Vasya from the third entrance

No matter how much one wants to always take the straightest path to a goal, if the interlocutor’s head is already shaped like a screw-hole, it’s pointless to hammer something straight in there; you have to screw it in.

This is where marketing comes to our rescue, with all its techniques aimed at increasing sales. For example, it makes sense to understand exactly what pain lies behind a mother’s objections. Because what is the point of talking about social safety nets in private companies in a free market in an affluent society, if her pain isn’t caused by the demise of Soviet social security, but, say, by savings burned in some financial pyramid, or by shootouts in the streets. Then, we work with that pain.

Pyramids

Explain that the most important reason for the rapid rise of pyramids was the need to protect one’s savings from hyperinflation, and hyperinflation was caused by the state’s frantic emission of money. Consumers never demand inflationary money; they much prefer stability, or even deflation, so that they can simply put money in a piggy bank and have it retain its value for decades.

And this is Bitcoin, Mom. Designed by hardcore ancaps specifically for that very purpose. Even gold, as a tool for long-term value preservation, works worse, because gold production can be increased in the event of a surge in demand, but you can’t pull that trick with Bitcoin. Well, and if there are cryptocurrencies, then we can boldly get rid of all these central banks, hooray.

Shootouts

Explain that in the wild nineties, the state by no means stopped regulating issues of civilian weapons and establishing rules for resolving conflicts. The police were happy to pressure law-abiding citizens, giving them neither the means to effectively oppose gangsters nor the ability to sue them, but at the same time, they readily backed down before any moderately brazen thug. Naturally, this created a powerful economic incentive for criminal behavior and provided no reward for striving toward a peaceful resolution of issues. In effect, this means that in the nineties, the state worked with all its meager power for the aggressors, until it managed to somehow squeeze the preferential right to banditry away from private aggressors.

Tell me, if you were cornered on the street now with a demand for your wallet, and you pulled a Glock out of your purse and shot the robbers, would you perhaps be praised for riddding society of dangerous criminals? No, you would be charged with illegal possession of a weapon and exceeding the limits of self-defense, and you’d be imprisoned for a long time, eating up taxpayers’ money in jail. And if you don’t shoot, but only frighten them, you’ll be charged just for possessing the weapon, and you’ll still be imprisoned. So why on earth do you need such a “protector”—this very state?

Oh, you don’t want to carry a Glock, you want it so that people don’t attack you? Well, can you go to an insurance company and get insurance against robbery? No. Because companies would only start insuring against that if they had the right to maintain order and effectively oppose gangsters. And that is exactly what is forbidden—state monopoly. No matter where you turn, no matter how you try to secure your life—you run into this or that state prohibition.

And here, Mom, look at this fresh video, about what happens where the state leaves. Or, look, read a whole collection at inliberty about how people leave the state’s umbrella and feel perfectly fine.

In short

You’d better know what is currently in your mother’s head instead of ancap. Act subtly, feed her individual cases, both regarding state lawlessness and (this is much more important!) regarding the effective resolution of vital issues without the state or even despite it. And eventually, she won’t even notice when she starts discussing these things with her neighbors, because people are very fond of secret knowledge unavailable to ordinary mortals—how could she not share it with those ignorant folks?