Тег: Marketplace

How will the fire service, police, and ambulance service work under ancap?

Ancom-kun (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00030360 BTC)

The question is long, so I will break it into parts.

1) Will there be a single emergency number? Remembering a bunch of three-digit numbers is difficult, but it is also difficult to reach a consensus, given that there will likely be many mobile operators seeking only their own profit, and moreover, they will be limited very little in a stateless society.

Providing a simplified interface to facilitate access to a multitude of complex and diverse services is a high-demand task. On one hand, it is more convenient for users to remember one single most convenient method of communication—provided, of course, that the intermediary works quickly and reliably. On the other hand, it is also convenient for service providers for someone to take on the trouble of finding out all the necessary details from the client and issuing the assignment in a formalized form, without emotions and scandals. In this way, they save on the call center, and therefore it is more profitable for them to pay for their connection to an aggregator.

Most likely, there will also be several aggregators. One might hold, for example, the number 911. A second provides a mobile application in which placing an order is even more convenient than by phone; most of the information is entered from the screen, and only non-formalizable details are communicated by voice. A third, say, sells a bracelet with a single emergency button, or one that reacts automatically to spikes in heart rate and blood pressure. As for some other mechanisms for ordering services, it is difficult for me to even imagine them now; let the market offer and the people try.

2) What happens if the owner of a territory refuses access to rescuers? It is their territory, and entering it without consent would be a direct violation of the NAP.

In general, everything depends on who called the rescuers and why, without ensuring their access to the rescue object, and whether the contract provides for the rescuers’ obligation to ensure this access themselves.

2.1 For example, a person falls ill with a dangerous and severe disease, but their religious, obscurantist relatives recognize only folk healing methods and refuse to let a medical team into the house.

If a person needs medical assistance but third parties are holding them on their territory and preventing them from receiving help, then that person should call not only doctors but also the police. Or simply state the circumstances via the aforementioned single phone number, and then the aggregator will attract specialists to solve the described problem. Blood relation is not an indulgence for a criminal, and the fact that they are in their own home is not either. Holding a person against their will is kidnapping.

2.2 I came to a party with alcohol and drugs to have fun, but at the height of it, I—a thin and weak youth unable to protect myself—had the misfortune of being in one room with a drunk host who began to threaten me with a knife or a gun over some minor quarrel. Or the same thing, but instead of the host, one of the drunk guests is threatening me, and the host himself is passed out and by definition cannot give consent for police officers to enter.

It is the same here. A person has the right to call for help wherever they are, and the costs of ensuring access to the object of assistance can be compensated later. You simply pay the sobered-up host for a new door to replace the one that was broken down.

2.3 Something catches fire on a person’s territory, but they hope too much to extinguish the fire themselves and refuse to let firefighters in, despite the fact that they store flammable and/or explosive substances—meaning that if they do not trust the professionals, then besides their own house, all surrounding buildings belonging to other people will catch fire or blow up.

Since the firefighters have already arrived, it means their work has been paid for; all that remains is to let them do it. Even if their task is to save neighboring houses and the burning object is not their area of responsibility, they will be forced to extinguish the fire there as well to protect the object that is important to them. Why might they be stopped?

First, if it is a high-hazard facility, it is possible that it needs to be extinguished differently; a regular fire crew may not have the necessary tools, while the owner of the facility does. Then it is quite logical for them to politely ask the outside crew to stay away and ensure the surroundings do not catch fire, while a specialized team arrives. I am not technically proficient enough to describe the specifics, but everyone understands firefighting at the level of “do not put out live wiring with water”; there are surely other nuances.

Second, the owner of the burning object wants it to burn down completely to hide something important.

Third, they are overconfident and believe they can extinguish the fire themselves with less collateral damage to the object.

Who makes the decision on whether to intrude on the territory to extinguish the fire? The firefighters, of course. If they decide to intrude without the owner’s consent, the owner can subsequently sue them. If the owner interferes with their intrusion and as a result neighboring houses are damaged, their owners can sue the owner. If the firefighters do not dare to charge in with axes and hooks, then they are clear.


3) How will they deal with schoolchildren, drunk and mentally ill people, or simply ill-wishers making deliberately false calls, or simply uselessly occupying the line, saying stupid things and insulting the operator, if it is not always possible to track them down even now, and blocking numbers is too cruel since even they might need real help from rescuers? Would it be fair to dump all the costs on those who can be identified, or to block the ability to call from other regions?

It is unlikely that under ancap DDOS attacks will be fought any differently than they are now. If there is a possibility to find the attacker using available means—they are found and held accountable. If not, they simply increase the channel capacity and filter out false messages. Naturally, there will be attempts to charge the found culprits for maximally inflated costs, but a court is an adversarial procedure, so the amount of compensation will be determined individually in each specific case. If the court issues an absurdly large fine that incorporates losses from many attacks to which the found culprit was not involved, then this may cause dissatisfaction among people who learn about it. This carries the risk that attacks will only intensify, as the risk of being caught is quite small, so excessive severity is also disadvantageous for the companies suffering from such hooliganism.

A Question about Intellectual Property Law

For example, say I live in Ancapistan and I am a writer. I sign a contract with a publisher for (let’s say) a percentage of every book sold. The book is published. But competitors copy the book and sell it at a significantly lower price, because they don’t need to kick back a percentage to the writer. Does this mean that writers in Ancapistan will be left sucking wind?

The King of Sex and Tea Bags

Well, first of all, who am I to forbid anyone from sucking anything, as long as they aren’t aiming to suck my property? And secondly, I don’t understand why all the authors of questions about ancap are convinced that it’s some kind of fairy tale where a magic market arrives and solves any problem.

The market doesn’t solve all problems, only those for which there is a voluntary, solvent demand. A writer wishing to earn a living through their talent must understand that for this to happen, people must be found who are willing to voluntarily reward that talent with money. They can search for these people personally or hire intermediaries, but the wider the search, the more opportunities a devotee of the talent has to pay the writer in one form or another—and the more brilliant the talent, of course—the greater the profit.

I provide admirers of my talent with several diverse ways to reward me with money—from direct transfers in bits to various indirect routes, such as subscribing to a live channel, donations for a guaranteed quick answer to a question, or even indirect ones, like referral links to various useful services. I could earn more if it weren’t for the self-limitation of maintaining anonymity (for example, by selling the right to have dinner with me or hosting streams) and my reluctance to bother with complex business models (for example, selling merch). I could earn nothing at all if I refused donations, even when they are literally shoved into my hands.

Hard copies of texts in the form of paper books are a kind of merch today. What share of sales the merch producer allocates to the writer depends solely on the merch producer’s desire to donate to the writer. But even if they don’t pay the writer a single satoshi, they still contribute to the writer’s promotion, because that is the primary function of merch. And then the promoted writer can earn more from a single stream than they could have received from a print run of books.

P.S. Of course, an answer to a similar question has already been published in this channel, and the answer was also similar, so I apologize to the early readers of the channel for the repetition—but now they can choose which of the versions they liked more.

Look at how stylish this merch is, not like those pocketbooks of yours! Whoever decides to publish my quote book, do it at this level, and my heart will be glad!

On the difficulties of mutual understanding with communists

Imagine the following situation. You are the director of the “Ancapistan” insurance company, which governs a certain territory. I am the speaker for the “Ancomistan” commune (we have no leader, but I am usually entrusted with conducting meetings and going on diplomatic trips on behalf of the commune), which also owns a certain territory. We share a common water border on a lake. Ancapistan is on the right bank of the lake, and Ancomistan is on the left. Almost the entire coastline of Ancapistan, except for a single shipping port, belongs to one private individual who uses the water for his chemical plants. You supply us with fertilizers and complex machinery, and we supply you with agricultural products, timber, and metals.

Then, at one fine moment, the aforementioned private individual begins to delay the replacement of filters, and many toxic substances enter the water. Since we share a common lake, several dozen people in Ancomistan (the lake is our only external water resource, whereas you also have a river on your territory) drink water from this lake, and all of them perish. And here is where it gets interesting. In Ancomistan, negligence resulting in grave consequences is punished by 15-20 years of hard labor for the benefit of the commune or by death by hanging. In Ancapistan, it is punished only by compensating the victims for damages. I hold a meeting where I raise the question of how to assess the damages for compensation. 5% of the communards suggest taking money and placing it in the commune’s account at the bank for international trade, 10% suggest sending the private individual to 15-20 years of hard labor, and 85% suggest the gallows, given the cynicism of valuing lives in money. In the end, the commune issues a death sentence and instructs me to send an extradition request. You offer to compensate for the damages, but I show you the paper with the commune’s resolution and continue to insist on extradition. Upon receiving a refusal, I state that in this case, the commune will completely stop supplying resources to Ancapistan and stop buying from it. If we sever trade relations, Ancapistan will lose one of its markets for selling and buying resources. Besides Ancomistan, the only other raw material territories nearby are in Anprimistan. You can sell finished products to them, but due to their poverty, they will not buy your products at the high price we pay. Also, due to the higher complexity of resource extraction, they will not sell you resources at the low price Ancomistan provides.

Ancomistan itself will simply drill water wells and sign a trade contract with Transgumistan, which sells and buys products at almost the same price but is located slightly further away than Ancapistan. As a result, you will have an economic crisis, while our standard of living will practically remain unchanged. Question: will you extradite the private individual to Ancomistan and thereby violate the NAP regarding him, or will you lose one of your markets for buying and selling resources and find yourself in a deep crisis?

Ancom-kun (question accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00023397 BTC)

Thank you for this long and interesting story, which demonstrates the problems a territorial commune may face. Fortunately, Ancapistan is merely an insurance company. We insure lives, real estate, transport, risks of industrial disasters, and so on. The fact that an insured enterprise failed to change filters on time and we did not find out about it (although non-compliance with technical regulations by the insured party is grounds for terminating the contract or revising the premium size due to increased risk) means only one thing: our employee was negligent or was bribed by the insured enterprise. Naturally, this means we fire our agent and revise our own regulations to prevent this from happening again. We also refuse to pay insurance to the insured company and sue it for fraud—they did not perform the procedures required by the regulations but did not inform us, thereby saving on insurance premiums. If other clients approach us for insurance due to the lake pollution (for example, fishermen or travel agencies whose activities are affected), we will have to pay them premiums, after which we will file claims against the enterprise for reimbursement of our losses.

Additionally, it seems we insured the life of the enterprise owner. This contract remains in effect, and we are obliged to prevent attempts on his life within the limit of expenses agreed upon by the insurance premium. So, we either take him under protection or provide him with a comfortable shelter and give him the opportunity to safely negotiate with Ancomistan to settle the claims.

Furthermore, Ancomistan takes a principled stand and insists on executing the businessman who offended them, refusing all his offers of financial compensation, even the transfer of the plant to the commune’s ownership. Therefore, the businessman continues to stay in the shelter and manage the plant from there. When the time comes to renew the insurance contract, we face a dilemma: either refuse the renewal or set an exorbitant price, because we are effectively acting not as an insurer, but as a security company. In the end, we reach an agreement: he continues to pay the bills, and we continue to protect him.

After this, Ancomistan begins to blackmail our other clients, threatening them with the termination of contracts if we do not hand over the criminal. We realize that further protection is impractical and finally terminate the contract with him. The former client, not being a fool, immediately signs a contract with another security company operating in the middle of nowhere, and they organize his evacuation. Then, being physically several thousand kilometers away from the vengeful commune, he continues negotiations with them, because he does not wish to wake up one fine day with an ice pick in his head. But his negotiating position becomes stronger, as it is more difficult for the commune in this situation to pressure his new security company. Therefore, most likely, after some time, you will reach some compromise with him.

The question of your sanctions against my insurance company remains. We protected our client within the framework of the contract, and as for what “extradition” is, we don’t understand it at all, because in our language it is called “kidnapping.” Refusing to protect is one thing, but kidnapping a person and handing them over to some bandits for subsequent execution is something entirely different. Nevertheless, we bear part of the responsibility to the commune because we poorly monitored our agent who was tasked with overseeing the compliance of technical regulations for our client. We offer Ancomistan compensation, and since there is no question of direct guilt in this case, we will most likely reach an agreement. After this, I have a claim against our former employee, but that is a completely different story.

Someone here is asking for trouble…

Speculation during an emergency

A few days ago, the New York police arrested Baruch Feldheim, who had pre-emptively bought up 192,000 masks and 600,000 gloves (and many other goodies) to later sell them to medical professionals and ordinary citizens with a massive markup (around 700%).
How would anarcho-capitalism deal with such speculation during emergencies?
On one hand, he acted exclusively through market methods and sought to maximize profit; on the other, his actions could very well have cost someone their life.

Slava Mahorkin

So, imagine it is the era of ancap; everything is calm in New York, while there is some local epidemic in China. No one cares about it, no one is panic-buying masks and gloves, no one is closing borders, and at the hour destined by fate, the epidemic breaks out in New York. Suddenly, everyone rushes for PPE, instantly clearing out the small warehouse stocks, and collapse ensues. Later, of course, everything will resolve itself—supplies will be brought in from where there is no epidemic, production will be expanded, and so on. But at first, there will be chaos.

Now let’s consider another scenario. There is some local epidemic in China, no one cares about it, but the vigilant Baruch Feldheim is already buying up masks and gloves. Pharmacies face increased demand, order more, and just in case, raise prices by about ten percent. Blogs write about the price hikes, linking them to the distant Chinese epidemic, and now other anxious people start flocking to pharmacies, just in case. As a result of the increased demand, PPE production begins to increase long before the epidemic reaches the USA. Consequently, when it does happen, it is met fully prepared: output has increased, warehouses are full, and everyone who wanted to protect themselves can do so. Riding the wave of hype even before the arrival of the epidemic, Baruch Feldheim sells most of his stocks at double the price, making a good profit, and keeps the rest for personal use or to sell even higher if the occasion arises.

And finally, let’s consider a third scenario. There is some local epidemic in China, no one cares about it, but the vigilant Baruch Feldheim is already buying up masks and gloves. Pharmacies face increased demand, order more, and just in case, raise prices by about ten percent. Blogs write about the price hikes, linking them to the distant Chinese epidemic, and now other anxious people start flocking to pharmacies, just in case. Meanwhile, the epidemic in China is localized and fizzles out. The vigilant citizens find themselves sitting on a pile of junk, pharmacies are overstocked, PPE prices drop, and gradually the unlucky entrepreneurs sell off their illiquid remains, recording small losses or even breaking even if they manage to maneuver skillfully.

Speculation is an attempt to earn money by predicting the future. If the speculation succeeds, the future turns out better for both the speculator and those who bought from him. If it fails, it is the speculator’s problem. But if a society develops a habit of punishing the speculator for his success, then the second and third scenarios described above will be closed off to him. No one looks to the future; everyone looks warily at their neighbors, fearing they might provoke envy and get punched in the face.

Yesterday I wrote about Somalia and mentioned a lecture by Vladimir Zolotorev, where he talks about Somali law. Capitalism did not happen there precisely because any personal success is considered accidental luck, and its fruits must be shared with the clan. The same nonsense reigned in Melanesia and among North American Indians with their potlatch culture; the same thing happens in today’s USA, although, it would seem, Indians have long since stopped living on Manhattan.

Raider carrying away the loot

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

Market Anarchism and Libertarianism

Not long ago, I answered a question about the differences between various types of anarchists, where I provided more of an analytical framework to help sort out the details. And today, on the channel Antigovernment, a rather extensive article appeared, Market Anarchism and Libertarianism — Time to Unify Theories, which touches upon similar issues, but in much greater depth.

If things continue this way, the difference between the libertarian right and the libertarian left will continue to become increasingly blurred, because the very direction of the global economy, as shown in the article, facilitates such convergence. We are simply beginning to describe the exact same society as the desired result, only viewing it from different angles.

Perhaps Ancapistan is better built in fourth-world countries after all?

Well, let’s say, in Somalia, Micronesia, and other failed states, since it is easier there to achieve a more or less even balance of the potential for violence with relatively small resource expenditures (conventionally speaking, buying a Kalashnikov) due to the absence of an overwhelmingly powerful agent enforcing a monopoly on violence in that territory, as well as the culture of servility and economic structure that has formed around it?

L29Ah (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00013567btc)

I will remind the readers that the balance of the potential for violence is one of the criteria for the stability of a stateless society according to Hirschleifer. Other criteria are a stable community composition and the absence of a significant number of people pushed to the brink of survival. Indeed, some secluded tropical paradise where coconuts fall right at your feet and where peaceful, smiling natives with Kalashnikovs live can easily build an anarchic society. But it is not enough to have anarchy; what is desired specifically is anarcho-capitalism.

And anarcho-capitalism requires a bit more than the absence of a state. It requires capitalism, which means commodity-money relations. So our imaginary tropical paradise will need a full-fledged commodity economy integrated into global trade. But international trade requires international recognition, and that is a serious limitation.

While composing his Meganesian cycle, Aleksandr Rozov particularly emphasized that the stateless society in the Pacific Ocean is being built not by real natives, but by outsiders. In reality, they are full-fledged white people with the notions of property, freedom, and law appropriate for white people—they simply deny the state. They only pretend to be natives in order to legitimize their claims in the eyes of the international community and avoid becoming pariahs leading a miserable existence under economic sanctions.

In real life, a similar project of anarcho-colonialism was attempted by the Seasteading Institute, but it encountered numerous legislative and technological restrictions, and now, judging by the website, it has degenerated from a libertarian project into something smelling of eco-activism.

So it is hard to say what is easier: to ensure the transition to anarchy in a capitalist state, to ensure the transition to capitalism in a failed state, or to organize a “freedom landing” in some toy state in Oceania. One thing can be said for sure: the matter is not limited solely to the balance of the potential for violence.

A white man with an automatic rifle in a tropical paradise

When is the tragedy of the commons a good thing?

In the script for the video about the free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons, I emphasized how bad this is for users of a shared resource and what strategies have been developed to combat it. Now, I want to talk about a case where the tragedy of the commons is actually a good thing, and fighting it is bad.

The entire focus is on what exactly constitutes the shared resource. Imagine a rare resource such as consumer demand. Everyone has the opportunity to produce a certain good or service, sell it, and make a profit. While the market is empty, a few producers will make superprofits, and the thirst for gain will attract many other suppliers to this patch. Competition for the consumer’s attention quickly leads to a decrease in margins. To maintain profit, volumes must be increased, and this finally exhausts the shared resource. The consumer receives an enormous abundance of cheap goods, which they are ready to push in the greatest possible quantity, as long as the consumer is willing to buy. Here is a “buy one get one free” promotion, here is an installment plan, here is a sale, here is unlimited access for a fixed subscription—just buy it.

Admit it, if you put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, this phenomenon cannot help but be pleasing. But the producer, for whom this is a terrible tragedy of the commons, tries to fight it. As we know from the video, two strategies are possible here: privatization and cooperation.

Privatization means the appropriation of consumer demand in a certain industry by a specific producer—in other words, the creation of a monopoly. Other suppliers are forbidden from selling certain goods and services to consumers. That’s it; now there is no need to chase sales volumes, and superprofits can be earned with fairly modest investments in production. However, part of the profit will have to be invested in protection against competitors, and they are not idling, so these costs will tend to increase.

Cooperation means that anyone can satisfy consumer demand, but a number of restrictions are imposed upon it. This is usually expressed in strict industry standards that effectively secure the dominant position of those players who are ready to invest significant capital into production, while outsiders are filtered out. However, a lot of attention must be paid to controlling that producers do not cheat. In this regard, a recent case comes to mind with some European auto concern that faked data on the exhaust emissions of its engines to save money on complying with environmental standards. But the classic example is, of course, medieval guilds. The quality of their goods was high, production volume was low, and profits were magnificent. Only the black market eventually undermined their dominant position, and a tragedy of the commons occurred, which we know as the Industrial Revolution.

So, when you are told about the harm of competition and the benefits of cooperation, as well as the inevitability of natural monopolies, it is important to understand: these people are quite sincere and not fools at all. It’s just that you are a resource to them.

A Christmas market is a tragedy of the commons in all its glory: consumers are happy, they are lured in with all their might, and they look more than they buy

NAP and contract enforcement, a discussion

Yesterday’s post about whether violent actions to enforce payment for a completed contract violate the NAP, sparked a discussion, so I am returning to the topic.

As Ekaterina Schulmann loves to point out in her lectures, the world is extremely unfair, and societies where there is little trust, bear additional costs due to this, which exacerbates their poverty and further reduces trust—while trust cannot be restored by simple preaching. This observation applies not only to the citizens of a particular state in general, but also to other groups. In the context of the transition to ancap, we are most interested in the agorist society, those engaged in counter-economics, and therefore voluntarily or forcedly cut off from state services for ensuring contract compliance.

For example, any shadow entrepreneur can easily encounter a situation where they have incurred costs while fulfilling the contract terms, after which they are refused payment. In such a situation, you cannot not only file a lawsuit, but you cannot even bring the situation to public attention, because the activity is shadow, and publicity is even more disadvantageous than the losses from unpaid work. Without publicity, the institution of reputation does not work.

Take sex work in modern Russian society as an example. It is illegal, so in case of non-payment under a contract, these funds cannot be recovered through the court, and you cannot even draft a written contract with specified sanctions for non-payment, as it would be evidence. Therefore, even an individual entrepreneur usually has to cooperate with someone to whom she can turn for protection in such cases, so that they can achieve payment through force or the threat of its application. These are additional costs that society bears due to a lack of trust, suivante which allow such a business to remain stably profitable; without the purchase of contract enforcement, sex workers quickly become sex slaves.

In legal business, this manifests itself less often, but it is quite easy to imagine, for example, how a drunk debauchee is kicked out of a bar where he is unable to pay for the damage he caused (see also my old article on vigilantism). Here, a conditional mutual offset of damages is far more common, and not an invoice for payment post-factum, although variants are possible.

Nevertheless, it must be clearly understood that all cases where direct violence is practiced instead of civilized proceedings with installments, penalties, and seizure of property, etc., are precisely excesseses, and the more trust there is between people in society, the fewer such excesses.

In the post Libertarianism ex machina, I referred to Alexander Auzaan’s lecture, where the conditions necessary for the stable existence of a stateless society are discussed. He calls the balance of the potential for violence as the key condition. When a sex worker or a bar owner hires security, they level the balance of the potential for violence, countering the potential aggression of customers with the potential aggression of security. The second condition mentioned in the lecture is a stable community composition. This factor allows the transition from a classic prisoner’s dilemma to a repeated one, launches the institution of reputation, makes it possible to predict others’ actions—and gradually develops trust in society, even if the various additional measures proposed by Ekaterina Schulmann are not used—namely, joining various social organizations to build experience in peaceful, creative interaction (though with them the process is significantly accelerated).

The Internet allows such stable communities to form even without being tied to a specific compact territory: the transmission of information is extraterritorial, and communities are based precisely on the exchange of information. Transaction guarantees, through mechanisms of collateral, escrow, insurance, and other non-violent instruments—these are services that appear on modern markets at fairly early stages of their development, and immediately radically reduce both the level of costs from contract violations, and the level of potential violence necessary to operate in such a market.

So do not violate the NAP—it is not only unsightly, but also unprofitable, there are better tools.

Should one beat someone over the head with the NAP for non-payment under a fulfilled contract?

L29Ah (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00035466btc)

To start, I would like to recommend a recent column by Bitarch about contract enforcement. It provides several historical examples of how, in a free market, contract enforcement happened not through violence, but through the refusal to cooperate, and indicates that this is an inevitable consequence of a sufficiently balanced potential for violence in society — and ancap is presumably just such, otherwise a dominant aggressor would not be long in appearing. Therefore, relatively stable markets usually already possess all the necessary tools for peaceful conflict resolution — such as arbitration, rating systems, and sanctions.

Nevertheless, reputation works well only where it is easy to refuse cooperation by replacing a defaulting counterparty with their direct competitor, and where all other market participants also monitor such situations and strive to deal with counterparties who have a good reputation.

However, if you have a short planning horizon, and it is not very important to you what long-term negative consequences the person who did not pay for your work will face, but you would like to quickly receive the money under the contract and spend it on urgent needs — then it is important to have threats in reserve that are more serious than “I will no longer do business with you, and I will try to make sure everyone follows my example.” For example, the ability to shove a barrel into his liver, after which you offer to part with the car keys as collateral that the contract money will be paid tomorrow. Or, as you indicated in your question, simply beating him up.

At the same time, it is important to understand what exact reputation you are creating for yourself with such actions. If you are satisfied with a reputation as hot-tempered but forgiving (beat them up and forgave the debt) — well, go ahead, crack some knuckles, then write off the losses, and you’re even. If you prefer the reputation of a tough guy who isn’t to be trifled with, you can try beating them up first, and then declare that this was the interest on the debt, while the principal must be returned by a certain date, or new interest will be charged. But this is already a serious claim that you are capable of completely determining the rules of the game in this area (since you have de facto revised the terms of the contract unilaterally, which is no less of a blunder than a breach of contract by the party withholding payment), and many may find a reason to challenge such a claim, even if you were previously, in essence, irrelevant to them.

So I would recommend avoiding violence whenever possible and limiting yourself to threats of violence. Demonstrate to the contract violator your ability to cause them unacceptable damage, and then offer, as an alternative to such a miserable scenario, to revise the terms of the contract by providing the possibility of payment in installments — or, if that is clearer to you, putting them “on the clock.” And, again, it is better to get their consent to the new terms in an explicit form, because what use is it to you to let go of a person whose only desire is to get as far away as possible without actually paying the bills. It is far more profitable if they leave happy, understanding that they got off easy, that it is actually realistic to pay the debt under the new terms, that their business reputation will not suffer, and that they don’t need to run from anyone.

And in conclusion, if you are concerned specifically with the formal compliance of certain actions with the non-aggression principle, I will describe the conflict from that point of view.

You weren’t paid, you act in accordance with the clause of the contract regarding delays: usually, both a penalty and a specific arbitration body are specified there. The NAP is not violated.

You weren’t paid, you beat up the non-payer, after which you proposed to consider that the parties are even, and the beaten person agreed. There was a mutual violation of the NAP followed by a reconciliation of the parties.

You weren’t paid, you beat up the non-payer, after which you demanded the return of the debt — there was a violation of the NAP on your part, unless, of course, the beating was written into the contract as a disciplinary measure in case of payment delay or even as the payment itself (the classic description of labor relations known to us, ending with the words “you shouldn’t have chased after cheapness, priest”).

You weren’t paid, there is no hope for arbitration, you insist on a revision of the contract through threats, after which the new contract is fulfilled by the counterparty — there is no violation of the NAP (but if you overdid it, the situation may only become more complicated; this is a favorite plot of action movies, and they don’t make action movies about peaceful and cloudless market relations).

Contract settlement