The Libertarian Band team, with whom I collaborated a long time ago on creating videos with an introduction to libertarianism (this experience later proved useful to me when writing the book), has after a long break produced an excellent video about the Free State Project.
This is their second video dedicated to libertarian communities (the first, released at the end of 2021, was about Monte libero.
The screenwriter who replaced me works in a completely different style: where I preferred my own, as original as possible, reflections, his focus is on much richer factual detail. In my opinion, it turned out quite entertaining; it’s great that the guys are still active and continue to deliver the basics.
Now, of course, a video about Liberland is overdue; I hope it won’t be more than a year before they enrich their playlist with a corresponding episode.
Mikhail Svetov has released another introductory video about libertarianism.
Apparently, the very first video on the SVTV channel, “Five Minutes About Libertarianism,” through which many people indeed first learned about this ideology, had ceased to satisfy him in some way.
Let’s compare what has changed.
The old video is a tongue-twister of tightly edited libertarian talking points, weakly linked into a single logical line. Key points: libertarianism is about the fact that the end does not justify the means, about the victim’s right to protection from violence, and about the right to love and hate. Libertarianism is a moral compass. The video contains mentions of Mikhail’s personal tastes, which are unrelated to the topic.
The new video is read in the measured tone of a storyteller, equipped with simple but quite captivating animation, and is far more logically precise.
I, of course, do not like the very beginning of the video, where self-ownership is presented as something inherent and given by someone unknown, while the non-aggression principle is for some reason called a contract. Why not the other way around: a contract on self-ownership and an inherent natural right to resist violence? This is, in general, important, because according to Mikhail, violating the non-aggression contract removes a person from the legal field, and here the question arises: what exactly is the legal field?
By the way, the visuals in this part directly contradict the text. An aggressor threatens violence, thereby supposedly exiting the legal field; an external defender appears, and what does the aggressor do? He drops the knife and surrenders. That is, he resorts to a legal procedure! He demonstrates that he is no longer an aggressor, and that shooting him from all barrels is no longer so attractive in the eyes of an outside observer. In other words, the aggressor does not exit any legal field. Or rather, he exits it precisely at the moment of aggression, when it is permissible to pump him full of lead. At least, that is how it can be understood from the video.
In short, Svetov has never been distinguished by the rigor of his conceptual framework, but for a politician, this is an excessive requirement; his job is to attract an audience. The video should presumably handle this quite well, and I can boldly recommend it for distribution.
Libertarian Band has released a very high-quality video about metaverses, integrating this trendy topic into the general frameworks of libertarian strategy—in other words, showing the prospects that open up for us as this phenomenon continues to develop. For some time, this new space will remain a territory of relative freedom, and if we strive to avoid centralization in this sphere from the start, there is a chance to keep this freedom under reliable protection.
At the same time, the ideas regarding the merging of the real world and the metaverse via NFT and RFID seem too raw to me for now, and it is not certain that any breakthroughs can be achieved here at all: nothing can prevent someone from attaching a buffalo NFT token to an elephant, and in this situation, a remote user will not even be able to follow Kozma Prutkov’s advice and “not believe their eyes,” because in their metaverse, they will see a buffalo, period.
I found the time to watch a fresh video from a team whose activities I continue to follow. I was pleasantly surprised. As is usually the case in their recent videos, it provides a fairly solid analysis of the concept under study—in this case, legitimacy. But besides that, this time it also offers a curious prediction: that the acquisition of legitimacy by various non-state entities (like free cities and other contractual jurisdictions) in the eyes of traditional states will proceed roughly the same way as the legitimacy of the Taliban regime is currently being strengthened.
Out of habit, I continue to watch new videos from my former team, but I’ve somehow forgotten to promote them on my own page; that’s untidy, so I’m correcting it.
In the video, which this time is dedicated to propaganda, as usual, there is an extensive historical introduction, and, as usual, it hangs in the air somewhat, because no thoughts are derived from it that the main part of the video could rely on. Next, there is an equally extensive analysis of how it works and what methods it employs, and in conclusion, it is stated that propaganda is not bad in itself, since it can be used for benevolent purposes. For example, promoting vaccination against a fashionable disease and other beneficial methods of state care for the population—what else could libertarians bring up as a positive example? Certainly not Svetov with his propaganda for lustration!
I accidentally stumbled upon a collection of videos featuring Vladimir Zolotorev on YouTube. It is some sort of tiny channel called Libertarian Site, but since 2019, a fairly large number of videos have been posted there, presumably quite useful ones, though so far I have only watched Vladimir’s most recent lecture, where he discusses the nature of the state and other related matters—not very structured, but fascinating. I suspect that other videos with him are constructed in a similar vein, so their main value, it seems to me, is the demonstration of exactly how a person’s thinking style changes when they begin to share a libertarian worldview. A worldview is a contagious thing, so even without being presented systematically, it will still influence you. Watch and be indoctrinated)
As for my book, which is currently being written, I would still like to save the reader’s time and provide an understanding of libertarianism as briefly and consistently as possible. Maybe it will work…
The fourth video from the “Anarchist Cookbook” series, dedicated to the darknet, has been released on the Libertarian Band channel. I watched it with great pleasure and learned a lot of new things. There’s nothing to criticize; everything seems clear and on point. Thanks to the guys for maintaining the standard. I highly recommend it.
I want to recommend a pretty good video from the “Unknown Economics” channel, run by Ukrainian economist Boris Yurovsky. His channel features many detailed theoretical reviews of economic theory—I didn’t even notice how I gradually switched to him from Pavel Usanov’s channel, who is more of an economic historian. But not long ago, Boris Savvich started a series of videos on the topic of libertarianism, which is outside his primary field, and in my opinion, he handled it quite достойно.
The video I’m recommending is the final one in this series and is dedicated to the transition from etatism to libertarianism. As usual, it is a review of other authors’ ideas, quite clear and benevolent. If you like it, check out the other videos in the libertarianism series, and from there, you might reach the economic theory reviews; it happens as unobtrusively as becoming addicted to male approval.
The post was preceded by a donation of 0.00004388btc
It turns out that the libertarian party has had a YouTube channel since 2008, and a quite crowded one at that. Later, during one of the splits, the channel left the party, renamed itself RLN (russian libertarian network), and existed in that form for many years. Now, the RLN Telegram channel has gone to the Montelibero project, and the YouTube channel has been renamed Panarchy World.
In my opinion, Libertarian Band also did a pretty good job in its time, but I am biased.
Nevertheless, for me, collaboration with Libertarian Band is already in the past, but collaboration with Panarchy World will quite likely be established soon. So you can subscribe in advance, mention in the comments that you came from Ancap-chan, and this will be a signal to the channel owners that it makes sense to invite me. Of course, not exclusively, but simply as one of the content creators.
Libertarian Band has released the third video from the “Agorist Cookbook” series, this time dedicated to how to avoid the army. The video is long, over 15 minutes, but includes timecodes. You can skip directly to the “Practical Tips” section at 5:23, because before that there is a long historical introduction about what conscription was like during the times of Ochakov and the conquest of Crimea, and this introduction has no connection to the subsequent detailed and useful practical instructions.
To the tips suggested in the video, I will add my own. Instead of trying to abuse the system through courts and begging for the right to alternative civilian service, you can simply leave the country in advance. Montenegro, where I am moving, is not the only option; there are many other places where a Russian person lives more freely and prosperously than under the jurisdiction of Moscow.
This is precisely the most agorist way to avoid the army draft. This is the method described by Ayn Rand in her most famous work. Our ancestors, by dismantling the Soviet Union, achieved the most important freedom for us: the freedom to leave. If they had had this freedom, how many Russians would not have perished in the 20th century at the hands of the Soviet state! So let us not undervalue this crucial achievement. We are now left with no other way to vote for a better future for ourselves than by voting with our feet.
