Marriage

Legal marriage is a tripartite transaction. Can an unregistered marriage (a bilateral transaction) be considered ideologically correct from the perspective of ancap and libertarianism? If so, can it be said that a state that has “banned same-sex marriage” (actually just refusing to enter into certain types of transactions, but not criminalizing homosexuality and relationships—as in Russia, for example) is violating LGBT rights? Under ancap, will there be something similar to a registry office (ZAGS)?

Moskvich

Marriage has many functions, but none of them is defining. Marriage can be a union for joint housekeeping, but there are also guest marriages. It can be a cooperative for raising children, but there are childless marriages, as well as raising children outside of marriage. It can be used to establish the right to legally represent one’s marital partner—but in a traditional society, this right may remain with the partners’ parents.

The most general thing that can be said about almost any marriage is that it is a relationship involving a certain sufficiently long-term and sufficiently broad trust between people, which then manifests in the spheres where these people wish to realize themselves. In housekeeping—so be it. In sex—so be it. In children—so be it. In political activism—here, marriage is an indispensable thing.

Why inform others of one’s marital status? Primarily to notify those around that in a certain human collective, its participants grant each other such-and-such rights. Does such a need persist in a stateless society? Yes, it does, because people generally value predictability. This person is taken; one should not hit on them. Great, that is certainty. From this person, one can demand the debt of another person because they have a joint household. Convenient? Convenient. A child should not be unclaimed; someone is certainly responsible for them. If you see an unclaimed child, you know exactly what to do. Little girl, where are your parents?

Thus, as long as people enter into long-term trusting relationships, they will most likely communicate this at least to their constant circle of communication. But do they need to bother and formalize their relationships with a serious formal contract implying the possibility of forced enforcement? That is unlikely. People frequently conduct commercial activities without drawing up papers, let alone organizing daily life, regulating sex, or undertaking a joint crossing of the Atlantic on a yacht. Marriage is a relationship of trust, and people are usually inclined not to spoil these relationships with paperwork.

Another matter is that others may care about what is happening between people in a marriage. What if it is same-sex, closely related, with teenagers, animals, or dolls. Even in the most tolerant libertarian society, those around want to be sure, at the very least, that the marriage is voluntary, and that there is no domestic violence or other archaic chthonic horrors. But even here, it is completely unimportant to others what kind of paper these relationships are formalized with; they will hit the face, not the passport.

I believe that under ancap, a notary system or something similar will be preserved—for example, instead of notaries, volunteers with a good reputation could act as witnesses. These witnesses will confirm the facts of concluding certain agreements, a tiny fraction of which will be marriage contracts. I do not believe in the mass recording of transactions in blockchains; they either have a terrible shortage of space, or their expansion will quickly run into economic and technological limitations. On the other hand, current registry offices are also big data collection points, but this role is already shifting to various online social platforms, and it is unlikely they will handle it any worse.

The absurdity of solving the problem of violence with violence

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The necessity of violence as a phenomenon of human relations is most often justified by the fight against violence itself. Since there is a threat of violence in society from a small percentage of people, it must be countered with one’s own “benevolent” and “legitimate” violence. But this scheme only creates its own problems, some of which can be called completely absurd. A violent solution looks especially absurd in light of the fact that the vast majority of people never commit at least brutal violence (causing serious physical harm or murder) and are incapable of doing so. This is confirmed by both military data and crime statistics, even in extremely violent countries where police work is simply paralyzed (Latin American countries).

Most people are non-violent; they will not use force against anyone to achieve any goals, except in the case of an immediate threat to life. Consequently, the scheme of using violence to fight violence requires the existence of one category of violent actors so that they may allegedly protect everyone else from another category of violent actors. And such protection does not imply only defense against an already present violent threat. Most often, it implies the right of security agents chosen for this task to use violence against anyone who, in their opinion, could potentially create some threat to society and other people, including threats of a non-violent nature (since in practice it is impossible to limit security agents, who have the legitimate right to use violence against people, to only fighting violence; they will use it wherever they see fit).

Perhaps this solution is capable of working to some extent in the short term. But in the long term, it leads to the following absurd situation: society must intentionally maintain a certain level of violent actors among the non-violent majority, otherwise there will be no people to solve tasks requiring the initiation of violence. This means that this solution cannot in any way serve the goal of fighting violence, as it creates violence itself. Obviously, to solve the problem of violence, entirely different methods must be considered.

E-karma

I read Latynina’s article about the subject with great interest. In some ways, it echoes a recent video by Libertarian Band about the Metaverse, but the article is far more detailed than the video. From an economic standpoint, the e-karma scheme looks decent, although it’s not entirely clear to me how it is protected against bot farms. Here, I lack the IT qualifications to assess the viability of the idea presented, so it would be great if some IT specialist could do so in the comments.

Eric Mack. Libertarianism. Translation of the chapter on Smith and justice.

Alex Dvoretsky chipped in another 6,000 rubles, which means a fresh chapter from Eric Mack is on its way, presenting a fairly original theory of justice by a certain David Schmidtz. I have just started a new and quite time-consuming job, so as is my habit, I am posting the text without notes for now; they will follow later—otherwise, I would have to delay publication by another day.

It was interesting to translate because the author under consideration is anything but a dogmatist (dogmatists are dry and boring in their meaningless uncompromisingness). In my own book, I limited the consideration of justice only to conflicts, stating that justice is the feeling of proportionality between the damage inflicted and the value of the object of conflict. Schmidtz, however, expands this concept, stating that I am speaking only of desert, whereas there are other irreducible elements of justice, such as reciprocity, equality, and need. And by building fair norms based on a single element, a person will most likely begin to contradict other elements of justice. In short, Schmidtz offers plenty to chew on.

Violence is an evolutionarily failed strategy

Voluntarist, Bitarch

In justification of intraspecific violence as a completely normal phenomenon in nature, one sometimes hears the argument about the selfishness of the gene. Since all biological evolution is primarily the evolution of genes striving for the most efficient preservation and copying of themselves, and only after that the evolution of individuals and populations, then intraspecific violence is not a problem at all. On the contrary—if a carrier of a gene committed violence, they gained an advantage over their conspecifics and passed this gene on. This means that intraspecific violence is a useful tool in the evolution of genes, and no violence inhibitor, slowing down aggression toward representatives of one’s own species, can exist, as it would contradict the attainment of such an evolutionary advantage by specific genes.

The idea that the evolution of genes takes precedence over the evolution of individuals and populations is a correct theory that there is no sense in disputing. But genes do not exist in a vacuum. Genes are carried by specific individuals who are part of specific populations. How the relationships between these individuals unfold will become the decisive factor in the preservation and transmission of genes. And violence will indeed give an advantage to a specific gene, provided it does not mean that gene’s own elimination. But what if it does?

Let’s take those species whose representatives possess strong innate weaponry and have no significant possibility of escaping violence (for example, due to the limited habitat range of the population or an extremely social lifestyle). It is precisely in such species that the inhibition (restraint) of intraspecific violence is observed. When one wolf exposes its neck or belly to another wolf, the latter becomes unable to bite its conspecific; no raven will peck another raven in the eye with its very sharp beak, even during a fight for food; venomous snakes conduct territorial clashes according to clearly defined rituals, without using their venomous teeth and not even demonstrating them to their opponent; oryx antelopes also ritualize battles, while they can freely use their sharp horns against lions. There are many such examples.

What is the benefit of the gene in such behavior? It is that a violent attack on a conspecific, given the latter’s strong weaponry, can end with the death of the aggressor itself with an impermissibly high probability. This means that the gene will not be preserved or passed on; it will simply perish along with its carrier. Only those genes will be passed on whose carriers, in such a situation, do not get into fights unnecessarily (or more accurately, do not initiate them at all, but only defend themselves if someone else has already initiated one). That is, the most advantageous evolutionary strategy for a gene is “cooperation” (let’s call it that) with the gene responsible for inhibiting violent behavior in the carrier.

This is a universal rule for biological evolution. Increasing weaponry of population representatives combined with frequent social contacts between them increases the negative consequences of intraspecific violence, at a certain point making them completely impermissible. As a result, only those genes survive whose carriers were able to compensate for this effect by suppressing violent behavior, meaning they were predisposed to have a sufficiently strong version of a violence inhibitor. The higher the weaponry of the population representatives, the less advantageous an evolutionary strategy violence becomes, and the more advantageous becomes the inhibition of violence.

This understanding should also be applied to humans—the most heavily armed species on the planet, whose weaponry is now growing at a giant pace along with the development of scientific and technical progress. The average person already possesses an inhibition of violence toward other people, but there remain those who suffer from a dysfunction of this neurobiological mechanism. Such people will sooner or later use weapons of mass destruction, which, with scientific and technical progress, are becoming increasingly accessible to recreate, especially regarding biological threats, where a catastrophic scenario could occur literally tomorrow. This means that violence is an evolutionarily failing strategy for humans!

Metaverses from Libertarian Band

Libertarian Band has released a very high-quality video about metaverses, integrating this trendy topic into the general frameworks of libertarian strategy—in other words, showing the prospects that open up for us as this phenomenon continues to develop. For some time, this new space will remain a territory of relative freedom, and if we strive to avoid centralization in this sphere from the start, there is a chance to keep this freedom under reliable protection.

At the same time, the ideas regarding the merging of the real world and the metaverse via NFT and RFID seem too raw to me for now, and it is not certain that any breakthroughs can be achieved here at all: nothing can prevent someone from attaching a buffalo NFT token to an elephant, and in this situation, a remote user will not even be able to follow Kozma Prutkov’s advice and “not believe their eyes,” because in their metaverse, they will see a buffalo, period.

2021, results

I have reread the summaries of past years: 2018 (joyful), 2019 (confident), and 2020 (gloomy). Fortunately, I managed to reverse the trend, and I look forward to 2022 with much more enthusiasm than I once did for 2021.

The year was devastating for the Russian opposition, to which I belonged to some extent, although I didn’t pay much attention to politics. Many left the country under the threat of immediate criminal prosecution, fleeing into a void, and I imagine it was not easy for them. I was far luckier: I left the country to build an offline libertarian utopia, and this utopia, Montelibero, has made decent progress in its implementation. There are already two dozen of us who moved to Montenegro to build a local ersatz-ancap, and on New Year’s Eve, for the first time in the project’s history, we will gather together at one table (one bomb could take us all out). Nevertheless, I still hope that we won’t be hit by a bomb, and that next year we will build a sufficiently reliable platform here for receiving and settling libertarians.

Another milestone for the channel was that I finally completely translated Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, and it is the largest of my projects implemented so far. Now, as a bonus, Oleg Teterevlev is recording the audiobook, and as of today, he has reached chapter 45 out of 66. I think the audiobook will also be completed in 2022. The translation of three more books is being carried out in parallel, encouraged by your donations, and will sooner or later be finished as well—at least after The Machinery of Freedom, I am now certain that I am capable of tackling something large-scale without abandoning it halfway.

A third important undertaking that is in full swing is the writing of my own book on ancap. The first part, containing an outline of the libertarian worldview, is completely ready; the second part—about life under ancap—is being written. Who knows—maybe I’ll manage to finish it in 2022 as well.

As for the channel’s metrics, they can be seen below on the postcard kindly sent by the statbot. In terms of the number of readers, I’ve hit a plateau; the channel turned out to be a mid-tier one, and it’s unlikely to grow at a noticeable pace without aggressive marketing. This doesn’t really bother me now, because other interesting activities have been found. Again, while my readers may be few in number, they are proactive: among the settlers in Montelibero, more than half joined the project specifically through my channel, which is, of course, flattering. I hope this trend continues in the future.

Happy New Year to all libertarians. Do not be afraid to take on ambitious projects, stick by each other, and do not forget that against the backdrop of the main enemy, small internal quarrels mean nothing.

A book about ancap – describing the problems of the world

I am continuing work on the second part of the book about ancap. If at first I briefly presented a beautiful picture of what an ideal anarcho-capitalist society looks like, now I am starting to explain in meticulous detail what obstacles might get in our dancer’s way. To start, I’m talking about the general imperfection of the world, and so far I have covered the problem of fuzzy boundaries and the problem of externalities.

Beyond that, I’ve taken a pause to think about whether to dump some more global problems here, or to move on to approaches for resolving them.

Minecraft versus copyright

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Supporters of the state monopoly privilege known as copyright and patent law are very afraid that without a mechanism of forceful punishment for the unauthorized copying and distribution of information content, its creators will simply be left with nothing, pirates will rob them and deprive them of the means of subsistence and the incentive to create new content in the future. Of course, there are dozens of ways to monetize content without using such a privilege, however, we will not analyze them now, but simply look at one practical example that I have known for a long time, but for some reason remembered only very recently. And this example is a game called Minecraft.

The creator of Minecraft, Markus Persson, is a supporter of piracy; he criticizes the attitude towards this phenomenon prevalent in large companies and is even a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden. He has never been against people freely copying and distributing the game he created. However, this did not prevent him from earning 640 million Swedish kronor (about 100 million US dollars) from the sale of licensed copies of the game in 2012 alone, and later selling his stake in the company he founded, Mojang, for 2.5 billion dollars (currently owned by the Microsoft corporation). Minecraft itself became the best-selling game in the world, with about 200 million licensed copies sold by 2020.

Indeed, although Minecraft is officially proprietary software, in reality it is not protected against copying; its files are not encrypted in any way and anyone can download and use them, and this is not even restricted by its current copyright holders (although I am not familiar with their future plans). Access to the official game launcher is only available to players who have purchased a licensed copy, however, a large number of unofficial launchers already exist, and the game itself can be launched without a launcher, simply using the command line. And for unlicensed players, not only single-player but also multiplayer is available. The game server core has a function in its settings which, by disabling it, the server owner can grant connection access to anyone regardless of whether they have a license; therefore, there are many unlicensed servers in the game. And this fact, by the way, also in no way hinders the development of licensed servers and the earnings of their owners.

As we can see, after creating information content, it is entirely possible to get by without forceful privileges. Their absence did not prevent Minecraft from becoming the best-selling game in the world, nor did it stop the game’s creator, Markus Persson, from joining the Forbes billionaires list. There are also many examples of other games that were cracked and posted on torrent trackers even before their official release; nonetheless, the sales of licensed keys did not collapse because of this.

Montelibero project news, issue 8

In the previous issue, I mostly talked about how the work on the land of our future settlement is progressing, and now, perhaps, I will start with this topic as it is the most grounded.

We have already laid some of the roads inside the settlement, cleared some stumps, started digging a septic tank, and so on—in short, the routine is underway. Importantly, it rained heavily for almost two weeks without interruption, and we were able to verify that the road was not washed away. However, in one place, we further improved the drainage afterward so that the stream flows along the shoulder rather than wherever it pleases.

Equipment for a small solar power plant is expected to arrive this week—we hesitated for a long time about whether to get involved in this, but electricity prices from the central grid are expected to rise significantly in the foreseeable future, so it seems that autonomous generation is exactly what the doctor ordered right now. This electricity is intended to power the trailer so that we can finally station a security guard there. As for the remaining energy, we are thinking of using it for Bitcoin mining. As an experiment, an old miner was purchased, which is currently buzzing at my home, and after the power plant is installed, it will move to the settlement.

But it’s not just about Bitcoin. Specifically for hardcore gold bugs, the Montelibero fund has released gold tokens, and several ten-gram bars were purchased with the funds collected. Some of them have already been delivered to buyers, while some remain on the fund’s balance. Tokens can be purchased in any fractional shares (worldwide) and exchanged for bars in ten-gram lots (only for residents of Montenegro).

Speaking of tokens. Along with the development of the project’s tokenomics, associated specific risks are increasing: unknown parties have already released several fake tokens on the Stellar blockchain that imitate ours. To avoid falling for such things, I recommend relying only on the tokens you see on the fund’s balance. This incident with scammers has spurred us to try to move to the Liquid Network, as tokens on a Bitcoin sidechain are, of course, far more substantial. If anyone is knowledgeable about this, feel free to drop by the developers’ chat.

However, we are not being promoted by scammers alone. You already know about the Libertarian Band video dedicated to our project. In addition, a local Montenegrin news site and a large Italian community, Instituto liberale – Gruppo nazionale, have written about us. For now, they are writing based on what can be found online, but I believe that reports from the site itself in the media are just around the corner. This motivates us to settle into our construction site as quickly as possible.