I am glad to present a new video from Libertarian Band, opening the third section of the cycle on libertarianism. This section will describe how a stateless society works. And today’s video describes the conditions under which a stateless society will remain stable.
First, we touch upon the previously analyzed iterated prisoner’s dilemma, then we chew over Hirschleifer’s conditions for the stability of anarchy, which have been mentioned here several times, but for dessert, we provide our own answer.
Further on, I hope it will only get more exciting, so please subscribe.
Utopianism is wishful thinking in the field of social organization. Such a mindset leads to the conviction that the desired picture of the world is, first, achievable and, second, sustainable. One only needs to make a heroic effort, change everything for the better—and then comes the end of history. And they lived happily ever after.
Avoiding utopianism is simple. It is enough to give up, to say that you know how life works and see which way the wind is blowing. The enemy’s corpse will float by on its own; one only needs to choose a good vantage point for observation.
History is a space of realized utopias. Some built their own personal ones, some for others, some failed, but their descendants succeeded for them. Utopias are embodied, but there is no history of the end.
Recently, on a stream, Svetov rashly claimed that a woman has the right to dispose of her own body and get rid of an embryo that causes her discomfort, but in the case of a voluntary and conscious sexual act, doesn’t the responsibility for conception and for the child ending up in such a dependent position lie with the parents?
Margo
As I have already written on another occasion, a right is a claim that is tolerated. A prenatal child does not make claims, therefore “the rights of prenatal children” is a claim made by third parties, which the parents of such children either acknowledge or they do not. Each side can present its own arguments.
Here are examples of arguments from the attacking side:
abortion is murder
childbirth is beneficial for the body
childbirth is beneficial for demographics
And for comparison, here are examples of arguments from the defending side:
my body, my choice
the embryo violates the NAP
there is no money to live on
the marriage has fallen apart, so the “child” project is no longer relevant
Generally speaking, people tend to present similar arguments to parents whose child has already been born, but whom they, in the opinion of critics, are raising in an improper manner.
Svetov’s arguments boil down to the fact that in any case, the resolution of such conflicts cannot be entrusted to the state. But the state cannot even be trusted to take out the trash, so let’s immediately imagine that it has long been gone, while people’s claims toward each other regarding the treatment of children, born or unborn, remain, and they must be resolved in some way privately.
So, some outsider crosses a woman’s path and demands that she not do what she considers her right. She, naturally, asks how this concerns him at all. Any arguments along the lines of “you are responsible for the conception” are dismissed with the objection “yes, I am, but not to you.” Attempts at forceful coercion lead us one way or another to a picture of a legal proceeding, where the defendant has to prove why, specifically in the matter of abortions, his opinion as an outsider on what a woman should do with her own body is valid in any way.
The only argument against abortion that would sound convincing in a free market society is “if you kill the child, I won’t be able to buy it from you.” Only after such an answer to the question “what business is it of yours?” can the woman breathe, take her finger off the trigger, and begin to bargain. Ultimately, a transfer of parental rights occurs with the drafting of a contract for gestation services, and the rest is just a matter of technique. The woman trades the possibility of an immediate exit from pregnancy for compensation, and the moralist acquires guardianship duties over the child and that very responsibility for its further upbringing.
Of course, the moralist would be better off hiding his desire to buy a prenatal child at any cost, otherwise getting pregnant and crossing his path with a brochure for an abortion clinic would become a temptingly profitable business—no one cancelled the cobra effect. So it is more likely that various charitable organizations will mainly rely on non-material motivation, such as “do not commit a sin, give birth to God’s child and give it to be raised in the church of witnesses to the commandment Be Fruitful And Multiply.”
One way or another, anyone who hopes to talk a woman out of an abortion with words about responsibility to the child must be prepared, at the very least, to take that responsibility upon themselves, and ideally, also to compensate the woman for the costs associated with agreeing to their persuasion and condemning herself to several more months of pregnancy.
Of course, abortion is bad and all that blah-blah-blah, but we are not discussing anyone’s moral character here. Only responsibility for one’s decisions.
The clip has no direct relation to the topic of the post, but watch it anyway
I read the essay “Theory of a Free Society,” which was recently released by Vitaly Tizun. I was pleased that for a relatively small volume—only 80 thousand characters—the text is very substantial.
Vitaly dedicates the first part to a critique of the state, demonstrating the incompatibility of this institution with the needs of the individual, regardless of the form the state takes.
The second part briefly describes the principles of organizing a free stateless society. I particularly liked the clarity of the section explaining the interconnectedness of subjects—there is a fairly original argument, which is encountered quite rarely, that many of the perceived weak points of ancap are linked to viewing a single transaction in a vacuum, while in reality, there is an entire network of contractual interactions. It is a pity that the section on the institution of reputation does not address the factor of the cost of applying reputational sanctions. Propaganda is propaganda, but it is also useful to analyze the potential weak points of ancap; otherwise, after reading the text, one is left wondering: why is it that such a wonderful social system, which is completely natural, fits everyone perfectly, and is capable of self-maintenance, nonetheless does not dominate anywhere to this day.
The third part explains which factors will contribute to the stability of ancap and prevent the return of the state, whether through market mechanisms or by means of military seizure. The section on the doctrine of deterrence was clearly strongly influenced by the ideas of Bitarch, and you have already read something similar from me.
The fourth part outlines the main strategies for achieving ancap, and here as well, much echoes the videos of Libertarian Band.
Overall, the work is very solid, and I readily recommend it to those who want to get a fairly confident understanding of ancap in a very modest amount of time.
I helped miss Liberty edit an article on the history of right-libertarian feminism for her channel. It’s very pleasant to switch to a related agenda from time to time, especially since my understanding of the technical details here is quite superficial.
Of course, I’m amused by the abundance of feminitives, but I fully admit that from my side it might look like “right, a lady in trousers looks very strange and almost indecent”.
Still, you were wrong to vote so actively against inviting her to my channel as a columnist: content appears quite rarely on her own channel, but for an author’s column, such frequency would have been just right. But since you supported the separation, then subscribe to each channel individually.
Right-libertarian feminism is often confused with individualist feminism, which emerged much earlier and in many ways laid the foundation for right-libertarian feminism. This should be kept in mind when searching for information about the history of feminism.
At the dawn of anarcho-individualism and individualist feminism, the American Ezra Heywood (1829–1893) made a huge contribution to their formation. He published the magazine “The Word,” in which he featured one of the most famous suffragettes of the time, Victoria Woodhull, wrote about the importance of extending voting rights to women, denounced the slave-like oppression of housewives and female social stigmas, and preached free love. It was for the latter that he was locked up, as his attacks on the institution of marriage were seen as obscenity. This caused mass protests, and President Hayes was forced to sign his pardon. By our standards, Heywood was quite the leftist: he spoke against private property and for rent regulation, against class inequality and for the right to seize unused private lands. However, all early feminists were leftists; nevertheless, their core ideas—that a woman is free to choose the conditions in which she lives and works, free to choose her type of family or not to have a family at all, that she, like men, owes nothing to anyone and must be free from state arbitrary power—are fully shared by modern right-libertarian feminism.
1872 caricature: A wife, carrying the heavy burden of children and a drunk husband, says to Victoria Woodhull (Mrs. Satan): “I would rather walk the hard path in marriage than follow you.” Victoria holds a poster that reads: “Save yourself through free love.”
Right-libertarian feminism is a product of the second wave of feminism. Taking much from individualist feminism, it emerged alongside the Libertarian Party of the USA. The party appeared in 1971 as a result of mass indignation over Nixon’s reforms (price and wage freezes, removing the dollar’s link to gold). In 1972, for the first time in US history, the Libertarian Party nominated Theodora B. Nathan, who promoted a libertarian feminist agenda, as a vice-presidential candidate. Tony Nathan was a party activist almost until the end of her life, regularly ran for the Senate and the House of Representatives from the party, and passed away in 2014 at the age of 91. She founded the “Association of Libertarian Feminists,” which began criticizing the third wave of feminism—a leftist and statist movement—earlier than others. Nathan criticized activists for demanding state intervention in private life and labor relations, failing to see the state as a much more serious problem.
Theodora B. Nathan — ideologist of right-libertarian feminism, one of the first female members of the Libertarian Party of the USA
Back then, in the 70s and 80s, no one perceived right-libertarian feminism as something surprising or contradictory. Until the left hijacked the agenda, feminism was a natural and organic part of the general libertarian discourse. Now, however, the word “right” is associated with racism and other conservative beliefs, and therefore feminism is considered by many to be absolutely incompatible with libertarian ideology.
Tony Nathan was not the only founder of libertarian feminism. At least two others can be mentioned: Wendy McElroy (a Canadian Zalina Marshenkulova on steroids, defender of porn and sex freedom, supporter of Rothbardian ancap, founder of “The Voluntaryist” magazine) and Christina Hoff Sommers (who has been fighting against the left so actively since the 80s that she is more often called an anti-feminist, although she simply advocates for full equality and against state regulations, showing how reforms pushed by left-feminists harm women).
It was a great surprise to me to learn how powerful the roots of right-libertarian feminism were half a century ago, and how this movement has almost vanished today. I have the feeling that this is related to the specifics of the political agenda in the USA. On one side, there are Republicans, who combine a desire to reduce the state with fierce conservatism and patriarchal values. On the other side, Democrats, with their reverence for freedom of expression, but simultaneously with blatant statism. Libertarians, who tried to take the best from both sides, found themselves in an unstable position, and as a result, split in two. Today, among American libertarians, there are many complete freaks, as well as a very pronounced paleoconservative wing. And now Professor Hoppe lumps gays, feminists, and communists into one pile, stating that they have a low time preference and therefore have a decivilizing effect on society and should be physically removed.
Thus, in the USA, the feminist discourse was almost entirely left to the leftists, who turned the movement for equality into a caricature of itself. But now, when libertarianism is on the rise, can we make libertarian feminism great again? Yes, we can.
We have begun translating The Practical Anarchist by Stephan Molinieu, and to start, we present to you the core essence — the chapters concerning courts under ancap (everyone loves to ask about courts under ancap, but there are as many views on this topic as there are ancaps) and private prisons.
Chapter 16, Dispute Resolution Organizations. The author shares anecdotes from the IT sphere, showing that the state is used not to help resolve conflicts with unscrupulous counterparties, but to threaten them with the very possibility of proceedings. This can, of course, also be used, but such application of the court institute looks utterly idiotic. Next are reflections on why contracts are needed and how to resolve inevitable disputes over them without the use of centralized violence.
Chapter 25, Stateless Prisons, paints us pictures of bleak existence for anyone who, having committed a violent crime, refuses to compensate for the damage in a situation where everything around is private. Next, a more or less lenient alternative is proposed, which any remotely rational criminal will not fail to use.
As a reminder, money is needed for the translation. We currently have approximately half of the amount on hand, so your donations to the wallet 1AFkD2bazCs5YZBBrSD7HsRMWLmRbg6QBo would be extremely appropriate.
It’s been a while since we’ve delighted you with fresh videos from the Libertarian Band! Today’s video concludes the second part of the cycle on libertarianism. In the first part, we started with the fact that the state has failed, and then discussed how libertarians try to eliminate it through various means. In the second part, we explained various terms and concepts popular among libertarians. And now we have returned to where we began, talking about what the state is, all its pros, cons, and pitfalls.
In the third part of our long cycle, we will proceed to explain how a stateless society is organized and how it works.
The facts. Alexander Litreev (author of the Krasnaya Knopka app, the Connecto-VPN service, the Russian Elephant project, the Cybersecurity & Co channel, and so on) stopped by Yekaterinburg for a day before speaking at a conference in St. Petersburg to meet up with a girl—and was picked up by the cops with two MDMA pills. Subsequently, he was sent to a remand prison for two months, and if the pre-trial detention period is not extended, the trial will be on April 22, where he faces up to three years.
Currently, the Tea Club, of which Alexander was a member, is raising money for a lawyer; Navalny, for some reason and without looking into the details, is blaming the girl for everything, who, according to the assurances of Alexander’s comrades, is indeed not involved—in short, everyone is heatedly discussing what happened, but as if it were a mundane story, like the one that happened to Associate Professor Sokolov. And there are also comments to the effect that he found a terrible place to buy substances—in Roizman’s city (which is characteristic, as no one mentions the current head of Yekaterinburg, who would even be interested in him).
It seems to me that everyone is fighting the wrong battle here. Since everyone is sure that this is political persecution, this should be used, and the public reaction should also be extremely politicized. Not “freedom for Alexander Litreev!”, but “down with Article 228!”
I believe that for the Tea Club, for instance, it would be a matter of honor now to announce a rally in Yekaterinburg for the repeal of Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and, accordingly, for the complete decriminalization of psychoactive substances. Yes, specifically in Roizman’s stronghold. And if the rally, God forbid, is not approved, then shame the shitty Roizman with everything we’ve got, as if he personally killed the rally and stuffed the pills into Litreev’s sock. Let him use all his influence to get it approved. Let that scoundrel speak at this rally himself and demand that they leave at least the users alone, because a user is not a criminal even in his cannibalistic logic.
Several hundred thousand people are in prison in Russia under this damn article, and it is unknown how many more got off with suspended sentences, fines, or bribed the cops on the spot. The world is moving toward the decriminalization of substances. A state where the same action is completely legal in one jurisdiction and seriously punished in another is normal when jurisdictions are contractual. But until that is the case, we can and must change the status quo toward less cannibalistic norms.
For my part, I am ready to donate to hold the rally and promote this campaign in every way. I urge everyone who believes that Article 228 should be destroyed to distribute this text and join this call. Rallies in other cities will also be useful, but we’ll see how things play out.
It is important now not to waste time before this news hook is replaced by something else. The authorities seriously expose themselves every time they try to apply general criminal articles to political activists. The best way to react is the destruction of the articles themselves.
I will briefly outline the facts. Till Lindemann filmed a music video that apparently contains (I haven’t watched it) sex scenes. Several actresses turned out to be Russian; they were deanonymized, their contacts were posted on 2ch (I don’t read it), and calls for violence were made right there. Zalina asked for the contacts to be removed, after which 2ch began calling for violence against her as well.
I’ll start by saying that calls to remove anything from 2ch are pointless. The main point of this garbage heap is that things are posted there anonymously and without censorship. If 2ch were to introduce systemic censorship, people would simply move their trolling to a less stifling platform. If the owners of such platforms are persecuted, people will start writing on the blockchain of some Steam or Voice.
I recommend everyone reread the chapter from Mechanics of Freedom published the day before yesterday about the public good. When someone writes a post on 2ch, it is a private good: the author receives all the benefits from the publication that interest them, and the opinion of others either doesn’t interest them at all or is one of the benefits for them. When someone tries to systematically fight certain types of publications on 2ch or deanonymize their authors, it is a public good. Such activity can bring small benefits to a large group of people, but the person who puts in the primary effort spends disproportionately more than the benefit they personally receive. Others spend nothing, except for the money to buy popcorn.
Public goods always suffer from underproduction. I have encountered a similar problem in my own chat. I positioned it as a place where one could chat with me on random topics or clarify something regarding the channel’s publications. No ideological filtering was intended; the only request to the public was to remain friendly. It’s unknown what the majority of the public wanted, but the targeted efforts of a small group were enough to turn the chat into a rather unpleasant place for me. I barely suppressed the urge to delete the chat, transferred the creator rights to another person, and since I cannot maintain friendliness toward its participants right now, I simply archived it. Mockery, stupid repetitive copypastas, attempts to fish for more personal information for deanonymization or to demonstrate my incompetence—all these are things that bring me no joy and are extremely costly to fight, so it’s easier for me to abandon the chat entirely than to try to ensure a pleasant atmosphere there.
But as soon as someone tries to bring something from the internet into real life, the situation reverses. An attempt to harass a person in real life over some nonsense attributed to them on the internet is the production of a public evil. All the costs fall on the perpetrator, while the internet just laughs, especially if the perpetrator fails in a funny way. It doesn’t even matter if they succeed in humiliating the target of the harassment in a funny way or fail miserably in a funny way. The attacker gains no significant benefit. For the defending party, self-defense is a private good from the production of which they receive all the benefits, and therefore they are fully motivated to invest in it.
It is thanks to this system of economic incentives that we have the internet as a space of relative freedom, including for stupid aggressive jokes—and offline as a space of relative safety, where one can actually get hit for stupid aggressive jokes. Responsibility for aggression online and impunity for aggression offline are not perceived as the norm. And the only thing we can do to ensure there is less stupid aggression on the internet is to work on the general softening of manners.
Bitarch posted reflections on his VKontakte page regarding the idea that instead of bombs, weapons and ammunition should have been dropped on the Third Reich. As justification, he cites the same Hirschleifer model in the form presented by Auzan — with conclusions that the stable existence of an anarchic society requires maintaining a balance of the potential for violence. If so, the artificial equalization of the BPN (Balance of Potential for Violence) in Germany during WWII would have led to the fall of totalitarianism and, consequently, to a swift end to the war.
One thing can be said for sure: if small arms and equipment were dropped on concentration camps, it would indeed have immediately led to an armed uprising, followed by attempts to leave the Reich or seize a certain area for the subsequent effective deterrence of punitive units.
To what extent the same tactic would have led to an armed uprising against the regime throughout the rest of the Reich’s territory depends solely on the degree to which that remaining territory resembled a concentration camp. Conversely, the more complacency toward power existed in a given social stratum, the more likely it is that the weapons gifted from the skies would have been disciplinedly handed over to the authorities for subsequent shipment to the front.
These obvious considerations follow directly from the Hirschleifer model as well: the higher the bitterness parameter and the lower the overall level of resources, the greater the probability that a battle for hegemony until total victory will occur in the system instead of peaceful anarchy. Conversely, the lower the bitterness and the higher the relative prosperity, the fewer efforts the parties are inclined to spend on fighting each other, and the more they leave for production.
The greater the legitimacy of the regime, the less likely it is that the artificial equalization of the potential for violence through the distribution of firearms will lead to any problems for the regime. The reason is quite simple: under conditions of low bitterness between parties, firearms simply will not be used for political struggle. It doesn’t matter if I have a gun if I express my dissatisfaction with the regime in the form of a solo picket and signatures on open letters, and the state politely takes my dissatisfaction into account without hindering me in any way. Having a gun begins to play a role when I encounter direct illegitimate violence and realize that I have a chance to solve the problem with counter-violence.
So, overall, the idea of artificial BPN equalization is good as a thought experiment, but it should not be taken literally: today, peaceful public discontent far more often becomes a weapon against the state, and to evoke it, I would likely need not a gun, but a boost to my info-resources. And here, of course, a humanitarian bombing in the form of, for example, a retweet of me by Mr. Trump could indeed produce a significant effect.
