Congratulations to everyone on the tenth anniversary of Bitcoin’s conception! On October 31, 2008, the white paper of the world’s first cryptocurrency was first published, and everything started…
Since then, the world has changed radically, although many have not yet realized it. Now anyone can open their own settlement account without asking anyone and without introducing themselves, and then send and receive money transfers that cannot be blocked, regardless of what government powers a particular regulator may possess.
In the new world, we have much more freedom and much more responsibility. No one has done more for the coming triumph of ancap than Satoshi Nakamoto, but I will try my best too)))
Telegram does not provide ways to obtain data about one’s audience and understand how this data differs from a priori assumptions. So, as a workaround, I am using my favorite method—a survey. How will I apply the knowledge that, for example, my main audience consists of thousand-year-old grandmothers? Hell if I know; maybe I’ll pay more attention to texts about the design of benches and entryways, as well as the differences between a drug addict and a prostitute.
First and foremost, the main thing I’d like to advise: don’t overthink her thoughts. It’s very easy to convince yourself that, for example, she looked at me strangely, she probably doesn’t like me, I might as well go kill myself with a broom. You will have to clarify a lot of things for certain.
Recall all the fragments of your knowledge regarding advertising, marketing, street agitation, negotiation skills, and so on. Consider how the process of seduction is similar to all the above, which techniques from that repertoire you more or less master, and how all this could be applied. This is mainly to get into an analytical mindset and attack the problem from the most unexpected angles.
As a result, you will develop several tactical ideas, for example: — I’ll add her as a friend, study what she likes, like some of her posts myself, but not everything indiscriminately, and leave a few comments. — I’ll strike up a conversation with her in some low-stakes situation, for example, walking together to the bus stop; I’ll bring up a topic for conversation that she seems interested in on social media, I’ll ask more than I chatter myself, and be sure to ask open-ended questions; I’ll be the first to say goodbye, making sure to thank her for the interesting conversation, so that she wants to repeat it sometime. — then, if the opportunity arises, I’ll invite her to a cafe, take a cozy table, and gradually steer the conversation toward a soulful, trusting tone; I’ll touch upon the fact that guys are, of course, cute creatures, but a bit clumsy, and still will never fully understand you, and that it’s great to have female friends; I’ll share memories of my intimacy with a girl, and that I slightly regret the breakup, and sometimes, depending on the mood, I want to get everything back; I’ll try to get some story about her own experience with girls. — I’ll get some empathogens and, when we gather together at an apartment, we’ll throw a party with substances; or just with cocktails. — and from there, it’ll just take off!
Then exhale, turn off the analytics, catch a state of light excitement, and go implement your findings.
Of course, everything will go differently than you planned. She might turn out to be against substances, or an Orthodox activist, or eternally busy, or have a jealous boyfriend who starts hitting on you himself, or something else. Any failure is the best reason to have a good laugh at yourself.
One way or another, you will gain a wealth of impressions and life experience, and it doesn’t matter at all where you end up. Maybe you’ll steal her boyfriend. Maybe you’ll start a joint business with her. Maybe she’ll pounce on you herself on the second date and fuck you. Maybe you’ll just become good friends, without transitioning to any sensual experience. Maybe you’ll quickly get bored of it and switch to something else. Any of these outcomes is better than watching and sighing, but doing nothing to fulfill your desire.
A woman entered self-defense mode and killed a man. Is the woman right in this situation? Is it permissible to kill a person if they point a replica pistol at you?
Alexey Deripaska
You know, a recent episode immediately came to mind, similar to the premise of the comedy “S Legkim Parom” (Enjoy Your Bath), but in the modern USA. A policewoman, thinking she was going to her own home, accidentally enters someone else’s house. There she sees a strange man and immediately kills him, mistaking him for a burglar.
It is quite obvious that in this tragic misunderstanding, the full responsibility lies with the woman, because the object of the attack did absolutely nothing to provoke it. The behavior of the woman, convinced that she had discovered a burglar, is completely logical and commendable: only such a lightning-fast reaction guarantees that the burglar will not have time to draw and use a gun first. But a mistake does not exempt one from responsibility, and a legal proceeding between the woman and the plaintiff, who filed a claim for damages resulting from the killing, will most likely lead to the woman having to pay the costs in full.
But now we add the provocative behavior of the deceased to the problem. It turns out that the emergence of a situation in which the woman defended herself from a presumed attack was caused not just by a tragic mistake, but is a direct consequence of the deceased’s reckless actions. Her behavior is also completely logical and commendable, as in the first case, but the party whose actions directly provoked the accident is different.
Therefore, a potential court proceeding here will most likely conclude that the man who threatened the woman with a dummy gun bears full responsibility. Wanted to play a prank? Well, congratulations, you played a fucking great prank!
… that’s because it says “replica” on the side of your gun…
Presidential elections were held in Georgia on Sunday. Not all ballots have been counted yet, but judging by Russian-language publications, a second round is inevitable. The contenders are the candidate from the ruling “Georgian Dream” party and the candidate from the former ruling party, “United National Movement.” We have all seen how the ruling party resoundingly loses second rounds in Russia, and there is no reason to expect that it will be different in Georgia. So, most likely, Georgia will once again begin to turn back toward the path it deviated from in 2012.
One of his first actions after taking the oath of office, the UNM candidate Grigol Vashadze promises to pardon the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, and restore his Georgian citizenship.
Grigol Vashadze
And separately, it is worth congratulating the Georgian libertarians, who did not yet have their own political party in the last elections, while in these elections, the libertarian candidate is gaining, according to preliminary counts, more than two percent. For comparison, in the first US elections where a candidate from the Libertarian Party participated, they received fewer than four thousand votes.
There is a very good video blog where it is convenient to follow news from Georgia and Armenia – Alexey Romanov’s channel – subscribe if you haven’t already.
I would say that the “left-wing movement” is precisely a typically eclectic trend, as it is a set of completely incompatible concepts. Here you have freedom of expression and political correctness. The absence of exploitation and high taxes. The right to work and war against strikebreakers. Freedom of conscience and sharia. The dictatorship of the proletariat and parliamentary democracy.
Similarly, anarchism is eclectic if considered without specifying terms via hyphens. The only thing all anarchist trends have in common is the indication of the possibility and desirability of liberating society from the state. Otherwise, anarchists have a complete muddle, from “property is sacred” to “property is theft,” from apologists of the labor theory of value to marginalists, from those who see the basis of all prosperity in the division of labor to those who see in it the root of all evil.
Anarcho-capitalism can be quite clearly depicted as the intersection of sets. You know, all those circles with shaded areas, reminiscent of the currently fashionable multicolored blobs. Everything that does not contradict economic theory is taken from anarchism, and everything that does not contradict the NAP is taken from capitalism. The result is a quite coherent doctrine, practically cleansed of eclecticism. This is easily verified: ask the same questions to a wide variety of ancaps, and you will receive answers that are very close in content. Such a trick would not work with eclectic doctrines.
I could have drawn two blobs who are friends by organism, but I’m too lazy
You know, one could trivially answer that the state is unnecessary because — and then follows a long list of problems it causes. One could refer to the fact that the smaller the scale of state intervention, the more the economy flourishes. But values are subjective, and one cannot answer for everyone that the state is unnecessary. There are plenty of people who love having a boot in their backside right now, and many demand that it be shoved even deeper. Minarchy isn’t enough for them; they want socialism; they were taught in school that under socialism there is liberty, equality, and fraternity, or at least order and security.
voluntarily and with a song!
Nevertheless, such an approach doesn’t work as an argument either. There is always a high percentage of conformists in society who will approve of the status quo, no matter how strange it is, so claiming that the majority sincerely and actively desires the state—to the point that they would come out to defend it—would also be rash.
Asking state representatives whether the state is necessary, and how about shifting a bit here to free up a small plot for ancap — well, that would be completely naive.
So, to get a correct answer to the question of whether the state is necessary, one must first achieve the appearance of a normally relatively pure ancap somewhere, and then let the market decide via migration and monetary flows. If people wishing “to make the state great again” consistently appear under ancap, then the state is necessary. For example, simply because one needs to have someone to grumble at. But if after a generation of living under ancap, the state is perceived as a strange, ancient, barbaric institution like trial by ordeal or some other omerta, then it means the state as such is not needed by humans; it’s just that it happens to exist now, and many put up with it.
Recent experience with “Cashberry” shows that the institution of reputation doesn’t really work here, and people, despite obvious facts, continue to pour money into it.
anonymous question
I will refer to a classic. Sergey Mavrodi, when launching another of his contraptions, explained in detail that existing money is a financial pyramid, and that what he was doing was exactly the same kind of pyramid, only better, because it brought a higher percentage. So it cannot be said that those who invest in hyips (High Yield Investment Projects) are unaware of anything. On the contrary, there is a fairly wide circle of people who are enthusiastically engaged in all this, scouring the web for fresh pyramids to enter as early as possible and manage to jump off before the scam happens. Then, referral networks begin to form; after some time come the first joyful reviews from those who managed to recover their deposit; and after some more time, it all ends, and people look for something new.
Gambling is great; it brings people joy and a sense of fullness of life. The market always decides for gambling; it grows through the asphalt even in a situation of complete and unconditional prohibition. You simply shouldn’t get in its way; let it compete peacefully with other types of expensive leisure. All these considerations apply fully to such a variety of gambling as financial pyramids or lotteries.
Let’s return to ancap. The issuance of securities, tokens, debt obligations, lottery tickets is not regulated at all. In other words, there is complete freedom for all kinds of hyips. Those who need exactly that do not need any protection; they are already aware that this is a high risk. The question, therefore, comes down to how the situation will change under ancap, compared to the current state of affairs, for the case of “a person looking for a reliable investment tool and trying not to run into a hyip.”
You know, in terms of the tools used to differentiate one investment product from another, little will change. You will still need to carefully study every offer, use logic, research the notorious reputation, and so on. Perhaps the market will decide for the many rating agencies, including those working on order, or perhaps people won’t be willing to pay for such things, and you’ll have to gather all the information yourself.
But the loudest alarm bell telling an investor not to get involved is, of course, the referral program. If a project pays for attracting clients, the probability that it is not a pyramid is non-zero, but if you are looking for an investment project specifically, why do you need this nonsense where the main profit is expected from attracting new people rather than from the investments themselves? Tell the agitator to get lost and look for something else.
Of course, other OSs exist, but Windows is much more popular than something like Debian. Moreover, as far as I know, this monopoly status is not supported by the state (quite the opposite), but arose precisely in the free software market.
анонимный вопрос
As I understand it, you are proposing to discuss Microsoft as an example of a monopoly that emerged and remains stable in a free market.
Indeed, Microsoft once created a very successful solution that significantly lowered the entry barrier for users into the world of personal computers, both due to ease of use and the fact that MS DOS was very undemanding of resources compared to the monstrous Unix. Then, a decent graphical shell was created on top of the system. Later, when software compactness became non-critical for most users, the company’s products responded in time and began to evolve toward expanding functionality and improving design. In general, skillful adherence to market incentives allowed the company to gain a good share of the desktop OS market. The accumulated network effect is such that individual failed products, like Windows Vista, are no longer capable of killing the company; a long series of bad decisions would be required for that. Nevertheless, such a thing is quite possible. For instance, Google’s browser dealt with Internet Explorer, despite its deep rooting in the system and its initially almost monopolistic position.
Of course, one could argue that the state supported Microsoft by pursuing pirates. If software monetization issues were left entirely to the producer, there would be fewer distortions. But this does not look like a factor that helps only Microsoft and not its competitors. So, in general, we can consider the market here to be free in a first approximation.
And how is this large company faring under free market conditions? It is having a hard time. In the shrinking market for PC operating systems, its share is consistently large, although far from 100%. It failed to really squeeze into the mobile OS market, where two other manufacturers dominate. Gaming consoles, augmented reality glasses, and many other products also haven’t quite taken off powerfully.
In other words, we see that all the horrors that political economy textbooks frighten us with regarding monopolies are not applicable to Microsoft: it cannot relax, hike up prices, and collect monopoly rent; it must, just like everyone else, diligently improve its products and maintain a flexible pricing policy so that even low-income clients prefer to buy Windows rather than pirate it — and yet, one by one, IT companies are surpassing it in capitalization.
If a citizen can gain the right to vote by paying voluntary taxes, and in the event of inability or unwillingness to vote — simply not pay taxes (state fees, etc., not counted).
анонимный вопрос
Everything here depends on exactly what issues are being decided by the vote.
If it is a local referendum deciding on a ban on the sale of alcohol within the municipality at night, then it is completely irrelevant whether the citizen pays taxes voluntarily or by compulsion — in any case, the enforcement of the decision of such a referendum would contradict libertarian principles. This is even more true for more egregious cases, such as when, for example, a deputy is elected who will have the power to enact arbitrary regulations.
If, for example, a vote by the residents of a condominium decides whether to allocate only the playground for children to celebrate Ivan Kupala, or let them splash around wherever they want, then it is completely irrelevant whether you live in this courtyard and pay your utility bills on time or not; restricting your right to vote on this principle would be unjustified, since this is not about the distribution of money, but about a temporary change in the rules for using a common resource.
But, of course, in all cases where voting concerns the distribution of certain funds collected into a common pool, counting only the votes of those who contributed to that pool is a completely natural tactic for libertarians.
There is, however, one more nuance. For example, one initiative group collected money and voted to use that money to put up a monument to Stalin in a private park, leasing a site from the park owner for this purpose. Another initiative group collected money and decided by vote to fence the monument to Stalin with barbed wire, placing decorative machine-gun towers at the corners of the fence, and also leased the territory for this installation from the park owner. If the first initiative group wanted to initiate a conflict in society, it achieved its goal. But if they wanted to quietly and peacefully lay flowers for the friend of all children, then it made sense to also inquire about the opinion of those who did not chip in for the monument, but who still have an opinion. Either they will be benignly indifferent, and then why not put it up, or they will be actively against it, and then it is worth thinking thrice.
