Тег: Property

What ensures the functioning of the NAP and the protection of private property?

Anonymous question

At the end of my book on ancap, I have carefully collected definitions of the concepts from the libertarian lexicon discussed in the book. I will take the necessary ones from there:

Non-Aggression Principle – no one has the right to the unpunished initiation of violence.

Property Right – a claim to the exclusive or preferential use of an object, recognized by others.

The NAP has been observed by people since the deepest antiquity and is based on the concept of justice. Let me remind you how I define it:

Justice – a feeling of proportionality between the damage caused and the value of the object of conflict.

The sense of justice was actually passed down to us from pre-human ancestors; at least, its presence has been experimentally confirmed in monkeys.

So, we can state with reasonable confidence that the non-aggression principle is implicitly embedded in human nature through evolution. On the other hand, historically, the number of people to whom the non-aggression principle applied and whose private property was respected was limited to the inner circle. The more foreign a person feels, the less others care about their claims, and consequently, about their rights.

Any thief knows that stealing from one’s own is the lowest thing to do. What stops him? Certainly not respect for private property—he is already a thief. Nor fear of retribution—he successfully overcomes that when committing risky crimes against the property of strangers. What stops him is precisely the sense of community. These are “their own.” Don’t touch. It’s beneath one’s dignity. In short, ethics versus morality (you know where to look for the definitions).

What, then, made people begin to respect the rights of complete strangers? First and foremost—the development of global trade.

Historically, trade was long considered a contemptible occupation because a trader was perceived primarily as a fraudster and an extortionist. Secretly find out where it’s cheaper, praise the goods to people, sell them for more—fraudster. Or buy while the goods were plentiful, then sell high when the goods became scarce—extortionist. Therefore, it is always psychologically more comfortable for a trader to sell overseas curiosities rather than local consumer goods. No one knows the purchase price of those, meaning they won’t be caught in fraud, and they are always in short supply; people have no memories of this same product being sold significantly cheaper, and therefore the trader is not perceived as an extortionist. It’s simply an expensive, premium segment product.

The higher the trade volumes, the less the trader trembles over maximizing profit from every penny-transaction, and the more they value the throughput of their retail points. And suddenly, they no longer haggle over every bunch of radishes, but publicly state fixed prices for the entire range. Similarly, purchases are conducted under increasingly long-term contracts. An honest merchant’s word begins to be valued in the widest circles, which further reduces trade costs and expands world trade even more.

For a person living in a closed society, it is enough to observe moral norms within their own circle and perceive strangers as natural enemies toward whom everything is permitted. For a trader, everyone turns out to be a potential client, or a potential advertising agent. This reshapes their morality. Those who rely on deceiving strangers lose in the long run to those who care about their reputation.

And now, after all these reflections, I can briefly formulate what ensures the observance of the NAP and the protection of private property. They are ensured by evolutionarily developed mechanisms of human adaptation to life in a global world.

In this regard, it is not surprising that those who wage wars today do so precisely under the banner of fighting globalism.

The fraudster and extortionist, the engine of progress

Why is the right to property a freedom, and not a restriction on the freedoms of others?

Anonymous question

Of course, the right to property is precisely a limitation on the freedoms of others. The right to property is a claim to dispose of a certain object and to prevent others from disposing of it. Their freedom to dispose of a privatized object will logically decrease.

At the same time, of course, completely different procedures for exercising such claims may be practiced in different societies, including in relation to different classes of objects. These could be procedures such as “if you want to use it — take it, use it, then put it back so that others can take it.” There could be procedures like “if you want to use it — take it, but provide others with a replacement that they will not object to.” Or “you may take it as long as there are enough objects of the same quality left for others.”

But still, we speak of property when the order of using objects is determined by more exclusive rules, such as those outlined in my book in the corresponding chapter. Of course, even in this case, it is not at all necessary that any object acquired as property ends up in the full and undivided disposal of the acquirer. Practices such as using one’s property to the detriment of others will still encounter quite natural resistance.

The question arises: if property rights are nothing but limitations on freedoms, then why do we suddenly claim that a society where they are observed is a free one? Free from what? First and foremost, of course, from the war of all against all. Knowing that you have the right to this item, and others respect it, you will not spend a vast amount of resources on second-by-second readiness to defend your power over the item in a struggle with other claimants; this frees up resources for more pleasant activities, thus increasing freedom. Knowing that you do not have the right to this item because it belongs to another, you will not seek ways to seize it directly, but will focus on increasing your opportunities for market exchange. This increases the wealth of possibilities, which, again, means freedom.

A more convoluted but detailed explanation of how property rights ensure freedom in society can always be read in David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, in the chapter In Defense of Property.

branilac slobode

Entrepreneurial Theory of Property

Shortly after my summary of Konstantin Morozov’s article stating that libertarians must either accept moral realism or give up the idea of proving that their ideology is the best, I began reviewing materials from the recently held “Capitalism and Freedom” conference in St. Petersburg. There, I came across Sergey Sazonov’s presentation, “Entrepreneurial Theory of Property.”

It seemed to me, and Valery Kizilov confirmed my suspicion in the Facebook comments, that the topic of this presentation echoes Morozov’s article.

The presentation showed that, purely philosophically, the concept of property can be based on two opposite foundations: deep private property (initially all property is the domain of individuals, and they can subsequently delegate their rights to society) and deep public property (initially everything belongs to everyone, and subsequently society may agree to allocate something into individual ownership).

It was further explained that the idea of deep private property in the most widely accepted Lockean interpretation has an insurmountable flaw—which is exactly what Konstantin Morozov points out. The basis for primary appropriation is the universal right of non-exclusive use of any ownerless resources, but everyone who appropriates them thereby deprives all others of their right of non-exclusive use. Deep public property, however, is devoid of such a logical flaw.

Although both concepts of the origin of property rights allow for the derivation of similar worldviews, there is a serious difference between them. By deriving property rights from deep private property, we must prove the extreme necessity of any state intervention. By deriving them from deep public property, conversely, we must prove any of our own authorizations to dispose of certain things—whether this will indeed be a socially beneficial use of property.

Sergey then demonstrates a justification for deep private property that is devoid of the aforementioned flaw. The transformation of a simple object into a resource that can be turned into property occurs not at the moment of the Lockean “mixing of labor with land,” but at the moment of making an entrepreneurial judgment about them. One sees how something unwanted by anyone can be applied—and that’s it, it’s appropriated. The Lockean contradiction is resolved because a simple object is transformed into a resource instantaneously, and no one is deprived of their non-exclusive right of use in the process. In contrast, within this approach, the idea of deep public property develops insurmountable problems.

In short, I highly recommend getting acquainted with the presentation; it’s a great mental workout. As for me, I will need to think about whether to include this material in my book, and if so, in what form.

Fences under ancap

What if your house was surrounded by a fence while you were at Minarchit buying a new cat-wife? In this case, there is no attempted murder, and the person had the right to build a fence, just as you had the right to build your house before that.
What should be done in such a case?
Do you have the right to break the fence to get through?
Is this a violation of the NAP?
And what if such a concrete fence is poured every day?

Hate

How to maintain the freedom to leave communities under ancap?

Anonymous question

To begin with, I suggest rereading the chapter from the Mechanics of Freedom about bargaining under conditions of anarchy. Briefly, it talks about Schelling points—certain special positions of a system that, for one reason or another, appear unique to those dealing with it, and therefore are more likely to come to the minds of several potential counterparties simultaneously in the absence of prior agreements. Schelling points, in particular, help establish natural boundaries, the maintenance of which saves the parties more effort.

A given spontaneously formed status quo is obviously a Schelling point, and its violation, of course, will meet some resistance. If in a community men usually shake hands and women hug each other and men, then a woman who offers a hand will be perceived with caution, and she will likely be attempted to be hugged. If it is customary in a community to walk freely on neighbors’ lands, marking boundaries as unobtrusively as possible, not locking doors, popping in for visits, leaving mail under the doorstep, and so on—then an attempt to erect a solid fence will already be perceived with strained bewilderment. And a fence that isolates someone else’s plot from the outside world is unambiguous rudeness; a whole delegation will come to such an unfriendly neighbor and try to explain that things aren’t done that way here. On the other hand, if it is customary to fence oneself off, let vicious dogs into the yard, and fire into the air at any stirring near the border, then a new fence preventing you from getting into your own home will have to be viewed simply as an inevitable fuck-up: you must have been such a loser not to notice that your neighbor managed to completely surround you with his territory. Now you’ll have to drop some toxic plague onto him via drones, and only after that can you begin peaceful negotiations with the neighbor.

The same applies to leaving a community. If it is a common occurrence, with people constantly entering and leaving, then such an open order of access is perceived as natural, and this Schelling point will be upheld. But if there have been no such precedents since the dawn of time, then the attempt to leave will be perceived as something extraordinary; you will have to explain yourself, prove your right, and perhaps somehow compensate those remaining for your departure. This, by the way, is not such an unlikely situation. Imagine, for example, an artel that has mapped out a front of work to a certain deadline—and then you suddenly decide to leave the community. They might simply not let you out until the work is finished, or shake you down for a serious penalty because those remaining will now have to slave away, which they had not planned.

An attempt to push one’s position against the status quo, whatever it may be, will inevitably meet resistance, and this resistance may turn out to be disproportionately serious, even if the required concession seems trivial. The reason is clear: if one simply gives in, the new status quo will be that you give in under pressure. Such things are clearly seen when representatives of different cultures clash, where for one, conceding on small things is good manners and a guarantee that you will also be met with reciprocity in the future—while for the other, a concession means that one should keep pressing until they break—after all, the opponent has already buckled, they must be finished off.

Now let’s talk about recipes. What to do so that your plot isn’t seized, so that you are allowed to leave a community, and so on. Build the reputation you need. By the way, we had a very good video about this, rewatch it.

If you have the reputation of a person who, upon seeing a fence, will start breaking it without looking, then that is a poor reputation. You break the fence, they shoot you, and then they explain to interested parties that this madman started breaking into my territory, didn’t listen to warnings, and I had to shoot in self-defense. Pity it was immediately fatal, it turned out rather unfortunate. It is far more useful to have the reputation of a person for whom a bunch of people will stand up. It is also good to have the reputation of a person who can bring a lot of benefit and with whom it is better to be friends. In short, working on your reputation can work wonders.

And finally, I want to recommend a very lovely cartoon Klaus. It is precisely about how to change the status quo in a situation where fencing in someone else’s house to keep the owner from leaving is just an innocent prank.

Blitz-4

Some guys from Reddit bought a bunch of shares in dead companies and ruined “greedy” hedge funds for shorting those companies. Who is more in the right in this situation?

Anal Magician

Those who leave the casino and go play chess are more in the right.

I have already analyzed the topic of market manipulation, and even more specifically, the pump and dump scheme. My reflections boiled down to the fact that if traders are doing this, it is a strategy as risky as any other. And attempts to regulate it are exactly the same kind of market manipulation. So, if a trading platform in principle implies the possibility of closing trading to prevent someone from making a profit, then there is no point in being on such platforms. It’s not surprising that the Reddit guys eventually ignored the stocks and went to trade crypto. Over time, the smartest among them will even understand which crypto is better for buying and holding, and which is only for speculation. But on crypto exchanges, at least their toy won’t be taken away, even if there is a danger that they might upset someone with it.

I am reading the translation of The Mechanics of Freedom. Very interesting, thank you. My English is at the level of reading an English-Russian dictionary, so this will not be criticism, but rather a question. At the end of the chapter Rare means exhaustible, the “problem of abundance” is mentioned. This really triggered me. Abundance is the best thing humanity can hope for, and calling it a problem is blasphemy.

Then I remembered that “false friends” of the translator exist, and the meaning of “problem” is much broader than the Russian “проблема” — it can be a task, a question, or even a situation.

I’m still triggered. I want to understand: is this just a translation inaccuracy, or does the author really think that abundance has some kind of problems?

Dnar

From the text, it seemed quite obvious to me that the author is being ironic about leftists who claim that the emergence of abundance will cause problems for the existence of private property. Yes, indeed, many things that were once paid will become free, and this only means a transition to other monetization schemes, as we see, for example, in the case of copies of texts. Property as a concept will not disappear. It is precisely competition in the production of goods and services that drives their price down so much that it can even become zero. But in order for the problem of how to get money for something cheap and easily accessible to arise in the first place, capitalism is exactly what is needed. This paradox is, in fact, the theme of the chapter.

Should abortion be banned or not?

I have analyzed this topic — once and twice. I can only add to what was previously stated that the question of whether one should have an abortion is as unpleasant as the question of whether one should perform anesthesia by hitting the back of the head with a mallet. As long as we do not have available methods of anesthesia that do not cause a concussion as a side effect, there are a huge number of situations in which such a barbaric method would be better than none at all. But when science has already stepped far enough forward, mallet anesthesia may only be required in a very exotic situation. The same goes for preventing the birth of a child. Should it be banned to surgically remove it from the body without a chance of survival for the fetus? As long as there are no less barbaric methods at hand, there are a huge number of situations in which it is better to do it this way. But when science gives us a wide variety of contraceptive means, surgical abortion becomes a much rarer procedure than it could be.

How should one treat those who, on principle, force people not to use protection and to give birth? Offer them appendicitis treatment without anesthesia.

Violence and Property Rights

Voluntarist, Bitarch

First, I want to share with you a rather interesting piece of material regarding the topic of violence and private property titled “The Political Concept of Freedom“. The author argues that property rights always have a violent origin, as violence must be applied to maintain them.

Before providing my commentary, I will note in advance that we are considering both the private property rights of individuals and companies (supported by the right-libertarians) as well as collective property rights formed within voluntary associations (supported by the left-libertarians). However, we dismiss the situation in which property rights do not exist at all, because in such a state of affairs, it would be impossible to organize any effective redistribution of resources to solve various tasks, since then absolutely anyone could take any resource from anyone else at any moment regardless of the circumstances.

If the matter concerns the protection of immediate property, which you use frequently or are holding in your hands right now, there is no problem in maintaining it—you would have to be attacked with physical harm (or at least with a non-zero probability of such harm) for it to be taken. If violence as a phenomenon has not yet been eradicated from society, then you can quite reasonably use means of self-defense. By the way, they do not even have to be lethal; they could be pepper sprays, stun guns, ultra/infrasound. It will be sufficient to inflict only very unpleasant sensations on the aggressor, without long-term physical consequences, to force them to let go of your bag or leave the house. If violence has been eradicated, then simply no one will attack you.

Regarding the protection of remote property—this too can be organized without violence, for example, by applying the following methods described by Bitarch in his material “Protection of Property in a Society that has Eradicated Violence“:

1) A contract within a contractual jurisdiction (CJ), under which the CJ will make certain efforts to prevent the violation of your property rights. The most obvious option for real estate is a contract between the CJ and utility providers (electricity, gas, water) regarding their disconnection in case of squatting or non-payment of rent.
2) Physical fencing of property with a fence and an access control system: a barrier, a door with an electronic lock.
3) For situational protection, when the owner wants to prevent anyone from entering their territory (for example, angry workers who want to seize a factory), a guard at the entrance or a human chain.
4) For any items containing electronic components (from planes, yachts, and cars to household appliances, phones, and headphones), blocking use without entering an access code, retina scan, fingerprint, or RFID tag.
5) Network-based reputation systems (available globally via the internet), where violators of private property can be listed, which would lead to denial of service, boycott, or ostracism.
6) A system of options. This is already widespread in Silicon Valley IT companies. The hired employee is financially interested in the success of the enterprise; they will profit from the growth of the company’s capitalization and are not interested in stealing the employer’s property, as under the terms of the contract, these options will be forfeited in the event of illegal actions by the employee.

As we can see, the protection of property does not necessarily require violence, except perhaps in the case of the immediate seizure of property that you are using at that moment; however, this is already an aggressive attack on you, in which case self-defense is permissible. Property rights and violence are not necessarily one and the same.

Example of property protection without violence

If the aggressor kills the property owner, does the property pass to him?

Someone

Property is, as is fashionable to explain nowadays, a bundle of rights. Moreover, an awful lot of these rights can be invented: the more complex the legal relations in society, the more of these rights there are, the harder they are to distinguish, and the more they intertwine. For example, I can visit a friend and sit down to work at a computer that he rents along with the apartment using his parents’ money, where I pay for access to the computer with a kiss. I use a pirated operating system and type the text of an article promised to a client, for which I have received an advance payment. In this regard, can the friend’s parents, the owner of the apartment with the computer, and the employees of the operating system manufacturer also demand a kiss from me, and exactly what share of the kiss? Can I, instead of a kiss, send the guy to my client so that the client can kiss him himself, since he has such an urgency that I have to work anywhere at an odd hour? The answers to these questions seem obvious only if we have some roughly similar notions of what is proper in our minds.

But notions of what is proper depend quite heavily on context. If I kill an opponent in a computer game, and the game implies the possibility of looting the corpse, then the transfer of the deceased’s property to me causes no particular dispute. If the same rules apply in a live-action role-playing game, then my ownership of the killed person’s property can also be quite legal. Finally, if I participate in such an unpleasant variety of role-playing games as a real war, then the appropriation of weapons, ammunition, and various souvenirs from the body of the killed person there also does not cause misunderstanding among those around.

Moreover, military booty may not be limited to things from a corpse. If tomorrow Navalny kills Putin, he could well claim to inherit the presidential post in Russia, and show me that strange person who would dispute this. Prescribe him a triple dose of fantasy.

But as soon as we move into a context where murder is not considered a way of resolving conflict, it ceases to be a legitimate way of acquiring the property of the killed. After that, the entire bundle of rights for the killer will shrink to the factual possession of what he managed to take from the killed, and only for as long as it is not taken away.

Madam President, please choose the dish upon which to place your trophy during the inauguration.

Blitz 3

How will commercial real estate work under ancap?

Placeholder

An interesting question. People more often ask how things in the sphere of so-called public goods will work under ancap. Commercial real estate, however, is a private good. Under a state, the right of private property is to some extent conditional, because it depends on whether the state changes its mind about recognizing this right, or decides to nationalize a particular object. Under ancap, the right of private property is also conditional, and depends on how strong of a negative externality the property owner creates for those around them.

So, if I am to answer the question directly: commercial real estate under ancap will operate in such a way as to create minimum negative externalities and maximum income. Those entrepreneurs who solve this optimization problem better than others will prosper.

How will private detectives work under ancap? After all, it seems one cannot violate someone else’s property.

Anal Magician

As I already mentioned in the answer to the previous question, private property is a conditional concept. Well, this is my favorite mantra that rights are claims that are tolerated—you’ve probably already learned it by heart. Therefore, a private detective first conducts an investigation as far as possible without violating anyone’s property rights and without disturbing anyone—for example, using open data, recordings from public cameras, analysis of evidence provided by the client, and so on. If during the investigation he becomes interested in something located on someone’s property, he seeks ways to obtain the owner’s consent. If consent is not granted, he usually manages to find workarounds.

And in a situation where absolutely all leads point to a unique piece of evidence controlled by some owner who is unwilling to grant access, this becomes a strong suspicion that this owner is, in the worst case, the sought-after criminal, or their accomplice, or in the best case, a sympathizer. And here the owner may well be faced with a choice of what will bring them the lower cost: strong suspicions of complicity in a crime or granting the detective the right to investigate on their territory.

Let’s also add such a tool as a reward for assistance in the investigation—if the notorious owner understands that they will receive a reward for their inconvenience, then why not put up with it.

Suppose ancap has arrived, and on the street one person killed another. In the current system, the police would handle this case. But who will handle this case under ancap? Private detective agencies? But they must be paid, and what if the person had no relatives or friends?

anonymous question

Well, this is already an example of a traditional question about ancap: how public goods will be ensured. Fortunately, you specified the location of the murder: the street. The purpose of a street is to ensure the mass movement of people within a settlement. Exactly how the street owner monetizes the solution to this task is a separate question. In this case, we are interested in the fact that unpunished murders on the street hinder the task of mass unobstructed movement along it. If the street owner does not solve this problem, people will either have to invent ways to protect themselves on this street or stay away from this sinister place. In the second case, traffic drops, and this directly hits the owner’s income. In the first case, the costs for residents increase, they become less solvent, and the street owner’s income drops indirectly. So, he has economic incentives to solve this problem, even if he is not bound by an obligation to provide security on his street directly.

Of course, if the street owner manages to hide the incident, it will save costs. But you know these people: they are always sniffing something out, they are always suspicious… Once this episode surfaces, all sorts of speculations will begin that dozens of corpses are being hauled away every night and it’s time to flee this cesspool. To hell with that, transparency is more profitable.

A city known for the fact that security on the streets was provided by a volunteer. Well, that’s also a way, of course, but usually the heroism of one person only masks the failures of others.

For the greater good

Bitarch asked me to comment on his article about property protection in a society that has eradicated violence, but asked that I not be too critical.

As a reminder, Bitarch’s main idea is as follows. The cost of weapons is decreasing, their destructive power is increasing, and then we extrapolate the graph of the number of weapons over time and find that after some time, one person will be able to destroy all of humanity with a simple flick of the wrist. To prevent this, Bitarch suggests tying people’s hands in advance; they will not be able to make simple movements with them, and thus humanity will be saved.

How to tie their hands? Universal armament is required. In this case, any attempt on another person’s life must lead to the instantaneous destruction of the aggressor. Under such conditions, rational agents will not dare to encroach upon anyone’s life.

But there is a problem: besides attempts on life, there are also encroachments on property, and property rights are a matter of agreement between people and can be disputed. Therefore, Bitarch postulates: using violence to protect one’s property is unacceptable. If you are asked to choose between your wallet or your life—you can choose life, and upon an attempt on your life, destroy the assailant. But if, for example, some squatters occupy your temporarily empty house, you’re screwed. In the best case, you can ask the utility workers to cut off their electricity. And even then, it’s unclear if they will accommodate you if the squatters are paying for the electricity.

How to solve such problems? “However you like,” Bitarch answers, “these are your problems, as long as there is no violence.” And he provides as an inspiring example a tale about how states, under the threat of violence, banned the use of DDT instead of leaving it to the market. With the help of the state club, they defeated DDT, defeated ozone holes, are defeating global warming and coronavirus, are defeating common sense—they will manage violence too.

Etatism is an intellectual disease in which a person places the presumed values of imaginary collective subjects above real individual values.

Stay healthy!

How do anarcho-individualism and libertarianism relate?

анонимный вопрос

To get a vivid idea of anarcho-individualism, I can recommend listening to such an anarcho-individualist as Alexander Tatarkov. He speaks quite a lot about his worldview. As for us, we will discuss the differences with libertarianism.

The main postulate of an anarcho-individualist is that the individual determines for themselves how to build their life and their relationships with others, and any norms coming from the outside have the status of well-wishes for them; they have every right to fulfill them, take note of them, ignore them, demonstratively violate them, and so on. Naturally, the anarcho-individualist agrees that they bear full responsibility for their chosen line of behavior, but reserves the right to avoid this responsibility. The only thing in which an anarcho-individualist limits themselves is that they do not engage in the construction of power institutions; this is a taboo. Violating this taboo turns them into an ordinary Machiavellian.

It is not difficult to see that an anarcho-individualist, without violating their principles, can coexist with others in a state of Hobbesian war of all against all, sit in a lotus position achieving enlightenment, join any cooperative activity, or engage in ancapism as a private entrepreneur.

The main postulate of libertarianism is the principle of self-ownership. A person belongs to themselves, which is quite close to the views of anarcho-individualists. But this also means the recognition of the institution of property, for if property is completely denied, there can be no talk of self-ownership, and if property is partially denied, it implies the permissibility of encroachments on self-ownership, such as coercion. Therefore, a libertarian, unlike an anarcho-individualist, limits themselves not only in the construction of power institutions but also in encroaching on someone else’s property.

Since libertarianism was invented, the phenomenon of property itself has been analyzed and is now usually interpreted as a whole bundle of various rights. A maximalist approach to property, where it is interpreted as an absolute unrestricted right to dispose of an object, is very convenient for drawing caricatures of libertarianism or criticizing it in other ways. There are a vast number of such attempts in the information field; among the most interesting, I would name the text by Laksi Katala, Fundamental Problems of Anarcho-Capitalism.

Anarcho-individualism is a convenient basic framework in which a person acts when building their relationships from scratch with an unfamiliar environment where the rules are unknown to them, or where rules have not yet been developed.

Libertarianism is the next logical step toward building a peaceful, prosperous society, where people generally recognize each other’s legal capacity, and thus can develop frameworks for determining property rights and their transfer.

I should note that libertarianism is not entirely synonymous with anarcho-capitalism. To understand the differences, I refer the reader to the corresponding chapter of Friedman’s Mechanics of Liberty: Is Anarcho-Capitalism Libertarian?