As I understand it, it is the hitman, not the client, who exits the non-aggression pact, and therefore the perpetrator should be the one to face punishment. But in the murder of Nemtsov (and other political murders), should the clients really be exempt from responsibility?
анонимный вопрос
In order to exit a contract, one must first enter into a contract, so the very concept of a non-aggression pact is as dubious as, say, the concept of a social contract for the establishment of a government. One can only state that people are generally not inclined to kill each other without reason, as if they had agreed upon it, or that people generally behave toward the government as if this institution acts on their behalf. In reality, people are simply inclined to adhere to the status quo and view its violation with suspicion.
States are organizations that systematically exercise aggressive violence, so in the current worldview, political murders are precisely part of the status quo for many people, which means it is an ancient and venerable tradition: a state representative has the right to order a killing, and the perpetrator must follow orders, and for this, the court will treat them with understanding. Therefore, of course, in a deeply etatist society, where it is not difficult but quite easy to find a perpetrator of a political murder on behalf of the state, placing all responsibility on the perpetrator signifies a lack of understanding of the foundations of the world order by the person doing so.
So it is more correct, until proven otherwise, to view murders in the interests of political groups as a common division of labor, where there is a client, a manager, and hired workers; all of them are to some extent involved in performing the work, and all of them to some extent bear responsibility for the result, whether it be the success of the operation or a trial of its participants.
Now, under ancap, should a contract killing occur, it is conversely more appropriate by default to assume, until proven otherwise, that the perpetrator bears full responsibility, since it is he who makes the decision based on his own personal moral convictions. If, during the investigation, a serious economic dependence on the client emerges, or hostages, or some other crap where not only the reward for successful work but also serious sanctions in case of refusal to execute the order depend on the client—then it would be appropriate to hold the client responsible, as if it were the ancient wild era of total etatism.
Three main types of system organization can be identified: centralized, decentralized, and distributed. This applies to all complex systems with multiple nodes, both technological and social. In a centralized system, there is a single point of control (a server) through which all interaction of regular nodes (clients) occurs, both with the server itself and with each other. In a decentralized system, there is no single server; instead, there is a certain number of super-nodes connected to other super-nodes as well as to clients (client-to-client interaction occurs with the participation of super-nodes). In a distributed system, the network is entirely peer-to-peer, and clients interact with each other directly, without any intermediary.
Let’s consider the history of the Internet. In its early days, if you wanted to distribute a file to other people, you had to upload it to your own server (Web, FTP), from where anyone interested could then download it. As the flow of visitors increased, your server might fail to handle the load, or the bandwidth of the communication channel could be exhausted, which ultimately made downloading the file impossible. I don’t think it’s necessary to mention the extreme vulnerability of such a system to a “forceful” server shutdown—that should be obvious.
Later, decentralized file-sharing systems appeared, such as Kazaa, eDonkey, and BitTorrent. These no longer had a central server that could easily fail. User interaction occurred through many independent super-nodes (for example, torrent trackers), which provided file search and coordination of data regarding the availability of files on regular users’ computers. For greater resilience and improved quality of service, fully peer-to-peer (distributed) networks later emerged, such as BitTorrent with DHT, which can operate without a torrent tracker at all, or the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) on the blockchain, which is fully resistant to censorship and individual node failure.
Decided to create your own internet resource? You’re in luck! Today there is a sea of options for hosting it. A quarter of a century ago, it would have been significantly more difficult. Back then, you needed to possess a huge sum of money to buy a physical server, place it in a room with a high-speed Internet connection, powerful power supply, cooling, etc. It is not surprising that there were practically no individual online projects at that time.
The boom of the Internet coincided with the appearance of virtualization technology, which allowed several virtual machines (VMs) to run on one physical server simultaneously. For example, there are the well-known VirtualBox and VMware. Each virtual machine allowed it to be treated as a physical server, solving the problem of running several applications simultaneously (each may require its own versions of system libraries and OS settings, so running them simultaneously under one OS could create a conflict).
The number of applications grew, but the ability of a physical server to run VMs is limited by memory and disk space. A solution emerged—containerization—virtualization at the operating system level (e.g., Docker). It uses the shared kernel of the physical server’s operating system, and each container encapsulates only the application itself, the required versions of libraries, and specific OS settings (rather than a full OS, as in a VM). This allows for a significant reduction in the size of the container image compared to a VM (which makes it easier to move from server to server), and also reduces the load on the physical server (meaning more applications can be run on it, lowering the price for end users).
How does all of this relate to social organization? Currently, we live in a fully centralized state with a territorial monopoly (the so-called Westphalian state) and constantly encounter it. As in the previous example with different versions of system libraries for different applications, different people have different values, religions, and ideas about life. It is complete absurdity to believe that, for example, Turks and Kurds can live by the same laws! And, as we see, any attempts by the Turkish authorities to impose uniform rules are met with resistance, up to armed struggle.
The simplest solution in this situation seems to be a transition to a decentralized system in the form of panarchy (a system of contractual jurisdictions – CJ), where each group with shared views has its own government, not tied to a territory. Some libertarians may not like this option, as they want to choose “components” on the market entirely according to their own tastes and not depend on a CJ. This results in a fully distributed model, which we call anarcho-capitalism (ancap).
History has many examples of transitioning from a centralized system to a decentralized one, and then to a distributed one. Here is another example—electronic media. First, there was fully centralized radio and television, then came the decentralized Internet with websites, and only now are the sprouts of fully distributed applications appearing (such as Bitcoin, or Ethereum with smart contracts). I cannot even provide examples of a transition from a centralized system directly to a distributed one (bypassing the decentralized), so I consider such a thing extremely unlikely. This also applies to social organization, and it is naive to believe that we can move directly from a centralized state (even a minarchist one) to ancap. I provided practical arguments in my article “Realistic Libertarianism”.
What needs to be done to achieve clean air with the help of the state? You need to launch a public campaign, convince politicians that ecological regulations can generate both political capital and a decent amount of embezzled money—and eventually, the state will squeeze those who pollute, reducing their income, and bestow favors upon those who want clean air. This is, of course, if you live in New York, and not in the city of Sibay in the Republic of Bashkortostan.
What happens to the environment in a free market? Where existing technologies mean that you either pollute and make money, or you don’t pollute and make jack shit, you will pollute. And around you will live those who also pollute and make money, or are otherwise tied to your business. Those for whom the smoke is harmful simply leave for wherever it is cleaner and start their own business there, linked to the sale of beautiful views and clean air. For example, in the USA in the 20th century, New York and other Detroits and Los Angeleses were polluting, while connoisseurs of healthy recreation mass-developed Florida, which rapidly transformed from a land of swamps into a land of beaches.
The market very reliably compels people toward peaceful coexistence when everyone minds their own business and does not try to suppress competitors by force. When the state began to actively fight for clean air in cities, businesses found places to pollute and began moving to third-world countries; the country paid for this with the emergence of the Rust Belt—cities where it was impossible to find any other more or less profitable activities besides polluting. Of course, I am simplifying greatly, and it wasn’t just about ecology—the state was advancing on many fronts.
Of course, business can be criticized for often starting to solve problems as they arise, meaning that for some time a problem remains unsolved. But the state, with its manic-depressive style of reacting, either forces you to swim in an empty pool or demands that you march along the bottom of one that has already filled up. If ecological regulations are introduced before the emergence of sufficiently cheap emission cleaning technologies, you will either get corruption or destroy businesses, and a vast number of people will suffer needlessly from poverty. Conversely, if you try to centrally suppress ecological protests, a vast number of people will also suffer needlessly from poor ecology.
At the same time, business in a free market, even without any state regulations, will look for ways to pollute less, produce less waste, spend less energy, and so on. A dirty enterprise is located on the outskirts; skilled workers must be lured there with good money, the produced goods must be transported to consumers in far-off lands, waste must also be hauled away, and so on. If it were possible to produce the same thing with comparable costs right next to the mass consumer, it would provide a significant competitive advantage, which means investing in technologies that reduce ecological damage.
The main means of improving the environment is the prosperity of the people. As long as people are poor, they will turn a blind eye to everything that hinders the satisfaction of their most urgent needs. Only after becoming wealthy do they begin to think about how to organize a comfortable life. Trying to organize their life for them immediately, at their own expense, while preventing them from becoming wealthy, is a crime.
If you live here, it means you need this for some reason
Democracy is the most humane and just form of government that the ideology of collectivism can offer to people. However, over many centuries of democratic existence, this system has been noted for many irremediable flaws: sluggishness, the impossibility of reliably reconciling group interests, extravagance, a tendency to slide into authoritarianism or unrestrained populism, and much more. The problem lies in collectivism itself; it is precisely because of it that democracy is structured as it is and possesses the flaws it has.
The emergence of the ideology of liberalism led to the creation of such a strange and unstable hybrid as liberal democracy. It succeeded in correcting some of the excesses of democracy, but playing with minority rights gave rise to its own problems. The basic construction of any form of government remains flawed: the imposition of a single order upon everyone.
People simply do not need to be forced into the Procrustean bed of the state in order to successfully coordinate their actions. Any legal relations can be established by them independently, without imposition by third parties, and exactly for as long as required.
And now, more about all this in detail
As is well known, it is impossible to live in a society while being free from it. The division of labor provides too many benefits to give up. Therefore, during the development of civilization, people have accumulated a vast amount of reasoning on how people in a society might better arrange themselves to reap the maximum benefits from cooperation while incurring minimal costs. One of the central places in all these discussions is occupied by the phenomenon known as democracy. This method of social organization has many theoretical defenders and is one of the few that some societies have voluntarily and consciously attempted to impose on others for their own good. Even ancient Athens, during the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC, when capturing another enemy city, would invariably establish democratic rule there, as they considered this system to be the best; thus, the idea of exporting democracy is by no means new. You can read more about this in Thucydides. In his famous retelling of Pericles’ funeral oration, you can also read the most colorful panegyric to democracy ever written.
Thucydides, son of Olorus, the first historian to claim scientific rigor
Democracy as a way of governance is a completely natural development of the idea of legal equality. Any community of legally equal individuals logically comes to seeking compromises through more or less democratic means. This includes, firstly, the right of each person to express their opinion and campaign for it, and secondly, the obligation to submit to the opinion supported by the majority and to defend that opinion as if it were their own. For what reason would a minority, whose opinion was not accepted democratically, implement the majority’s decision instead of, for example, stabbing the majority in the back at a moment of weakness? For the hope of receiving compensation for their cooperation, as well as the expectation that next time, with their opinion, they will be part of the majority, and their decision will be just as implemented by the entire community. If that hope appears illusory, then democracy turns into the tyranny of the majority, and the minority either endures it or, once their patience is exhausted, opposes its decisions—ranging from leaving the community to sabotage to direct war.
Since we are talking about the tyranny of the majority, let’s talk about it a little. It seems like an excellent system! The minority is exiled, physically exterminated, deprived of rights—in short, it stops bothering the majority, the majority turns into unity, unity means harmony of interests, a high level of trust within the group, which means decisions are implemented quickly and effectively, what more could you want? Just let the good people kill all the bad people, and we’ll live happily ever after. Or, okay, you don’t even have to kill, it’s enough to build a wall, introduce visas, censuses, conduct purges, well, you get the idea.
Well, admit it, putting Mikhail Svetov here would be too cliché
The problem is that successful practices become entrenched and habitual. Having successfully gotten rid of internal enemies, society does not achieve harmony, but instead begins to search for new ones with unquenchable enthusiasm. Why try to compromise over any trifle if someone who does not share the opinion of the majority is an enemy? How can one compromise with an enemy? And indeed, revolutions begin to devour their own children, winners in civil wars begin to compile ever more proscription lists, churches fight against ever new heresies—and there is no peace for people for whom the whole world is a struggle. Again, the expulsion of internal enemies multiplies the number of external enemies, which means the ranks must be closed even more tightly and more resources must be spent on defense, or better yet, to strike preemptively, of course… It seems that an excess of intolerance does not benefit society.
A concept such as liberalism can serve as a defense against this collectivist madness. Liberalism stems from the simple idea that private interests are more important than common ones. Therefore, liberal democracies no longer imply arbitrariness in the formulation of majority decisions, but limit such decisions by certain inalienable human rights. The main drawback of the idea of the existence of inalienable human rights, however, lies in the ease with which these rights are taken away; therefore, what looks like a liberal democracy on paper may, in practice, turn out to be either an electoral autocracy (that is, the same dictatorship of the majority) or some other political hybrid. But suppose people are firmly determined to defend the rights of minorities. What follows from this? Successful practices are replicated, and soon it turns out that being part of an oppressed minority confers privileges. There you go. We tried so hard to prevent the dictatorship of the majority that we are one step away from a dictatorship of minorities, who figure out among themselves which of them is the most oppressed and, accordingly, the most deserving of positive discrimination. The majority finds itself forced to vote obediently in the interests of the minority, fearing that otherwise it will be blamed for all sins. It seems that an excess of tolerance in society also yields some creepy results.
I spent a long time deciding what to use to illustrate privileged minorities in a liberal society: LGBT or Islamists. LGBT won by a narrow margin.
By the way, about the dictatorship of the minority. A constant problem for democracies is the doubt that decisions are truly made taking into account the will of the majority of citizens. For instance, in the 19th century in the US, about three-quarters of eligible citizens voted during elections, whereas in the 20th century, it was only about half. It does not matter whether this is due to the lowering of voting requirements or the decline in the overall level of trust in democratically elected authorities. What matters is that those in power turn out to be people representing a minority of voters, yet claiming to speak on behalf of the majority, and this works against the legitimacy of the decisions made.
But even if the overwhelming majority turns out to vote, say, under the threat of a fine for non-attendance as in Australia, the Arrow’s paradox comes into play whenever there are more than two alternatives, stating the impossibility of correctly determining the majority choice. The only way to escape the effect of the paradox is to reduce the choice to two alternatives—that is, to abandon the choice between several candidates for representatives and limit it to referendums with simple “yes” or “no” options, which works relatively well in Switzerland.
One also cannot fail to mention the meritocratic argument against democracy, which in its vulgar form can be formulated as “the voice of Professor Preobrazhensky is equal to the voice of Sharikov.” The “one person, one vote” system in societies with a large number of Sharikovs quickly and reliably turns Rhodesia into Zimbabwe. In the long run, this is disadvantageous for the Sharikovs as well, but they are not good at thinking in the long term. Thus, while voting restrictions are also not good because they violate the principle of legal equality, universal suffrage is no better.
Ian Smith, a fighter for voting restrictions, a defender of Rhodesia against Zimbabwe
By the way, speaking of long-term planning. It would be strange not to mention Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s arguments against democracy in this regard. In his book “Democracy: The God That Failed,” he examines the gradual evolution of societies from natural aristocracy (where decision-making is delegated to those who constantly demonstrate their ability to solve problems) through monarchy (where the right to make decisions is usurped by a sovereign, but the sovereign’s systematic incompetence leads to their overthrow) to democracy (where the right to make decisions is usurped by a faceless bureaucratic layer, and the entire people are formally put in the place of the sovereign). A monarch has a planning horizon comparable to their lifetime and even longer, as they intend to pass their estate on to their descendants. A democratically elected leader, however, thinks no further than the next election term and is most concerned with reelection, which is easily seen by the growth of social spending in the budgets of democratic countries during election years. It is precisely the shortening of the planning horizon and the blurring of responsibility for decision-making under democracy that leads democratic countries to increase their social obligations immoderately and carry huge state debt during peacetime. Monarchs, after all, usually went into debt at least because of wars.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe and his nostalgia for natural aristocracy
Supporters of dictatorships also like to complain about democracy’s slowness, which is especially relevant during wartime. In fact, the very institution of the dictator, known to us since the time of Rome, is a patch designed to fix exactly this bug. But using the example of Rome, we also see how a purely temporary solution (a dictator was elected for only one year) tends to become permanent: dictatorial powers are constantly extended, and republican foundations decay.
Instead of democracy
We have considered a multitude of arguments about how society should not be organized, but let us try to answer the request formulated at the beginning of the article: how should people organize themselves into a society to reap the maximum benefits from cooperation with minimum costs.
Maximum benefit means the ability to form groups of any size, relative to the scale of the task. Minimum cost means the freedom not to join those who are implementing a task for which a person does not intend to spend time, effort, and resources. Minimum cost also means the most modest possible expenses for finding a community engaged in solving the necessary tasks, and the ease of joining it. In other words, the recipe for cozy yet productive interaction consists of not imposing solutions that are personally needed by you on everyone, and implementing your solutions only among like-minded people. Entrepreneurial initiative and peaceful competition of alternatives take the place of democracy.
Thus, instead of communities united by territory, we get communities united by tasks and needs. Humanity turns out to be not a territory divided by states, but a conglomerate of commercial companies and public organizations. Commercial companies, by forming consortiums, can develop certain industry standards, jointly discuss emerging problems, and, if necessary, create internal arbitration bodies. Public organizations can unite into leagues, associations, confederations, and so on. Within these umbrella organizations, some common rules, interaction protocols, and other good traditions will also be developed. But at the same time, each specific commercial company will retain its own staff, its own management style, its own structure, its own technologies, and its own market. And each public organization will preserve its own unique atmosphere, its own specific tasks and developments for solving them, and its own methods of self-organization.
Thus, in such an organization of society, every specific individual, by setting a goal for themselves, has a rich choice of means. First, they can achieve their goal entirely through their own efforts (for example, making a salad from vegetables they grew themselves). Second, they can acquire a solution on the free market from a commercial company (for example, going to a restaurant). Third, they can turn to a public organization addressing this task and either use its help (ask for free soup) or join it and solve the task together (engage in distributing free soup). In each of these options, the voluntariness of relationships is maintained and legal equality between people is preserved, while at the same time all the benefits of the division of labor are achieved, which makes any even remotely significant increase in human welfare possible.
Such a state of society could be called something fashionable, like a “system of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions,” except these are not even jurisdictions, but simply spontaneous orders naturally arising in a developed, free human community. In a poorly developed, unfree society, all these spontaneous orders also arise, but their development is suppressed, and therefore occurs more slowly, though it is impossible to stop it completely.
Friedrich von Hayek, the father of spontaneous orders
All that remains is to formulate the last thing: what must be done so that this method of organizing society becomes dominant. In fact, the question itself contains most of the answer. One needs to practice voluntary interactions more and avoid coercive ones; invest more in the activities of public organizations and try to feed the state and other bandits less; buy from those who produce the best product, rather than from those whom one is prescribed to buy from. And, of course, inspire others toward similar activities, both through words and by personal example. And this is a task no less great and messianic than the promotion of the idea of democracy.
After all, for example, when using streaming services, a completely free contract is concluded with the user, which specifies how the content can be used. If you don’t like it—don’t enter into these contractual relations! The problem arises perhaps when buying physical media, as I haven’t seen any contracts there (but usually the relevant laws are cited, which, roughly speaking, are the same contract, as they are voluntary). In conclusion—is it possible that under ancap, after publishing a book, I wouldn’t be able to forbid readers, for example, from reading it on the street during the day? Where would you disagree?
Atomic Tram
Answered by Alex Murin
Let’s start with how copyright is currently protected. That is the entirety of Part 4 of the Civil Code. To properly manage the fruits of one’s creativity, one must know the laws. Currently, the law prohibits copying without permission, assuming that the author did not grant such permission initially. And it assumes that your interests can be protected without your knowledge by some organization, like the Russian Authors’ Society. The law also protects your descendants, who haven’t written a single line of music or a single kilobyte of code.
No one intends to limit the freedom of contract under ancap. If you like such a contract, then you offer the user or the new owner to enter into it. Ask them to write a paper stating that they have indeed read it, understood everything, like the terms, and have paid. If you believe that your book cannot be read during the day in public places, then write that and get the buyer’s consent. Not in the form of “by opening this link, I acknowledge that I am now the eternal serf of the publisher, who bought the author two beers and thereby gained exclusive rights to the work,” but ask them to perform a conscious action: write a paper or an electronic document and sign it. And preferably without hidden pitfalls, so that the buyer understands what they are doing. And without state lobbying, under which the actual author ends up in holey shoes in a cold shed.
And yes, you will have to independently find a court that will compel the payment of compensation to you, rather than giving three hundred rubles to the Ust-Labinsk District Court, by whose order the bold offender will be caught, brought in handcuffs, and put in a cage with robbers. If you like copyright, take the trouble not to create traps when executing such a contract, otherwise someone might consider it a direct attack. Voluntariness must be truly voluntary, not a pit that a user falls into by clicking the wrong button. Or one where the state finds a song remaining in the browser cache, even if they didn’t listen to it.
Addition from Ancap-chan
I have nothing much to object to in this harsh rebuke. Yes, you can demand certain restrictions on the use of your content from the consumer, but you will have to pay for the enforcement of these requirements yourself. So it’s better to think ten times before setting any requirements at all, because it will be far more reliable to win the loyalty of consumers rather than trying to oppose their will with your own. For instance, some Kirill Yeskov or Pavel Usanov writes a new book, publishes it, and warns readers: “Guys, let’s let the publisher make some money, let the book be sold only on paper for about three months, and then I will release the text for free access myself, and you won’t have to deal with piracy technologies.” And it works! And then, when the text becomes freely available, grateful readers even send donations. Because you don’t need to be an asshole; it doesn’t pay off.
Suppose the owner of a private garden with trees files a lawsuit against one of the neighbors, claiming that the neighbor breathes oxygen produced by the garden’s trees but does not pay for it, and demands payment for this oxygen at a price of 1 ancapodollar per liter. What decision is a court following libertarian principles most likely to make?
анонимный вопрос
Answered by Alex Murin
Most likely, the greedy plaintiff’s reputation will suffer greatly, and the court will fine them for attempting to enrich themselves through the court. The burden of proof lies with the plaintiff. Consequently, the plaintiff would have to prove that the defendant is actually breathing their oxygen. For example, by finding oxygen molecules produced by their plants within the defendant’s body. Not to assume it, but to provide real evidence. Since the service was not ordered and no promise to pay for it was made, the defendant had no malicious intent to obtain the plaintiff’s property in the form of oxygen. The plaintiff did not take proper measures to preserve their property—for example, by installing a dome over their garden. Furthermore, the plaintiff themselves breathes, and they breathe air containing oxygen not only from their own garden. The plaintiff somehow obtained the carbon dioxide needed for photosynthesis. Is the gas they received cheaper than the one they released into the common space?
For every plaintiff who loves to reduce things to absurdity, there is a judge who can take the absurdity even further: force them to enclose their garden with a dome and stop giving their expensive oxygen to the general atmosphere and shamelessly stealing carbon dioxide.
An important point: the share of oxygen in the atmosphere from the owner of a couple of hectares of forest is negligible, and a hermetic dome over a couple of hectares of land is a very expensive pleasure.
Addition from Ancap-chan
An important factor is that a court handling a property dispute between two neighbors is obviously an arbitration court. Its task is not the formal consideration of a claim, but the resolution of a conflict. These people still have a vast amount of time to live side by side, and if such ridiculous litigation begins between them, it makes sense to find out what the real grievance is, what the real conflict is—and then, based on this, try to resolve the issue so that conflicts no longer arise.
Ideally, the court’s decision should look, in my view, something like this: 1) carry out a mutual offset of the oxygen supplied by the plaintiff’s garden and the carbon dioxide produced by the defendant’s breathing; 2) oblige the defendant to include the plaintiff among the invited guests when having a barbecue in their backyard to monitor additional carbon dioxide emissions from grilling meat over coals; 3) oblige the plaintiff to compensate the defendant for the additional carbon dioxide emissions from the barbecue with supplies of garden produce.
Breathe deeper, the trees need more raw materials for photosynthesis!
Singapore is a state with severely curtailed personal freedoms and a very significant level of economic freedom. In effect, it is a state organized like a commercial company, where all of life is regulated within the logic of business processes. Naturally, this model cannot imply any political competition. For appearances’ sake, besides the ruling People’s Action Party, there is also an opposition Workers’ Party in Singapore. Even from the name, one can assume that its role is something like a pampered trade union, which certainly cannot claim to manage the enterprise, but theoretically can provide management with some feedback if they start messing up the administrative measures.
If something like the Soviet Union could be conditionally called a dictatorship of the proletariat, then Singapore, within Marxist terminology, is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Everything for business, everything for economic growth! A slogan roughly of the same vein as “everything for the front, everything for victory.”
Could a city with anarcho-capitalist orders have emerged instead of the Singapore we see now? Generally speaking, yes. If those same investors, whom Lee Kuan Yew chased with exhortations, had come on their own and established their own order—first buying out the extremely cheap local officials root and branch, and then abolishing state power altogether for lack of need—would we now have in this place a self-governing city with a very compact administration existing on an endowment fund, where the share of small and medium-sized businesses in its extremely dynamic economy would be about four-fifths, it would be slightly poorer, slightly dirtier, there would be three times as many poor people, and ten times as many happy people? Where do I get my estimates? I mostly base them on Hong Kong, taking into account local specifics and the fact that in Hong Kong there is still some form of state.
The main problem with such cities with a free economy is that there are too few of them, they are damn attractive, and therefore overcrowded with crowds of people wishing to settle in this wonderful place. Meanwhile, in order to non-violently replicate a successful model, a free land market is needed. Then there are no problems: investors from a conditional Singapore organize a consortium, buy a convenient territory from some state—and develop it. But for states, territory too often turns out to be some kind of sacred value for which they are ready to sacrifice millions of people, and to hell with these crazies and their hang-ups. And so, people thirsting for freedom and prosperity crowd onto tiny territories, vastly overpaying for such a rare opportunity.
But all economic history tells us that this is perfectly normal: a certain product is first premium, gradually becomes replicated, and its cost drops to an acceptable level, and then it becomes a mere mass-market commodity. Freedom in this case is an example of such a product. There is a demand for it, it is growing, and therefore the supply will expand.
What guarantees are there that under ancap, people with rare diseases (affecting fewer than 200,000 people) will not be left without medication because it would simply be unprofitable to develop and sell them (given such a small number of consumers)?
анонимный вопрос
Answered by Alex Murin
The strangest question I have ever encountered. And why is it profitable for states to fund scientists who conduct such research? Perhaps because funding scientists is profitable in general? They make useful discoveries, and over the last 100 years, these have become increasingly frequent, useful, and interesting.
A company that develops a new drug gains notoriety. This is currently the best advertisement a pharmaceutical company can imagine. One could hire a hundred PR agents to write that this company’s vitamin C and plantain are the best in the world. But many people sell vitamin C and herbal mixtures. So, most of the time, PR agents would be producing information junk. Instead, one could hire another dozen scientists to develop a drug for a rare disease. Journalists from many publications would gather to see and report on the discovery, the company’s name would hit the top news of all websites for a couple of days, and remain in the top of specialized publications for another month. In addition to that rare pill, the company produces hundreds of other less rare ones. A discovery means new clients, the respect of doctors, and the attention of their patients.
Regarding sales: selling medications is always profitable. Just as it was profitable in primitive society, when a hunter brought the shaman the best piece of meat for a pot of magic potion, so it is in a post-industrial society, where hundreds of pharmaceutical companies make aspirin and millions of pharmacies sell it. Perhaps it would be unprofitable to keep a rare medicine in a pharmacy, but nothing stops it from being ordered. Currently, restrictions on the online sale of medications are created by states.
The role of the state in the production of drugs for rare diseases is not very obvious. In funding scientists? They can be funded by charitable foundations and insurance companies. It is always profitable for an insurer for their patient to be healthy and pay premiums regularly, rather than lying on their deathbed.
By the way, the famous EU Directive 141/2000 (reduction of regulations in the development of orphan drugs) was adopted precisely thanks to private initiative, and not at the suggestion of any state. EURORDIS, an association supporting patients with rare diseases, was one of the organizations that contributed to the development and adoption of such an initiative.
In this case, the norm has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is anpcap or socialism. There is a broad global trend toward the reduction of aggression, including toward children. When you read someone like Kassil, far more brutal customs are described, both between children and between children and adults. I suspect that in those times, such an episode would not have attracted any attention at all. He didn’t kill or maim; he simply forced a fussy child to get up and led them by the hand—what’s the big deal? A hundred years have passed, and this episode is now perceived as clear coarseness of manners, though still not so egregious as to make one jump out into the yard and immediately intervene for the child instead of continuing the filming, or, say, to lean out of a window with a rifle and demand an immediate stop.
It is very difficult to predict what the norms regarding violence against children will be in the foreseeable future. The trend may continue, and then the ideas currently being promoted—for example, by the Dobroum project—will over time seem banal, or even self-evident. Or the trend may reverse, and then our era will seem to descendants as a time of softness and degeneration.
At the same time, ancap can develop within the framework of any current of this trend. If the world becomes more non-violent, the key principle in relations with children will be the principle of non-aggression. Did the child attack? No, they were just lying there and didn’t want to get up. How can they be hit? How can children be hit at all? If greater violence becomes the norm, the emphasis will shift toward legal capacity. Is the child not a legal subject? Then they are in the zone of the guardian’s responsibility. See a child being hit? Well, ask whose child it is. If the guardian is the one hitting—well, they are probably hitting for a reason. If it is not the guardian hitting, it is an attack on someone else’s property, an impropriety, and should be stopped—for example, by blowing the aggressor’s brains out.
To me, of course, the first scenario seems more natural and probable. The trend toward non-violence is accompanied by an increasing value of human life and is largely driven by this. Ancap presupposes the elimination of the state, which, among other things, is a systemic factor that reduces the value of human life (firstly, it produces violence, meaning violence becomes commonplace; secondly, it makes people poorer, thereby reducing the value of life). This means that under ancap, the value of life will increase, and there will be less violence.
But, alas, the reasons for the trend are not fully clear, and I cannot guarantee anything on this matter. After all, the softening and hardening of manners throughout world history clearly does not follow a simple linear dependency.
P.S. When the post was already ready for publication, news arrived that Anastasia Shevchenko’s daughter died in intensive care. For those who do not know: the mother was accused of membership in an undesirable organization and placed under house arrest until trial, deprived of the right to communicate with her daughter. The daughter was seriously ill and required constant care. The court, choosing the preventive measure, ignored this circumstance.
So: under ancap, this would not only not be the norm, but would become completely impossible. The state kills. It is not just a machine of violence, but also a completely irresponsible machine.
The difference between ancap and agorism is quite simple. Ancap is a state of society in which institutionalized coercion is absent, while agorism is a strategy for achieving ancap. In one of my early posts “Ancap or Minarchism?” I called this method counter-cultural, as opposed to political, but I am ready to agree that the term is subpar and a mouthful; in the future, I will use the word “agorism” specifically.
Agorism assumes that the only effective strategy for achieving ancap is direct action. If you want ancap, live according to ancap; do not try to bargain with the state or use state-approved mechanisms for interacting with the state, because this practice, which is questionable in terms of protecting rights, strengthens those very mechanisms and the state along with them.
Agorism is the black market, private education, crypto-economics, horizontal ties, and voluntary mutual aid. As is easy to see, in recent years, agorists have achieved considerable success in developing the necessary infrastructure and do not plan to stop.
However, it is also easy to see that the greatest intellectual contribution to the development of agorist mechanisms is still made by people living in relatively free states, while agorists in somewhere like China keep quiet as mice. Thus, for agorism to emerge as an ideological direction and develop steadily, rather than representing spontaneous, easily suppressed acts of defiance against violence, a certain basic level of political and economic freedoms is necessary, and this level is achieved precisely by political methods.
On the other hand, for example, the economic transformation from a planned to a market economy in Russia happened largely thanks to the black market that had already developed in the late Soviet Union; without it, private property would have had to be created from absolute scratch, which would have been far more difficult.
Finally, I will note that for a market to emerge, a certain minimum level of trust in society is required, without which the costs of ensuring security simply eat up all the benefits of most transactions, making market relations marginal, while subsistence farming and various forms of coercion come to the fore. The best mechanism for establishing trust is the successful experience of joint activity. And here, political activity, some form of cooperative economics, charity, and even sports competitions or mass celebrations are equally suitable.
So both agorism and political libertarianism successfully work toward the same goal. The more political rights there are relative to underdeveloped economic rights, the more relevant agorism becomes. The more economic rights there are relative to underdeveloped political rights, the more relevant political activity becomes, although it may also take on very peculiar forms—which is no surprise if parties are not registered and not included in ballots. And in a situation where there are neither political nor economic rights, I’m sorry, but the most direct path is flight from this hell, or an armed uprising.
Another pitfall of agorism: the similarity of methods with left-wing anarchists can lead to migration toward their ideology. Be careful with that.
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