Тег: Ancap

Would the police under ancap investigate the case of a person killed on someone’s private property, for example, in a case where the owner gave the killed person permission to move/be on their territory, and then took them out?

Anonymous question

Let us consider the organization of law and order according to David Friedman — in my opinion, his approach is the most developed and yet remains entirely within the framework of ancap, that is, a society with a free market where everything is traded, including law. Various law enforcement agencies and various courts operate in the market, guided by various legal systems. The task of a law enforcement agency is to protect the private property of its clients and assist in resolving conflicts between clients and other entities. The task of a court is to develop decisions that resolve conflicts between the court’s clients. Finally, a legal system is the product of the work of lawyers, representing a certain set of principles and templates for conflict resolution.

When the owner of a certain territory kills a stranger on it, this may cause a conflict with a wide variety of people or organizations. First, these could be companions of the deceased who are convinced that the execution was unjust. Second, his relatives or friends who were not present during the clash but are interested in finding out what happened. Third, the law enforcement agency of which the deceased was a client. Finally, any concerned individual who dislikes it when people are killed for no reason. In short, the killer has no reason to believe that no one will care about this incident.

In medieval Iceland, in the event of such excesses, the killer had to immediately tell the nearest neighbor what happened, taking him as a witness. It can be assumed that such a norm would also take hold under ancap, since the killer is directly interested in this: by telling everything, he can claim that it was an accidental conflict, or even one provoked by the victim, but if the story is hidden, it is unequivocally an intentional murder, for which much more serious sanctions are due.

Thus, after the murder has been announced, all that remains is to conduct an investigation. Much time has passed since the age of the sagas, technology has advanced, and it is possible to establish with slightly greater certainty how truthful the killer’s story is, even if there are no direct witnesses to the incident. Of course, the killer has no reason to obstruct the investigation, because that would predispose the court against him. But he can, of course, try to forge evidence to create a false impression.

Does the fact that the murder took place on the killer’s territory give any preferences in court? Only if it is established that the deceased violated the rules announced by the owner of the territory and refused to leave the other’s property. Therefore, naturally, the killer is interested in claiming exactly that. Whether he succeeds in creating the necessary appearance is a purely technical question.

Blitz 3

How will commercial real estate work under ancap?

Placeholder

An interesting question. People more often ask how things in the sphere of so-called public goods will work under ancap. Commercial real estate, however, is a private good. Under a state, the right of private property is to some extent conditional, because it depends on whether the state changes its mind about recognizing this right, or decides to nationalize a particular object. Under ancap, the right of private property is also conditional, and depends on how strong of a negative externality the property owner creates for those around them.

So, if I am to answer the question directly: commercial real estate under ancap will operate in such a way as to create minimum negative externalities and maximum income. Those entrepreneurs who solve this optimization problem better than others will prosper.

How will private detectives work under ancap? After all, it seems one cannot violate someone else’s property.

Anal Magician

As I already mentioned in the answer to the previous question, private property is a conditional concept. Well, this is my favorite mantra that rights are claims that are tolerated—you’ve probably already learned it by heart. Therefore, a private detective first conducts an investigation as far as possible without violating anyone’s property rights and without disturbing anyone—for example, using open data, recordings from public cameras, analysis of evidence provided by the client, and so on. If during the investigation he becomes interested in something located on someone’s property, he seeks ways to obtain the owner’s consent. If consent is not granted, he usually manages to find workarounds.

And in a situation where absolutely all leads point to a unique piece of evidence controlled by some owner who is unwilling to grant access, this becomes a strong suspicion that this owner is, in the worst case, the sought-after criminal, or their accomplice, or in the best case, a sympathizer. And here the owner may well be faced with a choice of what will bring them the lower cost: strong suspicions of complicity in a crime or granting the detective the right to investigate on their territory.

Let’s also add such a tool as a reward for assistance in the investigation—if the notorious owner understands that they will receive a reward for their inconvenience, then why not put up with it.

Suppose ancap has arrived, and on the street one person killed another. In the current system, the police would handle this case. But who will handle this case under ancap? Private detective agencies? But they must be paid, and what if the person had no relatives or friends?

anonymous question

Well, this is already an example of a traditional question about ancap: how public goods will be ensured. Fortunately, you specified the location of the murder: the street. The purpose of a street is to ensure the mass movement of people within a settlement. Exactly how the street owner monetizes the solution to this task is a separate question. In this case, we are interested in the fact that unpunished murders on the street hinder the task of mass unobstructed movement along it. If the street owner does not solve this problem, people will either have to invent ways to protect themselves on this street or stay away from this sinister place. In the second case, traffic drops, and this directly hits the owner’s income. In the first case, the costs for residents increase, they become less solvent, and the street owner’s income drops indirectly. So, he has economic incentives to solve this problem, even if he is not bound by an obligation to provide security on his street directly.

Of course, if the street owner manages to hide the incident, it will save costs. But you know these people: they are always sniffing something out, they are always suspicious… Once this episode surfaces, all sorts of speculations will begin that dozens of corpses are being hauled away every night and it’s time to flee this cesspool. To hell with that, transparency is more profitable.

A city known for the fact that security on the streets was provided by a volunteer. Well, that’s also a way, of course, but usually the heroism of one person only masks the failures of others.

What will happen to currency under ancap? Won’t hyperinflation occur, since there will be no copyright on currency and everyone will be able to print their own shillings?

Vladimir

To understand what will happen to currency under ancap, it is enough to visit the site coinmarketcap.com, which provides the price history of more than seven thousand cryptocurrencies. Since there is no copyright on cryptocurrency, literally anyone can create one, and this site reflects far from all of them, but only those that are traded, more or less, on exchanges, or were traded for some time.

What do we see when studying the price history of various currencies relative to Bitcoin? In many cases, it is a short-term speculative rise, followed by a long and painful decline with occasional spikes, sometimes ending in complete oblivion. The issue is not even unrestrained emission, but the fact that the consumer does not need an excessive variety of types of money. As we know from Alexey Tereshchuk’s catallactic theory of money, money are goods used to reduce costs in indirect exchange. If there are many candidates for the role of money, under conditions of freedom of choice, the consumer will use those that can reduce their exchange costs more effectively than others.

How many types of money are needed to fully satisfy the needs of the market? Money has various parameters by which they can be compared. For example, the possibility of anonymous transfer, or conversely, the impossibility of such, or the size of costs to make a payment, or preservation during storage, or preservation of value over time, or the development of infrastructure for working with this type of money, and so on. Each such factor is interesting because it allows reducing the consumer’s costs when using money in different ways. It is very unlikely that one single type of money will be found that leads in all possible criteria. Therefore, in the course of natural currency selection, at least as many should remain as there are leaders in individual functions of money.

However, of course, this does not mean that new and new attempts will not be made in the market to displace the old leaders. They will be. Most of them will end in failure. There will also be initially fake attempts, where the creators of the currency build hype around it, profitably sell it to all who wish, and then relax, and the currency fades into oblivion.

Coinmarketcap.com in the Weimar Republic

Why ancap? First of all, it’s beautiful.

Ancap is not only profitable, as economists claim. Not only just, as legal scholars insist. Not only virtuous, as ethics specialists believe. Today, I want to raise a toast to the beauty of anarcho-capitalism.

A person is free. A person is responsible for themselves. They have a right to whatever they voluntarily agree upon with others. They are ready to stand up for themselves. If they come to the aid of others, it is only because they wished to do so. If they ask for help, they always intend to reward those who help. If they accuse, they always indicate why it is their business. If they accidentally cause harm to someone, they always inquire about the amount of compensation.

Just imagine the image of the person that arises before you when you read such a description. Is he not wonderful? Does one not feel a desire to be like him? That is how the aesthetics of ancap work, and they should not be underestimated.

A person who positions themselves as an ancap but cannot stand up for themselves, takes offense at things that do not concern them, burdens others with requests, does not pay back debts, is quarrelsome and incapable of negotiation—is ridiculed. They do not correspond to the aesthetic image that arises in everyone who hears about ancap.

Place the image of an ancap next to the image of some honest statist. You will always find some aesthetic flaw. For example, the statist will insist that taxes be squeezed out of a person, even if it buries the business. Or they will insist on an obviously unfair accusation because that is the requirement of the law. Or they will demand tons of paperwork for something that normal people do much more simply, and who would be ready to give a bribe, but the honest statist does not take them. It is immediately apparent that the honest statist is a tragicomic figure, evoking hatred, pity, or laughter, depending on your position relative to them.

Or take a consistent communist. He will wear standard clothing from a public warehouse, eat set lunches in a canteen, put his children in nurseries, and burn himself out at the job where the general assembly sends him—even if he dreams of something completely different. This is a tragic figure; there is even a certain grandeur in his asceticism, but once you imagine him focusedly marching across your own destiny in those very same standard boots from the public warehouse—something about the aesthetics of socialist realism begins to turn one’s stomach.

Not only is the image of the anarcho-capitalist beautiful, but so is the system of interaction under ancap. If you need something, do it yourself, buy it, or borrow it. But if it isn’t lent or sold, do it yourself—or abandon the goal. Compare this with the statist “if you need it, vote for the one who promises to do it for you using the taxes collected from you.” Or with the communist “if you need it, convince the other members of the community that you need it, and then they will vote to allocate it to you.” When a description of interaction involves compulsory social redistribution, it is first and foremost unsightly, if only in its clumsiness.

In principle, an aesthetic of relationship descriptions comparable to the ancap one exists in the model of pure violence. If you need it, do it yourself or take it. If you couldn’t take it, do it yourself or abandon the goal. When ancaps are accused of being proponents of unlimited violence, it is precisely because of this similar aesthetic. Some simply do not understand the difference, but most (I believe) simply consciously manipulate your aesthetic perception to repel you from the image of the ancap.

Of course, there is a difference, and a quite obvious one. What does an ancap do when they want to build a small piece of ancap around themselves? They simply make deals, without asking permission from outsiders and without paying any taxes. According to Hobbes, however, within the framework of the war of all against all, he would more likely go and impose a tribute on someone. That is, he would build a small piece of a state around himself.

It is the market. Is it not wonderful?

If ancap happens, how will land sales in the state take place, and to whom will the money go? To previous rulers?

Ilidzhin

I have already answered a related question in a post about the continuity of pension payments during the transition to a stateless society. There, I noted that the transition mechanism will vary depending on exactly how ancap comes about.

The most peaceful and calm way to transition to ancap, from the perspective of state functionaries, is through minarchism, which is precisely why it is attractive. As a result of liberal reforms, the state’s share in the economy shrinks, taxes decrease, state property is gradually privatized, and all of this is replaced by private institutions. Over time, only the name of the state remains, and eventually, the last newly dismissed government official, leaving the last government office rented from a private company, turns off the light. The money received from privatization during minarchist reforms is spent on the bankruptcy procedure of the state pension system, the repayment of the national debt, and so on. And if, due to favorable market conditions, some unspent money remains after privatization, it is simply distributed equally among the citizens.

If the transition to ancap occurs through the formation of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions, then after some time the state will simply become one of such jurisdictions, losing its right to legitimate aggressive violence and its tie to a territory due to the shift to contractual relations with clients. In this case, that state property which is found unnecessary for carrying out the functions of a contractual jurisdiction will simply be sold, as non-core assets are usually sold. The privatization of the state itself will most likely happen through a shareholding mechanism: each citizen receives one share, and then some hold, some sell, and some buy up shares, thereby gaining control over the ECJ. This mechanism is prone to corruption (see voucher privatization), so it is unlikely to happen without scandals.

Finally, ancap may emerge as a result of agorist practices bleeding the state dry until it collapses on its own. But in the process of being bled dry, it will sell off those assets that still hold some value, and by the time of liquidation, all liquid state property will already be in the hands of enterprising agorists, including former government employees who privatized it into their own pockets. Those who find this unfair can simply try to do it before others. Agorist logic is harshest here: state property has already been declared ownerless property, effectively controlled by a gang of accidental heirs to the great robbers of the past. Whoever manages to seize a piece of this property non-violently is a success. Whoever manages to seize it violently is not a success, and property claims may be made against them later.

Defining freedom from the position of ancapism?

анонимный вопрос

I really like the definition of freedom given by the writer Alexander Rozov:

Freedom is the opportunity to openly do what someone else dislikes

A. Rozov, Deportation

For clarity, I would perhaps add one more word to it: “openly and with impunity”, but this is, in essence, simply a clarification of the term “opportunity”.

But this is a general definition that allows one to understand the degree of a person’s freedom in any society, even a totalitarian one. However, the question concerned ancap specifically. And in ancap, there is an important limitation on freedom called the non-aggression principle:

No one has the right to initiate violence with impunity

NAP formulation by Ancap-chan

Thus, the definition of freedom for ancap can be reformulated as follows:

Freedom within ancap is the opportunity to openly and with impunity do whatever one wants, except for the initiation of violence, even if someone else dislikes it.

It remains to clarify that from the perspective of ancap, violence is interpreted as unauthorized damage to property.

Of course, property boundaries, as well as the boundaries of acceptable property damage, can only be defined with some finite precision in any society. Therefore, interpretations and discrepancies are possible regarding specific manifestations of freedom under ancap. For example, the freedom to listen to music, starting from a certain volume level, turns into the freedom to cause damage to third parties, meaning it goes beyond the scope of freedom under ancap. At the same time, determining a threshold volume level in advance is pointless; the clarification of the current boundaries of freedom occurs through the resolution of emerging conflicts.

The boundaries of the acceptable are the fruit of long conflicts

How will the issue of preventing the degeneration of the Race be solved under ancap?

Genes that contribute to obtaining a higher education are weeded out by natural selection. Without intellectually developed people, it is impossible to maintain a technically complex economy. What is to be done?

анонимный вопрос

In the article you refer to, Alexander Markov already provides an answer to the question of what needs to be done. I quote:

…it makes sense to think about the development of high-tech, efficient, and humane methods for correcting unfavorable evolutionary trends. This includes methods related to genetic engineering, gene therapy, and the selection of gametes or early embryos.

By the way, these are exactly the methods I fantasized about when discussing ways to get rid of pathological aggression.

It remains to be understood how ancap can help in the development of the aforementioned methods. And here the answer is quite obvious. The main thing holding back the development of human genome correction methods today is government bans. No state — no bans.

But ancap is not just the abolition of the bioethics factor that puts a spoke in the wheels of progress. It is also the abolition of social taxes that the middle class pays for child benefits for the lumpen. In the absence of forced redistribution, the rich and educated have more economic incentives to have children, and the poor and uneducated have fewer.

Finally, in the absence of a mandatory state educational standard, people will not need to spend time studying various garbage subjects, such as patriotism lessons. Fewer costs for education (whether measured in time or money) means more is freed up for children.

Thus, in a stateless capitalist society, several factors emerge that weaken the effect mentioned in the article, and in the long run, abolish it entirely. There you have it, gentlemen proponents of racial superiority, an additional argument for ancap.

On the realism of ancom and ancap

Yesterday I took part in mini-debates on the subject, where in my opening statement I expressed an interesting thought that I hadn’t encountered in other sources before, so I’ll post it here, unedited.

The state exists in people’s minds: exactly where all ideas exist. Similarly, all ideas about how society should be organized exist in people’s minds. Therefore, the only way to overcome the state is to instill in people a complete conviction that this crap is not needed.

It is far more interesting what ideas can replace the idea of the necessity of the state. In small communities where everyone is more or less acquainted, relationships are more often built on various collectivist values—it’s more convenient. In families, communist relations usually dominate. Similarly, communist relations prove quite natural for anarchic communities as long as they remain modest in size—even if that society shares ancap ideas. Ancaps give free public lectures, donate to each other for various projects, and volunteer so much it’s mind-boggling. Where, one might ask, is the cold world of pure profit, the maximization of profit, and other purely theoretical constructs? It’s all cooperation and the joy of joint creativity. Therefore, paradoxically, ancaps develop a strange doublethink in themselves, where the market is supposed to settle things, but for some reason, mutual aid does.

As a community grows, ancaps naturally need to mature, learn how to make money by satisfying market demand, and establish coordination between specialized organizations—but, of course, bypassing state restrictions. The world of ancom, warm and cozy, falters when scaling in the face of complex division of labor, competition, and other things unpleasant to a child’s mind. Ancom is already felt within small communities today, and therefore seems utterly real. Ancap can be traced in individual phenomena, such as the world of cryptocurrencies, black markets, and the like. A certain level of abstract thinking is required to see in this the engine of the future world order.

So I see nothing particularly terrible in the fact that people begin their acquaintance with anarchy specifically with anarcho-communism. The wider the movement becomes, the further it will move away from its original ideals and approach ancap. Many ideological ancaps started as communists. The most famous example is, of course, Hoppe. Examples of the reverse transition are hardly observed. Therefore, I wish for this community, without losing harmony with the real world, to eventually master the entire aesthetic of capitalist relations as truly just.

In a chibi version, ancap inevitably looks like a gift economy, i.e., ancom

On the Harm of Free Trade

Free trade leads to a wide variety of goods appearing on the domestic market, and they are cheap. This is not surprising, because free competition reaches an ideal state. Everyone has equal access to the market. There are no hints of anyone’s monopoly.

Free trade has a strong negative consequence. Many local producers cannot withstand competition from foreigners, go bankrupt, and leave the market. In critical cases, this phenomenon can become mass. Entire industries perish, and the population becomes impoverished. Goods are sold cheaply, but this pleases no one. There is no money to buy them. The second negative consequence is that the money of local residents ends up in the hands of foreign sellers and flows abroad.

How to solve this problem without the state?

Anal Magician

I tried for a long time to imagine a situation in which this internally contradictory set of statements could be observed, and I succeeded!

I take a boat, a tent, a laptop, a solar panel, a shotgun, cartridges, a net, fishing rods, and a couple more dozen kilograms of gear—and I head to a small island a kilometer from the nearest shore, where a village stands on the coast. The island is uninhabited, and I declare it mine, although fishermen and vacationers often hang out here, but it hasn’t occurred to anyone to settle here yet.

Then I begin to manage the household.

I can catch fish; it will be enough for fish soup, and if I build a smokehouse, I can preserve some. But in the village, they smoke fish in the same way, and my goods brought from the island are not in particularly high demand. I could plant a garden, but the soil is mediocre, manual non-mechanized labor is unproductive, and everyone in the village has plenty of such produce.

I could go to the shore with a shotgun and demand money from vacationers for the right to hang out on my shore, but they don’t take the threat seriously and are only willing to pay if I provide some service in return. In response to my warning shot in the air, they tell me that I’ve gone crazy and that they will, of course, sail away, but tomorrow they will return with weapons, because they are willing to tolerate my presence in a place where they are used to vacationing only as long as I don’t interfere with them. I reply that I was joking, bring out some smoked fish to go with their beer, we hang out together, and the incident is resolved.

Eventually, I arrive at the following business model: I catch fish for personal use, continue running this channel, occasionally write articles for hire, and begin to play the role of a hospitable hostess of the island, who entertains vacationers with conversation, and in return receives donations, primarily food, and occasionally, depending on the mood, sex. From time to time, I swim to the village to buy everything I need. The goods there are inexpensive; I cannot compete with their producers in any category, and my money gradually runs out. Eventually, I realize that I have begun to spend too much effort and time on activities that bring me a disproportionately small income, and too little remains for writing texts for money, and the internet here is half-dead. So, I end this prolonged vacation, pack my things, and return to where there is internet, a hot shower, and other blessings of civilization that allow me to focus on what I am more competitive in.

Yes, under ancap, any business model can well turn out to be unprofitable. Free trade is precisely what allows one to quickly realize such things and switch to more profitable activities. And if profitable activity with existing competencies is fundamentally impossible in a certain area, then one must change locations and go where those competencies are more in demand.

At the same time, I will note that in the same example with the island, having capital and knowledge, I could have opened a yacht club, or a hotel, or a diving school, or organized a larger-scale fishing and processing operation—and turned a profit. Singapore itself was dirty and poor until it attracted investments, so the same place under different conditions can turn out to be either completely prospectless or a gold mine.

And in conclusion, I will finally answer the question posed in one phrase. How to solve the problem of market inefficiency without the state? Entrepreneurial initiative.

Ancap-chan came to homestead an island

How to fight cartels under ancap?

liberal

There is a well-known assertion that monopolies do not form in a free market. This, of course, is not true: in a free market, everyone has the opportunity to secure a monopoly for themselves. All it takes is very little: simply invent something that others haven’t thought of, implement it, and start selling. That’s it, you have a monopoly. If your product is in demand by the market, this monopoly will also bring you superprofits. Then competitors will catch up, and for a while, you can maintain your superprofits if you enter into a cartel agreement with them. Then someone will start to break it, hoping to seize a larger share of the market, and after some time, nothing will remain of your cartel.

But why suspect people of bad intentions? Let your cartel agreement remain sacred and inviolable, because each of its participants has learned the prisoner’s dilemma by heart and knows how to think a couple of steps ahead. Let’s raise our glasses to the cloudless future of your business!

Alas, the weather is fickle. Tomorrow, someone will appear who dreams of a monopoly. They will invent something that no one has thought of before, implement it, and start selling. After that, it will suddenly turn out that this was a substitute product for your cartel’s goods, and now you have competitiveness problems. You will urgently have to agree to increase production and lower prices to maintain market share, but still, your horse-drawn carriage, which was so progressive until recently, will gradually begin to lose to that wretched tram.

What is to be done? The market is free, entry is open to anyone who wishes, and this is an unavoidable obstacle for anyone who wishes to rest on their laurels from past achievements. One should invent some kind of thing that would allow limiting free entry into the market; then the old, respectable business will certainly be threatened by nothing. What should it be called? There, let’s call it the state! Great, all that’s left is to implement this product and start selling it.

Ah, what? Did I answer the wrong question? Well, sorry…

Oh, youth! They promised to bury the cities in manure knee-deep! What went wrong?