I am settling my pre-New Year’s debt and posting the translation of another chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State. It is absolutely monstrous in size, but at the same time, in my opinion, quite interesting. There are plenty of fresh thoughts scattered throughout this chapter, but the key point is that leftists and rightists are not some kind of static groups, but simply the tactics of a particular community in relation to power. There is a left-wing tactic — to overthrow the existing power. And there is a right-wing one — to preserve the existing power. And the practitioners of these tactics constantly replace one another: former leftists, upon coming to power, become rightists.

The author logically does not count libertarians as either left or right, but in his opinion, they have their own cycle: from a startup to a bureaucratized corporation, and then to the departure of the most free-thinking employees to found a new startup. He provides no recipes for counter-cyclical policy in this chapter; we shall see what happens next.

The translation of another chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State is ready. While the previous chapter seemed overly long to me, oversaturated with facts and undersaturated with ideas, here the balance has more or less leveled out.

The author points out that since the world will soon stop revolving around the USA, it makes sense to prepare for this in advance, starting with the dissemination of new narratives and concepts that explain the state of affairs. After which he rolls out as many as four—here they are, from left to right, in the header.

Some of them, such as the frontier thesis, were more or less familiar to me; some considerations turned out to be quite new despite their simplicity—for example, the thesis that the future, in terms of the general level of centralization, will mirror the past in the coming years.

I simply cannot find the time to translate another chapter of Eric Mack’s book, and I really should, because a small donation came in for its translation. But The Network State is an urgent order, and I’m already struggling to maintain the agreed pace. So I feel slight pangs of guilt, but I’ll have to endure them for a while longer.

The translation of another chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State is ready. The translation process was very, very tedious. After all, this tradition of meticulously chewing over the material is somewhat foreign to me. There is too much factual detail and too few thoughts in the text; I would have packed such things into appendices, as that is where factual detail belongs.

One might assume the problem is that the facts here are American, and much of what is mentioned is not particularly close to us. But no, if he were to chew over Chinese or Russian material, it’s unlikely I would find it any more interesting.

In general, the summary of this chapter is fully exhausted by its title, but your tastes may differ from mine. After all, from time to time, I am also asked to tell specific historical anecdotes to support my thoughts, so I fully admit that many people need exactly such anecdotes to be convinced. There are some here.

The translation of the new chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State is complete. In it, he develops the theme touched upon in the previous chapter, showing how Leviathans interact using the example of modern society in the USA. To be honest, it wasn’t the most interesting chapter. In short, the author points out that while conflicts in American society were previously mainly between the right and the left, now, from the perspective of the well-known two-dimensional political compass metaphor, the conflict is between the top and the bottom, authoritarians and libertarians.

In principle, we observe roughly the same thing in our own community. Both right-wing and left-wing anarchists integrate easily into the people of Montellibero, but statists have a much harder time.

War is war, but the book won’t translate itself. I am posting the next chapter of The Network State: God, State, Network. In it, the author develops Hobbes’ definition of the Leviathan as an artificial subject standing above the human community, and points out that this metaphor actually fits not only the State, but also the artificial subject that preceded it, namely God, as well as the artificial subject that succeeds it, namely the Network.

The metaphor turned out to be concise, and the author develops this theme in quite some detail, describing in the tone of a naturalist how little leviathans crossbreed. In my opinion, the chapter turned out to be quite fresh and interesting; I love a skillful packaging of meanings.

I am posting the translation of another chapter of The Network State. In it, Balaji Srinivasan argues that if you look at history from the top down, it is a narrative dictated by power, allowing the establishment to maintain its power—but if you look from the bottom up, it is simply a dispassionate recording of facts from the past. And while there seems to be a temptation to focus entirely on the bottom-up approach, on the purely technological aspects of history—no, that is a path to political defeat. Anyone wishing to have an acceptable world around them must push their own historical narrative, and they cannot manage without a top-down approach.

Work on the translation, as you can see, has slowed down a bit. I hope this is temporary; once the festival is over, I will continue more briskly. By the way, a tiny print run of my own book on ancap will be sold on paper at the festival, which we decided to print as a trial.

I continue to grind away at the translation of Balaji Srinivasan’s book (soon I’ll even memorize that surname) The Network State.

In the new chapter, Microhistory and Macrohistory, the author moves along a narrow and dangerous path along the border of the heresy of scientism, which, as is known, is based on the approval of applying natural science methods to social sciences. So far, it seems the line hasn’t been crossed, but I am viewing all of this with great suspicion and hope to notice any methodological incorrectness in time.

For the first time during a book translation, the layout is taking up almost more of my time than the translation itself—all these endless external and internal links and such. I find it hard to imagine how this will look on paper, although it seems a print version is also planned for publication.

I am continuing the translation of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State. In the comments for the translation of the first part, the idea was mentioned to translate the fifth part next, which concerns the actual construction of the network state. It is tempting, but no: every sufficiently original work tends to introduce its own conceptual apparatus (this is also very evident in my book about ancap), and reading out of order proves to be more difficult without it.

Therefore, here is the beginning of the second part of the book, where the author presents his thoughts on the fact that history is an applied discipline, that there is no predestination in history, and that true communities should be created specifically on the basis of properly processed history. In the prologue, a brief outline of the entire second part is provided.

I still hope to occasionally mix the translation of the book with my own original posts, otherwise you will get completely bored and scatter. But the translations will be released quite frequently.

A year ago, the channel Russian Crypto Frontier began publishing a translation of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State. The enthusiasm lasted only for the first chapter, and even a piece of that translation is already unavailable. So, I am picking up the process, as I have done previously with the translation of Friedman’s Mechanics of Freedom and his Legal Systems Differing Significantly from Ours.

I will not host the original text here because the author promises to keep it on his own website dedicated to this book and provide updates as needed; therefore, I will limit myself to hosting the translation.

In brief, the book is a comprehensive guide to building one very specific type of extraterritorial contractual jurisdiction: a self-governing archipelago of territories located around the world, possessing diplomatic recognition from traditional territorial states—at least from some of such states.

The first chapter is essentially an extended introduction, which is entirely sufficient to understand whether one should continue reading.

Since the translation has a sponsor, I expect to be able to produce the text quite quickly. Unfortunately, my other ongoing translations do not have such sponsors, and the process is moving extremely slowly. I continue to hope that the situation can still improve somehow.