Тег: Property

How do things stand with radio waves under ancap?

Under a state, practically no one ever jams signals from radio stations or telephone towers, because the perpetrator would be found instantly (this is a very simple task) and then forcibly compelled to pay fines, compensation, etc. (it is difficult to deny that this is fair).

Under ancap, however, such actions by this perpetrator would essentially not violate the NAP, would not infringe on someone else’s property, etc., which means, logically, they would not face punishment. But that is surely unfair.

Anonymous question (accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00047976 BTC)

As it happens, I have already answered a very similar question in great detail regarding how property rights to radio frequency bands are established under ancap, so first, please read that answer, and we will continue the discussion.

Having analyzed the principle of using radio frequency bands, I stated that in an economic sense, this is a scarce resource, and therefore it can be converted into property. Moreover, as you yourself note, the violation of property rights (unauthorized use of a reserved band) is quite easily recorded. In an ancap environment—that is, a developed market decentralized legal order—such disputes are easily taken to court. The grounds for filing a lawsuit are obvious: communication collisions lead to quite measurable losses, all logs are kept, so the damage can be calculated with very high precision.

Under the dominance of the state, it happens frequently that, for example, security forces jam communications in a certain area, and usually, these are states of a sufficiently authoritarian nature that they wouldn’t even bother with the issue of compensation for damages. Nevertheless, even under a state, there are precedents for the judicial protection of the right to use radio waves. For instance, a year ago, by a court decision in Sudan, the plaintiff’s access to mobile internet was restored, after the military junta had previously disconnected the entire country. Thus, if it is sometimes possible to restore property rights even under conditions of weak protection, then under ancap, where much more attention is paid to such things, similar problems would be extremely rare.

Lawyer Abdelazim Hassan guarantees: the right to use radio waves is respected even in Africa, let alone under ancap

Blockchain Registries, Continuation of the Discussion

Alexei Konashevich

Thank you for your comment. I bypassed the issues of the political arrangement of the system, and the presented concept is described in the language of the current system. But the architecture is much broader. I developed these protocols with fervent crypto-anarchists who saw the idea of a “filter as a jurisdiction” as their advantage. They are applied to self-organized communities, meaning that central governing bodies are not needed; delegative democracy can be abolished, for example, and direct e-voting can be implemented on the same blockchain.

One of the problems I pointed out is that it is mistaken to believe we can do without third parties. It’s just that right now the main third party is the state in the form of a registry holder. But the registry itself no longer needs to be “held.” Blockchain performs this function. All that remains is to replace registrar officials with a decentralized system of validators in various fields. But the most important thing is the resilience of this model to all kinds of oppression. In my scientific work, I describe how it is possible to resist a potential digital dictatorship.

At the blockchain level, a digital dictatorship will not be able to prevent anything. People can write anything into blockchains, whether it is legal or not—it doesn’t matter, it is simply a repository where all facts are recorded. As I explained, above the blockchains, we have a system of “filters,” meaning that what we consider legal goes into the general pool—into the current registry of property rights and civil status. But no one holds this database. Since the protocol is the same for everyone, anyone who wishes to look into the database (there may not be one general one, but many specialized ones: civil registry, land cadastre, etc.) downloads the bundle of blockchains and applies this protocol on top of them.

As long as we trust the authority, we use the protocol, apply it on top, and all of us, independently of each other, receive the same database locally on our PCs. Legitimatization occurs through the voluntary acceptance of the protocol. Elements of the protocol (smart laws and court decisions) are also recorded in the blockchain. But if the authority oversteps, this entire superstructure can be demolished, and the data in the blockchain will not be affected in any way (all facts, whether legal or not, are recorded there, including illegal decisions by officials and courts). And as a result of a reboot of power, a new image of justice and law can be applied to all those old records. If official Bob seized land from Alice, then after the overthrow of the authority, the new government simply wipes out the old database, creates new filters, and rescans the blockchains with the new filters. Under the new rules, Alice is restored to her rights by simply declaring the record of the seizure of the plot invalid.

Continuing the theme, here is a short video about CBDCs and central bank cryptocurrencies, which are not cryptocurrencies at all, but a complete lie.

https://youtu.be/bVFmpHaoBDA

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 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!

If animals do not possess agency, can they simply be killed without violating the NAP if they live on territory belonging to you—for example, in a zoo?

Harambe

It is clear that you are unlikely to be interested in the legitimacy of me killing a mosquito on my own territory, for example. Moreover, you would hardly notice if I killed a mosquito on someone else’s territory, unless I was explicitly told that it is a valuable mosquito in private ownership and must not be killed.

It is also not certain that you would be very interested in the legitimacy of killing various meat animals in slaughterhouses for the purpose of subsequent meat sale, although there are people who do contest it. Unfortunately for them: all this meat livestock lives only as long as its breeding is profitable. No profit—no livestock. The population of cows, pigs, and other rabbits will decrease sharply, and those excess to the capacity of the natural habitat will either starve to death, or people will have to carefully eat them without reproducing the existing herds. As soon as humanity manages to set up the production of synthetic meat that is cheaper and tastier than the natural kind, this exact scenario will happen: no one is interested in cleaning up manure when a steak is printed on a printer.

But, judging by your nickname, you are not talking about animals in general, but about rare ones, whose natural habitat is negligible, and who live almost exclusively in zoos, primarily so that people pay money for the right to look at them. These animals are luxury items, and, of course, no one will kill them without serious grounds. The accident with your namesake was a situation where everyone involved suffered: the child who was injured, the mother who experienced serious stress, the zoo, which, to avoid the costs associated with the possible death of the child, was forced to destroy a valuable animal, and finally, Harambe himself.

We do not know how soon zoos will stop being profitable because people will find it repulsive to look at animals in cages. When that happens, nature reserves will be the only places left for animals to live, and people themselves will visit them in cages, or some other way that does not violate the animals’ privacy. In general, the more resources a human is able to obtain without serious transformations of nature, the less their need for those very transformations. In a world where all of a human’s material needs are satisfied by a thought, practically the entire planet will be in the power of virgin nature. That is the kind of harmless animal we are.