I am starting to post the translation of the fifth part, The Machinery of Freedom.

As usual, everything begins with a poetic epigraph. In it, Friedman ironizes Hobbes’ idea of a mythical state of nature, in which a war of all against all occurs, and only the state is capable of protecting little people from this primitive horror. As for me, I had to recall how sonnets are structured.

Chapter 49, The First Legal System. Friedman announces his new book about legal systems that differ greatly from ours. At the time, it was still being written; now it is finished, but I haven’t tackled its translation yet. He asserts that literally all (or almost all) current legal systems originate from the fairly simple-to-understand tradition of blood feud, and then demonstrates this with several examples.

Chapter 50, Anarcho-Capitalism: The Kindergarten Version. Here, Friedman points out how this original legal system, through some simple tweaking, turns into the basic model of law and order under ancap—which has about as much relation to real modern models of stateless law enforcement as Robinson Crusoe’s economy has to a real economy.

Next, I will briefly switch to the translation of Eric Mack. Very little has been collected for it so far, but I hope you will encourage me with your donations. Details are on the translation page.

And a small curiosity illustrating the popular opinion that ancaps are usually not strong in mathematics. As the work neared completion, I clearly saw that my statistics for translated chapters weren’t adding up; I recounted them, and it turned out there are slightly more chapters in total, and slightly fewer have been translated, than I had previously shown in the images. Everything flows…

I have finished the last chapter of the second edition of The Mechanics of Freedom, from 1989. Only the relatively fresh chapters of the third edition, published in 2015, remain. The chapter is strange and looks like a bit of an off-topic addition to this book, because instead of the mechanics of freedom, it tells about a little-known author of detective stories from the beginning of the 20th century – G.K. Chesterton. The ending of the first edition seemed somewhat more logical, in my opinion, and as it stands, this chapter looks like a kind of expanded appendix to the book.

The review describes what a great man Chesterton was, a true old-school liberal who successfully combined this with Catholicism and a certain indifference toward Jews. This is probably interesting to connoisseurs of Chesterton, and I generally like the stories about Father Brown — but, in my view, this chapter is redundant in The Mechanics of Freedom.

Next, I will give you a break from Friedman for a while and switch to Molinism.

In the forty-sixth chapter, The Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman analyzes the idea of private money, free banking, and all that sort of thing, which in the eighties of the last century seemed much more distant and less feasible than it does now.

The main part of the chapter, The Money Market, is an exposition of the concept of private money itself. I haven’t read Hayek’s work of the same name yet, but it seems that Friedman based much of his work on it. The author analyzes why state maintenance of the monetary system will always perform poorly, and why there are no problems with private entities handling it.

The first additional subsection, Which Commodity Exactly?, concerns the question of which specific commodity the monetary system should be based on in the Wonderful America of the Future. Friedman suggests using a basket of exchange-traded commodities, the price of which would correlate as closely as possible with the level of consumer prices. In short, the boomer invented the stablecoin. Modern mechanisms allow for the easy issuance of tokens pegged to any commodity basket, but practice shows that tokens pegged one-to-one to the banal fiat dollar are the most popular.

The second additional subsection, Preference Is Not a Prediction, contains the author’s complaints that the system he invented is beautiful but unattainable, and that private money would more likely be pegged to gold—the inelastic supply of which, for some reason, Friedman views as a tragedy—but certainly not to a consumer price index.

After a considerable break, I am posting a single chapter from David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, but I hope to speed up in the near future. As usual, I remind you that you can support the translation project with your donations to the wallet 1AFkD2bazCs5YZBBrSD7HsRMWLmRbg6QBo

Chapter 45, Is There a Libertarian Foreign Policy, is devoted to reflections on the moral dilemma facing a potential libertarian government of the United States. On one hand, significant efforts are needed to protect against such a serious adversary as the Soviet Union, which suggests a network of international alliances. On the other hand, every alliance implies the possibility of having to fight for others’ interests in wars that have nothing to do with libertarian values. Ultimately, Friedman concludes that a policy of non-intervention is still preferable for libertarians.

Since then, the Soviet Union has ended, and thus the arguments in favor of a policy of non-intervention have only strengthened.

I continue to provide you with content for leisurely quarantine reading, this time returning to grandfather Friedman. Chapter 44, Private Law Enforcement, Medieval Iceland, and Libertarianism, is not comparable in size to the previous one, of course, but it is still quite large. Nevertheless, it is much easier to read because this time it is not theory, but history, and based on fiction at that.

In general, the age of the sagas in Iceland is almost my favorite historical period, perhaps second only to ancient Greece, so I edited the text with great pleasure; I wish it were always like this. I hope you will also enjoy the reading, and from there, you can go ahead and download the saga of Egil — and off you go, diving into the world of proto-ancap!

I am beginning to publish the translation of the fourth part of David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. This part was written for the second edition of the book, between 1973 and 1989, and was intended as an extended postscript to the book, which is exactly why it is named as such. It seems that the author did not originally intend to write two more parts after this one.

As usual, the new part opens with a poetic epigraph, in which the author states that he is bored with explaining elementary truths to those who are already convinced of the truth of the teaching, and therefore he would rather delve into the area of unresolved problems and borderline questions of libertarianism.

Chapter 41 is titled Problems. In it, David Friedman explains in detail why it is pointless to try to derive the entire libertarian teaching from a single, simply formulated basic principle that one would then only have to follow. On the contrary, he declares, following Machiavelli: there is nothing that is good or bad in itself, but everything depends on the circumstances.

Chapter 42, My Beliefs. Here, the author continues the reasoning from the previous chapter, analyzing the question of whether, if we cannot derive everything that ought to be from one basic principle of libertarianism, we should switch to utilitarianism and begin to demand the simple maximization of aggregate utility, calculating heterogeneous joys and sorrows in some mysterious way. And although he ultimately rejects this extreme as well, it is felt that economic calculation is dearer to his heart than abstract moral norms. And this brings me back to my own objections against the strategy of persuading statists to stop cooperating with the state based on moral argumentation.

Chapter 38, The Economics of Theft, or the Absence of a Ruling Class, provides an economic analysis of the theft industry, showing that competition in this sphere leads to the impoverishment of society, and that this industry is essentially unprofitable even for the thieves themselves. A similar system of arguments shows that the state, as a variety of theft, is unprofitable even for top politicians, as their costs turn out to be higher than the profits. Of course, this argument seems paradoxical, since it is easy to oppose it with many counterexamples; however, the main conclusion of the chapter does not relate to the denial of the possibilities of individual profit through the state, but to the indication that no single class interest can be seen behind the actions of the state.

Chapter 39, The Right Side of the Public Goods Trap, tells of a very interesting paradox related to the fact that public goods are always underproduced relative to the demand for them, due to difficulties with their monetization. Under a state, such a public good turns out to be good laws that make life simple, convenient, and unburdened, as opposed to bad ones that distribute costs among all while bringing profit to a few. However, under anarchy, it is exactly the opposite: since laws are, in a sense, purchased on the market, good laws turn out to be a private good and are produced until demand is fully satisfied, while bad laws turn out to be a public evil: few are willing to spend on their production for their own profit, and everyone will be able to sabotage their implementation, and cheaply at that. Thus, if it is possible to transition somehow from the state to an anarcho-capitalist order, it will prove quite stable against attempts to bring back the state.

In Chapter 40, How to Get from Here to There, Friedman tells me that I am doing well and correctly understand the strategy of building ancap, and suggests that Mikhail Svetov tone down his zeal in building a vertical of power in the libertarian party and focus on personal educational projects. Thank you, David!

In the Postscript for Perfectionists, Friedman explains which subjects he did not touch upon in the book and why.

This concludes the first edition of The Machinery of Freedom. Subsequent parts were written for the second and third editions of the book.

Yesterday David Friedman turned 75. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to prepare the entire translation for the anniversary, so I am publishing the next three chapters.

Chapter 35. When Prediction Amounts to Speculation. Here, Friedman admits to us that he described only one of many options for an anarcho-capitalist society—the agoric one, which is equally alien to both communes and corporations, but tends toward self-employment and small agencies of freelancers (cute!). At the same time, it turned out that the word agorism was coined not by Konkin, but by Robert LeFevre, about whom I, unfortunately, know nothing.

Chapter 36. Why Exactly Anarchy? In this chapter, Friedman has to explain why the idea of a limited state is so unsatisfactory to him, and why he so stubbornly defends the idea of anarchy specifically. Unfortunately, the author answers: we have already tried the limited state; it doesn’t fit into any boundaries and stubbornly moves to sit right on your face.

Chapter 37. Revolution is the Worst Choice. Here, Friedman polemicizes not so much with ancaps as with classical anarchists who are convinced that the state can only be abolished through revolutionary means. The argumentation is not brilliant in its originality, but it is clear enough.