Balance of Violence Potential (BVP), or more accurately, the uniform distribution of violence potential, is a certain state in society where any person is capable of inflicting unacceptable damage on another in a local clash. For simplicity, BVP can be viewed as maximum universal armament in society, where absolutely every resident of a given territory possesses a weapon for personal self-defense, for example, a pistol or even such ersatz weaponry as a blinding laser or a poison dart, preferably several units, so that it would be impossible to disarm anyone. It is assumed that residents of this territory have the opportunity (or rather an obligation in the form of a cultural norm) to possess weapons based on their physiological capabilities without any legal barriers (for example, age, citizenship, “criminal records” for activities undesirable from the state’s point of view) and financial need (volunteers and high-tech corporations will help the poor obtain weapons for free, just as vaccination is currently helped in poor countries, since this is profitable for them as well).
Why is BVP needed? To eradicate physical violence from society. This will allow for a significant increase in the quality of life and welfare of the population, eliminate tyranny of both the stationary bandit (the state) and the criminal mafia and touring bandits, and allow scientific and technical progress to develop peacefully, without fearing a global catastrophe.
By what means will BVP reduce/eradicate violence? In a multitude of different ways:
1) Classical deterrence doctrine (“deterrence by punishment”) against rational aggressors. Knowing that the victim of violence can inflict unacceptable damage on the aggressor, including even killing them, the aggressor will think carefully and decide that the benefit from violence will be less than the costs and will ultimately renounce violence.
There is a good example of such a model in the wild — porcupines. Cheetahs also frequently live in porcupine habitats, and they are hundreds of times superior in physical strength. But here is the surprising part: a cheetah can theoretically maul and eat a porcupine, but practically never does. There are occasional stupid individuals who decide to do so, but as a result, they either die or sustain such injuries that they never dare to try again.
2) Deterrence through denial (“deterrence by denial”) against invader states. The authorities of such a state set a specific goal — to conquer a territory and subjugate its residents. An aggressor can, of course, drop a nuclear bomb, but radioactive land without residents is worth absolutely nothing. As for the political elite of the aggressor, this is the end, because their own population will tear them to pieces for such an act. It would also create a dangerous precedent for the permissibility of using WMDs against civilians and legitimize the creation of strategic deterrent weapons by everyone capable of doing so (even now, a biohacker student is capable of multiplying a deadly virus and does not do so only for moral reasons).
3) The impossibility of creating and maintaining a violently hierarchical structure in a society with BVP. In such a society, the use of violence locally between people becomes unprofitable; accordingly, it is impossible to create and maintain a larger hierarchy of dominance (for example, a state) through the sequential accumulation of resources in the format of a “military hegemon.”
For example, an aggressor Vasya, having only a pistol, attacks Petya to use his resources to buy a Kalashnikov assault rifle. With it, he can attack Sasha with doubled force, buying a tank with the resources taken from him. Using this tank, he can attack billionaire Vanya with tripled force, who can even afford serious security, and use the obtained resources to hire a large army to conquer the entire country. But in the case of universal armament (uniform BVP), Vasya would be destroyed at the very beginning of his bloody path.
Imagine what would have happened if “little aliens” in the 1960s had arranged a “rain of pistols” over St. Petersburg? A teenager Pynya, who was prone to violence from birth, would with a probability close to 100% have died in a clash the next day, and the question of how to deal with him now would simply not be on the agenda.
4) Forcing natural selection that removes those prone to violence from the population. Analyzing many different species, biologist Konrad Lorenz found an interesting pattern — in animal species with strong innate armament (for example, hedgehogs, poisonous snakes, and insects) that allows them to very effectively inflict unacceptable damage on any opponent in a clash, an innate intra-species morality of non-aggression developed (more precisely — an instinct of aversion to initiating physical violence against a member of their own species), because otherwise the survival of the species would be under threat. This happened as a result of the most violence-prone individuals being destroyed during acts of aggression and thus failing to produce offspring. In humans, such a morality of non-aggression did not develop because humans are not a naturally heavily armed species; the mortality of fights with bare fists without the use of any additional means is very low, therefore there was no pressure from natural selection to develop this trait. More precisely, such a neurobiological mechanism also exists in the species homo sapiens, but in a very weak form. But if BVP is leveled in society, the pressure of natural selection will strengthen it in homo sapiens to the level of heavily armed species, since carriers of gene variants that cause less aversion to the initiation of violence in humans will be removed from the population before they even have a chance to pass them to the next generation.
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