Рубрика: Bitarch

Partner column

How the state turned rights into privileges

Once, a person simply sat in a carriage, and later—behind the wheel of a car—and drove. Not because the state “allowed” it, but because the road was a road, transport was transport, and an adult person was considered capable of being responsible for their actions.

Then came the stationary bandit (“the state”). It did not take away freedom all at once—that would have been too noticeable. It acted carefully: first accounting, then registration, then a license, and finally a fine for its absence. And suddenly, that which was a right yesterday is called “authorization” today.

Driving a vehicle without a driver’s license? When automobiles first appeared, people learned to drive much like they learned to manage a horse: through practice, advice from acquaintances, and sometimes painful lessons. The license gradually became not just a confirmation of skill, but permission to use one’s own transport.

Crossing a border without a passport? Before the era of total passport control, millions of people traveled, moved, and looked for work without the ritual we are now accustomed to involving visas, stamps, and the humiliating question: “What is the purpose of your trip?” Today, a person is born on the planet, but to walk a few kilometers in another direction, they must prove to an official that they have a valid reason.

Building a house on your own land without approvals? It would seem the land is yours, the money is yours, the risk is yours. But no: bring a project, get a permit, coordinate setbacks, height, purpose, materials, utilities, and perhaps even the shade of the fence.

Buying medicine without a prescription? Once, a person could decide for themselves what to take, consulting a doctor, a pharmacist, or their own common sense. Now, many medications are available only after an official blessing. And it is not about whether medical advice is beneficial. It is about something else: why has advice turned into permission?

Opening a workshop, a production facility, or a small business without a license? Making soap, baking bread, transporting people, repairing houses, cutting hair, teaching children, hosting guests—the state increasingly views this not as a peaceful exchange between people, but as suspicious and illegal activity that must first be legalized.

Buying, carrying, and using weapons for self-defense without a license? In many countries and eras, weapons were a common tool of a free person—dangerous, requiring responsibility, but not a state gift. The authorization system turns everything upside down: a peaceful person must explain why they need a means of protection, and the state decides whether they are sufficiently convincing in their fear for their life.

And what about a child who wants to leave abusive parents for another reliable adult? In a natural order, they could find refuge with a relative, a neighbor, a teacher, or a family acquaintance. In an authorization-based order, an adult ready to help faces a practically prohibitive guardianship procedure, while the child meanwhile remains inside “properly documented” violence. The papers are in order—so, apparently, everything is fine. Bureaucracy has an amazing ability to fail to notice the human being behind an ideally filled-out form.

Practicing medicine without a state license? Of course, one should not deceive patients, hide qualifications, or cause harm—responsibility must be held for that. But the very fact of voluntary assistance, consultation, or treatment between people did not always require official permission. Licensing has replaced the question “Are you competent and honest?” with the question “Are you on the right list?”.

The main trick of the authorization state will be that it first declares a natural action dangerous, then forbids it without permission, and then issues permission and calls it the protection of freedom. This is how a right turns into a privilege. A right is something you can do as long as you do not violate the rights of others. A privilege is something you can do only when you are told “yes”.

And the most uncomfortable question here is not: “Why are they forbidding this to us?”. It sounds differently: “Why have we become accustomed to asking permission for our own lives?”.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

You will be punished for what was legal yesterday (or why it is deadly dangerous to be “law-abiding”)

You surely know people who say the following: “I pay all my taxes, my business is completely white, I’m not interested in politics, I have nothing to hide.” This is a very cozy position. And although such people are often called “hamsters” in libertarian circles, it must be understood that the desire to simply live, create, raise children, run a legal business, and not play hide-and-seek with the state is an absolutely normal and natural need of a healthy person.
 
But there is one little nuance. By trying to play by the state’s rules, you are playing chess with a pigeon. Or more accurately—with an armed cheat who has learned to change the rules of the game after the match has already been played.
 
This is precisely why agorism (that very counter-economics, crypto, working for cash, hiding assets, and quietly disappearing from the radar of the stationary bandit) has become a matter of survival even for those who bake legal cakes or write legal code. Because the Leviathan across the world—and in Russia, by already kicking down the door—has begun to massively apply laws retroactively and nullify statutes of limitations.
 
Let’s first look into the history of law. Why did humanity come up with statutes of limitations in the first place? Even in Ancient Rome, jurists understood a simple thing: society needs legal certainty like air. If you honestly bought an anvil, you shouldn’t have to wake up in a cold sweat for the rest of your life thinking that in 20 years, the grandson of the previous owner will come for you and take it away due to an error on a parchment. Evidence decays, witnesses forget everything, and people die. A statute of limitations is a guarantee that society will not sink into an abyss of eternal paranoia, endless vendettas, and the revisiting of old cases. It is on this foundation that trust in the future is built.
 
And now let’s return to our reality. What is the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation doing now? It is churning out lawsuits in batches to seize factories (like “Solikamsk Magnesium” or “Maxfa”), lands, and companies privatized in the 90s. That is, 30 years ago! Businessmen invested money, paid taxes, and were crystal “white.” But the courts, with an unperturbed face, declare: “Statutes of limitations do not apply to the requirements of the state.”
 
Or take the laws regarding “foreign agents,” “undesirable,” and “extremist” organizations. Did you transfer 500 rubles to a foundation five years ago when it was not just legal, but respected and encouraged? This means today they can come to you with a search and charge you with financing extremism. You were absolutely legal yesterday, but they made you a criminal today—for your action yesterday.
 
One might think this only happens to us. But the erosion of law is a global trend. In the US and Europe, ideas of retrospective taxes are heard more and more often (“you earned too much last year, let’s have you pay extra at the new rates”). In Canada, authorities could freeze the bank accounts of protesting truck drivers and those who simply sent them 20 bucks for coffee at the snap of a finger. In the US and the UK, there is a retrospective stretching of modern moral norms onto the deeds of days gone by regarding “sexual harassment.” If the state needs to expropriate you or shut you up, it will find a reason, ignoring any old guarantees.
 
And this is where we return to agorism. “Going underground,” using cryptocurrencies, working outside the legal field, refusing to register property in one’s own name—this is no longer the romance of cyberpunks or the domain of darknet smugglers, but basic insurance. Even if you sell teddy bears today and sacredly honor the Criminal Code, tomorrow they might pass a law declaring plush to be a toxic material, and all sellers from the last 10 years to be enemies of the people with confiscation of property.
 
Disappearing from the “legal field” is the most rational choice for a person who has understood the essence: it is impossible to be “law-abiding” where the law is one today, another tomorrow, and you are punished by it for the day after tomorrow. Therefore, it is necessary to study counter-economics, hide assets, use cash and crypto, and most importantly—build horizontal connections with those you trust!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Neither Tor nor VPN could save him: what GDID is in Windows and why it is dangerous for each of us

A while ago, the story of 19-year-old hacker Peter Stokes from the Scattered Spider group went viral. The guy breached a jewelry store network and demanded $8 million for non-disclosure of data. He wasn’t an idiot: he used a VPN, operated via RDP, and covered his tracks. But the FBI knocked on his door anyway. Do you know what tripped him up? It wasn’t an IP leak or snitching on accomplices. It was his own computer via GDID technology.
 
GDID (Global Device Identifier) is a unique identifier that Microsoft binds inextricably to every Windows installation. It is not tied to hardware or an account, but is a digital passport of your system. And this system maniacally collects telemetry: which programs you open, which websites you visit, and when you turn off your computer.
 
How does the VPN trap work? Many people think they become anonymous after turning it on. Metaphorically, a VPN is like fake mustaches and dark sunglasses. You put them on (change your IP), enter Telegram or Tor to read opposition channels, and go about your business. Windows records: “User with GDID №12345 opened Tor.exe at 14:00.” Then you take off your “fake mustaches” (turn off the VPN) to log into your banking app and place an order on Ozon using your real home IP (as you probably already know, it is impossible to access many Russian services with a VPN turned on). Shortly after, Windows makes another entry: “User with GDID №12345 logged in to play Dota from an IP address in the city of Syzran.” Then, all of this is sent in a neat little package to the servers of the “Corporation of Good” in Redmond.
 
But I’m in Russia, Microsoft has left, the FBI won’t reach us?! Yes, a Major cannot simply send a fax to Bill Gates requesting the logs of an opposition figure. But:
 
1) Broker data and telemetry leak regularly. Intelligence services are perfectly capable of buying the necessary databases from providers and corporations on the black market.
2) State trojans and spyware (which can reach you disguised as anything) can read your GDID locally. From there, it’s just a matter of technique—matching it with provider logs, which, under the “Yarovaya Law,” already record all your traffic.
3) If they want to get to you, they can fabricate a “cyber fraud” case and send a request through Interpol. Corporations often satisfy such requests without unnecessary questions.
 
How, then, can you protect yourself?
 
The radical solution is switching to Linux. If you engage in opposition activities, admin channels, or work with sensitive information—delete Windows. Stop voluntarily letting a corporate overseer into your home. In 2026, Linux is not just a black screen for geeks. Something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu can be installed in a couple of clicks and looks more intuitive than Windows. An open-source system doesn’t snitch out of the box.
 
The compromise solution is to gag Windows. Because sometimes you can’t do without Windows: specific work requirements, corporate software, favorite games. And if you are forced to live in the same room as a snitch, you should at least tape his mouth shut. To this end, enthusiasts have created excellent free utilities: wpd.app (Windows Privacy Dashboard) and O&O ShutUp10++.
 
Download them, run them, and in a couple of clicks, cut out all telemetry. They disable data collection, block report transmissions to Microsoft, shut down Cortana, and prevent applications from reading your location. But there is an important nuance: Windows is a stubborn creation. After every major update, the system will try to secretly reset your settings and start spying again. So, check these utilities after updates.
 
And remember the main rule of digital hygiene: separate your identities! The device you use to write posts about freedom should not know your name, where you live, or what your favorite type of coffee is when ordering delivery.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

“It’s the Law of the Jungle”: how to lock wolves in a cage and accidentally invent a justification for authoritarianism

Every time the conversation turns to freedom, self-organization, and rejecting the state boot on one’s neck, a skeptic inevitably emerges in the comments. They believe that such ideas are mere idealism, since in nature, the strongest male always rules. The alpha keeps the pack in fear, and if you remove the leader, the wolves will tear each other apart. After all, man is a wolf to man!

But for now, let’s set aside politico-economic treatises and speak the language of biologists. Because the main biological trump card of “strong hand” supporters is not just a misconception, but a grand scientific myth that people have blindly believed for half a century.

Where did this myth of the vicious alpha male, who growls at his peers, dominates, and holds power through violence, even come from? In 1970, American biologist L. David Mech released the book “Alpha: His Essential Role in the Wolf Pack,” where he described the brutal hierarchy of predators. The book instantly became a bestseller, and the “alpha” image was plucked for management textbooks, movies, and political speeches. It sounds like the perfect justification for authoritarianism: males fight for status, the strong subjugate the weak, and order is maintained through fear.

However, there was one tiny but extremely important nuance. Mech conducted his observations in a cramped zoo enclosure. Adult wolves from different places, who did not know each other, were herded there and locked behind bars. The scientists essentially created a prison barrack, observed the camp-style bullying that emerged in the confined space with its local “overseers,” and with a knowledgeable look, declared that this was the natural order of things.

When that same researcher ventured into the wild years later to observe real, free wolves, he was appalled. There were no bloody tyrants there. A wolf pack in the wild is simply a cohesive family. The “alphas” are just an ordinary mom and dad. They don’t oppress their peers for self-assertion; instead, they teach the young how to hunt, care for the wounded, share prey, and coordinate the pack through care and authority.

Mech then spent thirty years unsuccessfully begging publishers to stop printing his old book. But authoritarians fell so in love with the fairy tale of the “right of the strong” that the alpha male myth remains more alive than ever.

Of course, a lover of dictatorship might concede that things are that way with wolves. However, we are primates, which means the most vicious one should definitely rule us. But even that is not the case.

The eminent primatologist Frans de Waal studied chimpanzees for decades and proved: the leader among primates is far from the most muscular and aggressive male. Stupid tyrants at the top of the hierarchy do not live long. If an alpha begins to act like a banana dictator—beating the weak and seizing food—their peers quickly unite into a coalition, lie in wait for the bully, and stage an early impeachment (with a possible lethal outcome).

A true leader among chimpanzees is a subtle politician and diplomat. He regularly shares delicious food, grooms allies, protects females with offspring, and, most importantly, breaks up fights. His status is maintained not by the animal terror of those around him, but by trust, respect, and mutual benefit. This is a voluntary recognition of leadership, not submission under the lash.

Do you see the irony? The entire pseudo-scientific concept of “natural tyranny” was born from observations of animals that were forcibly placed in a cage. Statists of all stripes love this trick: first, lock people in an artificial cage of prohibitions, taxes, regulations, and redistribution of wealth; then wait for an angry struggle for resources and status to begin on the soil of artificial scarcity and lack of freedom; and finally, step onto the podium in a white tie and solemnly announce the vicious and wild nature of man, whom only a guard with a baton can save from mutual destruction.

Market relations, horizontal connections, mutual aid, and voluntary communities—this is what is truly woven into our nature. Violence, the cult of the leader, and coercion are systemic failures that arise where people are deprived of freedom and driven into an enclosure. So stop confusing the laws of nature with the routine of a prison cell block!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

How to legally hack the state and not go to prison for extremism

You surely know that vile feeling of helplessness when the state comes up with yet another absurd law, and you realize there is nothing you can do. Go out with a placard—and you’ll be jailed for extremism. In the West, of course, it’s easier: you can boldly curse taxes with friends in a pub without fearing that the bartender will report you. But try to break into parliament or catch a deputy at their house to tell them what you think about new eco-standards—at best, you’ll be ignored, and at worst, you’ll be charged with harassment or a threat to national security.
 
Most libertarians recoil from getting involved in politics altogether. It’s a dirty game where the rules are written by cheats. But if sitting idly by makes you sick, and becoming a political prisoner isn’t in your life plans, there is one elegant way. Let’s call it “judicial jiu-jitsu.” The idea is very simple, yet brilliant. We take their own system and force it to work against them, driving the situation to utter absurdity.
 
Imagine this situation as an example: you consider speed limits unfair. You drive slightly faster, a camera snaps a photo, and a fine arrives. What does an ordinary person do? They curse quietly and pay with a discount. What does a clever person do? They come up with an excuse like, “My brother-in-law’s brother was driving, but I forgot exactly who.” Now, watch this. Instead, you launch a multi-year, public legal campaign to discredit speed limits as such. You go to the district court, then the regional court, the appellate court, the Supreme Court, and the Constitutional Court. And at every stage, you roll out new, crushing arguments so that they have no right to refuse to accept the case (and AI is here to help us now—it can generate lawsuits in batches).
 
You declare: “The tolerance of the devices is too low to physically drive without exceeding it by even a kilometer!”, “Compliance with this regime causes me constant stress and harms my health,” “Constant monitoring of the speedometer distracts from the road! The state is literally forcing me to risk my life and increasing the number of traffic accidents!” and finally: “Speed limits on an empty highway are an unlawful interference in my private life and freedom of movement!”.
 
Why might this work and why is it safe? First and foremost, you are outside of politics. De jure, you are not an oppositionist, not a revolutionary, and you are not shaking the regime. You are simply a very meticulous citizen fighting for your rights as a motorist. Even the most hardcore autocracy wants to appear legitimate in the eyes of the public. To do that, they need the illusion of a working judicial system. The authorities won’t turn on the repressive machine over a camera fine—it would discredit the system itself and look comical. You are hitting them in their blind spot.
 
Additionally, you set off an information bomb. You attract many times more attention than dreary politicians with their boring speeches. The media loves stories like this! “Madman reaches the Supreme Court, proving the speedometer causes panic attacks!” People begin to read your arguments and suddenly realize: “Wait, he’s actually right…”. You shape the libertarian agenda elegantly and with humor.
 
Furthermore, the possibility for donations and crowdfunding arises. While you are headbutting the system, the public will gladly donate for popcorn and legal costs. You become a folk hero.
 
And you know what else? Constant dripping wears away the stone. Even if you lose the first 10 trials, public pressure will begin to grow. And on the 11th time, the court might side with you. Or officials, tired of this circus and the resonance, might quietly change the law just to get you off their backs.
 
This hack, of course, is applicable to everything! A ban on installing air conditioners? Tax rates? Absurd construction regulations? Go to court; there are chances—history knows many successful examples of such legal trolling. So, if you cannot break the wall with your forehead—become the water that destroys its foundation. Sue, troll, and defend your freedom with a smile!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Do it quietly and live peacefully: how an attempt to legalize home renovations retroactively led to a catastrophe

As we know, the state loves to stick its long bureaucratic nose into someone else’s bedroom, someone else’s balcony, and even someone else’s bathroom. But this monster is incredibly blind, deaf, and lazy. At least until you yourself come to it to bow and confess how you have improved your life and are now ready to be fined.
 
A perfect example of this is a recent tragicomic incident from Berlin. A man named Kasper was quietly renting an apartment in the Kreuzberg district, paying his rent, and enjoying the coziness, as his bathroom featured both a full bathtub and a separate shower stall. It seemed like he could continue living with these amenities. But then the landlord intervened. She decided to act like a “law-abiding citizen” and legalize the completed renovations retroactively.
 
Naturally, the bureaucratic machine howled with delight. It turned out that the building stands in a so-called “social protection” zone (Milieuschutz), where officials from above determine the acceptable level of comfort for citizens. The department issued a verdict: having both a bathtub and a separate shower in one apartment is an “unallowable luxury” (Luxussanierung). Apparently, such bourgeois chic increases the attractiveness of the housing and raises its value too much.
 
The result? Officials ordered the landlord, at her own expense, to hire workers, tear the stall to pieces, strip the tiles, and throw the shower out. And Kasper was left with a demolished bathtub. Had the landlord simply remained silent, the man would still be peacefully lathering his back under his favorite shower.
 
Do you think this is purely German madness? Of course not; the Leviathan is structured the same way everywhere. Try going to a municipality in somewhere like France or Italy and declaring that you want to cut a small dormer window in your private house to see the stars at night. You will immediately be dragged into a years-long hell: you’ll need historical and architectural approvals, environmental certificates, the visit of three inspectors, and the icing on the cake will be a property tax reassessment upward.
 
In the US, homeowners regularly step on the same rake: you go to get approval for a miserable wooden shed for your lawnmower—an inspector arrives, fines you because the structure is five centimeters closer to the fence than allowed by the standards of the Carter administration, issues a cease-and-desist order, and while he’s at it, picks on an “unlicensed” outlet in the garage.
 
Now, look at the alternative—so-called quiet, guerrilla improvement. Millions of people around the world simply take their housing and make it comfortable. Without queues, without bribes, and without humiliating bows to officials.
 
Imagine that a hypothetical Uncle Seryozha lives in the next entrance. Back in 2004, he silently glazed his loggia, ran electricity there, installed an air conditioner, and knocked down an unnecessary partition made of cheap gypsum. Since then, eras have changed, children have grown up, constitutions have been rewritten, but Uncle Seryozha still drinks his morning tea in warmth and comfort. Does the state know about this? No. Will an official come to inspect him? The chance of this approaches absolute zero, unless he himself goes crazy and takes the apartment plan to the district administration.
 
The bureaucratic apparatus is incredibly cumbersome, and it lacks X-ray vision through reinforced concrete. It relies exclusively on the incoming flow of paperwork brought to it by naive citizens. And trying to “legalize a renovation retroactively” is like approaching a robber in a dark alley and asking: “Excuse me, I’ve earned some extra money here, could you tell me what share I am supposed to give you?”. Rest assured, the robber will take every last penny and even punch you in the jaw for your audacity.
 
Of course, in such matters, one should remember physics and respect for neighbors. You shouldn’t touch load-bearing walls or block the building’s general ventilation, and you should also ensure reliable waterproofing so as not to flood anyone and not to give neighbors a reason to complain to the authorities, revealing the unauthorized renovation.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

A bonfire of books for the sake of copyism: a dystopia in which we are already living

Imagine this scene: trucks pull up, unloading millions of printed books, after which they are ruthlessly unstitched, passed through scanners, and then sent to the shredder, to the knife, and to the paper mill.
 
Do you think this is a grim dystopian scenario? No, this is the harsh reality of 2026. Anthropic, the creators of the Claude neural network, turned millions of physical books into confetti to train their AI model. You might immediately think about how they are techno-fascists who have completely lost their minds. But the wildest thing about this situation is that they didn’t resort to this vandalism out of spite, not by choice, and certainly not out of hatred for literature.
 
Under the idiotic “intellectual property” laws in the US, if you buy a book and scan it, but keep the physical original on your shelf, you instantly become a pirate who has created an “illegal copy.” It is precisely because of this legal absurdity that authorities constantly persecute free network libraries like Zlib or Anna’s Archive.
 
To avoid being crushed by multi-billion dollar lawsuits from holders of copyright privileges, corporate bean counters found a loophole: if the paper original is physically destroyed during the digitization process, then everything is legally fine. One copy existed—and one copy remains, it has simply changed format. Therefore, Anthropic literally had to shred millions of books just so that the digital copies would be recognized as “legal.”
 
Ray Bradbury, in his novel “Fahrenheit 451,” warned us about firefighters burning books. But he, a naive romantic, thought this would happen because of direct state censorship. Bradbury held politicians in too high regard. In our reality, government authorities are destroying millions of valuable books through their moronic laws simply to protect copyright privileges.
 
And the scale of the tragedy is colossal. It’s not just worn-out pulp fiction going to the knife. Entire second-hand bookstores and warehouses where the rarest works gather dust are being bought up, many of which are only available in one or a few copies. What can never be printed again is being destroyed.
 
There is one important nuance to this book genocide. Do you know why AI corporations are hunting so fiercely for old paper literature? Because texts published until approximately 2022 are pure, one hundred percent, organic human products. No neural network hallucinations. In the future, the value of such printed books will constantly increase—it is a rock-solid guarantee that the text was written by humans, not by AI. And this unique heritage is now being irrevocably ground into dust.
 
But let’s look at this situation from the perspective of human survival. The destruction of paper books is playing with fire in the most literal sense. We live in an extremely fragile world. Imagine any global natural or man-made disaster: a massive solar flare, a large-scale EMP strike, a meteorite impact, or a total blackout. Data centers will go up in smoke. The much-vaunted “clouds” will dissipate. Servers will turn into useless scrap metal overnight.
 
Where will the survivors get basic knowledge about engineering, first aid, water purification, or agronomy? From the Internet? But it’s gone. From libraries? But they were sent to the shredder so as not to upset the copyright holders.
 
The destruction of physical information carriers leaves civilization absolutely naked and defenseless against any global crisis. A paper book does not ask for electricity; it doesn’t need servers, updates, or a paid subscription. It simply silently holds knowledge, waiting for you to open it.
 
What conclusion does this lead to? When laws force us to destroy basic knowledge to please a stationary bandit, it is no longer about protecting authors’ rights. It is a real, direct existential threat to the survival of our entire civilization!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The Law Named After a Dead Girl: How Someone Else’s Misfortune Becomes Someone’s Power

Do you know this phrase? It can shut down any discussion, any dispute about freedom, rights, and common sense. As soon as an official says “we are protecting the children” — that’s it, the opponent already looks like a monster.

American scientists from the University of Texas at El Paso decided to test how this actually works. Not on the level of “well, everyone understands,” but in laboratory conditions, with control groups, numbers, and statistics. The results were frightening.

Take a bill limiting solitary confinement for teenagers. Give people the dry text. 75% support it. Now add the story of a girl named Rosemary, who committed suicide after six weeks in solitary. Support — 100%. Not 90%, not 95%, but 100%. Or take a law on alcohol monitoring for parolees. Without the story — 60% “for.” With the story of a deceased teenager — 80%.

And then comes the most interesting part. The scientists separated the variables: here is just the victim’s name in the title of the law, here is a story without a name, and here is both. Guess what worked? Of course, not the name, but the story. “The Vasily Pupkin Law” by itself achieves almost nothing. But a three-paragraph tear-jerker triggers the “I’ll sign anything, just do something” mode.

The mechanism is very primitive: take a tragedy, link it to any law you need, and voilà — the population’s critical thinking is completely switched off. Now let’s look at how this works in our case.

2012: Dima Yakovlev dies — a little boy adopted by Americans who died of heatstroke after being left in a car by his adoptive father. A terrible tragedy. At the same time, US authorities pass the “Magnitsky Act,” hitting the wallets of Russian security forces and officials. And to retaliate, the State Duma passes a law completely blocking Americans from adopting Russian orphans (including those who had already met their future adoptive parents). And they named this act of political revenge the “Dima Yakovlev Law.” It doesn’t increase oversight of adopters, it doesn’t reform the system; it simply closes the border to all American parents and thousands of children who could have actually found a family.

Why? “To protect children from violence.” Although anyone who has ever looked at statistics knows: the probability of violence in a Russian orphanage is orders of magnitude higher than in a European or American adoptive family. But who needs statistics when there is a dead boy and a beautiful name for a law?

Same year, 2012. A registry of banned websites appears. The formal goal is to protect children from suicidal content, drugs, and pornography. Who would argue? “What, you’re for child pornography?” — and that’s it, conversation over.

Then begins what we have all observed. Teenage problems didn’t go anywhere, but the Roskomnadzor registry, created “for children,” gradually, like a boa constrictor, swallows everything in sight: opposition websites, independent media, pages criticizing the government, Social Network X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, VPN services, and generally any thought that does not align with the party line. The mechanism is already tuned, the censorship infrastructure is built; all that’s left is to expand the list.

What is this all leading to? Bureaucracy does not know how to empathize. When the state weeps for victims from a podium, it is simply lubricating with tears the very bolt it intends to screw into your civil rights. Creating laws based on isolated, most emotional, and horrific cases (lawyers call these “hard cases”) is a direct road to totalitarianism. Empathy is a wonderful human quality, and that is exactly why we must protect it from the sweaty hands of politicians.

Next time you are asked to give up a piece of freedom, the privacy of correspondence, or the right to choose in the name of “safety” and the memory of another victim — turn your internal skeptic to the maximum. Because these laws will not help the dead in any way. But you and I will have to somehow live with this repressive creativity.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Taxes are robbery. But you know what’s even worse? It’s unfair robbery!

What is the most popular fairy tale among adults? No, not the one about “I’ll start exercising next Monday,” and not even the one about “we’ll call you back.” The most resilient and beloved fairy tale is the myth of the “fair tax system.”
 
Every time another politician in an expensive suit (bought with your money, by the way) takes the podium and begins to proclaim: “We will make the rich pay more to help the poor!”, the etatists are selling us the image of a noble Robin Hood. But in reality, we get the Sheriff of Nottingham, who simply shakes the change out of the pockets of the working class.
 
Let’s look at how this “celebration of justice” works in real life. It is important to understand that you are the one paying for this entire banquet—the very same shrinking and vanishing “middle class.” People who just want to live normally, pay off their mortgage, go on vacation, and provide an education for their children.
 
How does the state sell us taxes? “Look, that guy in the Maybach! We’ll introduce a progressive scale, a luxury tax, strip him of his wealth, and we’ll all live well!”. Sounds like a great plan, right? But this is where harsh reality kicks in.
 
The thing is, truly wealthy people don’t receive a salary. They don’t have a pay stub that accountant Marya Ivanovna looks at with a sad sigh while slicing off a third for the state. The fortunes of the rich lie in stocks, trusts, funds, real estate, and clever financial instruments. They don’t need to withdraw millions in cash to buy a yacht. They simply take a bank loan secured by their shares at a ridiculous interest rate. And loans, as we know, are not taxable!
 
The ultra-wealthy also have something we don’t—entire armies of high-paid lawyers and tax consultants. For them, the tax code is not a noose around the neck, but simply a restaurant menu where one can always find a loophole, a discount, or an offshore zone. They don’t evade taxes, but they optimize them. And they do it brilliantly.
 
Now let’s return to our middle class. To you, to me, to the guy working as an IT specialist, a doctor, or running a small coffee shop. To the state, we are all ideal dairy cows. We stand in the pen, we can’t run away, and all our incomes are as transparent as a baby’s tear. The state is too lazy and it’s too expensive to chase wild mustangs (billionaires and their lawyers) across the prairies. Why strain yourself if you can just come into the cowshed and take what you want?
 
Of course, it’s useless for the middle class to complain about why, after all the deductions, VAT in stores, excise taxes on gasoline, and hidden levies from their salary, they are left with nothing. The oligarchs have already transferred their assets to the Cayman Islands. So, you will be the one chipping in for the new curb and the golden toilet brush for the mayor’s office. Nothing personal, just social justice!
 
That is precisely why the middle class is currently being destroyed worldwide. The state is constantly tightening the screws, inventing new levies, fines, and fees, presenting it under the sauce of “caring for society.” We are sheared so often that we don’t have time to grow our wool back. You strive, you grow as a professional, you take on side jobs, you open a small business, after which you suddenly move into a new tax category. You are now “rich” (in the eyes of the tax office, if you can afford meat every day, you are almost a Rockefeller), and they start milking you with double the intensity.
 
In the end, what do we have? Taxes are not just robbery (although the phrase “Taxation is theft” will never lose its relevance), but banal injustice. It is a system where the poor depend on handouts, the rich play by their own rules in the VIP room, and the middle class pays for it all, becoming poorer every year while trying to stay afloat. So next time you hear a fairy tale from another etatist about how taxes make society “equal and fair,” just laugh in their face!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The state broke the demographics, and now even migrants will not save it

Every modern statist has a rather interesting “cheat code” at their disposal. States around the world, through their suffocating regulation, insane taxes, and inflation, have driven their native populations into such a demographic pit that there is no easy way out. Having children when half of your income is taken away by the tax office with an invisible (and very visible) hand, and a mortgage feels like lifelong slavery due to central bank games, is an unaffordable luxury for many young families.

And so, the average authoritarian bureaucrat scratches his head. He essentially has two paths:

The first path is total deregulation. Radically lowering taxes, easing regulations, removing bureaucratic barriers, letting people breathe, build homes, start businesses, grow wealthy, and look confidently into tomorrow. Making it so that people actually want to have children because they are confident in their future.

The second path is, with a heavy heart, to let millions of migrants into the country to somehow plug the gaping holes in the budget and the labor market, while not loosening the noose around the necks of their own citizens by a single millimeter.

Which do you think the official chooses? The second option, of course! Authoritarian statists usually don’t like migrants, but they are terrified to the point of shaking in their boots of losing power over the economy and society. It is better to import new blood than to give freedom to their own.

But then a system failure occurred; the “cheat code” stopped working. Let’s look at Spain (this was recently written about excellently here in El Confidencial). Local socialists have for years prayed to immigrants as the saviors of the solidarity pension system (i.e., a legalized financial pyramid). But suddenly, an inconvenient truth emerged—migrants age! A mass flow of people over 45 began entering Spain.

And here, the mathematics hits the official right in the face. Even if the statist gentlemen dream of importing ideal “passive hamsters” aged 55+, who will quietly sweep the streets, drive a steering wheel, and not say a crooked word against the government—it no longer works economically. Such a “hamster” will sluggishly work for 5–10 years, pay their few pennies in taxes (if they even leave the gray economy), and then retirement age arrives. And what next? Next, this person will spend 20+ years draining money from a budget bursting at the seams for a minimum social pension and free healthcare, which becomes insanely expensive in old age. Instead of solving the demographic problem, the state gets a giant financial black hole. The presence of such migrants creates a colossal burden on the budget, effectively bringing no net plus to the economy.

And you know what the most ironic part is? Statism is contagious; it has spread across the entire planet. The bureaucratic noose is not exclusive to developed countries. After all, the governments of the countries from which migrants traditionally come play the same games with no less enthusiasm: introducing new bans, multiplying bureaucrats, and terrorizing businesses. The result is predictable: birth rates there are also plummeting into the abyss! The myth that there is an “infinite reservoir of young labor” somewhere in the Global South has shattered against reality. In the countries of Latin America, North Africa, or Central Asia, there are fewer and fewer young people because having children under the conditions of their own native, local government regulation is just as much of a financial suicide. That is why it is no longer healthy twenty-year-old guys moving to rich countries, but those same exhausted people in their fifties. States around the world, with their insane rules, have created a global demographic winter.

An alternative to the “do not interfere in people’s lives” option simply does not exist. Do you want the nation to grow and the demographic crisis to be a thing of the past? Abolish taxes and the total regulation of life! When a person has freedom, property, and the confidence that the state will not come to take it away tomorrow—they will build a large family themselves. But as long as statists continue to tighten the noose, no amount of importing obedient “hamsters” will save their budgets from inevitable bankruptcy.

Voluntarist, Bitarch