Тег: Ancap

And how will it be with selling heroin to children under ancap? It won’t be possible to ban it. As I understand it, it’s the reputation institute. An asshole sells heroin to children, fewer and fewer people will turn to him, and in the end, he will have to change his trading policy or close down. Do I understand correctly?

anonymous question

It’s even more interesting. Not only will it be impossible to ban it, but the institution of reputation will also fail to work.

Judge for yourself: you have two businesses, both bring in money, but those who find out that you have one business refuse to do business with you in your second business for some of their own ethical reasons. For example, you have a vegan restaurant and a steakhouse, and the vegans have stopped liking you, accusing you of hypocrisy. The meat-eaters generally don’t care what you sell to the vegans. What do you do? You simply hide the existence of the steakhouse and remain a respectable owner of a vegan restaurant in the eyes of society. And the steakhouse is owned by a “front man.”

The exact same thing happens with selling drugs to children and adults. If one business interferes with another, it is simply separated so that you are not associated with it. Moreover, if it turns out that parents forbid children from buying your heroin with their pocket money, you can always switch to the “dead drop” scheme, which works perfectly today under conditions of a total government ban on the circulation of psychoactive substances.

In other words: the stick method does not work, no matter how you try to optimize it.

We cannot predict in detail what the structure of supply and demand will be in a free market, but if a certain product, despite all its positive qualities, has a lot of various unpleasant side effects, then a demand arises for the same thing, but without the side effects. Once the desired substance can be obtained at a comparable price, the old one will have to leave the market. I think this is precisely the fate that awaits heroin in the end, and after that, it will no longer matter whether what replaces it is sold to children or adults — it will be something as socially acceptable as, for example, ice cream.

But for market forces to work successfully in the desired direction, they must not be hindered by various absurd bans. Because right now, in the field of psychoactive substances, not only distribution but also research is illegal.

And finally, I would like to note that with full deregulation of the industry, the problem of the spread of harmful habits among vulnerable categories of the population will be completely insignificant, even without any significant innovations. I suggest looking at Portugal’s experience with the decriminalization of drugs. It had many positive consequences, including a sharp decline in adolescent drug addiction that continues to this day. So, I appreciate your concern for children, but really, there would be nothing to worry about in this case.

decriminalization of ice cream

How could a free market without state regulation of security issues have prevented 9/11?

anonymous question

I currently remind me a bit of Yulia Latynina, because I want to respond in the spirit of “you know, it’s like in that joke: first of all, there were no bullets…”.

Terrorist attacks such as 9/11, Beslan, Nord-Ost, the Boston Marathon, and so on, are directed against state policy. No state – no policy – no political terrorist attacks. Voila, the free market prevented them. Now let’s dig a little deeper.
Who ensures the safety of people in a free market? The people themselves. For the most part – directly. But the least troublesome and most obvious way, given that the market always tends to settle things through the division of labor, is to use market offers.

What does the market offer in terms of security? First, one can purchase a security service, for example, by installing an alarm system in the house and signing a contract with a security firm. Second, one can buy an insurance policy and simply know that, should something happen to you, either you or a designated circle of heirs will receive an insurance payout, so now it is the insurance company’s headache to figure out how to ensure people’s safety regarding insurance events.

Aha. So, if a terrorist attack occurs, the insurance company will suffer huge losses. There you have your potential beneficiary of terrorist attacks – competing insurance companies. The plan of action: blow up a plane, the company that insured the flight goes bankrupt, and we enter the vacated flight insurance market. There is, however, a problem: the plane is insured by one company, but each passenger is insured by any other; after all, they choose whose policy to take when insuring themselves against an accident or attack during a flight. Thus, decentralization makes commercial terrorist attacks aimed at seizing the insurance market ineffective. This applies not only to flights, but to all spheres of life in general.

But what about ideological terrorist attacks? For example, conservative fanatics might carry out mass shootings in gay clubs, exactly as they do now. To a certain extent, decentralization rules here too: when even the last gay man has a gun, a mass shooting becomes a problem. But a gun doesn’t save you from an explosion.
How does the free market prevent the spread of destructive ideologies? In the only way available to it: by making people richer and happier. This works slowly and does not provide a hundred percent effect, but it completely outperforms any state alternatives.

The only thing the market hasn’t learned to prevent yet is the appearance of insane maniacs. Economic incentives work poorly on someone who has lost their mind, just as they do on meteorites and tsunamis.

But once the market settles the raiders and Islamists, it will be the turn of the maniacs and natural disasters. Just laissez faire, laissez passer.

September 9 Protest

You have run out of questions for now, so I will just talk about yesterday’s protests.

It is clear that pensions, in particular, concern very few people. Those who are about to retire suffer from the increase in the retirement age to a minimal extent, because the age is increasing gradually. And for those who won’t retire for a long time, it is such a distant future that in our fast-paced and unstable world, it is completely pointless to make plans for such a period.

But it is the youth who are protesting. What is their motive?

They are simply tired of this state, and here it has set itself up perfectly. You can go out to protest against the government as such, but in the eyes of parents and grandmothers, have an ironclad justification: we were robbed, you were robbed, the state has gone crazy, it needs to be reined in, otherwise it won’t stop.

Right now is such a wonderful period when there is absolutely no point in promoting any legal constructive politicians at the federal level. Duma elections in 2021. Presidential elections in 2024. So, it will be a very long time before people are receptive to the thesis that “the opposition only brings negativity, why not participate in elections with a constructive agenda,” and for now, questions about what the hell is going on with the government’s agenda will land much better. Now is the time to obstruct it, force it to make mistakes, shake its authority, and make any attempts to negotiate with it about anything other than surrender look ridiculous. Time for the thesis “you present us with a fait accompli, and we present you with a fait accompli.” A time when the state can not only be called a bandit, but one can behave toward it exactly as such: place it outside the law and organize a defense. A time when, in response to the words “I am against the state,” people stop pointing to their temples and start wondering what can be done.

From the thesis “the state cannot be trusted with our pension savings,” it is not far to the thesis “the state cannot be trusted with anything at all.” And that means people are ripening for ancap.

Will the current generation of Soviet—ugh, Russian—people live under ancap?

@WildTurkey

I would say that even the phrase “under ancap” is not entirely correct. Rather, one should say “by ancap,” just as people say, for example, “by conscience” or “by the rules,” although it sounds a bit clumsy.

The further we go, the more opportunities people have to live by ancap in a wide variety of things. Just ten years ago, people had practically no opportunity to conduct international trade without contacting the state. Now—no problem at all: there are bitcoins, there is the internet, trade away; the only issue is that problems may arise at customs. But once inexpensive long-range drones go into mass production, the issue of cross-border delivery of small parcels will cease to be acute.
And it will be this way everywhere there is solvent demand for bypassing state barriers. And the more positive examples of living by ancap there are, the greater the demand for such a life, and the less the demand for the state as such.

I have just drunk an elixir of optimism and predict that among the current generation of Russians around twenty years old, significantly more will live to see a life fully by ancap than will live to see retirement)))

This is a completely baseless prediction based on blind faith in the “market.” Mind you, economic theory does deny the possibility of precise quantitative predictions.

spherical ancap in a vacuum

Hi. And how, under ancap, can the harmony of the urban environment be ensured? What would stop one guy from building houses in the Baroque style, while another builds right next to him in the Constructivist style (let’s say)? Or is this not a problem worth thinking about at all?

anonymous question

Strictly speaking, even under a state, in most cases, nothing prevents two developers from building houses in completely different styles next to each other. There is a set of formal criteria regarding something like insolation, number of floors, and parking area; once those are met, it’s done. If the verdict of the chief city architect or some other expert bigwig is required, then corrupting them is simply a matter of time.

At the same time, there are many cases of self-organization in condominiums, where the purchase of land for development or a finished real estate object is accompanied by a set of restrictions common to the entire condominium—on fence height, number of floors, roof color, or even damn curtains on the windows. As long as such easements allow for increasing the value of the property in the condominium, the market supports them. As soon as a restriction leads to a decrease in the price of the properties, the market sets in motion the forces to abolish them, and suddenly the condominium board decides to lift the ban on building a second garage on a plot, or the requirement that roofs must necessarily be red. In the described mechanism of restricting property disposal rights, there is nothing that could not be implemented under ancap.

Here you go, an addition to baroque under state regulation

Hi, Ancap-chan! And once again the notorious question about roads: tell us, how will the movement of cars and pedestrians be regulated in the absence of single and centralized control?

anonymous question

There is already complete anarchy regarding pedestrians on the roads. In order to participate in road traffic, a pedestrian does not take any exams; they simply learn to walk—and then they walk. Infrastructure owners are interested in ensuring that a pedestrian arrives alive, solvent, and ready to spend their money at the place where they will spend it. Therefore, a pedestrian on a private street is fully looked after: they are physically separated from dangers, and efforts are made to move the points where they will spend money as close as possible to the places where, for some reason, there are many pedestrians.

But here is the trouble. Some pedestrians, wishing to make their movement even faster and more comfortable, get behind the wheel and begin to pose a danger to other pedestrians. How should the unfortunate owner of the street handle this situation if it is important to them that all pedestrians reach the spending point quickly and safely, even if some pedestrians have climbed into individual high-speed delivery vehicles? It becomes necessary to somehow reduce the risks of transport collisions by physically separating flows of different speeds and directions, and where this is too expensive, separating them at least logically—not in space, but in time, by organizing alternating movement in intersecting directions.

The same market logic applies here as in any other service sector: the more money there is in the market, the more profitable capital investments in improving service quality become. Therefore, in a remote village, we will see neither a sidewalk nor dividing barriers on the road, while in a metropolis, we see all of this and much more.

All these considerations are already in effect, despite the nominal existence of a “single centralized control,” and in its absence, they will work even better due to the absence of single centralized obstacles.

Sup, Ancap-chan. How will fundamental scientific research (mathematical and physical, for example) work in the absence of state funding? As history shows, such things only begin to bring benefit after decades and centuries. Will private foundations really invest in this?

anonymous question

How did fundamental scientific research work before the emergence of state academies of sciences? There were two main mechanisms.

First. A scientist conducted their research independently and at their own expense, satisfying their own private interest.

Second. A scientist found a patron, usually some aristocrat, and conducted research at the patron’s expense, while simultaneously fulfilling their minor whims and contributing to the increase of the patron’s prestige.

What are the contraindications to using these mechanisms even after the state withers away? Effectively, only one. It is claimed that quite many fundamental scientific projects are too expensive to implement for a single patron to be able to afford. Well, since the time of pre-state science, financial institutions have made good progress, so funds with billion-dollar budgets are by no means an exotic rarity now.

The question of motivation remains. What would prompt a potential sponsor of fundamental science to invest in a particular fund? Exactly the same considerations apply here as in patronage or philanthropy: the sponsor satisfies their sense of self-importance and gets good PR. Accordingly, for money to flow into fundamental science, it needs good marketing: stroking the egos of sponsors, vividly highlighting the results obtained and the breathtaking prospects. This is, of course, very soulless, but far fairer than the current model, where money is forcibly collected into a black box, and the report on results is given in the most tedious form possible, understandable only to narrow specialists, but not to those who pay.

Yes, it may happen that a stateless society will not fund certain fundamental mega-projects, and the Large Hadron Collider will never be built. Well, so be it; on the other hand, thousands of small projects will receive funding that would not have been allocated under a state because of it.

Bet you can’t build a Death Star on donations, huh, Elon Musk?

Of course, fundamental science will always compete for donations with art, sports, Mashinka’s nonsense, and Ancap-chan (donate here: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8) – but this is a normal market process. I, too, would like to work on making donating to the channel prestigious.

Why are there so many anime fans among your supporters?

anonymous question

To be honest, I don’t fully understand it myself.

It’s just that anime is a genre as far removed as possible from any kind of traditional values. Apparently, free people are drawn to those directions in art that they associate with freedom. Thirty years ago, they were more drawn to Hollywood, but now, from all its wealth of ideas, only the idea of diversity stands out, and as a result, the fashion for it is fading.

And then, of course, there is the general infantilization of humanity, linked to the fact that people have begun to live longer, richer, and more carefree lives, and therefore can afford not to fully leave childhood until the onset of senile dementia. It’s all better than turning into gloomy little old men at the age of five.

Bitcoin-chan

Right now I have pure, unadulterated childhood joy: in the third month of the channel’s existence, the first donation has finally arrived. Here it is, look how lovely!

A post that lifts the veil and finally confuses everything

I want to introduce you to a true LPR-chan, known to many as @cannibalica

LPR-chan

Now, please send all nudes and questions about the libertarian party to her.

As for me, I will be happy to continue answering your questions on ancap, economic theory, libertarian law, ethics, and similar matters.

Ancap-chan

Thank you for staying on the channel! Love you all!

Let’s consider a situation: someone builds a pyrotechnics factory in the city center, and everyone’s fire insurance premiums go up. But the factory owner has not violated the NAP, so he owes nothing to anyone (and no one can forbid him from building this factory). Do libertarians not consider this a problem?

anonymous question

To answer this question more fully, Alexei Tereshchuk aka @kamendant, leader of the Austrian School of Economics public page on VKontakte and the chat on the same topic in Telegram, was brought in as an expert. Below is a mix of his explanations and my own thoughts.

What is the difference between the case of a factory that pollutes the surroundings and a factory that raises the cost of property insurance for its neighbors?

In the first case, the factory causes direct damage to those around it, and this damage can theoretically be subject to compensation, even if the methods of calculating the damage are quite unreliable — after all, to set the price for a bunch of radishes for an old woman at the market, it is also not necessary to calculate its cost price in detail.

In the second case, it is only a matter of increased risks, and the very attempt to insure these risks leads to additional costs. Such indirect damage is not related to a violation of the non-aggression principle and therefore is not subject to compensation. Indeed, we are surrounded by many factors that increase our risks, but which we are forced to put up with if we want to maintain our current lifestyle.

For example, in the city, we have a higher chance of getting into a car accident than in the village; this increases the risk and, accordingly, the price of insurance for this event — but it is not a reason to make property claims against all drivers in the city — only against the specific one who caused the accident in which the victim was involved.

So, libertarians do not consider it a problem that it is impossible to demand money from a pyrotechnics factory located in the city center simply for the fact of its presence in the center.

It is another matter that the insurance cost for the factory itself will be much higher if it is built in the center than if it is on the outskirts — because the risk of claims from neighbors affected by an accident will be insured, which means it is more profitable for the factory owner not to have neighbors in the danger zone.

explosion at a pyrotechnics factory – fun and scary