Тег: Law

You will be punished for what was legal yesterday (or why it is deadly dangerous to be “law-abiding”)

You surely know people who say the following: “I pay all my taxes, my business is completely white, I’m not interested in politics, I have nothing to hide.” This is a very cozy position. And although such people are often called “hamsters” in libertarian circles, it must be understood that the desire to simply live, create, raise children, run a legal business, and not play hide-and-seek with the state is an absolutely normal and natural need of a healthy person.
 
But there is one little nuance. By trying to play by the state’s rules, you are playing chess with a pigeon. Or more accurately—with an armed cheat who has learned to change the rules of the game after the match has already been played.
 
This is precisely why agorism (that very counter-economics, crypto, working for cash, hiding assets, and quietly disappearing from the radar of the stationary bandit) has become a matter of survival even for those who bake legal cakes or write legal code. Because the Leviathan across the world—and in Russia, by already kicking down the door—has begun to massively apply laws retroactively and nullify statutes of limitations.
 
Let’s first look into the history of law. Why did humanity come up with statutes of limitations in the first place? Even in Ancient Rome, jurists understood a simple thing: society needs legal certainty like air. If you honestly bought an anvil, you shouldn’t have to wake up in a cold sweat for the rest of your life thinking that in 20 years, the grandson of the previous owner will come for you and take it away due to an error on a parchment. Evidence decays, witnesses forget everything, and people die. A statute of limitations is a guarantee that society will not sink into an abyss of eternal paranoia, endless vendettas, and the revisiting of old cases. It is on this foundation that trust in the future is built.
 
And now let’s return to our reality. What is the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation doing now? It is churning out lawsuits in batches to seize factories (like “Solikamsk Magnesium” or “Maxfa”), lands, and companies privatized in the 90s. That is, 30 years ago! Businessmen invested money, paid taxes, and were crystal “white.” But the courts, with an unperturbed face, declare: “Statutes of limitations do not apply to the requirements of the state.”
 
Or take the laws regarding “foreign agents,” “undesirable,” and “extremist” organizations. Did you transfer 500 rubles to a foundation five years ago when it was not just legal, but respected and encouraged? This means today they can come to you with a search and charge you with financing extremism. You were absolutely legal yesterday, but they made you a criminal today—for your action yesterday.
 
One might think this only happens to us. But the erosion of law is a global trend. In the US and Europe, ideas of retrospective taxes are heard more and more often (“you earned too much last year, let’s have you pay extra at the new rates”). In Canada, authorities could freeze the bank accounts of protesting truck drivers and those who simply sent them 20 bucks for coffee at the snap of a finger. In the US and the UK, there is a retrospective stretching of modern moral norms onto the deeds of days gone by regarding “sexual harassment.” If the state needs to expropriate you or shut you up, it will find a reason, ignoring any old guarantees.
 
And this is where we return to agorism. “Going underground,” using cryptocurrencies, working outside the legal field, refusing to register property in one’s own name—this is no longer the romance of cyberpunks or the domain of darknet smugglers, but basic insurance. Even if you sell teddy bears today and sacredly honor the Criminal Code, tomorrow they might pass a law declaring plush to be a toxic material, and all sellers from the last 10 years to be enemies of the people with confiscation of property.
 
Disappearing from the “legal field” is the most rational choice for a person who has understood the essence: it is impossible to be “law-abiding” where the law is one today, another tomorrow, and you are punished by it for the day after tomorrow. Therefore, it is necessary to study counter-economics, hide assets, use cash and crypto, and most importantly—build horizontal connections with those you trust!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

How to legally hack the state and not go to prison for extremism

You surely know that vile feeling of helplessness when the state comes up with yet another absurd law, and you realize there is nothing you can do. Go out with a placard—and you’ll be jailed for extremism. In the West, of course, it’s easier: you can boldly curse taxes with friends in a pub without fearing that the bartender will report you. But try to break into parliament or catch a deputy at their house to tell them what you think about new eco-standards—at best, you’ll be ignored, and at worst, you’ll be charged with harassment or a threat to national security.
 
Most libertarians recoil from getting involved in politics altogether. It’s a dirty game where the rules are written by cheats. But if sitting idly by makes you sick, and becoming a political prisoner isn’t in your life plans, there is one elegant way. Let’s call it “judicial jiu-jitsu.” The idea is very simple, yet brilliant. We take their own system and force it to work against them, driving the situation to utter absurdity.
 
Imagine this situation as an example: you consider speed limits unfair. You drive slightly faster, a camera snaps a photo, and a fine arrives. What does an ordinary person do? They curse quietly and pay with a discount. What does a clever person do? They come up with an excuse like, “My brother-in-law’s brother was driving, but I forgot exactly who.” Now, watch this. Instead, you launch a multi-year, public legal campaign to discredit speed limits as such. You go to the district court, then the regional court, the appellate court, the Supreme Court, and the Constitutional Court. And at every stage, you roll out new, crushing arguments so that they have no right to refuse to accept the case (and AI is here to help us now—it can generate lawsuits in batches).
 
You declare: “The tolerance of the devices is too low to physically drive without exceeding it by even a kilometer!”, “Compliance with this regime causes me constant stress and harms my health,” “Constant monitoring of the speedometer distracts from the road! The state is literally forcing me to risk my life and increasing the number of traffic accidents!” and finally: “Speed limits on an empty highway are an unlawful interference in my private life and freedom of movement!”.
 
Why might this work and why is it safe? First and foremost, you are outside of politics. De jure, you are not an oppositionist, not a revolutionary, and you are not shaking the regime. You are simply a very meticulous citizen fighting for your rights as a motorist. Even the most hardcore autocracy wants to appear legitimate in the eyes of the public. To do that, they need the illusion of a working judicial system. The authorities won’t turn on the repressive machine over a camera fine—it would discredit the system itself and look comical. You are hitting them in their blind spot.
 
Additionally, you set off an information bomb. You attract many times more attention than dreary politicians with their boring speeches. The media loves stories like this! “Madman reaches the Supreme Court, proving the speedometer causes panic attacks!” People begin to read your arguments and suddenly realize: “Wait, he’s actually right…”. You shape the libertarian agenda elegantly and with humor.
 
Furthermore, the possibility for donations and crowdfunding arises. While you are headbutting the system, the public will gladly donate for popcorn and legal costs. You become a folk hero.
 
And you know what else? Constant dripping wears away the stone. Even if you lose the first 10 trials, public pressure will begin to grow. And on the 11th time, the court might side with you. Or officials, tired of this circus and the resonance, might quietly change the law just to get you off their backs.
 
This hack, of course, is applicable to everything! A ban on installing air conditioners? Tax rates? Absurd construction regulations? Go to court; there are chances—history knows many successful examples of such legal trolling. So, if you cannot break the wall with your forehead—become the water that destroys its foundation. Sue, troll, and defend your freedom with a smile!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

If there were a person, AI would be found

It is hard to disagree that every person has broken state laws in their life, and often multiple times. Smoking in unauthorized areas, traffic violations, conducting business without a license or with other violations, selling personal belongings without declaring them to the tax authorities, and even simple verbal statements that the state deems illegal—these and other similar acts have been committed by many people. Moreover, some actions that do not imply a violation of the law at the time they are committed may, after some time, be interpreted as an offense—retroactively and without a statute of limitations, applying the highly controversial yet widespread practice of qualifying actions undesirable to the authorities as a “continuing offense.” For example, an administrative case was recently brought against a Russian woman for “LGBT propaganda,” triggered by a video recorded and published on VK back in 2010, where a friend kissed her on the lips for her birthday.

And it would be one thing if such violations were typically accidental, minor, and did not imply harm to people, meaning it would be unlikely that government authorities would even notice them. But modern and especially promising technologies will allow them to track any human activity. U.S. intelligence is already developing AI that will collect and analyze data about citizens and means of transport from surveillance cameras, drones, and even from webcams and smartphone cameras. In France, police have been allowed to remotely connect to the cameras and microphones of citizens’ smartphones. Roskomnadzor in Russia is actively testing AI to block websites and analyze materials published on social networks. As for China, there is nothing to say—total surveillance has long since become a commonplace there. And in Iran, AI is even used for religious repression—AI cameras recognize women who do not wear a hijab.

Of course, if a stationary bandit attempts to punish everyone for even the smallest violations, they will quickly become overloaded, and serious discontent may arise among the people. However, there is little sense in picking on everyone. The problem lies more in the fact that individual people can become victims of intentional harassment, both by the state as a whole and even by individual employees of government agencies. For example, someone might run a business that competes with the business of a civil servant’s friends or relatives, or the official might want to “provide protection” for someone’s business, or perhaps some girl rejected them in a relationship, or they have a conflict with a neighbor over a parking space—in such situations, a civil servant can easily ruin the life of a person who has displeased them simply by using information from surveillance systems. As we have already said, one can find at least minor violations for any person, and at the very least, they can be buried under fines.

A serious problem also lies in the fact that in such a scenario, the civil servant themselves will not technically be breaking the law. It is often argued that one can simply complain about any civil servant to higher authorities. But while such an argument might still be considered in cases of direct threats, abuse of power, or other similar actions, it becomes completely meaningless in the case of harassment following the scheme described above. Complaints against the systemic harassment of opposition members or other people undesirable to the state will also be rendered useless—by resorting to such a scheme, a stationary bandit can harass a person using perfectly legal methods.

As we can see, the power of the state in the age of high technology poses an enormous threat to the lives and well-being of people. Any person who becomes inconvenient to the stationary bandit or even just to his individual officials can be hounded in such a way that no laws are broken by the hunters—the person being hunted will be declared a malicious lawbreaker. Therefore, the “monopoly on violence” can no longer be called a system that works for the benefit of mankind.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Law and legality in the transition to ancap

Another question about the subject was asked in the comments, and I don’t really want to answer from purely theoretical positions, because for a little over three years now, I’ve had the opportunity to try to implement something. So, I want to reflect on the problems of law and legislation in the ancap community using Montelibero as an example.

I will outline the conceptual framework I am using. Law is the order for resolving conflicts accepted within the community. Statute is a legal norm that the community considers permissible to impose by force. Court is a procedure for resolving conflicts by a third party not involved in the conflict. Jurisdiction is the venue, that is, the circle of conflicts that the community customarily resolves through a specific court.

Montelibero, like any other ancap community in the era of state dominance, cannot claim full jurisdiction over its members. Yes, any issue can be resolved within Montelibero’s jurisdiction—but only if the state is unaware of it. Otherwise, the state may impose its own requirements on what the parties to the conflict are obliged to do.

The Montelibero community is small. It does not provide the opportunity for full market competition between many diverse courts. However, this is no reason to bow before the state. After all, we have implemented tokenomics and now have our own very cheap and efficient financial system. On a single blockchain, without competition between them (we tried adding others, but they didn’t take hold). Although, privately, nothing prevents the exchange of any values: whether commodities, fiat, or various types of crypto. The same applies to courts: by mutual agreement, disputes can be resolved by a coin toss, mediation by a pre-agreed authority, or a duel—but if there is no agreement, one must rely on some unified default judicial mechanism.

Every jurisdiction is subject to a strong positive scale effect: the more conflicts it resolves, the more potential conflicts will specify this particular jurisdiction in advance. This is understandable: people save mental effort and will not keep many different legal mechanisms in mind without particular need, eventually leaning toward a single option, even if it is not the most optimal for a specific case. There are also negative scale effects: even the most efficient judge is unlikely to be able to significantly increase their productivity and will more likely raise the price as demand increases. Therefore, to scale this type of service, it is convenient to use a franchising mechanism: judges may differ, but they will use a single procedure and uniform legal norms.

Where would these come from? The Schelling point here is the procedures adopted in the hosting jurisdiction, that is, in the Montenegrin courts. Why? At least because that is where those dissatisfied with a Montelibero court decision will theoretically turn. But since the local legislation is full of various statist rubbish, it must, of course, be discarded and replaced with our own home-grown concepts. There are few basic principles in libertarianism, but specific legal norms that do not contradict them can vary. And here, precedents will become the Schelling points. It will be easier for each subsequent court to apply a previously used norm than to invent a new one for every new case. Moreover, it will be easier for all members of the Montelibero community to proceed from established legal practice, as predictability in affairs is the foundation for trust.

But, as is known, it is not enough to understand if the laws are good; one must ask if they are enforced.

While judicial practice is limited, one must rely mainly on the conscientiousness of the parties and the informal authority of the judge. The potential ability to turn to the state for enforcement of court decisions is relevant only for the largest cases, where the amount at stake justifies the accompanying costs. In the smallest cases, the losing party will pay without question because the amount is trivial. The problem lies in medium-sized cases, where invoking state enforcement is still too expensive and disgraceful, but the losing party is reluctant to pay.

The most civilized way to achieve the enforcement of court decisions is the widespread use of collateral. I envision a gradual evolution here from one-time deposits to secure a specific claim, to permanent deposits confirming a willingness to comply with the decisions of a specific jurisdiction.

Initially, it might work roughly like this. A community member wishes to enter into a legal relationship with another member. For example, rent a car or an apartment, borrow money, or enter into an employment contract. In addition to the direct contract between the counterparties, they also notify the court and transfer collateral amounts to a court-controlled account, the size of which depends on the amount of liability imposed by the concluded contract. Then, from this collateral, a penalty can be recovered—for example, from an employee for damaging equipment, or from an employer for an industrial injury caused by their fault.

But gradually, as the court builds its own reputation, deposits will become permanent: you recognize the jurisdiction of the MTL court and place a certain deposit on its controlled account—a sort of “price of honor,” in ancient Irish terms. Now anyone can be sure that within the limits of the price of honor, you can be trusted unconditionally. Want to increase your reputation—simply increase the deposit. Leaving the country, or, say, the last court decision caused your distrust—decrease the deposit. Leaving the jurisdiction—withdraw the deposit entirely (with some lag to ensure you have no debts from old contracts).

Moreover, based on this solution, an institute of suretyship could develop, where a guarantor increases trust in the person they vouch for by risking their own judicial deposit.

It would be great if increasing the price of honor contributed to respect within the community, but such an attitude will not form on its own—first, a tradition of involving people with a high price of honor in responsible legal relationships must be grown, for example, as witnesses to large transactions or plaintiffs in socially important cases. Also, a mechanism for increasing another’s price of honor through the payment of judicial deposits into another’s account could certainly appear—if a person’s personal integrity far exceeds their financial capabilities. The result would be something like a Hoppean natural aristocracy.

And, of course, this entire mechanism will work much worse if it turns out that there are a large number of community members who completely ignore it, yet enter into legal relationships with each other in the same way. They may be too poor to freeze money for the sake of reputation. They may not trust a specific court. And finally, they may not trust the mechanism itself.

The poverty factor is handled to a certain extent through suretyship mechanisms. The factor of distrust in a specific court—through competing courts. The factor of distrust in the mechanism—simply a matter of habit. Trust is built; one just must not try to impose it.

What are the different variants of anarcho-capitalism? I only know about the Rothbardian and Friedmanite variants (I am not including Hoppe, as it is essentially a development of Rothbard’s ideas in one specific direction).

Dmitry

I don’t think there is a clear typology anywhere, but the question is interesting; let’s reason through it.

The Rothbardian version: it is derived from natural rights, and therefore presupposes a certain unified ethical-legal system described in “The Ethics of Liberty,” or derived in some other way on the same methodological basis (for example, Molliqneux expresses his views in this same vein in his Practical Anarchy). Consequently, questions arise regarding it: who will force everyone to be guided by a single legal system?

The Friedmanite version is based on the economic analysis of law, specifically on the basis of the Chicago School of Economics, which implies the possibility of engaging in interpersonal utility comparisons to a certain extent. Accordingly, in the Friedmanite version of anarcho-capitalism, different legal systems are traded on the market, capturing those segments where they prove to be the most efficient.

Nevertheless, both versions of social organization imply, as a kind of successor to the key state function of enforcing its own decisions, certain law enforcement agencies, as in the case of Friedman and the Tannahills, or strictly non-violent dispute resolution agencies, as with Molliqneux, which nevertheless possess truly totalitarian regulatory power—in short, some “larvae” of the state, about which one must somehow explain what reasons will prevent these larvae from growing into full-fledged states.

Following Vladimir Zolotorev, I adhere to a praxeological approach to the analysis of law and, quite independently of him, predict that in an anarchic society with developed market relations, the effect of the division of labor will push cumbersome monsters—those attempting to gather completely diverse functions, which are currently appropriated by the state, under one roof—out of the market. There are no grounds to believe that the services of detectives, forensic experts, or blockchain analysts must necessarily be provided by the same firms that offer security services, debt collection, resolve economic disputes, maintain cadasters, insure life and property, or issue certificates stating that a person knows how to drive a car or, for instance, shoot a pistol.

The practice of living in the libertarian community of MonteLibero further strengthens me in my originally purely theoretical views that people do not need detailed, written-out legal institutions all that much. On the contrary, in an anarchic society, people tend to resolve conflicts on the spot, forming situational coalitions if necessary. The need for complex specialized services in the field of legal protection arises quite rarely; therefore, in a free market, this need will likely be met by relatively small companies that nevertheless have a wide geographical reach—otherwise, a sufficient client base cannot be gathered.

Returning to the question, we see that different descriptions of ancap mainly boil down to how conflicts will be resolved in such a society—because regarding issues such as the functioning of a free market, libertarian theorists have no particular disagreements. Accordingly, if some previously undeveloped idea occurs to you about how law could otherwise function—congratulations, you will add another version of ancap to the collection of existing ones.

Legal systems that differ significantly from ours. Translation of the chapter on Islamic law.

I have been procrastinating for a nightmarely long time on the translation of David Friedman’s book about various exotic legal systems. But then I was sent a link in my DMs to Scott Alexander’s parody Legal Systems Very Unlike Our Own (Because I Just Made Them Up) — I felt ashamed and sat down to translate.

So, the fifth chapter of the book, on Islamic law, has been translated. As expected, it turned out to be similar to a refined version of Jewish law, and due to its inherent decentralization, libertarians can borrow quite a lot from it for their own purposes.

Please don’t forget to donate to this and all other translations, and I will try not to drag out this process too much.

Tell me everything about inheritance under ancap

How will the order of inheritance be distributed without a will? What if there are no heirs? And if my debts exceed the inheritance and there is no guarantor/insurance, will they pass to someone else?

Neprizivnoy

Ancap implies the decentralization of dispute resolution procedures, which automatically means the absence of rigid rules imposed from above regulating the issue of inheritance. Therefore, I cannot say exactly how a particular piece of property or debts will be divided, but I can speculate on how this issue will be resolved locally in substance.

Rights are claims that have been accepted. Upon the death of a person who owned certain property, various people may raise claims to that property. Who eventually gets the property and in what shares depends primarily on who accepts the corresponding claims and how easily. In the most obvious cases, for example, if the deceased had a bitcoin wallet and their household members also had access to the keys, it is unlikely that anyone would be able to contest their claims to own the bitcoins. Similarly, if the deceased lived in their own house, their household members automatically become the factual owners of the house after their death, and contesting their rights to this inheritance would mean putting forward a claim to evict them, which requires extremely strong grounds. It is likely that relatives or friends of the deceased living separately would find it difficult to justify their rights to any share in something where other people were already factual co-owners with the benefactor.

But what about property that the deceased owned solely and to which their cohabitants have no direct access? For example, they owned a company. The keys to the company office are held by the cleaning lady, but it is unlikely that her claims to seize the office based on factual access to the premises would be taken seriously by anyone. Nevertheless, if none of the deceased’s relatives took a direct part in the business and no instructions regarding the property were left by the deceased, it would not be surprising if the company were stripped by its employees or misappropriated by someone in management — either individually or in cooperation with some colleagues. This would simply mean that the property rights to this business were poorly established. Of course, the more established the surrounding market, the less likely such a situation is, and most likely the ownership of the company has long been tokenized, and the rules for the transfer of tokens to other hands were described, including taking into account the possible death of the owner. For instance, the Montelibero Foundation and the entire tokenomics developed around it are only a year and a half old, and we already have such possibilities fixed in certain agreements — after all, predictability of rules is a very important element of the investment climate.

Finally, let’s talk about debts. Of course, a creditor’s claim for the return of a debt is quite strong. Therefore, it is clear that in conditions of a developed market and properly recorded obligations, it will not be difficult for the creditor to recover a share of the deceased’s property toward the debt. If the amount of debts clearly exceeds the amount of divisible assets, then we have a bankruptcy case. In this situation, all claimants to the property will have to agree on who gets how much, and if an amicable agreement cannot be reached, then recourse to a court will be inevitable — they cannot exactly go to war, after all.

In general, I want to note that ancap is not only anarchy, but also capitalism, meaning developed market relations. All existing legal findings, especially from the sphere of common law, will not disappear, and in various disputed cases, they will certainly be appealed to. Foolish litigation, reducing to a competition of whose lawyer is more expensive and who paid the judge more, is unlikely under ancap due to the decentralized nature of law enforcement. But the desire to assert one’s rights itself will not disappear, which means that work for lawyers will not vanish.

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.

branilac slobode

What will happen to abandoned buildings under ancap?

1) Youth often sneak into an abandoned building, which displeases many city dwellers: you never know what might happen. Can they, and in what way, organize its security, fence it off, or demolish it entirely? Would the installation of a fence by a concerned public be a restriction of the freedom of urban exploration enthusiasts?
2) A group of squatters has settled in an empty cinema, arranged their own electricity (finding people on the free market who agreed to connect them), and lives there, organizing non-conformist concerts right in the cinema hall and inviting hitchhikers for overnight stays. Some believe this negatively affects property values in the area. Can anything be done about them?
3) A developer saw an unfinished business center and wanted to complete it and put it into operation. The last owner of the unfinished building is either unknown, unresponsive, or has already been dissolved as a legal entity. What should the developer do?
4) An initiative group of citizens wants to demolish an abandoned building and create a park in its place; many district residents have signed in support of the idea. However, the squatters living there do not want to move. They appeal to the right of the property they have acquired and the lack of rights to it by outside citizens, while the activists appeal to the illegality of the squatters’ settlement and their lack of any rights to such housing. Who is right and what is to be done?

Stalker

So, we have a city, which is a fairly dense settlement where the rights of its inhabitants to certain spatial objects are complex, mutually conditional, mutually overlapping, and constantly enter into minor collisions, and this is perceived as the norm. A person pays for developed infrastructure not only with money, but also by the fact that they are constantly bothered to some extent by their neighbors. Sometimes collisions become significant, and then they require a resolution.

Let me remind you of the principles of legitimate acquisition of property rights under ancap: homesteading, exchange, restitution, production. How can sufficiently clear property rights to an abandoned building be acquired in the complex conditions described above? Squatters quite logically apply the first method and occupy an empty building simply because no one before them used this method. What will protect them from indignant neighbors appearing on their doorstep tomorrow, waving the Lockean proviso? Only the other three methods of acquiring property rights.

  1. Voluntary exchange. Squatters can agree with other city residents on what specific benefits they will provide in exchange for the recognition of their right to the squat. For example, organizing those very concerts, providing shelter for the homeless, maintaining the neat appearance of the building, or paying utility bills.
  2. Restitution. Squatters could stand on the threshold of their new property with guns and declare that those who contest their ownership can only take it from their cold dead bodies. The willingness to bear the costs of war to protect one’s property has always been a very strong argument in favor of recognizing property rights, provided that someone else’s rights do not appear more compelling (and in the case of an abandoned building, no one has more compelling rights than the squatters). Squatters could also announce that as restitution for seizing the property (and thus for taking away the right to seize the same property from other potential claimants), they are ready to donate a certain amount to a city improvement fund. Agreement to accept the money would mean recognition of the legitimacy of the squatting.
  3. Production. Squatters can begin converting the seized building for their own needs, and then anyone who might claim an alternative use for the abandoned building will calculate that if they had, for example, forcibly evicted them a month ago when they first moved in, and the squatters had sued, they would have received at most the price of a hostel rental for a couple of nights. But today, they would already be demanding reimbursement for all the effort and resources invested in the squat.

I have outlined what the squatters should do. But what should the citizens do if they really do not want abandoned buildings to end up in the hands of just anyone? Simply avoid their formation whenever possible. For example, utility service contracts could include a clause stating that if the owner of the serviced object loses their right without terminating the service agreement, then until a new owner takes possession, the provider continues service at the latest applicable rates as a loan secured by the object. Thus, squatters find themselves in a situation: this house belongs to no one; it is collateral for the companies providing water, electricity, internet, sewer services, and waste removal. If any one of these companies needs the house, it will squat it itself (but it will have to negotiate a buyout with the others). And if none of them need it, they will all be happy with anyone willing to take the building on their balance sheet and pay off the utility debts.

I have provided only one possible mechanism, but there could be any others, including a city fund for abandoned buildings, to which citizens donate funds so that it can be the first to squat abandoned buildings, create groups for discussing their best use, search for investors, and so on. And if people who do not inspire enthusiasm among the citizens have already moved into a particular abandoned building, this same fund could act as a negotiator to change the format of the squat’s use or pay the squatters a buyout to move out.

Legal systems that differ greatly from ours. Translation of the chapter on Jewish law.

Having had my fun with Iceland: The Age of Sagas, I continued the translation of Friedman’s book on legal systems that differ greatly from our own, proceeding in order, so the fourth chapter is next. It is perhaps the longest in the entire book, as it is dedicated to the law of the chosen people, who have accumulated an absolute abyss of various legislative material throughout their long history.

As usual, I will deal with the translation of the footnotes and the final formatting of this chapter for e-books later; for now, I want to present what I have to your attention as is, without polishing it. As usual, I am transparently hinting that it would be nice to donate.

Next up is Islamic law, and I am curious in advance what place well-known practices, such as apologizing without trousers, hold within it.