Тег: Hirschleifer

Salvador and the BPN

Everything is fine with the right to bear arms in El Salvador (ownership from age 21, carrying from 24, a test and a criminal record check are required for a license), freedom of activity for private security companies, a government sector share of only 7.6% in the economy, and the lowest tax burden in all of the Americas. Now they are even giving permanent residency for three bitcoins. It’s not exactly ancap, but much has been successfully implemented. At the same time, El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world: robberies, murders, etc. Where is the notorious BPN (Balance of Violence Potential) if any law-abiding citizen can be armed no worse than any gangster?

Anonymous question

The Balance of Violence Potential (BPN) is a concept once used by Bitarch as a universal recipe against violence (later he abandoned such a vulgar interpretation), which he drew from Auzan, who in turn recounted Hirschleifer’s model regarding the conditions for the stability of anarchy. However, in the original model, everything was by no means reduced to the BPN alone. For the stability of anarchy according to Hirschleifer, low conflict intensity, high resource dispersion, and a sufficiently high income from peaceful activities are required.

The intensity factor is a sort of integral indicator consisting of the characteristics of military technologies, the motivation of the parties, and so on. It cannot be calculated directly, so it is rather understood through comparison between different conflicting societies. Resource dispersion ensures the difficulty of achieving hegemony through control of the economy. High income from peaceful activity reduces the motivation for war.

What do we have in El Salvador? Its history includes a war with Honduras in 1969, followed by a civil war that lasted until 1992, meaning one can assume a certain habit of solving issues by force—something institutionalists trace back to ancient colonial times and which is quite characteristic of Latin America in general. Resources are distributed very unevenly: in a tiny, densely populated agrarian country, there is a severe shortage of fertile land, and it is all concentrated in mountainous areas. Poverty and unemployment levels are very high, meaning there must simply be a large number of cheap fighters in the country who will inevitably dispose of themselves while terrorizing businesses, thereby further increasing poverty and unemployment.

What factors should lead to a decrease in the level of violence in El Salvador? First, the notorious second demographic transition. Fewer young people mean less banditry. Second, because a significant share of the economy consists of remittances from abroad, this increases resource dispersion. Recognizing bitcoin as legal tender will reduce remittance fees, which will increase income from peaceful economic activity. Finally, the country has recent experience with a truce between gangs and the government, during which the murder rate dropped sharply. If they wish, they can repeat this, which would not only reduce the level of violence but also increase the decentralization of power.

Why might the government in El Salvador be willing to decentralize? Because there is neighboring Honduras, a former military adversary. And Honduras is implementing panarchic projects, such as the Prospera charter city on Roatan island and a couple of smaller ones. Small El Salvador cannot afford the Russian Federation’s tactics toward neighbors attempting liberalization because it lacks the strength. Instead, it will have to catch up to their level. And wealthy citizens are a far more significant factor in reducing violence than any mythical BPN.

The (In)effectiveness of Violence

Bitarch’s Column
(with editorial edits by Ancap-chan)

When you want to achieve a certain goal, you choose one of many available tools. Suppose a hostel has opened in your house, which constantly creates noise and a criminogenic environment near your home. What can you do? The simplest option at first glance is to force the owner to close their business by using physical violence.

But what if they have at least a pepper spray? Now, in the event of your attack, your potential costs have increased. Violence as a tool no longer looks as profitable as it seemed initially. So, willy-nilly, you have to look for other ways to influence them—persuading, explaining the situation to the property owner so they terminate the lease, giving the hostel a one-star review on online resources, and calling on other residents of the building to do the same. In short, you have a incentive to act civilly.

Initially, the simplest tool of coercion, physical violence, quickly loses its effectiveness when the potential victim is capable of applying counter-violence, even in the smallest amount. The former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, once praised violence as a tool of extremely high efficiency. But for this to be the case, he had to introduce some of the strictest rules for purchasing and owning weapons in Singapore, even for self-defense—because even a slight leveling of the balance of violence potential in society leads to a sharp decrease in the effectiveness of violence as a tool of coercion.

I can propose a hypothesis well-supported by facts: the costs of aggressive violence increase exponentially as the possibilities for counter-violence by the victim increase.

Suppose a stationary bandit (the state) wants to use violence to force someone to comply with its demands. If the victim of state aggression has no lethal weapon, a small operational group is sufficient for the arrest. But what if the victim has a pistol? Police special forces must be sent. For a minor reason, such as unpaid fines or the retail sale of psychoactive substances, no one will send special forces. In Alexander Rozov’s blog, there is a post with confirmation of this fact using the example of Sweden.

Suppose the potential victim of state aggression is not some tax delinquent, but a more significant target—for example, a clan leader in Somalia. He doesn’t just have a pistol, but a thousand fighters with Kalashnikov rifles, albeit poorly trained. As history has shown, the damage even from such “bandits” proved unacceptable for the US government.

Imagine that the followers of the Branch Davidians sect, who took refuge at the Waco ranch in 1993, had anti-tank grenade launchers in addition to shotguns and rifles. As we know, the FBI decided to use tanks at the time to ram the walls and release tear gas. If the defenders had anti-tank weapons, such an option would have had to be rejected as excessively risky.

In such a situation, the state could either turn the assault on the ranch from a police operation into an army operation, using mortars or other lethal indiscriminate weapons, or starve the ranch out, with the prospect that these fanatics would indeed all die of hunger. Both options in a democratic state are fraught with significant political damage, which for politicians is even more important than economic damage to the state. For more details on such factors, I recommend reading Martin van Creveld’s book The Rise and Decline of the State.

Finally, we have already analyzed a potential situation where a potential victim of state violence threatens the use of weapons of mass destruction. Currently, this is perceived as something extremely unlikely—not because the state effectively prevents the creation of WMDs by private individuals, but because people who have enough skills to create WMDs also have strong internal moral convictions that preclude the use of indiscriminate mass violence, including against innocent people. If a democratic state sets an example by being the first to use WMDs against its own citizens, this moral prohibition will be weakened, and over time will disappear altogether. No official in a relatively civilized state is ready to allow such consequences.

Conclusions can be drawn:

1) The costs of coercion by the state or any other aggressor increase exponentially as the means of counter-violence by the victim are strengthened. Minimal self-defense weapons, therefore, sharply raise the price of an attack, and against a cheap dirty bomb made from nuclear waste, even the nuclear arsenal of a superpower will be ineffective.

2) In order for a free society (a territorial or extraterritorial contractual jurisdiction) to protect itself from conquest by the state, it is more profitable for it not to invest in a single “wonder weapon,” but to provide incentives for clients to acquire personal weapons, skills for their use, and the readiness to use them for defense. This will also help society protect itself from its own coordinating bodies, should they decide to become a state, since it will ensure an even distribution of the potential for violence. This is discussed, in particular, in the previously translated work by Jack Hirshleifer, Anarchy and Its Dissolution.

Finally, I will provide a good quote from the book The Liberal Archipelago by Chandran Kukathas.

Take gamblers and casino owners. Their activities may be alien or even repulsive to us. However, would the fact that gambling takes place in another country be sufficient grounds for invading it?

Take “monopolists.” They may set prices for their products that we consider unfair. However, would we consider the fact that a country supplies its goods too expensively a sufficient ground for declaring war on that country?

But why are we ready in similar cases to send armed men (police) to our fellow citizens, take them captive (prison), and take tribute from them (fine)? Probably because, unlike a neighboring state, they cannot defend themselves.

Give the enemy a weapon

Bitarch posted reflections on his VKontakte page regarding the idea that instead of bombs, weapons and ammunition should have been dropped on the Third Reich. As justification, he cites the same Hirschleifer model in the form presented by Auzan — with conclusions that the stable existence of an anarchic society requires maintaining a balance of the potential for violence. If so, the artificial equalization of the BPN (Balance of Potential for Violence) in Germany during WWII would have led to the fall of totalitarianism and, consequently, to a swift end to the war.

One thing can be said for sure: if small arms and equipment were dropped on concentration camps, it would indeed have immediately led to an armed uprising, followed by attempts to leave the Reich or seize a certain area for the subsequent effective deterrence of punitive units.

To what extent the same tactic would have led to an armed uprising against the regime throughout the rest of the Reich’s territory depends solely on the degree to which that remaining territory resembled a concentration camp. Conversely, the more complacency toward power existed in a given social stratum, the more likely it is that the weapons gifted from the skies would have been disciplinedly handed over to the authorities for subsequent shipment to the front.

These obvious considerations follow directly from the Hirschleifer model as well: the higher the bitterness parameter and the lower the overall level of resources, the greater the probability that a battle for hegemony until total victory will occur in the system instead of peaceful anarchy. Conversely, the lower the bitterness and the higher the relative prosperity, the fewer efforts the parties are inclined to spend on fighting each other, and the more they leave for production.

The greater the legitimacy of the regime, the less likely it is that the artificial equalization of the potential for violence through the distribution of firearms will lead to any problems for the regime. The reason is quite simple: under conditions of low bitterness between parties, firearms simply will not be used for political struggle. It doesn’t matter if I have a gun if I express my dissatisfaction with the regime in the form of a solo picket and signatures on open letters, and the state politely takes my dissatisfaction into account without hindering me in any way. Having a gun begins to play a role when I encounter direct illegitimate violence and realize that I have a chance to solve the problem with counter-violence.

So, overall, the idea of artificial BPN equalization is good as a thought experiment, but it should not be taken literally: today, peaceful public discontent far more often becomes a weapon against the state, and to evoke it, I would likely need not a gun, but a boost to my info-resources. And here, of course, a humanitarian bombing in the form of, for example, a retweet of me by Mr. Trump could indeed produce a significant effect.

Anarchy and its collapse

Translation of Jack Hirshleifer’s article

Recently, following the lead of Professor Auzan, I began referring to certain mysterious conditions for the stability of anarchy according to Hirshleifer. Since this concept has started to surface frequently in discussions, it would be a good idea to examine it in more detail.

Therefore, Andrey Meshkov undertook the translation (and I edited the translation) of the article by University of California professor Jack Hirshleifer, Anarchy and Its Dissolution, where these conditions are introduced. Those interested may also consult the original article (for instance, they might be interested in the bibliography, which we decided not to include in the translation).

The article describes a mathematical model of an anarchic system, its primary interaction mechanisms, and draws conclusions about the model’s behavior. Of course, these conclusions are applicable to real society only to the extent that the model reflects society, but this applies to any method of mathematical modeling. Hirshleifer’s model is not the only one; it is simply considered the most advanced to date, and yet simple enough to be convenient to use.

As a reminder, all translations in which I have participated are collected in the corresponding section of the website.

Jack Hirshleifer

Perhaps Ancapistan is better built in fourth-world countries after all?

Well, let’s say, in Somalia, Micronesia, and other failed states, since it is easier there to achieve a more or less even balance of the potential for violence with relatively small resource expenditures (conventionally speaking, buying a Kalashnikov) due to the absence of an overwhelmingly powerful agent enforcing a monopoly on violence in that territory, as well as the culture of servility and economic structure that has formed around it?

L29Ah (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00013567btc)

I will remind the readers that the balance of the potential for violence is one of the criteria for the stability of a stateless society according to Hirschleifer. Other criteria are a stable community composition and the absence of a significant number of people pushed to the brink of survival. Indeed, some secluded tropical paradise where coconuts fall right at your feet and where peaceful, smiling natives with Kalashnikovs live can easily build an anarchic society. But it is not enough to have anarchy; what is desired specifically is anarcho-capitalism.

And anarcho-capitalism requires a bit more than the absence of a state. It requires capitalism, which means commodity-money relations. So our imaginary tropical paradise will need a full-fledged commodity economy integrated into global trade. But international trade requires international recognition, and that is a serious limitation.

While composing his Meganesian cycle, Aleksandr Rozov particularly emphasized that the stateless society in the Pacific Ocean is being built not by real natives, but by outsiders. In reality, they are full-fledged white people with the notions of property, freedom, and law appropriate for white people—they simply deny the state. They only pretend to be natives in order to legitimize their claims in the eyes of the international community and avoid becoming pariahs leading a miserable existence under economic sanctions.

In real life, a similar project of anarcho-colonialism was attempted by the Seasteading Institute, but it encountered numerous legislative and technological restrictions, and now, judging by the website, it has degenerated from a libertarian project into something smelling of eco-activism.

So it is hard to say what is easier: to ensure the transition to anarchy in a capitalist state, to ensure the transition to capitalism in a failed state, or to organize a “freedom landing” in some toy state in Oceania. One thing can be said for sure: the matter is not limited solely to the balance of the potential for violence.

A white man with an automatic rifle in a tropical paradise

Discussion on the stationary bandit and the doctrine of deterrence

I commented on Bitark’s column about promoting libertarianism through the theory of the stationary bandit to the effect that this is largely knocking on an open door: the bandit nature of the state is quickly recognized by any interlocutor, and from there, discussions begin about the lesser of two evils. In particular, in Russia, there is a popular theme of appealing to the experience of the nineties of the last century, when there was a dominance of nomadic bandits.

In response, Bitark suggests in his VKontakte public page turning to Hirshleifer’s 1995 research, which Professor Ausan referenced in his lecture “The Evolution of the Stationary Bandit”

All three conditions for the stability of anarchy according to Hirshleifer were not met in Russia in the nineties, meaning there was no libertarianism in the nineties.

To this, I am forced to state that Bitark is again knocking on an open door, and there is no question that there was libertarianism in the nineties, unless, of course, you are arguing with a troll. The point is that to promote libertarianism through the theory of the stationary bandit, one needs to present arguments on how to prevent the dominance of nomadic bandits after abolishing the stationary one.

Also interesting is the criticism from Vladimir Zolotorev, who quite rightly points out that a stationary bandit is more dangerous than a nomadic one, because he is capable of inflicting far greater damage on society, and at the same time ensures that society is left with no strength to fight any bandits whatsoever. He does not write it explicitly, but it follows from this premise that returning to the era of nomadic bandits is an acceptable price for society to pay for the destruction of the stationary bandit, although, ideally, the choice should be not between stationary and nomadic bandits, but between the presence of a bandit and their absence.

So, we seem to have agreed: the bandit is not needed, let’s get rid of him, we need to ensure a balance of violence potential in society, and we will have stable anarchy. But then, from a reader with the nickname Holon Synergetic, came criticism of the proposed mechanisms of the deterrence doctrine (the text arrived via private channels, and I am publishing it on Telegraph, which serves as a neutral platform).

The text is very long and difficult to perceive, so I will provide a brief explication:

1. As follows from Mazarra’s article on the deterrence doctrine, the translation of which I recently posted, the perception factor is very important for successful deterrence. The opponent must understand that when a potential victim shouts, “I’ll pull your eye over your ass if you take one more step,” the victim is actually ready to carry out their threats because they are backed into a corner and have no way out other than to unleash their arsenals for pulling eyes over asses. At the same time, the potential aggressor must by no means be put in an equally desperate position where they have no choice but to risk an eye and take a step forward. However, the more successfully such a doctrine is implemented, the more often threats will be a bluff—simply for reasons of economy.
2. The state also implements a deterrence doctrine regarding members of society who wish to destroy it. One of the most reliable ways for it is to take society hostage. Every member of society must understand that any threats or, God forbid, real actions against state representatives will only make things worse for a conditional city like Voronezh. Thus, the state invented the concept of extremism, and now extremists are to blame for any tightening of the screws; all these security measures are undertaken precisely to protect society from them. Rare successful actions against the state only confirm that extremism is not a fiction and state security measures are justified.
3. Attempts to propose increasingly technological weapons for fighting state representatives, such as micro-drones and the uberization of violence, will lead to the state starting to protect citizens from micro-drones and uber-violence with great pleasure, and for this, completely totalitarian methods of control over all aspects of life will be required. In the limit, this arms race leads to a situation where doomsday weapons become available to everyone, and then it’s just coffin, coffin, cemetery, game over.
4. As a dessert, there is a historical excursion into medieval Saxony, where something very close to my described concept of uber-retribution was successfully practiced. Nevertheless, the system did not survive its time, like all other medieval elements of panarchy, and gave way to the state monopoly on judgment and punishment. The author suggests thinking about whether such an outcome was inevitable.

The main conclusion I would draw from this tangle of arguments is the following consideration. No single doctrine is a panacea. The state is in the minds. This means that although in some cases the problem of the state can be successfully simplified by cutting off particularly obstructive heads or the threat of such decapitation, the decisive importance still lies with the means of indoctrination in freedom. These, in turn, must be selected individually.