Тег: Government

Among our libertarians, there is much talk and many jokes about contract slavery. However, how is this possible from the point of view of libertarianism? After all, I cannot transfer my will, body, and mind to anyone—they belong only to me, and regardless of my desire, I will not be able to conclude a slave contract. Or can I?

anonymous question

I dislike lapsing into academicism, which is why I try to attract experts who aren’t prone to it. Regarding contract slavery, I recommend reading LJ-user Artyom Zheleznov under the tags slavery, slave ownership, and slave trade.

The guy positions himself not only as a theorist but also as a practitioner in this industry, which gives his delivery an additional freshness.

I’ll provide a mix of his points and my own thoughts.

Let’s define a slave as a subject coerced into a particular activity, and a slave owner as the person or organization that is the ultimate beneficiary of the slave’s forced activity. I should note that coercion to labor specifically is not the defining characteristic of slavery—it is enough, for example, that a slave is forced to live where specified, eat what is given, and follow a routine imposed by the slave owner. Similarly, whether the slave owner derives profit from the slave is not fundamental. A slave can be loss-making and yet still be in slavery.

In the modern world, private slave ownership seems to be permitted only in Morocco, while state slavery, conversely, is legalized everywhere. A person becomes a slave by entering prison, a conscript army, or an orphanage. Whether an Australian citizen, obliged to come and vote in elections, is considered a slave is a debatable question. I would rather define this as a labor obligation that can be bought off.

What is the difference between slavery and wage labor? A slave, by default, has no right to negotiate the amount of their remuneration with the slave owner, nor do they have the right to unilaterally terminate the relationship.

Now, let’s move on to contract slavery. This is a type of slavery that arises as a result of concluding a contract, that is, voluntarily. Thus, at the moment the deal is struck, each party believes they are gaining more than they are losing.

For example, Irish people fleeing famine to the United States in the 19th century could not afford the trip, so they sold themselves into slavery. In the States, they were bought by some private individual, and under the contract, the slaves were obliged to work for them for an agreed term. You will agree that such a model was beneficial for all participants of the deal. The emigrant bought their life and a ticket at the cost of a temporary limitation of freedom. The captain received money only if he delivered the indentured slave to the other shore. The slave owner received cheap labor, which would pay off only if the slave remained capable of working for the entire term specified in the contract.

I will note that voluntary slavery does not mean the sale of the body, mind, and will, even if the contract is lifelong rather than term-limited; this is precisely why it does not contradict libertarian principles. Contract slavery simply means coercion to perform activities at the request of the slave owner, in accordance with the contract. Retaining freedom of will, a slave can always deem further existence in slavery unacceptable and begin to sabotage the master’s instructions and take actions toward their own liberation. If they can convince the master to enter into a new deal—where, on one hand, the condition is liberation, and on the other, some benefit unattainable under the current slave contract—then obtaining freedom is entirely realistic.

The most innocent variety of slavery is erotic games between a dominant and a submissive. By contract, the submissive may be coerced by the dominant into anything, but the contract can be terminated or suspended at the will of either party.

The most disgusting variety of slavery is, of course, state slavery. Slaves come to the state for free; the state does not care about profit and is not interested in the preservation of the slaves—and therefore there is no cruelty that it could not easily exhibit toward them while remaining completely unpunished.

I recently came to the conclusion that antitrust services are not very effective in handling their task (one can use the recent situation with the collusion of memory chip manufacturers or with video cards as an example). And how can the free market resolve a monopoly?

anonymous question

This question is so common that when a memo for arguing with schoolchildren was being compiled, it was listed as number one.

Indeed, antitrust services are not needed. Monopolies are either formed where the optimal business size turns out to be comparable to the total market size, or where government regulations have created the monopoly artificially (for example, through licensing of activities, exclusive procurement from a single supplier, issuance of patents — in other words, by prohibiting anyone but the monopolist from entering the market).

In the first case, the monopolist successfully meets the demand, the market grows, and over time it turns out that there is now room for several more companies; any attempt by the monopolist to fight them using market methods leads to such a loss of profit that it becomes more profitable for the monopolist to invest in other industries rather than cling to a market share where they are still a monopolist.

In the second case, the monopolist becomes arrogant, raising prices and degrading the quality of services, while the state has to deal with consumer dissatisfaction. Sooner or later, either lobbyists for potential competitors will push through the deregulation of the industry (this is how Novatek secured the right to export liquefied natural gas, which previously belonged exclusively to Gazprom), or a black market will develop, which, without doing anything about the de jure monopoly, will undermine its de facto monopoly. Despairing of fighting the black market through state power, the monopolist will be forced to make concessions — and finally start lowering prices and improving quality.

Discussion of the pension reform catches up with me from every channel. Doesn’t the fact that for some time the number of beneficiaries of this predatory clusterfuck will not grow—not reduce the number of beneficiaries in the future, and not increase the chances that in perspective this clusterfuck might possibly be cancelled altogether?

anonymous question

The fact that the state will collectively receive more money from working people and return less to those who have reached the threshold age will only increase the number of beneficiaries of this predatory clusterfuck. A pensioner receiving an old-age pension is not a beneficiary of the pension clusterfuck; they are just as much a victim of it as someone who didn’t live to see retirement—they have simply been compensated for part of the damage previously sustained. The beneficiaries, however, are the pension fund employees and those who manage the plundered pension savings. Naturally, there will only be more of them as a result of such a reform.

One can conditionally agree with the logic of “the worse, the better.” The more victims the system has, and the fewer chances they have to receive any compensation within the system, the more reasons there are for the complete abolition of the system; whereas if the robbery were more moderate, far more people would be willing to tolerate it, and the few dissatisfied people would talk about reforms rather than the abolition of the system.

On the other hand, the worse, the worse. “The poor pray that their poverty is guaranteed.” Try to abolish the system of robbing the working class all at once if there is a hole in the pension fund and the elderly are universally destitute without savings—they will tear you apart, no matter how charismatic a reformer you are.

Example of the only reasonable behavior toward the pension system

And, as already mentioned, there is no more reliable tool for pension savings today than bitcoins. So you can donate a few of them to my channel 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8, and set aside the majority for your own old age.

Do libertarians realize that their ideology is impossible in the real world, since “non-aggression” itself contradicts human nature?

anonymous question

The correct definition of the non-aggression principle is as follows:
No one has the right to initiate violence with impunity.
If Alice initiates violence against Bob and does not face responsibility, the society does not cease to be libertarian. It ceases to be libertarian if there is a rule according to which neither Bob nor Carol has the right to hold Alice accountable for initiating violence.
The state is an organization of violence elevated into an institution, that is, precisely the kind of order where Alice is not held responsible for initiating violence simply because the state ordered it so.

The question is, what corresponds more to human nature: the desire to hold accountable everyone who initiates violence, or only those whom some external enforcer allows to be held accountable? I think if the latter corresponded more to human nature, we would have to admit that calls to hang thieving officials from lampposts do not correspond to human nature. Meanwhile, even the thieving officials themselves do not claim such heresy; on the contrary, they say that it is a natural human impulse, but let us be civilized people and obediently follow the laws we have invented.

symbolic violence, not elevated into an institution

Just think about it, it’s so unnatural: to just go ahead and donate bits to a favorite telegram channel: 
1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

How does libertarianism view participation in certain projects organized by the city administration (youth movements, for example). After all, on one hand it is the government, but on the other, it is municipal government… And it’s somehow unclear.

anonymous question

Libertarianism views taxes with suspicion because they are robbery. But once taxes have already been seized, and it was impossible to prevent this, and they cannot be returned in the form of money, there is nothing shameful about receiving partial compensation for the damage by consuming some of the tangible goods provided by the authorities.

If we are talking about the possibility of cooperating with local authorities on certain projects, then one must first look at the effect this joint activity has on third parties. If it involves the infringement of their rights, then cooperation with the authorities is shameful. For example, participating in some Orthodox patrol that demands adherence to Orthodox moral norms from passers-by would be shameful. There seems to be no damage to reputation from participating in charity under the patronage of local authorities, provided it is not a PR cover for some embezzlement. However, any military-patriotic theme is a literal minefield; one must think carefully about every step, where it is worth cooperating and where it is not.

And in any case, such things cannot have a higher priority than resisting state robbery and other forms of violence.

organized youth is always very strange…

Do you believe in a bright future for your state?

anonymous question

I do not believe in a bright future for any state. It is an archaic form of social organization, incapable of satisfying people’s demand for justice and security, yet requiring the forced seizure of a vast amount of resources from people for its functioning.

Alternatives to the state in various fields are known, theoretically developed, and have both historical and currently operating analogues. Trust in the state is steadily declining worldwide. So what bright future can there be for this dinosaur? Let’s bury it and dance!

Dancing fossils look good on screen, but not on the street

In particular, in the area of money, an alternative to the state has been known since 2009, and that is bitcoin, which will certainly soon bury dinosaurs such as state central banks. I gladly accept donations in this currency to the wallet 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

But still, no matter how you look at it, there are rules that are, to one degree or another, objectively conditioned for execution. Traffic regulations can be cited as an example. Currently, compliance with traffic rules is regulated by the state. What will happen if this regulation disappears? Anarchy on the roads means deaths.

anonymous question

This kind of rules are developed in precisely an anarchic way. There was no state on the roads when the first cars appeared, and when there were enough of them for a need for interaction rules to arise. Which side to drive on, how to yield to each other at intersections, how to best mark the roads — all this began to emerge even before the state intruded upon the roads.

It was only later that the state placed traffic controllers at intersections, and then traffic lights, thereby giving birth to traffic jams. It was only later that the state began to set speed limits and fine those who exceeded them. And finally, it was the state that built a vast number of highways at the taxpayers’ expense, creating non-market competition for many other ways of moving.

People easily create spontaneous order in any situation when they truly need it, and they solidify successful practices so as not to rediscover them every time, for laziness and egoism are the best harmonizers of society. Even under ideal conditions, the state is capable of creating only a passable crutch for such spontaneous order, and trying to beat with a stick everyone who sabotages the use of the crutch.

What are you staring at? Take the crutch and get going!

Also, anarchy created bitcoins, which can be used for donations: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

If the state is destroyed, corporations will take its place, won’t they?

Anonymous question

A lot here depends on what you put into the concept of “the state.”

If we are talking about who will become the new provider of the services that the state currently provides, then yes, of course, who if not corporations would take their place. Private companies are already successfully competing with state ones in the markets of medicine, education, pension provision, the creation of technical standards, and much more—effectively any market-demanded services that the state does not explicitly usurp.

As for those functions over which the state tries to usurp a monopoly—establishing arbitrary rules in a certain territory, forcibly redistributing property, and so on—then illegal criminal groups will take the place of the state here. In essence, the state currently differs from them only by legality. It is this very crutch that I want to kick out from under it.

In this regard, many people ask: will crime increase if one of the criminal groups loses its dominant status? History tells us that it could either increase or decrease. If we destroy the state for the sake of the sacred right of barons to uncontrollably plunder villeins, then crime will increase. If we destroy the state for the sake of the sacred right of citizens to uncontrollably own property, then crime will decrease. The devil is in the details: not only the state of the environment is important, but also the ideas that guide the actions of the people living in that environment.

bad, bad corporation!

What to do if an ancap society that has successfully formed in some territory begins to be squeezed by neighbors? For example, if they are a religious state, and its citizens, possessing some kind of superiority (or the support of their state), buy land, move in, but do not want to observe the NAP?

anonymous question

The topic of direct military conflict was best explored by Vladimir Zolotorev, whom I have mentioned repeatedly, in the series of articles “Insurance Company ‘Sonechko’ versus the Tsardom of Muscovy”.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Most likely, this volume of material will be sufficient for you to address both the question you asked and several related ones.

But I will still make a small clarification regarding one of the models of creeping expansion you mentioned. Buying up all the land is very unrealistic, because the less unsold land remains, the more expensive it becomes, and the happy sellers of land receive more and more resources, which they can invest in assets that seem more profitable to them than the land they have just sold.

At the same time, the fact that a certain NAP violator is a landowner does not protect them in any way. They violated it — a conflict arose, now they either pay a penalty or they are fought against. In a state, the law may protect a NAP violator, but for ancaps, dealing with such problems is much simpler.

Sonechko

Ancap or Minarchism?

Anonymous question

Minarchism is legal, so officially I cannot and do not put forward anything beyond minarchist demands. Ancap is more logically consistent, so in any theoretical studies it easily beats minarchism; however, I have to clarify every time that this is pure theory, comrade major, no extremism.

There are two points of view on the method of transition to ancap. One method is political, through minarchism. There are examples in the world of libertarians coming to power and implementing successful, albeit incomplete, minarchist reforms; all that remains is to ensure that this becomes mainstream, and then political pressure can be continued on minarchist states toward full ancap.

The second method is counter-cultural, bypassing minarchism. There is not a single example in the world where minarchist reforms were not followed by a rollback toward greater statism; therefore, it is postulated that the model of a limited state is by definition unstable, and there is no reason to hope that it will remain in this state, let alone voluntarily further cut its own powers. Instead, it is proposed to develop mechanisms of direct non-governmental interactions and to expel the state primarily from the mind. And once the viewpoint that the state in any of its manifestations is nothing more than a harmful parasite, and that people get along perfectly well without it, becomes mainstream, then this parasite will simply fall off because no one will feed it.

This is somewhat similar to two different approaches to fighting trolling in the comments: you can ban them, or you can stop feeding them.

You’d ban someone like that, yeah…