Тег: Cheka

State drug policy

When Alexander Litreev was swept up for substances at the end of February, I published a post where I urged people to focus not so much on the specific case, but on the repeal of Article 228 itself. The suggestion was to hurry with pressuring the state through mass actions before the news cycle was replaced by something else. Alas, the news cycle was indeed replaced, and mass actions now can only occur as a result of state sabotage, as happened in the Moscow metro on the day the access system premiered.

So, while the country was gradually settling into home self-arrest, Litreev’s support group worked quietly for his release and succeeded: Alexander has been freed. But the direction of undermining state drug policy has not been forgotten, and today the Tea Club movement released a very good, detailed longread about how the state fights drugs and how it should be done.

I am aware that the Libertarian Party is on strained terms with the Tea Club, but in this particular case, I would consider it a major oversight on the part of the LP not to promote this article—even if it requires pulling it onto their own site and removing mentions of the TC and the signatures of all authors who are not party members. As Ekaterina Schulmann likes to repeat, for political success, one must unite around common interests, not common sympathies. So please, help your editorial board make the right decision.

It would also be great if Egor Zhukov forwarded the article to his recent interlocutor, Evgeny Roizman. In my February post, I naively stated that even within his cannibalistic logic, a drug user is not a criminal. Not by a long shot. On the air of Zhukov’s program “Conditionally Yours”, Roizman claimed exactly the opposite. He also indicated that he was completely unaware of the Portuguese experience—which the article describes.

Thanks to the coronavirus, another promising direction for pressuring the state has emerged. One can demand the full or partial repeal of Article 228, and one can also demand amnesty for everyone imprisoned under this article due to the threatening epidemic situation. When officials have “yes” and “no” options, it is easier for them to refuse. When there is a choice between repealing the article and granting amnesty to those imprisoned under it, the chance of amnesty increases sharply. Immediately following amnesty, one can insist on a moratorium—what is the point of releasing a bunch of people from prisons only to start filling the vacant spots under the same article. And from a moratorium, it is a short step to repeal. But even if repeal doesn’t happen, it’s not that scary—we have already lived for many years in a regime of moratorium on the application of the death penalty.

The Tea Club as a Social Movement

Hi, Ancap-chan! At the end of October, you answered a question about the LPR, during which you read their charter. Could you analyze the Charter of the Tea Club for inaccuracies, potential abuses and flaws, and its compliance with principles?

Anonymous Tea-pot (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00119809btc)

As I indicated during the analysis of the LPR charter, complex multi-page charters are quite unnatural for a compact young organization and are practically useless in the absence of an external enforcer who could, based on the text of the charter, make decisions regarding various conflicts within the organization. If a certain group of people within the organization systematically violates the charter, their opponents will have only one pathetic tool—to announce the expulsion of this group. However, it is utterly unclear why a decision on expulsion should be followed by those expelled. They have the opportunity to continue their activities while calling themselves members of the organization, until the emerging split becomes so unacceptable to the majority of activists that they flee on their own in search of a healthier environment.

Thus, the content of a charter can only be seriously analyzed based on the fantastic assumption that all members of the organization will be guided by it in their actions under any circumstances. Meanwhile, organizations are routinely shaken by scandals, large or small, and each such scandal usually brings stronger apparatchiks into the organization’s leadership, weeding out those for whom the substance is more important than the form of activity for which the organization was created.

It should also be noted that it is practically impossible to meaningfully adjust a charter through democratic methods. All of Hayek’s arguments regarding the impossibility of constructing coordinated plans that take into account the interests of various groups via democratic methods are fully applicable to making amendments to regulatory documents, whether they be charters, constitutions, budgets, and so on—not to mention creating them from scratch. Sooner or later, the question arises of entrusting the drafting of the document to experts and then voting on the final text. Thus, the original text of any charter may be successful to the extent of the expert’s talent who drafted it, and further democratic mechanisms for adjusting the charter are simply meaningless, regardless of whether they are written into the original charter or not.

Don’t think that I am trying to dodge the question: I have managed to get through your charter. It is clear that you tried to create your own LPR “with blackjack and hookers,” meaning you started from the charter of the libertarian party and tried to prescribe mechanisms of interaction within the movement that would better correspond to libertarian principles.

According to your charter, the movement is a collection of regional branches, the activities of which are coordinated by elected steering committees within the branches (as in the LPR) and an interregional council consisting of the chairpersons of the steering committees at the interregional level (unlike the LPR, where this is handled by a body elected at the congress). You have also separated the actual management of the branch from the accounting and control functions, whereas in the LPR the accounting and control body exists more as a formality, and the membership records are kept by the head of the branch. I have no idea how this division works in your practice, but separating the CEO from the HR director seems justified for a large organization, but excessive for a small one. You have also implemented liquid democracy instead of representative democracy when it comes to a large interregional meeting. I don’t know if something similar exists in other Russian organizations or how it works, but generally, the world’s attitude toward such a mechanism is quite favorable.

You also pay a lot of attention to the work of arbitration—the negative experience carried over from the LPR is clearly felt. You didn’t dare implement a pure arbitration court, preferring a compromise model with a council of wise arbitrators joined by representatives of the conflicting parties. It is not hard to guess that if the arbitrators are biased, the arbitration will turn into a farce, and the charter does not provide for a mechanism to deny the jurisdiction of a knowingly biased arbitration. So this scheme is also potentially vulnerable to bureaucratic intrigues, just like any other model with a permanent judicial body.

What would I suggest?

If you were a purely libertarian organization, I would suggest you throw away the charter altogether and be guided solely by libertarian principles: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of choice of arbitrator, and so on. But you aim to attract class-libs as well, so it is better to have framework documents, but it would be better to grant branches the right to adopt their own charters and work regulations, and to abandon rigid territorial divisions (simply a group of movement participants united for joint work, started a treasury, got some useful gear, and solves common tasks until they split up). It only makes sense to strictly prescribe the conflict resolution procedure, and it would be great if this turned out to be something like: after an official accusation is made, the parties must amicably settle their conflict within a certain timeframe with a subsequent official notification of the end of the conflict; if an amicable solution is not reached, they have the right to apply to anyone willing to act as an arbitrator and choose a certain number of these volunteers within a certain timeframe; if a choice cannot be made, the conflict is recognized as frozen, and the parties are deprived of the right to participate in any decisions directly affecting each other’s interests; after a decision is issued by the arbitrator, the parties either voluntarily execute it or leave the movement. In general, something like that, the details may vary.

And that’s basically it. You will get an evolutionary system united by goals, principles, and a conflict resolution mechanism—but without coercion toward something people are not ready for. What more could you possibly need?

Democracy – a dethroned god. Review.

Commissioned by the Tea Club

Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book “Democracy: The God That Failed” is not a cohesive treatise, but rather a collection of essays arranged in an order that allows the author’s ideas to be presented fairly consistently. However, such a composition inevitably leads to self-repetition, and an author with more respect for his readers could have reduced the volume of the book by about thirty percent without compromising the result. But there are advantages to this approach: any of the chapters can be read entirely in isolation from the others if desired. I will not analyze the work chapter by chapter, but will touch upon the main ideas of the book, indicating what seemed valuable to me, and what seemed erroneous or underdeveloped.

Time Preference and Family Values

Hoppe begins by explaining what time preference is, and how it tends to decrease in a more civilized society and increase in a more barbaric one. From this, he concludes that those measures for organizing society that increase time preference are decivilizing measures, and therefore harmful—and vice versa.

He also touches upon another factor affecting a person’s time preference, namely the stages of their life. In childhood, time preference is high; a child is unwilling to wait to achieve their immediate goals. With age, it decreases as a person expands their planning horizons, and toward old age, it should theoretically increase again, since there is less time left to live, and, as Keynes rightly noted, in the long run we are all dead, so there is no point in making plans for a period exceeding the remainder of one’s life.

But, Hoppe joyfully notes, there is such a factor as the family. The desire for the prosperity of one’s lineage allows a person to maintain a low time preference into deep old age, for they know that the wealth they have accumulated will serve the benefit of their descendants. However, this requires the organization of people into stable collectives called families. Therefore, any measures that destroy families increase time preference in society, meaning they are harmful and decivilizing. Hence all of Hoppe’s hatred for communists, hedonists, and homosexuals; hence all of his conservatism. For the sake of instilling conservative values, he is ready to welcome any individual oppressions in the form of expelling individualists from patriarchal collectives, which are the bulwark of true civilization.

It is not difficult to see an elementary logical substitution here. Yes, family values reduce time preference in old age, but who said that this is the only thing capable of reducing it? People frequently do not squander their entire fortune by old age, but they do not necessarily leave everything to their children. Instead, for reasons incomprehensible to Hoppe, they continue to manage their capital prudently until death and bequeath it to various foundations, as did Nobel, Carnegie, or Rockefeller. That is, the family is clearly not the only factor that reduces time preference in old age, nor is it the factor that contributes most highly to the progress of civilization. A foundation, as the founder’s will formalized as a legal entity, often handles the expansion of the planning horizon even better than profligate descendants, who might even be tempted to hasten the benefactor’s end to spend everything sooner. Thus, one of the foundations of Hoppean apology for conservatism turns out to be shaky.

Aristocracy, Monarchy, and Democracy

The central part of the book is an analysis of how a society existing in natural freedom first, for natural reasons, becomes accustomed to seeking advice and the resolution of conflicts from its most competent members, then these individuals gradually turn into a hereditary aristocracy, then the aristocrats are subsumed by the wealthiest, who becomes an absolute monarch, and finally, the monarch is abolished by the Third Estate, and an order reigns in society where absolute power belongs to society as a whole, while temporary appointees rule in its name. At each of the described stages, the personal responsibility of the governors for the results of their management is diluted, the quality of services provided by the elite to society becomes lower, and the price becomes higher.

Fortunately, Hoppe notes, despite all this regress, people have succeeded in developing various useful market mechanisms, and now, in order to return the lost freedom, we do not need to return to natural aristocracy in its archaic form; it is sufficient that all services currently monopolistically imposed by the state be traded on a free market.

In Hoppe’s opinion, reforming the democratic state in this direction will not work, because there are too many managers of public property, the temptation to use power for personal gain is too great, and no libertarian party will be able to recruit enough ideological haters of the state to place them in all government positions. Fortunately, the majority always silently accepts the status quo, so in order to present it with the fact of the state’s abolition, there will be no need to win elections according to government rules; it is enough to rock the boat and then, through the coordinated effort of a determined minority, overturn it.

In short, a certain confusion arises. On one hand, there is the progress of society, during which time preference decreases. On the other hand, there is the regress of systems for managing society, as a result of which time preference increases.

I see little point here in nitpicking the author on the fact that the state hardly matured as a fruit of the evolution of natural aristocracy and its noble activity in resolving conflicts. Rather, it is likely the fruit of the evolution of a gang of robbers and their methods of solving issues through lawlessness, then through “understandings,” and then through laws. It is not so important whether Locke or Hobbes invisibly hovered over the waters on the first day of creation (both hovered, of course), as long as in the process of reconstructing the patterns of history, we arrive by different paths at a single conclusion regarding desired future changes in the organization of society.

The Beautiful Ancap of the Future

The most beautiful part of the book is the description of the functioning of a system of private insurance companies, which simply pay insurance premiums to their clients upon the occurrence of insurance events such as robbery or theft, but as a result, are forced to abolish states out of pure commercial calculation, because this means they will have to pay less to clients in insurance. Hayek’s name is not mentioned once, but this description fully aligns with his idea of spontaneous orders.

Here Hoppe provides a valuable consideration that I have not yet encountered in other authors. It is known that many skeptics argue: if two subjects who have contracts with different protection agencies begin to feud, this should lead to a war between the protection agencies contracted to them. David Friedman responds to this by saying that it is not profitable for agencies to fight, and therefore they will push the clients aside, hash it out among themselves, decide who is right, and present the clients with the fact. This looks logical, but generates bewilderment: how is such a model better than the current state model?

Hoppe provides a different logic. He does not speak of any protection agencies; the company’s task is the insurance of the client’s risks. But only those risks over which the client himself has no power are insured. If a company were to unconditionally pay fire insurance to everyone who insures their house and then sets it on fire, it would go bankrupt instantly; therefore, when drawing up contracts, it is always specified which cases are not insurable. Thus, in the event of a conflict, only the party that was not the aggressor in that conflict should be recognized as having the right to the insurance payout. Moreover, if both parties behaved extremely provocatively, it is not even that important who first resorted to open violence—such a case, where the client was asking for damage to the insured property, is obviously not insurable.

Another interesting reasoning is related to factors affecting the calculation of insurance premiums. They are higher the higher the value of the insured property, and they are lower the lower the costs of its protection. Thus, market logic will lead to the fact that insurance companies, wishing to earn a maximum, will fully contribute to the growth of the price of the client’s property, which is achieved, in particular, through its reliable security and reducing the probability of damage—but exactly this will lead to the margin decreasing, and insurance companies will have to master new markets, meaning come to more dangerous and poor places, for example, those where various criminal groups, like states or other thugs, still conduct their bandit activities. Thus, the activity of insurance companies will naturally lead to the expansion of security and the growth of the once-arisen zone of ancap.

Summary

Despite the fact that the author in a number of cases indulges his own tastes and falls into wishful thinking, the book contains a number of extremely useful ideas that were new to me, which I agree with, and which I will use in the future. Even if these ideas do not belong to Hoppe himself, he still deserves my respect as their popularizer.

Monopolies-2, review

On November 4, I was very sad. I am used to watching the broadcast of the Adam Smith readings held in Moscow every year, but this year the organizers deprived me of this opportunity for the first time, so I wish them a speedy removal and replacement. As I understand it, although the Adam Smith Center is formally responsible for this, in fact, the organization was entrusted to the same team that organized the summer debates between Shulman and Solovyov, as well as the lecture by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. These guys always disregard the broadcast and insist that no one else should conduct it. Monopolists, for goodness’ sake. Monopoly is expensive and bad. Always. Even if it is a monopoly on libertarianism or on organizing libertarian conferences. (Update: as I have been told, the team is actually different. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the refusal to provide a live broadcast remains a wrong move)

Fortunately, the Adam Smith Center does not have a monopoly on organizing libertarian conferences. On November 10, the second conference in the TED Talks format dedicated to monopolies took place in Moscow. The conference is conducted by the Moscow branch of the Tea Club. It is known that the LPR has rather strained relations with the Tea Club, but it is precisely thanks to their competition that we have more high-quality educational content online, so we can only welcome their rivalry.

Alas, the Tea Club also failed to provide a broadcast, but on the other hand, they began publishing recordings of the speeches on November 16 and finished on November 27. The recordings are collected in a playlist; I watched them all at once today and, as per tradition, will briefly go through all of them.

  1. Dmitry Kornienko. How the state teaches history. This discusses specifically the experience of the Russian state, without invoking foreign examples. Mention is made of an important difference between Soviet education and modern Russian education: the monopoly on knowledge has disappeared, although the monopoly on education has remained. One can lie, but students will know that you are lying and have no reason to remain silent about it. Thus, the tasks of forming a unified understanding of history have become more difficult, and, in essence, the state monopoly is ceasing to cope with them.
  2. Igor Drandin. Monopoly on discourse. Igor has extensive experience in the unpleasant role of being the liberal punching bag on federal TV channels; he shares the secrets of this non-trivial profession and speaks about the pros and cons of appearing on television. The most compelling argument presented by Igor is that TV debates are a very tough school of debating, and it is foolish to refuse such training if enemies practice this exercise daily. For instance, Navalny lost in debates to Girkin, Svetov to Kagarlitsky and Roizman—they lack the skill, as blogging and lecturing train one for something entirely different. Meanwhile, in public politics, the skill of debating is just as useful as the skill of speaking at rallies. I will note, however, that television itself is unnecessary for acquiring such skills, and it would be great if Drandin himself could find a way to pass these acquired skills to those politicians who did not participate in TV debates.
  3. Vyacheslav Shirinkin. Monopoly on a favorite band. Not all monopolization processes are linked to the state. Vyacheslav talks about various psychological aspects related to people’s love for exclusivity, as well as how to break into a market with a high barrier to entry.
  4. Vadim Novikov. To be or not to be for antitrust in Russia? Unfortunately, the recording turned out to be ruined, and the sound is very poor. The main thesis of the report: there is no point in tackling complex cases until the simple ones are sorted out. First, defeat protectionism in foreign policy, then try to defeat it in the domestic market.
  5. Roman Yuneman. Electoral monopoly. A candidate who won the elections to the Moscow City Duma shows in detail how the tool used to take away his victory is unlike an engine for fair elections, and why it is now important not only to contest the election results of a specific district in court but also to prevent the flawed practice of electronic voting from spreading across the entire country. The report is especially useful for the heralds of technological progress as a sort of sobriety check: if the goal is to counter falsifications, then simple mechanisms are better than complex ones.

Monopolies are returning

About three weeks ago, among other things, I happened to announce an event by the Tea Club with the long title “The Splendor and Misery, Fear and Hatred of Monopolies.” At the time, I complained to the club that their previous event had been poorly recorded and expressed hope that they would succeed on their second attempt. In short, they succeeded.

Recordings of all five speakers’ presentations have been posted and collected in a playlist on the Tea Club’s YouTube channel (by the way, please subscribe). It contains only the lectures, without the Q&A sessions, so it’s quite compact, which motivates one to attend such events in person whenever possible.

I will briefly share my impressions.

  1. Alexander Litreev. Monopoly in the Network. He discussed how the state, in its attempts to monopolize internet censorship, constantly swings for a dollar but hits for not just a penny, but rather millions of rubles in losses for innocent parties, all while completely failing to achieve its actual goals. It was delivered energetically; I learned a few new things, although mostly well-known facts were presented.
  2. Sergey Zhavoronkov. Can a Monopoly Be Useful?. He explains the difference between market and non-market monopolies, and why the former are not scary, while the latter cannot be cured by antitrust laws. My impression was mixed: Sergey distorted the plot of the trampoline case, confusing the Altai Krai with the Altai Republic, and a square with a shopping center—in short, it would have been better to stick to a simple mention without a retelling. Otherwise, suspicions arise as to whether he was mistaken in the details of less-known historical anecdotes, and then the logic itself can be called into question.
  3. Matvey Tzen. Monopoly on Violence. The longest lecture, but the most saturated with various little-known historical anecdotes. He talks about the difference between positive and natural law, the difference between laws and law enforcement practice, why Weber, with all due respect to his merits as a sociologist, is not particularly revered today in legal terms, but most importantly—why the state dislikes grassroots initiatives to help the state. I liked it very much.
  4. Egor Zhigarev. Is There a Monopoly in the Video Game Market?. The most compact presentation on the most specialized topic. In short, the industry is highly competitive, and no matter how hard market agents try, none of them have managed to even come close to a monopoly.
  5. Alexey Markov. The Splendor and Misery of Monopolies. Also a narrative very rich in historical anecdotes. He discusses the history of the very concept of monopoly, and how they were initially perceived as an unconditional good, while the idea of the benefit of competition is a merit of later economists. He analyzed cases of several monopolies, from the Russian Company to Gazprom, and how they all decayed. He also touched upon a specific case of monopoly, such as the patent monopoly, and where that can lead.

In short, the experience turned out to be very successful, and now the organizers want to make it a regular occurrence. The format was named TNT – Tea’n’talks. An announcement for the second part of “Monopolies” has already been posted on the newly created TNT page on the Tea Club website.

So as not to weary the readers, I will probably announce further events in this genre very selectively, so you’re on your own from here on. I hope you enjoy them.

About clothes

I am looking forward with great anticipation to the recording of stylist Fariza Rodriguez’s lecture “Power dressing” about the influence of a person’s appearance on people’s perception, and how to use this, particularly for the Russian opposition. The lecture will be this coming Sunday, August 4, in St. Petersburg, so if anyone is from there, or the surrounding area, you can try to snag the last remaining spots.

The lecture is organized by the Tea Club; all registration is handled through them.