Тег: Decentralization

Imperfect People and the Social Ideal

In your posts, you often state that under ancap, all people (or most of them) will not be prone to violence (and those who are can be “reprogrammed”), which will allow for the construction of a violence-free society. But hold on! With ideal people, one could build an ideal society based on almost any ideology—even communism in its early idealized conceptions. Any modern social structure, however, is built on the fact that people are almost always imperfect—emotional, foolish, aggressive, greedy, cowardly, and so on—and the social order must neutralize human flaws. How can ancap exist in a society of imperfect people, if even now criminals are stupid enough to steal right under cameras, and in the absence of a universally recognized police force, they will become completely brazen, and their capture/shooting by private security companies will become difficult due to the scale of crime and overloaded courts? Will this not lead to a rapid slide of society into a wild state, where even adequate people are forced to be in a permanent state of war against all?

Anonymous question

You are right; many things can be built from ideal people. That is precisely why Bitarch and Voluntarist—the authors of the posts regularly appearing on this channel about building a non-violent society—do not bother with building specifically ancap; for them, the economic model is secondary, and the absence of a central authority is secondary, while the primary value is non-violence, in its narrow sense of the absence of physical coercion.

The doctrine of anarcho-capitalism assumes that the human inclination toward physical coercion will not undergo serious changes. The only thing required for its triumph is the emergence of a critical mass of technologies that make decentralized production and trade more economically viable than centralized ones—this is if we proceed from a materialist position, where being determines consciousness and the base determines the superstructure. If, on the contrary, we assume that consciousness shapes being, then the triumph of ancap requires a critical mass of people for whom libertarian ideas have significant value. To me, it essentially makes no difference which end of the loaf I bite into; it tastes equally good from both ends.

When decentralized technologies dominate everyday life, it means that an uber-police force will arrive faster and provide service more cheaply and with higher quality than a police squad from the Ministry of Internal Affairs; therefore, the Ministry will lose the economic competition for the client and die off. And if people steal right under cameras, decentralized technologies will more likely provide the ability to issue them a fine right under those same cameras. And if they wave at the camera instead and claim that they are, say, renting this car, then instead of a disproportionately large fine, a modest rental fee will be debited from them in favor of the car owner. Or perhaps I am talking nonsense, and the “market” will decide some other way.

When libertarian ideas dominate society, then even under conditions of technologically driven centralization of a large number of industries, people will still value freelancing or freelance-like relationships relatively higher, and the owner of the production facility will have to adapt to this demand if they wish to secure a workforce. People will join the police, but will still view their patrol crew as an autonomous entrepreneurial unit, with its own permanent clients and obligations to them that mean far more than formal subordination within a police department.

The most terrifying thing for libertarianism is an increase in the efficiency of the centralization of violence. In the middle of the 20th century, such efficiency was at its maximum; humanity fought with armies of millions, and there was not the slightest prospect for building a libertarian society. Now, an army of a hundred thousand is considered large, and one hopes that decentralization will continue at an accelerating pace. Cheap and effective decentralized violence, which scales very poorly as the number of involved persons increases or additional capital is invested—this is exactly what is required so that even in the event of armed conflicts, they quickly fade away without further escalation.

As you can see, it is not at all necessary to indulge in empty dreams about how chipping will make everyone “sweethearts and darlings.” Instead, one can indulge in empty dreams about how total armament with handheld weapons—effectively and as painlessly as possible incapacitating a person, but having low lethality—will make everyone “sweethearts and darlings.” As for my time free from empty dreams, I prefer to build a local libertarian community where all necessary skills of interaction between people are acquired through simple habit—and these habits will strongly conflict with the habits of obeying the state or any other centralized force.

No one needs a Leviathan. Hobbes is sad.

A couple of lectures on crypto

Ekaterina Schulmann in her program introduces a distinction between news, meaning that which attracts attention, and events, meaning that which has consequences. For example, when I announced the debates between Litreev and Milov, it was news, but the debates never took place because Navalny returned to Russia, and everyone stopped caring about trifles.

A bit later, I announced a doublet of lectures by Alexei Nefedov and Alexander Kotov as part of the Ural libertarian lecture series. There was no broadcast of the lectures on the day they were held, and I soon conveniently forgot about them. But this event had consequences: after a considerable amount of time, the Ural libertarians channel quietly uploaded the recordings of the lectures, and I finally watched them.

1. Alexei Nefedov. Bitcoin and the Theory of Money.

The lecture first analyzed why money appears in human collectives at all, what function it serves, which types of money achieve wider distribution, and which rely solely on state coercion. Then it briefly described how Bitcoin is designed and why this construction ensures its wide adoption and price growth. Finally, it explained why Bitcoin never actually became money, but instead turned into a defensive financial asset.

The parts about economics were clear and interesting enough for me. Where it concerned technology, I didn’t dive too deep, trying not to be intimidated by phrases like “quantum superposition.” I learned some specific new details, such as how the rules for the Bitcoin network’s operation are changed, or how the price forecast was built based on the stock-to-flow model.

It seemed to me that it would have made sense to expand the topic of altcoins a bit more, but Alexei is a Bitcoin maximalist and apparently believes that if you don’t talk about them, they will disappear on their own.

2. Alexander Kotov. Technological Solutions to Social Problems.

I hoped to hear ready-made recipes in the lecture, but it turned out to be more philosophical than practical. Interestingly, Alexander believes that state actions are not the cause of problems such as, for example, censorship in social networks, but that these are purely social problems. It seems to me that in the absence of a state, these problems would at least be less acute, because attempts to silence opponents are linked precisely to the task of political dominance, which is nonetheless a state phenomenon. Nevertheless, several interesting recipes were mentioned in the lecture, for example, regarding moderation in large social networks that would significantly reduce social tension—through subscriptions to rating agencies that would act independently of the social network’s administration and provide services directly to its clients.

The lecture turned out to be quite sobering; it became much clearer to me why there is such low mass adoption of decentralized social networks, and now I am not entirely sure that I want to bother with it myself—at least as long as centralized solutions provide some room for maneuver.

At the end, Alexander demonstrated how a hardware wallet works; it was curious but not very clear, however, it is evident that it is a fairly paranoid piece of hardware that is unlikely to allow the user to lose their money in a very stupid way. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money to be that obsessed with security, but it was interesting to watch.

What reforms, measures, and methods must be undertaken for a post-Soviet country to become truly 100% decentralized?

The Average Ukrainian

To accomplish this task, it is not enough to simply, for example, give communities the right to keep most of the taxes: such rights are easy to give and easy to take away. It is important that the reforms be very difficult to reverse. In other words, they must improve people’s lives very quickly and very significantly.

How do you quickly improve people’s lives in the poorest country in Europe? Only by opening the country to a very wide flow of investment. So, the literally first package of proposed reforms is a serious reduction of state intervention in the regulation of the economy.

Right off the bat—the first thing—the abolition of customs, along with duties. If other states want to restrict the export of goods to Ukraine or the import of goods from Ukraine, that is their right. But in Ukraine, there is no one to deal with this nonsense; if people want to trade, they trade.

Second—granting communities the right to take any state functions under their own jurisdiction. If they wish to collect all taxes themselves and set their rates—be my guest. After that, let them negotiate with the center on how much money they are willing to provide as a dowry for those issues they cannot handle on their own. If they do not wish to decide anything themselves—be my guest; the center will appoint people, set the tax rates, and carry out full administration until the citizens gather for a meeting and declare that they have had a nice rest and are ready for self-governance again.

How to choose a president? You don’t need to choose him; sell this unpaid position at auction, for one year without the right of extension, and as for the powers, leave only the right to veto laws passed by the Verkhovna Rada. But that is not urgent; that is already ornamentation. If you don’t want to make money by selling the presidential office, do as they do in Switzerland—it’s not bad there either.

And what about the south-east? There, a Donetsk Sich is created. Since the country is decentralized, few communities will dare to maintain serious armed forces, but here is a region where it is vitally necessary. This means a safari park is needed, where everyone interested in hunting separatists will go, as well as representatives of volunteer organizations who will ensure that the hunt is conducted without poaching. You arrive, pay for a trip—and off you go. Whatever you capture is yours. The task of the Sich leadership is to organize coordination so that they don’t shoot each other; that’s what the money is collected for. And to promptly conduct the demarcation of those districts whose residents have decided to reclassify themselves from hunting grounds to a full-fledged territory of the Sich, handed over their separatists for trial, and elected representatives to the Sich self-government—and that’s it, the residents of the territory have regained their status as human beings. I don’t know how effectively this will reduce the size of the hunting grounds, but the question was about what measures are needed to ensure decentralization. Well, without a decentralized volunteer army, you will not hold a decentralized country.

It turns out I didn’t even invent this term. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the other advice also turns out to be sheer banality.