Тег: Somalia

Police brutality and pogroms under ancap

A discussion arose in the Libertarian Band patrons’ chat regarding an incident in the USA, which has led to riots accompanied by looting for nearly a week now.

Could an episode of police brutality occur under ancap? Absolutely! The “gatekeeper syndrome” operates under any regime. A petty fraudster pays with a fake check, the store calls security, they detain the thief—and then an excess occurs, and the head of the security team begins to strangle the detainee. The partners are stunned: on one hand, it is a clear abuse of authority; on the other, it is the firm’s honor, and staging a public quarrel is unprofessional, so they simply try to calm the crowd. What happens next? The director, a floor manager, or even just a cashier rushes out of the store and barks, “Stop it!”

This is where the key difference between ancap and the state manifests. It is not just anyone barking, but an official representative of the client. The partners of the security guard who lost his mind immediately pull the boss away and provide first aid to the victim, because the highest authority—the client—has commanded it. The one who pays the money.

Then the routine chores begin: the security company fires the overzealous guard, the thief reimburses the store for the money that caused the scuffle, there may be some maneuvers regarding his health insurance, and finally, there may be a press campaign resulting in damage to the security company’s reputation (and possibly the store’s, although that would be unfair).

But what if the store director rushed out and began to shout enthusiastically, “Give it to him, you scum, crush him!”? That is when a riot could happen. We can, of course, hope that everything will be limited to lawsuits, boycotts, and similar civilized reactions, but a riot or the burning of the store cannot be ruled out in this situation: people react extremely nervously to manifestations of crude thuggery—and there is no reason to assume that people would suddenly change under ancap.

Can riots become mass movements? They can, if we are considering something like a clan society. This can be considered ancap only with a great stretch, but such a society is certainly stateless and, therefore, also worthy of consideration. As we know from the example of Somalia, a specific legal system develops in a clan society where the clan acts as an insurance group and pays for crimes committed by its members. Such a system managed to extinguish the civil war in Somalia; it would handle riots as well.

However, the type of society where problems could truly take on a protracted character is one with a combination of market and clan orders. On one hand, there are several large groups defending the interests of their members, and on the other, there is a large number of individuals who do not belong to any clans and attempt to interact in a mode of open market access to goods and services. Clan members may perceive such loners as members of some foreign clans and bring claims against uninvolved parties within the framework of collective responsibility. Meanwhile, the loners, by inertia, will view the rioters as individuals with their own personal grievances—and be surprised by the absurdity of those claims.

Essentially, this is exactly what is happening in the USA right now. The quarrel occurred between the nominal clans of left-wing activists and police officers, but the leftists consider all business owners to be allies of the police—after all, it was the store that called the police when the incident happened. Blurred boundaries between groups generate numerous misunderstandings, where even those who express sympathy for the rioters are attacked. And the more such unresolved conflicts there are, the harder it is to stop the war.

Therefore, I venture to suggest that under ancap, in various unrest-prone areas, it will be very important to be able to quickly and clearly communicate to everyone who stands behind you. First, people learn to draw boundaries, and only then do they learn not to cross them.

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

Why is the ancap utopia better than the socialist one?

Studying libertarianism, I still haven’t understood why the “ancap” ideal model of social organization is better than some socialist utopias from the 18th-19th centuries.

In utopias, there are hypothetical people with a different morality—free, equal, happy, and always ready to help one another. A number of conditions that are clearly fantastical in modern realities are taken as given; there is no clear program for transitioning to such a wonderful society.

It is roughly the same with you, but there is exploitation, economic dependence, and so on. A number of rather debatable assumptions are taken as given—about the NAP, about the idea that something resembling affluent consumerism will emerge from the free competition of guys with guns, and about the need to convince people that “collective subjects” do not exist.

There is no transition program to the “better” social order (let me remind you that the caricatured mass-culture perceptions of leftists as lovers of mass shootings came,
firstly, from Cold War era propaganda, and secondly, from the practice of building an industrial society in Russia).

Why prefer inhuman ancap fantasies to the humane utopian fantasies of men from the 18th-19th centuries?

Vasily Vasiliev

Oof. Well, let me try to answer.

Why prefer the utopia of anarcho-capitalism specifically? It does not require the emergence of some special humane “new man” for its implementation, it is ready to work with any starting situation, and it quickly and guaranteed makes people’s lives wealthier and more prosperous than they were at the start. And, what is not unimportant, this is easily verifiable in practice.

Suppose we have Somalia. A country devastated by a socialist dictatorship and numerous wars. The state is abolished. People begin to organize their lives independently. They have a very short planning horizon, so they are quite ready to obtain resources from neighbors through direct violence. This means they have to spend significant resources on self-defense. Neighborhoods bristle with checkpoints; movement requires convoys. Hobbes arrives and strolls around business-like. “So, what do we have here? A war of all against all? Well done, boys. Now, who here isn’t fighting? Get to fighting, damn it, immediately!”

Fine, the last pre-war canned meat will soon run out, something needs to be eaten, but there’s not much to take from the neighbors either. Sooner or later, people will have to disperse and divert some individuals from the exciting process of shooting neighbors from ambushes to the conduct of boring and banal farming. And suddenly, someone is herding livestock, someone is growing vegetables, someone is running a gas station, someone is maintaining mobile communications and the internet, and someone is pirating. The difference in starting conditions (some have the sea nearby, others a savanna) leads to the division of labor. The division of labor gives rise to trade. Trade brings peace. Peace increases the planning horizon. The elegant fruits of tactical thinking fade into the past. Yesterday’s brave warrior today drives tourists on safari, because it is more profitable than arranging a safari on the tourists. Yesterday’s pirate today peacefully catches fish and takes divers for rides, because he’s had enough of fighting. And his pirate tales give him a charisma bonus and generous tips. Hobbes cries quietly on the beach: his beloved Leviathan never emerged from the sea due to a lack of demand.

What could hinder this rosy scenario? Firstly, the actions of neighbors who stubbornly wish to install a state on this territory. So far, society resists such attempts, but this consumes strength, and the path to ancap becomes thornier. Secondly, long-standing and venerable traditions of redistribution. If you’ve risen a bit—be so kind as to share with your clan comrades. They covered your skin during the war, and in general, don’t stick your head out. Over time, this tradition will evolve into insurance companies and various mutual aid funds operating on a voluntary basis, but initially, simply due to poverty, such redistribution will greatly slow the development of the institution of private property.

Ancap will establish itself more easily the harder it is to maintain a subsistence economy on territory liberated from the state. If all the resources for survival are right there, then why trade with neighbors? You have to shoot at neighbors; they are enemies, they are coming to take our beer and women. So, in the jungles of the Amazon, ancap will not be seen for a long time even without a state, but where living conditions are more diverse—where could it possibly go?

And what is wrong with socialist utopias? That there is no natural transition to them; a revolution is absolutely necessary, which will forcibly establish freedom, equality, and brotherhood—even if without mass shootings, the French managed quite well with the guillotine.

They seem like savages—yet they have trigger control