Daniel R. Carreiro – Utopía realista del Anarcocapitalismo

O movimento espanhol ancap continua a expandir-se (tendo nascido com Huerta de Soto e Miguel Anxo Bastos)

direito penal, restituição, retribuição e o ricos

Stephen Kinsella, um jurista anarch-libertarian faz a defesa interessante que a retribuição é prioritária em relação à restituição (numa sociedade, digamos, anarquista).

O problema de pré-fixar níveis de indemnização monetárias por morte como espécie de restituição (indemnização civil) é os ricos… poderem pagar.

Mas se a prioridade fosse a retribuição (sim, um olho por olho), um rico culpado por uma morte premeditada, estaria sujeito à retribuição de ser morto (pelas vítimas-herdeiros). Se pudesse negociar com as vítimas-herdeiros a não aplicação da retribuição (morte) iria em princípio pagar algo proporcional à sua riqueza, ou quem sabe, toda, ou sujeito a ser morto.

PS: A pena de morte seria pouco reivindicada mesmo no caso de pessoas com menos posses, se as vítimas-herdeiros tiverem a capacidade de negociar com o criminoso, o pagamento de indemnização futura, fruto do seu trabalho e rendimento futuro, teriam interesse que o pudesse fazer em boas condições. Instituições especializadas com espaços próprio (em vez das prisões actuais com os problemas que sabemos…) iriam oferecer a proporcionar essas condições. E ainda prévio a tudo isso, existiria a possibilidade de seguros de responsabilidade (do criminoso) sobre terceiros serem accionados. Seguros que seriam exigidos como norma standard para poder residir, trabalhar, circular.

A democracia de Atenas: tentado evitar os problemas… da democracia

Ancient Greece’s Legacy for Liberty: Public Choice in Athens by Roderick T. Long 

 * Demosthenes offers an example of the latter from Locri, a Greek colony in Italy, where the introduction of hasty or frivolous bills in the legislature was discouraged as follows:

In that country the people are so strongly of opinion that it is right to observe old-established laws, to preserve the institutions of their forefathers, and never to legislate for the gratification of whims, or for a compromise with transgression, that if a man wishes to propose a new law, he legislates with a halter round his neck. If the law is accepted as good and beneficial, the proposer departs with his life, but, if not, the halter is drawn tight, and he is a dead man.2

* We’ve seen that the Athenians sought to avoid devices of representation wherever possible.  But when representation was necessary, Athenians preferred to select representatives by lot, via the method of “sortition.”  This is how we pick juries today, but the Athenians filled most other offices by the same means. They reasoned that elections tend to be won by those who are wealthy and prominent – in other words, by members of the upper classes. Sortition, by contrast, ensures that those selected will be a representative cross-sample of the population. 

*Democratic worries about the ability of the rich to translate their wealth into political power were likewise embodied in the institution of ostracism, whereby an individual could be voted into temporary exile with no charges or opportunity for defense.

*Juries, as I noted in the previous installment of this series, were extremely large by our standards, ranging from hundreds to thousands of members. This was partly to ensure proportional representation, and partly to prevent jurors from being bribed or intimidated.

* The Athenian solution, in the event of a guilty verdict, was for the prosecutor and the defendant each to propose a penalty, and the jury would then choose between the two penalties. This policy gave the litigants an incentive to avoid proposing excessively harsh or lax penalties; while the defendant would of course propose a laxer penalty than would the prosecutor, too lax a proposed penalty would risk leading the jury to pick the prosecutor’s harsher penalty, while too harsh a  penalty from the prosecutor would risk the reverse.

* A wealthy person chosen for the “honor” of funding a public festival was allowed to shift the burden to someone even wealthier; the means of determining comparative wealth was for me, say, to challenge you to exchange all of your wealth for all of mine, on the assumption that if you refused, you thereby acknowledge that you’re wealthier.

* Even slaves benefited to some extent (though of course not terribly greatly) from the incentive structure of Athenian law. A slave could escape abusive treatment by resorting to a special place of sanctuary – but could then leave the sanctuary only if he found a new buyer. That’s admittedly not much as checks and balances go, but the option does introduce a slightcompetitive element into the slave system and thus a slight incentive for masters to treat their slaves less cruelly.

10 anos

Parabéns ao Miguel Madeira pelo muito que aqui tem escrito. Em vez de listar aqui alguns dos meus posts passados prefiro deixar a intenção de aqui voltar a escrever. Acho que por ter revisitado uma pequena pérola-americanada. Enquanto existirem anarquistas pacifistas-armados um pouco por todo mundo, há esperança.

Eric Garner last words to the State

Leituras: Anarchy in Kurdistan?, Jesse Walker

“The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has been active in the Kurdish parts of Turkey since the ’70s. It has a sometimes sordid history: Its politics were Marxist-Leninist, and its willingness to kill prisoners and civilians earned a rebukefrom Amnesty International. Its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, has been under arrest since 1999, but its armed struggle with the Turkish state continued until a ceasefire was reached last year.

I was vaguely aware of all that, and I may even have read at some point that Öcalan had recently rejected his old Leninist outlook and terrorist tactics, proclaiming a newfound devotion to democracy. What I did not realize was what brand of democracy had attracted Öcalan’s interest. Somehow, he became smitten with the American left-anarchist Murray Bookchin. He appears to be particularly interested in Bookchin’s idea of devolving power to cities governed by neighborhood assemblies.

I just called Bookchin an anarchist, but by the time he died Bookchin had rejected that label, calling himself a “Communalist” instead. But I’m not writing this post to discuss Bookchin’s ideas—the curious reader can check out my obit for him here and Reason‘s interview with him here—so much as just to express my astonishment to see Bookchinism bubbling up in the PKK, of all places.

ROAR has more on Öcalan’s evolution here. Bookchin’s partner Janet Biehl discusses these developments here. Some left-anarchists greet the PKK’s conversion with a mixture of interest and skepticism here. Kevin Carson is enthusiastic here. The most blistering critique of Bookchin ever written is here. A latebreaking correction to my Bookchin obit is here.” 

http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/03/anarchy-in-kurdistan

Ode to "Anarchy"

http://wetheindividuals.org/2014/05/09/ode-to-anarchy/

“Anarcho”-communists and “anarcho”-socialists out there are really pissed that I call myself an anarchist. I understand your concern, I really do. You have an identity to protect. That identity is intimately tied to the collectives you have chosen to let yourself be subsumed into. It’s an identity with a long history and tradition of luminous figures, lavish with tales of past glory. I understand how it must look to you, “anarcho”-capitalists coming in and wantonly appropriating your cherished terminology. It must seem like a real threat to that identity.

I do understand. I just don’t give a shit.

I use the word “anarchist” descriptively. It’s a wonderlfully useful word. Just like “atheist” is one without theism, “anarchist” is one without… archy. Honestly, if the word had never been used before, or even if I had just thought it up on my own, I’d still use it.

You and I, we have different definitions of that “archy” part, but, really, I don’t give a shit about that, either. Words are to facilitate communication, and the word “anarchist” in all its forms does work in that regard. Sure, I have to go on to qualify it, pin it down, tease out the precise meaning I intend, when I use it with people not familiar with the broad landscape of anarchist thought. But that’s fine. It’s more than fine, it’s a plus.

Good words are ones that start conversations, not end them. I’m happy, eager even, to have the conversation that comes after I tell someone “I am an anarchist”. If I used a more technical and precise term – which in fact would have to be a long string of terms unintelligible to most people – it would be no more informative to the uninitiated. In fact, it would be less informative, and the sheer weight of jargon that would need to be digested would not facilitate communication, it would shut it down. “Anarchist” has just enough familiarity, just enough baggage, that my conversational partner becomes curious rather than intimidated.

I certainly don’t use the word because I want to muscle in on your collective, to appropriate for my own purposes the cachet of your history and tradition. In fact, the usual immediate consequence of beginning that conversation is that I have to distance myself from all that. People who know me, even a little bit, and know that history, even a little bit, see a disconnect between the two. That makes them curious. It starts a conversation.

I usually go on to explain that, no, I’m not anti-capitalism, I am enthusiastically in favor of it, but that I am anti-corporatist (another conversation starter all by itself). I have to tell them no, I’m not out there vandalizing things every chance I get in order to destroy society (and I usually mention that most left-anarchists I know aren’t either), but that I have peaceful means in mind. I tell them that no, the people the media calls anarchists are not really anarchists, they’re just run of the mill socialists or communists who want the state on their side, which is hardly an anarchist position. I explain to them how I am not interested in taking over the government, nor really in even destroying it per se, but rather in abandoning it, being free of it, and letting it wither on the vine when enough people decide they’ve had enough of it and see those of us who preceded them living better than they do.

So don’t worry, I’m not trying to hijack your history. I wouldn’t if I could, because it is of no use to me – except maybe as a foil in conversation. I don’t want your traditions, though some bits and pieces of the intellectual work done in it are useful. Most of all, I don’t want to be part of your collective identity. I want nothing to do with it, I want no association with it, aside from a few friends who have at least one foot in it.

You can keep it. You just don’t get to keep the word all to yourselves. It’s a useful word, and I am damn well going to use it. And I’ll use it despite, not because of, its historical baggage. I don’t want to forge a collective identity, even with other anarcho-capitalists. We’re not a club or an identity group, just a bunch of individuals who share some, not all, of the same values and like the idea of cooperating wherever there is overlap. Most of us care about your collective history far, far less than you do. Your little collectives are safe from incursion by us.

So stop your whining… or don’t. Far be it from me to tell you what to do.

Jeff Peterson II

We the Individuals

 

 

Bitcoin Battle: Warren Buffett vs. Marc Andreessen

“A value of a BTC is not arbitrary, in fact it’s the opposite of arbitrary,” he says. “It equals the value of a single slot in a finite sized public cryptographic ledger through which value can move. The total Bitcoin ledger has value corresponding to the volume and velocity of transactions that will run through it in the future; by extension, each slot in the ledger has fractional value determined by the total number of slots (which, in Bitcoin’s case, are limited to 11 million today and 21 million ever).”

 “So saying what Warren is saying is like saying ‘a car is great technology but it’ll never actually get anyone from point A to point B,” he continued. “Bitcoin is great technology BECAUSE it lets people get value from point A to point B through the public ledger; that functional use creates the value of the ledger, and a single BTC has a corresponding fractional value of the ledger.”

 

Contra as patentes

“The main problem with the patent system is not software patents, low-quality patents, or patent trolls: it is the grant of “high quality” patents to actual companies that make products, who can use these patents as a protectionist bludgeon against their competitors.

(…) Patents are simply state-granted monopoly privileges that protect entrenched industries from competition. The US patent system alone imposes hundreds of billions of dollars of net cost on the economy every year. It restricts free speech.² It reduces innovation.³ It distorts the market.⁴ It gives rise to cartels and barriers to entry.⁵ It impoverishes people.⁶ It gives rise to imperialism and corruption of free trade.⁷ It confuses and corrupts libertarians into supporting restrictions on free trade⁸ and multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies to private industry.⁹

The very idea of patents is evil to the core. Shame on any supposed advocate of human liberty, technology, innovation, or freedom that is in favor of this modern legal abomination. Down with patents

(…) As libertarian attorney Jacob H. Huebert explains in “The Fight against Intellectual Property,”

Boldrin and Levine have found that the pharmaceutical industry historically grew “faster in those countries where patents were fewer and weaker.” Italy, for one, provided no patent protection for pharmaceuticals before 1978, but had a thriving pharmaceutical industry. Between 1961 and 1980, it accounted for about nine percent of all new active chemical compounds for drugs. After patents arrived, Italy saw no significant increase in the number of new drugs discovered there — contrary, one supposes, to the IP advocates’ predictions.”

Wenzel on patents in developing countries, by STEPHAN KINSELLA

Propostas à esquerda: positivemoney.org

What We Need

This is what we think needs to change to fix our broken money system:

1. Money should only be created through a democratic and transparent body working in the public interest.

We’d like to see the power to create money transferred to a democratic, accountable and transparent process, where everyone knows who has the power to create money, how much money they create, and how that money will be used. However this process is set up – whether it’s the Bank of England or a new committee that decides whether to create money, it must be accountable to Parliament and protected from abuse by vested interests. We also want to see safeguards that ensure that the right amount of money is created – not too much (causing bubbles and a financial crisis) and not too little (causing a recession).

2. Money should be created free of debt

3. Money should come into the real (non-financial) economy before it reaches financial markets and property bubbles

4. Banks should not be allowed to create money

In the short-term: Sovereign Money Creation

When we rely on banks to create most of our money, then the only way of getting more money into the economy – and allowing it to grow – is to encourage people to go further into debt. This is why UK government policy is focused on ‘getting banks lending again’ and encouraging people to borrow more for mortgages. But the financial crisis was caused by a huge build-up in private debt, so allowing that debt to increase even further could lead us into another crisis.

What we need right now is to have a way of getting extra money into the economy, but without relying on households borrowing even more. This can happen if the Bank of England creates money and transfers it to the government to be spent into the real economy (rather than the financial or property markets). Our Sovereign Money proposal explains how this could work, how it would lead to a boost in jobs and employment, and how it would make the current debt-fuelled recovery into a sustainable one.

More info & download

In the Long Term:

Ultimately, we think that the economy would be more stable and society better off if we completely remove the power that banks have to create money. These ideas have been around since the 1930s, but we’ve done a lot of work to update them for the modern financial system. You can find out more below: