Тег: Ancap

War under ancap

I recently came across an interview of Evgeny Volnov by Mark Solonin.

Briefly: it describes the organization of a business process for the decentralized volunteer production of consumables to supply the army. Toward the end, Solonin inevitably reflects on libertarianism, so it’s worth me reflecting a bit as well.

The question that concerns me is: can an ancap community already provide all the necessary ingredients for conducting a full-scale war?

Volunteers are capable of mass-purchasing everything necessary for logistics, nutrition, and daily living on the free market and delivering it to the combat zone. The production of small arms and explosives are developed civilian industries. In the absence of government orders, they will not wither away, and in conditions where the state is not getting in the way, they are capable of responding to increased demand by increasing production. Distributed production, similar to what was described in the interview, is capable of saturating the army with light combat mechanisms. Heavier specialized mechanisms can also be produced by volunteers; it’s just that 3D printers on a balcony will no longer suffice—small workshops will be needed instead. The Ukrainian war demonstrates to us that this is also not a problem. Such mechanisms also include long-range drones, including high-speed ones.

Private entities already know how to provide communications and satellite intelligence data excellently.

What about people? Volunteer units are performing excellently at the front and, compared to their state counterparts, demonstrate far fewer problems finding people willing to join them. The better the unit’s reputation, the higher the competition.

Coordination between units is also showing results at least as good as state chains of command, and authoritative commanders are capable of rapidly expanding their sphere of influence, taking responsibility for increasingly larger areas of work.

What private suppliers are not ready to provide today is manned combat aviation. However, today a combat aircraft is de facto a platform to lift a radar and missiles into the sky, and then to ensure that the pilot sees the radar data and launches missiles accordingly. A pilot is no longer needed to perform high-level aerobatics during an aerial dogfight between planes. Given a stable communication channel, the pilot can actually be on the ground, and a stable communication channel can be ensured if there are many planes in the air forming a relay network. A plane’s radar is something comparable in complexity to a Starlink terminal—it also needs to track multiple satellites and somehow make sense of a jumble of signals. That is, a private entity can produce it without an exorbitant price tag. Consequently, under ancap, a combat aircraft looks like a plump propeller-driven carrier of several missiles and many drones, flying in swarms that hover in the air around the clock, analyze the situation a couple of hundred kilometers from the swarm’s perimeter, and clear out everything interesting they find—and as fuel and/or ammunition are exhausted, they fly back to base in automatic mode, calling for a replacement in advance. However, this is still an unrealized fantasy.

Two questions remain.

First, motivation. States are breeding grounds for patriotism, and patriots are precisely the fuel of war. Will an ancap community be patriotic enough to organize large-scale resistance against a state? The example of the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine shows that the chances are quite high: the primary resistance to the sudden attack in areas where hostilities had not occurred since 2014 was mainly volunteer-based, and at the very least, it thwarted the blitzkrieg.

Second, economic sanctions. Sanctions are an insult to the element of the free market. They are imposed by states, and states monitor their compliance, while the market ensures that sanctions work poorly. It can be stated with considerable confidence that sanctions as a tool for influencing an opponent under ancap will have an extremely weak effect, representing isolated examples of refusing deals for moral reasons. Simply put, some will be actively donated to and worked for out of conviction, while others will be provided services only for good money. Since each side may have a quite diverse composition, there will be both volunteers and mercenaries on both sides. And victory will go to the side that is more effective in this resource confrontation. But in the long run, efficiency will be determined by how many ideological and talented people work for the victory of one side or another. And this, in turn, will depend on whose side the majority believes justice lies.

How would private military companies act under anarcho-capitalism?

Mauser

Anarcho-capitalism is a free market plus the decentralization of power. A private military company under ancap is a company operating in a free market to solve military tasks—that is, tasks arising from conflicts where people are willing to kill.

It is very easy to imagine the activities of private military companies during a society’s war of liberation against the state. Something similar to how this looks could be observed in the initial stage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in those areas where the state was practically inactive, yet defense tasks were nonetheless being solved. What is characteristic of such a war? The emergence and decentralized coordination of numerous startups focused on three types of tasks: direct combat operations, supplying those on the front line, and crowdfunding to finance the first two. If the war drags on, the supply task becomes more complex, and a separate industry emerges for the development of new means of warfare.

But once ancap dominates the world, all this flourishing complexity is a heroic past. The grandfathers fought their wars. Military tasks become much more local; the duration and frequency of military conflicts decrease. Thus, private military companies under ancap will operate in survival mode. They will have to exert significant marketing efforts just to justify why they still exist at all, and many will prefer to liquidate instead, since there are many peaceful tasks on the market that will bring a much more significant income with far less effort.

Believe me, you wouldn’t want to work as a PMC employee under ancap. No romanticism, no heroism, very few actual tasks, existing merely as a formality, in conditions where people look at you askance and wonder why you even exist, and if you wouldn’t accidentally like to create a new state, because you seem kind of aggressive—maybe you need a little injection. So, I fully admit that almost no military companies will remain at all under ancap. There will be gamers. There will be reenactors. There will be some kind of brutal sport. There will be fans organizing into teams to vent aggression on one another under the pretext of supporting sports teams. There will be various book theorists imagining what war could be like under current material and technical conditions.

The production of specialized military equipment will inevitably be shut down. Old stocks will be gradually disposed of, and those that make no sense to dispose of will eventually become obsolete anyway. Cheap mass-market items for the civilian market can be adapted for war using blue electrical tape if necessary, but engaging in this—and especially starting to produce more serious military tools—will only happen in the event of a real war whose duration exceeds at least a couple of months. And where would this real war come from?

A mass war under ancap would require a combination of two factors. First, the appearance of a sufficient number of sweet summer children convinced that war is a fun festival of courage. Is this possible under ancap? Of course it is, and it is even inevitable. And second, a talented psychopath is needed who can convince them that the world is rotten to the core, society has lost its purpose, and it is time to shake up these bloated pigs so they scream in terror. Is this possible under ancap? Of course it is; you can’t assign a Bitarch to every psychopath.

As for what happens next, that is also generally clear. There will be bewilderment. There will be distrust of news channels, claiming they are creating hype out of nothing. There will be helpless attempts to counteract this by service agencies involved in maintaining order and security. Then, more and more people will begin to realize that they are actually being fought against. Mostly, they will simply flee far away from the danger zone after receiving insurance payouts (if policies still imply coverage for civil unrest risks). But entrepreneurs will emerge who begin to solve the arising problem. And then the market will do its work, and it will be the hour of glory for private military companies. They will emerge from nowhere, attract all the necessary resources, deal with the war, and disappear again.

Such a boring story.

How ancap courts work in territories occupied by states

The misconception that the state’s power is insurmountable for non-governmental communities in the sphere of court decision enforcement is extremely deeply rooted, despite regular practical refutations.

Nothing and no one can be strong in everything, and the state has plenty of weak points. On one hand, the state is a fairly centralized organization. On the other, it is a completely decentralized mental parasite. The weakness of centralization lies in the long transit of orders through the chain of hierarchy, multiplied by the distortion of the order at each stage. The weakness of decentralization lies in the possibility of a covert independent attack on any node.

The state is a tool of institutionalized violence. However, it is not the only possible one. Any bounty hunter, blood avenger, or duelist is exactly the same tool of institutionalized violence, just from a different lore. But if humanity has learned anything from postmodernism, it is the construction of lores and switching between them.

Now, imagine a clash of two lores: etatism, with its laws written by bureaucrats, adopted by politicians, and enforced by low-paid employees under the command of bureaucrats venturing into politics — and ancap, with its decentralized pluralistic legal system based on the right to restitution and enforced by any interested parties. In a well-functioning etatist system, the second lore resides somewhere in the back of the mind, where adventure novel characters dwell. But what about an etatist system at the stage of collapse?

Let’s leave the theorizing here and turn to a practical example.

There is the state of the RF, which is at war with the state of Ukraine. War is a deeply anti-legal endeavor. To wage it, the state crudely tramples upon the rights of its own subjects that it established itself. Subjects who, in a normal situation, obey simply out of habit (and this is the most energy-efficient way to command), in conditions where extraordinary demands are placed upon them, obey thanks to stronger incentives, for example, serious reward and/or strong fear. Both money and fear lose their value as an incentive with every dose, so to maintain controllability, the doses must be increased. People to whom such powerful incentives for obedience are applied master the skill of serial murder of people unknown to them.

Let’s consider a couple more factors. First, the accounting of weapons in war conditions inevitably becomes extremely negligent, and they flood the black market. Second, the opponent, a citizen of Ukraine, is culturally close, possesses perfect command of the Russian language, and communicates without problems with any subject of the RF. These factors lead to the fact that various military objects or high-ranking officials are constantly exploding on the territory of the RF. The perpetrator could be a Ukrainian saboteur, an ideological Russian dissident, or a simple Russian mercenary for whom this is a less dangerous and more reliable earning than rotting in a dugout waiting for a drone strike.

And it is against this background that ancap gets a serious chance to establish itself in minds not just as a theory detached from reality, but as a fully working practice.

A native of Chuvashia, Mishshi Oreshnikov, moves to Ukraine and arms himself with a lore according to which Chuvashia never voluntarily joined the RF but is an occupied territory; he states that until the state legal institutions of a future free Chuvashia are formed, the use of norms of customary law is quite appropriate — and simply begins to offer court services. Primarily — over those with whom it is most pointless to litigate in state courts, namely, state officials. Middle-management officials find themselves in the highest risk zone here — those who make some responsible decisions, but of whom there are too many for the state to provide each with even a moderately reliable protection.

In an interview with Sota, Mishshi reveals the mechanisms of the court’s operation and his motivations in more detail, while the host demonstrates certain facets of his understanding of the phenomenon.

What other features of the anarcho-capitalist legal mechanism on state-occupied territory can be noted?

  1. There are several courts; entry into the market is formally open, but the mechanisms for admission into the association are informal. At the same time, the exact number of courts in the system is fundamentally unknown, and some of the publicly designated organizations participating in the movement are placeholders, false targets. The possibility of appealing a decision of one court of the association in another court of the association is declared. In fact, in the case of trials of state officials, this is unlikely to become a necessity.
  2. Fundraising for the execution of court decisions is carried out by non-public organizations via cryptocurrencies. Technically, the lion’s share of the budget could consist of funds from the state of Ukraine, but that is completely irrelevant.
  3. The executors of sentences are non-public organizations that formally have no connection to the courts. Technically, the executors could be professional Ukrainian saboteurs, but that is completely irrelevant.
  4. The initiator of the movement is out of reach of direct threats from the army and police of the RF, since the Ukrainian army stands between him and the RF security forces. Thus, he can be destroyed only accidentally during a raid or as a result of sabotage. It is unknown how many people are capable of picking up the banner in the event of his elimination. Technically, this could be handled by some professional Ukrainian officer, but that is completely irrelevant.
  5. Sentences against state officials and, more importantly, the execution of these sentences are primarily advertising. An official commits a crime as part of their job, and therefore is unlikely to seriously consider the possibility of paying compensation to victims from their own personal funds. Therefore, it is convenient to demonstrate on them what happens to those who refuse to pay compensation. After several such demonstrations, the court can be rolled out into production to resolve conflicts between private individuals. There, it is far more likely that the defendant will appear at the court hearing and provide a full defense, and therefore acquittals, court refusals regarding claims, actual compensation payments, and other riches of law enforcement are probable.
  6. However, even if this specific model of courts does not progress beyond ritualized retribution against members of the “State” organized crime group, it is still a significant step in bringing ancap ideas to life.

In several places, I state that for us it is completely irrelevant to what extent we have a confrontation between ancap and the state, and to what extent it is a confrontation between states. Since we are talking about a struggle of ideas regarding the world order, a state imitating ancap mechanisms works for ancap.

Law and legality in the transition to ancap

Another question about the subject was asked in the comments, and I don’t really want to answer from purely theoretical positions, because for a little over three years now, I’ve had the opportunity to try to implement something. So, I want to reflect on the problems of law and legislation in the ancap community using Montelibero as an example.

I will outline the conceptual framework I am using. Law is the order for resolving conflicts accepted within the community. Statute is a legal norm that the community considers permissible to impose by force. Court is a procedure for resolving conflicts by a third party not involved in the conflict. Jurisdiction is the venue, that is, the circle of conflicts that the community customarily resolves through a specific court.

Montelibero, like any other ancap community in the era of state dominance, cannot claim full jurisdiction over its members. Yes, any issue can be resolved within Montelibero’s jurisdiction—but only if the state is unaware of it. Otherwise, the state may impose its own requirements on what the parties to the conflict are obliged to do.

The Montelibero community is small. It does not provide the opportunity for full market competition between many diverse courts. However, this is no reason to bow before the state. After all, we have implemented tokenomics and now have our own very cheap and efficient financial system. On a single blockchain, without competition between them (we tried adding others, but they didn’t take hold). Although, privately, nothing prevents the exchange of any values: whether commodities, fiat, or various types of crypto. The same applies to courts: by mutual agreement, disputes can be resolved by a coin toss, mediation by a pre-agreed authority, or a duel—but if there is no agreement, one must rely on some unified default judicial mechanism.

Every jurisdiction is subject to a strong positive scale effect: the more conflicts it resolves, the more potential conflicts will specify this particular jurisdiction in advance. This is understandable: people save mental effort and will not keep many different legal mechanisms in mind without particular need, eventually leaning toward a single option, even if it is not the most optimal for a specific case. There are also negative scale effects: even the most efficient judge is unlikely to be able to significantly increase their productivity and will more likely raise the price as demand increases. Therefore, to scale this type of service, it is convenient to use a franchising mechanism: judges may differ, but they will use a single procedure and uniform legal norms.

Where would these come from? The Schelling point here is the procedures adopted in the hosting jurisdiction, that is, in the Montenegrin courts. Why? At least because that is where those dissatisfied with a Montelibero court decision will theoretically turn. But since the local legislation is full of various statist rubbish, it must, of course, be discarded and replaced with our own home-grown concepts. There are few basic principles in libertarianism, but specific legal norms that do not contradict them can vary. And here, precedents will become the Schelling points. It will be easier for each subsequent court to apply a previously used norm than to invent a new one for every new case. Moreover, it will be easier for all members of the Montelibero community to proceed from established legal practice, as predictability in affairs is the foundation for trust.

But, as is known, it is not enough to understand if the laws are good; one must ask if they are enforced.

While judicial practice is limited, one must rely mainly on the conscientiousness of the parties and the informal authority of the judge. The potential ability to turn to the state for enforcement of court decisions is relevant only for the largest cases, where the amount at stake justifies the accompanying costs. In the smallest cases, the losing party will pay without question because the amount is trivial. The problem lies in medium-sized cases, where invoking state enforcement is still too expensive and disgraceful, but the losing party is reluctant to pay.

The most civilized way to achieve the enforcement of court decisions is the widespread use of collateral. I envision a gradual evolution here from one-time deposits to secure a specific claim, to permanent deposits confirming a willingness to comply with the decisions of a specific jurisdiction.

Initially, it might work roughly like this. A community member wishes to enter into a legal relationship with another member. For example, rent a car or an apartment, borrow money, or enter into an employment contract. In addition to the direct contract between the counterparties, they also notify the court and transfer collateral amounts to a court-controlled account, the size of which depends on the amount of liability imposed by the concluded contract. Then, from this collateral, a penalty can be recovered—for example, from an employee for damaging equipment, or from an employer for an industrial injury caused by their fault.

But gradually, as the court builds its own reputation, deposits will become permanent: you recognize the jurisdiction of the MTL court and place a certain deposit on its controlled account—a sort of “price of honor,” in ancient Irish terms. Now anyone can be sure that within the limits of the price of honor, you can be trusted unconditionally. Want to increase your reputation—simply increase the deposit. Leaving the country, or, say, the last court decision caused your distrust—decrease the deposit. Leaving the jurisdiction—withdraw the deposit entirely (with some lag to ensure you have no debts from old contracts).

Moreover, based on this solution, an institute of suretyship could develop, where a guarantor increases trust in the person they vouch for by risking their own judicial deposit.

It would be great if increasing the price of honor contributed to respect within the community, but such an attitude will not form on its own—first, a tradition of involving people with a high price of honor in responsible legal relationships must be grown, for example, as witnesses to large transactions or plaintiffs in socially important cases. Also, a mechanism for increasing another’s price of honor through the payment of judicial deposits into another’s account could certainly appear—if a person’s personal integrity far exceeds their financial capabilities. The result would be something like a Hoppean natural aristocracy.

And, of course, this entire mechanism will work much worse if it turns out that there are a large number of community members who completely ignore it, yet enter into legal relationships with each other in the same way. They may be too poor to freeze money for the sake of reputation. They may not trust a specific court. And finally, they may not trust the mechanism itself.

The poverty factor is handled to a certain extent through suretyship mechanisms. The factor of distrust in a specific court—through competing courts. The factor of distrust in the mechanism—simply a matter of habit. Trust is built; one just must not try to impose it.

From Theory to Practice: Social Support Cases in the Montellibero Ancap Community

This is my second article from the first issue of Yozh magazine, which is distributed via a paid subscription model. The issue was dedicated to the libertarian view on social support.

I am writing this post in a libertarian club, sipping a suspended beer. Recently, I needed money, and I sold my promissory notes on the exchange. Several times, people helped me move my things to a new apartment for free. In the early stages of Montelibero’s existence, I received an unconditional basic income. And at the very dawn of the project, when I first arrived in Montenegro, I received a generous relocation allowance from one of the community’s ideologues—he appreciated that I was convincing people to participate in the movement by personal example. Finally, through one of the project participants, I managed to find stable remote work with a decent income that allows me to live and even save a little, without being an IT specialist.

These were only the cases of social support where I was the recipient. I can recall a few others. An acquaintance of mine received a loan from a private charitable foundation to develop her private kindergarten, and I am helping another person obtain investments to open her own jewelry workshop. And when one idiot borrowed a huge amount of money and was in no hurry to pay it back, he was helped to tokenize his debt, and now all his obligations are available for public viewing on the blockchain. Less patient creditors sell his promissory notes at a deep discount. And when someone buys enough of these debt obligations, it becomes market-justified for them to visit the debtor and very gently ask him to reconsider his priorities regarding spending on personal needs in order to buy back his notes at face value as quickly as possible.

The Montelibero ancap community is young. Therefore, major social support here usually boils down to loans or taking an equity stake in a business. Minor support takes the form of in-kind services or one-time gifts. We haven’t yet reached the point of thinking about what to replace (or if it’s necessary to replace) state pension payments for our participants. For now, it is far more relevant for us to help each other find ways to earn a living.

Our task as a libertarian community is to acquire enough resources to transform the world around us to our liking, and at the same time, not allow the state to seize these resources. Additionally, it is very important to us that other communities borrow and replicate our experience, and that those who know about us but are not part of the community view us favorably.

Therefore, it is required, on the one hand, to be proud and self-sufficient, not begging for money from the state or obscure external NGOs, and on the other hand, not to acquire the image of caricatured ancaps who can help only for money.

As a result, we created a quite original internal tokenomics on the blockchain, where tokens are issued to denote any public obligations, which can then be traded freely. On the one hand, this allows for the easy attraction of the community’s free resources for private needs. On the other hand, for the state, especially one as archaic as Montenegro’s, all these blockchains are a dark forest. Quite serious value is stored in the tokenomics, but it is difficult for an outside observer to analyze, despite the full transparency of the blockchain.

In tokenomics, it is easy for a person to confirm their business reputation: they show a link to their contracts, and then to the transactions on the blockchain made according to those contracts. In tokenomics, it is easy to provide some low-liquidity property as collateral to obtain a loan denominated in high-liquidity euro-stablecoins. In tokenomics, finally, one can simply collect micro-donations. For example, when the path to the club began to be overgrown with blackberries, one of the activists organized a community cleanup. A dozen people showed up and worked with pruning shears for a couple of hours, while many others sent donations for this good cause to the activist’s wallet. Then she divided the collected money equally among the participants. Thus, literally in passing, public goods are created under ancap.

One cannot mention all the cases, but the general principle is this: ideological kinship creates trust, tokenomics tools consolidate it, and an entrepreneurial spirit allows it to be used to solve social tasks.

How stateless social support works

This is my article from the first issue of Yozh magazine, which is distributed via a paid subscription model. The issue was dedicated to the libertarian view on social support.

1. Why is it needed?

Although the free market promotes general enrichment, commerce alone will not make everyone wealthy. Some will be unable or fail to save enough to cover suddenly arising urgent needs. Some people’s needs may exceed their credit limit, so the possibility of a loan will not solve the problem.

Such people have a request for the mercy of those around them.

2. Can they count on it?

In a society of strangers, people show mercy more willingly the wealthier they are, the more secure their position seems to them, and the more undeserved the plight of the petitioner seems to them.

In close-knit communities, additional factors play an important role: the gratitude of the community, a further increase in its cohesion, and the fact that an example of mercy will encourage mercy from other members of the community.

3. Who can count on mercy?

3.1. First and foremost — their own. That is, family members, friends, and participants of a close-knit community.

3.2. Those who are merciful themselves. Helping them is also an opportunity to express one’s gratitude. This also includes everyone who is considered worthy of gratitude for other reasons. Usually, these are positive externalities associated with their activities. Thus, artists, service workers valued by those around them, etc., can confidently count on charity.

3.3. Those who know how to express gratitude. This is a currency that anyone at all is able to find.

3.4. And finally, those who tried to take care of themselves rather than living for the day. This is especially relevant if hard times come for many.

4. What effect does this system of incentives produce?

As is easy to guess, these incentives will encourage people to gather in communities, strive to be useful and grateful to others, but not forget to create a safety net for themselves. Serious deviations from the described socially responsible behavior can mostly be afforded by very proud and self-sufficient people who, in essence, refuse social support themselves, and who are we to impose it on them?

5. What forms will social support take under ancap?

Let us stipulate: market behavior cannot be planned, therefore, in describing the future of self-regulating systems, we can only make plausible assumptions.

5.1. Spontaneous support

A person suddenly needs help, they broadcast a request among their circle of communication, and those willing either satisfy the request without further communication or get in touch to clarify the optimal option for themselves and the object of help.

The market is able to provide the necessary tools here: verification of need, convenience of money transfer, selection of providers of in-kind services — either on a gratuitous basis or at the expense of funds transferred by donors.

5.2. Regular support

A person requires constant help, or funds are needed to maintain some costly infrastructure that is not paid for by direct contributions from those who use it.

The market here provides a competitive environment in which the following operate: (a) funds that accumulate one-time and regular voluntary contributions and spend them on charitable projects; (b) contractors ready to implement these projects on a commercial basis.

6. Limitations of social support under ancap

Charity is an exchange of resources for moral satisfaction. In the absence of coercion, support will be received not by those who need it most, but by those whose support provides more moral satisfaction. This triggers competition among those in need of help, in which those who best satisfy the criteria in section 3 win.

Will everyone get help? It is impossible to say for sure, but the probability is higher the wealthier the society and the more developed the market, including the market for charity.

Will the volume of help be higher than under state distribution? It is quite possible that not, but it will certainly be spent more efficiently, and such a distribution will definitely be perceived as more fair.

Another attempt to recommend the Monteliberal YouTube channel to you

While the channel is on vacation, I’m not bothering with original materials, but so you don’t get bored, I’ll be posting some external content from time to time.

Soz recorded and posted a very high-quality video on MTL-TV, where he explains why the use of multi-signature wallets is extremely useful for literally everyone who holds large sums in cryptocurrencies, and how easily and conveniently this is organized in the Stellar blockchain in general and in the Montelibero tokenomics in particular. I highly recommend it, and I also want to use the suggested recipes once I have a bit more free time.

And don’t forget about the Ankaposhnaya segment on the same channel; they’ve already reached the part explaining the market and seem to have no intention of stopping.

On the harm of the institute of reputation

In Stefan Molynieu’s “Practical Anarchy,” which I have never fully translated, there is a chapter Stateless Prisons, where as an alternative to the loathsome state penitentiary system, an equally loathsome non-state one is proposed, based on what resembles cancel culture in the US, the social credit system in China, or, for instance, the “foreign agent” label in the RF. The idea is to make an undesirable person an outcast with whom everyone is afraid to deal to avoid secondary sanctions. The mechanism is described using the example of retribution for something sufficiently loathsome to the vast majority of readers (sexual violence), but there is no reason to believe that the exact same mechanism cannot be used to punish anyone for anything: it is enough to incite moral panic around certain actions, and suddenly the very mechanisms that yesterday cancelled rapists are today cancelling smokers. Or those leaving an excessively large carbon footprint. Or those infringing on intellectual property. Or formally the same rapists, but with an expanded interpretation of rape, extending even to initially voluntary sex with post-coital disagreement.

What I love about moral philosophers is that they adore pushing ideas to the point of absurdity with the utmost seriousness, thereby teaching others precision in phrasing, provided these others do not wish to resemble holy fools.

So let us talk about the institution of reputation more carefully.

Anya caused damage to Borya. Borya is a peaceful man; he wants restitution for the damage, but he does not wish to extract it by force. Additionally, he is offended, no longer wishes to have dealings with Anya, and generally does not want to see her in his social circle. Unless, of course, she apologizes, first making amends for her guilt.

Anya considers Borya an asshole who fully deserved all the damage received. She also does not wish to deal with him and simply rides off into the sunset.

Anya has no incentives to compensate for the damage. What is needed for her to have some? One of two things. Either Borya must spend significant resources on damaging Anya’s reputation, or these resources must be spent by someone else, in which case Borya only needs to send a low-cost control signal that triggers a chain reaction of cancelling.

How do you organize a system that allows for the cheap cancelling of people under conditions of decentralized law? Only through mass hysteria, which sharply lowers the threshold of arousal in people, after which they decide to abruptly sever relations with a person previously unfamiliar to them. Admit it, it’s convenient: you say a person is, say, a pedophile—and that’s it, no one will shake their hand. But who will verify this claim? No one can. Verification is a costly process. Adding it to the scheme kills all the profit from the idea of cancelling.

Fine, “no one can” is too strong a statement. One could add certain moral authorities to the scheme who verify the labels being applied. Borya called Anya a fraud—that is just noise. Guru Vasya called Anya a fraud—Anya becomes an untouchable. Borya’s only task is to grease Vasya’s palm. In other words, this scheme is also easily corrupted.

Of course, I am not suggesting the abolition of the institution of reputation. I am suggesting that one should not expect that under ancap it will be possible to cancel people without extremely destructive consequences for ancap itself. Yes, you can release information about Anya’s actions into the network, accompanied by reliable confirmations. Those intending to enter into a serious deal with Anya may come across this information and adjust their initial opinion of her reliability as a counterparty, after which, for example, they may demand payment upfront. But that is the maximum you can hope for. She will still be sold bread at the store, no matter how angry Stefan Molynieu is about it.

It’s not Anya, it’s Gina. Ancap Borya wants to cancel Anya the way Disney cancelled Gina. No fucking way he’ll succeed.

Court under ancap. Practice.

I have repeatedly had to answer questions about how courts would work under ancap, and we even once made a video on the subject. Nevertheless, questions continue to come in. This is understandable; the future is always in question. I believe the best way to resolve this issue is to demonstrate it in practice. Therefore, I am opening my own ancap court.

The main principles I intend to adhere to:

  1. The goal of the court is to resolve the conflict. Not to match a transgression with a registry of punishments, but to ensure that the decision helps the parties reconcile.
  2. All parties participate in the process voluntarily, agreeing in advance to execute the court’s decision.
  3. I reserve the right to refuse to conduct the proceedings and issue a decision at any moment, consequently refusing payment.
  4. The amount of my remuneration is announced in advance; the judicial process cannot begin before the parties agree to its payment.
  5. Judicial remuneration, deposits, and similar payments will be transferred to a separate Stellar account with a “2 out of 3” multi-signature. Thus, (a) parties will be able to withdraw their money in any proportion at any time by mutual agreement, thereby ending the court amicably; (b) I will be able to receive remuneration if at least one of the parties is satisfied with the decision; (c) the transfer of the claimed amount to the plaintiff or the return of the deposit to the defendant will not require the goodwill of the opposing party.
  6. If the parties agree for the process to be public, its progress will be covered by me in my channel.

I do not like it when those who call themselves libertarians simply mechanically replace the word “state” with the word “jurisdiction” and, in essence, try to simply cosplay the state. Jurisdiction is not a territory, not vassalage, and not an office with a sign. It is simply jurisdiction. For libertarians, it is voluntary jurisdiction that follows a request for help in resolving a conflict.

A court is far from the only tool for conflict resolution, and the need for it arises quite rarely. But, at the very least, I want to restore the good name of this institution, so that a court is not used as a threat, but that appealing to a court is perceived as appealing to a doctor or an accountant: yes, one can manage without it, but if the task is entrusted to someone with experience in it, the result will be faster and more reliable.

My main target audience is the participants of the Montellibero movement, but there are no problems with resolving conflicts among the external audience; they may simply need to put in effort to master the basics of tokenomics.

For now, I am accepting requests simply via Telegram DM (@ancapsan), but over time, I may add some additional interface.

In addition to the previous post

The post turned out poorly. As a mitigating circumstance, I can only cite a lingering respiratory infection, because of which everything is running, and it is somewhat distracting.

It was a mistake to mention some debates and takes from those debates, because readers naturally tried to understand how they related to the content of the post—and the connection there is quite weak. The thing is, I am not very interested in the topic of survival under a state; otherwise, the topics of my posts would mainly concern tactics for standing in line for various state social perks, roughly speaking, for the slop. The post concerned specifically the ethical aspects of concluding contracts under ancap, and the fact that positive law in conditions of decentralization works very limitedly, and therefore not every document that says “Contract” and is signed by the parties actually possesses the properties one would expect from a contract. That is, it is not a fact that the mutual promises described in it will actually be fulfilled by the parties, were planned to be fulfilled by the parties, or can be forcibly realized in reality by the efforts of one of the parties.

Is it ethical to sign a contract that you do not want to fulfill? Yes, if the alternative involves significant costs. Is it ethical not to fulfill a signed contract afterwards? Yes, or to fulfill it partially. Is it ethical not to make it clear in advance that you do not like the contract? Yes, if this type of feedback is punishable. Is it ethical to abuse deceits of this sort? Of course not; on the contrary, it is ethical to strive to avoid situations where such deception is required.

By the way, the presented ethical approach simultaneously completely closes the meme topic of contractual slavery under ancap.