In February, I reposted an announcement about a short story competition regarding free private cities. I never actually managed to produce a story for the contest myself. I had an idea to compose something in the spirit of an Icelandic saga, but about the colonization of Mars: there lived a man named Elon, who was the son of X Æ A-Xii, son of Elon, son of Errol — and so on. But instead of focusing on the plot, I got bogged down in trivialities, such as studying whether Bitcoin mining would be possible on Mars, given the finite speed of light, or if there would be their own corporate currencies — and in the end, I just gave up. However, Wed Neuman, from whose channel I made the repost, did not give up. His competition entry was recently published, and I have read it.
You can feel that the author is more comfortable with a larger form, and he would have gladly expanded the plot to roughly twice the volume. I have always envied this ability; I personally run out of steam quickly when writing long texts, and if I do it in pieces, I first need to reread the previous fragments before writing the next one.
To be honest, the plot seemed rather strained to me; the emphasis was clearly on the world rather than the story. Nevertheless, the plot has its own charm, and the work as a whole is quite an easy read. The world looks like a kind of benevolent version of cyberpunk, where shady corporations also handle some incomprehensible business beyond the reach of mere mortals, but without the grim brutalism. In short, it is worth reading.
The rise of the Russian libertarian movement over the last few years has not only led to the word “libertarianism” being frequently mentioned outside the libertarian circle itself, but also to the fact that the exposition of libertarian ideology in Russian, adapted for the Russian-speaking reader, is beginning to consolidate. Mikhail Svetov moved from five-minute videos to hour-long lectures, and is now writing a book. I started with answers to scattered questions, but for six months now I have been working with the Libertarian Band team to prepare a systematic video course presenting my understanding of libertarianism. And just yesterday, Ved Neuman also announced the start of work on a full-fledged panarchic manifesto, but first constructed a guide to panarchism, in which he collected and grouped by topic most of the materials published on this subject by the developers of the panarchism doctrine itself.
I hope you have already read or watched most of the materials provided in the guide — its value lies precisely in the systematization.
I don’t particularly enjoy writing long-reads (which isn’t very smart of me, as they are how I make more money). Therefore, I am always glad when someone creates a detailed text that I mostly agree with, thereby saving me a great deal of effort.
After Hoppe’s lecture in Moscow (I’m waiting for the recording to appear so I can formulate my own opinion on it), a discussion began among the authors of several medium-sized channels and public pages, which seemed quite fruitless to me: arguments over terminology, personal attacks, distortions—what could be more vulgar? But I was wrong. A stupid argument, the course of which I won’t even summarize here, prompted Ved Neuman, the author of my favorite channel Antistate, to put together an excellent programmatic article.
The article clearly explains that ancap is not reduced to Rothbard-Hoppe-Svetov and the construction of a society based on the absolutization of the non-aggression principle, and that economic theory is not reduced to the classical Austrian School of Mises’ time. It provides a professional lead-in to panarchism and explains quite reasonably why this is a promising direction for real work.
I hope that in a couple of weeks, once the online flame war that gave birth to this article loses its relevance, the author will rewrite it, removing the polemical specifics and changing the title while keeping the conceptual content; then it will be truly great. But the article is definitely worth reading already now.
To start, I recommend reading the question itself and my answer to it. I primarily covered the transition between panarchy and ancap, while in the “Anti-state” channel you can read another answer from Ved Neuman, which mainly concerns the transition from statism to panarchy.
Meadowcroft analyzes the prediction formulated by Hayek in his famous political pamphlet “The Road to Serfdom” and shows that the prediction turned out to be incorrect: not only is minarchism unstable, but so is totalitarianism, whereas a mixed economy actually is stable. Using rich material, he demonstrates that today, the conditional norm is approximately 40-50% of GDP redistributed by the state. States that redistribute less strive to redistribute more, in full accordance with Hayek’s logic, while states that redistribute more face serious market inefficiency and social discontent—and after some time return to a stable state. Moreover, developed states that have reached this norm today confidently hold high positions in economic and political freedom rankings.
On June 13, Ved Neumann released a review in which he explained the phenomenon described by Meadowcroft through the hypothesis that the modern state is a form of secular religion. According to Ved, this explains, for example, why the stability of the welfare state is paradoxically provided by its opacity. Further, Ved predicts that the transparency brought about by the information revolution will indeed make this religion marginal, and the modern welfare state will not be able to survive this, being replaced by panarchy.
However, it makes sense to question the very thesis that the state stops expanding once it reaches a certain level of redistribution. Yes, it is true that direct levies cause discontent, and direct monopoly management of the economy undermines the foundation of economic growth. But in addition to the tax burden, there is also the regulatory burden, and many business representatives note that it can hinder work almost even more.
At the same time, by strengthening regulations, the state may even decrease the share of its presence in the economy. For example, with a single education standard and a single state exam, the state can boldly abandon the maintenance of schools: private schools will still be forced to engage in the same brainwashing, as the auditing authorities will demand of them. At the same time, it is unlikely that such a state of affairs will negatively affect the country’s position in freedom rankings—since ranking calculations evaluate access to education, not its content or the freedom to choose subjects.
State standards in many other sectors, from medicine to trade, or, for instance, vehicle technical inspections, can work in a similar way. All certification procedures can be extremely transparent and completely free of corruption (this is precisely what fundamentally distinguishes the first world from the third), but even the most pleasant packaging will only mask the continued movement along the same road described by Hayek.
So, the arrival of new transparency may not kill that very secular religion, but only lead to its reformation. Therefore, we would be better off assuming that no panarchy will build itself, and continuing our regular sermons.
