Minarchism in the Russian Protectorate

Suppose young democrats come to power in the RF—they don’t want it to be “like Somalia,” but in principle, they are curious about various forms of organizing a free country. Is it possible to establish an experimental minarchist state in one of the protectorates—for example, South Ossetia (assuming some agreement is reached with Georgia—after all, we are now like Sweden, and she doesn’t fight over Aland, and neither will you)—? We appoint Misha/Yarik/you as the head, abolish taxes, declare freedom of business/substances/weapons/ideas, and welcome visiting global businessmen with open arms; we write the NAP and freedom into the constitution. From the state, we leave only a minimal police force for the first period (protection against “the air of freedom tickled me” and “Somalia”), social medicine, and a business entity in a competitive market (it is free to conduct business however it likes, but is obliged to spend profits on charity, and essentially on social welfare). Then, as success grows, we abolish the rudimenting state bodies, moving toward full ancap. Meanwhile, Ancapistan remains a protectorate for now, so the USA won’t attack it because of a nest of hackers and drug dealers there, and the PRB itself will protect itself from them in a market-based way—by paying for them to refrain from working in our market.

Katsist

Two related questions have been successfully combined, and if for the previous question—about ancap in an enclave against the backdrop of collapsed Putinism—I answered with a fairy tale, then here I am forced to state clearly: no, it is impossible.

What is the difference between the Sakhalin scenario and the one you proposed? The difference is that your scenario assumes that the RF retains the ability to influence its current protectorates after the end of Putin. But at what price can the rise to power of these very young democrats be achieved without the collapse of the RF? A simple change of government to people with pleasant faces is not enough. These young democrats would have to launch a process of denazification and demilitarization of Russia, publicly repent for all the sins of Putinism, pay reparations to at least Georgia and Ukraine, hand over a mass of criminals to them and international bodies for trial, withdraw troops from all annexed territories, from foreign military bases, and from those very protectorates.

There is some chance that they might simultaneously launch serious reforms within the RF itself: make the High Court in London the supreme judicial authority in the RF, and fine their own judges for every instance where their verdict is overturned in this appellate instance; return the lion’s share of taxes to the regions and even slightly reduce the overall tax burden; purge the criminal and administrative codes of a bunch of stupid Putinist articles; privatize a huge number of Putinist state corporations once again; completely abandon conscription, the navy, 80% of nuclear warheads; dissolve the FSB and Rosgvardia; radically rewrite the regulations of the antimonopoly service, and so on and so forth. But all of this would concern Russia directly. Meanwhile, the protectorates would have to somehow negotiate their return to their former metropoles, because without the help of the RF they would be unable to avoid this fate, and the RF would state something like “yes, yes, guys, of course, take it, it’s yours; sorry we are returning it in such a terrible state, here is some compensation.”

On the other hand, after the neutralization of the RF as an exporter of authoritarianism, a return to the trajectory from which it veered under Ivanishvili is quite likely in Georgia; and if so, the aforementioned South Ossetia does indeed have a chance for all these reforms, but not as a Russian protectorate, but as a Georgian one. But here I don’t even need to fantasize much; this is roughly the same course the region followed before 2008.

Is an attempt to build ancap possible in some country against the backdrop of a temporary weakening or collapse of its power structure?

For example, if Putinism collapses. Roughly what steps would need to be taken for this to happen?

Muscovite

Let’s imagine, for example, a scenario like this. Putin launches an offensive in Donbas with a simultaneous sea landing in southwestern Ukraine. To do this, among other things, he scrapes together the remains of the ground forces, airborne troops, and naval infantry from the Far East. Meanwhile, due to difficulties exporting Sakhalin oil and gas, employees there start being put on part-time hours, and in some places, are laid off. A small isolated donor region (smaller than Montenegro in population) finds itself in a situation of a sharp drop in the standard of living. Moreover, this is a region where the number and influence of public sector employees are relatively small, while the voice of working people, conversely, is very important.

It is known that the greatest discontent occurs among affluent people whose opportunities have been sharply curtailed. So the breeding ground for protest is ready, and these are people who care very little about some Ukraine; they want to work, earn money, and have Moscow stay out of their way.

What happens next? Next, for example, the governor flies to Moscow once again and doesn’t make it. Well, you know, the aviation fleet requires constant maintenance and supplies of imported spare parts, and those are in short supply in the country. New elections must be organized. And it so happens that on the island there are many people interested in breaking away from Moscow, and at the same time, from the sanctions. Moreover, they are supported by at least the Japanese and American shareholders of the island’s oil and gas projects. A representative of the LDPR (where, after the death of the party’s founder, the power vertical couldn’t be properly repaired) runs for election—an ethnic Ukrainian (there are quite a few of them on the island) and an entrepreneur. Attempts to remove him from the election turn into a storming of the regional election commission by the candidate’s support group, after which the candidate announces that the elections will take place with the participation of international observers. The local Rosgvardia has its garage gates blocked with concrete blocks, and it reports to Moscow that it is busy organizing the unblocking; in the meantime, it releases infantry onto the streets without transport, which reduces its effectiveness to zero, and it simply observes the proceedings.

Over the next few days, Japan sends a large number of extremely polite international observers. The LDPR candidate wins the election, after which the island’s parliament adopts a resolution stating that Sakhalin is beginning a transition process toward voluntary accession to Japan with the right to broad autonomy. It is announced that Sakhalin will stop paying taxes to the Russian federal budget immediately; as for Japan, the issue of taxation is postponed until the final stages of the transition period. All customs restrictions against Japan are unilaterally abolished.

The RF, ready to send an army to bring the island to submission, slows down. Firstly, there is no army, only the Pacific Fleet. In principle, that is enough, but secondly, the Moscow leadership is explained that in its current form, Sakhalin is an ideal offshore zone for bypassing sanctions, and such opportunities should not be thrown away. Therefore, Moscow sends its representative to the committee for organizing the transition process, and there he does his part in prolonging this bureaucratic process.

And after that, everyone likes how it turned out. Taxes are radically reduced, Russian businesses eagerly register where there are no sanctions, and Japanese businesses engage in the development of the island. The RF ensures that the rights of the Russian-speaking population are not violated. Japan ensures that the rights of Japanese settlers are not violated. In the end, thirty years later, when everyone has already forgotten that there was such a Putin and that there was such a Ukrainian war, the transition process continues on the island, because there are no fools to complete it. This is not ancap, but a pretty good approximation of it.

I love fairy tales.

*Not the Statue of Liberty, but it’ll do for ancap*

A joke question

If there is no state, and my wife cheats on me, would it be lawful to throw her out the window if I live on the second floor of a building owned by a homeowners’ association that has opted out of insurance services, but has an oral contract for territory security with a private security company (PSC) registered in a territory where a state exists, of which our joint daughter is a citizen, and who, under their law, is obliged to look after disabled parents—a category that includes stateless persons, which my wife is, having applied for a residence permit that was formally accepted due to the difference in time zones?

Topotushka

This question, if I recall correctly, was cited by Alexei “Komendant” Tereshchuk as an example of how even non-trolls—but quite enthusiastic ancaps—can be intensely interested in the most minute details of a completely hypothetical stateless society of the future, falling into the deductive heresy of deriving any, no matter how subtle, specifics from a few general principles.

But no. In order to derive specific consequences from general principles, one must add additional information to the general principles regarding the conditions to which we are deriving those specific consequences. The more assumptions the initial data rely on, the more unstable the result of such reflections becomes.

Does this mean that the deductive method is useless? Of course not. It simply means that to obtain reliable results, you need to take the general principles and bring them as close as possible to the local environment to which you will be applying them.

Now, let us return to the joking question and provide a serious answer to it.

The question of the lawfulness of throwing a cheating wife out the window can only have a positive resolution under conditions where cheating is considered a legal offense. Can cheating be considered a legal offense in the absence of a state? It can. Let us note that in our hypothetical society, marriage is officially considered a property relationship—at least, Topotushka’s “ownership” over his wife.

Moving forward. The homeowners’ association’s refusal of insurance services means that causing harm to the health of one of the association’s residents does not constitute a tort against the association.

The fact that the PSC is fulfilling an oral contract for territory security means that oral contracts are recognized in our hypothetical stateless society.

If the PSC operating legally on the protected territory records damage to the adjacent territory caused by the fall of Topotushka’s wife, I find it difficult to imagine a legal construction within which the responsibility for the damage would be placed by the PSC on the wife rather than on the Topotushka who threw her. Thus, we can state that since throwing a large object out of a window entails a risk of damage to the adjacent territory, it is an unlawful act, and we have obtained an answer to the original question without even delving into the intricacies of time zones. Moreover, according to the oral contract, the PSC may be obliged to prevent even the throwing of cigarette butts on the lawn, which are viewed as litter; therefore, Topotushka’s arguments that his wife is quite compact and did not cause any significant damage are unlikely to hold weight. Littering under the windows is an unlawful act, period.

If there is an ancap territory, let’s say Ukraine

Won’t all the other states crush it with all sorts of sanctions, like they did with Belarus—banning all firms from flying here, all ships from sailing here, all banks from transferring money here, all goods from being delivered here… or will the black market and smuggling ultimately win?

Orlik

The fears are not unfounded. One recalls, for example, the initiative to unify tax rates worldwide and pressure countries where taxes are too low—to discourage them from poaching capital from welfare economies.

Or we don’t even have to go that far; we can simply remember that customs require the country of origin of the goods to be specified. If the state (recognized by that specific customs office) does not exist, the declaration cannot be filled out. This wouldn’t even be due to anyone’s malicious intent. Simply put, the ancap case does not fit into existing state regulations, and even the most well-meaning official will just shrug their shoulders, saying they can’t help.

Of course, the market will provide some kind of crutches. The most obvious solution is not to abolish the state on paper. Let other states interact with the ancap zone through an emulator. In the cheapest version, I see it roughly like this: there is a nominal head of state, elected by lot from everyone who expressed a desire to participate in a drawing held every, say, four years, who has one single power, which is also a duty: to issue any documents upon request to anyone within a specified timeframe on behalf of the state “let’s say, Ukraine,” in whatever format the client requires—without taking any fee for the transaction into their own pocket, but placing all costs for preparing the documents on the customer. The very first refusal to sign or a delay in delivery leads to immediate resignation and the start of a new drawing. That’s it.

Need a package of documents for trade with “let’s say, Germany”? Draw them up, bring them for signature to the head of state of “let’s say, Ukraine,” and he is obliged to sign. A troll wants permission to eat small children? Let him draw up the permission and bring it for signature. The state doesn’t care; it will sign. The state emulator simply has absolutely no authority to enforce any directive. And if some other state gets the emulator to sign a request to introduce a peacekeeping contingent into the territory of “let’s say, Ukraine” to prevent the genocide of mice by frogs—this will in no way increase the legitimacy of its actions should it begin to fulfill that request.

But let’s return to the actions of other states against “let’s say, Ukraine,” dictated by malicious intent. It might feel as though, without active interstate diplomacy, businesses in the ancap territory are unable to defend their interests, which would worsen the territory’s investment climate. However, on the other hand, this territory is completely free from protectionist norms and places no obstacles in the way of international investors. This means that any influential corporation will be interested in ensuring that its home state does not hinder its operations in a stateless territory. In other words, foreign business will begin to play the role of its own diplomats. So, the market has tools to resolve things here as well. Yes, certain rigid states will easily ban any business working with the ancap zone—fortunately, there are enough states that it would be difficult for them to consistently violate the interests of the businesses that feed them. Seriously significant sanctions require consolidated public opinion to support them—even sponsors of terrorism are not always met with a serious response, and a peaceful stateless society is even less likely to agitate the global public enough for serious economic sanctions against it to be introduced, and once introduced, maintained for long.

Liability of the solicitor of a crime

While recently answering a series of questions in a blitz format, I touched upon the topic of the responsibility of the person who orders a crime, and this sparked a discussion in the Facebook comments. So, I will try to reason through this in more detail.

Let’s consider a sequence of situations.

1. The client demands that the perpetrator commit a crime, threatening sanctions in case of refusal: causing harm to the perpetrator themselves or to some hostages. The perpetrator does as required, thereby avoiding the threat.

2. The client demands that the perpetrator commit a crime, threatening sanctions for non-compliance and promising a reward for completion. The perpetrator does as required and receives the reward.

3. The client asks the perpetrator to commit a crime, offering a reward in return. The perpetrator carries out the request and receives the promised reward.

4. There is a highly competitive market for crimes where many perpetrators compete to offer their services. The buyer chooses the perpetrator who offers the service that is optimal in terms of price and quality, and purchases it.

5. The perpetrator commits a crime, reports it, after which interested parties pay them donations for it.

I have tried to arrange the situations in descending order of the client’s degree of responsibility and ascending order of the perpetrator’s degree of responsibility—from the full responsibility of the former to the full responsibility of the latter.

In a situation where the perpetrator faces a serious threat for failing to fulfill the order, we can de facto consider them a mere tool. That is why, for example, it is quite logical to completely exempt conscripted soldiers from responsibility for participating in a war if they acted within orders and it is customary in that army to execute for desertion or failure to follow orders.

But in a situation where the perpetrator of a crime has the opportunity to resign, or to stage a work-to-rule strike by demanding written instructions for every unlawful order—but does not do so—they share responsibility with their superiors for all crimes committed. This is the case of the Belarusian OMON, for example. In conditions where those who resign can also count on the support of society, the responsibility of those who did not resign naturally increases.

At what point can we confidently assert that the client should bear no responsibility at all? Clearly, this is only possible in cases where the perpetrator acts entirely voluntarily, but is it so in all such cases?

Any voluntary exchange is based on the division of labor. I do not do everything I need myself; instead, I exchange a part of what I need less for something that is difficult for me to obtain on my own. The purchase of an illegal service is the exact same division of labor. But since the labor is divided, so is the responsibility for the damage that this labor caused to someone. Logical? Logical. And what if we continue to complicate the division of labor?

One studied the target’s daily routine. A second purchased the equipment. A third planted the bomb. A fourth sent a text message at the right moment, and the bomb blew up the victim along with the car and three random passersby. A fifth negotiated with the client and coordinated the group’s work. The sixth is the client himself. The seventh is the primary beneficiary in whose interests the client acted. And let’s add payment schemes. And let’s add explosives suppliers. And someone else bought these guys donuts…

A court in the wonderful Ancapistan of the future will have to assess the level of awareness of each person involved in the offense, the degree of unlawfulness of the actions they were directly involved in, the possibility of backing out, cooperation with the investigation, and so on—everything we already see in our usual boring reality. Except that the idiotic practice of imprisonment for the sake of imprisonment will be mostly replaced by monetary compensation or their in-kind equivalents.

Knowledge of principles will not provide a precise solution for all cases in life. It only allows one to have something to be guided by when evaluating a given situation in all its complexity. Therefore, please do not turn the non-aggression principle into a dogma; it doesn’t work that way.

Here you have the direct perpetrators, the filming of a video for the report to the client, and a whole chain of decision-making behind the scenes. The division of responsibility is the most typical practice in the modern state.

Once more about intellectual property law

Suppose I am a writer. I live in Ancapistan. I wrote a book. I posted it on my website, free for readers. At the top, I put a banner that rotates with every view and brings me a little bit of money. At the bottom, I put a donation button.

A malicious pirate copied my book to his own site. He threw out a couple of chapters he didn’t like. He put his own banner at the top. He put his own donation button at the bottom.

If I take a little shotgun and go to kill him, will the jury acquit me?

анонимный вопрос

This is a supplement to the question proposed by the King of Sex and Tea Bags, but this time without a signature.

Oddly enough, I quite often do exactly what you described. Some Bitarch or Vitaly Tizun posts an article. I take the text, correct the commas, remove paragraphs I don’t like, accompany it with some comment of my own, and post it on my own site, not forgetting to place a “donations” button under the post. As it happened, none of them have come at me with a little shotgun for this; in fact, some even praise me, saying the edited text is easier to read. Perhaps it’s because I credit the author and provide a link to the original post. Therefore, the authors see their own benefit in my behavior and do not object.

But what if I ignored the norms of netiquette, took anyone’s texts, edited them however I liked according to my taste, and posted them in a channel under my own name? One thing would be obvious in this situation: it would also be unnecessary for others to observe the norms of netiquette in their attitude toward me. Perhaps the slandered authors would rain attacks on me in social networks and tediously explain to the public that they are the actual authors of the text, that the originals should be obtained from them, and that they are the ones who should be donated to if the work was liked. And I would continue my strange approach to content creation, focusing on exactly what and how I change in the posted texts. For example, I might post the text of the Iliad, leaving only the first half of the second song, and refer all those who are outraged to Mandelstam. Over time, I would gain a community of connoisseurs of my specific edits. Or perhaps the readers would quickly get bored. That’s the market.

Now, if I focused not on self-assertion through edits, but on simply posting as many “tasty” texts as possible, I would end up with a very ordinary electronic library. In this case, it would be redundant for me to cut out even the author’s name and substitute my own; I would post it as is, but I would take care of fast servers, providing the text in all popular e-reader formats, and other things valued by users. I would try to ensure that I have everything people are interested in, in the most convenient form for reading. I would develop a reader community, interview authors, and so on. And the authors would come to me themselves, suggesting, “Look, I have a fresh book here, take it, and give me a percentage of the donations.” I would say: ok. I would allocate a personal section for the author in my library, make them a moderator there, let them answer readers’ questions and entertain them in every way, and we would split the income in an agreed proportion.

Of course, if I behaved like a textbook “mudesa,” treating authors with disdain—saying, “be grateful that you talentless hacks are published anywhere at all, you should actually be paying me for this”—or, say, inserted scenes into someone’s books that made the author look like an idiot—well, then perhaps I would drive someone to the point of coming at me with a little shotgun. But I could just as easily drive anyone to that for any other reason; here, the activity of posting other people’s texts is no longer the principal issue. And the more vilely I behaved, the more people wondered how I hadn’t been shot yet—the more satisfaction they would feel upon the occurrence of that fact. Of course, those who demand compensation from the killer for my murder would find it difficult to find a sufficiently impartial court, but not everyone in the world is a fan of literature. So, they’d hardly be acquitted, but they probably wouldn’t be judged strictly either.

A Question about Intellectual Property Law

For example, say I live in Ancapistan and I am a writer. I sign a contract with a publisher for (let’s say) a percentage of every book sold. The book is published. But competitors copy the book and sell it at a significantly lower price, because they don’t need to kick back a percentage to the writer. Does this mean that writers in Ancapistan will be left sucking wind?

The King of Sex and Tea Bags

Well, first of all, who am I to forbid anyone from sucking anything, as long as they aren’t aiming to suck my property? And secondly, I don’t understand why all the authors of questions about ancap are convinced that it’s some kind of fairy tale where a magic market arrives and solves any problem.

The market doesn’t solve all problems, only those for which there is a voluntary, solvent demand. A writer wishing to earn a living through their talent must understand that for this to happen, people must be found who are willing to voluntarily reward that talent with money. They can search for these people personally or hire intermediaries, but the wider the search, the more opportunities a devotee of the talent has to pay the writer in one form or another—and the more brilliant the talent, of course—the greater the profit.

I provide admirers of my talent with several diverse ways to reward me with money—from direct transfers in bits to various indirect routes, such as subscribing to a live channel, donations for a guaranteed quick answer to a question, or even indirect ones, like referral links to various useful services. I could earn more if it weren’t for the self-limitation of maintaining anonymity (for example, by selling the right to have dinner with me or hosting streams) and my reluctance to bother with complex business models (for example, selling merch). I could earn nothing at all if I refused donations, even when they are literally shoved into my hands.

Hard copies of texts in the form of paper books are a kind of merch today. What share of sales the merch producer allocates to the writer depends solely on the merch producer’s desire to donate to the writer. But even if they don’t pay the writer a single satoshi, they still contribute to the writer’s promotion, because that is the primary function of merch. And then the promoted writer can earn more from a single stream than they could have received from a print run of books.

P.S. Of course, an answer to a similar question has already been published in this channel, and the answer was also similar, so I apologize to the early readers of the channel for the repetition—but now they can choose which of the versions they liked more.

*Look at how stylish this merch is, not like those pocketbooks of yours! Whoever decides to publish my quote book, do it at this level, and my heart will be glad!*

On the difficulties of mutual understanding with communists

Imagine the following situation. You are the director of the “Ancapistan” insurance company, which governs a certain territory. I am the speaker for the “Ancomistan” commune (we have no leader, but I am usually entrusted with conducting meetings and going on diplomatic trips on behalf of the commune), which also owns a certain territory. We share a common water border on a lake. Ancapistan is on the right bank of the lake, and Ancomistan is on the left. Almost the entire coastline of Ancapistan, except for a single shipping port, belongs to one private individual who uses the water for his chemical plants. You supply us with fertilizers and complex machinery, and we supply you with agricultural products, timber, and metals.

Then, at one fine moment, the aforementioned private individual begins to delay the replacement of filters, and many toxic substances enter the water. Since we share a common lake, several dozen people in Ancomistan (the lake is our only external water resource, whereas you also have a river on your territory) drink water from this lake, and all of them perish. And here is where it gets interesting. In Ancomistan, negligence resulting in grave consequences is punished by 15-20 years of hard labor for the benefit of the commune or by death by hanging. In Ancapistan, it is punished only by compensating the victims for damages. I hold a meeting where I raise the question of how to assess the damages for compensation. 5% of the communards suggest taking money and placing it in the commune’s account at the bank for international trade, 10% suggest sending the private individual to 15-20 years of hard labor, and 85% suggest the gallows, given the cynicism of valuing lives in money. In the end, the commune issues a death sentence and instructs me to send an extradition request. You offer to compensate for the damages, but I show you the paper with the commune’s resolution and continue to insist on extradition. Upon receiving a refusal, I state that in this case, the commune will completely stop supplying resources to Ancapistan and stop buying from it. If we sever trade relations, Ancapistan will lose one of its markets for selling and buying resources. Besides Ancomistan, the only other raw material territories nearby are in Anprimistan. You can sell finished products to them, but due to their poverty, they will not buy your products at the high price we pay. Also, due to the higher complexity of resource extraction, they will not sell you resources at the low price Ancomistan provides.

Ancomistan itself will simply drill water wells and sign a trade contract with Transgumistan, which sells and buys products at almost the same price but is located slightly further away than Ancapistan. As a result, you will have an economic crisis, while our standard of living will practically remain unchanged. Question: will you extradite the private individual to Ancomistan and thereby violate the NAP regarding him, or will you lose one of your markets for buying and selling resources and find yourself in a deep crisis?

Ancom-kun (question accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00023397 BTC)

Thank you for this long and interesting story, which demonstrates the problems a territorial commune may face. Fortunately, Ancapistan is merely an insurance company. We insure lives, real estate, transport, risks of industrial disasters, and so on. The fact that an insured enterprise failed to change filters on time and we did not find out about it (although non-compliance with technical regulations by the insured party is grounds for terminating the contract or revising the premium size due to increased risk) means only one thing: our employee was negligent or was bribed by the insured enterprise. Naturally, this means we fire our agent and revise our own regulations to prevent this from happening again. We also refuse to pay insurance to the insured company and sue it for fraud—they did not perform the procedures required by the regulations but did not inform us, thereby saving on insurance premiums. If other clients approach us for insurance due to the lake pollution (for example, fishermen or travel agencies whose activities are affected), we will have to pay them premiums, after which we will file claims against the enterprise for reimbursement of our losses.

Additionally, it seems we insured the life of the enterprise owner. This contract remains in effect, and we are obliged to prevent attempts on his life within the limit of expenses agreed upon by the insurance premium. So, we either take him under protection or provide him with a comfortable shelter and give him the opportunity to safely negotiate with Ancomistan to settle the claims.

Furthermore, Ancomistan takes a principled stand and insists on executing the businessman who offended them, refusing all his offers of financial compensation, even the transfer of the plant to the commune’s ownership. Therefore, the businessman continues to stay in the shelter and manage the plant from there. When the time comes to renew the insurance contract, we face a dilemma: either refuse the renewal or set an exorbitant price, because we are effectively acting not as an insurer, but as a security company. In the end, we reach an agreement: he continues to pay the bills, and we continue to protect him.

After this, Ancomistan begins to blackmail our other clients, threatening them with the termination of contracts if we do not hand over the criminal. We realize that further protection is impractical and finally terminate the contract with him. The former client, not being a fool, immediately signs a contract with another security company operating in the middle of nowhere, and they organize his evacuation. Then, being physically several thousand kilometers away from the vengeful commune, he continues negotiations with them, because he does not wish to wake up one fine day with an ice pick in his head. But his negotiating position becomes stronger, as it is more difficult for the commune in this situation to pressure his new security company. Therefore, most likely, after some time, you will reach some compromise with him.

The question of your sanctions against my insurance company remains. We protected our client within the framework of the contract, and as for what “extradition” is, we don’t understand it at all, because in our language it is called “kidnapping.” Refusing to protect is one thing, but kidnapping a person and handing them over to some bandits for subsequent execution is something entirely different. Nevertheless, we bear part of the responsibility to the commune because we poorly monitored our agent who was tasked with overseeing the compliance of technical regulations for our client. We offer Ancomistan compensation, and since there is no question of direct guilt in this case, we will most likely reach an agreement. After this, I have a claim against our former employee, but that is a completely different story.

Fall of the Black Hawk

Yesterday, after I finished editing the article on the inefficiency of violence, I sat down to watch the movie “Black Hawk Down,” which I came across while following links related to the article. The film focuses on the episode mentioned in the article: how the US was forced to leave Somalia after the failure of what they considered a peacekeeping operation—losing nearly two dozen special forces operators in a single day and killing around a thousand locals in a dense urban environment, without much regard for who was a combatant and who was not.

In 2001, when Black Hawk Down was released, I was more interested in things like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, which came out around the same time, but I’m glad I finally got to it; the movie is excellent. However, I want to talk not about the plot in general or the visual quality, but about literally two moments that were key for me personally, and to which all other narrative serves, in my view, merely as illustration.

The first moment is around the eighteenth minute. The Rangers are discussing a fact from a thin brochure they were given titled “All About Somalia”: if one local kills another, his clan must pay the clan of the deceased a hundred camels. To this, one of the soldiers notes that he couldn’t even afford one camel, and the locals must all be in debt now. And now, let’s listen to a lecture by Vladimir Zolotorev:

I am providing a link exactly to the moment where he explains how the civil war in Somalia was effectively stopped by a court decision: the combatants were quieted by their own clans because the relatives of the killers were tired of paying giant sums for other people’s debts.

Thus, the film brilliantly shows how expensive and pointlessly cruel the UN intervention was, and how little importance the self-proclaimed peacekeepers attached to the mechanism that actually stopped the war.

The second important moment is closer to the end of the movie, around 1:45. A Somali man is talking to a captured American pilot and explains: you took our hostages, we took you. The pilot replies: my government will not negotiate. OK, the Somali replies, then let’s negotiate between you and me, soldier to soldier. To this, the American replies that he has no decision-making power. The Somali huffs in response: you, apparently, are granted the right to kill, but not to negotiate, while for us, war is just another form of negotiation. Therefore, you have nothing to gain here.

Many thanks to Ridley Scott, who didn’t film a propaganda piece, but truly managed to show the difference between a dull and meaningless state military machine and an anarchic society. I especially recommend the film to those who repeatedly ask the same questions about how “Ancapistan” would defend itself from a state invasion.

Of course, Somalia is not Ancapistan—things are doing well with anarchy there, but significantly worse with capitalism, especially at the time shown in the movie. Nevertheless, even a pre-capitalist stateless society managed to teach a good lesson to the strongest superpower on the planet. States risk a lot when they try to impose their rules on anarchic orders, and if these orders are backed by a truly strong economy, then the outcome of a direct military confrontation between a state and Ancapistan can be considered predetermined.

Perhaps Ancapistan is better built in fourth-world countries after all?

Well, let’s say, in Somalia, Micronesia, and other failed states, since it is easier there to achieve a more or less even balance of the potential for violence with relatively small resource expenditures (conventionally speaking, buying a Kalashnikov) due to the absence of an overwhelmingly powerful agent enforcing a monopoly on violence in that territory, as well as the culture of servility and economic structure that has formed around it?

L29Ah (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00013567btc)

I will remind the readers that the balance of the potential for violence is one of the criteria for the stability of a stateless society according to Hirschleifer. Other criteria are a stable community composition and the absence of a significant number of people pushed to the brink of survival. Indeed, some secluded tropical paradise where coconuts fall right at your feet and where peaceful, smiling natives with Kalashnikovs live can easily build an anarchic society. But it is not enough to have anarchy; what is desired specifically is anarcho-capitalism.

And anarcho-capitalism requires a bit more than the absence of a state. It requires capitalism, which means commodity-money relations. So our imaginary tropical paradise will need a full-fledged commodity economy integrated into global trade. But international trade requires international recognition, and that is a serious limitation.

While composing his Meganesian cycle, Aleksandr Rozov particularly emphasized that the stateless society in the Pacific Ocean is being built not by real natives, but by outsiders. In reality, they are full-fledged white people with the notions of property, freedom, and law appropriate for white people—they simply deny the state. They only pretend to be natives in order to legitimize their claims in the eyes of the international community and avoid becoming pariahs leading a miserable existence under economic sanctions.

In real life, a similar project of anarcho-colonialism was attempted by the Seasteading Institute, but it encountered numerous legislative and technological restrictions, and now, judging by the website, it has degenerated from a libertarian project into something smelling of eco-activism.

So it is hard to say what is easier: to ensure the transition to anarchy in a capitalist state, to ensure the transition to capitalism in a failed state, or to organize a “freedom landing” in some toy state in Oceania. One thing can be said for sure: the matter is not limited solely to the balance of the potential for violence.

Ancap-chan

I answer questions on ancap, libertarianism, economics, politics, ethics, law and occasionally on abstract topics.

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