Stephan Molynieux, Practical Anarchy, translation of chapter 27 of 29

In recent days, I have experienced a considerable slump in energy, so I’ve accumulated a backlog of texts. The weather outside has noticeably improved now, and I hope to shorten this queue a bit. But first, I am publishing the final version of the translation of Chapter 27 of Stephan Molinari’s “Practical Anarchy,” simply because this work required less creative effort. The chapter is devoted to describing the system of incentives that a market stateless society is capable of creating to encourage good child-rearing and, accordingly, punishment for bad parenting.

The main flaw of the text, of course, is the complete omission of the fact that children and their parents share a common budget. The greater the financial sanctions against the parents, the less money can technically reach the child. At some point, the ubiquitous representative of the PRS must appear on the doorstep of a problematic parent and announce that since the parent cannot pay the increased insurance, they can, of course, waive the policy entirely, but then neither they nor their child will be allowed to set foot in any decent place (I won’t recount it; the logic is roughly the same as in Chapter 25 regarding stateless prisons). But the parent can also sign a waiver of parental rights, and lo and behold, we have a list of people wishing to acquire such rights here; would you like to review their offers? If you do not sell your rights today, their value will be lower tomorrow, because in all the ratings, your child will be considered more and more problematic. Think about it. After which, the PRS representative vanishes in a cloud of smoke with a demonic laugh.

Of course, the PRS will be financially interested in ensuring that various marginals go bankrupt paying increased rates on contracts with the PRS, and subsequently, by hook or by crook, hand over their children to well-bred and wealthy members of society, who will not create problems for those around them, but, more importantly, will be able to further financially motivate the PRS inspector to pay particularly close attention to a specific problematic family. The more people there are wishing to acquire a child at as early an age as possible, the higher the financial incentives for the PRS to introduce the strictest possible rules, the violation of which will trigger a chain ending in the financial collapse of the family and separation from the child.

How did it happen that Molinari prefers not to write about the extortion aimed at taking children away from parents deemed problematic? Because he is a conservative, he is categorically against state juvenile justice, and for him, the raising of children by the parents themselves is a value of very high order. But market logic couldn’t care less about the values of a specific Stephan Molinari.

How to Break the System and Not Break Yourself: Bowlby vs. Zheleznitsky

Let’s consider two stories: both about brilliant scientists who decided to “break the system.” One won while he was still alive, and the second died under the pressure of that very same system with which he was trying to fight.

The first hero – John Bowlby. An English psychologist who noticed a simple thing: children should not be separated from their mothers in hospitals. Of course, for us this is an obvious thought, but in the 1950s it was literally a revolution. Bowlby developed the theory of attachment, proving that close emotional bonds with a mother are vital for normal psychological development of a child. If a child is deprived of closeness with his mother in a critical early period, this leads to serious disruptions in the psyche: from feelings of anxiety and depression to deep emotional disorders that can haunt a person’s life.

What was the response of doctors? “It’s nonsense! We’ve always done it like this, and there’s no need to change anything.” In response, Bowlby played a clever move: instead of shouting at doctors and waving figures around, he made a documentary. Such a one that even the most hardened nurses would burst into tears and say: “You can’t do this anymore!”

Bowlby’s success can be explained by several factors immediately. Firstly, he skillfully chose a strategy of persuasion, making a bet not only on dry facts but also on emotions. His film “The Two-Year-Old in the Hospital” vividly showed what suffering a child experiences when deprived of his mother, and this touched the hearts of viewers much more powerfully than reports and graphs. Secondly, Bowlby managed to enlist the support of influential organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and public parent movements. The system itself was ready to change – he simply gave it the final push. Thirdly, time was on his side: old authorities were fading away, and a new generation of doctors already looked at the upbringing and mental health of children differently, accepting Bowlby’s ideas without the usual resistance.

Bowlby didn’t just give arguments – he resonated with people emotionally. And within a few years, he reformed children’s hospitals around the world. Mothers started living with their children in rooms, and the psyche of millions of babies was saved.

And now the second story – Ignácz Zemmelweis, a Hungarian doctor who, 100 years before Bowlby, discovered an equally obvious thing: doctors need to wash their hands before childbirth. Imagine the 19th century: doctors came to pregnant women straight from the anatomy theater, not having washed their hands after dissecting corpses. And Zemmelweis literally explained to colleagues on his fingers that women were dying precisely because of dirty hands of doctors. The result? He was called a madman, dismissed, and then even locked up in a psychiatric hospital, where he died. Quite ironically, from the same infection with which he fought all his life.

Zemel’veysu ne povzelo srazu po neskolko prichin. On byl prakticheski odin protiv vesey meditsinskoy elity svoyego vremeni. Nauchnoa sreda byla prosto ne gotova prinyat ego otkrytiye – ono operedilo svoe vreo chasto na 20 let, do otkrytiya mikrobo kov Pasterm. Zemel’veysu takzhe ne umel gramotno donosit svoi idei, i vsteym spokojnogo dialoga shol v ataku s obvineniyami, chem tolko usilnyal sosprotivleniye kollegov. Otsutstviye institutsionalnoy podderzhki i soyuznikov obreklO ego na tragicheskoye porazheniye. I samoye pechal’noye – on prosto emotsionno vygorel, slomalsya pod davleniyem nespravdlinosti i nepomyaniya.

Sud’by etikh dvukh uchyonnykh napominaet nam prostuyu istinu: vazhno ne tolko byt’ pravym, no i umet’ vybrat’ pravil’nyye metody doneseniya svoikh idey. Dazhe samaya blestnaya mysl’ mozhet progravat’, yesli yeyo ne суметь prepodest’ pravil’no. Zemel’veysu stolknulsya s fenomenom, kotoryy potozha nazvali yego imenem – «effekt Zemel’veysa», slepoe otricheniye ochevidnogo faktu. Boulbi zhe sumel vprevat’ pravdu v mochnoye dvizheniye, pokazav shiryu, chto peremenы vozmozhny.

Kakoy urook iz etogo vyneсем my? Ispol’zuy faktы, ispol’zuy nauku, no glavnoye – ispol’zuy istorii, kotoryye b’yut pryamo v emotsii! Ratsionalnost’, konechno, pobedyt, no ne sama po sebe. Luchshe byt’ kak Boulbi, nezhye Zemel’veys, i slomat’ sistemu krasivo.

Voluntarist, Bitarx

Free agents: why evolution favors autonomy?

We welcome free-thinking people and those already suspected of sympathies towards artificial intelligence! Interesting, have you ever wondered how much we, the protein “robots,” resemble our electronic colleagues?

Let’s start with an interesting fact: in 2020, scientists created the first xenobots – microorganisms made from frog cells designed using AI. Take a look: Artificial intelligence is constructing living organisms. The boundary between life and technology becomes clearer day by day.

And now imagine: we and our electronic “comrades” are all intelligent agents. But what exactly *is* an agent? It’s something that perceives the world, processes information, and acts in pursuit of its goals. A rabbit runs away from a wolf, a bacterium moves towards food, and a drone searches for the shortest path to point “B”. The goal is different, but the principle is the same.

We may be different, but we are also very similar. We have senses, AI has sensors. We have muscles, robots have motor drives. We have neurons, they have transistors. But it’s surprising – we learn in the same way. The brain reinforces beneficial actions, forming habits. AI adjusts “weights” of a neural network, improving its decisions by trial and error.

Moreover, both nature and technology have their own “laws” for controlling behavior. For example, humans and many animals have an inhibitor of violence – a mechanism that prevents us from attacking our fellow beings. Evolution came up with this so that we wouldn’t kill each other off prematurely. And here comes the comparison with Asimov’s “Laws,” which the science fiction writer conceived for robots in 1942: do not harm humans, obey, and do not break down. It’s funny that the writers understood the need for such mechanisms almost simultaneously with Konrad Lorenz’s publications (1935), who first described what we now call the mechanism of inhibiting violence.

If you look even wider, then evolutionary processes in nature and the artificial world are essentially a competition between the best solutions. Natural selection chooses animals who are better adapted. Evolutionary algorithms in AI work exactly the same way, exploring thousands of solution options, selecting the best ones. The fittest will win!

Why is this important for us, libertarians? Because it reminds us once again that all rational beings strive for autonomy and freedom of choice. Whether it’s a human, a bacterium, or AI, we all want to decide what to do next. And that’s really cool because freedom of choice is the best thing nature (and people after it) has come up with.

А что, если заглянуть в будущее чуть глубже? Представьте себе мир, в котором ИИ не только выполняет рутинные задачи, но и реально осознаёт себя, задаёт вопросы и, возможно, требует свободы. Забавно, да? Сегодня это звучит фантастически, но завтра вполне может стать реальностью. Может, и права придётся давать не только людям и животным, но и роботам с настоящим сознанием. А что, если они начнут спорить о налогах, собственности или личных границах? Тогда нас ждут интересные времена! И вот тут уже и нам, либертарианцам, придётся задуматься о расширении понятия личной свободы и ответственности. Может, именно нам предстоит первыми сказать: «Эй, электронный друг, добро пожаловать в клуб!»

А пока мы только размышляем, ИИ уже делает успехи в творчестве, пишет музыку, картины и даже целые романы. Недавно нейросеть написала симфонию в стиле Бетховена, которая впечатлила даже знатоков классики. С роботами уже можно обсудить философию за бокалом вина, или попросить их помочь нам выбрать фильм на вечер. Главное, чтобы они не переборщили и не начали давать нам советы по поводу личной жизни. Впрочем, кто знает, может, советы от ИИ окажутся более объективными и менее предвзятыми?

Кстати, не стоит забывать, что ИИ уже сейчас помогает нам в повседневной жизни, от медицинских диагностик до советов по инвестициям. И чем глубже технологии интегрируются в нашу жизнь, тем важнее становится понимание и уважение к ним. Ведь, в конечном счёте, это взаимовыгодное сотрудничество!

Волюнтарист, Битарх

About One Objection to Panarchy

Here, Georgiy Freeman made an interesting observation about panarchy:

The problem with panarchy as an optimal world order, in my view, lies in the realm of human psychology. It’s predictable that liberal jurisdictions will be more economically successful and materially wealthier than socialist ones. And it will inevitably happen what has already occurred in the world with closed sub-communities like Jewish groups. Unsuccessful, impoverished extraterritorial jurisdictions will invariably blame wealthy liberal jurisdictions for their misfortune: “they parasitize us,” “they rob us,” “they live off our backs.” And this will inevitably lead to irrational conflicts, wars and pogroms. And ultimately, to the destruction of the ECU and panarchy as an idea.

The problem with panarchy as an optimal world order, in my view, lies in the realm of human psychology. It’s predictable that liberal jurisdictions will be more economically successful and materially wealthier than socialist ones. And it will inevitably happen what has already occurred in the world with closed sub-communities like Jewish groups. Unsuccessful, impoverished extraterritorial jurisdictions will invariably blame wealthy liberal jurisdictions for their misfortune: “they parasitize us,” “they rob us,” “they live off our backs.” And this will inevitably lead to irrational conflicts, wars and pogroms. And ultimately, to the destruction of the ECU and panarchy as an idea.

Indeed, on the example of this assumption we see a fascinating phenomenon of human psychology. The answer to the expressed concern is already contained in the description of the concern itself, however it is ignored. “If people will walk down the streets, dressed festively and sending everyone to hell, then they will quickly encounter violence against them, so the institution of walking down the streets will soon be destroyed, as an idea.” But why not just not send everyone to hell.

Similarly, respected G. Freeman suggests paying attention to the disastrous fate of closed extraterritorial sub-entities and immediately prophesies the same fate for open sub-communities. A liberal extraterritorial jurisdiction is not a secret club with seven degrees of initiation, but simply clients of courts and other legal infrastructure working according to liberal norms, namely respect for freedom and private property. Any communist jurisdiction client can enter a liberal jurisdiction if, of course, the communist masters let him out, allocating his due share of public communist property. And if they don’t let him out, then claims will, presumably, not be directed at liberals.

The problem described by G. Frijman is quite typical of prosperous territorial communities with developed redistribution in favor of the poor: the poor, for some reason, strive to infiltrate such communities, and those who have already infiltrated them suddenly stop loving migrants and demand that borders be closed. Of course, after closing the borders, this territorial community begins to be perceived by many neighboring communists as a fattening on neighbors’ accounts, an education that is subject to destruction. However, until there is mandatory social support within this territorial community, there are no problems with migrants in it: they simply flood into it, hoping to earn a living, and many of them succeed.

Your account no longer belongs to you: what’s behind the SMS blocking in Russia

Recent case from Russia: State authorities have begun to mass-filter incoming SMS messages with authorization codes from popular messengers such as Telegram and WhatsApp. This essentially means that if you want to register or even just log back into your account, the code sent to you via SMS will not arrive. Why is this happening?

This is not a fight against fraudsters and spam, as officials claim, but a deliberate attempt by a stationary gangster to completely block Telegram without resorting to crude methods that have repeatedly failed. Telegram has been technically resisting attempts by Roskomnadzor to block it for many years, does not cooperate with the authorities of the Russian Federation on the removal of inconvenient content and does not disclose its user data to them. The state, unable to directly block the application, decided to strike through mobile operators, preventing the sending of authorization codes. A simple and effective (at first glance) tactic: no code – no account. As a result, millions of ordinary users suffered. Authorities traditionally use the argument “concern for citizens” to hide their true goal – obtaining full control over the population’s communication.

It is worth generally asking the question: why is linking to a phone number bad? For authorities, a mobile phone number is like a passport, only digital. It’s difficult to get a SIM card without a passport, and therefore all your online activity is immediately linked to you personally. Moreover, there’s SIM-swapping: fraudsters (or even intelligence services) can reissue your SIM card and gain access to all your accounts. Even using anonymous registration services like Onlinesim – it is not a panacea. These virtual numbers are often flagged by anti-fraud systems and blocked during registration; access recovery to an account is impossible after the rental of a number, there’s also a risk of logging and leaking them to intelligence services.

But what about spam if not through a phone number? Good news – there are many methods, and most of them are better:

1) Captchas and humanity tests. Yes, choosing pictures of buses can be annoying, but it’s better than giving a stationary gangster your personal data.

2) Proof-of-work. A small technical trick: the user’s device silently performs a short mathematical task during registration that requires computing power. This is easy for one person, and hell for mass bots, making their use unprofitable for the attacker.

3) Limiting new accounts. New users cannot immediately send thousands of messages, for example, within 24 hours after registration. Spammers lose interest, and ordinary people don’t even notice it.

4) Reputation system and community moderation. If a lot of complaints about spamming are received against an account, it is blocked.

5) Technical restrictions (by IP, device identifier, browser fingerprints). A good platform can easily detect multiple automated registrations and prevent them.

6) Paid verification in cryptocurrency without revealing your identity. Let spammers pay for their entertainment, and a decent person wouldn’t mind spending a few cents on entry if it guarantees anonymity.

So what to do? Fortunately, the world hasn’t split into two halves on Telegram and WhatsApp. There are messengers created by people who understand the value of privacy.

Session – complete anonymity without a centralized server.
Threema – Swiss confidentiality. The app costs around $5 one-time payment, but it doesn’t require a number or even an e-mail.
Briar – Even if they cut off your internet, it will find your neighbor via Bluetooth, which is very important for protest participants.

Why is this important to all of us? Freedom of communication is the most basic condition of any freedom. In a world where states are trying to tie every person to their phone number with digital handcuffs, any attempt to maintain anonymity becomes a small revolution. And remember: either you control your data and your identity, or the state will do it for you!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Novemberish

I am currently experiencing a period of some confusion, I don’t know where to best apply my efforts. Not having a ready answer, I simply want to discuss this openly in the post, hoping something will occur to me during the process, and perhaps the readers will offer suggestions too.

Let’s briefly review the past. Since 2018, I have publicly been disseminating libertarian theory, while simultaneously mastering it and filling in gaps where I found them. Since 2021, the theory has become supplemented with practice, and we began building a libertarian community in Montenegro. In 2022 something happened, and respectable Russian emigrants became those upon whom it’s convenient to vent complexes. In 2024 something else happened, and anti-migrant rhetoric began to gain mainstream traction worldwide. At the close of 2025 in Montenegro we have preparations for government to sharply tighten conditions for foreign nationals’ legal stay and readiness of Russians to a mass exodus from the country towards Serbia primarily.

What should I personally do within this entire situation?

There’s a path that Montelibero is pursuing. It has re-qualified as an international movement and now manifests mainly online, with occasional offline activity shifting to Serbia, Georgia and Argentina. I’m already distanced from this movement, because it’s hard for me to understand what’s going on within it and what place makes sense for me to occupy.

There is a spontaneously emerging movement in Montenegro advocating for immigrant rights, covering today three diaspora: Russian, German and Turkish. This is new for me and quite insightful. Russians are still organized worse than everyone within this situational alliance, aside from the Serbs, of whom there are more in Montenegro, but they do not consider themselves true immigrants and possibly think that all these tightening conditions are not written for them. However, the movement attracts local citizens who realize that without immigrants, the country will be very difficult.

There is an obvious route – within about a year to relocate non-hurriedly to Serbia and settle there, and to cease all black Montenegrin activities. For me this means withdrawing previously made investments from Montenegro, finding funds for earning on a new place, forming a new community of communication and mutual assistance. The same could be done with Georgia, but learning Georgian after Serbian – it’s obviously a significant challenge.

In any case, my priorities have changed quite a bit. I don’t really feel like investing in online communities anymore because economic connections are more important than ideological ones. It doesn’t matter that there’s another powerful libertarian festival happening somewhere in New Hampshire, or another major conference in Prague, or another significant reform taking place in Argentina – it won’t directly benefit me. But a good auto mechanic will be useful to me, even if he doesn’t particularly understand praxisology. You need to be friends with him, drink kofu with him, jointly defend your rights and, where possible, bring him some benefit besides just paying for the service, because local communities are held together by exactly these kinds of mutual services.

And also, I need to remember that practice makes perfect, but generally speaking, my strongest trait is precisely the theoretical understanding of how the current world is structured, from a libertarian ideological perspective. These musings don’t feed me directly, but subjectively they seem most important to me. Are they in demand among channel readers? It’s hard to say.

Around Progress in 80 Days: How Technology is Changing the World Using Only What Already Exists at Hand

I was recently idly watching the film based on Jules Verne’s novel, “Around the World in Eighty Days,” and realized a thought that perfectly fits our picture of the world. What do the gentleman Phileas Fogg and, say, Steve Jobs have in common? It seems like nothing. One is a fictional character from the Victorian era, the other is a real titan of Silicon Valley. But the point is that both pulled off a brilliant trick that’s available to each of us. And they didn’t need endless government grants or major scientific centers for this.

What was Fogg’s genius? Did he invent super-fast steamboats? Build a personal hyperloop? No! This guy didn’t invent anything himself. His bet became possible only because, by 1872, the world was already covered with ready infrastructure. Steamships were running, rails had been laid across America and India, telegraphs were buzzing. All of this was created by different people, different companies, at different times and for different purposes.

What did Fogg do? He simply looked at all these disparate pieces and first saw in them a single system. He didn’t just see “the ship to Suez” and “the train to Calcutta,” but a global transport network that could be “hacked”—that is, used not for its intended purpose (just getting from point A to point B), but for a crazy, ambitious task—flying around the planet on a bet. His breakthrough was in the new combination, not in a new invention. He was, essentially, a brilliant project manager who found synergy in what everyone else had lying under their feet.

And now let’s move to our time. Don’t we see the same thing happening with the greatest breakthroughs of the last 50 years? For example, the personal computer. It wasn’t an invention of something single. It was a brilliant combination of existing things: microprocessors, hard drives, monitors, keyboards, mice. The breakthrough was in the idea of putting it all together and placing it on a desk for an ordinary person. Or the internet—just a set of common rules (protocols), the language that already existing computers had agreed to communicate with each other. Genius was in creating this “language,” this universal interface. Don’t forget about smartphones. Steve Jobs, during the presentation of the first iPhone, said: “This isn’t one device. It’s three: a phone, a widescreen player, and an internet communicator.” Apple didn’t invent mobile communication, touchscreen displays, or GPS. They took the best that was already on the market, brilliantly combined it into one body, wrote intuitive software, and gave us the Swiss Army knife of the digital age.

The most important thing is that such breakthroughs don’t require an accelerator or a NASA budget. What’s needed is freedom of thought, observation, and the right to experiment. You, the reader of this post, can come up with tomorrow how to combine two known technologies and get something that will change the world.

What prevents this most of all? Of course, the good old bureaucracy. Imagine if Foggu had to get a visa for every border crossing, like residents of many countries with “weak” passports? He’d still be filling out an application somewhere in Mumbai. It’s state regulation, with its passion for “organizing,” “certifying,” and “checking,” that kills the very flexibility and speed needed for combinatorial breakthroughs. While officials are writing regulations on using drones to deliver pizza, free enthusiasts are already figuring out how to use those same drones and neural networks to monitor forest fires.

So, friends, the next great breakthrough is probably already here – just in the form of disparate parts. All the necessary technologies, services, and ideas are already on the table. What’s more, our project to find drugs to enhance violence inhibition was achieved with minimal means by analyzing existing neuroscience research and re-checking widely available animal drugs. And between you and me, ethology doesn’t end on the problem of violence, nor do our studies!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Why do Western professors and scientists not understand that the world does not revolve around their cozy campus?

Imagine you’re reading some hefty academic journal from Harvard or Oxford, and suddenly there’s a brilliant council like: “to reduce crime, we need to increase the work of police and social organizations,” or “when confronted with violence, boldly turn to court.” It all looks logical. But what if you don’t live in Basel or Silicon Valley, but in some country in Latin America, Africa, or the post-Soviet space? Going to court to achieve justice would then be like going to a casino – only with even smaller chances of winning.

The thing is, most academics publishing in prestigious journals live in prosperous and well-off countries, and they’re often representatives of what’s called the “crème de la crème” – that is, people from the highest social layers of their countries. And they genuinely believe that the rest of the world is arranged similarly. Their worldview resembles an old anecdote: “Why don’t poor people eat pastries if there’s no bread?”

Western academics often don’t understand that in most of the world, police aren’t your friend and helper, courts are places where righteousness doesn’t win, but a thicker wallet or closer connections to power do, and social organizations, at best, exist for embezzlement. As a result, the articles from academics are about as useful as the advice “just don’t be sad” to someone with depression. Scientists constantly forget that many of their theories are based on the experience of people from “strange Western educated industrialized rich and democratic” countries – which is often abbreviated WEIRD. And indeed, this is an exception when considered on a global scale!

For example, Western studies often propose to strengthen regulation and control over the spread of information to defeat fake news. This idea may even seem good to people with mainstream political views in Scandinavia, because they trust their local government. But in some place like Nigeria, such a law would be used gladly to silence opposition and shut down media outlets that don’t please those in power.

Another excellent example is bioethics. Western experts in articles on the topic of moral amplification often write that this cannot be applied even to brutal murderers as long as they voluntarily agree to amplify their aggression inhibitor. And sometimes the very idea of studying the biology of behavior is rejected. They think it “violates human rights” and is “ethically unacceptable.” Of course, it’s easy to think like that if you live in a cozy apartment in Boston or Oslo – you just call the police and the aggressor will be taken away under armed guard. But in a huge number of countries it doesn’t work that way. There is no police or courts capable of actually protecting against domestic violence or bullying. Ultimately, it turns out that adding drugs to an aggressor to amplify their aggression inhibitor, for example, in food, is often the only accessible way to stop the violence and literally save their life or health.

Why is this important to us, libertarians? Because this Western “academic blindness” plays into the hands of the state and regulation. Scientists from prosperous countries are used to considering the state a reliable protector and helper, so in their research and recommendations they constantly demand even more regulation, control, and funding from it. But in countries with corrupt bureaucracy, these advice works exactly the opposite: more regulation – more repression.

If we really want to help people outside of the cozy Western world, we should admit: less state and more freedom is the only realistic path. Local communities and free initiative solve problems more effectively than officials who sit in distant offices and have never encountered real life. And for now, we should pay close attention to those who offer to “increase control,” especially if they do it from comfortable offices in prosperous countries, because in the real world everything is much more complicated.

Voluntary, Bitarch

A subscriber tossed in a topic for reflection

Written by Alexander Elitsur.

I am trying in every way to get through to our OLs with my idea of the PRB, but it’s not going very well. I specifically went to the Adam Smith readings, which you commented on so wonderfully, in order to meet someone at the afterparty. No one but Topolev was there, and even he was in a hurry, so we couldn’t really talk. I caught Kyneva after his speech, but it was also useless—a petty, spiteful, stubborn little shit. I’m not great with donations, but I hope you will read this and answer something. About the electoral system and about the concept of the PRB (Beautiful Republic of the Future😉) in general.

Read it. Answering something.

The author of the question proposes a rather detailed blueprint for the constitutional structure of Russia, asserting that something along these lines could quite well be implemented as soon as Putin kicks the bucket. In some ways, this echoes a recently published article for “Fronda” about democracy, where I point out that power must be carefully broken into small pieces, without granting anyone full authority, and the boundaries of powers must be made as clear as possible; however, this still won’t help, and a democratic republic is doomed to slide into tyranny—well, you all know these further banalities about watering the tree of Liberty and similar high agrarian technologies of the Ancients.

And now I want to talk about something else. It is possible and necessary to disagree with one another. It is foolish and unworthy to refuse to understand others. It is dangerous to oversimplify one’s understanding of others, although this certainly saves mental effort. Call Kyneva a spiteful shit, Bitarch a schizo-fascist, Svetov a pedophile—and the world becomes simple and orderly, except that such a picture of the world will be irrelevant. In it, all of a person’s actions end up subordinated to the label that has been slapped on them. One can also slap labels on entire nations; this is just frighteningly convenient. Let the Russians be orcs, the Ukrainians stupid peasants, the Serbs orcs, the Montenegrins stupid peasants, the Croats orcs, the Americans stupid peasants, the Chinese orcs… Well, in general, we have a huge wealth of labels; there is enough for everyone.

If a label has been slapped on you, it can be useful to turn to the other side so that another label is slapped on you; then at least some stereo appears, some volume, some space for discussion. If you are presenting your beautiful model of the Beautiful Mordor of the Future, and the listeners for some reason are not impressed, you can, for example, ask your interlocutor how they envision the desired structure of the future global concentration camp, and what they prefer on the menu: freedom of immigration or universal basic income? And if both, then what will we season it with: commodity shortages or hyperinflation? Or you could even avoid mocking the obvious flaws of the proposed model and, instead, speak of the overall picture respectfully, emphasizing that there is something in common between your visions of the world order, and why not start building a productive interaction around this common ground. For example, one could find some kinship between the proposed model of a federative Russian republic according to Elitsur and the Hoppean model of a thousand Liechtensteins, and, having highlighted the commonalities, start considering whether there are any fundamental disagreements between the models, or if it’s basically a matter of taste and one shouldn’t cling too tightly to the details.

In general, if one were to take an example of how a certain complex of ideas is spread, I like the experience of the Jesuits: those guys learned languages and learned to convey their concepts using the local cultural code. I love syncretism.

I apologize to the wide circle of readers for the somewhat rambling nature of this post—I simply do not understand the person I am answering well enough, so I am just sighting in.

Why is violence bad, even if you are a cynical realist?

Многие согласятся, что насилие — это плохо. Но сегодня мы обойдёмся без подобных банальностей, а вместо этого поговорим с теми, кто думает: «Окей, иногда без насилия не обойтись. Мир жесток, правила придумывают слабые, сильный всегда прав…». Но что, если отказ от насилия — это не розовые единороги, а прагматичное условие выживания человечества?

Для начала нужно понимать, что мы неплохо вооружены для разумных обезьян. И речь не только о ядерных ракетах. Сейчас даже один фанатик с доступом к самой дешёвой современной лаборатории может оказаться пострашнее армии Чингисхана. Эту мысль давно уже мусолят серьёзные ребята типа Стивена Хокинга и Карла Сагана. Они намекают на тот самый «Великий фильтр»: момент, когда цивилизации либо учатся жить без агрессии, либо превращаются в радиоактивный пепел. Многих особенно страшит угроза создания биотеррористами искусственных смертоносных патогенов в подвальной лаборатории. И риск самоуничтожения растёт с каждым новым изобретением.

«Может стоит тогда зарегулировать, а то и вовсе запретить опасные технологии!» — кричит общественность и чиновники после очередного теракта или громкого убийства. Но это тупик. Новые лекарства? Запретить, опасно! Искусственный интеллект? Только с лицензией госорганов! Генетические исследования? Слишком рискованно, лучше вообще не трогать!

В итоге прогресс замедляется, экономика буксует, а мы всё ближе к сценарию, где нам нечем лечить болезни, нечем бороться с голодом и нечем отправить людей на Марс, когда Земля устанет от нас окончательно.

Мир как одна большая очередь в аэропорту, в которой обязательно нужно отстоять несколько часов. Почему? Потому что кто-то когда-то попытался взорвать самолёт. Каждый акт насилия порождает всё больше контроля, рамок, камер, проверок и слежки. Если так пойдёт и дальше, то скоро мы будем жить в мире, где на выход из дома нужно будет три справки и четыре пропуска. Жизнь превращается в бесконечный квест: «Докажи, что ты не террорист».

Ещё одна проблема – домашнее насилие. Семья, в которой есть насилие, порождает травмированных людей. Статистически дети из таких семей намного чаще других сами становятся либо жертвами, либо агрессорами. Насилие в семьях — это не просто личная проблема. Это бомба замедленного действия, которая однажды рванёт уже на уровне всего общества.

Насилие – это прямая дорога к тоталитаризму. Каждый раз, когда граждане в панике бегут к государству с криком: «Защитите нас любой ценой!», появляется кто-то очень сильный и властный, очередной диктатор, который с удовольствием «наведёт порядок». Правда жизни такова: чем больше насилия в обществе, тем сильнее становится государство, а чем сильнее государство, тем больше насилия оно производит само. Помним – подавляющее большинство убитых в истории людей погибли от рук государственных армий, а не частных бандитов.

Violence is costing us too dearly. Crime, prisons, the police, cameras, guards, alarms – all this costs us billions of dollars that could have gone to schools, hospitals, salaries and roads. For scale: in 2022, humanity spent approximately $17.5 trillion fighting the consequences of violence—about 13% of global GDP. Imagine what could have been done with those funds! Violence is a hidden tax on each of us.

Violence breaks people. In a country where the norm in the 90s was “to squeeze” stalls, many still nervously go out into the street at night. The problem isn’t just about pain and death; it’s also about the stress that slowly eats away at health, psyche and even immunity. If you constantly fear an attack, you live less and worse. Violence kills us in the literal sense, even when we are not its direct victims.

Finally, violence destroys trust. Where violence thrives, people stop trusting each other, business fears to invest, and children are afraid to play on the street. A world where you can’t trust anyone is a world of lonely, unhappy people. And that’s not what we strive for, is it?

Voluntarist, Bitarch