Тег: Law

Registration of property rights under ancap

What will the registration of property rights for assets (land, real estate, enterprises, securities, files(?)) look like in the absence of a monopoly registrar (USRN and others)? Will it be mandatory? And what about bundles of rights under ancap?

Free Reader

Bundles of rights are simply an analytical tool for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon we commonly call ownership. Any relationship between a subject and an object can be described through bundles of rights, regardless of whether it is ancap or socialism. It is simply that under socialism, a certain property, for example, does not grant the right to derive profit from it, while under ancap it does. Also, for instance, rights to a plot of land may imply the right to prohibit boundary violations, or they may be encumbered by an easement requiring the provision of, say, free passage. All these bundles of rights are formed both as a result of concluding direct contracts and simply by virtue of established traditions. Any right is a claim that is tolerated, and if a certain claim is contested, it means that specific right is under threat.

For those who struggle to understand what the previous paragraph is about, I recommend watching Boris Yurovsky’s video, which is titled: Property as a Bundle of Rights.

Now let’s move on to the registration of property rights. A title of ownership for any object that can be uniquely identified is very easily stored in one registry or another. These could be objects such as “a plot of land with such-and-such boundaries” or “a smartphone with such-and-such a serial number” or “a file with such-and-such a checksum.”

How do titles of ownership get into registries? They are entered there by the owners of the property assets to inform everyone of their ownership right, which is primarily necessary to confirm that this right exists. Maintaining a registry requires resources, so those who decide to engage in this will have to think through a monetization scheme for the service. One could charge money for placing information about a property asset in the registry. This risks the registry being incomplete. One could charge for obtaining information from the registry. This risks people obtaining information through cheaper means. One could establish a fund, feed it for some time, and once the registry begins to demonstrate its utility to a wide circle of people, the fund could quite possibly develop the registry through donations.

The alternative to registries is the archaeology of property titles, where, wanting to ensure that the property being purchased actually belongs to the seller, a potential buyer examines the document recording the acquisition of the property, for example, a purchase and sale agreement, then turns to the previous owner, finds out how they acquired the object, and so on until their paranoia is satisfied. In effect, this is the same methodology as blockchain analysis—just without the blockchain. Additionally, if we are talking about a plot of land, for example, one can ask the neighbors whether they truly know the seller as the owner of the plot or if he is an impostor.

But this will be of little help in a situation where the owner of a property asset sells it to several people simultaneously, takes money from each, and then leaves them to figure it out however they want. This is the very “double spend” against which, in the case of bitcoin transactions, it is recommended to wait for several confirmations before considering the transaction complete. Unfortunately, blockchain is not the Internet of Things, as Ivan Ivanitsky aptly formulated in his article on Habr. Information in a registry, whether centralized or distributed, may differ from the conditions of the transaction. To protect against most such fraudulent transactions, a temporary freeze of the funds paid for the acquired object is sufficient. During this time, the problem of multiple claimants to one title of ownership will have time to surface, but the seller will not have had time to secure the money, and it can be returned to the unsuccessful buyers. Such a payment delay can be implemented either through a trusted intermediary or, possibly, through smart contracts (although I am not an expert in this area).

How would juvenile justice work under libertarianism?

For example, Vasya Pupkin from grade 3 “b”, as a joke, reported a bomb planted in the school, which was later not found during the inspection. Or he beat up a classmate until they ended up in intensive care. Or he stole and then broke someone else’s bicycle.
Suppose he was detained. What happens next? If parents, according to libertarianism, are not responsible for their children’s actions, then how will the young hooligan be punished? Suppose neither he nor his parents have the money to compensate for the damage. Will he be put in prison or forced to work and pay for the damages?

Vopros999 (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00008510 BTC)

The claim that a child possesses self-ownership means that other people recognize their right to dispose of themselves to a greater extent than they could achieve by force. Nevertheless, just as the right of private property over things rarely means the freedom to use them to harm others, a child’s self-ownership does not mean complete freedom to cause harm to those around them.

In addition to the child’s self-ownership, people usually recognize someone’s right of guardianship over them. This right typically includes priority in instilling moral norms, but it is inevitably offset by the right of others to recover damages caused by the child from the guardian. It does not matter who provides the guardianship—parents, the school, just random people contracted for the job—or if all of them distribute these rights among themselves in some way. Either way, the right of guardianship is followed by responsibility for the damage caused to others by the actions of the ward.

Parents take the child for a walk, the child breaks someone else’s toy—the parents are responsible. A grandmother is left with the child—the grandmother is responsible for the broken toy. The child goes to school—the school bears responsibility for the damage they cause to others during school hours. The child goes to school and from there sends an email from a phone reporting a bomb threat—this is the school’s problem, as the child was within its zone of responsibility at that time.

Perhaps the risk of damage from a child’s actions could be insured, similar to how the civil liability of car owners is insured. Now, as we know, car owners are reluctant to insure their liability, which often prompts states to make such contracts mandatory. So I am not sure that in a stateless society, guardianship liability will always be insured. Most likely, schools—especially those in the medium and high price segments—will insure their guardianship liability; firstly, they will have more funds for this, and secondly, it can be assumed that students of expensive schools will, on average, cause damage in smaller amounts (not a fact, I don’t dare to predict exactly).

Another factor that is unlikely to allow guardianship liability insurance to become a panacea for parents is that with every wrongful act committed by the child, the insurance premium will increase; that is, damage from the least socialized children will likely be too expensive to insure.

Further, the imagination of AnCap critics paints all sorts of Dickensian scenarios, with workhouses and the like. I strongly doubt that such things would be in demand in a humane and wealthy society, however, it is obvious that the rights of guardians who find themselves unable to bear responsibility for the actions of their wards will be rejected or, at least, severely restricted. In whose favor? I believe, in favor of charitable organizations whose statutory goal would be precisely the socialization of such children. As an option—in favor of wealthier citizens who agree to cover the debts from lawsuits against the child’s previous guardians, after which they themselves assume further responsibility for this child. I do not dare predict which model will be more in demand in the market, but both are ethically permissible.

Socialization of difficult children two centuries ago—the dark past of AnCap

Fall of the Black Hawk

Yesterday, after I finished editing the article on the inefficiency of violence, I sat down to watch the movie “Black Hawk Down,” which I came across while following links related to the article. The film focuses on the episode mentioned in the article: how the US was forced to leave Somalia after the failure of what they considered a peacekeeping operation—losing nearly two dozen special forces operators in a single day and killing around a thousand locals in a dense urban environment, without much regard for who was a combatant and who was not.

In 2001, when Black Hawk Down was released, I was more interested in things like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, which came out around the same time, but I’m glad I finally got to it; the movie is excellent. However, I want to talk not about the plot in general or the visual quality, but about literally two moments that were key for me personally, and to which all other narrative serves, in my view, merely as illustration.

The first moment is around the eighteenth minute. The Rangers are discussing a fact from a thin brochure they were given titled “All About Somalia”: if one local kills another, his clan must pay the clan of the deceased a hundred camels. To this, one of the soldiers notes that he couldn’t even afford one camel, and the locals must all be in debt now. And now, let’s listen to a lecture by Vladimir Zolotorev:

I am providing a link exactly to the moment where he explains how the civil war in Somalia was effectively stopped by a court decision: the combatants were quieted by their own clans because the relatives of the killers were tired of paying giant sums for other people’s debts.

Thus, the film brilliantly shows how expensive and pointlessly cruel the UN intervention was, and how little importance the self-proclaimed peacekeepers attached to the mechanism that actually stopped the war.

The second important moment is closer to the end of the movie, around 1:45. A Somali man is talking to a captured American pilot and explains: you took our hostages, we took you. The pilot replies: my government will not negotiate. OK, the Somali replies, then let’s negotiate between you and me, soldier to soldier. To this, the American replies that he has no decision-making power. The Somali huffs in response: you, apparently, are granted the right to kill, but not to negotiate, while for us, war is just another form of negotiation. Therefore, you have nothing to gain here.

Many thanks to Ridley Scott, who didn’t film a propaganda piece, but truly managed to show the difference between a dull and meaningless state military machine and an anarchic society. I especially recommend the film to those who repeatedly ask the same questions about how “Ancapistan” would defend itself from a state invasion.

Of course, Somalia is not Ancapistan—things are doing well with anarchy there, but significantly worse with capitalism, especially at the time shown in the movie. Nevertheless, even a pre-capitalist stateless society managed to teach a good lesson to the strongest superpower on the planet. States risk a lot when they try to impose their rules on anarchic orders, and if these orders are backed by a truly strong economy, then the outcome of a direct military confrontation between a state and Ancapistan can be considered predetermined.

The best scene in the movie

Risky behavior

Continuation of the discussion on the coronavirus. Beginning, continuation.

Bitarch’s Column

My recent article about the idea of bypassing house arrest (“self-isolation”) for healthy people while observing all possible safety measures sparked a huge wave of criticism. I’ll be honest — I have never received so much hate directed at me. Nor so much support. Subscribers were split roughly in half: about 60% on my side and 40% against, but they proved to be extremely uncompromising in their positions! In reality, this exposed a very important problem that I had been planning to write about for a long time. The disputes regarding the permissibility of quarantine measures provided a good opportunity for this.

We are talking about the assessment of any risky behavior that does not directly cause harm to anyone, but has some probability of unintentionally causing harm to third parties. This is far from just forced “self-isolation” against the spread of coronavirus (do you not notice the oxymoron here?!), but also driving a car at high speed, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, the use of certain psychotropic substances, the construction of certain facilities (gas stations, explosives warehouses, chemical and nuclear waste sites) near residential buildings, placing a level 4 biosafety laboratory in an apartment of a residential building, launching pyrotechnics near houses, and much more. If a stationary bandit imposes a ban on any such action, he creates a victimless crime.

Any person calling themselves a libertarian, even a minarchist, cannot support punishment for a victimless crime; otherwise, they have no right to call themselves a libertarian. Some say that, for example, complying with a ban by a stationary bandit against leaving one’s home is normal, as I could potentially be infectious without even knowing it, and consequently, I initiate aggressive violence against the people around me. But if we follow such logic, then even an openly gay person, walking down the street holding hands with their partner, initiates violence against religious conservatives who might have a heart attack with some probability. This can lead to absurdity, which is why libertarian philosophy clearly answers this question: no victim — no crime!

Nevertheless, the problem of risky behavior does not disappear. For some people, the values of freedom, progress, and economic development are more important, while for others, safety and risk minimization are paramount. There are scientific studies proving that the predisposition toward certain values is partially determined by genetics. People from these two categories will never be able to reach an agreement. This is, in principle, an insoluble problem.

All that remains is to seek ways of peaceful separation:

1) Freedom of association and private discrimination;

2) For more conservative people, territorial communities/jurisdictions (TCJs) will likely be suitable, while for those more tolerant of risk and diversity — extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions (ECJs).

In any case, I recommend moving from the habitual authoritarian two-step style of thinking “Crime — Punishment” to a three-step “Action – Counteraction – Agreements for the future.” Only when it becomes natural for you to think in terms of the equality of subjects will you be able to start feeling out your own approach to the problem of balancing freedom and security.

Law, or courts under ancap. A new video from Libertarian Band

This is not an April Fool’s joke: Libertarian Band has finally released the long-awaited video about courts under ancap. I consider it one of our most important works, and I hope the video goes viral at least as well as the old video about ancap itself.

The film crew are absolute legends for managing to produce content at a good pace despite the current situation. Throw some money their way; they’ve earned it.

While creating the script, I leaned heavily on Hayek as interpreted by Zolotorev and, to a lesser extent, Chetvernin, as well as David Friedman and some other sources. I hope I managed to combine these diverse concepts harmoniously and create a truly original product.

I look forward to your likes and comments under the video.

In what direction and by what methods will protection against hacker groups develop in the world of free cities / ECU?

After all, finding such villains is not enough; you also need to compel them to stop, and in most cases I can imagine, they will be reliably protected by their contracts.

анонимный вопрос

And in a world where there is a state monopoly on violence, and in a world where the enforcement of rights is handled by private parties, and even where, as discussed in a recent post, violent collections are extremely limited, the strategy for fighting hacking groups is generally the same: to increase the cost of the attack.

To jump on a trendy topic, let’s liken the activity of a hacking group to the spread of an epidemic. You can invest in individual protection, you can make the transmission of the infection more difficult, or you can find its source.

A hacking attack can cause irreparable harm immediately. For example, a hacker steals your private keys, and your bitcoins vanish to someone else’s address. A virus can also encrypt your disk and demand money for decryption. If you send the money, the data will either be decrypted or not, depending on the strain you were infected with. An attack can also simply cause noticeable inconvenience, as in the case of a DDoS attack, for instance. For the state, catching hackers is long and expensive, and the barrier to entry into the market for such attacks is not particularly high. For a private individual, finding a hacker and preparing a body of evidence would also be costly. Thus, it is unlikely that the cyber-epidemic situation in a stateless society would be fundamentally better.

Since the cost of catching a hacker is high and the probability of success is not very great, there is every reason to impose quite large fines, in addition to damages, on those unlucky few who are actually caught. You can read about the principles of calculating fines in “The Mechanics of Freedom,” in the recently published Chapter 43.

What happens if a hacker is caught, but nothing can be seized from them? For example, they claim they forgot the wallet key. There are no legal grounds to apply thermo-rectal cryptoanalysis, and besides, it provides no guarantee of a result, as the key may indeed be lost. In this case, the only option is to impose installment payments on them, and let them compensate as new legal earnings appear. Or, perhaps, they will decide to speed up the process by remembering the key.

For the end user, I would recommend passive protection methods and insurance. As for the actual catching of hackers, let insurance companies pay for it on a systemic basis if they deem it a market-efficient measure.

Responsibility for Conception

Recently, on a stream, Svetov rashly claimed that a woman has the right to dispose of her own body and get rid of an embryo that causes her discomfort, but in the case of a voluntary and conscious sexual act, doesn’t the responsibility for conception and for the child ending up in such a dependent position lie with the parents?

Margo

As I have already written on another occasion, a right is a claim that is tolerated. A prenatal child does not make claims, therefore “the rights of prenatal children” is a claim made by third parties, which the parents of such children either acknowledge or they do not. Each side can present its own arguments.

Here are examples of arguments from the attacking side:

  • abortion is murder
  • childbirth is beneficial for the body
  • childbirth is beneficial for demographics

And for comparison, here are examples of arguments from the defending side:

  • my body, my choice
  • the embryo violates the NAP
  • there is no money to live on
  • the marriage has fallen apart, so the “child” project is no longer relevant

Generally speaking, people tend to present similar arguments to parents whose child has already been born, but whom they, in the opinion of critics, are raising in an improper manner.

Svetov’s arguments boil down to the fact that in any case, the resolution of such conflicts cannot be entrusted to the state. But the state cannot even be trusted to take out the trash, so let’s immediately imagine that it has long been gone, while people’s claims toward each other regarding the treatment of children, born or unborn, remain, and they must be resolved in some way privately.

So, some outsider crosses a woman’s path and demands that she not do what she considers her right. She, naturally, asks how this concerns him at all. Any arguments along the lines of “you are responsible for the conception” are dismissed with the objection “yes, I am, but not to you.” Attempts at forceful coercion lead us one way or another to a picture of a legal proceeding, where the defendant has to prove why, specifically in the matter of abortions, his opinion as an outsider on what a woman should do with her own body is valid in any way.

The only argument against abortion that would sound convincing in a free market society is “if you kill the child, I won’t be able to buy it from you.” Only after such an answer to the question “what business is it of yours?” can the woman breathe, take her finger off the trigger, and begin to bargain. Ultimately, a transfer of parental rights occurs with the drafting of a contract for gestation services, and the rest is just a matter of technique. The woman trades the possibility of an immediate exit from pregnancy for compensation, and the moralist acquires guardianship duties over the child and that very responsibility for its further upbringing.

Of course, the moralist would be better off hiding his desire to buy a prenatal child at any cost, otherwise getting pregnant and crossing his path with a brochure for an abortion clinic would become a temptingly profitable business—no one cancelled the cobra effect. So it is more likely that various charitable organizations will mainly rely on non-material motivation, such as “do not commit a sin, give birth to God’s child and give it to be raised in the church of witnesses to the commandment Be Fruitful And Multiply.”

One way or another, anyone who hopes to talk a woman out of an abortion with words about responsibility to the child must be prepared, at the very least, to take that responsibility upon themselves, and ideally, also to compensate the woman for the costs associated with agreeing to their persuasion and condemning herself to several more months of pregnancy.

Of course, abortion is bad and all that blah-blah-blah, but we are not discussing anyone’s moral character here. Only responsibility for one’s decisions.

The clip has no direct relation to the topic of the post, but watch it anyway

How to build mutual aid in terms of justice and fairness under anarcho-capitalism?

Vladimir

Thanks to the influence of Mikhail Svetov, many perceive ancap as a stateless society for the most morose individualists—and contrast it with the bright world of contractual jurisdictions, territorial and extraterritorial, where people gather into communities, agreeing to live by common rules, and where the most sacred right of every member of such a community is the right to leave it.

But for a human being, it is actually quite uncomfortable to completely enclose oneself within the framework of a narrow community, perceiving the world beyond the fence as a habitat for cynocephali. Rarely does any community in the world outlive its founder. Even the ideologues of left-wing anarchism, who generally adhered to collectivist values, such as Kropotkin, noted that a bleak existence in a closed collective on the sidelines of life is absolutely not what the vast majority needs.

Therefore, for a person wishing to live in a just society, the most important thing is the ability to build it without falling into self-isolation. Does one have such opportunities under ancap? Let’s figure it out.

Only the most hardline communists or theocrats are willing to expect that humanity will entirely adhere to identical notions of justice; therefore, we can start from the premise that under ancap, these notions will vary among different people.

So, you have certain notions of justice, and you would like the arbitrator to adhere to them specifically in the event that you encounter conflicts, even if the other party to the conflict holds different views. To me, the most workable David Friedman model seems to be the one that assumes competition and natural selection between law enforcement agencies, between arbitration agencies, and between legal systems. Thus, the client only needs to ensure one small thing: that the law enforcement agency they approached for a specific conflict uses the services of a court that operates within a specific legal system that meets the client’s notions of justice.

What do you need for this? To conduct effective propaganda of the principles you follow. The more popular your ideas are, the easier it will be to insist that the court rely on them. In turn, in a free market, ideas will be most widespread in those areas of activity where their application is most convenient and provides the maximum economic gain. So, the less your ideas are detached from reality, the easier it will be for you to promote them.

Finally, if there are not many supporters of your notions of justice, you may prefer not to bother with a court, but to attract like-minded people for mutual aid. In doing so, you will earn a reputation as a community that stands firmly by its own. This has advantages: people will be afraid to touch you without a significant advantage in strength. But there are also disadvantages: people will be afraid to enter into contracts with you. Do you need such a reputation? Decide for yourself. There is no state under ancap that would treat everyone with a one-size-fits-all approach and make things equally inconvenient for everyone.

A small, cohesive community with its own notions of justice

How can a right of ownership (or any other absolute right) arise ONLY from voluntary contracts?

Either I will have to enter into a contract with every person on earth, or there will be some kind of external coercion, wouldn’t there?

katta

On February 13th, on the channel Anarchy Debates, we were discussing property rights with an-coms, so right now, while I’m on a roll, I’ll be happy to elaborate further on this topic.

A right is a claim that is tolerated.

Let’s consider the emergence of a certain right from scratch. There is a group, one of whose members puts forward a claim. For example, “I am taking this chair because I sat on it first.” If the others tolerate this claim, the next person can take any free chair, and from the repetition of similar claims, a legal tradition for this specific group is formed: the right of use belongs to the first claimant.

Suppose someone challenged this right and stated, for example: move over here, I want to sit next to Masha. Regular requests of this kind can supplement the legal tradition with a rule: by mutual consent, usage rights can be exchanged.

Finally, someone may present a claim in the following form: get off, or you’ll get beaten. If such claims are regularly satisfied, congratulations, the right of the strongest has appeared in this group.

The more someone’s claim makes you want to challenge it, the more unjust you consider it to be. But whether you will actually challenge it depends on several other factors. First, your self-interest: how great your costs are from the fact that an unjust claim is implemented. Second, your self-confidence: how high you estimate your chances of forcing the claimant to abandon the claim. Third, your stubbornness: how much cost you are willing to endure for the sake of challenging someone else’s unjust claim.

Thus, first, a right is not absolute: everyone has their own opinion about who possesses which rights. Second, explicit consent of all interested parties, i.e., the conclusion of a contract with them, is not necessary to establish a right. Their non-opposition is sufficient. A legal tradition of a society is formed from the repeated experience of declaring rights and the reaction to these declarations. The fact that a contract with the previous holder of these rights is the most weighty argument for asserting someone’s rights is a widespread legal tradition. The reason for the wide distribution of this specific tradition is that very many believe such a mechanism for asserting rights to be fair.

Nevertheless, you may well encounter a situation where a property right you acquired by contract, which was recognized in one society, will not be recognized in another. For example, you will encounter the fact that hashish, honestly purchased by you in one place, in another place is not only not considered your property, but is also a reason for you to be deprived of your right to freedom of movement. And if you believe that such collisions are impossible under ancap, I am forced to disappoint you. They are possible, although they are unlikely to be so glaring.

What do you mean—I have no right? But I bought this hashish honestly!

To what extent does the GPL license align with libertarian ethics, and how would things actually stand with open source under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

The GNU GPL (general public license) is an interesting example of how, within the framework of modern state copyright laws, it is difficult to permit the acquirer of an information product to do anything with it. Forbidding is a piece of cake, and then you can take that prohibition to court, and the state will help you with the enforcement of that prohibition. In fact, most prohibitions are built into the legislation by default.

The GPL reserves the right for the author to be called the author, while obliging the acquirer to disclose the source code of any products made based on code distributed under the GPL license, and to further distribute them under the same license—the so-called copyleft system. Otherwise, the acquirer of a product under the GPL license has completely free rein: they can resell the product, modify the code, sell the modified version under their own name, and so on.

How is the situation with code distributed under this license likely to change under ancap? Currently, the creator of the code has the right to insist through legal proceedings that an acquirer of their product who has modified the code must further distribute the resulting product under the same license. Under ancap, they would be able to demand compliance with the license in the same way, but they would no longer have any tools of pressure other than reputational ones. I do not think this will significantly affect established practices, as the values of GNU are quite compatible with libertarian ones, and reputational pressure is usually a sufficiently serious argument for IT companies.

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