Автор: Битарх

Essential oils are effective anti-aggressive agents

Substances that have an anti-aggressive effect can be not only synthesized in laboratories but also found in various natural remedies. One category of such remedies is essential oils. Although they have traditionally been widely used to improve a person’s psychological state, the question of their effect on the nervous system is still insufficiently studied, especially when addressing the topic of aggressive behavior. However, existing research conducted on animals and even on humans indicates a great potential for studying this direction.

First, let us look at a study on the effect of a substance called linalool, which is present in a vast number of essential oils (bitter orange, neroli, petitgrain, rose, lavender, citronella, lemon, geranium, and others), on mice. It demonstrated that inhalation of this substance significantly reduces the number and duration of attacks on unfamiliar conspecifics, and at certain concentrations, almost completely eliminates them. At the same time, as shown in other experiments, such an effect cannot be explained by a general decrease in the activity of the mice, as this does not occur during the inhalation of linalool.

Another study was conducted on fighting fish, or Siamese fighting fish, whose males are known for their extremely aggressive behavior toward conspecifics, which is why they must be kept strictly alone. In the experiment, either lavender essential oil or pure linalool was used, which were added in various concentrations to a container of water. The test subject was placed in this container and given two minutes to acclimate, after which a container with another individual was placed next to it to allow visual contact. As a result, while individuals in the control group (without drugs) attempted to actively attack both during and after acclimation, individuals under the influence of both lavender essential oil and pure linalool showed almost no such behavior—their desire to attack disappeared. Moreover, although the aggressiveness of the individuals was restored over time, it did not return to the pre-test level even three months after the trial with the essential oil. Accordingly, we can conclude a limited permanent anti-aggressive effect from lavender oil.

But is all this applicable to humans? There are strong reasons to believe so, as many experiments have been conducted on the anti-aggressive effect of essential oils on people with cognitive impairments. A meta-analysis of 15 studies with 693 participants showed that although further research is needed to determine effective dosages and side effects, overall, the use of essential oils in therapeutic procedures has a significant anti-aggressive effect.

Although the mechanism of such an effect of essential oils is not yet sufficiently studied, it is known that their molecules can enter the hippocampus, the limbic system, and the amygdala of the brain through the nasal cavity and olfactory cells. It is worth noting that linalool and other substances from essential oils work as 5-HT1A receptor agonists (activating them), and such an effect is known for its selective anti-aggressive effect (eliminating attacking aggression without affecting defensive behavior and other activity), which is achieved through the strengthening of the violence inhibition mechanism. In addition, upon entering the blood, for example, through the skin, essential oils can affect various physiological reactions. Finally, by exerting a certain influence on the function of cholinergic synapses, they can prevent neurodegenerative processes.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Garage Revolutionaries: How Free People are Changing Science

Do you know what airplanes, personal computers, Bitcoin, and home-produced insulin have in common? All of these things were once “absolutely impossible” from the perspective of official science. And they all started literally in garages, basements, and on the kitchen tables of enthusiasts who didn’t give a damn about the approval of academics and bureaucrats.

Why is this so important? Because it is in such garages that real breakthroughs are born. Take the Wright brothers: the prestigious New York Times wrote that the first human flight was still a thousand years away. And a couple of months later, two guys who were considered local crazies proved the opposite. And today we have similar stories. For example, insulin—in the US, pharma giants jacked up prices so high that diabetics are literally forced to choose between food and medicine. A few guys and girls from Oakland, fed up with this, decided to start the Open Insulin project to simply make it themselves, without insane markups and bureaucracy. Professors rolled their eyes, saying it was impossible. But these guys have already made serious progress and may soon radically change the entire market. Not because they have permission or government support, but simply because they care.

Or take the diabetics from the OpenAPS movement, who took old insulin pumps, glucose sensors, and wrote code, creating an “artificial pancreas” at home. Regulators warned: “Dangerous, no FDA approval!” And tens of thousands of people replied: “We can’t afford to wait; we want to live normally right now.” Today, even pharmaceutical companies are forced to replicate their ideas to avoid losing the market.

Do you think this is only about medicine? What about Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who assembled the first Apple in a garage? Big bosses at the time claimed, “Nobody needs personal computers.” Today that sounds like a joke, but their ideas were truly considered foolishness. Or Bitcoin—an invention that no state would have officially approved. The initial reaction of economists? “It’s a bubble, child’s play.” Today, Bitcoin’s capitalization is estimated in the trillions of dollars, and it has become a symbol of freedom from state and banking monopolies.

An even cooler story is Copenhagen Suborbitals—Danish guys who decided to send a person into space simply by raising money through crowdfunding. Although the failed launch of the first rocket due to a breakdown caused mockery, a year later they successfully launched the next one. Without billions in budget, simply because they wanted to prove they could. And how about the story of 14-year-old Taylor Wilson? The kid built a nuclear reactor in his garage. Academics: “That’s impossible!” Reality: he demonstrated a working reactor and met with the President of the United States.

These stories don’t just inspire; they prove that bureaucracy, regulators, and official structures often become barriers rather than helpers. Requiring enthusiasts to publish in official journals is roughly the same as asking a runner in sacks to compete with athletes. Of course, official science and peer review are good, but they should not become the sole measure of truth. Grigori Perelman proved the Poincaré mathematical conjecture without any official publications—and received the equivalent of a Nobel Prize. His work was verified by mathematicians themselves, and that proved sufficient.

We must support garage science, DIY laboratories, and open communities. People should have the opportunity to experiment freely, create, and share discoveries without looking over their shoulders at officials and corporate monopolies. After all, science belongs not to institutions, but to people. Every garage can become a laboratory, every kitchen a workshop for innovation. This very freedom to create is what makes the world better. Let us not be afraid to create what is officially “impossible.” For it is exactly here, at the intersection of freedom and dreams, that the future is born!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Corporate Psychopathy – the Cause of the Global Economic Crisis

There is a theory developed by researcher Clive Boddy, according to which psychopaths working in corporations, particularly financial ones, played a significant role in the emergence of the 2008 global economic crisis. As is well known, not all managers are inclined to work for the benefit of the company that hired them. Some of them are dysfunctional leaders who literally destroy the company with their actions. One important type of such leaders are psychopathic personalities, which we will now discuss in more detail.

As we know, psychopaths in literature are defined as personalities who have problems manifesting empathy and sympathy toward other people, behave coldly and ruthlessly toward them, lack a conscience, and feel no guilt for causing harm to anyone. In turn, corporate psychopaths are individuals with similar characteristics who engage in organizational activities. They usually present themselves as pleasant, attractive, and successful individuals, but in reality, they merely manipulate everyone around them, usually to their detriment, to achieve purely personal goals.

Such individuals often receive rapid promotions and become leaders due to their charm and confidence, while they are prone to ignoring the needs of others, deceiving them, or even engaging in bullying. Furthermore, there is evidence that in some companies, including international financial corporations, psychopaths were even specifically selected for leadership positions due to the belief that such personalities are best suited for such work.

Usually, such individuals brought short-term success to companies through mass cost-cutting and employee layoffs. However, they were in no way concerned about the potential long-term harm of the strategies they chose, and in general pursued exclusively their own benefits, discarding their obligations and responsibility, striving to obtain as many personal “bonuses” as possible while everyone else was in the midst of financial litigation. From the actions of such “effective managers,” one can well expect that they will ultimately receive a large check for their efforts to “save” the company, after which it will simply go bankrupt.

Now imagine what would happen if, due to certain global changes in the corporate environment—such as increasingly frequent company mergers, the tendency of employees to change jobs more often and move to companies previously completely unknown to them, changes in the technological environment and others, which became common practice on the eve of the global crisis—psychopathic personalities received far more opportunities to occupy high positions, using not their actual work skills, but manipulation and political skills? In such a situation of growing corporate psychopathy, a corporate and social catastrophe can be expected, which is precisely what authors studying this problem warned about in their materials as early as 2005.

Such a problem has still not been given proper attention, which puts the very future of capitalism at risk. Of course, this problem is far from the only one in economic matters, but it deserves more detailed study and the application of appropriate measures.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

“Anti-Lorentz” is impossible in practice

We once examined the question of why using a certain drug that suppresses the function of a person’s violence inhibitor (or as we also called it, “Anti-Lorenz” agents) has little practical utility and effectiveness, but is capable of leading to serious problems. However, this was presented from the perspective of social processes, whereas now we will delve deeper into the biological essence of this issue.

As we know, the violence inhibitor is managed by the brain’s serotonergic system, specifically the 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors, as well as the MAO-A, TPH2, and SERT proteins associated with their function, encoded by the corresponding genes (for simplicity, we will call all of these “variables”). And we can assume that only a specific, quite narrow combination of these variables creates a high risk of developing violence inhibitor dysfunction in a particular individual. After all, only a tiny fraction of the population (no more than 1–2%) has increased psychopathic predispositions in any population.

Impact on at least one of these variables “upward” is quite capable of significantly strengthening the inhibitor function (eliminating the ability to initiate violence). Thus, in experiments on animals and humans, the mere activation of 5-HT1A or 5-HT1B receptors, or the enhancement of serotonergic function through impact on SERT activity, selectively eliminated violent behavior. At the same time, impact on any of the variables “downward” does not guarantee the weakening of the inhibitor (restoration of the ability to initiate violence), as was, for example, shown with the blocking of 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors in animals.

On the other hand, there are strong grounds to believe that attempts to actively exert such an influence can cause serious mental disorders—increased anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and other pathologies related to the serotonergic system. Initially, such problems are often not particularly pronounced in psychopathic personalities simply because the narrow combination of “variables” required for this is evolutionarily maintained (with a bouquet of disorders, they simply would not have had reproductive success). In fact, according to research, violence inhibitor dysfunction itself is a “point” rather than an extensive disruption in brain function.

Why is all this important in practice? In the tasks of strengthening and weakening the violence inhibitor, there is a huge disparity in complexity. To put it simply—even in a successful attempt to weaken the violence inhibitor by suppressing any “variable,” it will not be possible to guarantee that this effect will not be reversible if someone applies agents to strengthen a certain “variable” to the person who did this. However, one can certainly guarantee serious side effects. In one of the experiments on rats using the neurotoxin 5,7-DHT, which affects the serotonergic system, although it was possible to increase their aggressiveness, this effect was reversed by introducing small doses of serotonin into the brain. A similar neurotoxic effect is exerted, for example, by methamphetamine, which at high intensity of intake is capable of increasing a person’s psychopathy. But most likely this effect is also reversible in the same way, and the result of weakening the inhibitor with “meth” in such a case will be a lack of result and the causation of serious harm to health.

And what if the aggressor does not know the specific time when they will have the practical opportunity to use violence? They would need to constantly take multiple drugs to weaken all “variables.” But constantly maintaining such a balance of “variables” so that simultaneously: 1) it is enough to weaken the violence inhibitor, 2) it is not yet enough to cause neurophysiological disorders, 3) it is enough to overcome the effect of agents for strengthening the inhibitor—is hardly possible in real life at all.

Ultimately, an attempt to weaken the violence inhibitor will only lead to serious neurophysiological and mental disorders, but will provide no guarantee against its reinforcement under appropriate influence. Practically effective and safe “Anti-Lorenz” agents turn out to be simply science fiction.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The Rule of Hostile Jurisdictions

In a world where various states are divided into antagonistic blocks, there is one interesting possibility for ensuring personal security for agorists, dissidents, and others who hold any positions or engage in any activities that their own stationary bandits do not approve of and may threaten with punishment. It can be called the “rule of hostile jurisdictions.”

The essence of this idea is simple: if you are physically located in the territory of a state belonging to one block, you should use services, host websites, seek clients, store and exchange money, register companies, and employ intermediaries from states belonging to a different block. For example, if you live in Russia, you can use a VPN from Sweden or the USA, an email client in Switzerland, a crypto-card in Lithuania, a shell company in Estonia, and not worry about your security. And if you live in Europe, it will be many times safer for you to use “police-monitored” VK and Mail.ru than Facebook and Gmail.

Many services provide users’ personal information upon request from government authorities of a friendly block. This is inevitable, meaning you need to adapt to the realities of geopolitics. In reality, you only need to be afraid if the service provides information specifically to your own stationary bandit. At the same time, a resident of the RF does not care what some service reveals about them to security forces from the USA. Just as a resident of the USA does not care what security forces from the RF learn about them. As long as it does not involve committing large-scale acts of terrorism resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people—which no sane person would do anyway—it is unlikely that any risk of cooperation between jurisdictions from hostile blocks will arise.

Various fraudsters have long been aware of this. For instance, in the past, Russian hackers intentionally avoided users from Russia and targeted Americans or Britons, which made it very easy to evade punishment. Now, Ukrainian scammers do the same, calling Russians with proposals to transfer money to some “safe account” and then forcing them to perform various “tasks” allegedly to get the money back, since they know no one can do anything to them. Of course, we are absolutely against such fraud, but these cases show that the rule of hostile jurisdictions works.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The aggressor will not complain to anyone if his violence inhibitor is strengthened

According to numerous studies, psilocybin is capable of strengthening the violence inhibitor for a very long, or even permanent period, and also weakening the tendency toward authoritarian views, with just a couple of doses equivalent to 5-10 grams of dried mushrooms. It should be noted immediately that this substance is classified by the authorities of the RF and many other countries as a prohibited psychotropic agent. But such a ban could lead to one interesting scenario, where an aggressive degenerate, in the event that their violence inhibitor is strengthened, will simply have nowhere to complain!

Imagine a situation where some degenerate rapist had those same “mushrooms” slipped into their food; they found out about it and decided to snitch. They went to the police station… but instead of taking a report and searching for some anti-violence fighters, they filed an administrative charge against the degenerate himself for drug use, with all the ensuing consequences—registration with a narcologist, suspension of driver’s licenses of all categories, a ban on holding certain positions (doctor, lawyer, official), and ultimately, even dismissal from work.

The degenerate will think about this for a bit and decide: “Better to keep my mouth shut, not even tell my friends, otherwise if they find out, I’ll never see a normal life again! And besides, no one will care; I’ve said it myself many times that ‘the sheriff isn’t interested in Indian problems’ and pushed for ‘strict liability,’ without ever imagining that it could affect me as well.”

Such a scenario is entirely expected, because how is a rapist even going to prove they are right?! And in many jurisdictions, it’s unlikely that anyone would care—they would more likely just try to use him to fill a quota, especially if he has already managed to get flagged for committing violence in the past.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Social movements as conduits of the dark ego and antisemitism

Various studies show that public and activist movements of various kinds, including eco-activists, feminist movements, and even movements against sexual violence, suffer from one problem – they are often represented by individuals with certain dark personality traits. Particular emphasis should be placed on grandiose narcissism, which is characterized by an inflated sense of superiority and self-importance, as well as an obsessive need for recognition. In addition, such individuals often suffer from psychopathy – a lack of empathy toward other people, an absence of guilt for causing them harm, etc. In general, it is assumed that people with dark personality traits tend to “hijack” pro-social movements to use them as a vehicle for their own selfish needs.

One example of this, which we have already considered several times in previous materials, is the seizure of leadership in social and political movements by psychopaths. This process is well described by psychiatrist Andrzej Lobaczewski in the book “Political Ponerology: The Science of the Nature of Evil Applied to Politics.” Psychopathic personalities, being at the bottom of a movement at the start of their careers, do the dirty work for it that others would not undertake, earn a reputation within it, rise through the hierarchy by resorting to various kinds of manipulation, and displace everyone else from leadership positions. And when these individuals gain real power in society, they inevitably create large-scale catastrophes, such as repression, genocide, and wars.

In one of the current studies on this topic, researchers decided to examine the problem of antisemitism. Such an ideology also often serves as a vehicle for the dark ego. Participants in this study were 3,981 people from the USA and Britain. They underwent various tests for dark personality traits, as well as a predisposition to dark needs, such as aggressiveness, a desire to dominate others, sensation seeking, fake virtue (public demonstration of moral virtue without genuine moral conviction), and selfishness (lack of altruism). They also completed several questionnaires on adherence to various forms of antisemitism, ranging from a tendency toward prejudice against Jews (for example, viewing them as dishonest and greedy people) to radical anti-Zionist views that justify violence.

As a result, it was found that antisemitism is closely linked to dark personality traits – more than 94% of the indicators of these traits were positively associated with it. A particularly strong link to antisemitism is observed in the previously mentioned narcissism and psychopathy. And this applies to all investigated forms of antisemitism, from traditional to radical. Furthermore, the presence of dark needs in an individual was also linked to antisemitism.

Researchers believe that any ideology, prejudice, and activism that can help satisfy dark needs are attractive to people with high scores in dark personality traits. For example, according to research, both left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism are linked to them. At the same time, exactly which ideological tools people with a dark ego use depends on which ideas and narratives they encounter in their specific life circumstances and whether they recognize the possibility of satisfying their dark needs.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Doctor Semmelweis: Freedom of Thought Against Conservative Dogmas

Imagine a doctor who literally demands that his colleagues wash their hands—and becomes an outcast for it. It sounds anecdotal, but this is exactly what happened to the Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis in the mid-19th century.

Vienna, 1840s: in one maternity ward, male doctors stubbornly follow the tradition of going straight from an autopsy to delivering babies without any hygiene. Meanwhile, there is a nearby midwives’ ward where this does not happen. The result shocked Semmelweis: the mortality rate of women in the first case reached 18%, while with the midwives, it was about 2%. The difference was like that between hell and heaven, and the young doctor wondered why.

Puzzled, Semmelweis began his investigation and went through every version, from overcrowded wards to even the position of the moon—until a tragic incident led him to the answer. One of the doctors cut himself with a scalpel during an autopsy and soon died from the same symptoms as puerperal fever. Eureka! Semmelweis realized that an invisible killer was being carried on the doctors’ hands from corpses directly to the mothers. The solution was dauntingly simple: wash hands and instruments with chlorinated water. By today’s standards, this is a banality, but back then, it was a revolution of clean hands.

Now imagine: Semmelweis stands at the head of the ward with a basin of chlorinated lime, demanding that the respected doctors scrub death off their fingers. One would think his colleagues should carry him on their (clean!) hands for saving hundreds of lives. After all, mortality plummeted to the level of the midwives’ ward. But instead of awards and honors, the innovator was met with ridicule and anger. The medical luminaries of the time took the idea as a personal insult: it implied that their own hands were killing patients. Pride and dogma prevailed over logic. Instead of admitting a mistake, the hospital administration preferred to fire the uncompromising doctor and stick to the familiar theory of miasmas—invisible “vapors” supposedly causing the fever. Simply put, Semmelweis’s colleagues rejected his discovery out of fear of the new, and the doctor’s free-thinking was considered dangerous audacity.

The story of Semmelweis is a clear example of how conservative thinking and fear of fresh ideas hinder progress. There is even a concept called the “Semmelweis reflex”—the automatic rejection of new knowledge simply because it contradicts established norms. In the case of the doctor from Vienna, this reflex cost many lives. His tragic fate (he ended his days in an asylum for the insane, never seeing recognition) shows the price society pays for stubborn dogmas.

Unfortunately, such fear of the new is not a relic of the past. Even today, dogmas and bureaucracy often stand like a concrete wall in the path of innovation. Examples are not hard to find: the denial that Helicobacter pylori bacteria cause stomach ulcers rather than stress and spicy food; the denial of the greater safety of NPPs compared to other power generation technologies; the denial of the benefits of psilocybin in treating PTSD and depression; the denial of a patient’s right to try experimental treatment.

Stories like the one that happened to Semmelweis show that progress is born from the freedom to think differently. New ideas often look frightening or heretical to those accustomed to old paradigms. Of course, skepticism is a healthy quality, but blinded dogmatism is dangerous. It can make rational people reject facts that are literally right in front of them (in Semmelweis’s case, literally on unwashed hands). Every new hypothesis deserves a fair test, not immediate execution just because it contradicts textbooks.

Remembering Doctor Semmelweis, one should ask: is there someone like that truth-teller among us today, whose ideas are ahead of their time but are drowning in the swamp of bureaucracy and prejudice? History teaches us to be bolder and to open the door to the new, even if it means facing rejection. After all, it is the freedom to seek truth and challenge dogmas that ultimately drives humanity forward.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The Nonviolent Semai People

The Semai are a semi-nomadic people numbering about 50,000 who live in the center of the Malay Peninsula in Malaysia. This people are known for their absolute non-violence. Now, drawing on the works of anthropologist Robert Dentan, we will examine some interesting features of the lives of the members of this people.

The Semai initially present themselves as non-violent people. In their words, they speak of non-violence not as an ideal to be achieved, but as something already accomplished. For example, instead of saying that hitting people is bad and forbidden, they simply say “we do not hit people.” Of course, in reality, the Semai can get angry with one another and have conflicts. But direct acts of aggression are a great rarity for them. Even when under the influence of alcohol, they become very talkative and noisy, but never violent.

It is very important to note that physically punishing children is condemned among the members of this people. In conversations about this, they are most likely to say something like “how would you feel if a child died,” thereby equating a simple blow to murder. They primarily prevent undesirable behavior from children through certain threats and intimidation; for example, they often tell children about evil spirits that will eat them, or may threaten to hit them (but will not actually do so). Even if a child hits an adult, the adult will most likely start laughing at them or intimidate them, rather than respond with violence. It is not even customary to force children to do anything against their will; the Semai believe that their children will learn everything necessary on their own, without coercion. Thus, they are simply deprived of observing the very model of violent relationships between people.

An important concept for the Semai is “punan,” which means taboo. If a person does something that reduces the satisfaction and well-being of another person, it is “punan” and is treated as if that person had increased the other person’s chance of sustaining a physical injury. Whoever committed such an act must apologize and materially compensate for the inconvenience caused. If they refuse, the victim has the right to take the offender’s belongings—for example, taking their clothes while they are bathing—and then simply notifying them that these were taken as compensation.

If a conflict cannot be resolved, elders may be sought for help. However, it should be noted that their decisions are not enforced; among the Semai, it is simply customary to respect them. Public opinion also plays an important role in such a system where there is very little power and restriction. The parties to a conflict try to gain the support and help of other people. Naturally, verbal skills become important in such cases, and usually, the most influential members of the Semai are good orators. On the other hand, however, the Semai view overly polished speeches with suspicion, so whoever wishes to gain support must not press the audience too hard.

Finally, it is important to note that the Semai have no provisions for sanctions for murder, simply because murders never occur among them. Even killing animals for sustenance is a task that the Semai perform with great difficulty, and the killing of a human is something absolutely unthinkable for them.

The non-violent lifestyle of the Semai is very interesting and shows that people can live in complete peace with one another, even if conflicts still occur between them. Zero tolerance for violence, even as a method of achieving goals or raising children—this is what everyone could learn from the Semai.

How billionaires bypass the oppression of the state

Following up on the previous post about the birth rate among billionaires.

In the previous post, we figured out why billionaires and the ultra-wealthy have a good birth rate compared to the general population—they successfully bypass the problem of state regulation that suffocates the psyche. Other people, living as if in a cage under the supervision of a “civil servant-trainer,” begin to behave like hunted animals with a lost instinct for procreation.

Why, then, do billionaires successfully bypass this problem? Because they have an antidote to state oppression—money and influence. With great fortunes, they buy themselves an immunity and peace of mind unknown to mere mortals. What is an inevitable obligation for us is, for them, a solvable organizational matter involving a couple of phone calls.

Here is how the elite free themselves from the problems that stifle everyone else:

1) An army of lawyers: For a wealthy person, any legal battle with the state ends before it even begins. Fines will be contested and overturned; loopholes in the law will be found. Billionaires do not fear laws—they turn them to their advantage. If it is necessary to bypass stupid regulation, they hire the best lawyers and lobby for the necessary amendments.

2) Personal assistants: You won’t find the wealthy in queues at clinics or government service centers. They have assistants who handle all the paperwork for them. Bureaucratic routine is outsourced to paid employees. The stress from bureaucracy for them is zero—they don’t immerse themselves in it personally.

3) Private jets and drivers: They are not threatened by the loss of their driver’s license for speeding—they have personal drivers who deal with the traffic police themselves. They don’t stand in stuffy buses or squeeze into the subway. A private jet saves them from humiliating border inspections. They do not feel the “shepherd’s whip” with which the stationary bandit drives us in everyday life.

4) Private schools and medicine: Their children study in elite schools and universities, outside the system of mandatory standards to which everyone else is subjected. They don’t need to worry that a state school will negatively affect the child—they simply move to the private sector. The same goes for medicine: any problem is solved for money in a private clinic, bypassing the queues and low quality of state hospitals.

5) Tax minimization: While income tax is automatically deducted from your salary, large corporations and their owners hide profits in offshore accounts and use tax breaks.

6) A billionaire pays the state relatively less than you do as a percentage of their income—even though it would seem it should be the other way around. But they have the best accountants, financial consultants, and the ability to move their business where the tax is lower. As a result, the super-wealthy often avoid the bulk of the tax burden, shifting it onto the middle class.

7) Private security: Many billionaires simply don’t need the state police—they have their own private security service. Security often has access to weapons, special control systems, and high-tech surveillance (from CCTV systems to internet tracking tools). Consequently, a billionaire can set the rules on their own property (mansions, corporate campuses, “closed” gated communities), often ignoring state laws.

8) Influence and connections: Finally, the cleverest install and remove rulers. If a law hinders them, they will see to it that it is changed. If a regulator pressures their industry, they will find a way to the right minister. The state serves big capital rather than commanding it. In a sense, billionaires keep the state on a short leash, using it for their own interests.

Taken together, this produces a striking effect: most state restrictions practically do not apply to the super-wealthy. They live as if outside the state—or above it. The rules are written for you, not for them. That is why their hands are free where you are bound hand and foot.

P.S. Specifically for the authoritarian-right who see no problem in this: Elon Musk’s 12 children in no way compensate for the zero children of millions of ordinary people.

Voluntarist, Bitarch