The translation of the last two chapters of “Practical Anarchy” has been completed. One dealt with the issue of abortion and left a favorable impression on me because the author did not fantasize about a bright totalitarian future in which omnipotent libertarian PORs subject those performing abortions to total ostracism, forcing these terrible criminals to die in a ditch—but merely reminded us that government subsidization ensures the overproduction of whatever is subsidized. Surprisingly gentle for a conservative moral philosopher.

The final chapter, on the other hand, turned out not to be a standard conclusion at the end of the book, briefly summarizing what the reader has just spent several hours of their life on, but rather a couple of completely separate worldview essays. One is about how lucky Molynieu himself is to have been born in such a wonderful time, when he can burn people with the word in relative physical safety, and how boring it would be for him to live in a world of triumphant anarchy, where there is no longer any need to burn anyone. The second is about how wonderful it is when you clear your mind and realize that it is not you who should please the reader, but the reader who should please you, and then you can graciously choose not to ban them in the comments. In general, the text is very personal and sincere.

In the near future, I plan to format the text into an epub, proofreading various minor slips in the process, and, having refreshed this long-term project in my memory, provide a coherent review of the entire book rather than its individual chapters.

In recent days, I have experienced a considerable slump in energy, so I’ve accumulated a backlog of texts. The weather outside has noticeably improved now, and I hope to shorten this queue a bit. But first, I am publishing the final version of the translation of Chapter 27 of Stephan Molinari’s “Practical Anarchy,” simply because this work required less creative effort. The chapter is devoted to describing the system of incentives that a market stateless society is capable of creating to encourage good child-rearing and, accordingly, punishment for bad parenting.

The main flaw of the text, of course, is the complete omission of the fact that children and their parents share a common budget. The greater the financial sanctions against the parents, the less money can technically reach the child. At some point, the ubiquitous representative of the PRS must appear on the doorstep of a problematic parent and announce that since the parent cannot pay the increased insurance, they can, of course, waive the policy entirely, but then neither they nor their child will be allowed to set foot in any decent place (I won’t recount it; the logic is roughly the same as in Chapter 25 regarding stateless prisons). But the parent can also sign a waiver of parental rights, and lo and behold, we have a list of people wishing to acquire such rights here; would you like to review their offers? If you do not sell your rights today, their value will be lower tomorrow, because in all the ratings, your child will be considered more and more problematic. Think about it. After which, the PRS representative vanishes in a cloud of smoke with a demonic laugh.

Of course, the PRS will be financially interested in ensuring that various marginals go bankrupt paying increased rates on contracts with the PRS, and subsequently, by hook or by crook, hand over their children to well-bred and wealthy members of society, who will not create problems for those around them, but, more importantly, will be able to further financially motivate the PRS inspector to pay particularly close attention to a specific problematic family. The more people there are wishing to acquire a child at as early an age as possible, the higher the financial incentives for the PRS to introduce the strictest possible rules, the violation of which will trigger a chain ending in the financial collapse of the family and separation from the child.

How did it happen that Molinari prefers not to write about the extortion aimed at taking children away from parents deemed problematic? Because he is a conservative, he is categorically against state juvenile justice, and for him, the raising of children by the parents themselves is a value of very high order. But market logic couldn’t care less about the values of a specific Stephan Molinari.

The final edited translation of another chapter from Stephan Molinari’s book Practical Anarchy has been posted—about how a stateless society solves the problem of issuing reliable money. The text was written shortly before the appearance of Bitcoin, and therefore it does not concern how a stateless society can ensure reliable money despite the will of governments, but merely how it all could work in the absence of state opposition.

Nevertheless, the text is by no means useless. In essence, it describes the prospects of what the tokenomics of Montelibero could turn into if it were to achieve significant scale. We already have a fairly developed system of private monetary obligations of varying liquidity, but overall our monetary market is still too small for there to be economic sense in the emergence of complex clearing systems. Our private money largely takes the form of obligations backed by goods and services offered by the issuer, and the issuance represents a form of obtaining a loan to launch or maintain the production of these very goods and services. Accordingly, the more widely a service is demanded, the more liquid the monetary obligations issued for it become.

Molinari will soon be finished, and it is not a given that I will take on new large projects for translation. Firstly, people do not read long texts very often. For example, during the entire time a volunteer-translated draft of the chapter on money was on my site, no one complained that a page of text was simply missing from the middle. Secondly, if a person needs to tackle a text in a foreign language, they search for a translation less and less often, and more and more often trust the on-the-fly translation tools built into the browser. Yes, neural networks produce a mediocre semi-finished product, but for simple texts this is enough, and in the case of complex ones, the reader usually has a good understanding of the subject and understands what the author wanted to say, even based on a poor translation of individual difficult parts.

The final version of the translation of another chapter of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molinari is ready, this time concerning healthcare. In principle, the structure of the chapter is already quite familiar: an analysis of the current statist picture, followed by a description of how it would all look in a stateless market society. Unlike the situation with roads and similar infrastructure, here it was necessary to add a touch of socialism in the form of charity, without which purely commercial healthcare could present unsightly images of the poor dying by the fence. However, charity does not need the state, so this does not disrupt the coherence of the constructions.

Today’s chapter of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molinari is, unlike the previous one, long and thorough. Not surprisingly, as it is dedicated to a topic that has inspired many memes — roads under ancap.

First, the author explains that the best way to understand why on earth someone would suddenly want to pay money to build and maintain a road in a free market is to imagine yourself as a developer approaching investors. Then, he analyzes various typical scare tactics. And in conclusion, he delivers a finishing blow from a related field, which also pertains to public goods.

Today, a very short chapter from Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molignu has been translated. The chapter is titled Tank Control and quickly addresses a couple of topics: how the prevention of behavior potentially dangerous to neighbors on one’s own private property will be handled in a stateless society, and how gun control will work, given that people’s opinions on this subject are polar opposites—some believe that widespread gun ownership increases safety, others that it decreases it.

No mega-revelations or grounds for flame wars; the author is simply tying up loose ends, concluding the second part of the book.

The newly translated chapter of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molinieu is dedicated to the problem of collective folly. If a certain community, from the perspective of an outside observer, decides to go crazy and begin adhering to idiotic rules, who will stop it in an anarchic society?

The author’s argumentation proceeds from two directions.

First, he reasonably asks: why have we decided that this problem must be solved in any way at all? As long as a certain whim is voluntary, people tend to leave those who practice it alone.

Second, what if certain moral attitudes prevent people from leaving alone those who practice a certain voluntary whim? Here, the author shows that a proactive legal system, which interferes in the relations of third parties without a request from them, is simply expensive. And if the funding of this legal system is voluntary, a powerful economic incentive arises to evade this funding. At the start, people may strongly dislike drug addicts and, out of old statist habit, ganging up on them. Later, they will pick all the low-hanging fruit, realize that addicts are no longer lying in every alleyway, and are actually hard to find—and searching costs money—and they will calm down. A certain dynamic compromise will emerge: one set of eccentrics does not offend the eyes with their stoned bodies in public spaces, and another set of eccentrics does not offend the ears with scandals on this topic. And so it goes with any moral foundations.

Here, credit must be given to the author: the social theorist has triumphed over the moral philosopher within him—that is what life-giving economics does!

The translation of the new chapter of Practical Anarchy is ready. This chapter, with the long title Stateless Dictatorship: How a Free Society Prevents the Re-creation of the State, seemed a bit weak to me. It provides counterarguments to the well-known claim that in the course of free market competition, one protection agency will inevitably begin to dominate over others and form a new state—only this time without any checks and balances like the separation of powers, but simply as a business enterprise for robbing the natives, similar to one East India Company or another.

The weakness of Molynieu’s argumentation is that he exaggerates the inevitability of using centralized services—in an anarchic world, no less—and the possibility of horizontal coordination between multiple agencies in the pursuit of a single goal. Imagine threatening people in a world of bitcoin, drones, and 3D printing with such laughable measures as bank freezes, control over the distribution of weapons, and similar totalitarianism. It is clear that all these technologies, at the time the book was written, were either nonexistent or in their infancy, but if your forecasts collapse with just one decade of technical progress, how much are those forecasts worth? As for his hypothesis about the flawless coordination of independent economic entities around a strategic goal despite the prospect of immediate market gain (someone banned in one place will be willing to overpay in another)—that is the well-known problem of cartel agreements. They are unstable.

Molynieu should have focused on explaining specifically the decentralized mechanisms for countering attempts to re-create systems of organized robbery. In my book, they are mentioned quite briefly, because the book is not exactly about that. In general, it can be put this way: if anarchy is imposed from above, and a sign saying “Ust-Perduy District Court” is simply painted over with “Ust-Perduy PRA,” then nothing much may change under the sign compared to the dark times of etatism. However, if ancap evolved from below and the state truly withered away from obsolescence, then the very human qualities that killed the state will not allow a new one to grow. Ancap is not just a society without a state. It is a society with immunity to the state.

As previously indicated, my last remaining long-term translation project can no longer escape, and presented for your attention is the translation of Chapter 19 from Stephan Molneux’s book Practical Anarchy. The chapter is titled These Cages Are Only for Beasts. Previously, while describing his proposed system in which dispute resolution organizations (DROs) operate instead of modern law enforcement systems, Molneux emphasized how powerful an effect a coordinated active boycott can have on an individual. In this chapter, realizing that he went too far and created so much dread that totalitarian anarchy might seem to many a less preferable solution than existing state models, Molneux, conversely, explains that multiple checks and balances are also provided against DROs, and therefore they will not be able to act lawlessly and become a new edition of the state.

This chapter, Stateless Society and Violent Crime, had already been roughly translated by a volunteer, and I have now simply proofread the translation.

Here Molynieux, sparing no colors, continues to paint that totalitarian hell he is trying to sell us instead of ancap—with a global network of “dispute resolution organizations” (DROs) to which, however, he grants powers of total control over the smallest aspects of life. According to the author’s design, this should make it impossible for a person to exist without “cover,” as the intimidated DRO businesses would not dare sell even a damn hot dog to someone who finds themselves struck from the lists.

No bitcoins, total KYC, and other wonders of totalitarianism—this is what happens to otherwise decent people when they get fascinated by moral philosophy. Children, do not be like Molynieux. Moral philosophy corrupts, as does any pursuit of absolutes. If you feel an attraction to it—keep your hands above the blanket.

What guarantees against abuses by DROs does Molynieux offer? Here you go, this is everything he writes on the matter:

Ah yes, but what if an “outcast” has been treated unfairly and is being blackmailed by a DRO or a PCR?

Well, remember that anarchism is always a two-way negotiation. To attract people to sign a contract with your DRO or PCR, what checks and balances would you include in it to soothe their fears on this issue?

In other words, he believes that DROs will figure out for themselves what guarantees of their own integrity they could provide to attract clients—and this is in a situation where not being a DRO client means becoming a total marginal. Quite hypocritical, much like expecting states, with their monopoly on violence, to compete in the attractiveness of their laws to attract potential citizens—rather than striving to extract maximum money from citizens while providing minimum services.

Fortunately, the proposed model simply will not work as described. For example, here is the simplest way to bypass it. A person simply declares that they have created their own DRO, which provides insurance services personally to them—and to everyone else, they honestly offer contracts with prices so exorbitant that no one would ever insure with them. That’s it; we have a “non-outcast” with a zero-value contract, which they concluded with a zero-value firm, and which they honestly observe, since they indeed pay themselves for all insurance cases.

If Molynieux believes that such a system bypass should be suppressed by the large, venerable DROs—otherwise, various outlaws will exploit this bug, and they could not be distinguished from honest individuals by the formal criterion of having a DRO contract—then we arrive at the idea of business licensing, which is already state regulation. Well, fine, let’s call this regulation “guild-based”—does that make life any easier for people? Today the DRO guild decides who to let into its market and who not, and tomorrow every random person will start regulating entry into their own business plot.

If Molynieux agrees that self-service in the sphere of dispute resolution is legitimate, then this kills all his totalitarian pathos. A person who is de facto outside the insurance system would still be able to conduct ordinary economic activity, which means there is no point in the myriad of procedures devised to ensure not even a mouse slips past the system. “All the better,” countless hotels and diners would say. “Our business costs will decrease, and if some snobs want to insure themselves against every sneeze—be their guest; we choose risk and champagne.”

In short, one should not take any static model and give it a total character. People will seek ways to improve their own personal situation. The result at any given moment will be largely determined by the balance of profits and costs of one behavior or another. But it is extremely unlikely that at any point in time the result will resemble the DRO system as Molynieux describes it—it is based on too narrow a conception of who should be considered respectable, and therefore will inevitably be in conflict with numerous more libertine anarchists, to whom this system appears as a totalitarian hell.

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