states in the world can easily turn literally into authoritarian regimes with strong government power, suppression of the opposition, and the imprisonment of “undesirable” people. We are talking about Australia and Canada, which rank in the top ten countries in democracy ratings. In the fight against the pandemic, the government of the former decided to resort to total bans on leaving the home and movement of citizens, surveillance of them, and the imprisonment of violators. In the latter, the government responded to truckers’ protests against coronavirus restrictions by blocking bank accounts, suppressing the activities of the opposition, introducing a state of emergency, and arresting some of the protesters. Or let us recall France, which is also a fairly democratic country, yet its police do not hesitate to beat people without masks with batons, and almost any anti-government actions end with a harsh dispersal of protesters by security forces.
Democracy can very easily turn into an authoritarian and repressive regime. And this should not be surprising—what else can be expected from governments that, while perhaps quite democratic and liberal in their goals, still rely on the instrument of force to implement those goals? When a certain body in society has the right to use force to compel people and the ability to effectively exercise that right, it is only a matter of time and the existence of a pretext before force transforms from a simple tool for upholding the law into a tool for carrying out repressions and strengthening power.
Therefore, it is important to understand that the only possible path to achieving a free and non-violent society is the eradication of coercive instruments of management, and the mere replacement of an authoritarian regime with a democracy will yield nothing in the long run. Adhering to democratic and liberal values is absolutely meaningless and useless if, alongside them, the impermissibility of violence is not actively supported, both in private relationships between people and in the implementation of measures by any associations or public governing bodies.
The state is an order that determines exactly how it is customary to systematically rob people in a given place. Anarchy implies a high degree of decentralization of power in society, where in the worst-case scenario, people unite into situational alliances to restore justice, and once the task is solved, the alliance begins to struggle with goal-setting and tends to dissolve. A certain analogy can be found in modern interstate relations: the NATO defensive alliance almost collapsed from neglect when the threat of the USSR vanished, but immediately revived and is ready to accept new members when the RF began rattling sabers. But for a victim of aggression to receive support under anarchy, they do not even need to formally belong to an alliance, which we can clearly see in the example of Ukraine.
The same applies to ancap: no one will object to a particular market agent becoming stronger: why not, if they satisfy their clients so well. But as soon as they begin to exercise non-market power, clients begin to flee, and competitors begin to consider which side is most convenient to strike from.
A sufficiently strong agent under ancap
Is this mechanism sufficient to ensure that ancap, once established, prospers for all eternity? I cannot guarantee it. Fukuyama deceived us: there is no end of history. The stability of ancap is based on economic incentives that prevent inefficient centralization, but anomalies cannot be ruled out. For example, the proof-of-work mechanism in Bitcoin is a good model of ancap, and we see that over time, the decentralization of mining only increases, yet the history of Bitcoin has by no means been devoid of crises related to miners’ attempts to dictate their will to coin holders. And a poorly balanced PoW, as we see in the example of ether, does not prevent the creator of the currency from ruling it unilaterally at all.
Liberal democracies are precisely an example of such crooked systems, where checks and balances are drawn on paper, but in fact, it still results in a vertical of power or, at best, an oligarchy. Designing a reasonable system of anarchic self-government from scratch and launching it instead of a particular state is a non-trivial task, and it does not occur to me how it could be implemented in the absence of crises. However, since the state is a system of robbery in which positive feedback loops are historically much stronger than negative ones (the more you have robbed, the easier it is to rob more—positive feedback; but the more you are hated—negative feedback), crises in states are inevitable. From time to time, I come up with some story about how, in one place or another, a transition from a rigid state to something like ancap occurs against the backdrop of a crisis. For instance, right here about liberal parliamentary democracy.
I am not, of course, talking about what is happening in Ukraine—a war is happening there. I am talking about the special operation carried out by Ekaterina Schulmann for evacuation to Germany “for an internship.”
For a long time, Ekaterina Mikhailovna categorically denied the possibility of her own emigration, because she is a political scientist, a specialist in the Russian legislative process, and leaving would mean leaving the field of research. Of course, these are rather laughable excuses, because she herself has repeatedly stated that she always relies solely on open sources rather than some murky insiders; access to open sources from Berlin is no worse than from Moscow. We have a classic cover story so that the enemy suspects nothing until it is too late.
Now she claims that the internship is not indefinite, it is only for a year, and then either the shah will die, or the donkey will, or as a result of the internship, a new interesting research task will come up, for example, in Latin America—but make no mistake, return to Russia is inevitable, so there is no need to repress the relatives remaining in Russia, dear officers of the authorities.
I strongly urge those who find it difficult to decide to leave to adopt the experience of Ekaterina Schulmann. The main thing: if emigration scares you so much, do not call it emigration. As Schulmann has repeatedly stated, people are not leaving for nowhere now. You can relocate to another country while continuing to maintain communication with those remaining in Russia no less closely than before departure. You can continue to work for Russia remotely. You can choose not to sell off your property, but simply mothball your home or rent it out. You can leave powers of attorney with reliable people, allowing them to carry out any transactions on your behalf if necessary. And most importantly—you can immediately outline an approximate timeframe or conditions for return. That’s it; you are simply going for a change of scenery, not throwing yourself into a whirlpool of uncertainty. Admit it, that sounds much less frightening.
Nevertheless, please do not be overly reckless. Study the experience of the pampered Muscovites who rushed out of the country like they were scalded, only to discover with surprise that while it is, of course, pleasant and peaceful abroad, it’s actually damn hard to break through. Many skills diligently acquired in Russia turn out to be useless, employers are not lining up to hire you, and then there are all those annoying domestic trifles, like an unfamiliar cuisine or an insufficiently rich cultural life.
Far from the familiar business and linguistic environment, far from familiar daily life and old friends, it can be difficult. You will have to prove to a multitude of people, who didn’t know you until now, that you are needed enough for them to pay you. You may have to engage in completely unskilled labor, at least for some time. You may be visited by thoughts that you are using yourself completely irrationally, since in Russia your labor was far more effective than here, in a new place. Yes, it may be so. But there, your labor benefited primarily those who are killing people in Ukraine. Therefore, your departure is a heroic act. It is your feasible contribution to the defeat of the Putin regime. It is not the only possible path, but it is a completely worthy one.
Instead, you can go to prison in Russia. The regime will feed you, and the recruit will get less food. You can engage in propaganda and sabotage. The regime will feed an army of investigators, whom you will provide with work, and the monetary allowance of Russian contractors will be more modest. You can earn money in Russia and donate to the Ukrainian army or other organizations waging war against Russia. All of these are also worthy choices.
Actually, there are only two unworthy choices. This is retreating into internal emigration, when you live in the RF as if nothing had happened, shutting yourself off from external irritants. And this is supporting the Russian regime. In the first case, you are a legitimate target for economic sanctions. In the second, you are also a legitimate target for security actions.
Perhaps I will expand slightly on the last point. Libertarians, after all, advocate for the protection of private property. But if it occurs to you to mark your private property with the same symbols used to mark Russian military equipment—you are marking yourself as a target for guerrilla warfare. Moreover, an easy, poorly guarded target. You are a combatant, a member of an organization that initiated violence against a wide range of people, and your property is now encumbered by demands for reparations. Be glad if they only slash your tires.
Do you know why in the United States after 1971 labor productivity continued to grow at a constant rate, but at the same time real incomes of people abruptly stopped following the growth of productivity and remained virtually unchanged? Or why after 1971, over 50 years, the consumer price index soared 7-fold (what cost 1 dollar in 1971 now costs 7 dollars), although before 1971 it took almost 200 years for an approximately similar price increase? Or perhaps why the share of US residents living with their parents until age 29 gradually decreased until 1971, but began to grow again after? Or why the cost of housing relative to workers’ incomes in the US has only increased several times during this period?
The answer is extremely simple – on August 15, 1971, US President Richard Nixon finally liquidated the gold exchange standard, canceling the fixed conversion of the US dollar into gold. After this, the US dollar turned into paper that was effectively backed by nothing. It was after this decision that the impoverishment of Americans, who had previously only grown wealthier, began.
This rather simple fact clearly confirms the absolute failure of paper money as a means of exchanging goods between people and accumulating wealth. The use of paper money is merely a reliable way to become poor. After all, what else can be expected from money that can be printed in unlimited quantities, thereby devaluing people’s savings, while enriching officials, government structures, subsidized oligarchs, and banks, who received the new money supply first and realized it at the old prices. Or what else can be expected if money is distributed boundlessly at an artificially low interest rate for the development of businesses that would be absolutely unprofitable and failing at a rate formed under free market conditions. Indeed, the theory of the Austrian School of Economics does not call unlimited money emission and credit expansion the main causes of economic crises for nothing.
People will only grow poorer until we abandon government paper currencies in favor of money that is not controlled by any centralized governing bodies and has a strictly limited issuance of new coins. Precious metals demonstrated their reliability as a means of exchange and wealth accumulation in the past. But in today’s digital world, where information technologies play a key role in all types of activity and relationships, cryptocurrencies can serve as a reliable means of exchange.
Suppose young democrats come to power in the RF—they don’t want it to be “like Somalia,” but in principle, they are curious about various forms of organizing a free country. Is it possible to establish an experimental minarchist state in one of the protectorates—for example, South Ossetia (assuming some agreement is reached with Georgia—after all, we are now like Sweden, and she doesn’t fight over Aland, and neither will you)—? We appoint Misha/Yarik/you as the head, abolish taxes, declare freedom of business/substances/weapons/ideas, and welcome visiting global businessmen with open arms; we write the NAP and freedom into the constitution. From the state, we leave only a minimal police force for the first period (protection against “the air of freedom tickled me” and “Somalia”), social medicine, and a business entity in a competitive market (it is free to conduct business however it likes, but is obliged to spend profits on charity, and essentially on social welfare). Then, as success grows, we abolish the rudimenting state bodies, moving toward full ancap. Meanwhile, Ancapistan remains a protectorate for now, so the USA won’t attack it because of a nest of hackers and drug dealers there, and the PRB itself will protect itself from them in a market-based way—by paying for them to refrain from working in our market.
Katsist
Two related questions have been successfully combined, and if for the previous question—about ancap in an enclave against the backdrop of collapsed Putinism—I answered with a fairy tale, then here I am forced to state clearly: no, it is impossible.
What is the difference between the Sakhalin scenario and the one you proposed? The difference is that your scenario assumes that the RF retains the ability to influence its current protectorates after the end of Putin. But at what price can the rise to power of these very young democrats be achieved without the collapse of the RF? A simple change of government to people with pleasant faces is not enough. These young democrats would have to launch a process of denazification and demilitarization of Russia, publicly repent for all the sins of Putinism, pay reparations to at least Georgia and Ukraine, hand over a mass of criminals to them and international bodies for trial, withdraw troops from all annexed territories, from foreign military bases, and from those very protectorates.
There is some chance that they might simultaneously launch serious reforms within the RF itself: make the High Court in London the supreme judicial authority in the RF, and fine their own judges for every instance where their verdict is overturned in this appellate instance; return the lion’s share of taxes to the regions and even slightly reduce the overall tax burden; purge the criminal and administrative codes of a bunch of stupid Putinist articles; privatize a huge number of Putinist state corporations once again; completely abandon conscription, the navy, 80% of nuclear warheads; dissolve the FSB and Rosgvardia; radically rewrite the regulations of the antimonopoly service, and so on and so forth. But all of this would concern Russia directly. Meanwhile, the protectorates would have to somehow negotiate their return to their former metropoles, because without the help of the RF they would be unable to avoid this fate, and the RF would state something like “yes, yes, guys, of course, take it, it’s yours; sorry we are returning it in such a terrible state, here is some compensation.”
On the other hand, after the neutralization of the RF as an exporter of authoritarianism, a return to the trajectory from which it veered under Ivanishvili is quite likely in Georgia; and if so, the aforementioned South Ossetia does indeed have a chance for all these reforms, but not as a Russian protectorate, but as a Georgian one. But here I don’t even need to fantasize much; this is roughly the same course the region followed before 2008.
For example, if Putinism collapses. Roughly what steps would need to be taken for this to happen?
Muscovite
Let’s imagine, for example, a scenario like this. Putin launches an offensive in Donbas with a simultaneous sea landing in southwestern Ukraine. To do this, among other things, he scrapes together the remains of the ground forces, airborne troops, and naval infantry from the Far East. Meanwhile, due to difficulties exporting Sakhalin oil and gas, employees there start being put on part-time hours, and in some places, are laid off. A small isolated donor region (smaller than Montenegro in population) finds itself in a situation of a sharp drop in the standard of living. Moreover, this is a region where the number and influence of public sector employees are relatively small, while the voice of working people, conversely, is very important.
It is known that the greatest discontent occurs among affluent people whose opportunities have been sharply curtailed. So the breeding ground for protest is ready, and these are people who care very little about some Ukraine; they want to work, earn money, and have Moscow stay out of their way.
What happens next? Next, for example, the governor flies to Moscow once again and doesn’t make it. Well, you know, the aviation fleet requires constant maintenance and supplies of imported spare parts, and those are in short supply in the country. New elections must be organized. And it so happens that on the island there are many people interested in breaking away from Moscow, and at the same time, from the sanctions. Moreover, they are supported by at least the Japanese and American shareholders of the island’s oil and gas projects. A representative of the LDPR (where, after the death of the party’s founder, the power vertical couldn’t be properly repaired) runs for election—an ethnic Ukrainian (there are quite a few of them on the island) and an entrepreneur. Attempts to remove him from the election turn into a storming of the regional election commission by the candidate’s support group, after which the candidate announces that the elections will take place with the participation of international observers. The local Rosgvardia has its garage gates blocked with concrete blocks, and it reports to Moscow that it is busy organizing the unblocking; in the meantime, it releases infantry onto the streets without transport, which reduces its effectiveness to zero, and it simply observes the proceedings.
Over the next few days, Japan sends a large number of extremely polite international observers. The LDPR candidate wins the election, after which the island’s parliament adopts a resolution stating that Sakhalin is beginning a transition process toward voluntary accession to Japan with the right to broad autonomy. It is announced that Sakhalin will stop paying taxes to the Russian federal budget immediately; as for Japan, the issue of taxation is postponed until the final stages of the transition period. All customs restrictions against Japan are unilaterally abolished.
The RF, ready to send an army to bring the island to submission, slows down. Firstly, there is no army, only the Pacific Fleet. In principle, that is enough, but secondly, the Moscow leadership is explained that in its current form, Sakhalin is an ideal offshore zone for bypassing sanctions, and such opportunities should not be thrown away. Therefore, Moscow sends its representative to the committee for organizing the transition process, and there he does his part in prolonging this bureaucratic process.
And after that, everyone likes how it turned out. Taxes are radically reduced, Russian businesses eagerly register where there are no sanctions, and Japanese businesses engage in the development of the island. The RF ensures that the rights of the Russian-speaking population are not violated. Japan ensures that the rights of Japanese settlers are not violated. In the end, thirty years later, when everyone has already forgotten that there was such a Putin and that there was such a Ukrainian war, the transition process continues on the island, because there are no fools to complete it. This is not ancap, but a pretty good approximation of it.
