Тег: Report

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 57

I received a small donation for the translation of Friedman; I took the hint, so here is a fresh chapter.

I published Chapter 56 earlier, together with Chapter 34, since their themes are closely related. So those who wish to read in order can refresh their memory on the topic of national defense and then proceed to Chapter 57.

Original appropriation, a brief excursion into moral philosophy. The chapter is dedicated to answering the question of what grounds libertarians can even have for appropriating that which is not produced, specifically, land. Two approaches are explored: according to Brodie (if it cannot be done, but is very profitable, then it can, provided compensation is paid) and according to Locke (by mixing honey with tar, the owner of the honey claims rights to the entire barrel).

By mixing Locke’s argumentation with his own, the author concludes that the resulting product is barely edible, but in principle capable of serving as a libertarian basis for the appropriation of unproduced resources.

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 55.

The new chapter of The Machinery of Freedom, Default Rules, Economies of Scale, and the Stability Problem, is a more in-depth analysis of the possibility of a stateless society’s collapse compared to the first edition of the book. Forty years ago, the author’s mood was more overconfident, but later serious objections were raised against the proposed model, and he had to make a number of clarifications.

The key clarification was the idea that regardless of whether a state exists or not, the social contract is simply a peaceful agreement on which distribution of rights will not provoke people’s desire to violently change the status quo. This echoes, in some ways, my formulation that rights are claims that are tolerated. Then, Friedman adds the apparatus of Schelling points used in several previous chapters and shows that a stateless society is indeed susceptible to the danger of collapse during its formative stage, but if the rules become more or less settled, the resulting inertia will then provide the necessary stability.

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 54. Anarchy and Effective Law.

I present the translation of another chapter of The Machinery of Freedom, Anarchy and Effective Law. Here, Friedman recalls his description of the legal system in a free market and applies a standard economic efficiency analysis to it. The conclusion is that in the market for law, the benefit of law providers and its enforcers is not always precisely linked to the benefit of the clients of the respective agencies. In other words, ancap does not lead to one hundred percent justice for all, and the field of private law is also subject to market failures (which Friedman analyzes in detail in the previous chapter). Nevertheless, attempts to establish legal norms through political mechanisms are subject to similar failures to a much greater extent, so overall, the market still decides.

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 53. Market Failures: Arguments For and Against the State.

The translation of Friedman was recently encouraged by a donation, so here is another chapter of The Machinery of Freedom.

The most common argument in favor of the state from economists is the assertion that external coercion is useful for solving the problem of market failures. Some ancaps, such as Vladimir Zolotorev, simply deny the existence of the phenomenon itself in response, pointing out that if something is not being done, it means it wasn’t wanted that much. Friedman suggests not arguing with the economists, but simply redirecting their argument against the state, showing that it is precisely because of market failures that the state causes so much completely inevitable harm.

By the way, I was recommended a story by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge The Uncontrollables, written in 1985 under a serious influence of The Machinery of Freedom. It presents a textbook plot of “the state attacks Ancapistan.” In general, I enjoyed the author’s style. The story turned out to be part of a larger cycle; I will read it in full in my spare time.

Practical Anarchy, Chapter 5

I was recently encouraged by a small donation for the translation of Stephan Molneux, so I continued the editing, and now I am posting the final version of the fifth chapter, The Apocalypse Argument.

First, to get things started, the author analyzes the Apocalypse argument itself, which does not require much intellectual effort, but then the interesting part begins. If in the previous chapter the anarcho-capitalist skillfully explained why roads are not that important, now he sets a new bar and just as skillfully explains why anarchy is not that important. Truly, among none of the critics of ancap have I previously encountered a critique of ancap as convincing as that of the person who consistently preaches that very ancap, and this, if you think about it, is quite logical.

How Molneux will answer this critique himself, I do not yet know: the end of the chapter caught Scheherazade, and she ceased her permitted speeches. So send your donations for the translation of the next piece of text. There is no rough translation there, so I will be working from the source, but I have become quite adept, and this will not particularly slow me down now, so I will put your donations directly into my own pocket. Nothing can be done, coronacrisis, there is less money.

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 52

In Chapter 52, A Positive Conception of Rights, David Friedman, using the conceptual framework introduced in the previous chapter, develops the idea of Schelling points and claiming strategies from a model microsociety of two people to a society of arbitrary complexity.

In fact, Friedman introduces more extensively and with more justification the very definition of rights that I regularly use in my texts: rights are claims that are tolerated. It is not surprising that we found such a parallelism in thinking: if it hadn’t existed, I would hardly have undertaken to translate his book after reading literally a couple of chapters.

Stéphane Molinier, Practical Anarchy. Chapter 4.

I edited the fourth chapter of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molneux. The text is an impressive exercise in rhetoric. The author continues to motivate us to abandon the state in favor of anarchy using the following logical construct: the state is absolutely horrific, therefore, the absence of a state could be cool; if it turns out that coordination in a society without a state is possible in principle, then we should go for it. If this creates minor inconveniences, they can be tolerated, but the whole point is that no, it won’t, but on the contrary, it will only be better, and then it turns out that you endured the evil, ugly state just so that life would also be inconvenient—aren’t you idiots?

Mechanics of Freedom, Chapter 51

I continue to publish the translation of The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman.

In the chapter Bargaining in Anarchy, the author analyzes how, in a Hobbesian state of nature where there are no means to compel each other to abide by agreements, these very agreements can arise and be observed at all. In other words, how people exit the state of war of all against all without any state. To explain this, a rather curious concept from game theory is introduced: Schelling points. I don’t know about you, but for me, the material was completely new, so I sincerely enjoyed the process of editing the text.

Eric Mack. Libertarianism. Chapter on Hume.

Today on our program is the promised chapter from Eric Mack’s book “Libertarianism,” dedicated to the views of David Hume as another of the precursors of this ideology. Despite the fact that Hume, opposing Locke (who was discussed in the previous chapter), denied both the social contract and natural rights, he quite sensibly supplemented Locke’s views on social organization with his description of the morality that arises in humans as social animals. Hume also formulates the resulting principles of justice, which lead to mutually beneficial social cooperation.

Mechanics of Freedom, chapters 49-50

I am starting to post the translation of the fifth part, The Machinery of Freedom.

As usual, everything begins with a poetic epigraph. In it, Friedman ironizes Hobbes’ idea of a mythical state of nature, in which a war of all against all occurs, and only the state is capable of protecting little people from this primitive horror. As for me, I had to recall how sonnets are structured.

Chapter 49, The First Legal System. Friedman announces his new book about legal systems that differ greatly from ours. At the time, it was still being written; now it is finished, but I haven’t tackled its translation yet. He asserts that literally all (or almost all) current legal systems originate from the fairly simple-to-understand tradition of blood feud, and then demonstrates this with several examples.

Chapter 50, Anarcho-Capitalism: The Kindergarten Version. Here, Friedman points out how this original legal system, through some simple tweaking, turns into the basic model of law and order under ancap—which has about as much relation to real modern models of stateless law enforcement as Robinson Crusoe’s economy has to a real economy.

Next, I will briefly switch to the translation of Eric Mack. Very little has been collected for it so far, but I hope you will encourage me with your donations. Details are on the translation page.

And a small curiosity illustrating the popular opinion that ancaps are usually not strong in mathematics. As the work neared completion, I clearly saw that my statistics for translated chapters weren’t adding up; I recounted them, and it turned out there are slightly more chapters in total, and slightly fewer have been translated, than I had previously shown in the images. Everything flows…