Тег: Отзывы

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.

Stefan Molyneux. Practical Anarchy. Translation of Chapter 9, again on collective defense.

Chapter 9 concludes the first part of Stephan Molneux’s Practical Anarchy, which is dedicated to methodology; following this will be the second part on argumentation, a considerable portion of which has already been translated and published in draft form by volunteers. Therefore, in my spare time, I will refine the next six chapters slightly and will report back once they are done, to avoid making too many small updates.

While in the eighth chapter Molneux explains why collective defense against external invasion is more effective under anarchy than under a state, in the ninth he uses several historical examples to show what is wrong with the state’s so-called defense.

Unlike the translation of Eric Mack, which is funded by Alex Dvoretsky, and David Friedman, which is funded by Dima Kovalenko, a permanent sponsor for the translation of this particular book has not materialized. Bitarch was involved here, but he seems to have lost interest; I would be glad if someone else takes the initiative.

Eric Mack. Libertarianism. Translation of the chapter on Smith and justice.

Alex Dvoretsky chipped in another 6,000 rubles, which means a fresh chapter from Eric Mack is on its way, presenting a fairly original theory of justice by a certain David Schmidtz. I have just started a new and quite time-consuming job, so as is my habit, I am posting the text without notes for now; they will follow later—otherwise, I would have to delay publication by another day.

It was interesting to translate because the author under consideration is anything but a dogmatist (dogmatists are dry and boring in their meaningless uncompromisingness). In my own book, I limited the consideration of justice only to conflicts, stating that justice is the feeling of proportionality between the damage inflicted and the value of the object of conflict. Schmidtz, however, expands this concept, stating that I am speaking only of desert, whereas there are other irreducible elements of justice, such as reciprocity, equality, and need. And by building fair norms based on a single element, a person will most likely begin to contradict other elements of justice. In short, Schmidtz offers plenty to chew on.

Legal systems that differ greatly from ours. Translation of the chapter on Iceland during the saga period.

I read my first saga by mistake when I was about twelve. I was sure that this plump volume would contain tales of gods and heroes, something like the legends and myths of Ancient Greece. Everything turned out to be completely different and far more interesting, and it clearly influenced why ancap seems like a perfectly natural and reasonable system to me. David Friedman also relied heavily on the material of the sagas when constructing his proposals for a stateless system of law under capitalism. And finally, in his book about legal systems that differ from those we are used to, he also began specifically with the section on Iceland.

Therefore, when it became clear that simply translating this book as a commissioned work at a fixed rate didn’t work out, I decided to continue the translation using my traditional donation scheme, and to perk myself up, I grabbed a chapter out of order, and the most delicious one right away.

I will finish the chapter notes later; that’s already a bit tedious. In the meantime, I will be very glad for your money, by the volume of which I can judge how interested you are in this specific translation and how briskly I should tackle the next chapter.

On Boosty, I created a separate goal for this translation, but you are, of course, free to use all the other tools listed on the donations page. By the way, there is another innovation there: since we have developed all sorts of local tokenomics here in Montelibero, I will gladly accept donations in our own internal tokens.

Eric Mack. Libertarianism. Translation of the chapter on Loren Lomasky.

I am continuing to translate the bonus section of Eric Mack’s book Libertarianism. It contains a selection of views from relatively obscure contemporary theorists who are developing libertarian ideology in directions they find most convenient. The second bonus chapter refers to Loren Lomski’s essay People, Rights, and the Moral Community, and primarily describes exactly which rights and for exactly what reason people would find it appropriate to waive in the interests of others.

In his reasoning, Lomski introduces the curious concept of personal projects—essentially, certain strategic goals that largely define each person’s personality and that somehow connect people with one another. Everyone knows that another person also has a personal project, and this means that they can be given a small amount of respect for it, expressed at minimum as non-interference, and at best, as unburdening assistance.

I would say that these arguments are far more appealing than those of Steiner in the previous chapter, and I am glad that something useful can actually be gleaned from the book being translated, although, of course, the concentration of useful ideas is incomparable to that of Friedman in The Machinery of Freedom, it seems to me.

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Stéphane Molinier. Practical Anarchy. Translation of Chapter 8, on collective defense.

Alex Dvoretsky kindly sponsored the translation of another chapter by Eric Mack, but the donation caught me in the process of translating another chapter by Stephan Molinari, which I was crafting according to the dictates of my own soul (and in the hope that donations would follow post factum). So, I finished with Molinari first, and now I will switch to Mack.

In the chapter Collective Defense: An Example of Methodology, Molinari analyzes the third most popular question about ancap, after courts and roads: how ancaps will defend themselves against an attack by an evil neighboring state. The book was written before Putin loudly enough declared his claim to be the world’s number one villain, so Germany is used as the model villain instead of Russia, and the dictator there faces a difficult choice: whether to conquer statist Poland or ancap France. I would say that in his fantasies about how the defense problem is resolved, Molinari appears more overconfident than Friedman, who, at least, considers the problem serious, and even admits that for this specific need he would, grimacing and wincing, agree to feed the state.

Eric Mack, Libertarianism, starting to translate the bonus section

Alex Dvoretsky, my subscriber on boosty, donated another 6,000 rubles for the translation of a new portion of Eric Mackay’s essay Libertarianism. Thus, I have had the opportunity to work on the bonus online section of the book, which was not included in the original printed or pirated edition. I have translated the introduction to the section, where Mackay says that, you know, you might have gotten the impression that libertarianism got stuck in the seventies, but no, Nozick is not the only one, and Hayek is not the only one singing along; we have a whole wagonload of fresher thinkers, followed by a list of completely unknown names. And I have translated the chapter about a certain Gillell Steiner, who, instead of killing himself against a wall in childhood and thereby immediately entering the public domain, decided instead to publish his musings and enter it fifty years after his death. In short, before us is a pillar of so-called left-libertarianism, and translating his thoughts was not exactly pleasant for me, because who enjoys it when a cannibal clings to you and starts declaring, “look, I’m a libertarian here too.” Fortunately, although Eric Mackay calls him a profound thinker for some reason (or rather, thoughtful), he nonetheless criticizes him in such a way that this characterization begins to seem completely contrived.

Blocksize War

About a month ago, the chapter-by-chapter publication of the translation of Jonathan Beer’s book Blocksize War ended on the Hype Coin News and Bitcoin Translated channels. I read the translation as it was being released, and when it finished, I decided to layout the book in epub, as I had previously done with the book Inventing Bitcoin published there. I started the work but forgot to upload it to the cloud, and then I left for Albania, resulting in a long technical break. Better late than never, so I laid out the book upon my return, and now I am posting it.

The book describes the inner workings of the bitcoin community in detail and provides an understanding of how decision-making occurs when everything is decentralized. Moreover, it is a successful case study where a very difficult and fundamental conflict eventually led to a good, balanced solution where everyone made some concessions. Thus, the book will be interesting not only to tech geeks (I am not one of them), but also to those interested in the mechanisms of self-governance in complex systems, which is extremely important for us ancaps.

Upd.: I added a section about patrons to the preface, as it felt impolite toward the people who funded the translation. Sorry for forgetting it at first.

Eric Mack. Libertarianism. Translation of the chapter on Hayek’s views on social justice

I have processed another large donation and finished translating the fourth part of Eric Mack’s book “Libertarianism.” The chapter being posted is interesting because it is the first time Mack polemicizes with the discussed views of a particular author rather than simply transmitting them. Previously, there was nothing like “Locke is wrong here” or “Spencer is wrong there,” but he makes such assertions about Hayek. Apparently, this means he considers Hayek sufficiently his contemporary for it to make sense to argue with him.

Mack classifies Hayek’s argumentation against social justice, highlighting five arguments against it, and notes at the end that in his further reasoning, Hayek still departs from his own principles and argues that society does have the right to provide its members with a basic income, and that this is fair. In short, Nozick, in Mack’s presentation, appears far more consistent.

Strangely enough, this concludes the main positive exposition of the principles of libertarianism by Eric Mack. One more part will be devoted to the critique of libertarianism, and one bonus part contains a set of surnames completely unknown to me, who tweaked the ideology in their own key—I suspect, somewhere toward the left. I will deal with them starting from the next donation.

Stefan Molinieu. Practical Anarchy. Chapter 7

After an indecently long break, I am returning to the translation of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molinari. I have already begun to miss his style, so I decided to ignore the lack of donations and translated another chapter just because; you’ll have plenty of time to chip in later.

Chapter Seven continues the first part of the book dedicated to methodology — the author approaches the explanation of his subject quite thoroughly, yet quite vividly. In particular, here he shows where the main strength of the existing world order, in which everything is divided among states, lies — in the fact that we cannot imagine it being any other way, although if we were to start designing the best possible world order from scratch right now, it wouldn’t occur to anyone to voluntarily build all this crap. On the contrary, the solution we devised would likely resemble something anarchic — simply because these recipes work perfectly in private life. In short, give it a read; it is presented quite well and convincingly.

Next, I am switching back to the translation of Libertarianism by Eric Mack, because a donation of sufficient size has arrived for the translation of another chapter, from which we will learn what Hayek thought about economic justice.