I enjoyed listening to Ekaterina Schulmann’s lecture on Pravokon, dedicated to the fears that influence Russian society. The lecturer calls the most important category of fears the fear of some unexpected meanness on the part of the state. This could be repressions, tax increases, some new regulations, or simply a banal economic collapse, which the state illustrated in Ekaterina Mikhailovna’s lecture literally just a few days ago.

Analyzing the nature of this fear, Schulmann notes that it is not a manifestation of darkness and ignorance—on the contrary, it is a deeply justified distrust of both the motives of those in power and their competencies. Later, admittedly, she focuses on how best to coordinate in order to defend one’s political rights, but I think we should forgive the political scientist for her love of her subject of study, which prevents her, despite all her criticality toward the state, from sharing a libertarian worldview.

In such situations, one can react to the environment in different ways. Those who practice agorism will likely gloomily calculate what profit can be derived from the coming expansion of the black market, and how to facilitate this expansion. Those who put effort into regime change are considering where it is best to apply those efforts now, when the regime may be on the verge of faltering. Those looking for a country to flee to are considering whether it makes sense to try to save a little more, or if doing so here is already counterproductive. Moreover, as Bitarch recently correctly noted, relative freedom of movement between states is by no means the norm, and for Russia, it is an anomaly; it is unclear how much longer it will last, as it is already being gradually curtailed. And, of course, there are those who will run right now to buy dollars or household appliances at the old prices. Although, keeping in mind the coronavirus wandering around, perhaps a much larger percentage will actually start stocking up on canned goods: this is both an investment in a relatively hard currency and an opportunity to survive a quarantine.

This year, the Russian oil industry is unlikely to bring significant sums to the budget, which means they will squeeze money out of citizens to the fullest. This means that to minimize losses, one should not only try to earn money “under the table,” but also avoid showing money to banks whenever possible: banks are completely transparent to the state. So, those who have not yet acquired bitcoins should do so now and start practicing settling accounts with each other in this currency.

This is probably one of my most banal posts recently. I simply needed to voice all these fears, if only for myself.