Yesterday I checked into a hotel, and in the evening we sat with the owner and chatted. He told me:
that the cursed Saakashvili started a war with Russia, caused a rift between two good countries, and they still haven’t been able to reconcile.
that under the cursed Saakashvili, the police killed and raped, and now, finally, they have stopped.
that in 2012, Saakashvili prepared to usurp power after losing the elections, but half of the special forces refused to fight the people, and the dictator had to leave.
that during the war with Russia, many officers abandoned their weapons because they did not want to fight for the regime, but wanted Georgia to become Russian; later they were imprisoned for 10 years, but were released under the new government.
that under the cursed Saakashvili, LGBT people became completely unrestrained and felt at home in an Orthodox country.
that this clown has no and never had popular support.
And then I watched a recent interview of Saakashvili with Alexey Romanov, and there Saakashvili says that Ivanishvili’s regime is illegitimate, he no longer has popular support, and decisive clashes between the regime and the people are about to begin.
What conclusion would I like to draw from all this? Value sociological data! As long as you are surrounded by your comrades, you are in an echo chamber. You have no idea how popular your views are in society, and when you decide to hold a rally or participate in elections, unpleasant surprises may await you. On the other hand, if conducting sociological research is for some reason impossible for you, then mass actions themselves become sociology for you. If you managed to bring tens of thousands of supporters to a rally — perhaps hundreds of thousands will vote for you. If you didn’t — then do not be deceived, work on recognition and fight the anti-rating (for example, by changing your leader).
As for the interview, watch it; it is actually mostly not about Georgia, but about Russia.
If some greedy people honestly bought a lake into their ownership and decided to take all the fish out of it for quick enrichment, they will get the fish, sell it, and then they will have to find some other use for their lake. They could breed some other kind of fish there, use the water for irrigation, build a water park nearby — there are plenty of uses for a body of water. These guys are within their rights.
If these same greedy people decide to take all the fish at once from someone else’s lake, then the owner of the lake will, of course, try to oppose this, if not during the process, then certainly demand compensation after the fact. This is not a state fishery inspection where you can wiggle out with a bribe or connections — quick enrichment will not happen.
Finally, they could find an ownerless lake in the deep wilderness, claim it as their own, and take all the fish in the lake at once. But here is the problem: the lake is in the wilderness, which means problems with transporting the catch. They would have to use expensive transport like a helicopter, likely in more than one trip, and this again means that super-profits will not happen; transport costs will eat up all the profit. Therefore, a lake in the wilderness is useful for recreational fishing and selfies against beautiful views, but not for industrial fishing. If, for some reason, the transport costs are not so high, then the new owners of the lake have no reason to fish out all the fish from their lake at once when they can do it regularly without depleting the resource. They aren’t some poachers who are forced to feed on stealthy raids. They honestly claimed this lake as something nobody wanted, and now they will honestly exploit it.
Exactly the same applies to hunting animals, logging the taiga, and so on. It is precisely the ability to not worry that the state will come tomorrow and drive you off your plot that allows one to moderate their appetite and exploit the resource carefully enough. It’s a pity that the entire taiga in Russia is state-owned; now even putting out its fires has become economically inefficient.
Opposition to the honest homestead of the state sturgeon
You know that my channel is completely non-political in nature. I have no right to call anyone to the barricades, as I maintain my own anonymity; I am quite skeptical about the prospects of decent individuals participating in legal politics, about the prospects of registering a couple of potentially good political parties—and so on. But regarding what has been happening in recent days, I have developed a distinct personal interest. The Russian government is depriving me of the opportunity to listen to people who interest me.
For a month, Aleksey Navalny, the host of the popular weekly program “Russia of the Future,” has been lost to me. The channel’s attempts to find an adequate replacement have not even come close to success so far. For a month, I have been deprived of Mikhail Svetov’s programs on SVTV—now, instead of interviews with various interesting people, the channel shows imperial stormtroopers beating peaceful citizens to touching music. For a month, I have been cut off from the best weekly program on economics, hosted by Vladimir Milov. Even Egor Zhukov’s channel, which provided rather thoughtful content on a wide variety of topics, has now closed for an as-yet-unclear period. Such a violation of my consumer rights by the state, of course, does not add to my affection for the institution of the state in general and the Russian political regime in particular.
I don’t have many opportunities left to somehow harm the state in return. I no longer pay personal income tax or various other personal taxes. I already try to choose stores that do not pay VAT (this is visible on the receipts), and whenever possible, I shop at the bazaar. For the state, I practically do not exist.
However, I have this channel, and I would like to use it to convey a simple thought as widely as possible. The state is your enemy. In open confrontation, it is stronger, but it is very vulnerable to guerrilla warfare. Do not feed the state with your money. If you are forced to work for it, work poorly. View yourself as a spy or even a saboteur in the enemy’s rear. Plunder state property: it will be better in private hands (this, of course, does not refer to various urban improvement items; why spite yourselves). Squeeze all the social benefits out of the state that it has carelessly allowed you to claim. Do not hesitate to do this using fake documents if you have the opportunity. Decorating the city with leaflets and graffiti saying that the state is the enemy is a great idea and a classic of guerrilla struggle. If you want to kill a cop—think thrice.
Before deciding on things that the state opposes particularly harshly, master the art of conspiracy. At least the basics, such as the fact that your smartphone is not only an invaluable assistant but also a spy that will help the state find you, and Vkontakte is simply a garden plot where the state grows criminal cases. Think not only about satisfying your own demand for justice but also about the PR effect. It is better if the direct damage to the enemy turns out to be smaller, while the state loses more in the eyes of society. Ultimately, the state must be expelled precisely from people’s heads, and it would be enough if it were only from ours—but we will have to reach the last grandmother.
As for the recent initiatives of the Russian security forces, I very much hope that they will serve to unite the opposition. For the state, we are all—regardless of the nuances of our ideas about the desired society—equally enemies. Let’s not feud with each other. I hope that Gudkov meets Svetov at the doors of the detention center, they shake hands, and go together to record a stream with prison tales and plans for joint action. I hope that Zhukov then arrives with a bouquet of flowers and is also happily welcomed into the company. I hope that people stop reminding Svetov and Navalny about various ancient questionable posts on LiveJournal, and if someone does, they are snapped at. I hope that Svetov starts collaborating with the Tea Club. Who said what bad thing to whom and how they threatened—it doesn’t matter anymore, we are not in that position now. It would be good if simultaneous imprisonment in a detention center helps the ambitious leaders of the Russian protest reach this simple understanding.
The anarcho-capitalist camp—Rothbard, for example, analyzed this issue in detail in “The Ethics of Liberty,” explaining the impossibility of defending a slave contract within libertarian theory.
анонимный вопрос
In the final paragraph of the post from July 30, I do indeed mention voluntary private slavery in passing, but in an extremely narrow sense. If there exists a methodology that allows for complete control over a person’s actions through some mysterious subconscious manipulations, yet all these manipulations are non-violent, then the person is de facto enslaved and, from the perspective of an external observer, completely voluntarily performs any actions required by the manipulator.
Such things are the subject of horror stories about the coming dominance of big data, which will compile a full profile of every person and allow for ideal influence over them, so that under this influence, they might go to the polling station to vote for you, go to the store to buy your product, or dance on the Maidan.
In my view, such a dystopia is the flip side of the utopia of a bright communist future, where abundance is ensured by a planned economy managed by benevolent supercomputers—and it has just as much chance of being realized on a global scale. However, I cannot rule out isolated cases of gaining complete control over human motivations through non-violent manipulations, which is why I mentioned them in my analysis of the concept of free will.
This has nothing to do with Rothbard’s argumentation regarding the impossibility of libertarians defending a slave contract, given the absence of a contract.
It looks as ridiculous as a horse harnessed to a sports car
I have updated the donations section on my website, adding several instructions on using cryptocurrencies, so as not to refer to scattered blog posts.
Also, something unexpected happened to me. When Siberia was covered in smog, I complained in the chat about headaches, throat problems, and sleep disturbances. The smog has eased now, but one of my readers suddenly decided to gift me a trip to the sea, so I will soon head to Armenia and Georgia for a couple of weeks. Such generous gestures are, of course, very overwhelming. But I will try to view the trip more as a business trip than a vacation, and from time to time, I’ll write something interesting in the channel.
Thank you for filling my life with such pleasant surprises!
Very often, these kinds of tricky questions boil down to a lack of clarity in definitions. On the other hand, imprecise definitions provide an excellent opportunity to reflect on the entire topic at hand, which I will gladly do.
Historically, when speaking of free will, it is implied that although God is omniscient and omnipotent, having defined all the laws of existence, and that not a single blade of grass blooms without His providence, He made an exception specifically for humans. Having created man in His own image and likeness, and knowing his entire destiny from beginning to end, God nevertheless does not interfere in his behavior—except in those cases where He does, which is then termed a miracle or divine inspiration, but that is another story.
The concept of free will did not become established in Christian doctrine from the very beginning; in the writings of Augustine, we still see complete predestination, where a person has not a single chance of salvation unless it was predestined for them from the start. Within the framework of this strange doctrine—”I am a slave (that is, a speaking tool) and I will sternly state this”—there was no chance for libertarian ideas to even emerge. Indeed, what self-ownership can be discussed for a speaking tool that does not dare even to sneeze except by the will of the master.
If we shift from theology to a more commonplace understanding of free will, it could be defined as the ability to act contrary to someone’s manipulations. Following this, we can observe that, indeed, quite many people do not possess free will in full, as their choices are determined by context rather than internal preferences (such matters are analyzed in detail in the trendy field of behavioral economics). Can pronounced libertarian relations exist in a society where such manipulative practices are actively applied? Yes, they can. Such images are often painted for us, showing a world of triumphant corporations. As long as manipulations are non-violent, libertarians will clearly point to their legitimacy, whereas violent opposition to them, such as destroying advertising materials, may indeed be suppressed in such a society.
Still, we are not talking about total zombification in our fantasies today, but even if we were, we would have a situation of private slavery, which is either voluntary—in which case we have no legal grounds to oppose it—or forced—in which case, again, libertarian doctrine provides all the tools necessary to counteract such practices.
I am looking forward with great anticipation to the recording of stylist Fariza Rodriguez’s lecture “Power dressing” about the influence of a person’s appearance on people’s perception, and how to use this, particularly for the Russian opposition. The lecture will be this coming Sunday, August 4, in St. Petersburg, so if anyone is from there, or the surrounding area, you can try to snag the last remaining spots.
The lecture is organized by the Tea Club; all registration is handled through them.
Do you think that people have started to change for the better? Also, what do you think about protest tactics?
I found one such tactic on the internet, apparently inspired by recent events; it would be interesting to hear your opinion on this:
Action Plan
Before the march begins – initial gathering point for protesters:
1. Protesters split into groups of 5-10 people. People organize into groups using: 1.1. Commanders 1.1.1. The commander indicates the group’s status with their hand – a fist means the group is assembled and waiting for instructions. The number of extended fingers equals the number of free spaces. 1.2. Via social networks, the Briar app. 1.3. On their own (together with friends at the rally) 1.4. Preferably, groups should be homogeneous – groups of women, groups of tall people, groups of cyclists, etc. 2. Commanders are chosen within the groups: 2.1. The commander must use hand gestures (described in point 1.1.1) to identify themselves to other commanders. 2.2. Commanders must have a phone with the Briar app. 3. Commanders with “fists” gather in one place. The groups themselves are free to either stay or follow the commander. 4. Commanders are added to a private group in Briar. 5. Commanders discuss the course of the rally. Specifically, the following are established: 5.1. A “commander-in-chief” is chosen (if necessary) 5.2. Destination point 5.3. Group roles: 5.3.1. Vanguard/Tank-group/Main-Group – positioned at the front. Their tasks include: 5.3.1.1. Ensuring the formation is impenetrable to police 5.3.1.2. Breaking through blockades (if any exist) 5.3.1.3. Other tasks (to be supplemented) 5.3.2. Recon-group. Its tasks include: 5.3.3.1. Detecting cordons, barriers, paddy wagons, patrol groups, rapid response groups, police officers, and other agencies 5.3.3.2. Detecting bypass routes, as well as methods to facilitate the crowd’s passage through cordons and barriers 5.3.3.3. Maintaining direct contact with the “commander-in-chief” (if any), otherwise everything is decided via chat 5.3.3. Midgard-group. Its tasks include: 5.3.3.1. Pushing law enforcement officers back into the crowd 5.3.3.2. Suppressing law enforcement groups that have broken into the crowd 5.3.3.3. Providing medical aid to the main group 5.3.3.4. Supplies of equipment taken from law enforcement forces 5.3.4. Support/Spirit/Passive group. Its tasks include: 5.3.4.1. Delivering equipment 5.3.4.2. Delivering messages 5.3.4.3. Chants/extras/initiative 5.3.5. Communications group (possibly unnecessary). Its tasks include: 5.3.5.1. Delivering messages in the absence of Briar 5.3.5.2. Coordinating groups 6. The march begins
At the meeting point, a new goal and the paths to reach it are chosen.
Ancap-chan’s Answer
The action on July 27, of course, looked quite inspiring. Even if nothing more remarkable happens until the elections, and opposition candidates are still not allowed to run, the pro-government candidates still have little to look forward to in these elections. Moreover, it is quite likely that this will lead to changes in the election law: signatures may be allowed via government services, election deposits may be brought back, the collection threshold may be significantly lowered, or graphological expertise may be abolished — in short, the authorities will have to take measures to curb such scandals in the future, as it is too costly for them otherwise.
So, the Muscovites did well; it is only fitting that, as residents of the capital of a highly centralized state, they show increased opposition — and they did, while simultaneously demonstrating civilized behavior.
Now let’s talk a bit about tactics. Honestly, the provided snippet of the manual reminded me of War and Peace: Die erste Kolonne marschiert… die zweite Kolonne marschiert — the battle plan for Austerlitz. It is impossible to ensure a clear, disciplined behavior of large masses of people without full-scale combat coordination. A conditional National Guard can train for a long time to form their little boxes, run in lines, and so on. For people who have not trained in advance, only the simplest tactics work, such as “let’s go there and block the road,” “link arms,” “move through alleys to such-and-such a square,” and so on.
A person who comes to an unauthorized action can be quite inventive in terms of external representation; they came to create a picture and get impressions, which is what they are doing. They understand the overall goal of the action quite well, are able to identify provocateurs, and are generally very motivated — it is important not to waste their enthusiasm on meaningless nonsense. Using July 27 as an example, it is clear that without leaders, people stirred up the entire city center for several hours, but as soon as the police released the “guests of honor” and the latter began giving orders, everyone ended up localized in one square, surrounded and arrested.
Of course, if the protest becomes multi-day, people will allow themselves increasingly complex coordination and division of labor. Relatively disciplined groups of more or less constant composition and similar things will appear.
If you look at the protests in Yerevan, there was a headquarters, but it doesn’t seem like they dealt closely with tactical issues like “who leads people to which street to block traffic”; rather, they issued general appeals within some kind of campaign plan. In Russia, one cannot rely on the existence of a headquarters, because anyone who sticks their head out will be immediately imprisoned. Therefore, a much more decentralized tactic without hard clashes is forced here, until the security forces are exhausted. Only then can conditional protest leaders be used in that capacity to conduct negotiations.
And, of course, it is important for the protesters to maintain the loyalty of the passive part of Muscovites, because constant street protests in a large city inevitably create inconvenience. A war between the authorities and society is one thing, but an intra-civil conflict is something entirely different, and it is not worth letting it get to that.
I slightly supplemented the day before yesterday’s article with the response to Alexander Elesev. The supplement includes an advertisement for Alexander Litreev’s new project and a mysterious wish not to eat yellow snow.
I am also duplicating here from the article a mention of collecting ideas on applying the doctrine of deterrence to the state.
If you have fresh, interesting ideas regarding what non-violent threats and mechanisms for their implementation could be used by a citizen against government officials of various ranks, please share them in the comments or via private message. Authors of the most successful ideas can expect a reward in bitcoins.
Also, since the opportunity arose, I got to know the Dobroum project better, which turned out to be a quite interesting phenomenon, and I would like to tell you more about it.
Like my project, Dobroum is built around its own website, but it has significantly greater penetration into various social networks, of which the most developed and interesting is the YouTube channel (almost 20 thousand subscribers). The website states that Alexander was inspired to create the project by Freedomain Radio — a channel by Canadian blogger Stephan Molyneux, who is quite scandalous in the English-speaking world and is only occasionally mentioned by Mikhail Svetov in the Russian-speaking one. I am practically unfamiliar with the content of Molyneux’s ideas, except for a very laconic Wikipedia page, so I will not attempt to judge the continuity between Elesev and Molyneux in ideological terms.
Alexander himself pushes two main ideas in his videos and articles:
The root of state violence toward people lies in domestic violence. As violence in families is phased out, violence in society as a whole also decreases. Therefore, it is extremely important to raise one’s own offspring in a non-violent manner and spread this idea as widely as possible.
The rationality of society’s organization, its ability to develop and overcome prejudices, is directly linked to the average IQ in that very society. IQ, meanwhile, is far more determined by heredity than by education. Therefore, practices such as limiting immigration from disadvantaged countries, the absence of support for dysfunctional families, and encouraging birth rates among the intellectual elite are beneficial for society.
As his primary method, Alexander uses “reasoning from first principles,” in other words, deduction in the spirit of Rothbard. At the same time, as we see from the IQ case, he tends to trust research in the natural sciences and draw conclusions about the desired organization of society based on them, which is dangerously close to various scientistic social engineering practices so popular in the 20th century. Ideas of spontaneous orders and an evolutionary approach are not close to him, as far as I can judge.
Alexander lives in the USA, so this point should be kept in mind when he discusses Russian events. On the other hand, his videos concerning American problems specifically are very interesting.
In general, I subscribed to his YouTube channel, but I decided not to subscribe to the Telegram — there is too much ephemeral content there for my taste, and I am already close to the limit of my perception capabilities; I have to be very careful with subscriptions so as not to spend too much energy on scrolling. But of course, you decide for yourselves. In any case, among Russian-language channels, this is a fairly unique and quite pleasant example of such a slightly naive liberal-conservatism.
the title video on the Dobroum channel — apparently, it is intended that this should be watched first
Every time we mention the deterrence doctrine, it sparks a discussion. The first time, we spoke with the host of the Antistate channel, and now it has caught the attention of Alexander Elesev, the host of the Dobroum channel. Thus, the idea is controversial, and it is worth continuing to provide clarity, but not for too long, so that the reader does not get bored.
Alexander is far from the first person to voice this reproach: “You intend to fight the state; it’s useless, you will be declared terrorists and destroyed like the militants in Chechnya.”
However, the deterrence doctrine has nothing to do with war. If it can be used with the word “war” at all, then only as “cold.” The confrontation between the USSR and the USA in the 20th century, often called the “Cold War,” was in fact a manifestation of DD.
War is a conflict between several parties, the goal of which is to impose one’s will on the opponent. War is generally conducted by violent means (even if it is a cyberwar, there is an infringement on property). War can be waged until a peace treaty is concluded or until one of the parties completely loses its agency.
Deterrence is also a situation of conflict, but the main goal of deterrence is to make the use of aggressive violence disadvantageous for the opponent. Deterrence in itself is not violence, but only the threat of some damage, which may not be associated with violence at all, if we are talking, for example, about reputational damage. For example, you may not like that a gay couple is walking hand in hand, and you may want to throw filth at them. If they are unarmed, you will easily do so and receive moral satisfaction. But if they are armed, besides moral satisfaction, you have a non-illusory chance of catching a bullet. Weighing the benefits and costs, you will likely prefer not to interfere in other people’s affairs and send the filth you carefully prepared where it belongs: down the drain. Also, you might decide not to stand in the way of even unarmed gays if the name of the previous attacker is currently being dragged through the mud on every corner in the most unpleasant way. In this case, the fear of non-violent punishment will work as a deterrence mechanism.
Another important difference between DD and war: as long as deterrence takes place, there are winners, but no losers. Everyone continues to live their life, without violence and coercion to act, because deterrence is coercion to inaction. In the case we are discussing, when a person carries out secession and unilaterally exits the jurisdiction of the state, he does not overthrow the government and does not call for its overthrow. He does not interact with the state at all and suggests that state representatives reciprocate.
Let’s imagine this situation as a game and draw a simple matrix that describes this game:
If the official does not hinder the secession, his loss is minimal: from slight irritation to dismissal. If he successfully hinders it, the gain is also minimal: from slight moral satisfaction to a professional reward. If a person does not care about deterring the state but encounters no opposition, his gain is maximal. If he has to take deterrence measures and no opposition occurs, the gain decreases. Finally, if the person suffered from state opposition, or the official suffered as a result of the realization of the threat stated by the person, they lose to the maximum, and roughly to the same extent.
What can we see from this matrix?
If the game is a one-time event, then the person, wishing to maximize gain, relies on luck and applies no measures to deter the state. The official, however, wishing to maximize gain, hinders the secession and receives a reward from superiors.
If the game is repeated time and again with the same or new players, then the person more and more often incurs additional costs and chooses the deterrence doctrine, and the official, fearing this circumstance more and more, more and more often closes their eyes to the secession, preferring a small loss to a large one.
Nevertheless, there will still be free riders in society who prefer not to take any measures. If the officials are sufficiently frightened, the bluff will work.
An example of a similar game is the interaction between citizens who have the possibility of concealed carry and criminals. A weapon works as a tool of deterrence, and in a society where a citizen has the right to armed self-defense, violent crimes decrease. At the same time, unarmed free riders benefit from such a positive externality as increased safety, without spending on weapons themselves — but only as long as there are not too many of them.
A gun is a very compact and convenient deterrence tool against a person or a small group of people, but not against the state. That is exactly why we propose various more or less successful options for protection from the state, available both to organizations like ECU and to individuals.
Based on theoretical calculations that do not contradict historical examples, we indicate that the optimal deterrence doctrine against the state is the threat to specific functionaries who make decisions or execute them.
It is quite rightly pointed out to us that if the threat looks too intimidating, the state figures may take the risk of being under attack for a while and begin preventive purges, in other words, start a war. Similarly, harsh opposition to low-level security forces can cause a feeling of solidarity with fallen comrades. To minimize the danger of such an outcome, we suggest, first, to maximize the anonymity of those carrying out the threats, and second, to make threats non-lethal whenever possible, emphasizing ridicule and other types of humiliation, or, in the worst case, property damage. Here, one really wants to refer to the project announced recently by Alexander Litreev with the very telling name Russian Elephant. Alexander regularly deanonymizes various offenders in power, and it seems he now intends to put this on a conveyor belt.
And if we are to delve into philosophical generalizations, then maxims such as “live and let live” and “do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself” are not just good wishes. These are lines from a safety manual, written, as usual, in blood. This is the same kind of life wisdom as “don’t eat yellow snow” (remade by domestic meme-makers into “don’t eat yellow snack,” with an obvious reference to the NAP) — and this wisdom appeared precisely because people have successfully practiced the deterrence doctrine for many centuries.
If you have fresh interesting ideas about what non-violent threats and mechanisms for their implementation could be applied by a citizen against state employees of various ranks, share them in the comments or via DM. Authors of the most successful ideas can expect a reward in bitcoins.
