Тег: Announcement

Belkovich in Novosibirsk

The well-known Russian Orthodox republican Rodion Belkovich has appeared in my channel twice so far.

The first time was when I was answering the question of whether we are already living under ancap. The question was obviously inspired by Belkovich’s speech at last year’s Adam Smith Readings, where he thoroughly trolled the audience with this paradoxical assertion.

The second time I gave him my attention was when I was answering a question about the dangers of preserving institutions in contract jurisdictions. There, I touched upon Husainov’s review of Belkovich’s new book Blood of Patriots.

And then suddenly, a rumor reaches me that Belkovich is traveling across the country presenting this very book of his, like Svetov in the pre-covid era, and intends to visit Novosibirsk on October 4th. By today’s standards, any kind of public lectures are quite exotic; I’ve completely grown out of the habit. In short, for those who wish to drop by, here is the Timepad address for lecture registration. The book presentation will take place on October 4th from 14:00 to 15:00 at Voskhod 28, 4th floor. And from 15:00, he will be debating republicanism with local colleagues. I don’t know how reluctantly the organizers will be forced to set up chairs and, accordingly, what the capacity of the hall will be, but I hope everyone will fit comfortably. Because I remember almost fainting from the stuffiness at Svetov’s, and I don’t want that again.

In the lecturer’s gaze, one can clearly see a desire to water some tree…

Morality. A new video from Libertarian Band.

In the new video, the Libertarian Band team and I examined morality from the same perspective we previously used to examine law, namely as a spontaneous order, so it is better to watch both videos one after the other. I don’t recall anyone describing morality in this way before, but I hope we managed to provide a sufficiently coherent, consistent, and practically applicable vision of the topic.

And next will be a video on a topic that many libertarian theorists have clashed over — about children. So don’t forget to subscribe to the channel.

Coronavirus and the State

A new video has been released on the Libertarian Band channel — about how an old ailment called the state, which humanity simply cannot seem to cure, has led to serious complications in combination with a new viral infection. Not that we are particularly fresh or original; too many have already spoken on this topic. But it is always useful to record your position, otherwise, people might rub it in your face later: “remember, remember how you were calling to beg for money from the state last year? well, now enjoy your hyperinflation!”

This is a special episode that interrupted our series of educational videos on libertarianism, but we will return to the main sequence closer to May.

Started a personal blog

Several times, I have been suggested to start a Patreon or some other system for providing premium content in exchange for regular donations. The idea of receiving regular donations certainly appeals to me (although it’s unclear what stops a reader from simply donating regularly without using intermediary services) — but for a long time, I couldn’t figure out what kind of premium content I would be willing to offer. Share smarter thoughts with paid subscribers and less smart ones with free ones? Well, that’s not quite it…

Then an idea occurred to me. In my main channel, on the website, and in all the linked social networks, I talk about libertarianism, while I usually remain behind the scenes. So, as premium content, I could provide my own personal perspective on the world around me — basically, various things that don’t fit into the format of a channel about libertarianism.

So, I started a live channel on the Boosty service (chosen for banal economic reasons — it takes less for mediation than its competitors: 7%, plus the payment system commission). I will post personal things there, while still trying to avoid my deanonymization. There is only one subscription level, 200 rubles per month, and so far I don’t see any reason to create more. If you have suggestions on what else could be written there, subscribe and let me know in the comments. As you know, I always highly value the opinion of those who are willing to back it with money, and I try to fulfill such requests.

Donations in rubles

I have added the ability to make donations in rubles. The forms for sending rubles differ slightly on different pages so that I can understand whether the donation is for a question, for Eric Mac’s translation, or simply for the project’s development. Unfortunately, I cannot trust you to write the payment purpose yourselves—the state does not react well to joking payment purposes such as “to overthrow Putin” or “4.20” (congrats, by the way!).

It looks something like this:

From time to time, I write reviews of various articles or videos, and it occurred to me that you could also suggest materials for reviews to me, if you are interested. Naturally, preference will be given to requests accompanied by donations. This option could be especially interesting for Telegram channel owners, because it is certainly more interesting to readers than a standard promo post.

Asked to promote it

Sorry for posting other people’s announcements two days in a row, but people in self-isolation have clearly livened up and started broadcasting their ideas into the network with redoubled force. I will try not to fall behind myself, although in my life, with this whole pandemic, almost nothing has changed at all.

Roman Yuneman is known as the only independent politician in the country who managed to defeat Navalny’s smart voting in the elections. And he would be a poor politician if, after that, he didn’t set about developing his success. Yuneman created the Society.Future community, within which he engaged in various expert studies: first, studying the intricacies and pitfalls of the electronic voting that ruined him, and then, after Putin’s January address, he took on work for a new constitution, since the current regime intends to completely spoil the old one.

On April 8, he is organizing a stream on his YouTube channel with a fairly representative team:

  • Vatoadmin, who taught us all to cross ourselves at the word “AES” and to apologize for any reason
  • Grigory Bazhenov, who knows how to scream very loudly at the sight of fuel price tags
  • Dmitry Zubov, whom I know from the Telegram channel Right Economics, but I haven’t encountered him on YouTube, so no stories come to mind about him.

The plan is to discuss pressing issues: how deep today’s crisis is, how long it will last, and what to do about it all. I will be glad to hear the opinions of smart people, many of whom I disagree with (for example, I find Yuneman’s idea of introducing a curfew harmful), but it would be foolish to deny their competence. I hope that some practical steps will also be announced by the participants of the conversation.

So, April 8, 20:00 Moscow time, on Roman Yuneman’s channel.

Three short announcements

I recently published a selection of interesting quasi-libertarian channels, and among them was Artyom Seversky’s channel Life with Others. I specifically recommended checking out the series of posts on monetary policy, but digging through a Telegram channel’s history can be inconvenient. Fortunately, the author was kind enough to compile these posts into a single article and post it on the website. At the same time, you can browse the site; there are some interesting things there as well, for example, an article on classical liberalism and libertarianism by the same Eric Mack, whose book we are currently translating.

The Libertarian Band channel, where I write scripts for a series of educational videos, has started its own separate news section and today released a pilot episode with a new charismatic host. Please take a moment to leave a comment about what you think of the presentation to help improve it.

I have also posted the translation drafts of five new chapters of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molneux. With this, my budget for incentivizing volunteers has completely run out, so I think the flow of drafts will now stall, and I can calmly focus on editing what has already been sent. However, you can contribute more money, and the volunteers will perk up. As a reminder, here is the wallet for financing the translation project: 1AFkD2bazCs5YZBBrSD7HsRMWLmRbg6QBo

Law, or courts under ancap. A new video from Libertarian Band

This is not an April Fool’s joke: Libertarian Band has finally released the long-awaited video about courts under ancap. I consider it one of our most important works, and I hope the video goes viral at least as well as the old video about ancap itself.

The film crew are absolute legends for managing to produce content at a good pace despite the current situation. Throw some money their way; they’ve earned it.

While creating the script, I leaned heavily on Hayek as interpreted by Zolotorev and, to a lesser extent, Chetvernin, as well as David Friedman and some other sources. I hope I managed to combine these diverse concepts harmoniously and create a truly original product.

I look forward to your likes and comments under the video.

Bitcoin. A new video from Libertarian band

The second episode of the third season of our favorite series by Libertarian band has been released. The third season, dedicated to the mechanisms of a stateless society, began with the criteria for the stability of anarchy. We examined several of them, chose one, and settled firmly on it. Bitcoin is an excellent illustration of how this criterion works.

We briefly went through the history of money and described why Bitcoin emerged, why it was created in this specific way, and why it is an excellent tool for a stateless society, without which, of course, things would have been significantly more difficult for us in the wonderful Ancapistan of the future.

Conditions for the Stability of Anarchy

I am glad to present a new video from Libertarian Band, opening the third section of the cycle on libertarianism. This section will describe how a stateless society works. And today’s video describes the conditions under which a stateless society will remain stable.

First, we touch upon the previously analyzed iterated prisoner’s dilemma, then we chew over Hirschleifer’s conditions for the stability of anarchy, which have been mentioned here several times, but for dessert, we provide our own answer.

Further on, I hope it will only get more exciting, so please subscribe.