Тег: Ancap

And how will things stand with the quality and safety of food products under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

This question complements my yesterday’s post about the movement for the free distribution of discounted food very well, so I chose this specific one from the queue.

Either at the very end of the 19th or the very beginning of the 20th century in the USA, there was a craze for exposé publications in the press. Journalists specializing in this were called “muckrakers,” and they ruined more than a few careers back then. For the most part, “muck” was to be interpreted figuratively as political dishonesty, but today we are interested in a case where muck appeared in a publication in its literal sense. We are talking about a series of publications regarding the terrible unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses, sausage production, and so on. The extensive press campaign led to the federal government introducing sanitary standards for food production, and indeed, US citizens today are a society that pays enormous attention to the quality and safety of products.

In the United States at the beginning of the last century, a country with a huge proportion of poor immigrants arriving in pursuit of their American dream, the vast majority of the population had a simple requirement for food: it had to be cheap and available in abundance. The state first began to regulate food quality, and by the turn of the thirties, it moved on to regulating both price and quantity, as a result of which during the Great Depression, government agents engaged in destroying food on a massive scale to prevent its price from dropping. Thus, as usual, the road to serfdom was paved with good intentions.

But how could the free market have worked instead to improve food quality? Of course, through the exploitation of such base human traits as vanity and greed. Muckrakers publish reports about unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses. An enterprising, greedy meat packer opens a slaughterhouse maintained in such cleanliness and order that even the rats tie napkins before eating, invites journalists there, and pays for a series of promotional reports: buy meat only from Butcher & Co, owners of the cleanest slaughterhouse in both Americas! The meat is sold in a branded store at triple the price, vain nouveau riche (America is a land of opportunity!) shop only there, Mr. Butcher gradually expands production, competitors begin to press him, and after some five years, the thought that slaughterhouses could be filthy already seems completely unthinkable.

I am exaggerating, of course, but agree that one can provide many examples of when free competition led to increased quality, and the desire to maintain low costs led to the development of technology, and there is certainly no reason for food production to be some strange exception. First, a certain product or service appears as a luxury item, but after some time, thanks to competition and market expansion, it becomes a complete commonplace and an essential attribute of civilization.

Beauty!

Readiness for ancap

1. What qualities does a person need to live in ancap? And to build it?
2. Given that full freedom will be provided — are there any customs or traditions that could more or less objectively negate such qualities in some perspective (and which should be avoided for practical reasons)? For some reason, as an illustration of this, Svetov’s favorite Amish, who reject technical progress and are quite isolated, come to mind.

Atomic Tram

It seems that in the dispute between Marx and McCloskey, you are on the girl’s side, and like her, you believe that having a certain technological framework is not enough to transition to a certain type of society, but a certain ideology is also needed. I also think this is the case; otherwise, my activity in instilling ancap values in people would be pointless.

I see two such key human qualities. First, a strive for freedom, otherwise where would anarchy come from? Second, a strive for wealth, otherwise where would capitalism come from?

Without the first, we easily get a classic pyramidal society where it is normal to be humiliated and to humiliate others — for the sake of grabbing a piece for oneself. Without the second, we will have an excess of conservatism, where anyone who achieves slightly more success than others would rather throw a party for the neighbors, where all the surplus is eaten up, than invest these funds to achieve even greater success in the future. Google what a potlatch is, and you will get a good illustration of what I mean.

And from here we smoothly transition to the second part of the question.

We have a society of people who value their freedom, strive for wealth, and therefore built an ancap around themselves, meaning a free market, which is then supposedly meant to resolve anything. What human quality, not contradicting the two basic ones for ancap, could gradually undermine them and lead to the destruction of a free market society?

Perhaps I can call such a quality oversensitivity. If a person is too bothered by too many things in other people, it will hinder cooperation. Yes, he may still be freedom-loving, yes, he may still strive for wealth, but he’s surrounded by such assholes! One person’s child tortures a cat; how can you buy groceries from him? Another has disgusting musical tastes, so he shouldn’t even hope for interior design. The third is a sexist; it’s a disgrace to even shit on the same hectare as him. And so the person begins to rush around, wondering where to run and where these wretched little humans will finally stop irritating him.

So ancap also cannot do without a certain healthy thick-skinnedness. The institution of reputation, so loved by ancaps, is the Trojan horse capable of “resolving” even the market!

Look what a cute institution!

The Inviability of Ancap

Grigory Bazhenov, an economist better known to the wider community as the initiator of the project No to Excise (by the way, an interesting example of a fairly competent public campaign, do join), has published an article on the insolvency of the ancap concept.

The language of the article is not the simplest, but as I understood, after scrolling through Grigory’s channel (also recommended, by the way), he is a mainstream economist who believes that non-mainstream things should be communicated in the language of the mainstream and based upon it, otherwise one remains on the sidelines. For an economist, this is logical. For a popularizer, this is walking on thin ice.

But let’s return to the article on ancap. Grigory summarizes that the insolvency of the ancap concept lies in the fact that “anarcho-capitalism proceeds from an economic interpretation of the concepts of competition and monopoly, but at the same time transfers these concepts into spheres where they are simply inappropriate”. I am very sorry, but this is a fight in the wrong place.

The doctrine of anarcho-capitalism does not imply free competition between organizations exercising aggressive violence for the right to rob those who are less efficient in this area. This is closer to the doctrine of extraterritorial insurance rackets advocated by Oleg Tarakanov, which he considers an intermediate option between minarchism and ancap.

Anarcho-capitalism is primarily a legal, not an economic, doctrine, and it asserts that no one has the right to rob, and that any imposed contracts are null and void, regardless of the status of the person imposing the contract.

This legal doctrine is merely supported by economic theory, as it proves that purely economically, a free market is better than an unfree one from the perspective of economic agents. And then Mises says that this conclusion is enough for a smart person to choose the free market, and Rothbard adds that even if it were proven that a certain form of unfreedom were economically more profitable, “proper guys” would still be for freedom. One can treat Rothbard as a freak for such bias, but fortunately, thanks to Mises, this is indeed immaterial.

So ancap is simply a critical hum, whether addressed to a minarchist state structure or to a world of competing insurance rackets: not bad, it says, but it could be better.

Are classical liberalism and libertarianism the same thing?

The Liberal Boot

Liberalism and libertarianism are two terms with very similar, yet mirrored, fates. In the middle of the 20th century, statists snatched the term “liberalism” away from the proponents of economic freedom. And around the same time, the term “libertarianism” was snatched by proponents of economic freedom from the socialists. Mind you, I have not heard of libertarian socialists calling themselves classical libertarians after that.

Classical liberalism in the 20th century is primarily Mises and Hayek. Both are convinced supporters of the free market, both are convinced opponents of collectivism, but both consider the existence of the state entirely acceptable and see some benefit in it, namely the protection of private property. For this purpose, the state is granted a monopoly on violence, and to ensure it does not use it against citizens, citizens must have the right to bear arms and to self-organize, up to the point of armed resistance to the government.

Libertarianism is, in effect, classical liberalism in economics plus the application of those same principles to all other spheres of life, primarily in ethics and law. Rothbard argued that a monopoly on violence contradicts the principles of a free market and must therefore be rejected along with the state; subsequently, Nozick clarified that if a state were to emerge again on a free market as part of a voluntary process, then libertarians should, in theory, have no complaints about it.

As a result, in addition to classical liberals, who simply say that the state must be limited and that political activity should be pursued for this purpose, we also have anarcho-capitalists, who claim that all services, including the protection of private property, are perfectly provided on the free market, and “we are not buying the state, take it away”—and minarchists, who do not mind the state remaining, but only on the condition that it behaves itself, does not extort taxes, but politely asks for donations.

This is how the differences between classlib and libertarianism appear to me

How are you going to build anarcho-capitalism? What is the plan of action?

Militiaman

I would rather speak not of a plan, but of a strategy of action. A plan is good when there is certainty: a specific achievable measurable goal, the ability to clearly specify means, break actions into stages, and so on. For example, Navalny’s campaign headquarters acted according to a plan when starting his presidential campaign: open so many headquarters by such-and-such date, distribute so many newspapers, collect so much money. Strategy differs in that only the goal is known, along with certain characteristics of the environment and some restrictions on the means used—and one must understand how the goal can be achieved at all under these conditions. An example of a strategy is “smart voting,” a recent initiative from the same Navalny headquarters. The goal is to bring down the Putin regime. The strategy at this stage is to break the monopoly of United Russia in elections. And to this are added various justifications and explanations of details.

So, the goal is anarcho-capitalism, that is, a society based on voluntary market relations, respect for private property, decentralized contract law, recognizing the value of cooperation and the disadvantage of aggressive violence.

The starting position is the state, meaning a situation in which there are categories of persons capable of committing aggressive violence with impunity through the silent acquiescence of the majority, and although it is assumed that the boundaries of this violence are defined, they are quite vague and volatile.

The strategy consists in undermining the legitimacy of the state as an institution. In relatively prosperous countries, people have to start by justifying why the state is a bandit rather than a provider of benefits. In Russia, this is already obvious to many, but it is still important to make the idea a commonplace that trying to replace a bad state with a good one is either a dead end or, at the very least, cannot be the ultimate goal.

In order for the perception of the state as a desirable or, at least, inevitable state of civilized society to cease being mainstream, one can work in several directions, according to one’s tastes and competencies:

  • developing and popularizing tools that allow one to get by without the state in spheres where it claims dominance;
  • constantly demonstrating the failures of the state and the victories of private initiative—the state must look like a total loser;
  • mass discredit of the main myths of state propaganda—from the efficiency of democracy to the efficiency of propaganda itself;
  • demonstrating the invulnerability of society before the state, or, at least, the extremely low efficiency of the state’s struggle against ancap ideologues;
  • undermining the resource base of the state by evading plunder and through the direct privatization of state property;
  • demonstrating the moral unacceptability of working for the state, from “don’t get ahead of the locomotive” to universal condemnation.
It seems Tommy does not approve

Is it possible to sell libertarianism to people who fear that robots will take their jobs and hope for UBI? How can ancap improve a society in which 75-90% are unemployed?

…And Justice For All

answered by Alexey Nefedov

The majority of libertarian arguments regarding UBI were presented in his 2016 article by economist and LPR member Yuri Kuznetsov. In it, he shows that replacing the system of conditional benefits with an unconditional income eliminates the stagnation poverty trap and increases the overall efficiency of the redistributive system by reducing bureaucracy.

Ekaterina Schulmann also touched upon UBI and the fears of neo-Luddites in one of her programs on Echo of Moscow. She pointed out that those countries with poor institutions should be more concerned about mass unemployment due to robotization. They won’t get any UBI; instead, they will face a transition to subsistence living. Thus, Ekaterina Mikhailovna gives citizens a simple recipe: engage more in politics so that they are perceived as political subjects.

In Russia, on the one hand, there are poor institutions, and on the other—a strong demand for social welfare. If global robotization suddenly begins, it is more likely that several million more public sector jobs will be created here than UBI will be introduced. Public employees are too valuable for securing administrative resources during elections and similar matters.

And here are arguments for UBI from another LPR member, Mikhail Pozharsky. UBI means not only less bureaucracy but also a common set of rules for everyone, which is a crucial part of liberal doctrine.

However, both Kuznetsov and Pozharsky still remain within the framework of minarchism. Uniform rules are imposed on everyone, and we shall see how long this model can last. Furthermore, the so-called unconditional income still remains conditional, since the condition for its payment is citizenship of the country that established UBI for its citizens.

Can ancap improve a society where unemployment is at 90%? Yes, if unemployment is caused by state regulation, and otherwise people are offered work and are willing to take it. No, if work is not needed by ninety percent of people because they already have enough to live on.

Will there be UBI under ancap? Yes, if during the dismantling of the state, those who contributed to the UBI fund decide to continue doing so on a voluntary basis. Is this likely? Yes, if it is not burdensome and brings respect and prestige. What should be done to bring this bright future closer? Either increase the productivity of one’s labor or improve one’s ability to show respect and prestige. One can combine these strategies.

How will the consequences of catastrophes and natural disasters be fought under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

So, we have a situation: a bridge has collapsed, a house has burned down, a mine has caved in, a typhoon has hit, people have suffered, and Putin isn’t around, so there is no one to promise every victim a couple of million rubles from the budget.

The most reliable and systemic solution, upon which ancap theorists place their main bet, is, of course, insurance companies. Knowing that there is no state and that they must rely on themselves, people have far more incentive to insure their risks. Thus, the insured receive payouts, the uninsured lament their stinginess, and everything takes its course: some insurance companies handle the situation with dignity, some are forced to refinance urgently, and some go bankrupt, thereby cleaning up the market. New insurance premiums trickle in, and even more so, because the issue of risk has temporarily risen to the top of the rankings, policies are easier to sell, and everyone strikes while the iron is hot.

But it is not enough to pay money to those who applied for payouts; first, the rubble must be cleared, evacuations carried out, fires extinguished, and so on—in short, the further spread of the disaster must be stopped. This is profitable for insurance companies, but the free-rider effect arises: for example, one company may start the work while another does not, thereby incurring lower costs. A logical solution appears to be the advance creation and maintenance of rescue services by insurance companies, with funding, for example, proportional to policies sold, or simply equally, depending on their agreement. Effectively, for insurance companies, this is something like the reinsurance of risks.

Finally, it may happen that help is needed urgently, but specialized services are far away, or the scale of the disaster is such that specialists certainly cannot cope. In this situation, volunteers, of course, come to the rescue. Volunteers come to help people even in Putin’s Russia, with all its paternalism and all the dangers awaiting those who engage in crowdfunding from the side of the state—so in the absence of this factor, the readiness to come to the rescue will only improve.

Ancap is not some new, unseen social order where everything will be completely different and no old mechanisms will work. Simply mentally remove the state, and in most cases, you will find that it is either not needed at all or is very easy to replace.

Putin will not come and will not put out the fire

The market will decide—but what about those people who dedicated their whole lives to creativity and died in poverty?

The default, most striking example is Van Gogh—but even that is very relative. How does the market decide on art? Of course, it may be unfair that talented musicians are shut down by the FSB (although they become popular), or unfair that there are provincial artists whom nobody knows about. Tell us about art under an ideal ancap. How does the market decide on art?

Yan Libertine

The ability to create, that is, to invent and produce something that did not exist before, will be valued by those who find what currently exists insufficient. Van Gogh’s tragedy was not that he dedicated his life to creativity, but that his form of self-expression was in low demand among his contemporaries. It is his sacred right to create what he wishes to create, using what he has acquired through legitimate means. However, if he wishes to sell the fruits of his creativity to someone, he will still have to find someone willing to buy it.

A characteristic of many creative natures is their impracticality. Van Gogh himself claimed that a painter’s worst enemy is the art dealer. A creator working on commission considers their own vision far more important and significant than the opinion of the client. It is not surprising that this quite often leads to conflicts. A creator working by the call of inspiration often does not even consider who might need the result of their work or why.

But everything I just wrote about creators can also be applied to an entrepreneur. Similarly, instead of working for a boss, they venture into the free market, assuming that their product will be more in demand. They say nine out of ten companies close after their first year of operation, so the market is no more merciful to entrepreneurs than it is to artists. Both act under conditions of future uncertainty, assuming they know better than others what people need and how to provide it.

But, besides entrepreneurs who wish to directly create something new, there are people who wish to help in the creation of the new. Artists are helped by patrons. Innovative entrepreneurs are helped by venture capitalists. Some are driven by the desire to earn from breakthrough projects, believing their intuition works better than the market average. Some are obsessed with the idea of making the world a better place. Some are driven by vanity. Some simply have warm feelings for the creator. Van Gogh, for example, was helped by his brother Theo.

The attempt to organize state support for creators instead of private patronage leads to the appearance of stifling monstrosities like the USSR Union of Writers, the USSR Union of Artists, and the USSR Union of Composers. Choosing between pop art and opportunistic art, I would still prefer pop, although I would prefer not to choose between these two options at all, since the world is infinitely more diverse, and adhering to the mainstream is by no means mandatory.

Especially since technology has already largely neutralized the factor of provincialism, as the internet is global. The tools for monetizing art under ancap will, for the most part, be the same as they are now. This includes eBay, Patreon, or even something like DeviantArt—in short, it’s impossible to list them all.

Many questions and concerns

Greetings. I have a few concerns regarding ancap (or rather, regarding the anarchic part). First, is anarchy possible within a single state (territory)? Have there been such cases in history? How long did they last? Second, if the anarchic movement comes to power worldwide, could it happen that communities grow into the well-known states, and creating one’s own would be extremely difficult? Third, who will decide the important issues that the state solves today? No, I’m not talking about roads. I’m talking about money (who will handle its emission?), about emigration and immigration (will there be equivalents of visa centers, who will deal with this), about basic documents (will passports exist, who will issue them?), and who will handle ecology (often, to extract the maximum profit, it is better to use environmentally harmful means as they are simply cheaper)?

Kirill

Possibility of Anarchy

I have repeatedly written that law is rooted in human relationships and is determined by the willingness to tolerate certain actions on the part of other people. Is anarchy possible in some more or less distinct territory? Yes, if a critical number of residents of that territory are unwilling to tolerate “archy”—that is, compulsory management, the seizure of resources under the pretext of government needs, and everything else that accompanies the state.

Have there been such cases in history? Two fairly prolonged ones are well-documented: Ireland and Iceland. In both cases, instead of a state, there was what would now be called contractual jurisdictions, where people had a choice of whom exactly to turn to for conflict resolution and how exactly to coordinate their actions.

The world has now become much more globalized, and for an anarchic society to feel secure, it is not necessary to live compactly in a specific territory. Although many know from personal experience how much it helps when you are physically surrounded by like-minded people and you can afford exactly the lifestyle you prefer, knowing that you will find understanding and support among those around you. So, the pull toward territorial communities will remain, but they have no need to strive for considerable geographical extent; it is unlikely to be on a scale larger than a city.

Transformation of Society into a State

Do I fear that such poleis (the word “community” has been distorted by mutual responsibility, which facilitates its oppression by an external aggressor, so I would prefer not to use it) will turn into states? In conditions of global informational connectivity? In conditions where extraterritorial societies exist alongside territorial ones? You know, I find that doubtful; it’s roughly like fearing that birds will become dinosaurs again. The conditions are not the same. The short era of states is ending. (And, I hope, I don’t need to further explain that “polis” is a conventional name; real territorial anarchic societies will only slightly resemble ancient models)

Visas

Will some poleis provide access to outsiders only by special invitation? Yes, it is quite possible. Whoever invited them is responsible for the guest—this is a simple and natural mechanism that works perfectly without any state, its visa centers, and officials issuing entry permits.

Private Money

Money in the form of cryptocurrencies already circulates perfectly in a private manner; I see no reason why they should stop doing so, since the technology allows it.

Ecology

Ecology is a complex of knowledge and technologies applied to transform nature in such a way that humans can live most comfortably under the new conditions. Accordingly, the more people live in a certain territory and the wealthier they live, the higher the demand for ecology, and the fewer, the lower. Therefore, in territories where no one lives and no one claims, there is the least demand for any ecological transformations. It could be a primitive wilderness or a smoke-belching plant; however, where demand for ecology appears, there will be a nature reserve, a well-maintained park, a lawn convenient for lounging on the grass, a flower in a pot, or simply walls painted in a cheerful green color and a kitten in a phone app—depending on the extent to which elements of living nature are demanded in a specific place.

A conventional community of lovers of life among greenery in a modern city

Restrictions on rights

1. Imagine a situation: a local epidemic of some infection suddenly breaks out in a hospital, and the doctors forbid you from leaving the quarantine zone. But in doing so, they are restricting your right to freedom of movement. How would such situations be resolved under ancap?

2. Consider this situation: in the summer, a child is lying/sitting in a car, crying, possibly suffocating from lack of air and heat; the parents went somewhere on business and forgot about them, and a passerby sees this and wonders what to do. Can they or the police break into the car or smash a window without permission, if the car is private property (which is inviolable under ancap)?

3. Is it permissible to cause damage to a person’s property that clearly threatens other people? Examples: a car with the handbrake on starts rolling toward another car, a tower leans due to age and is about to collapse onto neighboring buildings, etc. The nuance: there is no contact with the owner of the threatening property, or there is no time for it (the car is rolling).

I decided to combine three similar anonymous questions into one to avoid writing three similar answers.

In the first case, it turns out that exercising your right to freedom of movement could lead to significant harm to third parties, so you are asked not to insist on its exercise until it can be ensured that the threat has passed. In the second and third cases, causing damage to private property prevents harm to a third party. In all cases, you are simply presented with the fact of your rights being violated.

Where do rights come from? Rights arise from the interactions of some members of society with others. Some people agree to tolerate certain behavior of other people because they believe that those people have a right to such behavior.

Doctors believe they have the right to restrict your movement; they only need to convince others of this, and for this, they can use various methods. The most obvious and correct one: when you are admitted to a hospital, you sign a contract that outlines various boundaries, including force majeure situations like quarantine. Again, to ensure quarantine, doctors usually bring in specialists specifically for enforcement. Who will pay for this? As already mentioned in the post about epidemics, the most obvious interested party is insurance companies. They are the ones interested in ensuring the epidemic is prevented and the volume of insurance claim payouts is minimized; for this purpose, they can pay both those who enforce the quarantine and those caught in the quarantine—as compensation for the inconvenience. Or the insurance company may decide that the danger is small and will not introduce restrictions—those are its risks.

A passerby believes they have the right to encroach upon your private property to save a person; they only need to convince others of this. This is quite simple: they only need to demonstrate the rescued child to other passersby, and they will join the rescuer’s sincere indignation toward the jerk who left the child in the car, and perhaps even help in searching for the car’s owner.

General principles emerge from the generalization of private practice. They work well for typical situations and allow for the saving of mental effort. When two conflicting general principles collide in one head, a mental effort must still be made. It’s nothing terrible; the ability to think is always useful.