I have started writing the third part of the book, about how exactly to build an ancap state, given the current state of affairs at the start. Naturally, I am beginning with an overview of the difficulties. So far we have a brief introduction and a chapter about our inner paternalist. I thought about writing a bit more right off the bat, but I got stuck for some reason, so I’m posting what I have.

I won’t nag about donations this time, as I successfully sold my debt tokens for exactly the amount I was counting on.

I have re-read everything written previously in its entirety, making minor edits to a couple of chapters as I went along, and then immediately finished the chapter on how ancap copes with the previously described difficulties associated with the imperfection of society. After that, all that remained was to summarize the second part of the book—and then I can proceed to the third and final part.

I can state that, overall, the book contains a fairly high concentration of my own original thoughts and definitions of terms. The structure of the presentation may also seem unfamiliar to those who have previously read other works on libertarianism. I hope this will not repel the reader, but rather spark their interest.

For those who find it more convenient to read on mobile devices rather than a large screen, the book is available in epub format.

And, of course, I cannot help but hint that the completion of the second part of the book is a great reason to donate so that I can celebrate this event.

Since my recent posts have featured translations of smart books, it is high time to squeeze out another fragment of my own smart book. In the second part of the book, as the reader may recall, I first briefly described an ideal ancap, and then began to show the difficulties on the path to its implementation, dividing them into three categories: the imperfection of the world, the human, and society. Well, now I have slowly crawled my way to society.

Firstly, in a real society, the construction of ancap is hindered by communication difficulties — it is difficult, you know, to establish voluntary relations if you are unaware of what the counterparty’s good will consists of because you cannot understand them. Secondly, opportunism turns out to be a very harmful thing — when people may verbally acknowledge the appropriateness of observing the non-aggression principle, but find it hard to refrain from violating it in conditions where it leads to obvious personal gain (and sometimes to obvious gain for many people).

Every time I write another pair of chapters about the difficulties of ancap, I try to do it conscientiously enough that, in the process of writing, I begin to suspect that this is a disaster and there is truly nothing that can be done about it. So, I need some time to restore my emotional balance and counter my gloom with text about how the aforementioned difficulties are overcome. Fortunately, the second part of the book is nearing completion, and the third part will be about the tools for building ancap, which is a much more positive topic.

As usual, if you find it more convenient to read the book in e-reader format, you can download it; I try to maintain the current version on the website. And, as usual, if you have a desire to donate, do not delay the fulfillment of that desire.

I have finished the chapter about the likely approaches in an anarcho-capitalist society to solving problems related to the fact that a real person is by nature not necessarily always fully ready to act as a full legal subject, as well as the fact that their planning horizon may in some cases be extremely short. Now all that remains is to finish the section on the non-ideality of society, and then I can summarize the second part of the book.

As a reminder, the book can be read online by chapters, or it can be downloaded for offline reading in e-book formats. I suspect the latter will be relevant for most only after the book is completed, but just in case, I keep this file up to date. And while I’m at it, I’ll remind you that I am always glad to receive your donations and comments. Regarding this book, I welcome comments even more, as they can help improve the text.

After venting about the sudden outbreak of war, I took a bit of a break, and now I am gradually returning to my routine. I have started the second section of the second part of the book on ancap—it sounds soothingly boring and mundane, exactly what the doctor ordered.

Right out of the gate, I wrote a short introduction to the section, a chapter on the fact that a person is not fully a legal subject (ancap and children are an eternal theme), as well as a chapter on the fact that humans are mortal, and this also hinders the triumphant march of ancap.

Humans have many other shortcomings, but I will leave the dwelling on them for next time, and perhaps then I’ll get around to discussing what we should do with all of this.

Summarized the first section of the second part of my book about ancap: in the first two chapters, I covered the problems caused by the imperfection of the world, and now I’ve added a chapter about how ancap overcomes this family of problems. The chapter is short, but I’ve packed into it the main approaches from Friedman’s talmud The Machinery of Freedom, which first required me to tackle said talmud—something I suggest you do as well, as it’s far more interesting than my work.

Further, I plan to proceed in a similar manner with the family of problems caused by the imperfection of humans and the imperfection of human society.

I am continuing work on the second part of the book about ancap. If at first I briefly presented a beautiful picture of what an ideal anarcho-capitalist society looks like, now I am starting to explain in meticulous detail what obstacles might get in our dancer’s way. To start, I’m talking about the general imperfection of the world, and so far I have covered the problem of fuzzy boundaries and the problem of externalities.

Beyond that, I’ve taken a pause to think about whether to dump some more global problems here, or to move on to approaches for resolving them.

How I love diagrams! Making my first attempt at describing society under ancap, I tried to outline two approaches to how it is done, and then fell into a long stupor facing the question “and so what?”

The thing is, those were two bad approaches; ancap should not be described either by adding capitalism to real anarchy, or by adding anarchy to real capitalism. Ancap must be described based on theory.

So I tossed out the two previously published chapters and composed another one instead, where I briefly described the ideal ancap, how it looks based on theoretical ideas of how it should look. And next, I face a fascinating task: to detail what mechanisms push imperfect people, living in an imperfect world and forming an imperfect society, toward making society more or less correspond to the described ideal after all.

I hope things will move along more briskly now.

The second part of the book is intended to provide a relatively plausible description of an anarcho-capitalist society. I spent a long time considering where to begin, and I started with a tedious methodological introduction on how such a description can be formed in the first place. There is time to build momentum, so I decided that I could afford not to rush headlong into it. After all, it is important to me not to present some single, alternative-free picture of a beautiful future, but to show the principles of how it is all derived.

The first chapter provides a less trivial approach—by adding capitalism to anarchy. This immediately reeks of alternative history and other joys of that sort. The second chapter takes a more obvious approach, by cutting the state out of an existing capitalist society.

Next, there will likely be a large section with a more detailed analysis of how the main institutions of society work, followed by a necessary section describing the difficulties of ancap.

Since the last update, I have slightly reworked the chapter on the market, added a brief summary, and in terms of formatting, I finished the navigation between chapters. Now it can be read as a fully independent work with a sufficiently complete, yet maximally concise presentation of the libertarian worldview.

The book is available to read online by chapter, as well as in epub format for those who prefer the e-book format.

If you know any sufficiently competent libertarian theorists, please pass this text to them for review. Before starting the practical part of the book, I would like to ensure that I haven’t forgotten anything important in the theory. If they don’t mind publishing their reviews, please let me know about that as well.

In the second part of the book, I will attempt to describe an anarcho-capitalist society in a sufficiently structured and also maximally concise manner—what features it might have and which are highly unlikely.