Тег: Ancap

Is the use of violence by ancaps against representatives of law enforcement agencies, such as the police or army, who are violently enforcing the state and its laws, aggressive or nonetheless defensive?

анонимный вопрос

To be honest, such questions feel somewhat dogmatic to me. It’s as if someone started pestering an imam, for example: “Is the killing of infidels a defensive jihad—or an offensive one?”

Well, in the name of the great and merciful Market, I shall begin!

Since the state is a system of institutionalized violence against private property, then, of course, any person who is a subject of any given state has grounds to present property claims against that state. Since no state not only refuses to consider the possibility of restitution for property forcibly seized from people, but also applies sanctions for the very act of contesting such seizure, it must be concluded that an open conflict exists between the state and the individual, which is essentially a euphemism for the term “war.” In our case, it is a form of guerrilla warfare.

Thus, the question of how appropriate it is for an individual to use violence against certain state employees is merely a question of the laws and customs of war, as well as a question of tactics and strategy.

I remind you that the primary element in this war is the existence of property claims the individual has against the state, arising from the state’s forced seizures of the individual’s private property and the restriction of their freedom. Therefore, victory in the war is brought closer by reducing the rate of seizures and restrictions, reducing the share of state property in total wealth, and reducing the number of civil servants and other persons supported by the state.

So, can you beat up cops after all—or not? Theoretically—you can. Practically—there is usually no point. Privatizing something state-owned or securing a tax deduction is far more useful. Achieving a reduction in tax rates is an extremely noble cause indeed. But killing a state employee is simply killing a human being. It is permissible if they are carrying out a direct attack dangerous to your life, but it will in no way diminish the state, reduce taxes, or weaken regulations. On the contrary, it more often leads to a tightening of the screws and personal bitterness toward you from the deceased’s previously indifferent colleagues. So, this offensive jihad is not the duty of a libertarian.

Now, the widespread looting of state property kills the state quickly and reliably, even one as powerful and creepy as the late USSR. Widespread sabotage of taxes and regulations does the same. It is this defensive jihad that is more pleasing to the Market.

May the Market guide you on the straight path and be favorable to you. Amen!

The omnipotent Market knows best!

Can the free town of Christiania be considered an anarcho-capitalist community, even if only in its infancy?

анонимный вопрос

The more I read about Christiania, the more parallels I find with Elausestere—a group of islands on the outskirts of the Tuamotu Archipelago where, according to the Meganesian Cycle by Alexander Rozov—a piece of sci-fi popular among Russian libertarians—a communist enclave existed within a minarchist confederation.

A group of people homesteads unclaimed property, organizes self-governance, establishes its own exotic order, and then the outside world eventually notices this commune, and its first impulse is obvious: to bring it to a common denominator. It quickly becomes clear that this is, first, difficult; second, disapproved of by local residents; third, not approved by all other citizens; and finally, that profit can be derived from this attraction.

Next come the negotiations, a partial adaptation of the enclave to external rules of the game—and that’s it, it lives freely and happily in symbiosis with its surroundings.

What is more prevalent in today’s Christiania—anarcho-communism, anarcho-capitalism, or is it simply something like a Chinatown, only formed not by cultural-ethnic, but simply by cultural traits? From the state’s point of view—definitely the third. An anarcho-capitalist will see primarily ancap traits in Christiania. I think an ancom will see primarily ancom traits.

Well, it’s wonderful that Christiania managed to please everyone and allow each person to see something of their own in it!

I’ve made a note for myself: when I travel around Europe, I’ll stop by Christiania.

For weed, against heroin; for bicycles, against cars. Moderation itself!

How will the transition to ancap be carried out in general, and in Russia in particular?

анонимный вопрос

In the post about ancap and minarchism, I described two possible ways of building ancap: the political and the countercultural. The political approach boils down to reforming the state into a minarchist state, and then further reducing it through political means up to its full formal dissolution. The countercultural approach boils down to a factual refusal to use the state, and especially a refusal to provide it with any resources whatsoever, from money to brains.

In a poll on the most promising method, my readers preferred the political method, although a significant number of votes went to the view that one should first achieve the maximum possible through political means, and then use the countercultural method to finish off the weakened state mechanism.

Personally, it seems to me that there will be more and more ancap in our lives as people learn to hide their income from the state more effectively and grow wealthy faster than they are plundered. A poor person may still hope that the state will rob the rich and give it to them. A wealthy person only needs to be left alone; they will figure it out themselves.

It is very important that working for the state be humiliating and serve as a demonstration of incompetence, while working for a private individual signifies both respect and prosperity. For this, it is important that entrepreneurs and their employees realize the unity of their interests: the less the state gets in the way, the more those who work will get. And this is achieved only through the widespread penetration of ideas.

The temptation of the political path is that a politician can lead society to their desired result almost by force, whereas the method of cultural transformation assumes a broad acceptance of libertarian ideas by society. It is also important to understand that any failure of libertarian political reforms hits the image of the ideology (look what those damned liberalasts have brought the country to!), and any success is easily converted by the state into its own strengthening (you’ve grown rich—now share!). Meanwhile, public sentiment cannot be uprooted so easily, which is why the path to approximating ancap through it is much more reliable.

This is the kind of tax collection graph we need

How will private property rights to mobile communication frequencies be determined under anarcho-capitalism, and can they even be property from a libertarian perspective?

анонимный вопрос

I will start with the second part of the question. Of course, technically nothing prevents competing companies from placing a huge number of cell towers side by side that operate in the same frequency range, but this would lead to collisions, and the equipment would be unable to perform its primary purpose—providing mobile communication. Therefore, it can be confidently stated that the working frequency range for mobile communication is a scarce resource. And anything that is a scarce resource can be converted into property.

Now let’s move to the question of determining property rights for this peculiar object in the absence of an external regulator. There are only three permissible ways of acquiring property without violating libertarian principles: primary appropriation, purchase, and compensation for damages. It remains to understand the specifics of applying these methods to frequencies.

Technical characteristics of using frequencies for mobile communication (I am simplifying greatly, after all, this is a post about economics, not technology):
1. There is a specific frequency range for which equipment is manufactured. This range is optimal for mobile communication based on radio wave propagation characteristics: on the one hand, the phone antenna can be quite compact; on the other, waves do not attenuate too strongly in the environment and allow for sufficiently reliable reception indoors, shielded from the signal source by walls.
2. Using the entire frequency band within which mobile devices operate allows for the simultaneous transmission of a certain finite amount of information. The wider the frequency range used by a particular mobile operator, the wider the communication channel they can provide to their users, and consequently, the more users they can connect. More accurately, the less frequently they need to place towers to serve their users.
3. In addition to mobile operators, other companies may use the same frequency ranges for their own needs.

So, a certain mobile operator wants to enter a region. They estimate the tower density they minimally need at the start, depending on the population density in different parts of the region, infrastructure (communication is desirable along main highways, even if few people live there for some reason), and so on. Another parameter in determining tower density turns out to be the width of the frequency range the operator will use.

If there is no particular competition for frequencies, then there is no problem. The operator takes a large unused band and begins to exploit it. Gradually, competitors arrive, and this continues until the free ranges are exhausted. What should operators do now? First, they can abandon the idea of entering a region with such high competition and expand where competition is lower, but this is not always convenient, as subscribers want communication from their operator in all regions to avoid dealing with roaming. Second, they can buy a range from someone who is using it. Since the early adopters grabbed frequencies with a large margin, operators may initially agree to such offers at reasonable prices. Third, they can agree on the joint use of existing frequencies and equipment, which reduces costs for each party to the agreement. Such a precedent, by the way, occurred in Russia during the construction of fourth-generation networks: for them to work productively in densely populated areas, frequency bands must be quite wide and continuous, and so operators began to conclude agreements on the joint use of their ranges. The funniest part is that they had to obtain permission from the state for this, although, it would seem, what business is it of theirs.

Finally, a fourth possible tactic for an outsider is to ignore agreements and simply start placing their own towers and seizing frequencies on a first-come, first-served basis. As in, whether you like it or not, I am now also working on this frequency, and if you don’t like it—move. This is a declaration of war, which eventually ends in one agreement or another. War is a very ruinous enterprise that also damages one’s reputation. Judge for yourself: if subscribers of an existing operator begin to experience connection problems and the operator explains to them that this is because an outsider has arrived and is sticking in their towers, the outsider will have to offer simply revolutionary low tariffs for users to feel even a semblance of loyalty toward them. I do not rule out that occasionally such a seizure of frequencies will be economically justified, but far more often (ancap provides all the tools for this), the delusional will simply go bankrupt.

A characteristic intermediate stage of the industry’s extensive development: everyone has their own tower, but they all stand side by side. At the stage of cost reduction, we will see all these toys on one Christmas tree.

Continuation of the discussion about reputation

Bitarch replies:

You wrote a review of my reputation proposal, but it seems you didn’t understand the exact essence of the idea. You write:

As for the system you proposed, people will be willing to take its recommendations into account only if, for some reason, it becomes very important to them that a person, for the sake of increasing their reputation, be willing to contribute to charity.

The main goal of the system is not to show one’s generosity to others, but to create a mechanism for the value of a reputational entity, which will then be a pity to lose. Game theory comes into play, making deceiving other people economically disadvantageous. The original idea was proposed by the developers of the OpenBazaar project; I modified it for application in real society.

Reputation Pledges
OpenBazaar implements proof-of-burn in a different way. On the OpenBazaar network, users can choose to be pseudonymous, meaning you don’t know their true identity. As such, it can sometimes be difficult to determine if they are trustworthy or should be avoided. A reputation system is important to help inform the network of which participants have acted honestly in the past, and which haven’t. There are several facets to the OpenBazaar reputation system, which is still being built, and you can read about the overall system here. One part of this system is Reputation Pledges. This means that a user has chosen to prove their commitment to their OpenBazaar identity by burning a certain amount of bitcoin. The act of burning coins shows the network that the user is committed to their identity because they’ve now expended resources on it, and if they incur a negative reputation then those resources will have gone to waste.


https://openbazaar.org/blog/proof-of-burn-and-reputation-pledges

Indeed, that’s roughly how reputation works. “No one remembers McFlurry the bridge builder! But once I fucked a goat…”

Thank you for the clarification that charity in the proposed engine is not that important, the main thing is the willingness itself to confirm one’s reliability through the expenditure of resources. This could indeed prove important for an outsider to gain traction on a particular trading platform. They could spend money on advertising, or instead, or in addition, spend it on boosting their karma, and this would also perfectly demonstrate their willingness to play fair.

But I thought it important to note that it is pointless to try and stretch any such mechanisms to fit all cases in life. A person can be honest and respectable, like Alexei Karenin, but his wife will still throw herself under a train because in her eyes, he is an inhuman machine.

— I don’t understand why you hate me so much? What have I done wrong to you?
— Fuck a goat, Onegin!

Reputation under ancap, part 2

Yesterday I published a model of a reputation engine for ancap that was submitted to me for review, and today I will tell you what I think about it

I will start, as usual, with a definition. Reputation is the conclusion drawn by a potential counterparty regarding a certain subject and the prospects of interacting with them, based on the full extent of their knowledge about that subject. Thus, reputation is not a property of the subject. My reputation in the eyes of socialism-chan and my reputation in the eyes of minarchism-chan are two completely different reputations, and the difference between them is no less than the difference between the concepts of “execution” and “a fine”.

Many have heard about the Chinese social credit system. The state collects a vast amount of the most diverse data about a citizen, then using an incredibly complex and opaque algorithm, it puts two and two together and concludes how reliable this citizen appears to be to the state. The higher the rating, the more freedoms it is willing to grant the citizen; the lower it is, the more it restricts them. The goal of this entire system is social engineering—the cultivation of the perfect human of the future. I don’t know if market offers for “boosting” ratings have appeared yet, but if not, they simply must appear soon.

Everyone knows about the Russian Unified State Exam (USE) system. The state forces schoolchildren to take a test of monstrous proportions, and then forces universities to admit applicants based on a single criterion: the result of this test. I don’t need to tell you what phenomenal results are demonstrated in this test by natives of certain national republics.

Examples can be multiplied, but I think it is already clear that the forceful imposition of one’s own assessments of someone’s reputation on others is not the true Tao. It’s not even about the fact that such systems will be attempted to be cheated, but about the coercion itself. In ancap, however, any system that collects certain data about people and derives assessments from it can be implemented only if people voluntarily begin to use that system.

How do I envision a near-ideal reputation system? Something like this:
— Siri, look at the proposal from Bitarch; can this guy be trusted?
— I have performed an express analysis of the proposal itself and what is available about Bitarch in open sources. Based on your previous preferences, Ancap-sama, the probability that you will trust him is 85%. The probability that he will betray your trust should cooperation begin is 7%. You specified a trust threshold of 80%; may I respond to him affirmatively, or would you like to review the details?
— Give me the details.
— Hi!

Of course, just as people try to get the maximum score on the USE or the maximum social rating in China, they will want to optimize their requests for the reputation assessment system I use—in this example, Siri. But they will strive to earn my trust in the same way now, when a lot of data has to be collected manually.

The more routine I want to remove from my life, the more typical decisions will be entrusted to my virtual consigliere. But first, one way or another, I will have to train this neural network on my preferences; otherwise, the result is unlikely to consistently please me.

Siri, scratch my back, please!

As for the system you proposed, people will be willing to take its recommendations into account only if it somehow becomes very important to them that a person, for the sake of increasing their reputation, be willing to contribute to charity. I doubt such a quality would concern me if, for example, I am looking for a one-night stand or choosing a model of hiking boots. But if I need to find a home for a litter of homeless kittens, then that’s a different story.

Reputation under ancap

Bitarch (topic disclosure paid in the amount of 0.005btc)

Today I have an unusual format. In essence, this is not about answering a question, but a review of a full, detailed proposal. Therefore, I would like to split the topic into two posts. Today’s post will outline the proposal itself, and in tomorrow’s, I would like to provide a detailed overview of the topic of reputation and the construction of reputation systems. Discussion in the comments is highly welcome.

As we all understand, under ancap, the institution of reputation will play a significant role. Imagine that a person is not yet well-known in the community or wants to atone for their past “sins” by creating or restoring a reputation. There is an organization or a blockchain project to which this person can make a donation and receive in return an ID with reputation points. They can show this to other people when conducting transactions to increase trust. If they cheat, the victim can file a complaint with this system, and the fraudster will lose the reputation points for which they previously made a donation (more precisely, their ID with negative reviews will be useless for concluding deals in the future). To exclude fraud on the part of the victim, the reputation service may also require them to make a donation of a similar amount (and they will also make their own reputation ID useless if they lie and are caught). The result is a reputation system in which it is not profitable for the parties to deceive each other from the perspective of game theory. The donations received can be directed toward funding public goods (schools, hospitals, roads, science, ecology, etc.), simultaneously finally dismantling the main argument of statists against libertarians: “If a person has no insurance and no friends, who will take care of them in old age, provide medical treatment, free education for children, and so on?”.

How do you evaluate this system?

If anarchism is historically a left-wing movement, isn’t ancap an eclectic current?

I would say that the “left-wing movement” is precisely a typically eclectic trend, as it is a set of completely incompatible concepts. Here you have freedom of expression and political correctness. The absence of exploitation and high taxes. The right to work and war against strikebreakers. Freedom of conscience and sharia. The dictatorship of the proletariat and parliamentary democracy.

Similarly, anarchism is eclectic if considered without specifying terms via hyphens. The only thing all anarchist trends have in common is the indication of the possibility and desirability of liberating society from the state. Otherwise, anarchists have a complete muddle, from “property is sacred” to “property is theft,” from apologists of the labor theory of value to marginalists, from those who see the basis of all prosperity in the division of labor to those who see in it the root of all evil.

Anarcho-capitalism can be quite clearly depicted as the intersection of sets. You know, all those circles with shaded areas, reminiscent of the currently fashionable multicolored blobs. Everything that does not contradict economic theory is taken from anarchism, and everything that does not contradict the NAP is taken from capitalism. The result is a quite coherent doctrine, practically cleansed of eclecticism. This is easily verified: ask the same questions to a wide variety of ancaps, and you will receive answers that are very close in content. Such a trick would not work with eclectic doctrines.

I could have drawn two blobs who are friends by organism, but I’m too lazy

Is a state necessary, what functions can (should) it perform, and why is minarchy not enough?

anonymous question

You know, one could trivially answer that the state is unnecessary because — and then follows a long list of problems it causes. One could refer to the fact that the smaller the scale of state intervention, the more the economy flourishes. But values are subjective, and one cannot answer for everyone that the state is unnecessary. There are plenty of people who love having a boot in their backside right now, and many demand that it be shoved even deeper. Minarchy isn’t enough for them; they want socialism; they were taught in school that under socialism there is liberty, equality, and fraternity, or at least order and security.

voluntarily and with a song!

Nevertheless, such an approach doesn’t work as an argument either. There is always a high percentage of conformists in society who will approve of the status quo, no matter how strange it is, so claiming that the majority sincerely and actively desires the state—to the point that they would come out to defend it—would also be rash.

Asking state representatives whether the state is necessary, and how about shifting a bit here to free up a small plot for ancap — well, that would be completely naive.

So, to get a correct answer to the question of whether the state is necessary, one must first achieve the appearance of a normally relatively pure ancap somewhere, and then let the market decide via migration and monetary flows. If people wishing “to make the state great again” consistently appear under ancap, then the state is necessary. For example, simply because one needs to have someone to grumble at. But if after a generation of living under ancap, the state is perceived as a strange, ancient, barbaric institution like trial by ordeal or some other omerta, then it means the state as such is not needed by humans; it’s just that it happens to exist now, and many put up with it.

Will there be some kind of protection against these very pyramids and other variants of “fuck-business” under ancap?

Recent experience with “Cashberry” shows that the institution of reputation doesn’t really work here, and people, despite obvious facts, continue to pour money into it.

anonymous question

I will refer to a classic. Sergey Mavrodi, when launching another of his contraptions, explained in detail that existing money is a financial pyramid, and that what he was doing was exactly the same kind of pyramid, only better, because it brought a higher percentage. So it cannot be said that those who invest in hyips (High Yield Investment Projects) are unaware of anything. On the contrary, there is a fairly wide circle of people who are enthusiastically engaged in all this, scouring the web for fresh pyramids to enter as early as possible and manage to jump off before the scam happens. Then, referral networks begin to form; after some time come the first joyful reviews from those who managed to recover their deposit; and after some more time, it all ends, and people look for something new.

Gambling is great; it brings people joy and a sense of fullness of life. The market always decides for gambling; it grows through the asphalt even in a situation of complete and unconditional prohibition. You simply shouldn’t get in its way; let it compete peacefully with other types of expensive leisure. All these considerations apply fully to such a variety of gambling as financial pyramids or lotteries.

Let’s return to ancap. The issuance of securities, tokens, debt obligations, lottery tickets is not regulated at all. In other words, there is complete freedom for all kinds of hyips. Those who need exactly that do not need any protection; they are already aware that this is a high risk. The question, therefore, comes down to how the situation will change under ancap, compared to the current state of affairs, for the case of “a person looking for a reliable investment tool and trying not to run into a hyip.”

You know, in terms of the tools used to differentiate one investment product from another, little will change. You will still need to carefully study every offer, use logic, research the notorious reputation, and so on. Perhaps the market will decide for the many rating agencies, including those working on order, or perhaps people won’t be willing to pay for such things, and you’ll have to gather all the information yourself.

But the loudest alarm bell telling an investor not to get involved is, of course, the referral program. If a project pays for attracting clients, the probability that it is not a pyramid is non-zero, but if you are looking for an investment project specifically, why do you need this nonsense where the main profit is expected from attracting new people rather than from the investments themselves? Tell the agitator to get lost and look for something else.