A few bits of channel news

Since 2018, a huge amount of text has accumulated on my website, and I suddenly felt the urge to translate this entire corpus of materials into English. You see, sometimes when chatting with an English speaker, I’d mention that I have a site with materials on ancap, they’d get curious and go to the address, only to find Cyrillic. And there wasn’t even a button to switch to English. It felt kind of silly. Well, now there is a button.

For this task, I mastered vibe-coding, built a WordPress plugin plus a set of Python utilities that connect to this plugin, and of course, API calls to an LLM—how could I do without them. It was terribly fascinating, and I even managed to limit myself exclusively to free tools. I’ll need a few more days to finish translating the very earliest posts and run a script to replace internal links in the translations from Russian to English. But, of course, this will be a purely neural-network translation, and native speakers might cringe at certain phrasings. On the other hand, if the English version of the site is presented not to Americans, but to say, Germans, there’s a chance they won’t notice anything at all. However, if any readers are willing and able to proofread not all posts in a row, but at least the most valuable ones, that would be wonderful. Once the English version of the site is finished, I will create a Serbian one in the same manner, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Actually, I didn’t just dive into this activity for no reason; it’s because this autumn I am finally moving to Serbia. Montenegro is introducing visas for Russians, and all the ways to live in the country legally are becoming too expensive for me. Moreover, the government’s rhetoric leaves no doubt that they don’t plan to stop, and squeezing out foreigners before joining the EU is their conscious policy. So I see no reason to cling to this country until the end; I’d rather try to start from scratch in the neighboring one. And if Montenegro is Montelibero, then Serbia is Liberland. This means there will be a lot of communication with an English-speaking audience, which means a site translation is needed—that was roughly my train of thought.

That was the second piece of news, and the third is even more exciting. I’m planning to give birth around mid-April. And the fact that I won’t have to rely on the famous Montenegrin medicine already fills me with great joy, so everything is working out perfectly.

Due to the pregnancy, I am becoming less fit for physical work, so I’ve started looking for remote work. So far, I’ve laid out my “Libertarian Theory of War” for the Svoboda Publishing House; the client liked it and gave me a new book, which I’m currently working through, and we’ll see how long their queue of orders is. It’s unlikely this one side job will be enough to live on, but it’s a start. If you have any other interesting remote work options, please suggest them. But even if you don’t, you can simply donate to the development of the project, as you can see, it is indeed developing.

“Ancap” on “Svoboda”

My book “Ancap” has been published in print by Svoboda Publishing House and is available for purchase on Ozon. The first copies are sold at a discount; as of today, the price is less than 300 rubles (varying slightly depending on the payment method), and the sale will last for another 19 days, or until a Ukrainian drone hits the Ozon warehouse in the Moscow region, which serves as an additional incentive not to delay the purchase.

While you’re at it, stock up on other books from the same publisher

Mechanics of “Freedom”

I don’t quite understand publishing books on paper, unless they are books for small children that can be physically chewed on or, at a slightly older age, creatively doodled in. Even if a person leads a sedentary life in their own home, storing paper books at home is a luxury, as it requires acquiring such a strange vintage interior item as a bookshelf (if there are few books in the house, a small shelf in the toilet would be more suitable). And if a person rents housing, is forced to move from time to time, and doesn’t even know in which country they will be in six months, then for them the expression “paper book” is definitely something for the rich. Therefore, paper books migrate to public spaces, and they can more often be seen in some time-cafes next to board games. The few paper books that for some reason ended up with me in recent years quickly migrated to one of these spaces, and now in the apartments I rent there lies a single comic in Serbian about Corto Maltese, which wandered in from a comics festival.

Nevertheless, paper books, this deeply niche product, are still not only being bought but even produced in new editions. For example, my acquaintances were engaged in this back in Russia, founding the “Svoboda” publishing house, then continued in Montenegro, and now in Germany. However, they are still oriented towards the Russian market and are sold mainly on Ozon. I doubt that my own books will be published in this way because they are extremely small in volume, which means that the share of postage costs in the expenses of obtaining the finished product will be disproportionately high. However, if I happen to write another work, then three books under one cover would already have a chance.

On the other hand, “Svoboda” published my translation of Friedman’s “Mechanics of Freedom,” and there are even a couple of dozen reviews on the Ozon website. You can perfectly well read the translation absolutely free in electronic form, but if you enjoy owning a hefty souvenir brick, then you are welcome. As I understand it, the links I will provide here contain a mention that they were received specifically from me. I think this is for analytics, so that the publishers understand how effective advertising in this way is. I have no idea myself; we’ll see.

What’s there on libertarianism, besides Friedman?

2. Alya Zanoza. A Guide to Rational Egoism. Well, I’ve started with my trump card, of course. You are probably familiar with Alya from her YouTube channel, which will likely be soon renamed to “Serbian Political Stove.” The text of the book is not in the public domain, so buying a two-hundred-page brick is not only a souvenir but also an extremely perverse way to get acquainted with the content of Alya’s creativity. If the author throws the text my way, maybe I’ll even post a review.

3. Linda and Morris Tannehill. The Market for Liberty. This is another exclusive, previously unpublished in Russian. Friedman and the Tannehills almost certainly actively cross-pollinated each other’s ideas (judging by the nearly identical publication years and references in Friedman, since I am not directly familiar with the Tannehills’ work). For instance, the famous idea of private security agencies, which are intended to replace the most toxic function of the state, was launched to the masses in the 20th century specifically by the Tannehills.

4. Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. This is no longer an exclusive of “Svoboda” publishing, but a reprint of an edition by the Novosibirsk Hyde Park Library. Judging by the annotations, the most valuable part of the book is not the discussions on socialism and capitalism at all, but Hoppe’s argumentative ethics, upon which he presumably builds all further constructions.

5. Ayn Rand. Capitalism: An Apologia. This is a noticeably less popular author, judging by the number of reviews on Ozon. This is a collection of various articles in which Ayn Rand applies the tools of her developed objectivism to discuss different political concepts. Maybe in my old age I’ll also put together a collection of appendices to different aspects of reality for my own theories…

6. David Bergland. Libertarianism in One Lesson. Somehow it happened that I knew about this book with the basics of libertarianism, but didn’t get around to reading it in my time, immediately rushing to gnaw through Rothbard. As a result, I have no idea how good this direct competitor to my Ancap is for carriers of Russian culture. If anyone has compared them, please share your opinion.

Perhaps in the foreseeable future I will make more detailed reviews of these books, as well as new releases from the publisher, should any appear.

Column for the Second Number of “Fronde”

Just submitted an article to the editorial board for the third issue of “Fronda”. And if that’s the case, why not make your own column from the second issue, dedicated to democracy, publicly available? Here it is, please enjoy:

Lessons of Freedom

Hello everyone, it’s Anka-tyan with you again, and today we’re talking about the lessons that a social structure like democracy gives us.

Lesson of Resolution

Ancient Greek democracy began with tyrannicides. Since then, killing a tyrant is considered good manners and a pretty decent prelude to establishing a more free political order. Most tyrants have drawn this lesson, so they try to maintain the outward appearance of democracy. Let’s draw the same lesson for ourselves:

The most direct way to establish democracy is to destroy the tyrant… Destroying an army or an economy is a much more roundabout and unreliable way. Negotiating with a tyrant about his peaceful departure is even less reliable.

Lesson of Vigilance

Fighting for democracy, people don’t want democracy itself. They want freedom from tyranny – that is, from a regime in which they are arbitrarily subjected to violence. Democracy is just a family of various compromise social structures designed to prevent a recurrence of tyranny. The common thing in all stable democracies is the principle of separation of powers. No one owns all power! Tyranny of the popular assembly is just as tyrannical as the tyranny of one person. Let’s formulate our lesson as follows:

Construct a system of self-government so that your community doesn’t give anyone the opportunity to seize power. No expansive interpretations of norms! No extraordinary powers! Any holder of power is a potential tyrant. Be vigilant!

Lesson of Distinguishing Goals and Means

Coordination in a community implies working to ensure it. Someone needs to do this work. We need to find and involve someone in this. How to look for them? In modern democracies, everything usually comes down to two mechanisms: an official is appointed by a higher authority, or they are elected by vote. Voting is just one of the possible meansof achieving a compromise solution in selecting candidates from a group, and it has a lot of drawbacks. There are many other means. The most unbiased means was originally considered lots. There are also exams and other types of competitions, there’s the purchase of positions, there are tenders, there is volunteering… Democracy doesn’t reduce to voting. The lesson is obvious here:

Don’t substitute goals with means. Don’t try to use a tool for everything, even if it’s very fashionable. Use what is simpler, more reliable, and that solves the specific task that has been set.

Lesson of Breaking Out of the Vicious Circle

Как ни распределяй власть, какие ни внедряй сдержки и противовесы, как ни связывай власть имущих законами, система со временем деградирует. Деградировав, она порождает новых тиранов, а потом по их головы приходят новые тираноборцы… Что может помешать соблазну сконцентрировать власть? Только одно: отсутствие того, что можно сконцентрировать.

Если координация происходит добровольно, в этом процессе нет места для того, кто принуждает. Чем больше места занимают добровольные отношения, тем меньше места занимают властные. Отсюда простой урок:

Если вам что-то нужно от других, спрашивайте, что хотят взамен. Не считайте, что вас должныдолжны

Подведём итог

С одной стороны, демократия – это способ не дать немногим всю полноту власти над большинством. С другой стороны, демократия это возможность для большинства получить общественные блага дешевле, чем они бы стоили на рынке. Это большой соблазн, но надо отдавать себе отчёт в том, что это тоже тирания, только тирания большинства. Переход к рынку вместо принуждения – это нравственный выбор людей, которые сознательно отказываются быть тиранами. Только этот путь ведёт к настоящей свободе.

What is the guarantee of freedom of speech under libertarianism?

Fyodor Svetlov

In short: the guarantees of freedom of speech under libertarianism are the same as under liberalism.

Now, in more detail.

Originally, the concept of “freedom of speech” is a liberal doctrine implying that citizens deny the state the right to prosecute its citizens for their utterances. Usually, freedom of speech is promoted in conjunction with freedom of religion, the press, and so on, because citizens, understanding that the state will inevitably find loopholes in a general prohibition, separately specify spheres where the state is not just forbidden, but completely prohibited from prosecuting citizens. What guarantees freedom of speech according to liberal doctrines? Of course, the separation of powers. The executive branch encroaches on freedom of speech, the legislative branch describes exactly what limitations the executive has, and the judicial branch interprets what the legislative branch has dreamt up; as a result, the branches of power trip over each other, and if they suddenly start marching in step, citizens have the right to rebellion, interpreted as the right to reconstitute the government if the previous one, through a long series of abuses, has completely discredited itself as a bearer of liberal values.

Libertarianism implies that the only permissible function of government is the protection of private property rights (since not everyone believes that private property rights can also be effectively protected in a decentralized manner without any government at all).

Can a libertarian government prosecute its citizens for their utterances? Yes, easily. For example, a certain citizen slanders another citizen, and the latter suffers losses because of it. There is a loss—there is a reason to sue. The court may award compensation to the victim of slander at the expense of the slanderer, and this, certainly, can be interpreted as a violation of freedom of speech. Another example is fraud. No slander here; on the contrary, the product is praised so much that it makes your mouth water, but the real qualities of the product fall far short of the description. Could a court consider this statement a violation of private property rights if the transaction took place and is subsequently contested? It could.

Finally, there are countless examples where freedom of speech is not entirely correctly understood by people as the right to make any statements without punishment on any private platform, provided that the platform is fundamentally intended for making statements. Can the owner of the platform ban someone who prevents them from developing their business? Of course, it is their private property. Will a libertarian government support such an encroachment on freedom of speech? It is obliged to support it. But what if the platform belongs to a member of the government? Here we have a clear legal conflict.

What follows from all these arguments? Yes, a libertarian government has fewer powers than a liberal one. But it does have the power to encroach on freedom of speech. Could it begin to abuse these powers? It could. What is left for citizens as a last resort? The same sacred right to rebellion.

Don’t forget to water the garden bed with oil.

*The tomatoes, grandson, might wither, but the machine gun won’t rust*

Please provide the Russian article title you would like me to translate.

Trump released Ulbricht. During his first term, he refused to do so, speaking along the lines that both your Bitcoin is a scam and Ulbricht is your criminal, and generally to just leave him alone, he has more important things to do.

What has changed in 8 years? Has the Libertarian Party become more influential and managed to pressure Trump more than before his first term? Of course not. Compare the results of the LP presidential candidate in 2016 and 2024. It is exactly the opposite. Around the world, the influence of political parties has decreased and the influence of memes has grown. Of course, organizational structures matter a great deal, but today they do not require century-old roots; startups are in charge. Milei was not made president by the Libertarian Party, but by the meme of the chainsaw man. Trump is not the leader of the Republican Party, but Donald the Wall Builder, Donald the Swamp Drainer, Donald the Peacemaker, Donald the Immortal, and Donald the Fascist, of course, as well.

A man who creates a 15 billion dollar capitalization for his personal memecoin in a few days can no longer leave Ulbricht in prison.

In the book on libertarian war theory, which I have been writing with great effort for God knows how long, I pay great attention to conceptual subjects (especially collective ones), referred to for brevity as spirits. Spirits express the emerging community between people, describing the motives that unite them—in short, they are used as a crutch to reduce the complex motivations of each group member to simple models. Not “Vasya wanted a thrill, Petya was showing off to Masha, Kolya planned to loot, Oleg joined for the company,” but “they were seized by the spirit of freedom.”

Memes rule. He who skillfully uses memes feels the zeitgeist. Force the right memes, attach those upon whom much depends to them; let the memes support them, while they, in turn, find themselves dependent on the memes.

Ancaps are not obligated to fuck children. But supporting a joke about it is their sacred duty. Ancaps are not obligated to fight for their freedom right this second. But the thought of being able not only to run for freedom, hide for freedom, and lie for freedom, but also to fight for it, should fill them with trepidation. This means that the spirit of freedom has taken root, and its demands are growing. Someday it will demand fighting. First, you buy Trump’s memecoin, and then you discover that the call “Fight! Fight! Fight!” is not an empty sound.

Do you think it is possible in the future for technologies to emerge that will divide humanity into superhumans and serfs, for whom this will not be accessible?

For example, through gene editing, mind uploading, immortality-granting drugs, etc. Where will this lead? Does libertarianism have any original answer to this?

Will such technologies spell the end of the ideas of freedom?

For instance, Mises believes that tyranny collapses precisely because, due to nepotism, the mediocrely capable oligarchs are replaced by their untalented children, leading to such inefficiency that the state becomes unable to perform even the role of a bandit. How do we fight tyrannies in the future if imperfect mortal bandits are replaced by perfect and immortal ones?

Nenavision

Suppose that our technology provides only individual, non-heritable non-aging, and no other superpowers. Simply, there is now an option for an insane amount of money to ensure the absence of age-related degradation of the body.

Let us also assume that access to non-aging is granted only by money. If there were some actor capable of denying access to the technology, one could speculate about a ban on immortality for dictators.

Finally, let us assume there is some factor that prevents the technology from becoming significantly cheaper over time—meaning the proportion of non-aging people in the population will grow very slowly. Otherwise, we would have to consider a rather short transition period before moving to a completely immortal humanity, but the question is about something else entirely.

So, we have a non-aging Putin, and a hundred non-aging billionaires across the rest of the RF. Will much change in the style of governing the country? No. The degradation of politics, and subsequently the economy in the RF, is caused not by Putin’s physical degradation, nor by the shortening of his planning horizons, but on the contrary, by the consolidation of his power and the centralization of all decision-making processes in himself. A dictator may rise on a wave of fighting a certain crisis for which he is most competent, and may even beneficially influence the situation in the country, but other crises require other competencies, and without the rotation of power, the state will quickly lose the early achievements of the dictatorship. Well, except perhaps that the dictator will not lose his passion for feasts and harems over time, so he might become less interested in playing tank games and reading Ilyin.

The same applies to business empires. Will Buffett suddenly understand the power of Bitcoin if he physically strengthens and no longer fears death from old age? No, he will still have his set of time-tested criteria for asset evaluation. Business empires will practically cease to be inherited—well, that means the children of their creators will immediately look for themselves in something else. Perhaps this will even be for the better if the son of a successful investor becomes a talented musician rather than an unsuccessful investor.

In general, I assume that the appearance of such technology will lead to the division of humanity not into superhumans and serfs, but into societies where there is political dynamics and societies where there is none. This division already exists, but currently the border between them fluctuates actively: yesterday’s dictatorship democratizes, yesterday’s democracy slides into shitty putinism. It will become more static: Putin’s Russia or Saudi Arabia will remain stable abscesses, while political regimes with a rotation of power will value their rotation much more.

The same goes for ancaps. A conditional Mikhail Svetov, upon achieving immortality, will not become a more effective conduit for libertarianism; he will inherit all the qualities that limit his effectiveness already now. The attractiveness of libertarianism as a system of views will not change much just because a few chosen ones are able to ensure their immortality. Although, perhaps, ambitious guys might become more intolerant of left-wing ideas because of this, because the more the state takes away, the further away that coveted immortality becomes. Therefore, the attractiveness of economic growth and the investment climate may increase relative to the attractiveness of egalitarian ideas.

*Now, if we endow our immortal being with a bunch of other superpowers, then, of course, the changes will be far more serious*

Why did you decide to build the basic theory through rights, rather than through freedoms?

Did it turn out that way? Is it easier to explain to liberals with remnants of religious consciousness? Are there some non-obvious pitfalls with liberties that aren’t present in an explanation through rights?

Λ (taken from the chat)

Freedom is the natural state of a human being outside of society. Robinson is free on a deserted island until Friday appears, and he has no rights, because there is no one to whom he can make claims, and no one to whom he must yield. When society emerges, it means the restriction of liberties and the appearance of rights. Since the book on ancap is dedicated specifically to life in society, it discusses rights rather, as they are generated by society itself.

*A free person before the emergence of the need for ancap*

Why is the right to property a freedom, and not a restriction on the freedoms of others?

Anonymous question

Of course, the right to property is precisely a limitation on the freedoms of others. The right to property is a claim to dispose of a certain object and to prevent others from disposing of it. Their freedom to dispose of a privatized object will logically decrease.

At the same time, of course, completely different procedures for exercising such claims may be practiced in different societies, including in relation to different classes of objects. These could be procedures such as “if you want to use it — take it, use it, then put it back so that others can take it.” There could be procedures like “if you want to use it — take it, but provide others with a replacement that they will not object to.” Or “you may take it as long as there are enough objects of the same quality left for others.”

But still, we speak of property when the order of using objects is determined by more exclusive rules, such as those outlined in my book in the corresponding chapter. Of course, even in this case, it is not at all necessary that any object acquired as property ends up in the full and undivided disposal of the acquirer. Practices such as using one’s property to the detriment of others will still encounter quite natural resistance.

The question arises: if property rights are nothing but limitations on freedoms, then why do we suddenly claim that a society where they are observed is a free one? Free from what? First and foremost, of course, from the war of all against all. Knowing that you have the right to this item, and others respect it, you will not spend a vast amount of resources on second-by-second readiness to defend your power over the item in a struggle with other claimants; this frees up resources for more pleasant activities, thus increasing freedom. Knowing that you do not have the right to this item because it belongs to another, you will not seek ways to seize it directly, but will focus on increasing your opportunities for market exchange. This increases the wealth of possibilities, which, again, means freedom.

A more convoluted but detailed explanation of how property rights ensure freedom in society can always be read in David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, in the chapter In Defense of Property.

There can be no rights and freedoms to violence

Voluntarist, Bitarch

To the question of whether a person has the right to commit violence, we have only one answer — they do not! No single person in the world should possess the right to initiate an act of violence against another person. But some people (most often supporters of authoritarian-conservative views and force-based methods of solving problems) may say that this is a restriction of freedom. Freedom to commit violence is a freedom like any other, which means we are contradicting ourselves and are authoritarians ourselves, wanting to forcibly impose a single life scenario on everyone.

This is a rather inadequate manipulation in essence, which ignores the fact that violence leads to people being deprived of their freedom. That is, when one person initiates an act of violence against another person, they thereby deprive them of their freedom. Accordingly, violence is non-freedom. The right to violence is the right to deprive people of their freedom. However, the elimination of violence, the striving for its complete eradication as a phenomenon as a whole, is the elimination of the factor that leads people to non-freedom. And no verbal manipulations will change the essence of the phenomenon of violence!

Ancap-chan

I answer questions on ancap, libertarianism, economics, politics, ethics, law and occasionally on abstract topics.

Тег: Freedom