Record inflation in the US has once again shown that one cannot rely on currencies with unlimited emission and centralized management, such as modern government (fiat) money. For a long time, the US dollar was considered a fairly stable currency, and many chose it specifically as a means of accumulating wealth. Now, all dollar savings are merely awaiting devaluation. The reason for this is the inadequate economic decisions of the US government during the coronavirus pandemic; it decided to combat the arising difficulties by increasing the money supply. And no government in the world can guarantee that it will not make decisions leading to the devaluation of money and the impoverishment of people. Rather, the opposite should be expected—inflation is beneficial to governments, enriching those whose hands the new money supply reaches first (for example, the government itself and state banks), since they can spend these funds at pre-inflation prices. Thus, there is no such fiat currency in which your funds would be safe.
Cryptocurrencies demonstrate a different picture—of course, not all of them, but certainly those that are truly decentralized and crypto-resistant. The emission of such currencies is limited by the mathematics of large numbers, and centralized management is absent—any changes in the network’s operation (and even the implementation of updates by developers) are possible only with the direct consent of the holders of the majority of the computing power involved in it. Together with the absence of any restrictions on the exchange of funds (funds can be sent to any person in a matter of minutes, even one located in a distant country on the other side of the Earth), this makes cryptocurrencies a valuable asset in the eyes of an increasing number of people—the well-known Bitcoin, for instance, recently broke another record in its value.
Sooner or later, the governments of all states whose currencies are considered guarantors of savings stability will, mistakenly or even intentionally, make decisions leading to an uncontrolled increase in the money supply, meaning the devaluation of money and the impoverishment of people. And each time, cryptocurrencies whose emission remains at the initially set level will only become more popular as a means of accumulating wealth, or even as a means of exchange. The decline of fiat money is inevitable when such a good alternative exists!
Violence is a fairly common phenomenon in nature. This is especially observable in interspecies relationships. Representatives of different species are in a constant struggle for territory and resources; additionally, some become food for others. However, the situation changes when shifting to the consideration of intraspecies relationships. Of course, these are also frequently violent in nature, but this is far from always true. Under certain circumstances, a population will begin to develop inhibitors of intraspecies aggression. We will call this the violence inhibition mechanism, or more simply, the violence inhibitor.
The analysis of intraspecies aggression should begin with a look at its positive aspects, which will later allow us to avoid certain misunderstandings. Aggression, including that of a violent nature (i.e., inflicting physical harm, killing), allows stronger and healthier individuals in a population to prevent weaker and unhealthy ones from reproducing. Furthermore, it is simply beneficial for a specific individual capable of using it for their own survival and the transmission of their genes. It also serves as a tool in creating and maintaining a dominance hierarchy that coordinates the actions of individuals. Finally, since aggressive behavior prevents different individuals or groups of individuals from remaining close for too long, it leads to their uniform dispersal throughout the available living territory, and thus to a uniform distribution of limited resources.
One might get the impression that committing violence against fellow clan members is not just useful, but vital for the survival of specific individuals (and the genes they carry), as well as for populations as a whole. But one should not make the mistake of viewing violence in isolation from environmental circumstances. In this case, two of the most important factors are the presence of strong innate weaponry among population representatives and their inability to escape from violence. The stronger these two factors are, the higher the risks of violence. At a certain point, they become too high for the benefits derived from violence to compensate for them. Violence ceases to be an evolutionarily optimal model of behavior. And these risks can grow to the point where individuals simply exterminate each other in violent clashes, and the population comes to an end.
As an example of such a scenario, one can cite the well-known Universe 25 experiment, in which a mouse population raised in supposedly paradise-like conditions went extinct in less than 5 years. The experiment was poorly executed; the conditions were far from paradise. But the main error was the design of the enclosure, which allowed the 65 largest males to use force to block all others’ access to females and food. This triggered a chain of events that led to the extinction of a population limited in space and extremely violent in its order. In more intelligently designed enclosures, where it is impossible to establish such a violent dominance hierarchy, mouse populations can live for decades [1].
As we can see, weaponry and the lack of an opportunity to escape violence prove to be a problem for the survival of the population. However, it is precisely this that creates evolutionary pressure to develop inhibitors of intraspecies aggression among its representatives, which solves this problem. If population representatives possess strong innate weaponry, then the individuals most inclined toward violence who initiate attacks will encounter the weaponry of their fellow members, and this can often lead to their death. Resistance from an armed victim who has nowhere else to run can also be fatal for the aggressor. Even several victories in such a situation do not guarantee success for the aggressor, since there is still a high probability that one of the attacks will end in a lethal outcome for them. Meanwhile, less violent individuals will perish less frequently, as they do not initiate attacks themselves but only defend against them. They will encounter the risk of dying from violence less often than their aggressive counterparts, and thus will more frequently produce offspring.
As a result, natural selection will move toward the development of strong inhibitors that prevent the infliction of physical harm and the killing of fellow members, as individuals lacking such inhibitors will be removed from the population and unable to pass on their genes. The mechanism responsible for such inhibitors is the violence inhibitor. Overall, we obtain an evolutionary model of non-violence, according to which violence is eradicated as a phenomenon of intraspecies relationships in the course of biological evolution.
This conclusion is supported by observations of animal behavior. The concept of the violence inhibitor was first formulated by ethologist Konrad Lorenz. According to his theory, this mechanism is most developed in species whose representatives are capable of easily killing an individual of approximately their own size. Describing his observations of wolves, he showed how the violence inhibitor is activated when one wolf demonstrates gestures of submission to another—exposing vulnerable areas such as the neck or belly. As a result, the stunned aggressor cannot continue the attack. Similarly, observations of crows confirmed that they do not peck out each other’s eyes, even during clashes [2][3]. Indeed, the sharp teeth of a wolf and the beak of a crow are powerful weapons; a single bite or strike to a vulnerable spot is enough to seriously injure, or even immediately kill, another individual. The presence of such weaponry led representatives of these species to develop corresponding inhibitors during biological evolution.
A large number of such observations from various researchers were listed by ethologist Ireneus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. Many animals exhibit ritualization of intraspecies battles, which prevents the use of strong weaponry. This is true even for arthropods, such as fiddler crabs, which do not open their claws wide enough to injure their opponent during clashes. Similar restraint of aggression is characteristic of many species of fish, lizards, and mammals. A notable example is the oryx antelope, which handles its sharp horns carefully in clashes with conspecifics but uses them to their full extent when defending against lions. It is also worth mentioning poisonous snakes, many of which writhe, exaggerate their size, and push each other during clashes, but do not bite and do not even display their weapon [4][5].
At the same time, violence is inhibited to a lesser extent in poorly armed species. Compared to crows, doves with less sharp beaks are not restrained in their aggression and are even capable of killing a conspecific if the latter is deprived of the opportunity to escape, for example, if placed in a cage [2]. Animals that lead a solitary lifestyle are also quite aggressive. Consider hamsters, which generally will fight to the death if several individuals are placed in one cage. In nature, however, they scatter after only a few mutual bites [4]. If we examine the case of a solitary lifestyle in more detail, in its evolutionary influence, it can be equated to escape. Thus, violence does not threaten the survival of bears, who outside the mating season encounter each other too rarely for the occasional clashes to affect the population as a whole.
Based on observations of animal behavior, neurobiologist James Blair suggested that humans possess a similar mechanism that inhibits aggressive behavior. He subsequently developed a model of the violence inhibition mechanism (English: Violence Inhibition Mechanism, or abbreviated VIM). In its development, his goal was to explain the emergence of psychopathy as a result of the malfunction of this mechanism [6][7].
According to the VIM model, the violence inhibitor is activated when a person observes distress signals from other people, such as a sad facial expression or crying. As a result, the person begins to experience aversion and ceases aggressive actions. The violence inhibitor is also a prerequisite for the development of moral emotions in humans (i.e., sympathy, guilt, remorse, and empathy) and the ability to identify moral transgressions in actions consisting of causing harm to people.
As can be understood from the evolutionary model of non-violence we are considering, the development of a fairly strong version of the violence inhibitor could not have bypassed modern humans, as their ancestors began inventing artificial weaponry. Furthermore, population density has increased significantly over history, and the human population has already occupied the entire available habitat on the planet. However, due to rapid social and scientific-technological progress, the violence inhibitor has not had enough time to fully adapt to new circumstances, which creates the problem of violence in human society. But this issue, as well as the general issue of violence inhibition in humans, will be examined in detail in the following topics of the cycle.
Right now, it is important to understand that violence in human society is not an evolutionarily optimal model of behavior. It cannot be so for any highly armed beings limited in their habitat, since the risks of violence increase as weaponry increases, while there is nowhere to run from it. These risks become especially catastrophic in the case of a high-tech civilization due to the possibility of creating weapons of mass destruction. And humanity is exactly such a civilization. All this creates the prerequisites for the necessity of eradicating violence and achieving a non-violent society in which there is no place for forced forms of relationships, as the most evolutionarily optimal model of social organization.
Sources:
1. Khokhlovsky, P. (2020). “Universe 25: crushing criticism of myths and new conclusions”: https://tjournal.ru/analysis/212316-vselennaya-25-razgromnaya-kritika-mifov-i-novye-vyvody;
2. Lorenz, K. (1949). Er redete mit dem Vieh, den Vögeln und den Fischen (King Solomon’s Ring);
3. Lorenz, K. (1963). Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression (Aggression: the so-called “evil”);
4. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1970). Ethology: The Biology of Behavior, pp. 314—325;
5. Dolnik, V. R. (1993). Ethological excursions through the forbidden gardens of the humanities;
6. Blair, R. J. R. (1992). The Development of Morality. Department of Psychology, University College, London;
7. Blair, R. J. R. (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: investigating the psychopath. Cognition 57, 1—29. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(95)00676-P.
We have already considered the topic of transaction insurance once before. This method is perfectly applicable to the issue of guaranteeing transaction security and compensating for damages in the event of a breach of agreement by one of the parties. The need to resort to violence and forceful measures of coercion is thus eliminated, meaning this concept is fully implementable in the absence of a state monopoly on law enforcement, and indeed in the absence of any police or security agencies whatsoever. Furthermore, it is compatible with the concept of reputational institutions, which creates additional scenarios for its application. Even now, it is actively used in large transactions and in the lending sector. However, doubts are sometimes expressed regarding its applicability in small, everyday transactions.
The way accident insurance currently works can help us dispel these doubts. You have surely been in a situation where, when buying a ticket for a bus, train, or plane, you were offered insurance. Insurance is also offered when renting transport via a mobile application, even if it is just a bicycle or a scooter. Usually, the cost of such insurance is only a few dozen rubles, yet the compensation in the event of an insured loss reaches tens and hundreds of thousands.
See how easy it is? For a provider of risky services, there is no difficulty in concluding a contract with an insurance company and adding the option for their customers to take out accident insurance. This is even profitable for them, as they can receive additional profit from the insurance company for implementing its services. And in the case of transport rental, this matter is simplified to the press of a single button in a mobile application. Since this type of insurance is so easily implemented, there is no problem in making transaction insurance simple as well.
The parties sign a contract, after which it is uploaded to the insurance company’s application (or perhaps concluded directly within it). Then the application calculates the insurance premium rate and the participants of the contract pay it. That’s it. If one of the parties eventually breaches the agreement and the other party provides the insurance company with evidence of the breach, they will be entitled to an insurance payout, which should be sufficient to cover the damage caused. The party that breached the agreement, of course, will not go unpunished if reputational institutions are used alongside this. They will simply be placed on blacklists until they admit guilt and cooperate.
Even in the case of the most ordinary purchases, this concept is also applicable. At a self-checkout terminal, by pressing the corresponding button, or by asking the salesperson, one could also take out insurance. If the product turns out to be unsuitable, defective, or even worse, causes harm to the buyer, and the seller denies their guilt, there would be an opportunity to compensate for the damage through this insurance (and the seller, of course, would suffer reputational punishment). To attract buyers, sellers could add the insurance function and openly publish data on which insurance companies they work with. And those sellers who are unwilling to insure their sales can simply be bypassed by buyers as unsafe agents.
Some might criticize this idea by pointing out that buyers would now have to pay more for goods, and in general, all transactions would become more expensive. However, this is exactly what is happening right now. Due to VAT, excise duties, customs duties, licenses, and the tax burden on entrepreneurs, more than half of the cost of goods already consists of contributions to the state, including for the maintenance of a giant, organizationally extremely inefficient state judicial and police system. Transaction insurance, on the other hand, is a cheaper and more effective solution. Sometimes insurance premiums, where they are currently applied, amount to less than one percent of the transaction amount or the potential insurance payout. Thus, it is a much better solution than state bureaucracy and forceful control paid for by taxes.
When discussing the issue of state violence and the restriction of freedom, one sometimes encounters the argument that this is not such a big problem, since in the modern world of democracies and liberalism, most states are limited in their ability to use force and violate the freedom of their citizens, and in this, they cannot cross a certain line. But in reality, no institutional factors prevent even the most democratic and liberal states from turning into brutal dictatorships. As long as they are stationary bandits and can “legitimately” use the instrument of violence, as long as they have agents capable of committing violent acts, and ordinary people have neither the right nor the possibility to resist violence, a tightening of social orders can be fully expected, provided there is only a pretext for it.
And recently, such a pretext appeared – the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, the pandemic must be fought, but the primary method chosen for this by many states was precisely violence and the forced restriction of freedoms. Moreover, there was no sense in such harsh measures, based on research on the effectiveness of different measures in the fight against the pandemic; also, using the example of Sweden, which has already returned to pre-COVID life, I showed how informing and encouraging less risky behavior ultimately yield better results than strict control and bans. Forceful coercion is a less effective tool in implementing any measures, unless coercion and the restriction of freedom is the goal in itself.
Before continuing the topic of COVID measures, I would like to recall one example of how states effectively destroyed the freedom of movement around the world by introducing passport and visa control. The pretext for this was the First and Second World Wars, during which states needed to control the movement of people. Was the control lifted after the wars ended, i.e., after the pretext for it disappeared? It was not! States took the opportunity to forever make any movement of people beyond the borders of their own “pens” strictly controlled.
During the coronavirus pandemic, borders turned out to be completely closed, but the essence of the matter is not only in that. In many countries, people were literally locked in their homes, deprived of work, and their movements were monitored, for example, using COVID apps. Now, a telling example of the implementation of such a policy is Australia, where people deprived of freedom literally have to fight with police, their movements are tracked by the state via a smartphone app, and violators of COVID norms face imprisonment and fines. Also, in many countries, police can easily beat and detain you, for example, for the lack of a mask or a vaccination passport (I am attaching a recent case from France to the post). This is also true for Russia, where police have already beaten and brutally detained people without masks many times.
Now I want to ask one question: is it possible to believe that after the pandemic ends, states will truly lift all restrictive measures and return to people the same freedom they had before? As far as I am concerned, relying on this would be great naivety. Of course, some freedoms will be returned, but at the same time, states will most likely retain some of the control. It is unlikely to be like in Sweden, where all COVID measures except for border ones have already been lifted, since this country did not rely on harsh coercive measures from the start. By the way, borders after the pandemic may also remain more controlled than before it, and it is quite likely that in this case, even Sweden will no longer be an exception. In general, one should not rely on the idea that for some miraculous reason states will not punish their citizens with police force, deprive them of freedom, and strictly control them simply because they are developed democracies. The question is not so much about political and social institutions as it is about the willingness and ability to commit violence.
Continuing the theme of experiments that allegedly demonstrate the violent nature of humans and their willingness to cause pain and harm to others if circumstances demand it, it is worth considering the Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment is as well-known as the Milgram experiment we considered earlier. Its published data suggest a willingness of the majority of people to inflict pain on others on the orders of an authority figure. However, as an analysis of unpublished data showed, 56% of participants stopped as soon as they felt the victim was actually experiencing pain, and 72% of those who continued to participate did so because they did not believe in the authenticity of the experiment and the reality of the pain caused to the victim (and indeed there was no pain, only acting). But while in the case of the Milgram experiment the issue was merely about unpublished data, the Stanford Prison Experiment turned out to be completely baseless.
The participants of the experiment were divided into two categories—guards and prisoners—who lived in a simulated prison. All participants were expected to play their respective roles. But, as published data suggest, the experiment soon became truly dangerous. The guards began to cruelly abuse the prisoners, and a third of them displayed sadistic tendencies. Two prisoners were even excluded from the experiment due to the psychological trauma they suffered, and the experiment itself was stopped prematurely for ethical reasons. For nearly 50 years, many believed in the reality of these results and their corresponding conclusions. However, a series of pieces of evidence has recently been revealed that completely refutes this experiment. We will now consider some of them.
First, as the experiment’s organizer Philip Zimbardo assured, the participants were free in their actions, and those playing the role of guards received no prior training. In reality, however, the guards were aware of the expected results of the experiment; they were given clear instructions on how to act in various situations, and efforts were made to instill in them the belief that they were assistants to the experimenters in this study.
Second, and very importantly, the participants understood the requirements of the experiment in advance and corresponded to them. As Zimbardo claimed, the requirements for participation were minimal. However, almost all potential participants understood, for example, that guards were required to be despotic, hostile, and aggressive. This led to the assumption that participants, due to a clear understanding of their role, may have played it to the fullest extent in order to ensure the success of the experiment. In fact, after some time, they stated that they were only playing a role. They also always understood that they were participants in an experiment, that they were being observed, and that none of it was real.
I would like to draw attention to one more point. Such an understanding of the upcoming role could have influenced the selection of participants in favor of those with tendencies toward more cruel behavior, since that was exactly the behavior required. And can an experiment for which more cruel people may have been selected say anything about the cruelty of the average person?
There are many other facts that cast doubt on the experiment. It is worth remembering the participants who had to leave it due to psychological trauma. One of them later admitted that he only simulated a psychosis because he did not like the experiment and wanted to leave as quickly as possible. The unrealistic nature of the experimental conditions should also be understood. And finally, the researchers did not provide all the data—out of 150 hours of the experiment, only 15% were recorded (6 hours of video and 15 hours of audio). Very little personal data was collected from the participants, which could have influenced the course of the experiment.
Sources:
Thibault Le Texier (2019). Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment;
Considering the concept of harm reduction, I have already shown why the best result is achieved not through prohibition and accusation, but through awareness and attempts to encourage a person toward less risky behavior. For example, the needle exchange program during the AIDS crisis in the 80s, which allowed drug users to take fewer risks by using fresh syringes instead of the same ones repeatedly and sharing them among several people, proved to be much more effective than strict prohibitions. Program participants began to use drugs less frequently, their health improved, and many of them eventually voluntarily sought help for addiction treatment.
Similarly, awareness and encouraging people toward less risky behavior could have been used instead of harsh coercive measures in the fight against coronavirus. Unfortunately, most governments chose the second method. However, it is good that not all of them decided to resort to force and strict prohibitions, so we can easily compare the results of these approaches. Research on the impact of strict measures, light measures, and all measures combined on the growth of infections has already long shown that both types of measures produce approximately the same effect. This means that the introduction of harsh coercive measures is unnecessary, or even harmful, given their consequences for social and economic life.
Sweden is a good example. From the very beginning of the pandemic, it refused to introduce harsh and coercive measures within its country; even the wearing of masks, which was mandatory almost worldwide, remained only recommendatory in Sweden. Initially, the number of infections and deaths greatly exceeded the corresponding figures in other countries (though in reality, this was not the case in all instances; for example, they were quite comparable to the figures in France). However, it was already clear then that compared to other countries, Sweden’s economy would suffer less and recover faster after the pandemic. And importantly, the last wave of the pandemic, which put many countries in a critical position, had almost no impact on Sweden. By the way, the inspiration for writing this post was the comparison between the situation in Israel, where people are already being given a third dose of the vaccine, where covid passports are being actively implemented, and where there were multiple lockdowns, and Sweden, where there is and was nothing of the sort. At the same time, in both countries, the vaccination level for the first and second doses is approximately the same, but the situation is fundamentally different.
Slightly stricter measures were introduced in other Scandinavian countries—Denmark and Norway. The governments of these countries, of course, called these measures extremely harsh, but if compared to measures in other countries, they also seem quite mild. It is also worth mentioning an experiment conducted in Norway. Fitness clubs were considered breeding grounds for coronavirus, so they were closed at first. Later, 5 clubs were opened, allowing half of their clients to attend classes and the other half not to. As a result, over two weeks of observation, only one case of illness was registered, although it was in the group attending fitness clubs, but the infected person had not even managed to reach the sports facility. Also, the director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health claims that the country could have gotten by without quarantine and achieved the same results. In general, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have already lifted all restrictive measures (except for border controls) and were the first in Europe to return to the life they had before the pandemic. Other countries are still very far from this.
Thus, we are once again convinced that awareness and encouragement of less risky behavior can achieve at least the same, if not more, than strict prohibitions, control, and force. And in general, a huge price will have to be paid for harsh measures in any case. So what is the point if, in the end, they cause more harm than good?
In today’s information world, the institution of reputation plays an important role. It is already difficult to imagine purchasing an expensive product or seeking a moderately serious service without first checking the provider’s rating. Ratings and reviews have become an essential part of many services. Most likely, over time, reputation tools will be used in all transactions, including direct deals between individuals. This leads us to the emergence of a social rating, in which different people will have different reputations depending on whether they fulfilled their obligations honestly, or whether they deceived others, violated the terms of deals, or even harmed their well-being through robbery or violence.
The institution of reputation and financial instruments, especially ostracism and transaction insurance, are capable of replacing coercive tools as a method of influencing offenders. The need to initiate forceful measures simply disappears, and in cases where the offender themselves has not committed violence, the need for any form of forceful resolution essentially vanishes (in the event of a violent attack, of course, self-defense is unavoidable). This would only contribute to solving the problem of violence and reducing its level in society. But at the same time, in a world of stationary bandits, where states hold a monopoly and the “legal” right to commit violence, reputation institutions and social ratings could well serve a harmful purpose.
It is important to understand that states often monopolize services that are important to society. Previously, they took strict control over roads, the financial system, fire services, medicine, the extraction of many resources, social security, and—most importantly within the framework of our topic—the quality control of services and goods supplied to the market. It is quite reasonable to expect that if, at some point, the vast majority of people begin to rely on the institution of reputation, states will take control over it as well. Officials will claim that private solutions are unreliable and that there is a need to issue strict rules for the operation of reputation services, or even create a single state reputation service for everyone, banning private rating and review systems. In a world where some states decide which charging device standard people should use (referring to European Union states), such a scenario has a high probability of becoming a reality.
Thus, the institution of reputation will not only become bureaucratized and inefficient, it could also become a tool for persecuting and punishing people disliked by the current political power. This is already happening in China—a minus in one’s social rating can be received for friendship with an opposition member or for statements against party policy. By a single order from above, any person can be deprived of access to many state benefits. And never mind these benefits—if the state were not a violent monopoly, alternatives to its benefits would exist. But under states, there are no alternatives, as private activity is heavily controlled or prohibited in the spheres they have monopolized. In the end, instead of being a method to fight violence, robbery, and deception, the institution of reputation becomes a supporting tool for strengthening state power and coercive control.
A simple conclusion can be drawn from all this: the institution of reputation is very useful in ensuring the security of transactions, and it is also important for the transition from coercive methods to non-violent influence as the basis for maintaining public order. But when combined with violence, especially state violence, it loses these positive qualities and begins to work toward the strengthening of state power and coercive control. Therefore, it is very important to fight violence and prevent the institution of reputation from being taken under the control of any coercive agents. After all, we cannot fight violence if the institution of reputation is used only by violators for their own benefit, as is currently happening in China.
In 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram decided to conduct a series of experiments to clarify a question: how much suffering are ordinary people willing to inflict on others, completely innocent people, if such infliction of pain is part of their job duties? He wanted to understand how the residents of Germany during the years of Nazism could have participated in the destruction of millions of innocent people in concentration camps.
The essence of Milgram’s experiment is that participants are assigned the role of the teacher (in reality, they think they receive this role by lot, but everything is arranged so that a plant actor always becomes the student). Then the “teacher” goes into another room, sits at a table before a high-voltage device, and reads a list of associative word pairs to the “student,” which the student was supposed to memorize. If the student did not memorize the words and subsequently gave a wrong answer to the teacher’s question, the teacher was to use the device to deliver an electric shock to the student. Starting from 15 volts, with each new error, he was to increase the shock in increments of 15 volts up to a maximum of 450 volts, after which he was to continue using the maximum shock. Of course, the actor playing the student received no shock, but only pretended to receive it and experience pain. In different variations of the experiment, the student and teacher were separated either by a soundproof wall (meaning the teacher could only hear the student knocking on the wall), or by an ordinary wall (meaning he could hear screams, pleas to stop, and complaints about supposed heart problems).
As for the results, for example, one series of trials showed that 26 out of 40 subjects (65%) increased the voltage to 450 volts and did not stop delivering electric shocks until the researcher gave the order to end the experiment. And only 5 subjects (12.5%) stopped at a voltage of 300 volts when the victims showed the first signs of distress. Replications of the experiment under different conditions and with different people showed approximately the same results.
What does this mean—that most people are indeed ready to discard all humanity and inflict pain, or even harm, on other people simply by the order of an authority? If we look at the data from Milgram’s experiment that were not published, it is easy to see that this is not the case at all. By analyzing data from 656 post-experimental questionnaires, researchers found that 56% of participants actually stopped the experiment at one point or another because they believed the person behind the wall was truly experiencing pain. Another study, examining 91 interviews conducted immediately after the experiments, showed that among the 46 participants who continued the experiment after the victim’s distress, 33 participants (72%) did so simply because they did not believe that the victim was actually being caused pain (which was indeed the case—the victim-actors only simulated it).
In total, we find that about 86-88% of Milgram’s experiment participants actually either stopped their participation as soon as it seemed to them that they were truly causing the victim pain, or continued only because they did not believe in the authenticity of the experiment and the victim’s pain. These conclusions, based on unpublished data, do not align with the results that were demonstrated in the original studies and shown to a wide audience. Perhaps the methodology of the experiment itself has nothing to be criticized, but the results were clearly cherry-picked to suit the views of the experimenters. An ordinary person cannot be forced to harm others simply by an order from above. And the multi-million victims of Nazism are the result only of the passive acceptance of the regime by the majority of people, while the acts of violence themselves were committed by a minority of security agents working directly for the Nazi state.
Support for certain social norms through coercive methods provided by states, as well as state violence in general, is often not considered a problem at all, since a person is supposedly absolutely free to move to the territory of another state whose conditions will satisfy them. This possibility is also frequently compared to a voluntary change of service provider, as in a free and competitive market. But this assertion is fundamentally incorrect, as several arguments tell us.
First and foremost, moving between states should not be compared to changing a private service provider or moving within a state due to the colossal difference in accompanying costs. As a rule, this requires significant funds, which is far from always achievable for people in difficult situations or living in poor countries. One should also consider the fundamental change in cultural environment, ways of life, and the need to learn a foreign language. For many people, these costs prove insurmountable; because of them, most people never leave their homeland and resign themselves to violent power in the absence of an opportunity to resist it.
One might say that while all these costs are serious, they do not make escaping violence unrealistic for a specific individual. After all, the minimum action required is simply to move to the territory of another country. But even this is difficult. Consider North Korea, from which it is almost impossible to leave; only a few manage to illegally cross the border, risking their lives. Or even less brutal dictatorships, such as Turkmenistan, which is also very hard to leave. It would be interesting to know how the residents of these countries would respond to the assertion that one can simply get up and leave.
In general, movement between states is possible only through border checkpoints; otherwise, forcible detention awaits you. That is, leaving a state is possible exclusively according to the rules imposed by it through force. And rules can change at any moment, becoming stricter. One does not have to look far for examples — just a month ago, leaving Afghanistan was no more difficult than leaving Russia, and now people are ready to cling to the landing gear of a plane to escape the violence of a new stationary bandit in the form of the Taliban. This also applies to civilized Western countries, where historically strict border controls and passport-visa regimes emerged as a means of tracking the movement of people during world wars but were not eliminated upon their conclusion. Additionally, those who are already being persecuted by the state cannot legally leave its territory.
And finally, living in a world where coercive power is the norm, you are not escaping from violence to non-violence; you are merely escaping from one perpetrator of violence to another. The fact that you crossed the border guarantees nothing. Upon entering the territory of another state, your fate is entirely in the hands of its government. It will set certain conditions, and if you do not meet them, you will be detained and sent back, even if you have already socialized in the new place. For instance, a number of countries return fugitives from North Korea. Not long ago, there was a case where Russia deported a woman to Afghanistan who had fled from the Taliban, who were trying to force her into marriage. And even from Western countries, people have often been deported to whom violent retribution threatened in their homeland, for example, because of their sexual orientation.
After all these arguments, it is hardly possible to speak at all about the idea that one can simply get up and run away from violence, especially state violence. In a world of stationary bandits possessing a coercive monopoly on power, doing this is extremely difficult, and in some cases completely impossible. Even in the most favorable scenario, you have no choice but to live without the threat of coercive power from above. Violence is in the foundation of every current social system, and this is another reason to fight it worldwide and as a phenomenon in general, rather than only its individual forms.
Imagine you have entered into a contract of any kind with someone, whether it’s purchasing a product or employment. But later, the other party to the contract decides to “screw you over.” What are the consequences of such an action? This question can be answered based on who your now former partner actually is. If it was an ordinary person or a company, the worst you will experience is financial loss, and perhaps to some extent moral damage. You will be left without money, your property may be taken through deception, but overall you will still be okay and free. No market entity that does not use violence as a tool in its activities can deprive you of this.
But what happens if some bandit decides to screw you over? And a bandit can do anything, up to a beating resulting in lifelong disability, or even murder. Maintaining relations of any kind with a bandit is always dangerous because there is a significant probability that at a certain point he will decide to get rid of you. The state can also be categorized as bandits, since it is itself a stationary bandit that is not at all averse to committing violence against its citizens if it allows it to achieve certain goals. This means it is dangerous to conduct any kind of business with it, just as with any other bandit. It is enough for you to displease some official once, or even just to be disliked by them, for them to take a serious interest in you and for you to end up either behind bars or in a cemetery.
For example, let’s recall the recent case with Group-IB, a cybersecurity company. Its founder was arrested, and searches were conducted within the company itself. Although it had previously cooperated closely with the FSB, this is certainly not something that can guarantee the absence of violence on its part. From older stories, one can recall the “Seventh Studio” case, when members of a theater troupe that received government subsidies were eventually imprisoned for the alleged misuse of those subsidies. It is dangerous even to engage in work provided by the state or heavily regulated by it. Recently, two honored doctors with heroic pasts were sent to a pretrial detention center for the most ordinary provision of medical care to an elderly patient.
It turns out that it is somewhat risky to hold a government position or even simply cooperate with the state, because in such a case, any mistake or even simple dissatisfaction from the “partner” will cost you not only the loss of funds—you could be left without freedom, or even your own life. Your connections with the state certainly do not guarantee your safety from the state itself.
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