Тег: War

Question about the publication of IA “Panorama”

Is it permissible from the perspective of libertarian ethics to act as described in the meme about private discrimination?

Bitarch (this time in the role of the question author, not the answer author – note by Ancap-chan)

Essentially, this question pertains to the section of social norms concerning the laws and customs of war. The more fierce the conflict, the greater the probability of the deliberate destruction of non-combatants.

What determines the fierceness of a conflict?

I will give a slightly paradoxical answer. A conflict will be less fierce the more it is perceived by all sides as a kind of natural state of affairs. It is precisely the routine of war that makes people treat it sloppily, show zeal only in front of their superiors, and perceive rank-and-file soldiers on the opposite side of the front as fellow wretches who happened to end up in this shit.

One happened to be born German, another French; now they sit opposite each other in trenches. It’s boring, damn it, maybe play some football? One happened to be born in the USA, another in the USSR; now the first has a bunker in the backyard, and the second is next to the factory gates. Studying the effects of a nuclear explosion is deadly boring—why doesn’t the first read “Das Kapital,” and the second watch a Hollywood action flick? One happened to be born with a penis, another with a vagina, and now their entire life is a continuous minefield. So, they will fuck, feeling like spies in the enemy camp. One is from a conservative family, another from a liberal one, and now they are supposed to fight in social networks. And then it turns out that discussing baseball is more interesting, and why doesn’t this politics just go away.

The conflict didn’t disappear; it is part of everyday life. Just far from the most important part. In fact, this is exactly how it was in the USA for quite a long time, and Trump, with his sharp rhetoric and clumsy diplomacy, contributed to the escalation of the war. Now, for some time, the conflict will be very fierce, and news about disconnecting ventilators could very easily become a reality. For libertarians, this means a certain field of opportunities, which I mentioned in the previous post.

So, is it permissible from the perspective of libertarian ethics to use total war techniques during fierce conflicts? Yes, it is permissible. But not very smart.

USA

Many reflections on the situation in the USA have already been written, from the banal to the very deep, authored by quite respected people. I will try to survey the state of affairs from a slightly different angle.

From my two previous posts, you know that a republic is a society of people who agree on questions of law. In the USA right now, there is nowhere near an agreement on questions of law, which means there can be no legal assessment of either the electoral procedures, the performance at the Capitol, or the subsequent purges in the information field. If the jurisdiction of a court is not recognized by both parties to a conflict, then the court does not perform the function of resolving conflicts; therefore, it is not a court at all, but a more or less ritualized execution. In short, I interpret the state of affairs in the USA as a civil war. In a war, elections are only capable of recording exactly which personalities end up at the helm as the leader of the dominant grouping. This is still a more legitimate procedure than the direct rule of military commanders, but in fact, at the federal level, the elections in the USA were not between Trump and Biden, but between Biden and Sanders (from the Republican side, there were no elections at all). And then, Biden, having won the election, simply led the troops during the forceful crushing of the Republican side of the conflict.

What position do ancaps find themselves in this situation? The position of the third party who rejoices. In the confrontation between the toad and the viper, the toad emerged victorious, and now the viper temporarily finds itself on our side. An alliance between agorists, who defend market freedom regardless of the desires of any power groups, and those who continue to chant the mantra about law and order is potentially a very powerful thing. Because now we will be talking about our law and our order.

Using the information field as an example, this will mean the following. We will get a serious solvent demand for free social networks, free hosting, free domain registrars, free operating systems that do not prevent us from managing user devices, free hardware without hardware backdoors, and free money to pay for all the above. The network effect is exactly what the tools of freedom are currently lacking.

Today, it is a matter of honor for every American Republican to sell all their Apple and Alphabet shares, not to mention shitty Twitter, invest the proceeds in bitcoins, and use them to support those free market tools that best satisfy their client demand for the free exchange of information, money, and goods, for self-defense, for building peace and order around themselves, for the destruction of the aggressors’ property, for provoking discord among them, and for tools that ensure the state’s blindness, whether through anonymizing network actions or paralyzing the will of the overseers. Gouging out the Cyclops’ eye is an important part of the strategy.

The enemy is fucked – we grow stronger

I would like to find out about the foreign policy of an anarcho-capitalist society. I have read The Mechanics of Liberty, but I still didn’t understand it well enough.

анонимный вопрос

Friedman devoted two chapters of The Machinery of Freedom to the problem of territorial defense against an aggressor of the “nation-state” type, with an interval of forty years between them. In the first part, he estimated the chances of an anarcho-USA fending off nuclear aggression from the Soviet Union and concluded that for the sake of defense against such a serious aggressor, he was willing to accept the existence of a state. In the second part, once the USSR was reliably dead, he breathed a sigh of relief and began to fantasize about how territorial defense is ensured without a state.

In my view, Friedman pays excessively much attention to the territorial aspect of the problem. For example, when he dismisses the model of financing defense through insurance, he puts the cart before the horse and assumes that clients will be tried to be sold “national defense” specifically (and that they will hope to save money, counting on their neighbor buying it). But the client does not need national defense. They need assurance that if an insured event occurs personally to them, they will receive the money. Whether they are on territory near where they bought the policy or on the other side of the planet is unimportant to them. And exactly what means the company uses to reduce its own risks of having to pay out insurance does not concern them either, as long as the company does not commit fraud.

Thus, if the organization of territorial defense truly reduces the chances of an attack by an external “state”-type aggressor, insurance companies are capable of calculating how much to invest in it to keep it profitable, and how to interact with other insurance companies to share the costs, for example, proportionally to the client base.

Friedman also presents an interesting thesis that the absence of a single jurisdiction over a certain territory is not in itself a guarantee against an aggressor’s claims. And when a conditional USSR arrives in a region where ancap reigns, it is sufficient for them to smash one city with a nuclear bomb and declare something like: look, see, Alderaan was here, it is no more. If the residents of Yavin do not wish the same fate, they owe five hundred million credits by the day after tomorrow, and we don’t care that they have neither a single administration nor taxation; if they want to live, they’ll figure it out somehow.

Effectively, he suggests that when it is too costly for a stationary bandit to expand its territory, it retains the option to act toward that territory as a nomadic bandit. Further, as you understand, everything depends on how coordinated the response will be. If a community is capable of reaching a level of coordination sufficient to pay a large tribute, it is reasonable to assume that further resistance will be coordinated at a level at least no less. This means that the second Death Star will indeed be destroyed without firing a single shot, unlike the first, which managed three.

At the same time, let us note that it is the free market that contributes to the fastest scientific and technical progress. And if, at the initial stage of ancap, states will still be able to oppose network market structures due to the difference in scale, then by the end of the transition period, the technological backwardness of states will become too obvious, and they will have to focus rather on holding onto the remnants of power over their own subjects.

Perhaps by ancap’s foreign policy you did not mean defense. But since for ancap the state is nothing more than a bandit, relations with a bandit amount to nothing more than deterring it from banditry directed at oneself, and other diplomacy is reduced precisely to this aspect. Visa regimes? That is about ensuring the bandit does not attack travelers. Customs regimes? That is about ensuring the bandit does not rob caravans. Regulatory regimes? That is about ensuring the bandit does not interfere with contracts. All these negotiations will come down to the interested party spending money on a payoff. As long as this money is less than the money required to eliminate the bandit, the latter will have a chance to survive.

Suppose a girl wants to study at a military university, but they mostly take guys. What to do?

Provide a quota for girls? Let me say right away that this nonsense—claiming “we will establish a proper system where selection will be unbiased”—doesn’t work, because at the moment “this selection is also unbiased,” yet they still predominantly take guys, and it is difficult for a girl to get in.

liberal

It is a time of anarchy, capitalism, heat, and summer. A young woman submits an application to an educational institution where they teach effective ways of killing people and destroying material assets as part of organized groups and using various specialized equipment. In essence, this is as ordinary an event as if a girl were applying to an educational institution where they would tell her the history of how people effectively killed people as part of armed groups and so on—that is, a faculty of history.

What interests guide the institution when accepting her application? It expects to make a profit. What ways does it have to profit from educating students in the absence of state funding (due to the absence of the state)? There are two main ways. First, trading in knowledge—that is, educating for money anyone who is willing to pay. Second, trading in prestige—that is, implementing a strict selection process, providing the most effective knowledge and skills, and hoping that graduates will be maximally successful in life and then, out of gratitude, contribute to the endowment fund of their beloved university. The education itself might even be free, because the university here effectively acts as a venture capital fund.

If the military university in question makes money by selling knowledge, the girl has no problems. She pays—she receives what she bought. But if the university considers itself prestigious, then the girl has a chance of encountering disproportionately serious difficulties right at the admission stage.

Let’s start with the fact that historically, the army is a male brotherhood, and the entry of women into it often dealt a blow to the prestige of the army (historian Martin van Creveld talks about this interestingly in his book Transformation of War, I highly recommend it). We do not know to what extent patriarchal snobs will form the core of organized armed formations under ancap conditions, and how fundamental it will be for them that women not only do not enter the army, but do not even study military science. I find this unlikely, simply because trends have changed, inclusivity is in fashion, and work in the army looks less and less like a brutal slugfest and more and more like working in a delivery service or other logistics businesses.

Secondly, the army still places significant physical fitness requirements on soldiers, including those related to lifting heavy weights and other disciplines in which women are relatively weak simply by virtue of their constitution. Theoretically, this should not become an obstacle to university admission, as it should, at worst, only narrow the range of available specializations. However, if physical training turns out to be one of the admission criteria at the university, then our hypothetical applicant faces obvious, though surmountable, difficulties.

So your fears are quite justified; it is unlikely that it will be much easier for girls to become specialists in the military sphere under ancap. Then again, this sphere itself does not look particularly promising, so it’s not like anyone really wanted it that much.

The American Civil War

A post appeared in the “Life with Others” channel, in which the riots in the USA are examined from the perspective of the concentration of forces. I will briefly summarize its message.

The rioters gathered into a crowd, and they are opposed by individuals, each of whom is defending their own piece of property. As long as the individuals are armed, though not all of them, and the rioters only have improvised tools, a fragile possibility of defense remains; because, firstly, there is no need to loot a specifically protected point when there is an undefended one further down the street, and secondly, no one wants to be the unlucky person who catches a bullet before the crowd tears apart the person who fired it. But if the rioters are also armed, the defenders’ position will become hopeless; therefore, the fact that there is little weaponry in society is more likely to reduce mass violence. It is also pointed out that the attempt at a reciprocal concentration of forces by those defending their property is historically a key factor in the formation of states.

It seems to me that attempting to analyze the situation that has developed in a large state as if that state does not exist is a dubious idea. The riots mainly occur in cities and states covered by the Democratic Party. That is, precisely where the city government and state police are on the side of the rioters. If you stand with a gun guarding your property and they don’t come for you—consider yourself lucky. If you stand guard over your property and you are killed by rioters, they will try not to report it in the news, and mentions will be erased from Facebook, as we see in the example of David Dorn’s murder. But if you happen, for example, to organize a self-defense squad, it will be perceived as the creation of an extremist community of some white supremacists, and it may very well happen that the police, who tried to keep a low profile during the riots themselves, materialize out of nowhere. In this situation, the owners of the looted businesses can only be comforted by the fact that the Democratic Party opposes guns, and therefore rioters are unlikely to be waving firearms—in that case, the picture would cease to be pleasant for the state leadership.

In states led by Republicans, everything is relatively quiet, and if there are cities there covered by the Democratic Party, the National Guard is sent in, and that is sufficient. In general, many have already concluded that the riots in the USA are rather a tool for showdowns between the dominant “roofs” (protection rackets). It just so happens that due to the economic shock caused by the lockdown (which was again stronger in states under the Democratic Party), these showdowns turned out to be particularly vivid this time.

Panarchy theorists suggest that the most peaceful way of resolving this hopeless conflict would be the formation of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions, where Democrats would have their own government and Republicans their own, and citizens would simply live within the model closer to them. Naturally, in this case, the number of competing governments would quickly increase: currently, diverse forces are forced to unite under one flag for the sake of winning elections, but under panarchy, this factor promoting consolidation would become irrelevant.

Nevertheless, such an option remains highly unlikely. Rather, some California (or, conversely, Texas) will announce secession, and then citizens of both Americas will simply be able to effectively vote with their feet. Times have changed, and in the event of the country splitting, no one will have the drive for a new civil war for the sake of a unity that no one needs anymore.

Civil War in the USA in the 21st century

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

On tangled court cases

Let’s imagine the following situation arising in an imaginary ancap society. In my opinion, someone has caused damage to my property, but in the opinion of that someone, he caused me no damage. And the circumstances of this case are such that it is very, very controversial; it is difficult for an objective party to determine who is right. As a result, this leads to a situation where, across a large sample of different courts, half of them side with me, and the other half side with the party I am accusing. To my suggestions to pay at least a portion of the compensation demanded by me (and by the courts that sided with me), the opponent categorically brushes them off, because, in his opinion, he did not cause damage to my property, and therefore does not owe me a single penny.

Under the conditions of a state, such a problem is reliably solved by a hierarchy of courts. Yes, someone will remain dissatisfied, but that is the whole essence of the institution of the court. In the conditions of ancap, however, we arrive at a complex conflict where my bailiffs and my opponent’s security must, in effect, start fighting each other, since both conflicting parties are equally right. What solution does ancap offer for such situations? And how should I personally behave in such a situation?

SK (the question is accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00088285btc)

The function of a court is to help the parties resolve their conflict. The only way to do this is for both parties to the conflict to recognize the jurisdiction of a particular court in a specific case. If the case is complex and convoluted, we cannot know in advance the position of any specific pre-designated court until it completes the proceedings. Therefore, all the parties to the conflict need to do is find a court that has a good enough reputation, is acceptable in price, and is willing to take on the case. Then, both parties enter into an agreement with the court that they are ready to execute its verdict in this case, and only after that does the court even begin to delve into the subject.

Since the case is so murky, the final court decision will likely be quite a compromise, such as one party receiving partial satisfaction of their claims while paying some compensation to the other party. But, however, we cannot know this in advance.

Naturally, each party to the conflict will be interested in the impartiality of the court; therefore, they will probably consider it important to include a clause in the contract stating that they reserve the right to withdraw from the process before the end of the proceedings if they can demonstrate the court’s interest in a particular outcome.

If one of the parties refuses in advance to recognize any verdict other than one that completely relieves them of obligations, they are thereby refusing the court as such, which means they intend to continue an open conflict with the second party. In this case, the party that agrees to the court can wave this readiness around, saying, “I am not the one starting a war here, I am merely defending myself,” and thereby gain new allies while gradually stifling the aggressor with sanctions, forcing them into peaceful negotiations.

By the way, peaceful negotiations, without any external arbitrator, are also a way of resolving a conflict, so a court is not a mandatory procedure for this at all.

As has been noted repeatedly by many, the state of affairs in international politics very much resembles ancap

AI will help the authorities fight against oppositionists… or the other way around?

Bitarch’s column

Supporters of authoritarian power sometimes frighten libertarians with artificial intelligence (AI) systems. They try to prove to us that after their implementation, all our struggle will become meaningless, because the state will be able to instantaneously detect and nip any oppositional activity in the bud.

However, AI, like any other technology, is a double-edged sword — just as a stationary bandit can use it against us, we can use it against the authorities. The use of AI for the deanonymization of security forces by projects like “Scanner” and “Russian Elephant” is only one possible example.

Also, such systems are prone to false positives. This insurmountable property of AI can be used intentionally by introducing false targets to overload the system. Not the neural network itself, but the investigative bodies and security forces, who will have to spend effort investigating fake cases, overlooking real oppositionists. And if politicians are substituted as false targets, the entire system of the stationary bandit will fall apart.

Why “erroneously”?

A question regarding military actions in Ancapistan

For example, there is a large amorphous country in the north of the continent; the climate there is cold, there are few valuable resources, and a freedom-loving people live there, where almost everyone has an AK under their bed. There are cities in Ancapistan, where order is maintained by private companies and a small PMC for special operations.
Suddenly, some valuable resource is found in this beautiful country. A neighboring country, Etatistan, is an ordinary country with corruption and standing armed forces (of a sort). And Etatistan decided to seize this resource. It failed to acquire it through market methods (the landowner did not sell his land, and blackmailing him to get it also failed), and Etatistan declares war on Ancapistan.
And my question is: how can Ancapistan defend itself in order to maintain its independence and remain Ancapistan?
How can an armed people, who have plenty of firearms and light armored vehicles (like jeeps and BMPs), withstand an army with aviation and heavy equipment?

Baker

This question has been hanging for a long time; I was too lazy to answer it because I had already answered a very similar one. And then a post on the Freedom pride channel appeared, which touches upon a related topic. Why not take advantage of such a free ride?

As is easy to see, the topic of direct military confrontation between a non-state society and a state military machine worries many, because war is historically the most important thing a state had to be able to do if it wanted to survive; and thanks to its competencies in military affairs, practically the entire Earth is today divided among states, while non-state societies lead a marginal existence on the fringes of civilization.

Zolotorev, whom I am quoting, emphasizes that the ancap community, all other things being equal, is definitely wealthier than the state; due to decentralization, it can afford more flexible tactics, and the costs of implementing a state from scratch on the territory of Ancapistan conquered by the state would be disproportionately high for the state—in other words, the game would not be worth the candle.

Freedom pride shows why it would be difficult for a single gang to seize power in a conditions of an already established ancap. But it also states that if it were not a gang, but a state, it would become a problem.

Therefore, in conclusion, I want to suggest you read my longread on the doctrine of deterrence, which shows exactly that a means has already been invented to prevent a state from attacking you—the threat of guaranteed destruction of the state leader. The state is centralized, and this is its weakest point: it is enough to demotivate a very small circle of people from attacking, and the attack will not take place.

So, of course, an AK under the pillow is great sports equipment, but the key role in the conflict will be played by that very small PMC for special operations you described. This “department for working with difficult clients” at the insurance company, in the event of military action, simply captures the commander-in-chief of Etatistan and twists his balls until he agrees to withdraw the troops and pay a penalty. And if they can’t capture him alive, the problem will be solved by a dozen Tomahawks or something along those lines. This is significantly cheaper than heavy armored vehicles and other means of destroying large military formations that Etatistan possesses.

I will note that Etatistan cannot respond symmetrically, as there is no government in Ancapistan. And even sabotage at a PMC military base would only lead to the insurance company simply having to hire another PMC somewhere else, or simply announcing a substantial reward for the head of the dictator of Etatistan.

Although, to be honest, personally I don’t quite understand why the deposit could not be acquired through market means. Everything has its price, and if a price per share with a large premium to the market is offered, what is the point of refusing? But since that is the condition of the problem, then the word goes to the Tomahawks, provided that the shareholders of the deposit are willing to pay for it.

A so-so rocket against a so-so target