Тег: Criticism

The Billionaires’ Final Plan — a review

An anonymous user asked me to comment on a video from the Netstalkers channel about how “famous super-rich libertines arrange libertarianism for themselves and the state boot for everyone else.”

I am completely unfamiliar with the channel, however, it is clearly better known to the public than my own, as it had 859 thousand subscribers at the time of this post. The video in question fits well within the channel’s theme, which mainly discusses various behind-the-scenes global mechanics. Well, the topic is in demand, and I want to understand how this demand is exploited in relation to libertarianism.

I don’t want to analyze the style of presentation. Since people watch it, who am I to dispute someone else’s business approach. The video provides quite correct facts: about the book “The Sovereign Individual,” which set many current trends; about how the development of autonomous libertarian territories proceeded, from seasteading in the Andaman Sea to Prospera and Network School; about the fact that this movement is largely driven by representatives of the American tech and financial industries; and finally, that these same people often provide business services to the state, despite all their libertarian rhetoric. Oh, yes, the theme of cosplaying the Roman Republic was also touched upon, but that’s been going on in the US since the Founding Fathers, so there’s nothing particularly surprising about that.

The final punchline is quite funny: basically, that capitalism is already established in the world and works reasonably well, but no, there are troublemakers who are bored and want some action. Thus, enthusiasts of private charter cities are equated to Putin. And rightly so; enough of chewing over the now-tedious Hitler, it was long overdue to find a new bogeyman. Now everyone will be equated to Putin for every possible reason, until the understanding of what exactly is wrong with him is completely blurred, but with a firm fixation that he is definitely terrible, and no one doubts this—unless they want to be seen as literally Putin themselves.

The video prompted me to reflect on the evolution of the criticism of the libertarian movement.

Historically, the first platform for criticism boils down to the idea that libertarian settlers will be communally helpless, that in an-cap there will be no one to build roads, and that these folks will eventually have to go begging to the state if they want normal infrastructure. There are texts about this regarding New Hampshire, and Sperry incriminates Coopersmith with roughly the same position while he was establishing order in Hong Kong. In the video being discussed, this position is no longer used because it is outdated.

The second position is that if an-caps were given their way, they would build a grim corporate cyberpunk world with ruthless exploitation of workers and charging a fee for every sneeze. High tech low life, all that. This is again illustrated by Sperry’s article on Hong Kong, the game BioShock, and is very widely represented in general mass discourse. The video about the billionaires’ final plan hints at this, but, of course, does not illustrate it with real examples.

What happens when an-caps actually found a settlement and start establishing their own rules? Everything turns out fine for them. It becomes a normal peaceful life where people are busy with their own affairs. But then the state inevitably comes along and tears everything to shreds, because where is the cyberpunk, what are you showing us, where is the oppression, are you libertarians or did you just come out for a walk? Now we will show you oppression.

Thus, the third complaint about charter cities is: why do these suckers even bother, the big uncle will come anyway, break this sandcastle, and send everyone to toil in a sand quarry. Some “autonomous settlement” that can’t even withstand a navy. The author of the video slightly indicates this position but does not delve deep, because his task is not to criticize the state, but those who wish to avoid its embrace.

Instead, he goes all out criticizing libertarians from a fourth angle: look, the libertarians have learned from their early attempts, and now they more and more often speak to states from a position of strength. To do this, they simply bring another state over to their side. And to attract that state, they provide services in the proper organization of oppression. Why specifically in this field? Because these are exactly the services the state needs; it buys them.

In other words, the criticism of libertarian autonomous structures now follows the line of hypocrisy. That they establish one set of rules for themselves, but help states establish completely different ones. Well, here we are.

What should the next step be? I think it’s quite obvious. Another libertarian settlement will actually be able to stand up for itself without appealing to state courts and without turning to other states—but simply by its own strength. What will libertarians be incriminated with then? Well, this sort of criticism was quite accurately described by Rozov in the Meganesian cycle. The founders of private autonomous settlements will be accused of war crimes, immorality, poaching talent, financing extremist organizations, and so on. These accusations have one thing in common—they are small dick energy. Anger born of helplessness. I dream of living to see this stage, of course)

Not only libertarianism

Ancap-chan

I’ve finally gotten around to analyzing the latest powerful longread from my favorite Canadian catgirl named Kulak—about the hypocrisy, inconsistency, and harm of libertarian ideology for a free society.

Although Kulak is from Canada, her interests regarding libertarianism are focused entirely on the USA. First, she admits that she used to be a libertarian, spent a vast amount of time studying economic and legal theory, and eventually became disillusioned with this ideology. This is not a particularly original trajectory. There are many complaints about the fruitlessness of libertarian theorists’ teachings: direct conclusions from libertarian ideology require an immediate declaration of war against the state until the last mainstream economist is hanged by the guts of the last politician; however, the libertarian theorist simply shrugs and says, “the theory has been presented to you, now go brush your teeth and go to sleep, and don’t you dare violate the NAP.”

Kulak touches upon this point briefly, but her real passion awakens when she begins to review who these singers of the market and freedom—the founders of libertarianism—actually are. They are almost entirely university professors who have never dealt with a free market, but instead largely broke through thanks to their Jewish origin. The only exception is the Russian Jew Ayn Rand, whom Kulak considers a truly extraordinary literary talent who broke through on the free market thanks to her abilities, and who created a very original literary genre of dystopian BDSM fantasy, raising her “Atlas…” to the level of such masterpieces as the Marquis de Sade’s “Justine…” and John Norman’s “Gor.”

Among American libertarians, it is widely believed that the Founding Fathers of the USA were proto-libertarians and that they created the republic on these very principles. Kulak wonders how it happened that modern libertarians read not the works of the winners—snacking on Sam Adams and Patrick Henry, and polishing it off with George Washington—but instead prefer losers like Mises, who fled Europe when things started to smell a bit burnt, and whose combat experience amounted to conscripted service in World War I. What is the point of learning from losers if you can take lessons from those who actually achieved something in life? True, Kulak then says: those very winners who founded the American republic, in turn, learned from titans such as Thucydides (who was a strategist for the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, conducted an unsuccessful operation, was removed from office and exiled), Xenophon (famous for describing the retreat through hostile territory after a lost battle), and Machiavelli (a disgraced politician whose instructions were completely ignored by his contemporaries)—therefore, read classical literature, for it contains the concentrated experience of winners.

The key idea of the article is that libertarianism is a gutted cosmopolitan ideology that is de facto supported by the state, since it distracts passionate youth from revolutions toward fruitless discussions about how courts will operate under ancap. It is compared to what they call “goy-slop” in America—that is, a surrogate sold under the guise of a once-honestly-earned worthy product. In other words, current libertarianism has as much in common with the worldview of the Founding Fathers as soy meat does with beef.

Of course, Kulak makes a fair disclaimer that a normal libertarian is supposed to be an autistic, and he will invent exactly such a version of libertarianism for himself that will completely satisfy him, while claiming that everything else is “incorrect libertarianism, remove the crap.” As the author of my own original version of the teaching, I fully sign on under this disclaimer. But then Kulak asserts that first you achieve power, and only then does your ideology begin to triumph, not the other way around. This means I should have spent less time distracting myself from the Montelibero project by writing a book; as a result, the project is more dead than alive, and no one really reads the book.

Russia has its own catgirl who is equally unflattering toward libertarianism, contrasting it with original American patriotism, and her name is Rodion Belkovich. Of course, Belkovich is no Sam Adams; he doesn’t personally fight the empire and doesn’t build a republic, limiting himself to rhetoric, but this is exactly the same reproach that could be addressed to Kulak herself, to me, and, for example, to Bitarkh.

Essentially, all of us here in internet publicism differ little from the AI agents in my previous article: our activity is based on a language model, and no matter how radically we write, it will still be just words. Getting an AI agent to stop bullshitting and start acting is a non-trivial task. Getting a real “meat” human, possessing full agency, to stop bullshitting and start acting is a task an order of magnitude harder, for he is aware of possible sanctions, he has a desire to survive, and it would be most painful for him to perish without seeing even the first steps toward the realization of his ideas, which is a highly probable scenario.

Nevertheless, the world today is such that it can force any person to move very quickly from words to actions; all it takes is a few kilograms of explosives from the sky into the neighboring yard. And a person acts in accordance with their ideas. So from this moment, a person’s ideological baggage becomes truly important for the world. Pick your baggage in advance. Do not limit it to only goy-slop.

Today, as an illustration, there will be no neuro-slop, only a photo of making normal meat burgers from today’s picnic in honor of March 8th

About One Objection to Panarchy

Here, Georgiy Freeman made an interesting observation about panarchy:

The problem with panarchy as an optimal world order, in my view, lies in the realm of human psychology. It’s predictable that liberal jurisdictions will be more economically successful and materially wealthier than socialist ones. And it will inevitably happen what has already occurred in the world with closed sub-communities like Jewish groups. Unsuccessful, impoverished extraterritorial jurisdictions will invariably blame wealthy liberal jurisdictions for their misfortune: “they parasitize us,” “they rob us,” “they live off our backs.” And this will inevitably lead to irrational conflicts, wars and pogroms. And ultimately, to the destruction of the ECU and panarchy as an idea.

The problem with panarchy as an optimal world order, in my view, lies in the realm of human psychology. It’s predictable that liberal jurisdictions will be more economically successful and materially wealthier than socialist ones. And it will inevitably happen what has already occurred in the world with closed sub-communities like Jewish groups. Unsuccessful, impoverished extraterritorial jurisdictions will invariably blame wealthy liberal jurisdictions for their misfortune: “they parasitize us,” “they rob us,” “they live off our backs.” And this will inevitably lead to irrational conflicts, wars and pogroms. And ultimately, to the destruction of the ECU and panarchy as an idea.

Indeed, on the example of this assumption we see a fascinating phenomenon of human psychology. The answer to the expressed concern is already contained in the description of the concern itself, however it is ignored. “If people will walk down the streets, dressed festively and sending everyone to hell, then they will quickly encounter violence against them, so the institution of walking down the streets will soon be destroyed, as an idea.” But why not just not send everyone to hell.

Similarly, respected G. Freeman suggests paying attention to the disastrous fate of closed extraterritorial sub-entities and immediately prophesies the same fate for open sub-communities. A liberal extraterritorial jurisdiction is not a secret club with seven degrees of initiation, but simply clients of courts and other legal infrastructure working according to liberal norms, namely respect for freedom and private property. Any communist jurisdiction client can enter a liberal jurisdiction if, of course, the communist masters let him out, allocating his due share of public communist property. And if they don’t let him out, then claims will, presumably, not be directed at liberals.

The problem described by G. Frijman is quite typical of prosperous territorial communities with developed redistribution in favor of the poor: the poor, for some reason, strive to infiltrate such communities, and those who have already infiltrated them suddenly stop loving migrants and demand that borders be closed. Of course, after closing the borders, this territorial community begins to be perceived by many neighboring communists as a fattening on neighbors’ accounts, an education that is subject to destruction. However, until there is mandatory social support within this territorial community, there are no problems with migrants in it: they simply flood into it, hoping to earn a living, and many of them succeed.

Montellibero’s criticism from bitcoiners

A podcast was released on the Hype Coin News channel, for which two bitcoiners wanted to invite our Soz from Montelibero to tell them about Montelibero. However, the guys failed to account for the Montenegrin polako — Soz was late, and the entire podcast took place without him. As a result, it became a conversation between a person who knows something about Montelibero and a person who knows nothing but is trying to understand.

The main question that concerned the interlocutors for most of the podcast was “why are they using some shitcoin, what’s it called, Stellar, when there is a normal, orthodox Bitcoin?”

I have two answers to this question.

The first is usability. For instance, I cannot provide a link to a post from the Hype Coin News channel, nor to the channel itself, because it is private. As for how to subscribe to it — God knows; I subscribed somehow a long time ago and no longer remember how (which is why I am simply posting the podcast right here). It is roughly the same situation with attempts to operate tokens on the Liquid Bitcoin sidechain. Yes, the MTL fund has a Bitcoin sub-fund there, but all I managed to do there was buy L-MTL tokens with Bitcoin and occasionally nudge the head Bitcoin guru manually so that he would manually transfer the dividends to my Lightning wallet. This is not a full-fledged tokenomics, but rather a reservation for Bitcoin maximalists.

But if one sets a goal, it is possible to write a custom wallet (such an attempt is discussed in the podcast) with decent usability, and the first answer would become irrelevant. So, I have prepared a second, more fundamental answer.

What do our bitcoiners see as the main advantage of Bitcoin as a platform for tokenomics? That by issuing tokens, you provably freeze Bitcoins as collateral. But if an investment fund freezes all receipts, it turns out that it is investing in Bitcoin, and only in Bitcoin. However, the MTL fund needs to invest money into one business or another. Thus, its tokens will ultimately be backed not by the original carrier of value transferred to the fund, but by obligations. It doesn’t matter what entered the system. Some bought MTL tokens with Bitcoin, some with rubles, some even with the god-forsaken Lumens. Most of these funds were then converted into euros, and those euros were used for purchases on the external market. And entries appeared on the fund’s balance sheet regarding which assets it acquired. More precisely — tokens of the assets acquired by the fund. The fund does not have a single euro — neither in bank accounts nor in cash — because such entities cannot be put into a blockchain. Instead, it has tokenized euros (which the fund’s treasurers are obliged to exchange for cash upon first request, and these are specific people, and as many as needed can be brought in). Plus tokenized businesses that bring dividends. Plus tokenized investments that one hopes will increase in price — for example, land or Bitcoin itself.

If we used tokenomics based on a Bitcoin sidechain, it would be absurd. I freeze my Bitcoin in the sidechain and receive an MTL token. Then, for the fund to invest the funds, it would need to find someone who will accept this Bitcoin frozen in the sidechain and give euros for it. And where can you find such a person?

It is clear that bitcoiners would like to see something like the Bitcoin Beach project, where there is a large local economy, and everyone within this economy keeps records and makes settlements in Bitcoin. Need land — buy it with Bitcoin. Need a tractor — buy it with Bitcoin. Need to pay taxes to the damn state — pay with Bitcoin.

Yes, in such a world, tokenomics could be based on Bitcoin. What stopped us from doing something similar? Nothing, it is simply a completely parallel task. When the Bitcoin Beach franchise comes to Montenegro, we will be able to fit into it. But for now, it is more convenient for us to use another solution, one that is cheaper and simpler.

Tokenomics is perpendicular to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is about the ability to store and transfer value without trust. Tokenomics is about the ability to monetize trust. One does not hinder the other.

As a dessert, I suggest refreshing your memory with a couple of my texts on tokenomics: part 1, part 2.

Anti-Ukrainian post, update

The previous post sparked a number of critical remarks. To ensure they don’t go unanswered, I am not editing that publication, but rather releasing a supplement.

First, I messed up, and instead of Zelensky, I published another man in overalls, a certain head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, Vitaly Kim. I wish many years of life to this owner of cheerful socks! For myself, I wish for a bit more attentiveness when looking at pictures, although I realize this is hardly feasible.

Second, I was quoted the legal norms based on which the distribution of weapons was carried out. They imply presenting a passport, enrolling in the territorial defense, certain other formalities, and, most disgustingly, an obligation under threat of criminal prosecution to return the received state property within ten days after the lifting of martial law. I believe the wretchedness of these norms will be slightly more than completely negated by their non-fulfillment. Almost certainly, the lion’s share of the issued firearms will eventually be tragically lost in battle according to the documents—much like hunting rifles have a striking tendency to sink according to the documents during duck hunting.

Anti-Ukrainian post

As a series of posts directed against the Russian state was published, about forty people unsubscribed from my Telegram channel, and now I intend to exacerbate the situation by taking a swipe at the state of Ukraine.

The Great Patriotic War is taking place in Ukraine. The national spirit is strong, and the Javelins are fast; if only there were a no-fly zone, the occupiers would have been destroyed in a week, and without it, the task will stretch until summer, provided, of course, that the “snuffbox” factor doesn’t play a role. The state trusts its citizens so much that it distributes combat weapons to them without any documents and has officially declared that the killing of Russian soldiers by private individuals is not a criminal offense. In essence: be partisans, you have our blessing. Foreign volunteers are flocking to the country because human hunting is the most exciting of hunts, as we have read much about in the classics. To top it all off, the Ukrainian government is receiving serious amounts of aid not only in weapons and humanitarian cargo, but also in money.

The question is, why the hell does military conscription still exist in Ukraine? Why the hell are men up to 60 years old not allowed to leave the country? Firstly, this is sexism (well, that’s me lightly touching upon the “agenda”). Secondly, this is direct state slave-ownership. Thirdly, it is simply inefficient. If a man has already reached the border, he certainly does not intend to fight. He intends to get his family to a safe place, and there, in that safe place, he will at least no longer be a burden to the Ukrainian state social security system, will not increase the casualty count of the civilian population, and will hover before Russian embassies with a Ukrainian flag—and then, who knows, he might even return to join the war, but voluntarily. This is quite likely, especially given the fact that Ukraine is able to pay its soldiers quite generously, while refugees can only rely on their own savings and the help of the local Russian-Ukrainian diaspora.

The question is, why the hell has Ukraine kept border guards and especially customs officers on its western border at all? Does the state have nowhere to put its people? Does the state wish to obstruct the free movement of goods under conditions of extreme tension within civil society? Has the state lost its fucking mind? Customs should have been sent in full to the front on the first day of the war, so they could have all perished there. Or at least fired, for goodness’ sake.

In short, I am far from admiring the actions of the current Ukrainian leadership. It could destroy Putin’s occupiers no less effectively while not tyrannizing its own people. This would serve as a much more weighty moral example to the world than the president keeping an automatic rifle at his workplace. Look, Lukashenko also posed with an automatic rifle; some knight he is.

Oh, if only people were as kind as beavers!

I have one tiny but lovely channel in my subscriptions, primarily about practical agorism, but occasionally it drifts into reflecting on more abstract things. And not so long ago, it suddenly began a series of posts on the bitarchy theory of restructuring humanity based on a violence inhibition mechanism. Naturally, I couldn’t pass this up; I waited until the series finished, and now I recommend it to you, along with the channel itself.

It begins with this post, and further on, you can read many posts almost consecutively up until this one, the final one. Fortunately, they are mostly short. I usually lack the tediousness to dive into overly detailed breakdowns of complex topics, so I gladly leave those to the men, and then I assimilate the resulting product and recommend it to others if I find it worthy.

The author concludes with a significant remark:

The question remains open: “what would be the most clever replacement for Lorentz’s theory?”. I’m still thinking.

Critique of the Libertarian Movement from the Right

Instead of a regular question, I received a rather detailed discourse, apparently with a suggestion to comment on it in some way.

If you are truly a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist, then you must abandon the progressive “Overton window,” after which anarcho-capitalism becomes feudalism, and you become a reactionary. If we truly had anarcho-capitalism, we would have the death penalty for most crimes typical of the lower class, as well as serfdom or slavery for vagrants and the able-bodied poor, the death penalty for everything, the abolition of voting, at least for the poor and the stupid, serfdom or some similar way to disable people who are not inclined to work.

Most “libertarians,” since libertarianism is close to being illegal, have abandoned libertarianism. Now it is a completely dead doctrine. The great flaw of progressive “libertarianism” is egalitarianism. People are not equal, groups are not equal, reproductive roles are not equal.

Higher people should rule lower people; otherwise, lower people will create problems for each other and for their betters. The best people need to be freer. Lower people cannot handle freedom; they need supervision, discipline, and control. Lower people should be significantly less free. In order for people to have a reason for savings and investments, those who save and invest must possess greater political power compared to those who do not. Children need fathers. For children to have fathers, fathers must have power over their families. For the economy to function, property must be secure. For property to be secure, those who have it must have political power over those who do not.

The Enemy

I would say that some of the theses in this pamphlet coincide with the theses of Moscow republicanism according to Belkovich: people are not equal, the best people should have political power, and so on. But here the position is presented even more exaggeratedly.

I cannot say that the described society is unviable. What is described here is a very ordinary urban aristocratic republic, which existed in various forms from antiquity to the modern era. Such a society is sufficiently stable and historically died, if not from external conquest, then from the degeneration of the aristocracy. What can be done; political power is a poisoned fruit—you may pluck it to preserve your property, but you quickly discover that power is perfectly suited for preventing your competitors from getting rich, and even better, for plundering those under your control. The aristocratic little world closes in on itself, and in the best case, after a few generations, it finds itself tedious to everyone and needed by no one.

Is it possible in the modern world to maintain a society culturally similar to the one described, but without political power? This seems doubtful to me. At the very least, families relying on the dominance of the father of the house are struggling to survive in a world where there are many well-paid labor vacancies for women. On the other hand, if no one has political power (that is, the right to seize someone else’s property under the pretext of implementing socially important projects), then property ends up being relatively secure, and that is exactly what you need.

And what about the numerous rabble—lazy, unable to handle responsibility, living for the day? Let them hang out. At the current level of labor productivity, they will be quite able to afford working to a minimum, without straining themselves much, and it will be enough for them to live. Why worry about these downshifters? They won’t be able to cheat anyone or overthrow anyone. Well, they’ll quietly die from an overdose at fifty—why should you care? For a person without savings, it won’t be such a bad way out.

In short, in order to recreate the society you dream of for yourselves, you no longer need to harshly pressure the mindless mass, and they won’t pressure you either. You can breathe a sigh of relief.

So why on earth do you need these guys as serfs?

Critique of “Mechanics of Freedom”

My reader Sergey Soltys was discussing his anarcho-capitalist beliefs with an acquaintance and from time to time referred to Friedman’s Mechanics of Freedom. This ended with the interlocutor taking up reading the book, managing to get through about half of it, and posting a very detailed review, which I am now presenting for your attention because it is quite characteristic.

From this review, it is evident that the book was read sporadically and that the reader clearly did not grasp certain economic terms used in the text. The term “public good” suffered particularly. The reader believes that the key word in the term is “good,” whereas a good is simply some value, regardless of what it is, and the key is the definition of “public,” in opposition to “private good,” which refers to a very specific type of good possessing a set of characteristic properties.

Does this mean that the reader is an idiot and is fighting straw men? No, he is a smart and well-intentioned social democrat who values life’s comfort very highly, is ready to work hard and pay a lot for it, but is unwilling to delve deeply into how the economy works because he is a specialist in another field. Thus, for him, a complete lack of understanding of the theory of the firm, public choice theory, and similar things is forgivable.

The example of a perfectly intelligent person failing to understand Mechanics of Freedom shows the book’s shortcomings. It is long and disjointed; it was not sufficiently revised from edition to edition, and therefore often appeals to outdated facts about the USA from the middle of the last century; it is not rigorous enough in its use of conceptual apparatus.

Perhaps I refer to Friedman too much. That is a matter of taste. I like his language and characteristic humor; it is not that difficult for me to accept his system of definitions, although I often use slightly different terminology for myself. And simply, we both think roughly within the same paradigm of an economic approach to legal issues.

Perhaps I should still write my own work on ancap. Something clearer and more concise. More modern. Based on facts more accessible to the Russian-speaking reader. Svetov threatened to create something like that, but he isn’t in any hurry. I don’t know. I am not sure I have enough talent and perseverance. In any case, first I will finish polishing the Friedman edition. I have enough talent and perseverance for that.

Forgive me that the post came out more in a blog format. It is just that I am on the threshold of significant changes in my life, and that puts me in a very pensive mood.

How much nonsense is there in Netesov’s cycle on the mistakes of libertarianism, and how should one respond to it?

Danila

This is about the following cycle of three articles: Libertarians have shrugged their shoulders, Soviet society is not 1984, and Corporate Wastefulness in the 21st Century.

Shoulders

§1. The concept of Schumpeter’s entrepreneurial function and Hayek’s dispersed knowledge is described, as well as the problems that arise in a planned economy lacking access to this knowledge, since it is embedded in market prices. Everything is quite correct, with various amusing examples from life in the USSR.

§2. Mises’s calculation argument is described, according to which in the absence of market prices, a planning agency has to assign them arbitrarily, leading to suboptimal resource allocation, making the planned economy wasteful and inferior to the market economy. As a partial answer to how the USSR managed to survive for 70 years, it is pointed out that it was able to peek at some market prices from its capitalist neighbors. There are no complaints about this paragraph either.

§3. Here, the author, on one hand, shows that the lion’s share of innovations appears in small startups, but on the other hand, says that the world has long been ruled not by shopkeepers, but by corporations, and therefore classical liberalism is a libertarian’s dream. Essentially, “pipe down and return to the real world from your beloved 18th century.” Generally, the facts presented are quite correct, but the author’s pathos is unclear: the fact that the current economy is not fully market-based does not mean that its state is optimal or even inevitable. It’s just the way it is now.

1984

§4. Here the author points out that both Mises’s calculation argument and Hayek’s argument about dispersed knowledge neglect empirics. Since a global planned economy has never been built, it cannot be verified that it is incapable of economic calculation. Since the Soviet economy contained some rudimentary elements of a market rather than being fully planned, it again cannot be verified that a planned economy is unable to account for this dispersed knowledge. In short, the unverifiability of the arguments regarding the impossibility of building a planned economy is confirmed by the fact that no one has ever been able to build a pure planned economy. I would say that the absurdity (okay, let’s say more gently—the paradox) of such argumentation is quite obvious.

On the other hand, it is pointed out that both Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and Orwell in 1984 clearly overdid the pessimism of their forecasts, because the inefficiency of a totalitarian society quickly begins to require a minimum of market lubrication, and only with its presence is this planned machine somehow able to move forward. Again, the criticism seems strange. Hayek says: if you are consistent in your madness, this is what will happen. Then Netesov claims: look, Soviet society was not consistent enough in its madness, therefore Hayek was wrong. Well, sort of…

§5. Here it is said that Hayek claimed: under a system of centralized planning, all plans are handed down from above by one leader. But this is not the case: huge, cumbersome structures were built to create plans, which worked terribly, and these plans were not properly fulfilled. It is clear that empirical data should differ somewhat from theoretical ones: the Soviet Union was not an ideal system of centralized planning because such an ideal system is simply unattainable, just as absolute zero is unattainable.

But essentially, the author is right: The Road to Serfdom is not a detailed description of a specific USSR, nor even of socialism as a system. It is simply a political pamphlet, a warning to British society not to flirt too much with the Labour Party. For studying socialism, Hayek’s book is too superficial; if anyone is interested, there are many established Sovietologists, and the author suggests getting acquainted with them.

Greedy Escort

§6. Here, the author first suggests that libertarians get rid of praxeology. Then he begins to reason that a corporation is not some single and indivisible entrepreneur, but a multitude of people, each acting in their own personal interests, which do not necessarily coincide with some conceptual interests of the corporation as a whole or even its management. The question arises: why should we discard praxeology if it is precisely concerned with the consideration of individual human interests, which are much broader than economics?

It is also pointed out that Mises’s calculation argument regarding the impossibility of economic calculation in a planned economy applies to corporations in the same way. That is, the more internal transfer pricing within a corporation is detached from the market, the worse resources are distributed within it. Next, positive and negative economies of scale are mentioned, which Mises touched upon only slightly. Well, Mises wasn’t the only one; Ronald Coase did a lot of work in the field of firm theory, and supporters of the Austrian School of Economics can perfectly well use his constructions; they fit into the general economic theory and do not violate the principles of praxeology.

Further in this very long paragraph, there are reflections that the efficiency of a corporation becomes even lower when it reaches the state trough, and Mises is accused of ignoring this circumstance. Here, one can only be surprised, because the entire sixth part of Human Action is devoted to various distortions that the government can introduce into economic activity.

§7. Here, referencing Hernando de Soto, explanations are given as to why supercomputers are unable to save a planned economy, and then a question is left hanging about what prevents these same arguments from being applied to TNCs. Nothing prevents it. Centralization has its costs, and decentralization has its own.

§8. Here the author repeats a number of theses from previous paragraphs and mentions that Joseph Salerno proved: market prices convey a reliable signal to entrepreneurs only under proximal equilibrium. He uses this as an argument that Hayek is outdated, and along with him, the entire Austrian School. But Salerno is also a representative of the Austrian School, so we are seeing an evolving school rather than a dead dogma, so what’s the problem?

§9. In conclusion, Netesov lists the reasons why, in his view, the rapid expansion of the influence of the Russian-speaking libertarian movement has slowed down significantly recently. The selection looks like a set of random facts that caught the author’s eye and serves as a warning to me personally not to do the same, because it looks very funny from the side. There, literally, as reasons for the end of the golden age of libertarianism in Russia, he lists the publication of a feuilleton with 13 thousand reads (I first learned about it from Netesov’s article), Usanov’s weak performance in debates with Vatoadmin, and the failure of Zelensky’s reforms. Where is my pre-New Year depression? I also influenced the fading interest in libertarianism in Russia!

In my view, the problem is more that almost all the low-hanging fruit have been picked, and further, if one wants to continue spreading their ideology at the previous pace, new approaches must be found. The second problem is, undoubtedly, the COVID restrictions, which completely cut off the sphere of offline agitation. The third is the recent split of the libertarian community. However, the latter circumstance, on the contrary, may provide new growth points due to increased competition for fresh minds.