In my recent article on ideological diversity, I talked about how ideas of freedom spread and why this is better than direct missionary work within a single rigid doctrine. Now I would like to look at a related problem: what to do with ideas of un-freedom and their carriers.
Why are ideas of un-freedom attractive?
First, they are relevant to the current state of affairs. Today’s world is far from the ideals of freedom both de jure and de facto. Therefore, the desire to think within a realistic approach and not bother with utopias is quite natural. Understanding that the state was born as a purely bandit formation and then evolved into a modern corporate structure for the purpose of even more effective and stable suppression of the dissatisfied, seizing funds from subjects, and capturing new subjects from neighbors, will in no way help in communicating with state structures. What will help is studying the interconnections between these very structures, both formal and informal, making acquaintances with state functionaries, and other real topics that can bring money, influence, and a decent quality of life.
Second, there are many examples of the collapse of state structures and the transition of a territory to a failed state status—and every time it invariably turns out that the territory turns into a bandit enclave, and freedom in it can only be spoken of as the freedom to rob and kill without fearing retribution from the state, due to its absence. In other words, the state obviously curbs the rampage of private banditry, and therefore should be viewed as a blessing, and these “ideas of freedom” of yours shake the foundations, so please pay a fine for extremism and be thankful you aren’t serving a prison sentence.
The failed state argument: shaken foundations in the background
Third, there is a simple and clear principle: if it works, don’t touch it. Supporters of the status quo will always prefer the current, more or less understood situation, and even if they clearly see the flaws of the system, they will prefer to put up with them rather than choose the uncertainty of the future. If a potential reformer does not have a clear, realistic, step-by-step plan with which the opponent fully agrees at every point, that opponent will always prefer to touch nothing.
How to work with this?
With supporters of living in the real world, everything is quite simple. As soon as they see real-world examples that some free technology effectively handles and withstands the blow of the state, they simply incorporate it into their picture of the real world. For instance, any realist knows for sure that nothing can be blocked on the internet; it is a simple, clear, and easily observable fact. And the realist will themselves laugh at the naive dreamers from some Roskomnadzor, in whose fantasy world adding a resource to the register of blocked resources immediately destroys the corresponding information or service. Similarly, for realists, it is beyond doubt that the state is unable to block Bitcoin transfers, and therefore they logically perceive the complex of anti-money laundering legislation as a set of poorly working spells that should not be taken to heart. So just feed them facts from life, and after some time, they will themselves ridicule the naive etatists who rely in any way on this pathetic seventeenth-century rudiment, the so-called state.
It is also not difficult to find an approach to the adepts of the “don’t touch what works” idea. In general, they are psychologically ready to support a concept such as “everything new is free.” They can be shown how a certain endeavor worked and developed wonderfully after its appearance, and then the state came along and started “fixing” what was working. After that, it usually started working worse. This applies to attempts at state regulation of the internet, the enslavement of the electronic transfer sphere, KYC regimes in banks and exchanges, and all sorts of platform services like Uber—everywhere the principle of “if it works, don’t touch it” was violated specifically by the state. In the same way, it tends to interfere in any voluntary transactions. Finally, one can provide numerous examples of how the state “fixes” already working mechanisms directly related to the functioning of the state. Citizens learned how to achieve a relatively honest vote count in elections—the state changes the election law, making it harder for citizens to control falsifications. A danger arises that a district might go to the opposition—the state engages in gerrymandering or removes the opponent from the election. In short, the state itself so actively violates the principle of not fixing what works that suggesting one should not touch the state because it works turns out to be, at the very least, inconsistent.
All that remains is to deal with the failed state argument. Here, the main counterargument is that this state arises not because people strove for ancap. A failed state always arises after a dictatorship. If the dictatorship ignored reality, made external and internal enemies, and accumulated critical vulnerabilities in the system, then eventually the state broke, leaving citizens poor, fragmented, and incompetent in matters of peaceful cooperation. This created the failed state situation, where people trust only the strongest social ties, the crudest arguments, such as the threat of weapons, and the shortest-term strategies, since under conditions of strong uncertainty, there is no point in long-term planning.
Accordingly, if citizens are already learning to trust weak social ties, plan for the long term without including state handouts in their plans, and do not base their wealth strategies on robbery—then the more of them there are, the less likely a failed state will appear when the next dictatorship collapses. A number of countries that failed to overcome their dictatorship nevertheless did not collapse into a failed state after the dictators died, but began to build something more decent. Spain and Portugal serve as good examples. It turns out that the more actively the supporters of the dictatorship uproot civil society in the country, even if it is disloyal to the dictator, the higher the probability that it will end in a failed state. So they are simply fighting the wrong battle.
With such a civil society, for example, Europe’s penultimate dictatorship is no longer threatened by a failed state
I read a teaser on RLN.Today about the charter city of Prospera on the Honduran island of Roatán. Naturally, all panarchists are following this case with great interest, but for now, excessive enthusiasm seems premature. There was already an attempt to build a charter city in Honduras, but it fizzled out because they failed to agree with the central government on a number of important details. Now they have decided to try again, and they seem to have progressed further than the first time. However, if you look at the immigration guide booklet, it is clear that, in essence, you are not being invited to a special political zone with its own complete charter, but simply to Honduras, according to Honduran immigration rules. It’s not the worst country, more free than Russia—but for now, inside the wrapper of a free city, there is no free city to be seen.
So I would not recommend rushing off to settle on this wonderful island right now—without first getting acquainted with the project initiators to assess how far the negotiations on the political and economic autonomy of the future city have actually progressed, and what the guarantees for its future preservation will be.
However, Prospera has a chance today to truly become a free city very quickly—it just needs to open free immigration for the residents of Hong Kong and give new citizens the opportunity to establish their Hong Kong-style systems in the new location.
What I love about libertarians is the flourishing diversity of their ideas. This is especially true, of course, for those who maintain anonymity and are therefore less constrained in their intellectual explorations. At the same time, I consider the most dangerous of possible trends in the libertarian movement to be the use of such an ancient technology of dominance as “excommunicating” people from the movement.
Libertarians may disagree with one another on the issue of intellectual property, and that’s normal: some quote Kinsella, others Rothbard. They may argue about the acceptability of a minarchist state, drawing arguments on one side from Mises, Rand, and Nozick, and on the other from the same Rothbard or, say, Zolotorev. They may simply be fond of one particular doctrine because it is most interesting to them—for example, Alexander Elesev focused on non-violent child-rearing, Bitarh on the idea of outliving aggressive violence through a multitude of non-trivial ways, Svetov on lustration, and my favorite, Artem Ferier, on contractual slavery. This entire array of ideas is the direct realization of one’s own freedom, without restricting that of others.
The idea of encouraging intellectual diversity is often opposed by the idea of intellectual purism. It has its own obvious appeal, because it is always exclusively pleasant to be in an echo chamber, and knowing that your ideas are in demand and supported is usually very inspiring. One could also quote Lenin and his famous “Before uniting, and in order to unite, we must first decisively and definitely demarcate ourselves.” In other words, you clearly state the theses that constitute the essence of your teaching, give it a specific term, anathematize everyone who tries to call themselves by the same name while having a different set of postulates—and then launch a media campaign promoting precisely this purified product. Resources that were previously spent on searching for ideas and internal discussion are redirected toward missionary work, and the teaching begins to capture the masses.
The obvious problem with such an approach turns out to be fragility. Not only do heresies regularly form within the teaching when someone reinterprets the original set of theses in their own way, but attracting allies who have their own relatively coherent doctrine also becomes problematic. For example, Svetov has a teaching very closely related to what Elesev or Bitarh bring to the masses, but he is unable to attract them to himself except at the cost of their renouncing their own perspective on the issues. And why would they want to do that? Decisive demarcation remains self-sustaining until some teaching begins to occupy a dominant position. Only then can people unite: yesterday’s intellectual rivals join you, first repenting for their blindness and renouncing everything in their early views that deviated from the current canon. This trick worked for Lenin. Today we see similar mechanisms in the advance of the ideology of political correctness. Could the same thing work with libertarianism? Easily. It is just a word, and one can embed however narrow and dogmatic a content into it, having nothing to do with freedom itself.
We have a fork in the road. On one hand, the possibility of growing a rigid but successful teaching that will capture many minds. On the other, the freedom to dwell in a swamp of fruitless intellectual rambling. The preference for the lesser evil suggests itself, and for many, this turns out to be joining the ranks of the “Witnesses of NAP” or something of that sort. Fortunately, this fork is a false dilemma.
Only fans perceive music as whole albums. Usually, someone appreciates a specific song, someone gets attached to a couple of phrases from the chorus, someone remembers a little tune. It is the same with ideologies. Ideas are gathered into teachings for logical consistency, which is important to those who are deeply interested in understanding them. However, indoctrination occurs through the spreading of individual ideas, or even practices based on ideas—not through large-block constructions. Therefore, it is far more important that ideas of freedom take the most diverse forms and presentations, and that they grow into practices with the most varied styles. Some will appreciate cryptocurrency as “free money.” Some will like autonomous energy. Some will prefer coordination structures parallel to the state. Some will promote homeschooling. And some will go into politics, advocating for economic deregulation from elected positions.
Ideas spread unnoticed. Also, ideas can be born independently. You look at a person who doesn’t even know the word “libertarianism”—yet they are internally free and project a highly attractive pattern of action to others. There is no need to immediately examine them for compliance with a given talking-point memo. Just rejoice aloud: oh, one of us!
Let’s look at what the prerequisites for the creation and operation of trade unions might be under ancap conditions.
At the start, we have ancap, meaning anarchy (the absence of a generally recognized institution for producing norms and enforcing them, i.e., the state) plus capitalism (developed commodity-money relations, private ownership of the means of production, freedom of contract, and so on). At what point, for what purpose, with what restrictions, and how successfully can a trade union (an organization for coordinating the collective pressure of hired workers on employers) appear in such a society?
Hiring for a job is an ordinary service provision transaction on the part of the employee. Whether these are services for massaging heels, managing document flow, or maintaining a machine is a secondary matter. A service agreement usually specifies the nature and volume of services, as well as the amount and principles of payment. In any case, a contract cannot foresee all conceivable nuances, and therefore allows for a more or less loose interpretation of individual provisions, which is usually expressed in the form of informal traditions. Each party to the contract, naturally, prefers to shape traditions to their own advantage.
The main tool available to a worker in a situation of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs at work turns out to be the threat of quitting. Essentially, it does not matter whether the employer is complying with the contract. The worker may be dissatisfied with the current conditions, even if they are better than the situation that existed at the time the contract was concluded. For example, they may have managed to increase their qualifications and are confident that they are now worth more. Or they see a favorable change in market conditions that has led to an increase in the employer’s profit, and believe that it would be reasonable for the employer to share part of this profit with the worker.
Faced with the prospect of production losses, the employer may prefer to compromise or even satisfy the worker’s demands in full. Thus, the contract (or the informal practices that do not correspond to the contract) is revised, and the parties move forward in a new reality. Alternatively, the worker receives a refusal and either accepts it or carries out their threat, which logically leads to dismissal.
When there are many workers of this profession both at the enterprise and in the labor market, it is not difficult to replace the dismissed person. Hence a quite natural hint from the workers of a specific profession: to present coordinated demands, threatening a mass refusal to work. If such a practice becomes recurring, it makes sense to form permanent structures for coordination, i.e., a trade union.
Since we are in ancap, I fundamentally do not consider violent ways of raising the stakes in this conflict; we are talking only about peaceful pressure.
What happens next? The higher the direct and indirect costs to the entrepreneur from the workers’ breach of contractual obligations, the higher the probability of an entrepreneurial solution that radically eliminates the problem. This could be the automation of production, moving the business to a region with a more loyal workforce, or simply closing the enterprise and shifting capital into something more capital-intensive than that based on mass unified labor.
Thus, trade unions under ancap are possible, but they generate negative feedback, and the more successfully they operate, the sooner the unions are abolished along with the professional group that spawned them. Therefore, a more stable model seems to me to be one with spontaneous mass actions of discontent, which do not lead to the creation of permanent organizations for inventing new reasons to pressure the employer. Anger works convincingly as long as it is not institutionalized.
After all, if I am just a small entrepreneur, a local gang could seize everything I have. And there would be an unthinkable number of such gangs due to the crude nature of humans and an unwillingness to work. Am I supposed to rely only on a gun in my pocket?
Tigrenok
I analyzed this topic in great detail in the script for the Libertarian Band video on the conditions for the stability of anarchy; you can even skip reading further and just watch the video instead.
If you happen to find yourself in an impoverished society where robbery is significantly more profitable than peaceful labor, then you, as a small entrepreneur, will indeed have to rely on both your gun and a good “roof” (protection)—you will spend a very significant share of your income on protection in one form or another, and the cost of your distrust toward everyone will be factored into the price of the goods you sell, which consumers will have to pay for. Thus, your life will be poor and dangerous, and you will be seriously outperformed in labor productivity by your peaceful neighbors—and it will remain this way until a certain critical mass of people in society crawls out of the swamp of poverty: money provides confidence in tomorrow, meaning it expands people’s planning horizon. In this way, they unlearn the principle of “you die today, and I’ll die tomorrow” and switch to a “let’s let each other live” mode.
In any case, regardless of your starting conditions, you will not be able to transition to a peaceful, stable, stateless society until you are personally ready to defend your individual freedom. That is, as you quite correctly noted, rely on the gun in your pocket. A gun in a safe that you do not dare use, regardless of what happens, will not help you at all.
The translation of Friedman was recently encouraged by a donation, so here is another chapter of The Machinery of Freedom.
The most common argument in favor of the state from economists is the assertion that external coercion is useful for solving the problem of market failures. Some ancaps, such as Vladimir Zolotorev, simply deny the existence of the phenomenon itself in response, pointing out that if something is not being done, it means it wasn’t wanted that much. Friedman suggests not arguing with the economists, but simply redirecting their argument against the state, showing that it is precisely because of market failures that the state causes so much completely inevitable harm.
By the way, I was recommended a story by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge The Uncontrollables, written in 1985 under a serious influence of The Machinery of Freedom. It presents a textbook plot of “the state attacks Ancapistan.” In general, I enjoyed the author’s style. The story turned out to be part of a larger cycle; I will read it in full in my spare time.
Bitarch posted a note on VKontakte about risk-free struggle against the state. In short, the idea is to anonymously hire non-politicized members of the public for real-world actions. The methodology is quite obvious; it is a standard division of labor. But, of course, such technology requires infrastructure for widespread implementation — secure platforms where one could post orders and expressions of readiness to fulfill specific tasks. Bitarch writes about the darknet, which is rather vague, and without certain qualifications, this tells an inexperienced political activist practically nothing. However, to develop a taste for this, one can start by using simple, makeshift services.
For instance, the friendly channel Anarchy+ recently launched a service called Protest Action Exchange, where you can place an order for an action, ask for donations to implement your idea, and so on. Although the channel is anonymous and all communication goes through a bot, it is still far from true security, but the risks are modest enough because the exchange does not accept orders related to violent actions.
So, if you have ideas, take the opportunity to find performers. If you have the strength, take the opportunity to get involved. The project is non-commercial, and although it was started by left-wing anarchists, they have no prejudice against libertarianism, so no ideological screening is expected.
Imagine an economy where the property of all or most enterprises producing goods and providing services is under the shared ownership of the workers, who gain and lose it upon joining or leaving the collective, decisions are made through the expression of the workers’ will, and the net profit of the enterprise is divided equally among everyone.
Please provide a critique of such a model. How should one respond to opponents proposing this model? What points should be highlighted? Thank you.
анонимный вопрос
Before imagining an economy consisting entirely of such enterprises, it makes sense to look at how they might form within a regular economy where ownership of the means of production exists.
So, there is a group of people who want to implement a certain idea and intend to start a business. They need a set of competent workers for several different positions, as well as startup capital. Presumably, the workers are there—they are the founders themselves. Where do they get the capital? In a modern economy, they can chip in in certain proportions, and each will receive a share in the founding enterprise corresponding to the amount contributed. Within the proposed model, shares are strictly equal, meaning they must contribute strictly equal amounts, which reduces the system’s flexibility, as a potentially valuable worker might not have enough savings to join the enterprise, or may not be willing to risk them. When the functions of capitalist and worker are separated, this is not a problem. When they are forcibly combined, not everyone can handle it.
What are the alternatives to chipping in equally? One could take a loan from a credit institution. But for a bare idea, a loan will only be granted at serious interest rates. These could be lowered by providing collateral, but the conditions of the problem assume no collateral, and it is impossible to pledge the shares of the future enterprise, because the enterprise must remain in equal shared ownership of the workers, not some capitalists.
But fine, let’s assume a group of people chipped in a very small amount, opened a micro-business, and gradually grew it by investing most of the profits into expanding production—and now they start lacking manpower. They need to hire someone else and allocate an equal share to them, proportionally reducing the shares of each founder. The larger the starting contribution was, the longer they had to deny themselves the basics to get the enterprise running—the harder it will be to make the decision to simply give away an equal share for free. If they intend to hire a highly valuable specialist, the founders will think it over and decide it’s worth it. But with equal probability, it could be about hiring someone with low qualifications. For example, production has grown, delivering to customers independently is no longer convenient, and a courier is needed. And this courier, a position that literally any random person could handle, becomes an equal shareholder in a successful startup? It is not hard to see that old workers will face such psychological problems every time a new vacancy opens.
Similar difficulties await the person who was there at the start, invested a lot of effort into the enterprise, and now, for one reason or another, would like to leave. They realize that they have no way to monetize their share, and all their merits toward the company are wiped out the second they quit. They must now look for a new place and persuade a new collective to take them as a shareholder. Obviously, under the conditions of a well-functioning institution of reputation, a person who was in good standing in one company will be able to find a place in another without problems, but still, relying on the hope of obtaining a share in a more productive enterprise instead of the individual value of one’s labor is not such a flexible scheme.
The real nightmare begins if, due to changes in market conditions or other reasons, it becomes necessary to reduce staff; otherwise, the company will start incurring losses. That’s it, a scandal is guaranteed. Everyone accuses everyone else of causing the company’s situation to worsen, no one is ready to jump overboard and lose their share, but without this, instead of a regular share of profit, all shareholders must instead regularly contribute to a loss-making enterprise in equal shares. It remains unclear exactly how to decide who to throw out. In a regular company, the management makes the decision based on production necessity. But here, everyone is a shareholder, and everyone has a vote. That is, it will have to be decided democratically at a general meeting, and it may very well turn out that it is not the least necessary employees who have to leave, but the least eloquent.
Thus, such enterprises lose to companies without socialist burdens on labor relations in terms of flexibility, and therefore, they will likely fall behind in the competitive race. In essence, nothing prevents anyone from opening enterprises of this type right now in countries without labor codes, like Georgia. But practice shows that few people need this. Even if people unite in an artel or cooperative, they still prefer to retain the right to a share in the company, and upon leaving, they demand their share in money or equipment, and when accepting a new member, they find it justified to require an entrance fee—again, in monetary or in-kind form.
In essence, the entire toolkit of market manipulations with shares is precisely an additional expansion of possibilities over the limited functionality of equal shared conditional ownership, and if it was evolutionarily developed in the course of humanity’s economic progress, it would be very strange to abandon it on a mass scale. But to each their own; anyone who wishes can start working according to this scheme as early as tomorrow.
So, is it a completely unviable scheme? Not at all. Caribbean pirates operated on almost these very principles. You can read more about this in the recently translated chapter of David Friedman’s book on legal systems that differ greatly from ours. In essence, the only difference between the pirate scheme and the proposed socialist one was that the pirates did choose leadership for themselves and paid them not an equal share of the loot, but an increased one. Pirates were also helped by the fact that the problem of startup capital was not so acute for them: they did not build ships, they captured them. But socialists, in fact, can quite well envision their system as the expropriation of existing enterprises from owners in favor of workers, so they can be just as successful as sea robbers.
Thus, it can be stated that within the framework of relatively simple economic activity, and especially in resource economies with low capital intensity, the socialist scheme can quite well take root, but the more serious the division of labor, the more difficult it will be to adapt it to the needs of the collective members, and the closer it will in fact resemble a regular market scheme with private ownership of the means of production.
With this article, I would like to summarize the cycle of previously published notes concerning the NAP—from discussions on the relevance of the topic to various approaches to its dissemination in society. Most of the ideas are taken from Bitarch and have been thoroughly reworked. Links to earlier materials expanding on certain theses are generously scattered throughout the text; if desired, you can refresh them in your memory.
What is unsatisfying about the status quo? Without eliminating aggressive violence from the life of society, it is impossible for any somewhat libertarian model of the country’s socio-political structure to emerge (even healthy federalism, let alone ancap or panarchy). Furthermore, the habit of solving problems through violence creates powerful negative externalities in society—it reduces the quality of life and economic well-being, slows down scientific and technical progress, and even creates a risk of the extinction of all humanity.
What is the non-aggression principle (NAP)? There are many interpretations of the non-aggression principle, but we will limit ourselves to the most minimalistic version. Let us assume that the NAP prohibits only direct physical violence against a person’s body and property that is under their immediate physical control (for example, the house where a person lives and the phone in their pocket). According to this minimal interpretation of the NAP, the use of violence for self-defense is permitted only in the form of counter-violence against the aggressor at the moment they attack and only in the minimal amount sufficient to make them cease the aggression. To seek revenge, punish, or recover compensation using violence would already be going beyond such an NAP. Psychological influence, due to the ambiguity of perception, should also not be considered violence. Following the NAP in this form already ensures freedom of association, and further, within voluntary associations, additional rules can be used that are not derived from the minimal NAP but are convenient for the comfortable interaction of the association’s members. A violation of the NAP itself or the established additional rules within an association can be settled through conciliation procedures or simply lead to a refusal of further cooperation, whether temporary or lifelong.
Why this specific minimal NAP? It inherently corresponds to the notions of justice of the vast majority of people, even if they have no complex concepts of property rights other than those inherited directly from animal ancestors. There is a well-known study by biologist Konrad Lorenz, who described the evolutionary mechanism for the emergence of innate inherited morality regarding intraspecific non-aggression in many animal species, such as hedgehogs, porcupines, echidnas, venomous snakes, and insects. In those periods of human history when society lacked functioning institutions to counteract individual violence, natural selection quickly led to the recognition of the NAP in roughly this minimal form. A similar understanding of the NAP can also be found in international relations, that is, between states, especially developed ones capable of employing deterrent weapons.
Who will be responsible for maintaining the NAP in society? Volunteers. Look at the distribution of the Bitcoin network’s hash rate across mining pools. Bitcoin has existed for over 10 years, and there is still no global dominant pool. People do not spend their efforts gathering statistics and warning miners about the risks of centralization for no reason. It even reaches the point where mining pools that approach a dangerous threshold of dominance, under public pressure but without violent coercion, stop accepting new miners, voluntarily depriving themselves of potential profit. All these people perfectly understand the value of decentralization and that it is better to spend a little of their own effort or give up part of their profit than to have people lose faith in the reliability of Bitcoin during a “51% attack,” which would cause the coins to lose value and the losses to be far higher. The same will happen with the maintenance of the NAP. Volunteers will certainly be found for whom the opportunity to live in a society with a low level of violence and to “enjoy the freedoms we have” are not empty words, and who are ready to exert effort to maintain it.
The methods for fighting aggressive violence described below can be used by anyone and in any combination, depending on the preferences and abilities of the volunteers. Their effectiveness and, accordingly, the appropriateness of their application in each specific case vary. All described methods do not contradict the NAP and do not imply the use of aggressive violence even against the most hardened maniacs. The list is not exhaustive and leaves room for human creativity.
1. Moral pressure
This method involves expressing condemnation toward those who practice aggressive violence themselves, as well as toward all those who approve of it. People are uncomfortable when they are considered villains; they seek justifications for themselves, and the task of moral pressure is to debunk these justifications.
For instance, it is important to convey to people the idea that the state is a stationary bandit, and that political methods of management are, in essence, robbery. Justifying such things is either a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome or evidence of complicity in robbery, and therefore is also subject to condemnation. Few are capable of openly admitting they are a violent criminal and a robber; this is the lot of only a minority of people who see nothing wrong in it, while for others, the very concepts of violence and robbery are primarily associated with something immoral. Let a person first begin to state, even if only under public pressure, that they condemn state violence, and then grow accustomed to such rhetoric and believe in it themselves.
The more hardened the statist, the harsher the methods of criticism permissible toward them. They can be compared to pedophiles (a comparison that favors the pedophiles) and totalitarian dictators, for whom the price of a human life is zero. The strategy of Western fighters against homophobia and racism, utilizing the ostracism of such individuals, which has proven its effectiveness, would also be appropriate. All these methods can be amplified by proliferation through specialized online services.
A powerful strategy that is potentially possible is the use of existing left-wing activism to promote the NAP. The alarmist protest, the face of which became Greta Thunberg, succeeded because many beneficiaries of the agenda Greta transmitted were found within the establishment. Now, when many countries are shaken by protests against police aggressive violence, the idea of riding this theme and beginning to transmit a general refusal of aggressive violence looks quite realistic. The same corporations that sponsor this protest will fit into a new expanded discourse. The public loves apocalyptic predictions, and we have them.
2. Transparency
Psychological research shows: people, if they believe their identity is hidden, find it much easier to cause suffering and pain to others. Any situation in which people feel anonymous, when no one knows who they are or does not want to know, reduces the sense of personal responsibility and thereby creates an opportunity for atrocities. The violent effect of anonymization can be amplified by the effect of an upward spiral of emotional arousal, which creates a feeling of power. The Milgram experiment also showed that personal face-to-face contact increases the likelihood that people will not carry out inhuman orders from authority to cause suffering and pain. Anonymity promotes the commission of violence.
Accordingly, the threat of publishing unsightly facts always works as a deterrent to violence. To prevent people from resorting to this method of protection, proponents of aggressive violence usually use shame. You are told that “airing dirty laundry” is shameful. That informing is “snitching.” That the victim of violence, not the perpetrator, will be smeared because they were at fault. This is a serious obstacle that can be overcome precisely through the moral pressure described above. Never condemn the victim, even if it seems to you that they could have been less careless, more modest, or followed cultural norms that you personally like rather than their own.
Technically, it is not so difficult today to find all the data about a person, knowing their appearance, voice, or other clues. Big data is a powerful tool that can also work in the interests of civil society. De-anonymization services, hidden audio and video recording, trackers and the like are actively developing. If you know promising teams working on this—support them. If you know of ready-made useful products that help people uncover the identities of criminals—tell others about them.
3. Balancing the potential for violence
The more evenly the potential for violence is distributed in society, the fewer opportunities a potential aggressor has to commit violence for their own benefit. With a completely even distribution of the potential for violence, the attacker always receives exactly the same damage as the object of the attack. If, at the same time, the potential for violence is not only evenly distributed but also quite high, then even uniting ten people to attack one may seem like a bad idea: one-tenth of the damage received by the victim would be more than enough for each attacker.
Thus, there will be less aggressive violence in society the more evenly the potential for violence is distributed, the greater the potential for violence of the individual, and the more readily they are willing to use force for their own defense, that is, to practice the doctrine of deterrence.
In essence, the presence of a sufficiently large potential for violence in each individual makes an exact parity of forces redundant: it is enough to have the necessary minimum to inflict unacceptable damage on the attacker. A classic example of such a necessary minimum is a firearm: a standard rifled short-barrel weapon. With minimal skill and determination, it allows one to fight off a small group of aggressors or keep at a distance an ill-motivated crowd in which no one wishes to be the first victim. However, a pistol is simply an example of a convenient modern technological solution to the problem of balancing the potential for violence. As shown by the example of the technologically backward Senoi tribe, even blowguns with poisoned darts are quite sufficient to deter aggression, provided they are guaranteed to be used when aggression is directed at them.
One might object that individual self-defense works poorly against the state, but this assertion is refuted by practice. The well-known science fiction author Alexander Rozov expressed himself well on this matter in his blog:
“A completely different matter is in Sweden (with a comparable and very high level of economic well-being). There, a person is, in general, also powerless before the state. But this powerlessness affects almost exclusively the LAW-ABIDING person—he is easier to find and punish for something. But an armed bandit, although also powerless, is harder to punish (since he must first be found, and then detained—and he may offer armed resistance). Therefore, the Swedish police prefer to hunt law-abiding citizens.”
“A completely different matter is in Sweden (with a comparable and very high level of economic well-being). There, a person is, in general, also powerless before the state. But this powerlessness affects almost exclusively the LAW-ABIDING person—he is easier to find and punish for something. But an armed bandit, although also powerless, is harder to punish (since he must first be found, and then detained—and he may offer armed resistance). Therefore, the Swedish police prefer to hunt law-abiding citizens.”
Of course, the state can spend a disproportionate amount of resources on opposing a specific individual, inherently exceeding any of their spending on defense. An individual can oppose this with two tactics.
First, the price of an effective frontal attack by the state on a private person usually turns out to be several dozen times higher than the price the person spent to counter this attack; in other words, in an arms race, the defending individual has the advantage. Having firmly decided to sell their life dearly, they are capable of causing a lot of trouble even after death.
Second, transparency and moral pressure provide a very unfavorable background for large-scale state violence, whereas a large number of people may come out to defend the victim because they decide for some reason that it also concerns them. Despite the fact that the firepower advantage in such situations still remains with the state, mass civil disobedience is often enough for the state to hush up the conflict.
4. Non-violent upbringing of children
The most humane and unobtrusive thing a person can do to fight aggressive violence in the world is to pass values of non-violence to children. Of course, this means the need to act by personal example, that is, first and foremost not to apply violence to children oneself, so the task may not be easy. Nevertheless, the effort is worth it, for in the long run, this is the strongest means of influencing the world. A person who grew up understanding that they can trust people and not look for a catch, that people are benevolent and inclined to negotiate, will carry these values into adult life, and will react to stories about the realities of the beginning of the 21st century as we react to stories about public executions: with incomprehension and disgust.
Even if the state is not rejected by humanity for its inefficiency, being led by people who absorbed non-violent practices from childhood, it will become humane and unobtrusive in its methods, not even remotely resembling the gang of robbers from which it once grew.
Of course, when instilling values of non-aggression in a child, it is also important to instill a readiness to oppose it: starting from ways to nip a conflict in the bud through constructive negotiations, and ending with the use of means of self-defense, as described in detail in the previous point.
The idea of non-aggression leads directly to the idea of legal equality, so much attention will also need to be paid to instilling this idea. First of all, it manifests in the small things. For example, a society in which adults address children using the informal “ty” while demanding to be addressed with the formal “vy” is already instilling the idea of inequality. Meanwhile, there are situations of natural inequality of opportunities due to different ages and experience, and usually, it is more appropriate for adults not to participate in many children’s games on equal terms with children in order to preserve their dignity.
A good illustration of this thesis is the approach to adolescent sex. In Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World” (or “Science in Search of God”), the results of a statistical study by sociologist James Prescott are described, who compared the customs of hundreds of cultures in human history.
“…the fundamental differences relate to whether it is customary in that culture to hug children and whether premarital sexual intercourse is permissible for youth. He considers these parameters to be key and concludes that all cultures where children are hugged and adolescents are allowed to engage in sexual intercourse ultimately do without a pronounced social hierarchy, and everyone is happy. Whereas those cultures where certain social prohibitions prevent hugging children and a strict taboo is placed on premarital adolescent sex develop a strong hierarchy of dominance and wallow in violence and hatred.”
“…the fundamental differences relate to whether it is customary in that culture to hug children and whether premarital sexual intercourse is permissible for youth. He considers these parameters to be key and concludes that all cultures where children are hugged and adolescents are allowed to engage in sexual intercourse ultimately do without a pronounced social hierarchy, and everyone is happy. Whereas those cultures where certain social prohibitions prevent hugging children and a strict taboo is placed on premarital adolescent sex develop a strong hierarchy of dominance and wallow in violence and hatred.”
At the same time, as noted in the study, the prevalence of sex between adults and adolescents again proves to be a pretext for the development of dominance relationships.
Of course, if you practice non-violent upbringing of children, you will have to face violence from others directed toward them. You will have to be ready to counteract this, even if they are other people’s children; otherwise, you will simply instill in the child the idea that the main thing is personal well-being and it is better to turn a blind eye to everything else to stay safe. Depending on the situation, means of protection, public disclosure of facts of violence, and the creation of moral pressure may be useful here.
5. Freedom of Association
Modern people too often have to be part of various involuntary associations. This could be compulsory schooling, a conscript army, imprisonment, an orphanage, certain family-clan relations in archaic societies, and even the institution of citizenship itself.
It is precisely where leaving a community is impossible or associated with high costs that a phenomenon such as bullying appears, including the use of physical violence. Involuntary association with anyone develops in a person the ability to endure, to act covertly, hiding one’s interests and motivations, and sharply reduces empathy—in short, it makes them a rather unpleasant type. Spending energy on intrigues and survival in society, a person loses the opportunity for development and self-realization.
What can be done to develop freedom of association in society?
First, of course, it is important to recognize the problem itself, to speak publicly about its existence, calling things by their names: prison as prison, slavery as slavery, dependence as dependence.
In many cases, the exit from an involuntary association is not actually closed, and many people remain in them simply by tradition. Having found the exit, one should use it and learn to enjoy life in conditions of freedom, destroying with one’s own example the myths about the troubles awaiting those who leave the cozy cage. Thus, those who leave school for self-education will arouse envy rather than pity if they not only rid themselves of the pressure of the educational system but also achieve the life success for which the entire educational system is presumably built.
Similarly, it makes sense to flee abroad immediately upon the threat of criminal prosecution—or even simply in a situation where the political regime in the country becomes particularly unpleasant, and one can choose something less repulsive.
It is important to promote and publicly approve leaving toxic, abusive personal relationships—it is also desirable to provide support to victims of such relationships afterward so that they can find another support in life and not fall back into something similar.
Finally, it is not enough to know how to exit involuntary associations; it is important to learn how to enter voluntary ones, gaining pleasure, benefit, and security from this. This could be any interest-based group on social networks, membership in public organizations, or establishing a network of known service providers. Finally, one can simply become a regular at bars, clubs, children’s or sports grounds. Even such elementary habits as greeting neighbors in the building and talking with taxi drivers or hairdressers are already an important step toward building a civil society. When people evoke sympathy and interest in each other, it promotes the spread of the values of non-aggression.
6. Working with Heredity and Biochemistry
Biologist Konrad Lorenz proposed a model describing the appearance of innate morality of non-aggression toward representatives of one’s own species in many animal species (those possessing innate weaponry—hedgehogs, porcupines, echidnas, venomous snakes, and insects). The higher the ability of the species’ representatives to destroy their conspecifics, the faster the genes responsible for the tendency toward intraspecific aggression are washed out of the population during lethal conflicts. A strong animal may have a strong morality of non-aggression, and a weak one—a weak one. In its natural history, humans are very poorly armed animals. Therefore, in humans, instinctive prohibitions are initially weak, and natural morality is weak. Innate prohibitions in humans correspond to this state of affairs. However, reason has provided humans with the ability to significantly improve their tools for killing humans in timeframes that are negligible by evolutionary standards; therefore, an innate morality of non-aggression toward other humans never had time to appear in humans during natural selection.
It has been established that a tendency toward increased and pathological aggression can be either inherited or acquired (due to brain damage and hormonal imbalances). A single gene or even a precise list of genes responsible for the tendency toward intraspecific aggression has not been found to date, so this is a promising direction for applying effort if you specialize in the relevant biological disciplines.
Several approaches can be proposed for washing out the hereditary tendency toward intraspecific aggression from human society, which differ both in ease of application and in the speed of achieving results.
6.1 Forcing Natural Selection
When armed self-defense is available and welcomed in society, aggressors quickly exit the population. Thus, the implementation of the methods outlined in section 3 can ensure a long-term reduction of aggressiveness in society, although natural glitches and mutations will still not allow the complete and final elimination of intraspecific aggression; therefore, it will be necessary to constantly maintain a uniform BPN (Balance of Power/Non-aggression) so that pathological aggressors appearing by chance as a result of mutation are washed out of the population.
6.2 Sexual Selection
As historian Martin van Creveld said,
“the true reason for the existence of wars is that men have always loved to fight, and women have always loved warriors.”
“the true reason for the existence of wars is that men have always loved to fight, and women have always loved warriors.”
As women increasingly prefer caring partners over aggressive ones, carriers of genes with low aggressiveness get more chances to have offspring—after which aggressive individuals go off to squander their lives and manage perfectly well without reproducing.
In addition to these methods, which are suitable for application already now, the development of science may allow for more direct methods of influence in the future.
6.3 Embryo Selection
A DNA sample is taken from the fetus and analyzed for pathological hereditary diseases, including those related to a tendency toward aggression; in the event of a positive analysis result, the pregnancy is terminated. More obvious hereditary diseases, such as Down syndrome, are already fought in this way. Convincing a mother not to deal with problems she does not need and simply make another attempt at conception later is a solvable task, provided there are not too many cultural constraints in society prohibiting the termination of pregnancy.
6.4 Genetic Modification in Adults
A virus is created that integrates into human DNA and either switches off the genes responsible for the tendency toward aggression or reduces their expression. The technology of genetic modification itself has already been created and is actively developing, but exactly which genes and how exactly should be corrected still needs to be studied thoroughly. The direct switching off of genes most obviously linked to aggression so far leads to many undesirable side pathologies in experiments, so the technology is yet to be refined.
6.5 Genetic Modification at the Embryonic Stage
The method is the same as in the previous point, but it introduces changes into the genome that will subsequently be inherited. The task is much easier, since changes need to be introduced into literally one cell, rather than into an already formed organism.
6.6 Supportive Medication Therapy
Since the tendency toward aggressive violence is regulated by the hormonal background, it is not strictly necessary to delve into the genome if the hormonal background itself can be regulated. Currently, this is done with medications, but in the future, implanted hormonal regulators could be used for this purpose.
Some of the described methods can be practiced by everyone; some require qualification. In any case, speaking of methods 6.4 or 6.6, there can be no question of coercion. Even if someone committed aggressive violence under the influence of pathological tendencies, they should be left with a choice: ridding themselves of the pathology or bearing full responsibility for the act committed. In the latter case, this, again, should not be associated with violent punishments—only compensation for damages and restriction of communication opportunities.
Conclusions
Maintaining a low level of internal aggression in human society is a complex and multifactorial task. There is no single universal solution here; instead, there is room for initiative in a wide variety of directions, some of which are outlined above. It is important to realize the existence of the problem itself, not to hush it up, and to discuss it freely, as if it were a problem of cardiovascular diseases. One manifestation of strong intraspecific aggression in humans became such an institution as the state, with its tendency to sacrifice countless victims on the altar of its own greatness, or simply to poison people’s lives in peacetime. As humanity realizes the tendency toward violence as a problem, this toxic institution will go into the past—either completely, or it will transform into a harmless set of voluntary services. As ideas about the necessity of transitioning to non-violent interactions penetrate, they will find increasing support both in funds and volunteers, but for now, a great responsibility for its rooting in society lies with the few adherents of the idea.
As I promised, I am moving over the two chapters of David Friedman’s new book, Legal Systems Very Different from Our Own, which have already been translated under the editorship of Vladimir Zolotorev. At the same time, I am gradually typesetting the English original by chapters; I will complete this meditative process in a while.
