Alex Dvoretsky, my subscriber on boosty, donated another 6,000 rubles for the translation of a new portion of Eric Mackay’s essay Libertarianism. Thus, I have had the opportunity to work on the bonus online section of the book, which was not included in the original printed or pirated edition. I have translated the introduction to the section, where Mackay says that, you know, you might have gotten the impression that libertarianism got stuck in the seventies, but no, Nozick is not the only one, and Hayek is not the only one singing along; we have a whole wagonload of fresher thinkers, followed by a list of completely unknown names. And I have translated the chapter about a certain Gillell Steiner, who, instead of killing himself against a wall in childhood and thereby immediately entering the public domain, decided instead to publish his musings and enter it fifty years after his death. In short, before us is a pillar of so-called left-libertarianism, and translating his thoughts was not exactly pleasant for me, because who enjoys it when a cannibal clings to you and starts declaring, “look, I’m a libertarian here too.” Fortunately, although Eric Mackay calls him a profound thinker for some reason (or rather, thoughtful), he nonetheless criticizes him in such a way that this characterization begins to seem completely contrived.
Do you need to ask them for permission before flying? Is it necessary to somehow amortize the risk of the aircraft falling on the property of people located beneath it, and how to compensate for the noise of the engines/propellers? What is your personal/Montelibero/Montenegrin position on this issue?
L29Ah (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.012345678901 Monero)
I like how David Friedman analyzes this and many other questions (sorry for buzzing your ears with him so much). He analyzes the topic in great detail in the book The Machinery of Freedom. I have managed to get through about a third of it so far. Much more concisely—in one of the chapters of The Machinery of Freedom. There, economic analysis of law is also used as a basis for reasoning. This often allows for a fairly clear generalization of those specific answers that I have to give from time to time.
To put it very briefly, the lower the transaction costs for proposed deals to purchase rights to actions that violate others’ interests, the more convenient it is to recognize the owners’ right to prohibit such actions. If necessary, the potential trespasser will buy the right of passage. And the higher the transaction costs, the more convenient the procedure of judicial settlement of such cases becomes through claims for damages. No one defines a specific threshold altitude at which one can fly over someone else’s property, but if the flight caused damage, it will have to be compensated in court. Flights over someone else’s territory at a sufficiently high altitude (so as to at least not crash into terrain irregularities in normal mode and not frighten people with the wild roar of engines) are clearly the second case; obtaining permission to fly from all owners over whose territory it may occur is an unrealistic task.
Specifically in Montenegro, there is state licensing for the import of drones into the country, certain weight restrictions, a ban on flying above a certain altitude, and other highly sophisticated restrictions, some of which can be bypassed, while in others it proves too expensive, and it is simpler to accept that a certain application of drones is too troublesome to engage in systematically. Naturally, we in Montelibero find the complete repeal of all these regulations desirable, because drones can at least be used to take beautiful photos, which is useful for promoting the project. But, of course, the drone owner must be prepared for the fact that if their expensive toy falls on someone else’s plot, they may well lose it. The plot owner is not responsible if a cow steps on the fallen drone, or if his underage son decides to break something off this unexpected gift. He is not even obliged to let the drone owner onto his territory—here, the right of prohibition applies, because the transaction costs for purchasing the right of passage are small.
Here we filmed our plot with a drone, but this required flying over the neighbors as well
Bitarch, although I only recently became acquainted with libertarianism, I have already read about voluntarism and realized that it is exactly what I need! I am so tired of living among the abusers, boors, and rapists who surround me now! I wish a vaccine that destroys the ability to initiate aggressive violence would be invented as soon as possible, and along with it, universal prosperity would arrive! My father used to beat me, my ex-boyfriend beat me too, and once some thug even tried to rape me in an alleyway! Well, until the vaccine is invented, I want to ask for your help. Bitarch, I want to have a child with a strong Lorenz inhibitor, who would be guaranteed never to initiate violence and yet be able to stand up for themselves, just as you, strictly speaking, do. I am not a poor woman; I can sign a written waiver of alimony; all that is needed is conception from a carrier of a strong variant of the Lorenz inhibitor. Otherwise, there are two extremes around: either mama’s boys and wimps unable to protect themselves, or alpha males with testosterone overflowing and absolutely unrestrained in the manifestation of violence, but something in the middle is needed. Do you agree? And if so, how much do your services for the conception of non-violent offspring cost?
Katya Latysh
I am glad that you liked the ideas I promote and that you believe it is necessary to eradicate violence. As for your delicate request—unfortunately, I cannot 100% guarantee perfect genetics on my part. Although I am a non-violent person, who knows, perhaps I am a carrier of recessive genes that determine a weak variant of the violence inhibitor. There is no genetic test yet to determine the variant of the Lorenz mechanism (the violence inhibitor). Moreover, it is unnecessary to ask me specifically—most people are non-violent anyway; it is unlikely that I can offer anything more than they can. You have simply been unlucky so far, crossing paths with those same 2% of crazed degenerates who have an extremely weak variant of the inhibitor. The distribution of degenerates can be quite uneven, and it is possible that you found yourself in an environment with an increased concentration of them. Perhaps a good solution would be to slightly change your surroundings and your social circle?
I also want to note—one child cannot fix the situation as a whole. If you have financial resources, perhaps it is worth considering investments in biotechnology, obtaining the appropriate education, or some other way to help eradicate violence in degenerates? After all, the sooner it becomes possible to create a genetic test for the violence inhibitor variant and gene therapy to strengthen it, the faster the problem of rapists will be solved and no one will ever apply violence to you again. And in this way, you will be able to precisely guarantee both the non-violence of your children and that they themselves will never encounter violence.
Think about this; if violence is so unpleasant to you and you have certain opportunities, perhaps then it would be a good idea to dedicate your life to the fight against violence and bring closer the day when this problem is finally solved?
Katya Latysh (The question is accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00008354 BTC. There is also a second half to the question; the answer to it will be in a separate post.)
In my specific case, the principle of noblesse oblige worked. First, I was asked to play the role of Ancap-chan, and then she just stuck to me. It turned out that by starting with a good style and a sufficient amount of common sense, one could create a convincing image, and then refine it through reading literature and countless reflections. Fortunately, kind readers constantly threw me topics for reflection: how does this work under ancap, and how does that work under ancap.
I also think it was a great stroke of luck that I began my acquaintance with libertarian literature with economic works rather than the writings of moral philosophers. I think it was something light, like Callahan’s Economics for the Ordinary Person , from which I immediately moved on to Mises’s Human Action. When I tried Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty and Hoppe’s Argumentative Ethics, I found the line of thought there to be excessively dogmatic, preferring to operate not so much with abstract deductively derived principles as with economic logic. In this regard, David Friedman and his The Machinery of Freedom were a true discovery for me, and (also thanks to the fact that David and I do not live together) I have fervently loved him for more than a year now, which is practically a record for me in terms of the duration of feelings. From him, I would very gladly have a child (a small homage to your second question): the potential father not only has a magnificent pedigree but also possesses restrained self-irony, an extremely sane approach to raising children, and on top of that is a connoisseur of historical reenactment (though that is personal).
Now I will try to abstract myself from personal experience and generalize slightly. It seems to me that the optimal path for developing oneself as a libertarian is roughly as follows.
Upon learning that such an attractive ideology exists, immediately realize that so far you only know a few of the most striking positions. Get acquainted with some overview work that provides a fairly general outline of libertarianism. I think I managed to give a maximally brief overview of this kind in the first (and so far only) part of my future, currently untitled book about ancap. Of course, other works with similar goals are also suitable; they don’t have to be text—they could be videos of some successful lectures. A popular economics course would also help significantly, but without the shamanism regarding various macro-indicators, and instead something as close to ordinary life as possible. This is important for establishing an economic worldview, because economics is, in essence, the logic of how incentives work.
Realize for yourself the key point: libertarianism is about the person, their activity, and their interaction with other people. Any logical abstractions, such as “society,” “the state,” “violence,” “inequality,” “justice,” “the market”—these are nothing more than tools of analysis. They have no independent value and certainly no agency. It is not the state that robs and kills, but people who have become arrogant from the realization of how cool a gang is protecting them. It is not “the market” that decides, but people within the framework of market relations. It is not socialism that leads to poverty, but people practicing socialism. This means that libertarianism can be practiced here and now, without waiting for a libertarian revolution or a decree on ancap.
And after that—mostly practice (filling gaps in theory as they are identified by turning to experts and reading specialized literature). A conscious preference for voluntary relations and a conscious avoidance of robbery. Settling conflicts privately, without turning to gangsters. And if you have to turn to them—at least realize that this is precisely a gangster racket operating according to concepts deeply alien to a free person, and there is no need to pay attention to the beautiful facade on which various words are written, such as “state,” “law,” “Spartak is champion,” “Kosovo is Serbia,” “dick,” and whatever else they write on facades.
Perhaps, after some time, you will feel the urge to begin broadcasting your libertarian agenda as widely as possible. This is, of course, an impulse that is hard to resist, but it is very desirable to do this in such a form as to not look ridiculous; otherwise, you will become a walking anti-advertisement for good ideas. For this reason, for example, I do not appear in videos and prefer to avoid discussions in oral form, as that would be a much more pathetic sight than texts. Similarly, it would be counterproductive, for instance, to boast of a deep understanding of economics without having any reasonably well-placed capital or a streamlined business: counterparties will reasonably suspect that the knowledge is detached from life and will prefer the advice of celebrities.
I hope I managed to answer the first question, and Bitarch will answer the second; I will most likely also add something of my own.
To mark the release of the Russian edition of his book The Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman promised to answer questions from the Russian-speaking audience. Questions were collected on several libertarian online platforms in early 2021, but for several months, David was unable to find the time to answer everything at once due to a heavy workload. However, the saga has finally concluded, and the interview is posted on the publisher’s website: the Russian and English versions.
True to my principle of copying interesting things for myself, I am also posting the interview on my own site: the Russian and English versions. I added a link to a pirated copy of the translation of Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom (since he mentions it—might as well make use of it)—and scattered a few more links, as well as made a number of editorial corrections.
The English version remains somewhat unfinished; I hope to polish it later.
About a month ago, the chapter-by-chapter publication of the translation of Jonathan Beer’s book Blocksize War ended on the Hype Coin News and Bitcoin Translated channels. I read the translation as it was being released, and when it finished, I decided to layout the book in epub, as I had previously done with the book Inventing Bitcoin published there. I started the work but forgot to upload it to the cloud, and then I left for Albania, resulting in a long technical break. Better late than never, so I laid out the book upon my return, and now I am posting it.
The book describes the inner workings of the bitcoin community in detail and provides an understanding of how decision-making occurs when everything is decentralized. Moreover, it is a successful case study where a very difficult and fundamental conflict eventually led to a good, balanced solution where everyone made some concessions. Thus, the book will be interesting not only to tech geeks (I am not one of them), but also to those interested in the mechanisms of self-governance in complex systems, which is extremely important for us ancaps.
Upd.: I added a section about patrons to the preface, as it felt impolite toward the people who funded the translation. Sorry for forgetting it at first.
In the previous issue, I told you that the clearing of the future libertarian village plot from overgrown brush had begun. As of today, all the brush has been cut down, leaving only a moderate number of useful trees.
Now all the resulting debris in the form of branches that are poorly suited for firewood must be burned; fortunately, the rains have started, so the probability of starting a fire in the process has sharply decreased.
So far, only a small test pile has been burned, but there is an idea to organize a festival on the plot to combine business with pleasure—lighting bonfires accompanied by drinks, music, and other cultural programming. An agreement has already been reached regarding this with the local Russian-speaking art community from Budva.
In order to organize any events on the plot, it is useful to finally make the road to it passable. A construction company founded by the participants of the Montelibero project has acquired a tractor and is working on the road: building retaining walls, filling unnecessary slopes with crushed stone, removing unnecessary mounds, and preparing to concrete the road surface in key places.
Once the road becomes passable, it will be possible to bring in equipment for the festival, drill a water well, and install poles for electricity—in short, ancaps desperately need a road.
As for me, overjoyed that Bitcoin has once again started to be worth a more or less decent amount of money, I have finally bought out the land tokens that had long been reserved for me. After the debris is cleared from the plot, a land surveyor can be called in to perform the demarcation, during which I will officially obtain ownership of my two hundred square meters of land and can begin building there.
On October 16, the conference Liberty in our lifetime will take place in Switzerland. This gathering is organized by Titus Gebel’s Free Private Cities Foundation; representatives of several Honduran charter cities, a speaker from the System Design Institute, the ubiquitous Liberland info-gypsy Vit Edliczka, and several other speakers representing projects unknown to me will speak at the conference. Igal Hofman will go and speak on our behalf. We all hope for his extraordinary communication skills in the matter of establishing connections with colleagues in the sacred cause of building pockets of libertarianism in the world.
The Montelibero Foundation has decided to accept Bitcoins on its balance sheet in addition to Euros, so there is currently a sale of foundation tokens for BTC—the final tokens at a price of 1 Euro each. When the share of Bitcoins on the foundation’s balance sheet grows to 30%, the sale at this price will end, and in the event of new emissions, the token price will be set at 2 Euros. Bitcoins are stored in a multisig wallet held by the majority shareholders of the project, so we continue our shared policy of slightly cumbersome but secure distributed decision-making. We are also studying the possibility of moving all our tokenomics from the Stellar blockchain to the Bitcoin sidechain Liquid—in this case, settlements in BTC would be integrated more natively into the project’s economy. Additionally, the launch of a proprietary Lightning node within Montelibero is not ruled out. This would allow us to exchange Bitcoins among ourselves quickly and with tiny fees, by opening channels not to each other, but to a common hub, as this is cheaper.
As usual, I invite everyone to start participating in the project: join the main chat, ask any questions that interest you, get involved in online activity, buy tokens, come to Montenegro to see all this action from a close distance, and if you like the country—move here for good.
I have returned to Montenegro from a three-week trip to Albania; during this time, a lot of unread and unwatched material has accumulated, so I will go through it briefly.
Kapelyushnikov – a good introductory lecture introducing listeners to Hayek and his main achievements.
Nureev – an introduction to the problems of implementing Hayek’s idea about the introduction of certain abstract universal rules of fair behavior (did I translate Eric Mack’s book on libertarianism for nothing – there is a chapter about all of this).
Sazonov – a similar report with a presentation on the entrepreneurial theory of property; he had already given it earlier in St. Petersburg, and I summarized it briefly, and even the listeners’ questions partially overlap. At the time, I was wondering whether to include elements of the presented theory in my book – and in the end, I decided not to. Not because I disagree with the author, but simply because I don’t dig that deep into the philosophical foundations of property rights in the book.
Bystrov – republicans trolling libertarians, funny, but not very substantive.
Bazhenov – a minarchist trolling ancaps and agorists, plus an exposition of those same Hayekian principles stating that uniform universal legal norms are necessary for the efficient functioning of a free market. Also, some excursion into the classification of goods by alienability and exhaustibility.
Travin – a talk primarily about the subject of historical sociology, as well as an explanation of why there is room to apply Hayek even in this field.
Zemtsov – a talk about how democracy is understood and valued differently in different places, while there is a clear inverse correlation between the development of democracy and its declared value, for which political science provides no unambiguous explanation, so we are offered to choose from six different explanations.
A video titled Inhibition of Violence was released on the Libertarian Band channel. It completely repeats numerous materials on the same topic posted by Bitarkh on my channel, specifically, the one from literally yesterday. So, it can be recommended as a brief explication of the ideas put forward by Bitarkh, and at the same time, it is an opportunity to admire the cool print on the presenter.
A competing translation of David Friedman’s book titled Mechanisms of Freedom has finally been made publicly available, although only in the pdf format, which is not the most convenient for reading. I skimmed through it and can say that, except for the poems, it is quite good. If I were more of a perfectionist, this would be a reason to go through my own translation again and polish certain parts, but perhaps it would be more appropriate for me to spend time on more urgent tasks.
An article by Alexey Korshunov on the current state of affairs in Honduran charter cities was posted on the Libertarian State channel. Following that, he also posted an analysis of the initiative to create a charter city in Somaliland, where he wonders about the violation of their creation principles without specifying the reasons why this is being done. In our Montelibero, of course, the scale is more modest, but things are moving forward as well; I plan to post a fresh digest of project news soon.
Intraspecific violence is often credited with the role of a mechanism important for maintaining the life of individual populations and even entire species. For example, violence is a tool for establishing a dominance hierarchy, excluding weak individuals from competition, allocating limited resources in favor of the strongest and most adapted members of the population, etc. To a certain extent, these statements are true, but what is definitely incorrect is to look at the phenomenon of violence in isolation from other factors—an error often made when presenting violence as a mechanism that works the same way in all cases.
Factors such as the innate armament of population members and the possibility of avoiding violence through flight play an important role in intraspecific violence. In cases where the armament of individuals is quite weak, the population is not limited by a strict habitat (it has room to expand), and individuals generally possess a good ability to flee, then certain benefits can indeed be derived from intraspecific violence without encountering an unacceptable level of negative externalities created by it. In short, in such cases, the benefits outweigh the losses.
But everything changes with an increase in the armament of individuals, with the limitation of their habitat, and if their ability to flee is less developed. The more pronounced these factors are, the more negative externalities the population will experience—violence will begin to threaten its survival. This was noted in ethological research by Konrad Lorenz, who also did not deny the positive aspects of violence, but at the same time took into account factors capable of turning this phenomenon into a catastrophe. He also described the concept of a mechanism that inhibits (restrains) intraspecific violence. I will provide an excerpt from his book “Aggression, or the So-called Evil”:
“A raven can knock out another raven’s eye with a single blow of its beak; a wolf can rip open another wolf’s jugular vein with a single bite. If reliable prohibitions did not prevent this, neither ravens nor wolves would have existed for a long time. A pigeon, a hare, and even a chimpanzee are unable to kill one of their own kind with a single blow or bite. Moreover, such poorly armed creatures possess an ability to flee that allows them to escape even from ‘professional’ predators, who are far more skilled in pursuit, capture, and killing than any superior fellow of their own species. Therefore, in the wild, it is usually impossible for such an animal to harm its own kind. Consequently, there is no selective pressure creating a prohibition against killing.”
From all this, a simple conclusion can be drawn: intraspecific violence can be useful, but only as long as factors such as armament and the inability to flee from violence do not become so pronounced as to create too many negative externalities. And the more pronounced these factors are, the greater the harm will be, which will ultimately lead to selective pressure toward stronger inhibitors of aggressive behavior among population representatives.
Now let us briefly consider the case of humans. Their innate armament is quite weak, and they have not yet fully adapted to the artificial armament that emerged during the development of civilization and scientific and technical progress. But this armament, along with the current lack of possibility for significant expansion of living space (humans have already spread across almost all habitable territory on the planet), creates a great threat to the survival of humanity. Intraspecific violence may have been useful for the distant ancestors of humans, but since they began using artificial weaponry, the situation has changed fundamentally. It is also worth adding that when discussing violence, the characteristics of humans and human society that distinguish them from animals and the animal world are often overlooked. Violence has an extremely negative effect on human psyche and behavior. Violence also disrupts economic relationships. This creates even more negative externalities.
Right now I am living in Albania in the village of Theth, 50m from a majestic historical monument – Kulla e Nguemit – the tower of conflict resolution.
This unique structure was used by locals to handle legal matters. If a dispute arises – go to the tower, sit there on a rug, and discuss your issue over rakia, in the presence of mediators if necessary.
If you cannot reach an agreement within a reasonable timeframe – they will lock you in there, and you can negotiate as much as you like. Food will be brought to you.
Finally, if someone plotted something evil against you – run to the tower, lock yourself in, and fire back from the top floor, while simultaneously negotiating the terms of reconciliation. Thus, we have an elegant combination of a courthouse and a prison in one package, which is quite economically justified for a small village. Prisons in the ancap sense – that is, a refuge from retribution.
In short, most smart things were already thought of before us. Our task is to comprehend them, provide a theoretical basis, generalize, and then implement them on a new level of understanding.
