Тег: Review

Libertarian Theory of War, a review

@SperryUNIVAC

Writing reviews of friends’ books has always been difficult for me, because on one hand there is the demand for objectivity, and on the other—sympathy for the person, which clouds the critic’s vision. Therefore, I usually avoid such a conflict of internal interests, but in this case, I decided to take it on (especially since the theme of war is generally close to me). I decided to do it, but for a long time, I struggled to find the right angle, for although the book is small, it took me quite a while to understand what it is actually about. During the reading process, I periodically felt outraged, then touched, then outraged again, and so on in a circle; things only started to make sense when I finally realized what it reminded me of. That is what I will talk about first.

Once, I read a book of similar size and also self-published called Warlordism 101, dedicated to an instrumental analysis of the warlord concept with various historical examples, from successful ones (Álvaro Obregón, Li Mi) to failures (Baron Ungern, Charles Taylor, Chen Jiongming, and others). One of the goals of its writing was to create a Reader that the Author would be afraid to meet (in his own words)—simply put, it is a small pocket guide on how to become a successful warlord based on historical examples. I haven’t become a warlord yet, but the book, it seems to me, turned out to be quite practical and useful.

The Libertarian Theory of War, however, stunned me upon first reading precisely with its relative uselessness, especially in those sections where the war itself is described. The author’s recommendations take up literally a couple of paragraphs and are formulated in the spirit of “do good, don’t do bad”—meaning, before an attack, one should conduct reconnaissance (specific recommendations on how, with what, etc., are unfortunately not provided); if you go to war, stock up on resources (an important but trivial thought), and so on. In short, from the perspective of the art of war, Sun Tzu is more useful, not to mention Clausewitz.

Mahan, Duhe, Ludendorff, Liddell Hart, Guderian, von Seeckt, Svechin, Mao Zedong, Boyd, Lind, and Warden: for those wishing to partake in the military wisdom of the 20th century (the 21st is still being processed), there is no shortage of non-fiction. Frankly speaking, it would be difficult to expect a modest volume to crack themes comparable to general staff textbooks, but nevertheless, I am used to understanding a book on the theory of war as something slightly different, and therefore I initially treated what was written with great skepticism.

So what, then, are we being offered, if not an exhaustive work on operational art, strategy, and other useful things? While thinking about this (and almost letting the review slide into a typical paragraph-by-paragraph dispute), I had an epiphany. The book, in general, is not about the art of war at all; that is presented in such modest strokes just so that it is there in principle. The author is far more interested in something else: the correlation of wars with libertarian philosophy—that is, reflecting on what goes on (and should go on) in the head of a libertarian who goes to war. Of course, libertarianism as such is not very compatible with classical warfare, where millions march under state flags, but the author immediately makes a pivot and declares war as any confrontation in which one side desperately wants to physically kill the other—permanently, so they don’t get back up. Thus, war immediately moves into the cozy plane of small scales and frantic individualism. One immediately envisions a kind of Wild West, where a farmer with a Winchester shoots back from the attic at a neighbor who decided that the farmer stole his cow. And it is clear that descriptions of what is happening in the heads of both actors in this fun are precisely what interest the author most. He wants to study how deadly conflicts will ignite, proceed, and end in a society of such atomic super-individualist rationalists, sitting on their farms with rifles and killdozers—that is, libertarians.

And here I almost started a paragraph-by-paragraph dispute in the spirit of “that’s not how people’s heads work!!”, but I stopped again because I was finally enlightened. Lem once had a series of sci-fi stories presented as reviews of non-existent books. On one hand, they were so tasty that it was terribly frustrating that the book itself couldn’t be read, but on the other—Lem masterfully opened and closed the topic, describing the plot twists and characters in such a way that there was hardly any need to read the fictional book itself. There is also a genre of in-world books found in various novels or even RPGs, which seriously expound concepts that are terribly important to the inhabitants of that world, but, of course, do not relate to the real world. They are usually composed to make the player’s or reader’s immersion deeper, so they can peek through such a window into the mechanics of relationships and philosophies of the depicted world.

The Libertarian Theory of War reminded me of exactly such a publication: a book arrived from some parallel reality that has no touch with ours, a world of those very farmers with rifles on their own land and without governments (not even large corporations), who need a moral (first and foremost!) guide to action: how to act in accordance with one’s faith if a neighbor stole a sheep, and a private court, misled, for some reason decided that the sheep is his. This is a serious question in a world of atomic rational super-individualists with rifles sitting on their farms: do I have the moral right to go to my neighbor and smash his house, threatening him with a weapon? and what will my neighbors say? and what if he gathers neighbors, lies to them about the sheep, and before I arrive, comes to shake my house? Of course, for us, these things are of about as much practical interest as listing the Sixteen Permitted Heresies, referring to the Daedric Princes in Oblivion, but for the inhabitants of such a hypothetical Libertarian Wild West, all these questions are extremely important.

And here the author can no longer be blamed for stupidity or lack of logic: in his head, as with any good writer, there is a high-quality and internally consistent picture of such a wonderful place, and for its inhabitants, he provides answers to all the above questions. When and how it is permissible for a libertarian to enter a war, why, how to end it, what to do if one has to fight non-libertarians (suddenly a state appears on the horizon, Achtung!) and so on and so forth. Of course, everything is laid out quite concisely, but in an elegant style, and almost all conceivable questions are touched upon briefly (i.e., within a couple of paragraphs), up to potential PTSD and the realization that war changes people. Generally speaking, all thinking people of East Slavic origin have been affected, one way or another, by the sudden war in Ukraine, which, to be honest, has been going on for far too long. And everyone has somehow reflected on their attitude not only toward it, but toward wars in general, even if they hadn’t thought about war before. This book represents an interesting philosophical experience of libertarian reflection on hypothetical wars of libertarians—here, again, the author speaks about what is closer to him and what he feels more deeply.

Who will find this useful? Well, definitely not hard-core materialists who do not believe in a libertarian paradise, nor those looking for specific recommendations like “storming a forest belt under conditions of enemy drone countermeasures” or “features of the strategy of highly decentralized armies.” Escapists will definitely like the author’s world, that’s a fact, and we will all derive practical benefit from this work when the specified world arrives. And the last part of the book will definitely prove useful, where a quite realistic case is considered: states have started to fight (or a war has started inside a state)—what would be ethically justified to do to preserve both one’s libertarian faith and one’s skin in such a situation, is it permissible to side with someone, and if so, to what extent, how, and why, or is it ethically justified to simply get away from this mess as far as possible? In principle, considering that, as already mentioned, the war has affected quite a lot of people, among whom was clearly the target audience of the book, discussing the ethical issues of a libertarian’s behavior in a war between states is clearly not useless. Let us note that at the beginning, the author makes references to his first work—an introduction to libertarianism—and clearly indicates the target audience of the book (essentially, it is a second volume continuing the theme), so from this point of view, everything is correct. If you are not in that audience, there is no point in complaining about the text.

Ah, and in conclusion, one cannot fail to mention the author’s most original feature. Emotions, which people are guided by (and which are by definition irrational), he considers as imaginary entities, so-called spirits, by which people can be possessed, and which are quite real from the point of view of physical influence on the world and peculiar desires. That is, one can say that a person killed someone out of hatred and revenge for the sad fate of a sheep stolen from him, or one can say that he did it because he was possessed by the spirit of the sheep craving vengeance, and this spirit will not rest until the offender’s blood is spilled. All this is laid out, again, elegantly and poetically; the question arises—how justified is it to introduce extra entities? On one hand, it seems we haven’t said anything new; on the other—the irrationality of human behavior, which leads to quite material consequences, is emphasized, and a uniform view of the entire spectrum of such behavior is provided. So, I hope the metaphor takes root; it is quite unconventional.

Libertarian Theory of War, Woven from Contradictions

Alex Rozov, a left-wing anarchist and author of the transutopia cycle, has read my “Libertarian Theory of War” and shared his impressions on his channel. I felt it necessary to add the word “left-wing” to his description so that the reader would better understand where he gets such a strange conception of ancap:

Ancap society is based on the non-aggression principle. Every member of society recognizes the established distribution of property and promises not to seize by force what is recognized as belonging to someone else.

It is quite characteristic for leftists to speak not of the ways of acquiring property, but of the distribution of property; not of methods (exchange), but of results (inequality), and so on. However, it would be a sin for me to be indignant about someone else’s inclination toward such holistic constructs, since I myself operate with the concept of collective speculative subjects, aka spirits, in my book.

I view war for resources within my classification as one of three causes of war, and I separately indicate that for libertarians, this type of war is marginal: although the forceful acquisition of resources may be legitimate (in the case of restitution), it is usually too expensive to make sense. Alex, however, interprets the text as if it were entirely about the seizure of resources, while everything else is apparently insignificant lyrical digressions—some kind of war for freedom, what are you even talking about. I don’t know if the entire pathos of the book completely passed him by, if this part of the reasoning is too banal for him and therefore does not require separate analysis, or if it is simply uncharacteristic for Alex to speak of ethics where it is not verified by economics. To some extent, the epigraph to the book is precisely my polemic with such a purely economic approach to conflicts.

Upon reaching section 2.3.3 (I hope he progressed further afterward), Alex saw a logical dead end: war is expensive, a temptation may arise to forcefully extract resources from uninvolved parties, and that is lawlessness, so that’s the end of your ancap. That is essentially where his analysis of the book ends.

Meanwhile, the text explicitly states that even if such requisitions are accompanied by promises to compensate everything, the person subjected to the requisitions still has the full right to resist this by any means, up to lethal ones. In other words, he may consider this the beginning of a war against him, where he is the defending party, and you can’t argue with him, damn it, because he is right; therefore, try to remain within the framework of voluntary transactions with outsiders even during wartime, and do not make new enemies for yourself. Perhaps I should have articulated this point more clearly. Perhaps Alex was simply looking for something to nitpick. If you think the text should be adjusted, please suggest options.

Tyan, could I also get a review of Grad, Snail, and Picnic?

I used the search and found a review of Rainbow. I’ve never seen it from such an angle! It turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant, intellectually stimulating stereoscopic effect

Semarg (Question accompanied by a donation of 0.1 dash)

At this rate, sooner or later I will become acquainted with practically the entire legacy of the Strugatsky brothers. To start with, I read “Roadside Picnic,” and now I will share my thoughts on it, and in time I will get to the other two commissioned novellas.

What invariably pleases me about the Strugatskys is that their world is quite psychologically authentic, and since economics largely continues psychology, it turns out to be economically consistent as well. For example, it is quite accurately noted that no matter how much you lower the iron curtain, you cannot completely isolate any Zone; it will inevitably become part of world trade, bringing prosperity to both itself and the outside world, while the paranoiacs from the secret services will have to accept it.

But, of course, the Zone is not only a metaphor for a frightening and incomprehensible foreign land, but simultaneously a metaphor, let’s say, for the sphere of scientific knowledge. In “Hard to Be a God,” the Strugatskys showed science as a box. A scientist puts his hand in and pulls out some random thing. He thinks he will use it this way, but it turns out that others start using it that way. It is similar in “Picnic.” A stalker drags some mysterious loot out of the zone, which is then adapted for use in unpredictable ways. The fact that the result will be unpredictable is no reason not to haul it, because the risk pays off.

And since we’ve started talking about science, I cannot fail to note that the only representative of the USSR in the book is engaged, conventionally speaking, in studying the influence of the philological characteristics of the word “concrete” on the drilling properties of a gaze. All the conversion of the Zone’s wonders into technological wonders is left to greedy capitalists. The stalkers act as sorts of startups that skim the cream off new markets, but gradually give way to fat corporations that rely not on courage and art, but on capital investments and methodicalness. As usual, the vast majority of startups go bust.

In conclusion, I will note that in the world of “Roadside Picnic,” humanity was terribly lucky. The most important thing about the aliens’ visit to Earth was the very fact of the visit. After this, humanity simply had no choice but to stop closing its eyes and pretending that it was alone in the universe. Our humanity also most likely encountered an alien probe in 2017, but preferred to pretend that nothing special happened, because acknowledging the very fact of contact with an extraterrestrial civilization is psychologically unbearable. I am talking about the visit to the Solar System by an object named ‘Oumuamua and its performance of non-gravitational maneuvers in the system. So we live as if nothing happened, as if there had been no Visit.

Pilman’s Radiant

Monday begins on Saturday

There was a lot of commentary about the Strugatsky brothers, especially on Facebook, so I think I’ll write about one more of their books that I’ve managed to read since my first review. I am talking about the novella “Monday Begins on Saturday,” which is cult status for junior school-age research fellows.

The book uses a simple allegory of magic as a science. This livens up the plot, allows the inclusion of various folkloric elements, and simultaneously gives the authors an opportunity to safely offer mild criticism of the Soviet system of research institutes (NII). And some things in this criticism seemed quite curious and even symptomatic to me.

Who are the negative characters in the book? Almost exclusively those wizards who try to implement the achievements of magic into the national economy. They do it clumsily because they are all untalented cynics with hairy ears, intent on riding and endlessly milking a single topic, and so on. And who are the positive characters? Those who investigate deep fundamental questions, such as the connection between the piercing properties of a gaze and the philological characteristics of the word “concrete,” but categorically refuse to defile themselves by introducing advanced concrete-drilling techniques into production. And this is the whole essence of Soviet science, which does not know the word “startup” and believes that science is a way to satisfy a scientist’s personal curiosity at the expense of the state—a phrase I have heard repeatedly from scientists, though I don’t know who the author was.

As a result, there is nothing surprising about the fact that in the world of “Monday,” magic is completely absent from the daily lives of ordinary people. It is something that sages in ivory tower research institutes engage in. They might practice it a little at home, but ordinary citizens receive nothing from magic except costs, resulting from accidents during tests and the sheer sloppiness of the wizards.

Furthermore, wizards absolutely loathe the press. And why wouldn’t they? The press tries to inform people of at least some benefit that magic brings, and as a result, deals mainly with opportunistic implementers while neglecting the philological characteristics of the word “concrete.” Naturally, such feedback cannot help but offend a true wizard.

What, under ancap, will there be only applied magic? No fundamental magic at all? Of course there will be, and plenty of it. Those wishing to satisfy their personal curiosity will receive grants for satisfying personal curiosity from funds established by admirers of others’ curiosity, or directly. That is more honest. That means less meaningless bureaucracy, which all self-respecting sorcerers dislike so much. And that way, there will be less fussing over ear depilation.

This post was conceived on Saturday and published on Monday, all according to the canon.

The positive hero flew in to steal a valuable device—a constant leitmotif for the Strugatskys, which I already mentioned in my review of Distant Rainbow

Fall of the Black Hawk

Yesterday, after I finished editing the article on the inefficiency of violence, I sat down to watch the movie “Black Hawk Down,” which I came across while following links related to the article. The film focuses on the episode mentioned in the article: how the US was forced to leave Somalia after the failure of what they considered a peacekeeping operation—losing nearly two dozen special forces operators in a single day and killing around a thousand locals in a dense urban environment, without much regard for who was a combatant and who was not.

In 2001, when Black Hawk Down was released, I was more interested in things like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, which came out around the same time, but I’m glad I finally got to it; the movie is excellent. However, I want to talk not about the plot in general or the visual quality, but about literally two moments that were key for me personally, and to which all other narrative serves, in my view, merely as illustration.

The first moment is around the eighteenth minute. The Rangers are discussing a fact from a thin brochure they were given titled “All About Somalia”: if one local kills another, his clan must pay the clan of the deceased a hundred camels. To this, one of the soldiers notes that he couldn’t even afford one camel, and the locals must all be in debt now. And now, let’s listen to a lecture by Vladimir Zolotorev:

I am providing a link exactly to the moment where he explains how the civil war in Somalia was effectively stopped by a court decision: the combatants were quieted by their own clans because the relatives of the killers were tired of paying giant sums for other people’s debts.

Thus, the film brilliantly shows how expensive and pointlessly cruel the UN intervention was, and how little importance the self-proclaimed peacekeepers attached to the mechanism that actually stopped the war.

The second important moment is closer to the end of the movie, around 1:45. A Somali man is talking to a captured American pilot and explains: you took our hostages, we took you. The pilot replies: my government will not negotiate. OK, the Somali replies, then let’s negotiate between you and me, soldier to soldier. To this, the American replies that he has no decision-making power. The Somali huffs in response: you, apparently, are granted the right to kill, but not to negotiate, while for us, war is just another form of negotiation. Therefore, you have nothing to gain here.

Many thanks to Ridley Scott, who didn’t film a propaganda piece, but truly managed to show the difference between a dull and meaningless state military machine and an anarchic society. I especially recommend the film to those who repeatedly ask the same questions about how “Ancapistan” would defend itself from a state invasion.

Of course, Somalia is not Ancapistan—things are doing well with anarchy there, but significantly worse with capitalism, especially at the time shown in the movie. Nevertheless, even a pre-capitalist stateless society managed to teach a good lesson to the strongest superpower on the planet. States risk a lot when they try to impose their rules on anarchic orders, and if these orders are backed by a truly strong economy, then the outcome of a direct military confrontation between a state and Ancapistan can be considered predetermined.

The best scene in the movie

They didn’t ask for some promo for nothing

I finished listening to Yuneman’s stream, which was announced recently. Impressions of the speakers:

  • Vatoadmin. The most energetic of the four; as a humanities person, his stories are, of course, closer and more understandable to me. He believes the world will emerge from the crisis renewed, having discarded some of today’s inefficient practices.
  • Bazhenov. The most high-brow economist among the four interlocutors, and is perceived as a bit of a snob because of it. He believes that nothing will change much; we will recover and carry on as before.
  • Zubov. Had the most terrible connection, due to which I couldn’t make out everything he was saying. Being more of a financier than an economist, he is skeptical about the post-crisis future, because massive government interventions will, naturally, significantly worsen the structure of the global economy.
  • Yuneman. The least of an economist among those gathered, but he conducted the conversation quite sensibly and structurally. He believes that the pandemic should have a long-term impact on our social practices, and this will likely be its main consequence.

A considerable and least interesting part of the discussion was devoted to the analysis of current support measures for citizens being implemented in various countries. It was full of banalites already worn out a thousand times elsewhere. Well, except that they didn’t stoop to reciting the plight of the Pechenegs.

To hell with the Pechenegs, but the word “bitcoin” was also not mentioned once, which, in my view, indicates too narrow a perspective on the situation. Bitcoin emerged as a reaction to the pumping of the economy with fiat in 2008, and in the years since, it has developed and strengthened significantly. Now, that pumping looks like playing in a sandbox, and I would be truly interested to hear an economic analysis of how the coexistence of a printing press going “brrrr” and ready-to-use deflationary money will affect the global economy. If economists believe that this influence will be negligible, again, I would like to understand why.

The prospects of some regimes simply not surviving the crisis were mentioned at the very end and only briefly, but they can be understood here: let political scientists discuss such topics.

I don’t watch streams very often, but I don’t feel that this specific one was a waste of time; the material was dense and the delivery was of decent quality.

Theory of a Free Society

I read the essay “Theory of a Free Society,” which was recently released by Vitaly Tizun. I was pleased that for a relatively small volume—only 80 thousand characters—the text is very substantial.

Vitaly dedicates the first part to a critique of the state, demonstrating the incompatibility of this institution with the needs of the individual, regardless of the form the state takes.

The second part briefly describes the principles of organizing a free stateless society. I particularly liked the clarity of the section explaining the interconnectedness of subjects—there is a fairly original argument, which is encountered quite rarely, that many of the perceived weak points of ancap are linked to viewing a single transaction in a vacuum, while in reality, there is an entire network of contractual interactions. It is a pity that the section on the institution of reputation does not address the factor of the cost of applying reputational sanctions. Propaganda is propaganda, but it is also useful to analyze the potential weak points of ancap; otherwise, after reading the text, one is left wondering: why is it that such a wonderful social system, which is completely natural, fits everyone perfectly, and is capable of self-maintenance, nonetheless does not dominate anywhere to this day.

The third part explains which factors will contribute to the stability of ancap and prevent the return of the state, whether through market mechanisms or by means of military seizure. The section on the doctrine of deterrence was clearly strongly influenced by the ideas of Bitarch, and you have already read something similar from me.

The fourth part outlines the main strategies for achieving ancap, and here as well, much echoes the videos of Libertarian Band.

Overall, the work is very solid, and I readily recommend it to those who want to get a fairly confident understanding of ancap in a very modest amount of time.

Download in epub fb2 mobi pdf

From Dictatorship to Democracy. Overview.

Commissioned by the Tea Club

Gene Sharp’s essay “From Dictatorship to Democracy” could just as easily have been titled “From the State to Ancap” or “From Bad to Good.” In fact, it is simply a collection of reflections on how to change a political regime if you dislike it, feel morally justified, and assume public support for your position.

The central idea of the book is that the most reliable strategy for this is political disobedience, also known as nonviolent resistance. A consistent denial of the state’s legitimacy can indeed make it illegitimate as this denial becomes increasingly stylish, fashionable, and youthful.

The weak point of the approach proposed by Sharp is that everything must begin with strategic planning, and then the resistance develops its activities strictly according to the plan, centrally deciding which of the 198 methods to choose for today and which for tomorrow. Thus, the best tactic for a dictator is to sow discord within the opposition, letting them fight among themselves to determine under whose banners they should unite in the war against the bloody regime.

Decentralized resistance, according to Sharp, is far less effective, and this is bad news for ancaps wishing to act through political methods.

On the other hand, Sharp explicitly points out that one should not just fight a dictatorship, but already at the stage of resistance plant the seeds of a new society that will already be legitimate by the time the regime falls, and this fall will merely provide them with legality. Thus, if the ultimate goal of the resistance is to adopt the construction of a stateless society with decentralized law and a free, unregulated market, then the idea of building the resistance on these very same principles seems damn logical; Sharp simply did not consider such a goal: his political fantasies did not extend beyond the Swiss cantons.

The least useful part of the book turns out to be the most famous—namely, the appendix listing the notorious 198 methods of nonviolent resistance. The book was written in 1993; in 27 years, the toolkit has changed significantly, and those methods that are still relevant are already more or less well-known. So, I can understand Leonid Volkov, the chief of staff of the Russian resistance, stating that the book is weak, but I do not accept his reproaches that it is harmful. It is definitely worth reading. As for using it in practice—do so with great caution. Especially since, since the book was written, dictatorships have increasingly mutated into electoral autocracies, and the set of methods for abolishing them will be very different.

Among the book’s strengths is its modest size; if one wishes, the essay can be finished in one evening.

The Road to Serfdom. Review

Commissioned by the Tea Club

Many reviews and critiques have been written about Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” where the book is placed within its historical context, its position among Hayek’s publications is identified, and a brief analysis of its ideas is provided. As much as I would like to avoid all this academicism, it is impossible, as the entire book is a political pamphlet on the pressing issues of the day, and the only reason the work remains relevant to this day is that ideas do not die—and this applies not only to Hayek’s own ideas, but also to those he fought against.

“The Road to Serfdom” was published in Great Britain in 1944, when the country was finishing its fifth year of war with the National Socialist Reich. Victory over the Reich was simply a matter of time, and one could have calmly begun to reflect on the postwar restructuring of the world, but the author felt it was far more important to draw the public’s attention to the fact that the dragon-slayer was beginning to increasingly resemble the one he was fighting. Hayek saw the victory of the Labour Party in the upcoming general elections as the most terrifying danger for Britain. That is exactly what happened. As a result, Great Britain accumulated an economic lag behind freer countries right up until the Thatcher reforms.

The main idea Hayek fights against in his book is the notion that economic planning brings prosperity. He painstakingly demonstrates that the temptation to slightly regulate from above for the greater benefit of society is the first step toward regulating everything and everyone to the point where it is impossible to breathe: there is no natural optimum on this road, upon reaching which the government would stop on its own and declare that things are now good and nothing more needs to be tweaked. He also shows that regulation is total, and economic freedoms are inseparable from political ones, so people far removed from economics should not look benevolently upon interventionist efforts, thinking that as long as political freedoms are left untouched, economics is a narrow specialized topic and experts know best how to steer it.

Hayek did not claim that everything was hopeless and that, having stepped onto the road to serfdom, humanity would be unable to stop. If he had believed so, he would have had no need to write the book. He did, however, argue that the further one goes down this road, the harder it is to stop, and therefore socialism is best fought at the far approaches. Unfortunately, practice has shown the exact opposite: it is extremely difficult to deny socialists small concessions while society as a whole is liberal, but when everything is already regulated to shreds, both society and the government tire of the constant tightening of the screws. A sufficiently strong demand for deregulation emerges, it is carried out, and people breathe a sigh of relief, but it soon turns out that the leviathan, having retreated in one place, is already pressing in another.

In the article Barrier on the Road to Serfdom: Dead End or Detour?, Bitarch and I mentioned John Meadowcroft’s thesis that it is the hybrid society that proves to be stable, unlike the liberal or totalitarian ones, and we also pointed out that neither increasing transparency nor reducing direct state participation in the economy helps avoid the fact that the overall regulation of society continues to grow slowly.

The book “The Road to Serfdom” is a good example of rhetoric that can and should be used when working with politicians. The fact is that most of the arguments in the book are no longer relevant, unless, of course, you are dealing with hardline Marxists; against more or less modern supporters of state regulation, it makes sense to apply Hayek’s later texts, such as “The Fatal Conceit.”

The Tea Club as a Social Movement

Hi, Ancap-chan! At the end of October, you answered a question about the LPR, during which you read their charter. Could you analyze the Charter of the Tea Club for inaccuracies, potential abuses and flaws, and its compliance with principles?

Anonymous Tea-pot (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00119809btc)

As I indicated during the analysis of the LPR charter, complex multi-page charters are quite unnatural for a compact young organization and are practically useless in the absence of an external enforcer who could, based on the text of the charter, make decisions regarding various conflicts within the organization. If a certain group of people within the organization systematically violates the charter, their opponents will have only one pathetic tool—to announce the expulsion of this group. However, it is utterly unclear why a decision on expulsion should be followed by those expelled. They have the opportunity to continue their activities while calling themselves members of the organization, until the emerging split becomes so unacceptable to the majority of activists that they flee on their own in search of a healthier environment.

Thus, the content of a charter can only be seriously analyzed based on the fantastic assumption that all members of the organization will be guided by it in their actions under any circumstances. Meanwhile, organizations are routinely shaken by scandals, large or small, and each such scandal usually brings stronger apparatchiks into the organization’s leadership, weeding out those for whom the substance is more important than the form of activity for which the organization was created.

It should also be noted that it is practically impossible to meaningfully adjust a charter through democratic methods. All of Hayek’s arguments regarding the impossibility of constructing coordinated plans that take into account the interests of various groups via democratic methods are fully applicable to making amendments to regulatory documents, whether they be charters, constitutions, budgets, and so on—not to mention creating them from scratch. Sooner or later, the question arises of entrusting the drafting of the document to experts and then voting on the final text. Thus, the original text of any charter may be successful to the extent of the expert’s talent who drafted it, and further democratic mechanisms for adjusting the charter are simply meaningless, regardless of whether they are written into the original charter or not.

Don’t think that I am trying to dodge the question: I have managed to get through your charter. It is clear that you tried to create your own LPR “with blackjack and hookers,” meaning you started from the charter of the libertarian party and tried to prescribe mechanisms of interaction within the movement that would better correspond to libertarian principles.

According to your charter, the movement is a collection of regional branches, the activities of which are coordinated by elected steering committees within the branches (as in the LPR) and an interregional council consisting of the chairpersons of the steering committees at the interregional level (unlike the LPR, where this is handled by a body elected at the congress). You have also separated the actual management of the branch from the accounting and control functions, whereas in the LPR the accounting and control body exists more as a formality, and the membership records are kept by the head of the branch. I have no idea how this division works in your practice, but separating the CEO from the HR director seems justified for a large organization, but excessive for a small one. You have also implemented liquid democracy instead of representative democracy when it comes to a large interregional meeting. I don’t know if something similar exists in other Russian organizations or how it works, but generally, the world’s attitude toward such a mechanism is quite favorable.

You also pay a lot of attention to the work of arbitration—the negative experience carried over from the LPR is clearly felt. You didn’t dare implement a pure arbitration court, preferring a compromise model with a council of wise arbitrators joined by representatives of the conflicting parties. It is not hard to guess that if the arbitrators are biased, the arbitration will turn into a farce, and the charter does not provide for a mechanism to deny the jurisdiction of a knowingly biased arbitration. So this scheme is also potentially vulnerable to bureaucratic intrigues, just like any other model with a permanent judicial body.

What would I suggest?

If you were a purely libertarian organization, I would suggest you throw away the charter altogether and be guided solely by libertarian principles: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of choice of arbitrator, and so on. But you aim to attract class-libs as well, so it is better to have framework documents, but it would be better to grant branches the right to adopt their own charters and work regulations, and to abandon rigid territorial divisions (simply a group of movement participants united for joint work, started a treasury, got some useful gear, and solves common tasks until they split up). It only makes sense to strictly prescribe the conflict resolution procedure, and it would be great if this turned out to be something like: after an official accusation is made, the parties must amicably settle their conflict within a certain timeframe with a subsequent official notification of the end of the conflict; if an amicable solution is not reached, they have the right to apply to anyone willing to act as an arbitrator and choose a certain number of these volunteers within a certain timeframe; if a choice cannot be made, the conflict is recognized as frozen, and the parties are deprived of the right to participate in any decisions directly affecting each other’s interests; after a decision is issued by the arbitrator, the parties either voluntarily execute it or leave the movement. In general, something like that, the details may vary.

And that’s basically it. You will get an evolutionary system united by goals, principles, and a conflict resolution mechanism—but without coercion toward something people are not ready for. What more could you possibly need?