I listened to Grigory Bazhenov’s conversation on Vadim Politikov’s channel. The conversation is boringly titled “Why Left-wing Economies are Doomed,” so I didn’t immediately decide to spend two hours on the interview, assuming that it would indeed be a banal explanation of why left-wing economies are doomed. Fortunately, Grigory, fueled by good whiskey, discussed many other things, and in particular, towards the end, modernization.
Main points: 1. In a state that is already leading, authoritarian modernization from above is impossible, because a plan works only when you know where to go; the leader, however, will have to pave the way through the operation of spontaneous orders. 2. Forced modernization from an agrarian to an industrial society within the framework of catch-up development is possible. Universal education, a transport network, a banking system—and that’s enough; after that, just don’t interfere with the work of institutions. Those states that limited themselves to this gentleman’s set, and then allowed society to develop independently, were able to successfully cut the corner, catch up with the leader, and many even surpassed the unfortunate Great Britain, once the world’s first economy. Those that played at dirigisme, crawled forward in bursts, with great costs—in short, it didn’t turn out very well. 3. Forced modernization from above from an industrial to a post-industrial society is theoretically possible, but the recipe consists precisely of the dismantling of authoritarian mechanisms, and this is not a recipe that most leaders are willing to hear. However, Grigory does not believe in dismantling from below through agorism, and this is the point on which I would discuss with him, provided, of course, that he doesn’t find a conversation partner in his own weight class.
In connection with this, I recalled a book I recently read by Dmitry Travin and Otar Margania, “Modernization: from Elizabeth Tudor to Egor Gaidar”. It is an excellent selection of historical anecdotes about who and how tried to spur the nag of history in their countries. It mainly describes a long line of kings, prime ministers, and other ministers, while only two inseparable partners of the twentieth century—Keynes and Hayek—stand apart, who personally conducted no reforms, but exerted a powerful influence on minds.
Historical anecdotes are pleasing because they are not dry theory, but a multitude of yarns, from which each is entitled to derive their own moral. In general, these stories do not contradict Grigory Bazhenov’s points, and instead complement them well, so I recommend checking them out, especially since it is a fairly light, entertaining genre.
And finally, I will give you a song by Timur Shaov, “From where modernization in Rus’ began,” to create a proper stereo effect.
After the Russian state banned Jehovah’s Witnesses, the niche of street preachers has remained vacant. So, if you feel an urge to borrow five minutes from passersby to convey some bright idea to them, why not make it about panarchy? And what is a preacher without glossy brochures featuring a lion lying with a lamb?
But seriously, for a libertarian, it can be quite useful to have printed handouts on hand at rallies, public lectures, debates, round tables, and other gatherings of social activists. Put on a bright t-shirt, a badge, a scarf, or a cap in any combination; people will notice you in the crowd, approach you, and wonder who you are. If you don’t have time to explain in detail to everyone what you are campaigning for, or if you simply aren’t very silver-tongued, you can always hand a handout to someone who is interested.
I would like to organize a section on my website with various useful templates (I would welcome help from designers, as I don’t know much about it myself) for free download and self-printing. To start things off, I am posting a template for a brochure about panarchy. The text is mine; the design is by Aegis Mirijam.
Don’t know where to start promoting libertarian ideas to your mother or a friend? I’ll be blunt, because I’ve tried it myself more than once: don’t talk about the advantages of the free market, the absence of taxes, and regulations. Firstly, your interlocutor is unlikely to understand anything. Secondly, you must know the theory perfectly and avoid mistakes, as everyone has Google in their pocket now. You shouldn’t talk about personal freedom right away either, because a person’s views on drugs and gambling may not be libertarian at all.
What should you talk about then? The Stationary Bandit Theory (SBT). Your story should begin with the phrase “The state is a stationary bandit.” You need to instill in your interlocutor a sense of guilt for supporting the stationary bandit, as if they themselves are an accomplice to state violence and therefore a “complete maniac.” Turn them into a modern German, who feels guilt not just for themselves, but for ancestors who died long ago. The “state” structure exists only in the head; it is a quasi-religion (meaning the belief that people belonging to this structure have a “legitimate” right to initiate violence, while others are not allowed to). If a person feels guilt for supporting aggression, they will change their behavior, the state will begin to weaken and eventually lose its territorial monopoly, which is exactly what we are striving for.
If you haven’t read our article on SBT, I advise you to do so and give it to everyone to whom you are promoting ideas of freedom.
Although, it is quite possible that a slightly simplified but emotionally charged explanation of SBT will be more effective:
“States are organizations that unjustifiably appropriated supreme power over a certain territory through conquest, placing its population in direct subordination to themselves. The state arose not from freedom of association, but through a violation of the non-aggression principle.
You do not question the state’s right to kill, carry out confiscations, or arrest. Yet, if private individuals do this—you would call them murderers, thieves, and bandits. Don’t you find this hypocritical?
States are highly organized criminal organizations, like gangs that “racketeer” a particular territory, imposing their rules on its residents, collecting tribute (protection money) from them, and occasionally fighting other gangs for spheres of influence. The state has the same basis as any organized crime group—the violent imposition of its rules on captured territory. And today, there is nowhere to run from these gangs. They have divided the entire Earth among themselves.
How does the “Islamic State” group fundamentally differ from the states of “Saudi Arabia” and “Iran”? After all, their laws are roughly the same. The only difference is that IS is not recognized by other states. International recognition—that is the difference between a “legitimate” gang and an “illegitimate” one.
The main grievance against bandits is that they are bandits and take land or other goods from their victims through aggressive violence. These same bandits then write laws to create the feeling among others that what was looted belongs to them by right.
If people came to a wild land and began to develop it—they are colonists.
If they came to a land where other people lived and took it from them by force—they are bandits.
If they hold other people on their land by force—they are bandits, even if they refer to a “law” that they wrote themselves.
When you tell people that the state is a stationary bandit, it is quite possible that you will be asked one of the following questions. Be ready to answer them.
1) There is a “social contract” between citizens and the state. How can it be a bandit if it happens with the consent of the citizens?
If such a contract exists, show me the text! The Constitution is not a “social contract,” but one of the “laws” (which are actually orders, i.e., the arbitrary will of the stationary bandit); it’s not for nothing that it’s often called the “basic law.” Even if just one person in the country did not agree to this constitution, it cannot be considered a contract (which, by definition, requires the voluntary consent of all parties).
2) People are not protesting, which means they are satisfied with the status quo. Can’t the “social contract” be implicit?
Suppose a girl is raped by a maniac, and she is unable to put up a proper fight. Will you say that everything between them happened “by mutual consent” too?!
3) The state is not necessarily a “stationary bandit,” since there are examples in history of the emergence of proto-states—entities with a territorial monopoly not through violence (conquest), for example, like some poleis in Ancient Greece?
Such entities occupied in total no more than 0.1% of the Earth’s surface; the remaining 99.9% were seized by stationary bandits. Even if we assume that poleis, as voluntary associations, did indeed exist, this does not justify modern states with extensive borders that appeared through violence according to SBT. If we accept a hypothetical situation where stationary bandits never existed, we would now have, for example, 1% of the planet’s territory with voluntary territorial monopoly and 99% without it, with extraterritorial status (like international waters). Agree that this is far better than 100% of the planet under stationary bandits, which we have now. Libertarianism does not forbid the creation of voluntary communities and private cities with territorial monopoly, but this should not happen through violence, and people must retain the right to leave, and owners—to withdraw their land from such jurisdiction. This model is promoted, for example, by Mikhail Svetov.
4) At the moment when the bandits seized a certain territory, there were no laws prohibiting this, so what grievances can there be against them?
At the moment when millions of Jews were sent to gas chambers and burned in the ovens of Auschwitz, there were also no laws prohibiting this—that is exactly what the defendants said at the Nuremberg trials. As a result, they ended their lives with a noose around their necks, as befits any maniac and rapist who rejects the fundamental principles of morality and does not recognize the natural right of every person to life.
5) Yes, I agree, but what do you propose instead? Anarchy?
You can’t just simply abolish the state entirely in one or two steps. This would lead to the creation of a new and more cruel state, which would be an unmasked stationary bandit, as usually happens in a failed state situation. But you can make current states extraterritorial with competition between multiple jurisdictions in one territory. Then the current state will become just one of such jurisdictions (meaning you could choose another jurisdiction for yourself without flying to Alpha Centauri, but while continuing to live in your home in Russia). Such a system is called panarchy.
6) This will cause chaos. Without a monopoly on violence, a war of all against all will begin.
Diplomats for some reason don’t fight, haven’t you noticed? Although they have extraterritorial status (they obey the laws of their own state, not that of the territory they are on). Perhaps people fight among themselves in European cities like Basel and Geneva, where jurisdictional borders run right through houses? I haven’t noticed anything.
7) Personally, I feel more comfortable living in a familiar state with a territorial monopoly; I am a conservative and fear abrupt changes.
Currently, many libertarians would be quite satisfied with the non-interference of state supporters in the creation of new jurisdictions. People would gladly occupy unclaimed lands, experiment there with social orders convenient specifically for them, and not immediately attack capitals. This is a very moderate agenda, from which no one should experience discomfort. Various practices of social organization in these territories could be evolutionarily refined and gradually reach large cities in a mature form, without causing upheavals.
But you must also clearly understand that by opposing such a model, you directly initiate aggression against peaceful people through your support of the stationary bandit. If being a maniac does not cause you remorse, then be prepared for oceans of blood, the destruction of the economy, and the habitual way of life already in the city where you live.
8) Move to another country and build your Ancapistan there.
Why should I move anywhere?! I love my country and I hate the stationary bandit, who forcibly seized the territory and considers it, and everything on it, his property. But can a subject who acquired a thing using violence be considered a legitimate owner of anything? For example, a robber who took your phone on the street? By all principles of law—definitely not!
Comment from Ancap-chan
Everyone has their own experience of offline preaching; some find it more convenient to appeal to the Stationary Bandit Theory, and this text is for them. My practice shows that people usually understand anyway that the state is a stationary bandit, but for them, this means that it is “their own” and already tamed. And if it were removed, nomadic ones would swarm back, like in the nineties, and would act lawlessly. So one should seek an individual approach to the interlocutor, finding out beforehand what they fear.
Hello, give me a minute of your time, and I will tell you how the stationary bandit crucified our Lord Jesus; by the way, happy birthday to him!
Creeping Capitalism. The author notes the success of the socialists’ tactic of stealing a well-sounding word, liberalism__, and calling themselves liberals. He then suggests using the same tactic: to stop fighting socialism and start improving it, to the point where it becomes completely indistinguishable from true classical liberalism.
If you need it, just buy it. Here, Friedman provides simple calculations showing that there are no reasons why workers, within the existing order in the USA, could not provide themselves with full socialist worker self-management if they actually needed it—simply by buying their companies using their own salaries. This would require far fewer resources than a bloody socialist revolution.
Scarce means exhaustible. In this chapter, Friedman notes that one should not confuse the economic term “scarce resources” with the everyday understanding of the word “rare.” He examines in detail why, in an era of full automation, the prerequisites for the disappearance of the institution of property will nevertheless not arise, regardless of how much our left-anarchist friends might wish otherwise.
In these days of epic collapse, as the established order rapidly disintegrates before our very eyes, humanity seems to be tearing itself apart, gravitating more and more toward the far right or the far left. And why the hell not? Poor people across the world are tired of the lying promises and blatant lies of the so-called moderates. The only thing the warring extreme camps seem to agree on is that the mass democracy of neoliberal globalism is a grand scam. A fraudulent gambling game where only the house wins. But now, the house itself is on fire.
Thus, we are witnessing a spectacle of populism from both the left and the right. A record number of young people are adopting the once-tainted label of socialism, but at the same time, various forms of caveman xenophobia, which once whispered only in backwater church parishes, are now becoming mainstream, brandished openly like Hermann Göring with his revolver. This is the time we live in now, but it has happened before. Whenever empires crumble, the well-oiled markets of state capitalism are put in danger. The people who stand to gain the most from the cataclysm find themselves in opposite corners of the ring. Stalinists and Nazis. Antifa and alt-rights. It is in these moments that the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, the prophetic DJ from Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” a classic analysis of urban unrest, rings in my ears. “Can we live together?! Can we live together?!!” I have spent my entire life searching for the answer to this existential question. I feel I am getting closer to it.
I always found myself in the far left corner, even when the proletariat was still drunk on illusions of progress that came with the first black president and the commodity fetishism of the Apple Store. As a child, I discovered Marx, and shortly after, Chomsky. The lion’s share of my youth was spent flirting with the carousel of libertarian socialist ideologies: Chomsky’s syndicalism, Rosa Luxemburg’s council communism, the zapatismo of Subcomandante Marcos. All of this to the hard soundtrack of Billy Bragg, Joe Strummer, and Zack de la Rocha.
In late youth, I fell under the influence of more statist forms of leftism, triggered by the unexpected revival of Bolivarianism in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Eventually, I fell into the arms of Third World communism as a bastion of democratic social experiments against attacks from North America. I came to the conclusion that Fidel Castro’s harsh non-democratic measures to protect the Cuban Revolution after Kennedy’s terrorist campaign against it were the only solution to the problem of imperialism. But my taste for history would not allow me to hold onto this illusion for long. After further research, I concluded that the state itself is a cancerous tumor, and it doesn’t matter how benevolent its leaders are. It has always been a malevolent device designed to oppress others and eventually devour itself. I returned to anarchism, but contradictions continued to haunt me.
The biggest problem with almost every school of leftism is its almost messianic assumption that humanity can be united in internationalist harmony under the banner of a single path. No matter how strongly I believed that my own post-Marxist syndicalism was the ideal model for a truly democratic society, it was hard to convince myself that humanity would ever reach a special collective consciousness and merge into a single union. Honestly, as an anti-imperialist, I always felt awkward about these kinds of notions of internationalism.
The assumption that some 19th-century factory workers in industrial Western Europe had all the recipes for my friendly primitivist neighbors from the Amish community, let alone the tribes of Borneo or the Kalahari, simply reeks of colonialism. When the world is so beautiful in its complexity, how can there be only one path? It felt like the same trap that led our Founding Fathers to pave the way for the neoliberal hell of global capitalism, only our trap was tied to the Manifesto of Equality. I believed strongly in the ideals of Murray Bookchin and Rudolf Rocker, but because of these contradictions, I could view even my own anarchism as nothing more than a distant, unattainable dream. Until I discovered the philosophy of panarchy.
One of the biggest misconceptions about anarchism is that it is defined by the absence of government. Such a notion is clearly absurd. Governments have always existed, exist now, and will continue to exist. Government is any assembly of people who come together to make collective decisions. Technically, three stoned roommates discussing pizza toppings are a government. Anarchy is defined by the absence of the State—a permanent government run by a class of professional politicians, whether they be corporate board members, congressmen, or monarchs. The very existence of this managerial class turns a simple government into a State. Anarchy in all its forms seeks to destroy this hierarchy and replace it with a fully civilian government. Panarchy, then, is the recognition that in our world, in this diverse cultural landscape known as humanity, there is no single answer to a disaster like the State. Anarchy can only exist beyond manifestos and punk-rock venues when it is free to take any form, with any adjectives attached to the word “anarchy,” as long as it happens voluntarily and without coercion.
Globalism has brought nothing but colossal superpowers. The tyranny of large sizes: big government, big business, big people, big religion. This problem cannot be solved by seizing these systems and rebranding them in the key of internationalism. The only correct antidote to this tyranny of the masses is localism, and that is exactly what panarchy is: the idea that government should be based only on the same foundations as any other relationship—through voluntary contracts with the possibility of termination, with voluntarism and non-aggression toward all others as the core ideas. These could be mutual aid societies, autonomous communes, democratic syndicates, tribal structures, a patchwork quilt of endless utopian experiments peacefully competing for the right to patronize their citizens—while preserving the right of individuals to opt out of these services and the right of new collectives to enter the competition at any time. Ideally, these governments would exist as social clubs providing certain benefits, completely untethered from geography. This makes the existence of six stateless nations on one landing entirely possible.
What’s the catch, you ask? There is always a catch. The catch is that the freedom of society exists on the same principles as freedom of speech. Panarchy protects not only the societies you like, but also those you hate. According to the main contract of the Confederation Constitution, people will be free to build societies based on any ideology, as long as they remain peaceful and voluntary. This means societies based on mutualism, syndicalism, capitalism, and communism. But it also more than likely means peaceful nations governed by ideologies such as religious fundamentalism, geographic unity, and even racial separatism. Allowing such societies to exist does not mean accepting them any more than freedom of speech means accepting hate speech. We will have to accept the reality that true freedom means respecting the decisions of others, however mistaken, to live voluntarily as they see fit, provided they do so peacefully—much like my Amish neighbors with their kinship society, who peacefully coexist with sinful English trans people like me.
This philosophy anathematizes the current culture of both the far left and the far right, whose essence seems to be reduced to loud protest against the very existence of everyone else. But I view the catch described above as the solution to the problem of the proletariat, which will always be torn apart by the cultural agenda. When right-wing fascists lack the elegant shield of the persecuted victim, they tend to lose their appeal to the masses. Every time one of these little shits gets beaten up by Antifa, their book sales skyrocket to fucking heaven. I believe in the Kropotkin theory that free mutual aid will evolutionarily lead the left to a society of equality. Under conditions of peaceful competition, more aggressive cultures based on fear will shrink, while those open to cooperation will thrive. The beauty is that the ultrarights are free to believe the same thing about my tribe of queer syndicalists. They get the chance to prove me wrong, just as I do to them, but we will all be too small to spend our energy on fighting. For micro-nations, any prolonged war means mutually assured destruction. Coexistence becomes the only sustainable way of existence.
And I believe that this is exactly how we can live together: communists and nationalists, melting-pot ideologues and isolationists—together we can live. Behind every apocalypse hides an opportunity for a utopia. The panarchist asks: why not a thousand? Indeed, why not? After all, now is the perfect time…
Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania
In the script for the video about the free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons, I emphasized how bad this is for users of a shared resource and what strategies have been developed to combat it. Now, I want to talk about a case where the tragedy of the commons is actually a good thing, and fighting it is bad.
The entire focus is on what exactly constitutes the shared resource. Imagine a rare resource such as consumer demand. Everyone has the opportunity to produce a certain good or service, sell it, and make a profit. While the market is empty, a few producers will make superprofits, and the thirst for gain will attract many other suppliers to this patch. Competition for the consumer’s attention quickly leads to a decrease in margins. To maintain profit, volumes must be increased, and this finally exhausts the shared resource. The consumer receives an enormous abundance of cheap goods, which they are ready to push in the greatest possible quantity, as long as the consumer is willing to buy. Here is a “buy one get one free” promotion, here is an installment plan, here is a sale, here is unlimited access for a fixed subscription—just buy it.
Admit it, if you put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, this phenomenon cannot help but be pleasing. But the producer, for whom this is a terrible tragedy of the commons, tries to fight it. As we know from the video, two strategies are possible here: privatization and cooperation.
Privatization means the appropriation of consumer demand in a certain industry by a specific producer—in other words, the creation of a monopoly. Other suppliers are forbidden from selling certain goods and services to consumers. That’s it; now there is no need to chase sales volumes, and superprofits can be earned with fairly modest investments in production. However, part of the profit will have to be invested in protection against competitors, and they are not idling, so these costs will tend to increase.
Cooperation means that anyone can satisfy consumer demand, but a number of restrictions are imposed upon it. This is usually expressed in strict industry standards that effectively secure the dominant position of those players who are ready to invest significant capital into production, while outsiders are filtered out. However, a lot of attention must be paid to controlling that producers do not cheat. In this regard, a recent case comes to mind with some European auto concern that faked data on the exhaust emissions of its engines to save money on complying with environmental standards. But the classic example is, of course, medieval guilds. The quality of their goods was high, production volume was low, and profits were magnificent. Only the black market eventually undermined their dominant position, and a tragedy of the commons occurred, which we know as the Industrial Revolution.
So, when you are told about the harm of competition and the benefits of cooperation, as well as the inevitability of natural monopolies, it is important to understand: these people are quite sincere and not fools at all. It’s just that you are a resource to them.
A Christmas market is a tragedy of the commons in all its glory: consumers are happy, they are lured in with all their might, and they look more than they buy
Many reviews and critiques have been written about Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” where the book is placed within its historical context, its position among Hayek’s publications is identified, and a brief analysis of its ideas is provided. As much as I would like to avoid all this academicism, it is impossible, as the entire book is a political pamphlet on the pressing issues of the day, and the only reason the work remains relevant to this day is that ideas do not die—and this applies not only to Hayek’s own ideas, but also to those he fought against.
“The Road to Serfdom” was published in Great Britain in 1944, when the country was finishing its fifth year of war with the National Socialist Reich. Victory over the Reich was simply a matter of time, and one could have calmly begun to reflect on the postwar restructuring of the world, but the author felt it was far more important to draw the public’s attention to the fact that the dragon-slayer was beginning to increasingly resemble the one he was fighting. Hayek saw the victory of the Labour Party in the upcoming general elections as the most terrifying danger for Britain. That is exactly what happened. As a result, Great Britain accumulated an economic lag behind freer countries right up until the Thatcher reforms.
The main idea Hayek fights against in his book is the notion that economic planning brings prosperity. He painstakingly demonstrates that the temptation to slightly regulate from above for the greater benefit of society is the first step toward regulating everything and everyone to the point where it is impossible to breathe: there is no natural optimum on this road, upon reaching which the government would stop on its own and declare that things are now good and nothing more needs to be tweaked. He also shows that regulation is total, and economic freedoms are inseparable from political ones, so people far removed from economics should not look benevolently upon interventionist efforts, thinking that as long as political freedoms are left untouched, economics is a narrow specialized topic and experts know best how to steer it.
Hayek did not claim that everything was hopeless and that, having stepped onto the road to serfdom, humanity would be unable to stop. If he had believed so, he would have had no need to write the book. He did, however, argue that the further one goes down this road, the harder it is to stop, and therefore socialism is best fought at the far approaches. Unfortunately, practice has shown the exact opposite: it is extremely difficult to deny socialists small concessions while society as a whole is liberal, but when everything is already regulated to shreds, both society and the government tire of the constant tightening of the screws. A sufficiently strong demand for deregulation emerges, it is carried out, and people breathe a sigh of relief, but it soon turns out that the leviathan, having retreated in one place, is already pressing in another.
In the article Barrier on the Road to Serfdom: Dead End or Detour?, Bitarch and I mentioned John Meadowcroft’s thesis that it is the hybrid society that proves to be stable, unlike the liberal or totalitarian ones, and we also pointed out that neither increasing transparency nor reducing direct state participation in the economy helps avoid the fact that the overall regulation of society continues to grow slowly.
The book “The Road to Serfdom” is a good example of rhetoric that can and should be used when working with politicians. The fact is that most of the arguments in the book are no longer relevant, unless, of course, you are dealing with hardline Marxists; against more or less modern supporters of state regulation, it makes sense to apply Hayek’s later texts, such as “The Fatal Conceit.”
Check out the new video on the Libertarian band channel! This time, our focus is on two interconnected terms: the free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons.
The free-rider problem is the bane of any community. One step to the right or one step to the left, and you either have the tragedy of the commons with the collapse of any productive cooperation, or the state with its total slavery. In the video, we outline the main approaches to solving the problem.
And at the beginning of next year, the final episode of the second part of the cycle on libertarianism awaits you, in which I will try to reveal the image of our main enemy—the state.
The most surprising achievement of the past year for me is that the channel continues to exist at all and is even doing quite well. I still have things to say, and the number of people wishing to read them continues to grow. In 2019, the channel’s audience tripled, and that is only among those who prefer texts. In addition, I started writing scripts for videos, and since July, eight of them have already been released on the Libertarian band channel, and a ninth should appear any minute now.
The format of answering scattered questions from the audience helped a lot with post topics at the start of the project; now, in addition to that, I have begun to devote a lot of time to a consistent presentation of my own vision of libertarian ideology, translations of interesting texts published by foreign authors, cooperation with other libertarians of related directions, and even with left-wing anarchists, which I could not have imagined a year ago.
I am sure that in another year I will again be writing with surprise about the unexpected ways the channel continued to develop, so for now I will refrain from making detailed plans. Well, except that I promise to finish the translation of The Mechanics of Liberty and continue working on the video course on libertarianism. I would like to gradually look for ways to move from theory to practice, but we will see how that goes.
I will be glad for your New Year’s gifts in my bitcoin wallet, greetings in the chat and comments, and simply a good mood expressed in likes under the post.
The notion that the state is a product of a social contract is an important factor in legitimizing the state; therefore, etatists cling to this theory with all their might, despite the fact that, for instance, the stationary bandit theory explains reality far more accurately. A bandit indeed behaves like a bandit, whereas no one has ever seen a social contract, nor can anyone produce its text.
You may have heard about the laws against sexual violence recently adopted in several European countries, known as “No means no.” Their essence is that sexual abuse (violence) is now considered not only the commission of “lewd acts” amidst active physical resistance by the victim (when she uses all possible strength to fight back), but any resistance where she unambiguously makes it clear that she wants to leave. Among Russian social media users, these laws were received ambiguously and were mainly used as an excuse to once again mock “Gayrope” for having lost all traditional values. Nevertheless, there is common sense in these laws. All criticism should be directed at the states in these countries, which, as always, will distort the essence and apply these laws with bias.
Let’s return to the state. I think a significant portion of people, most likely more than half, would similarly like to say “no” to the state. However, the bureaucrats in power are not fools either; they intuitively understand game theory and do everything possible to ensure that for an individual, any expression of discontent carries the highest possible costs, while the benefit from such a request should be zero! Look, even a request as trivial for the state as building waste processing plants instead of simply dumping trash in landfills remains unanswered. The authorities understand—if you concede such a trifle, in a couple of years they will demand the recognition of the right to create their own sovereign jurisdictions. The cattle must clearly know that they will get nothing, while the costs will be enormous (sleeping in tents near Shies in the freezing cold and constantly being hit on the head with clubs is not exactly like going to a picket line once).
It is exactly the same with the “social contract”—every person understands perfectly well that they alone can do little to change the status quo (depriving the state of its territorial monopoly on governance), but they will get into deep trouble if they start complaining. And so they nod along with the stationary bandit, like a fragile girl with a rapist, even though in their soul they fiercely hate him!
Therefore, I suggest that fans of the “social contract” stop mincing their words and say it straight: “They are raping you, and you aren’t resisting? Then how is that violence; it’s completely voluntary!”
