Тег: Charity

Can one praise a tyrant to save lives?

For example, praising and promoting Putin to gain the ability to operate your own charitable foundation where you will save lives. Is this a violation of the NAP?

анонимный вопрос

I present to you my new co-author; he will answer the questions you have accumulated from time to time, and where I want to add something, I will do so. So, responding is Alex Murin.

Ancap-chan

The principle of the non-aggression principle implies only the rejection of aggressive violence. Everything you write or say does not relate to the NAP. However, the NAP is a fundamental principle, not the only one. There is also the principle of freedom of contract, the institution of reputation, public opinion, and traditions. In general, there are many different factors to which the NAP has no relation. If everything is reduced to the NAP, one can simply get lost in logical and legal constructions. It is not worth doing that.

From the point of view of the NAP, praising Putin to get money for a charity or a public organization is permissible. You are not attacking people to kill or rob them.

And then there is the reputational aspect: you convince people that the system currently in place in Russia is the only possible one, that the country is managed by a person leading it toward prosperity. If you do not believe this, but want to get money from it to implement a humanitarian mission, then judge yourself. You did not attack, kill, or rob. You wrote or spoke words that you will then reproduce in one way or another. People who have not seen you will judge you by these words. Will they want to accept help from a person who praises a system that sent them to the bottom of life? Everything stated in the question has no relation whatsoever to the prohibition of aggressive violence. If, in your opinion, you are lying and then performing good deeds to redeem your own guilt, then you are doing double work. If you believe that Vladimir Vladimirovich is the person who deserves to be exalted, while performing good deeds, then “blessed is he who believes,” and your conscience is clear. If this is how you earn money, then your judge is your conscience. In short: this has no relation to the NAP, based on its definition. But the NAP is the primary, not the only principle.

And yes, I would not use the techniques of a Baptist preacher to influence your opinion; that would be dishonest.


Your attitude towards FNB (Food Not Bombs)? Is it not shameful for a libertarian to participate in such a movement, given that it is anti-capitalist, yet the members of this movement engage in charity?

анонимный вопрос

As I understand it, the movement’s activity consists of volunteers recovering food from supermarkets, wholesale warehouses, and establishments—food that ended up there due to capitalism and is about to be thrown away because otherwise it would not comply with state-established shelf-life regulations—then they cook it and distribute it to the hungry, thereby expressing their disapproval of the government’s budget spending priorities.

At the same time, it ignores the fact that under socialism, the food that in this case rots in trash bins would have rotted back in the fields or at vegetable depots, as well as the fact that socialist regimes usually spent a much higher percentage of their money on bombs than on social welfare, compared to more or less democratic capitalist states.

This behavior is somewhat similar to that of a lady who, preparing to accompany a gentleman through a disadvantaged neighborhood, persuades him to leave his weapon at home and bring some food along to feed the poor. But, for the sake of fairness, let us note that, within our analogy, the neighborhood became disadvantaged largely due to the gentleman’s activities. So, on one hand, the lady’s reproaches are justified, but on the other, the behavior appears quite infantile.

But, however incorrect the rhetoric of the movement’s activists may seem to me, it is completely non-violent and is a form of moral pressure. Moreover, I suspect many participate in it not because of their anti-capitalist beliefs, but solely out of philanthropy, or to promote veganism, or because they went hungry in childhood and find it unbearable to see food thrown into the garbage—there could be many reasons to organize a distribution of homemade food on the street!

How would I personally react to finding some libertarian acquaintance in the ranks of FNB? I would be interested and ask about the people surrounding them there, the people who come for free food, how they manage to find a common language with food suppliers, whether there are problems with the state, and so on. This is an excellent practical exercise in private charity, without which pure ancap would be a rather harsh living environment, so at the current stage, familiarity with it would be useful for anyone. And switching a thinking person from anti-capitalist rhetoric to anti-statist rhetoric is not such a difficult task.

Also, they have a mischievous emblem, although for Russia I would suggest drawing a horseradish root instead of a carrot

How will the consequences of catastrophes and natural disasters be fought under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

So, we have a situation: a bridge has collapsed, a house has burned down, a mine has caved in, a typhoon has hit, people have suffered, and Putin isn’t around, so there is no one to promise every victim a couple of million rubles from the budget.

The most reliable and systemic solution, upon which ancap theorists place their main bet, is, of course, insurance companies. Knowing that there is no state and that they must rely on themselves, people have far more incentive to insure their risks. Thus, the insured receive payouts, the uninsured lament their stinginess, and everything takes its course: some insurance companies handle the situation with dignity, some are forced to refinance urgently, and some go bankrupt, thereby cleaning up the market. New insurance premiums trickle in, and even more so, because the issue of risk has temporarily risen to the top of the rankings, policies are easier to sell, and everyone strikes while the iron is hot.

But it is not enough to pay money to those who applied for payouts; first, the rubble must be cleared, evacuations carried out, fires extinguished, and so on—in short, the further spread of the disaster must be stopped. This is profitable for insurance companies, but the free-rider effect arises: for example, one company may start the work while another does not, thereby incurring lower costs. A logical solution appears to be the advance creation and maintenance of rescue services by insurance companies, with funding, for example, proportional to policies sold, or simply equally, depending on their agreement. Effectively, for insurance companies, this is something like the reinsurance of risks.

Finally, it may happen that help is needed urgently, but specialized services are far away, or the scale of the disaster is such that specialists certainly cannot cope. In this situation, volunteers, of course, come to the rescue. Volunteers come to help people even in Putin’s Russia, with all its paternalism and all the dangers awaiting those who engage in crowdfunding from the side of the state—so in the absence of this factor, the readiness to come to the rescue will only improve.

Ancap is not some new, unseen social order where everything will be completely different and no old mechanisms will work. Simply mentally remove the state, and in most cases, you will find that it is either not needed at all or is very easy to replace.

Putin will not come and will not put out the fire

And what about global warming?

I think it would be foolish to deny this phenomenon. The consequences of warming include the melting of glaciers and the flooding of lands, and consequently, the violation of property rights. Who should bear responsibility for this? And how can the market be used to prevent it?

anonymous question

For the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants, global warming is, of course, wonderful. History clearly shows that during periods of climatic optima (which is why they are called optima), it was far more comfortable for people to live than during periods of cooling: at the very least, they didn’t starve to death as actively.
However, for the inhabitants of the atolls of some Kiribati, warming provides no benefit, as it is already warm at the equator; instead, the rise in ocean levels is a very real problem.

So yes, indeed, some people benefit from certain climatic changes and others from different ones, and if climate change is anthropogenic, then those for whom this externality is negative have grounds to file a claim for damages against those involved in anthropogenic climate change.
Let’s imagine how this could be implemented under ancap, that is, in a free market system. A native of Kiribati goes on the internet, first looks for theoretical information about the industries contributing most to global warming, then finds specific companies operating in those industries, and then starts flooding them with lawsuits? It seems unrealistic. Too many competencies are required from the victim; it is too difficult to calculate the amount of compensation for damages. When the damage is finally calculated, it may easily turn out that the calculation cost more than the amount of compensation. What is left?

Only private charity remains. Eco-activists create hype by filming videos about unfortunate natives disappearing underwater. Companies and individual media personalities capitalize on the hype by creating a fund to help those affected by flooding. With the fund’s money, individual natives who wish to do so are solemnly helped, in front of cameras, to move somewhere to Hawaii, the Philippines, or the Solomon Islands, or are simply given money, with which they acquire a yacht and then decide for themselves which harbor to dock in. Voilà, everyone is happy, everyone profits, the market has solved it!

Kiribati

Well, you understand that the mention of private charity wasn’t just for nothing, right? How about chipping in for a yacht? 
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What will you do with the sick and the disabled? Are you really going to leave them to die under your libertarian fence?

Anonymous question

I don’t spend money on high fences. I don’t spend money on doing nasty things to my neighbors. I don’t spend money on spying on my boyfriend. I don’t spend money on making him pointlessly move furniture around the house just to keep everyone busy. Therefore, I have enough for my own health and to help my loved ones. That’s another thing—not every random person I meet will be close to me. At the very least, they shouldn’t be an asshole. If you seriously count on someone’s help, you need to be nice until you receive the help, and know how to express gratitude after receiving it. That is how a one-time act of charity has a chance to become systematic.

As for the assholes, they are unlikely to be in a rush to die specifically under my fence—after all, there are still plenty of places in the world where assholes are fed by taking resources away from honest people.