Тег: Bitarch

Libertarian channels

Written jointly with Bitarch

There is never enough time. Fortunately, quite a lot of information on libertarianism can now be obtained in audio format. The most popular delivery channel for such content is, undoubtedly, YouTube. Except that by default, it assumes you are sitting and staring at the screen, rather than strolling down the street with headphones, and the mobile app refuses to work in the background. More precisely, it graciously agrees, but only in the paid version.

Fortunately, for Android, the market has solved this situation, and those who wish can install NewPipe — a free open-source YouTube client capable of background mode and saving videos locally to the phone for subsequent offline viewing. You can download the installation file directly, or, if you want to receive app updates, install the alternative app store F-Droid in addition to the alternative YouTube client, and install NewPipe through it. Then you’ll have to export your YouTube subscriptions as a file and import that file into NewPipe, and after all this series of tedious manipulations, finally obtain the coveted ability to cheat Google. By the way, to hell with the background mode, but NewPipe also cuts out the annoying ads, which definitely makes all the effort worth it. In short, I recommend it.

Now, Bitarch recommends a selection of channels worth subscribing to. I am not familiar with all of them, so I will only comment in italics in a few places.

Dobroum (Alexander Elesev) – an interesting evangelist of non-violence, lives in the States, broadcasts in Russian, has gathered a community around himself; in particular, Bitarch himself came from there, which is why the channel holds the honorary first place)))

Stefan Molyneux — in English, but very easy to understand, has subtitles – haven’t listened, took note, I know that Svetov referred to him from time to time.

Alexey Sherstnev – as far as I understand, this is a guy from the Zolotorëv circle, while Vladimir himself, alas, is not represented on YouTube, but occasionally appears on television.

Pavel Usanov – well, this is overall my favorite channel on YouTube)))

SVTV (Mikhail Svetov) – the frontman of LPR, mentioned here many times, whom one may disagree with, but cannot afford to ignore

Zhukov’s Blog (Egor Zhukov) – a guy who for some reason is not liked in LPR, a witness of Gene Sharp, a preacher of the wonderful idea of giving flowers to the police, and generally a talented self-taught person, much like myself)))

InLiberty – didn’t even know they had a video channel, I’ll have to subscribe

Ruslan Sokolovsky – the most famous Pokemon catcher in Russia and an involuntary cryptocurrency practitioner

BitNovosti — mainly about cryptocurrencies, occasionally podcasts about ancap come out.

Mr. Deadline is kind of hinting that you should listen to videos in the background, so as not to kill Time


Birth rate as a reflection of the tragedy of the commons

Bitarch

Statists often say that the state helps solve the problems of the tragedy of the commons. In reality, of course, it only creates them. The most large-scale of these, capable of leading to the collapse of civilization, is the sharp decline in the birth rate. Indeed, why should a woman spend many sleepless nights changing a baby’s diapers, when it’s far more interesting to go to a club to party with friends and post photos of fashionable clothes on Insta! And what will happen in old age? Absolutely irrelevant — the beloved state will not leave her without a decent pension, and if she votes correctly, it will even provide a free caregiver.

This is a clear tragedy of the commons. For an individual woman, from a resource perspective, it is more profitable not to give birth at all (she will still receive a guaranteed pension in old age, but will not spend resources on raising children). If all the residents of a country do this, tax revenues will fall along with the population of that specific country, and the state will be forced to increase its plunder. Taxes are already at historical highs; accordingly, any further increase will guaranteedly lead to a decline in the entire economy, the departure of business both from the country and “into the shadows,” and ultimately — the collapse of the state.

For my part, I will note that the state solves this tragedy of the commons simply: by paying child benefits. In this way, the birth rate increases among those for whom the amount of the benefit matters. So, from the state’s perspective, nothing terrible is happening: childless wealthy citizens pay for the poor and fertile; justice triumphs. The state is an entire conglomerate of special interest groups, and any challenge coming from the outside world, or even just a fabricated one, can be used as a pretext to increase the size of the state: whether it be high birth rates, low birth rates, high immigration, low immigration, warming, or cooling…

Why is counter-economics much more effective than insurgency and armed struggle?

Bitarch Answers

For most people, a radical change in the socio-political formation of society is usually associated with a revolution, which occurs through armed struggle and the overthrow of the ruling regime. However, people miss the main point—upon coming to power, revolutionaries carry out mass purges of their former opponents, creating an atmosphere of fear and hatred in society (for example, the Red Terror during the Civil War, and later the Stalinist repressions). Often, the revolutionary government itself is overthrown by the opponents of the revolution, and its achievements are destroyed (for example, the Jacobins during the French Revolution). All this happens against a backdrop of famine, economic collapse, and technological degradation. It should also not be forgotten that people acting from the underground do not shy away from using violence. We want to build a libertarian society, that is, a society based on voluntary relations. But here is the problem—people accustomed to violence and a violent (military) hierarchy will most likely use familiar methods against dissenters even after their victory. Simply because they do not know any other way!

There is another, more effective and humane way to reach a free society (voluntarism, ancap)—counter-economics. This is exactly what I advocate for, and I hope for the gradual non-violent construction of such a society.

First and foremost, of course, the ideas themselves must be conveyed to people (taxes are theft; the state is a stationary bandit; it is possible to do without it by replacing its institutions with competing public organizations or extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions with voluntary membership). The state exists in people’s heads as a model of behavior, so it must first be eradicated from there. The more promotion channels we master, the better—leaflets, graffiti, social media groups, online and offline advertising, lectures, videos, books, etc.

I want to convey the main idea to people—the state itself creates no value and exists exclusively through taxation. Even income from the sale of oil and gas is, in reality, tax payments. The fewer taxes the state receives, the weaker it becomes and, accordingly, the fewer resources it can spend on suppressing protests and repressing its opponents.

How can an ordinary person enter the fight against the Leviathan without fearing repressions on its part? The answer is simple—minimizing tax payments and maximizing the extraction of state resources through social services (using any opportunity to obtain benefits, tax refunds, social housing, food stamps, discounted travel passes, etc.).

If possible, one should agree with the employer to have the entire salary paid “under the table.” An alternative option is to switch from an employment contract to a service contract (meaning you become a separate contractor for the employer company and save significantly on taxes and, surprisingly, this is one hundred percent legal). It is also worth learning how to use cryptocurrencies, buying food and things at local markets and from private sellers (rather than in a store where you pay VAT), and using the services of private providers and craftsmen (who do not provide cash receipts).

The state already senses something is wrong, and not long ago it declared a hunt for the self-employed. Well, let it run: the costs of collecting such taxes will far exceed the volume of funds collected.

Agree, it is an extremely optimistic picture: the Leviathan has perished, and man remains

Why does the state constantly grow? Why is minarchism unstable?

Answered by Bitarch

History shows that over a long period of time, the “size of the state” (the volume of resources it controls and the degree of influence over the lives of its subjects) constantly grows. This applies to all forms of government—liberal democracies, republics with census-based democracy, ideocracies, theocracies, and even monarchies. Some states were initially created on the idea of minarchism (“limited government”), such as the USA, where the founding fathers understood the possibility of the state’s growth and tried to prescribe mechanisms to restrain this process in the constitution. In all cases, this did not work, and even the “smallest” governments grew to gigantic proportions.

So why does this always happen? There are many versions, but the most plausible seems to be the idea expressed by Pavel Usanov in his recent lecture “Spontaneous Orders as an Alternative to the State”. Growth occurs because every official is interested in redistributing rent (resources taken from the population through taxes) in their own favor. If they do not do it themselves, one of their colleagues will. A constant temptation arises to engage in populism and invent new functions for state intervention in areas related to the interest group that put this specific official in power. For example, officials from a state social insurance agency are interested in INCREASING the number of unemployed and poor people, as they can then “secure” more funding for themselves and, accordingly, increase their salaries, hire their friends, or award themselves bonuses.

Если вы пришли сюда по ссылке из других соцсетей, напоминаю, что на мой канал можно подписаться в телеграме, а для обсуждения деятельности канала там же, в телеграме, создан уютный чатик.

Oh, what noble intentions they had!

Continuation of the discussion about reputation

Bitarch replies:

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Reputation under ancap

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

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

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

How do you evaluate this system?