I really hope that the conference Constitution of Freedom, announced by the Adam Smith Center for this coming Sunday, will be streamed, so that I can watch and comment in real time. If not, I’ll wait for the recording. In any case, it’s pleasant that the educational part of the libertarian agenda in Russia hasn’t been completely consumed by the political one, although in the future I would like to see similar conferences here in Montenegro, of course)))
The vast majority of the questions I receive boil down to the formula “how will such-and-such sphere of life work under ancap?” In fact, I have already provided answers to many similar questions, and some more than once. I have built up a huge body of texts that few people are likely to bother re-reading. Now, I am increasingly thinking about consolidating them into a relatively compact and coherent material.
Many people also ask for a link to some basic introductory course on libertarianism, without the jargon, for those who want to go a bit further than Wikipedia and understand what libertarianism is, how well it suits them personally, and if it doesn’t suit them very well, whether libertarians should be considered dangerous enemies, harmless weirdos, or useful companions.
In principle, I have already translated one such opus—Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. In progress is the translation of another opus with a similar message—Stefan Molinieu’s Practical Anarchy. But both works have at least one obvious downside: they are translations. This is an appeal to a different cultural background, which generates arguments that may seem strange and clumsy. There was hope for Mikhail Svetov, but a lot of time has passed since his announcement of a book on libertarianism, and there has been no progress.
Presumably, the work will consist of three parts. The first—a brief description of the libertarian worldview and a justification of why we need ancap. The second—tentatively titled “How under ancap”—a collection of examples of how this can be implemented. The third—how to bring ancap closer.
Forgive me for not planning to go to prison for the sake of writing a book, so the process may take some time. But on the other hand, I intend to post individual chapters as they appear, even if I am not entirely satisfied with the result and consider reworking them in the future. So you will have an idea of the paths my thoughts are taking.
Drop suggestions in the comments about which chapters are absolutely necessary in the second part of the book, besides courts and roads.
Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s deputy for political technology, has announced something unprecedented that he is preparing to save his boss many times, and now, he has published it. In effect, he has invented a Free State Project. There, a roll call of those wishing to join the project was conducted first, and only after twenty thousand people wishing to move to the promised land were gathered did the relocation begin. It is the same in our case. Everyone who intends to join the prayer ritual for Navalny’s release from captivity is suggested to first sign up on the website, and only when half a million such people are gathered will the date of the ritual and other details be set.
They say the site crashed almost immediately from the influx of interested people, but by the time I reached it, the only thing indicating the high load was a non-functioning counter. So, the order of magnitude could only be estimated by the circles on the map (however, a report arrived—the 200,000 application mark has been passed). To register, you need to specify your address (you can simply click a point on the map) and a valid email. After the email is verified, the voice of the applicant is counted—at least, the number next to my house on the map increased by one.
There are no options to withdraw a vote, so if the date for taking to the streets turns out to be later than the date of my departure to Montenegro, I will not be able to inform the organizers that I cannot attend.
What can I say about the prospects of the campaign? If the goal were specifically the release of Navalny, one would have to take some Katerina Tikhonova hostage and demand Alexei’s immediate release, threatening this woman with death. As for the chosen toolkit, it is primarily suitable for rocking the boat. Well, okay, let’s rock it, even though it’s already become tiring. This will not help Navalny in any way, but he is a grown boy and knew what he was getting into.
A manifesto was published on the panarchy.ru website about the launch of a project to resettle European libertarians in Montenegro — an analogue of the American Free State Project. Much to my own surprise, I agreed to join this project at an early stage. If nothing falls through due to some new COVID restrictions, I plan to head to the country in April and begin settling in.
When I talk about an early stage, I mean literally the very beginning, because so far, only one family has actually moved to the country as part of the project; the other potential participants are currently discussing prospects in a Telegram chat that branched off from the main panarchists’ chat and was originally dedicated to systeding.
Thus, my channel, which has been predominantly theoretical until now, will take on the characteristics of a travel blog in some time. Of course, I am far from the idea that once I arrive, the entire country will suddenly take giant leaps toward libertarianism. Rather, I will need to learn how to survive in a new place, since the cost of living there is higher than in my current backwater. But if it becomes slightly easier for those who move after me because of my experience, it will mean that my effort was not in vain.
Ural Libertarian Lecture Hall
This Saturday (27.02.21), two lecturers will visit Yekaterinburg. The event begins at 13:00. Address: 12 Rosa Luxemburg St.. Entrance is free. Advance registration on TimePad is required. Come and bring your friends, it will be interesting! Our guests:
● Alexander Kotov, Perm. Author of the blog Crypto-Libertarian, dedicated to libertarianism, crypto-anarchism, and methods of collective decision-making.
● Alexei Nefyodov, Novosibirsk. Cryptocurrency popularizer, bitcoin maximalist. He is not a programmer, therefore he examines this issue from economic and socio-political perspectives.
Many people know about Bitcoin Pizza Day, celebrated on May 22nd, in honor of the first purchase of a product with bitcoin, when on May 18, 2010, a guy from Florida named Laszlo Hanyecz put out a call, saying he wanted pizza and would pay 10,000 bitcoins; he waited four days before finally finding someone who would buy him that very pizza in exchange for bitcoins.
And on February 24th, Lightning Pizza Day is celebrated. On February 24, 2018, the same Laszlo Hanyecz bought pizza again, using the then-recently launched Lightning Network—a second-layer protocol on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. This time, the price of two pizzas was only 649,000 satoshis, which is 0.00649 bitcoin. At today’s prices, that is approximately 330 dollars. Moreover, he handled the purchase significantly faster; there was no long wait for a seller.
He described the technical details on a lightning developer resource, and the text shows how immature the technology was at the time. Currently, using Lightning is still far from convenient, but there has nonetheless been substantial progress.
How did I find out about all this? There is a convenient custodial lightning wallet on Telegram @lntxbot, equipped with many third-party services. In particular, you can subscribe to a mailing list of paid advertisements there. Send the bot the command /sats4ads on 15 and you will occasionally receive messages from the bot with very short ads and a claim button. By clicking the button, you receive a reward of 15 millisatoshis per character (this is very little, but you can play with the price—you can receive more expensive ads, but in smaller quantities). And so, today a mailing arrived where I was congratulated on the holiday, told this whole story, and offered cashback in satoshis for every pizza purchased. Unfortunately, the offer did not apply to the Russian Federation, so the bot’s ad targeting isn’t great.
On the other hand, today I received another offer regarding ad placement. And since it’s such a day, I requested payment in Lightning: 10,000 satoshis—exactly one hundred million times less than what the pizza cost in May 2010.
So, I am happy to post an announcement for a lecture on cryptocurrencies, which will take place this coming Saturday in Yekaterinburg. I hope there are residents of this city among my readers who are not yet aware, and that the lecturer’s advertising budget did not go to waste. Bring your acquaintances to the lecture as well, if, of course, you wish them well, because mastering the use of bitcoins is definitely a good thing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be trying to fine us and tax us for it.
As for the announcement itself, it will be in the next post, to separate it somehow from the prolonged preamble.
I am pleased to present a new video from Libertarian Band — the guys have started the long-awaited series on the tools of agorism. And although I no longer write scripts for them, they are doing a great job, which I am very happy about.
The video provides a historical introduction to encryption and how this entirely state-driven affair suddenly led to cryptocurrencies—tools for liberation from the state—and concludes with recommendations on how to use them.
On January 23, debates between Alexander Litreev and Vladimir Milov will take place on Alexander Plyushchev’s YouTube channel regarding recent events in the USA and various ideological interpretations of what is happening.
Alexander Plyushchev is an Echo of Moscow presenter who recently organized debates between Mikhail Svetov and Maxim Katz on the same topic at an absolutely abysmal technical level, and now, apparently, wants a rematch against the multi-person streaming software.
Alexander Litreev is an Estonian IT entrepreneur known for creating the Red Button mobile app and the Vee VPN service. He is a member of the Tea Club, with whose technical support the debates will be conducted, so I hope that Plyushchev will be able to focus on the show rather than fighting with the audio.
Vladimir Milov is an economic commentator for the Navalny Live channel, and also runs his own YouTube channel. He is a former Deputy Minister of Energy. Co-author of the report Putin. Results and several others, as well as the economic part of Navalny’s presidential program. A fan of Barack Obama, and based on this love, he is ready to love even the late Joe Biden, who served as Vice President under Obama.
The reason for the debates was a tweet by Milov stating that Twitter is a private company, so why, he asks, are libertarians outraged by Trump’s blocking. Litreev replied that Twitter is fully within its rights, while we are all within our rights to be outraged by the blocking from a moral standpoint. Vladimir countered with a question as to whether he would have the right to kill Alexander if he headed a monopoly private military company, while the rest would be left only to be outraged by this from a moral standpoint. Alexander was stunned by such a distortion and invited Vladimir to a debate. The latter initially declined, citing the fact that it didn’t go very well with Svetov, but then changed his mind and agreed. And when Svetov, in turn, began asking to go instead of Litreev, Milov replied, “get in line, young man”.
Thanks to the Tea Club for asking to promote the event; I went into Twitter to figure out where it all came from, and it was fascinating, but where do you get so much time to be in it constantly?
It is no secret that Mikhail Svetov dismantled the LPR with a single goal: to rid himself of the burdensome obligation to participate in organizing the Adam Smith readings and to conduct his stream dedicated to the US elections without interference. Therefore, the 2020 readings will take place in a strange format, where lecturers will speak before a giant audience of as many as thirty people, and the main emphasis will be shifted to the online broadcast.
Historically, there have always been some problems with the broadcast of the readings. And even now, although they start tomorrow, the links to the stream are still nowhere to be seen. They promise to provide it an hour before the broadcast begins to those who perform an additional pointless action—registering on the event’s Timepad. Of course, this is not required— here is the link. However, we love the readings not for their strange streaming policy, but for their interesting program. Let’s see what they have prepared for us this time.
Economic Section “The Wealth of Nations”
12:05 — 12:45 Grigory Bazhenov, economist, Friedrich von Hayek’s Sensory Order. He previously spoke at the IX readings with a report on whether an ethically neutral economic science is possible. He currently runs the YouTube channel Furydrops.
12:45 — 13:30 Valery Kizilov, economist, The Economics of the Corona-crisis: Old and New. I don’t know if he has spoken at the Adam Smith readings before, but here is an example of his lecture at last year’s “Constitution of Freedom” conference.
13:30 — 14:10 Farid Khusainov, economist, The Railway Industry and the Invisible Hand of the Market. Here is an example of his previous presentation: How the State Took Over the Railways – IX readings.
Ethical Section “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”
14:30 — 15:10 Lyudmila Petranovskaya, psychologist, Ethical Aspects of Discussions Around COVID-19. She doesn’t seem to have spoken at the readings before; the web mostly contains videos about child psychology.
15:10 — 15:50 Alexey Raksha, demographer, Truth and Mortality in the Age of Covid. Here is an example of his yesterday’s presentation on Echo of Moscow. I suspect it will strongly echo the theme of the lecture.
15:50 — 16:30 Anton Kuznetsov, philosopher, Free Will and Science. His presentations regarding the problem of consciousness are mostly available online. Here, for example, is last year’s.
Political Section “Political Rhetoric”
16:50 — 17:30 Alexander Filippov, sociologist, The Revival of Leviathan as a Challenge and a Problem. Here is an example of his presentation within the Open University project on the meaning of the state.
17:30 — 18:10 Daniil Tsygankov, sociologist, author of the telegram channel Commission on Regulatorics, The Russian Frontier: The Birth of the Political Field from the Regulatory Oppression of the State? As an example of his presentations, I can suggest an interview with Tsygankov on the SVTV channel— from those times when Mikhail Svetov knew how to cooperate with Sergey Boyko.
18:10 — 18:50 Evgeny Varshaver, sociologist, Integration of Migrants in Russia: Theory and Practice. Here is an example of his presentation on PostNauka—specifically about the integration of migrants.
In general, if you get a bit bored during the election night on Svetov’s stream (or on the competing stream from Leonid Volkov), you will have the opportunity to get acquainted in advance with the lecturers of the upcoming Adam Smith readings. As for me, I will be commenting on the readings in text format in my telegram channel (remarks in twitter are possible along the way, although I don’t really know how to use Twitter).
Our team has released a new video. We continue to develop the theme of NAP, and while in the previous episode we limited ourselves to formulating the principle as it applies to today’s realities, now we are considering the question of why, exactly, violence is a poor tool. It would seem that so many people have used it for so many years, so why give it up?
Separately, I really enjoyed the atmospheric gaming inserts in the video — the team has returned to its signature touch, and that makes me very happy.
The next episode will feature a set of recommendations for the unobtrusive implementation of NAP (I already have this script ready), and further, there are planned recommendations regarding obtrusive implementation, a topic I am still exploring.
