Read and Die: How Long Contracts Steal Your Life

Do you know what your mortgage papers, a smartphone license agreement, and a devil’s contract with fine print from a bank have in common? Exactly: it’s impossible to read and understand them without sacrificing a couple of years of your life and your nerve cells. Let’s be honest: this is no accident. This is the theft of your time and your right to a conscious choice!

Today, an ordinary contract with a bank looks like the Joker’s villainous plan: a thousand pages, pretentious language, “asterisks,” and fine print. They convince you that “this is how it has to be,” and then they act surprised: “Didn’t you read on page 843 that the rate is floating and can triple?” Remember the 2008 mortgage crisis? Millions of people signed contracts with “floating rates.” Most didn’t even imagine what that meant. And the result? When the refinancing rate skyrocketed, families ended up on the street, and the global economy plummeted into a severe depression.

And do you know what the scariest part is? According to informal polls, a significant number of people think that if a mortgage rate is 20%, it means the apartment will be 20% more expensive in total, not 20% more every year. If such elementary things are unclear to many, how can we expect them to tackle a thousand-page contract that even specialists struggle to read?

Other examples of unfair contracts:

– Insurance where almost nothing is covered because page 58 mentions “exclusions.”
– A software license that gives a company the right to track your activities on the device.
– A mobile plan with “unlimited internet” where the speed drops to almost zero after the first 10 GB.
– Employment contracts that forbid you from working in the same field after resignation so that you don’t create unnecessary competition.

Let’s call things by their real names: this is not a voluntary agreement. This is fraud disguised in legal language. It’s the same as if you were sold a car that explodes on its own after a year, simply because somewhere on page 287 it was written in fine print: “Warning, may explode!”.

I propose a simple rule: any contract longer than 4,000 words or written in language that an average person wouldn’t understand on the first try is null and void. It’s simple. If you can’t fit it into a couple of clear screens, it means you want to hide something. Hid it? The contract doesn’t work. This applies to everyone—even banks, even mortgages. Imagine a bank decides to sneakily insert a clause about raising the rate on page 999? Congratulations, the apartment is yours; you don’t need to pay more. It’s their own fault—they wanted to fleece a person of their time and nerves, now they pay the price of justice!

By the way, even now in many countries with an independent judicial system, there is a chance to create a precedent for the nullity of a contract, even a mortgage. One could refer specifically to the theft of time and fraud, as the bank consciously provided a contract that an ordinary person without specialized education could not understand, despite their best efforts.
An idea for the future: create a community of auditors who issue a “simplicity badge” (analogous to an SSL certificate). If you see such a badge, you can be sure the contract is clear and contains no hidden traps.

All of this would be a return to the essence of voluntary exchange: people must understand what they are agreeing to. If a person spends half their life trying to understand what they’ve agreed to, it’s no longer a free market, but legalized racketeering. The world would only change for the better after this. Banks and companies would begin to compete for the clarity and transparency of their contracts. The market would be cleared of parasites who feed on incomprehensible papers. And finally, people would reclaim the right to a conscious choice, and therefore, their freedom!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Libertarian Theory of War, Section 3.1.1.

I have started writing the third part of the book on libertarian war theory. So far, not even a full chapter is ready, but only one section, and the style has mutated somewhat compared to the first two parts, so I would like your opinion on how well it harmonizes with the content. Plus, I finally gave in to the current trend and am now illustrating texts with neural networks. This book will be filled with illustrations in the style of red-figure Hellenic vase painting. Gradually, I will add images to other chapters as well.

How the state helps hackers steal our data

Some might think that security regulation is a necessary pursuit for society. However, in reality, because of the actions of regulators, the exact opposite happens—endless security checks and reports, which are supposed to protect us, actually do the reverse. Companies spend insane amounts of money and a ton of time just to appear secure in the eyes of officials. Consequently, there is neither the energy, the nerves, nor the budget left for actual data protection. The result? Another hack, another leak.

For example, take 23andMe. These cool guys do DNA tests so you can find out that you are 3% Mongol, 5% Swedish, and 92% an ordinary person who simply has nothing to do on a Friday night. You would think they would guard the data like Fort Knox. Yet, the year before last, hackers pulled nearly half of all user data, and now millions of genetic profiles are floating around the internet.

Think this is an exception? No, it’s more of a rule. Take our Sber. You’d expect a major bank, with stricter laws and constant reporting requirements, to be secure. And then—bam—a data leak of 52 million customers. And that’s just from the “Spasibo” loyalty program. Apparently, the customers said “thank you” to the bank, but someone decided that “you’re welcome” meant letting their data scatter across the darknet.

But that’s not all. Remember Yandex.Eda? There was a downright anecdotal case there: they delivered a pizza to someone in the secret apartment of an FSB officer. A data leak from the service revealed the addresses of famous people and security force employees. Thus, the state accidentally stepped on its own tail. It was almost funny, but not for those whose addresses became public.

Why does this happen? Because regulators love checking boxes. They adore paperwork and reports. A hypothetical Vasya from the security department spends 70% of his time on reporting and only 30% on fighting real threats. Then hackers break the defense that no one had time to strengthen while Vasya was trying to figure out how to fill out another form for Roskomnadzor. It becomes a vicious cycle: hacked → fine → even more reports → hacked again.

And the state only adds fuel to the fire. Remember the “Yarovaya Law”? Telecom companies are forced to store giant volumes of data, spending billions of rubles. Now guess who is salivating while looking at these massive data arrays? Exactly—hackers. Because gathering all of this in one place is like putting a huge safe in the middle of the city and hanging a note: “Dear thieves, there are valuables here; we aren’t guarding them because the money went toward buying the safe.”

Of course, the picture is roughly the same in the USA. Medical data leaks there have already become a national sport. So many records were leaked last year that you could give several to every American. The hack of Equifax, the credit history giant, is a “genre classic.” 147 million records fell into the hands of criminals, and the company received a $700 million fine. Imagine how much security could have been improved if that money had been put to work in advance, rather than into paperwork and fines? The moral here is simple: the more a stationary bandit forcibly “protects” our data, the more often that data is lost.

So, what should be done? Probably force companies less to spend their energy on pointless paperwork. Instead of hundreds of mandatory checks, let there be one clear standard: “Protect the data or pay—but not with reports, with money.” And the companies will find the best way themselves. Otherwise, it’s like the joke about the elephant in a china shop: the state stomps around, the dishes break, and the elephant is, of course, to blame. Therefore, it is necessary to stick to simple and clear rules. Regulators come and go anyway, but for some reason, our data remains wandering the network forever!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Which moral values are psychopaths more prone to reject

According to the definition by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, morality is a set of interrelated values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolutionarily developed psychological (neurobiological) mechanisms that work together to constrain or regulate personal interests and make cooperative communities possible. Haidt also identifies five distinct moral foundations:

1) Harm/care — this foundation represents concerns about the violence and suffering of others, including compassion and care;
2) Fairness/reciprocity — represents norms of reciprocal relationships, equality, rights, and justice;
3) In-group/loyalty — covers moral obligations associated with group membership, such as loyalty, betrayal, and preferential treatment of in-group members compared to out-group members;
4) Authority/respect — represents moral obligations associated with hierarchical relationships, such as obedience, duty, respect for authority, and the protection of subordinates;
5) Purity/sanctity — represents the moral ideal of a sublime, noble, and less carnal life, based on an intuition of divinity, a sense of moral disgust, and the purity of body, mind, and soul.

The first two foundations can be called individualizing, as they are aimed at protecting the well-being and interests of separate individuals. The remaining foundations are binding, as they are primarily aimed at some group interest. And what is important for us to know now is how psychopaths—more specifically, individuals with high scores in primary psychopathy, consisting of traits such as callousness, indifference, and a lack of empathy toward others, and a tendency to manipulate and harm them in pursuit of their own interests—relate to various moral foundations.

Regarding the connection between binding foundations and psychopathic predispositions, research usually shows either a positive correlation or no correlation at all, which is not a definitive result. However, what can be said for certain about psychopathic individuals is that they have a relatively greater preference for binding moral foundations than for individualizing ones. Empathic motivation lies at the heart of individualizing moral foundations. Psychopathic individuals, naturally, have problems with this—they are little concerned with things like causing harm and suffering to people, reciprocity in relationships, etc. Accordingly, research shows that high psychopathic predispositions are followed by a decrease in a person’s preference for individualizing foundations.

This is very important to consider when promoting ideas aimed at expanding human freedoms and reducing harm to people, such as libertarianism. Psychopathic individuals are less likely to embrace such ideas; or, if they do, it will be only in extremely distorted forms that allow for violent attacks on people, intentional harm, and the violation of their rights in the pursuit of certain interests (primarily their own). Again, psychologically, they are not particularly concerned with the problem of causing harm to people, and their morality will be structured accordingly, permitting such behavior.

Sources:

  1. Kirrane, M., Farqan, A., Cloak, E. (2024). Exploring a paradox: Psychopathy, Morality and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour.
  2. Glenn, A. L., Iyer, R., Graham, J., Koleva, S., Haidt, J. (2009). Are All Types of Morality Compromised in Psychopathy?
  3. Esser, M. (2022). An Investigation into whether psychopathic traits negatively contribute to moral judgements.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Right of Way

I listened to the debates on the subject that took place on August 10th on the “Gorbushka Istorii” channel. Boris Strannik, who defended his invented concept of the right of way, and Alexei Sherstnev, who opposed him, were the discussants.

I will admit my bias right away. I like Boris. When he was in Montenegro for a few months, we met; he stayed at my house for about a week. It didn’t go beyond kissing, but nevertheless, he left me with the most positive impression. I dislike Alexei. He used to be rude and dogmatic, so I removed him from my echo chamber quite quickly, especially since there was no ideological novelty in his views, meaning there were no reasons to tolerate his tone. Therefore, I will not comment on who was more convincing in the debates.

Next, I want to note one point in the debates, simply because I was mentioned there. One of the listeners asked the opponents what “right” (pravo) is. Alexei formulated a rather confused idea of right as a spontaneous order of human interaction, clearly drawn from Zolotovrev (I prefer to operate with a narrower concept of right as a spontaneous order of conflict resolution, to separate it from morality as a spontaneous order of entering into conflicts). Boris, however, began to speak not about “right” (law/pravo) but about “rights” (prava), and quoted my definition: “rights are claims that have been accepted.” Only he said it in the singular. And, naturally, when the moderator summarized his impressions of the debates, he said he was appalled that Boris gave some irrelevant slogan instead of a definition. Here we have a banal misunderstanding related to the features of the Russian language, in which “right” and “law” are expressed by the same word “pravo.” The debaters understood the question differently, and the moderator didn’t even grasp what was happening. Well, it happens.

I will not say more about the debates; you can listen to them yourselves and form your own impression. I would rather reflect on the concept of the right of way itself.

After Montenegro, Boris visited several other countries and is currently living in South America. In Uruguay, he saw countless latifundia enclosed with barbed wire and realized that, although the country is not small, one can effectively only walk along the roads—no cozy paths through fields and woodlands. He began to reflect on this within the framework of libertarian ideology and reached certain conclusions.

Originally, the entire surface of the earth is unowned. When someone, according to the homesteading principle, appropriates a plot of land for use, they acquire the right to the resource they use for their economic activity—but not an absolute property right to everything located in the area of space limited by rays from the center of the Earth passing through the boundaries of the land plot and extending to infinity (this is the purely geometric approach to drawing land property boundaries that Alexei Sherstnev defended in the debates). But by acquiring the right to dig in the soil, he does not automatically acquire the right to forbid anyone from moving across that land. At most, he can insist on a certain penalty for the destruction of crops and similar specific measurable costs. The right to move in space belongs to every person according to the same homesteading principle—simply by the fact that they love it, know how to do it, practice it, and cannot exercise their self-ownership without it. A ban on movement is traditionally called deprivation of liberty, so why on earth does some latifundist deprive people of liberty? These are roughly the arguments in favor of the existence of an unconditional right of way.

What proposals does Boris make next, having presented arguments for the existence of such a right? In essence, it is about changing the defaults. If existing legal systems that provide for private land ownership assume by default the owner’s right to impose a ban on movement across their property, and then specify certain exceptions where the owner must still provide the right of way—then now a reverse scheme is proposed. By default, the landowner does not have the right to prohibit passage through their territory, however, they can present various grounds why in a specific case a ban is nonetheless appropriate.

Boris is quite radical, stating approximately the following: yes, a landowner can physically enclose themselves with a wall, but they cannot thereby steal from other people the right to pass through the wall-enclosed area: they can climb over the wall and continue moving. If the space is covered by a roof, then that’s great—the traveler will simply move across the roof; thus, their right of way is not infringed. And whatever is under the roof is already fully private. Generally speaking, exactly such a legal system existed long ago in the Neolithic settlement at the site of present-day Çatalhöyük: houses are built tightly together, and the roofs of the houses are public space. Thus, Boris’s legal intuition finds direct reflection in history.

Of course, supporters of full private property have their own arguments: the right of way is too easy to abuse. Once you allow the possibility of moving across someone else’s territory without permission and without compensation, tomorrow you could organize a flash mob on the lawn in front of an unpleasant person’s house, trample the flowerbeds, and so on, not to mention the constant stomping on the roof. But since rights (claims that have been accepted) are merely a generalization of principles that allow for the implementation of right (a spontaneous order of conflict resolution), constructive compromises are entirely possible between those who defend the right to prohibit trespassing and those who defend the right of way. They boil down to the landowner agreeing to a limited right of way if those passing through minimize the inconveniences caused to the landowner, and perhaps even compensate for them. The landowner, in turn, takes measures to simplify passage across their land: by laying paths. Why? First, a path organizes the flow of people, reducing the load on the rest of the territory. Second, the landowner’s appeal to the fact of providing a path is a strong moral demand in favor of limiting passage to the path specifically, and in some cases—in favor of charging a fee for passage (more often for driving).

However, for such practices to spread more widely, it is indeed necessary to change the presumption from “forbidden by default” to “allowed by default,” and here Boris is likely right. I will add that changing presumptions in this direction also prepares the ground for a future ancap, where all land becomes private. Just as the abolition of state social welfare forces people to be more responsible regarding the prevention of life’s difficulties, the abolition of the concept of state-owned public land will force people to approach the issues of freedom of movement more consciously.

Stop fearing meteorites!

Imagine a person who puts on a ski suit on a hot summer day because “what if it snows?” Yes, safety is important, but if you over-insure yourself always and everywhere, you risk looking strange at best, and suffering from heatstroke at worst. Of course, as libertarians, we adore freedom of choice and personal responsibility. But when it comes to designing a product, a policy, or another “revolutionary” startup, many suddenly turn into apostles of insurance against the universal flood, literally screaming: “What if a meteorite hits? Let’s urgently triple the budget for a titanium dome!”.

But let’s try it! The problem? Resources are finite. If you pour everything into one parameter, others shrink like a student before final exams. As in the classic tale of the fortress: you can build walls two meters thick, or you can dig a moat, or you can maintain a garrison. Do everything at once? Only if you have the bank account of Saudi Arabia. For everyone else, it is an inevitable choice of only one option.

Evolution explained the rule of balance long ago. Look at the peacock: the tail is glamorous, but it flies like a sack of potatoes. The peacock invested its “evolutionary points” in marketing rather than in the R&D of migratory aviation. Or the ostrich: it gave up fighter-jet wings, but in exchange, it runs like a Formula 1 car. To each their own, but none of them tried to be Batman and Superman simultaneously—it’s too expensive.

Now let’s move from the savannah to the modern world. Take, for example, government structures that love to “play it safe.” In the pursuit of total security and control, they create cumbersome laws and regulations, turning life into a bureaucratic hell. The result? The economy becomes “heavier,” less agile, and the citizens become unhappy. All resources go toward fighting imaginary and rarely occurring risks, while startups flee to neighboring jurisdictions where they are allowed to make mistakes—and grow.

It’s the same song in business. Companies that are afraid to take risks and spend all their strength and money on insurance and re-insurance almost never become market leaders. They are overtaken by those who know how to take reasonable risks and understand that it’s impossible to prepare for everything at once. Want absolute server uptime? Pour money into redundancy, like into a “breakthrough” NFT in the winter of 2021. But be prepared that nothing will be left for UX, marketing, and salaries.

While you are building a bunker for a zombie apocalypse, your competitors are quietly conquering the market. And if the apocalypse does happen, it might look quite different from what you expected. And to hell with it—let the zombies worry now about how to deal with entrepreneurs who are used to taking risks and adapting faster than anyone else!

Of course, you cannot “ignore risks.” Calculating and considering them is very important. But do not become slaves to a single nightmare. The paradox: the more you cling to the “worst-case” scenario, the closer the “second-worst” scenario sails in—the one for which there was neither time nor nerves. The main thing is to remember the balance. Preparing for the worst-case scenario is useful and perhaps even necessary, but if you bet only on that, there is a great chance you will miss a mass of opportunities and be left with nothing. Life, economics, evolution—these are all games with limited resources. Success awaits those who understand that it is impossible to be ready for absolutely everything.

So there’s no need to wear a foil helmet; it’s better to check the weather, choose a moderate sunscreen, and go ahead—start building. Yes, you might get splashed by the first puddle. But the alternative is living in a spacesuit, where you can’t even drink coffee. And if a meteorite does happen to fall tomorrow… at least we lived the day without extra titanium on our heads.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Capitalist Transutopia

Alex Rozov, author of the Meganesian cycle, began in his LiveJournal preliminary inquiries into how he might best write a capitalist transutopia—that is, a realistic positive picture of pure capitalism, the processes that led to it, and the processes that make it sustainable. I have serious doubts that he will succeed, because his understanding of the market does not seem entirely adequate to me. Roughly speaking, he will be inclined to think about the market more according to Marx than according to Mises. The crowd grazing in his comments is more likely to exacerbate his problems, because, as usual, it is full of choice Hobbesians who believe humanity to be thoroughly depraved and in need of a strong regulator, without which people would, of course, devour each other.

Also interesting is a certain passage set forth by one of his commenters, with which the author generally agreed:

“Professional” supporters of capitalism (writing in popular analytical media) gloss over real capitalism.

“Unprofessional” ones (participating in online flame wars) imagine a picture-book capitalism—or rather, not capitalism at all, but some phantom feudalism interspersed with farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers with primitively structured family businesses.

Real capitalism, however (in which the main players are large companies with pyramids of bureaucracy, complex ownership relations, unspoken deals between top managers and majority shareholders, and even more complex relations with financial-banking and state systems) is unacceptable to the “unprofessionals.” Such capitalism seems (suddenly) to them to be a “leftist distortion of capitalism.”

In short, the state is considered by them to be an indispensable, inevitable, and inherent attribute of capitalism, which accordingly makes all ancap ideas, for them, mere picture-book images that cannot have any relation to reality.

Mikhail Svetov once promised to write a book about libertarianism and flaked. I had to take it upon myself and write my own. Vladimir Zolotorev complained about the lack of a libertarian theory of war; I had to start thinking in that direction as well. Now, it seems, I will also have to compose some sort of fictional text about what one of the many possible embodiments of ancap looks like. I am currently in the bargaining stage: well, maybe I should wait a bit, and perhaps Alex will write something passable after all—he is a prolific author, he even wrote about a cesspit cleaner under communism, so why shouldn’t he solve this new problem, and I won’t have to take up something I’m not good at.

But just in case Rozov doesn’t deliver, or the result matches my current low expectations, I am starting to think about how to do something of my own. My strengths are a sense of style, conciseness, and analytical abilities. My weaknesses are difficulty keeping a broad vision in mind and a poor imagination; that is why my creative work consists of short posts on specific topics assigned by others. However, what is required here is a fairly voluminous fictional text.

Most likely, a passable solution would be a cycle of stories. A sort of Montelliberian cycle as a counterpoint to the Meganesian one. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it yet. It’s scary to dive into these waters.

Stefan Molynieux, Practical Anarchy, translation of chapter 24

The final version of the translation of another chapter of Practical Anarchy by Stephan Molinari is ready, this time concerning healthcare. In principle, the structure of the chapter is already quite familiar: an analysis of the current statist picture, followed by a description of how it would all look in a stateless market society. Unlike the situation with roads and similar infrastructure, here it was necessary to add a touch of socialism in the form of charity, without which purely commercial healthcare could present unsightly images of the poor dying by the fence. However, charity does not need the state, so this does not disrupt the coherence of the constructions.

From Napoleon to a ban: the route of a toxic commenter

We all know this kind of character: sitting behind a screen at 3 a.m., and they just won’t settle down. They leave a caustic comment with few or no actual arguments, check if they’ve been answered, reply even more causticly, and so on ad infinitum. It seems they don’t even need coffee anymore—they are energized by pure indignation.

Why is it important to pay attention to this? Network trolls are not just bored thrill-seekers. In reality, these are people with a whole set of psychological “special effects.” Psychologists have long found that internet trolls often possess a whole bouquet of unpleasant traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and even sadism. Such a “commenter” usually has an overly inflated ego; they believe themselves to be absolutely right and smarter than everyone else. Trying to prove something to such a person is the same as explaining etiquette rules to a cat: you can try, but the result is predictable.

Such trolls couldn’t care less about the feelings of others, but they love infuriating people and watching them suffer. They are like emotional vampires who feed on your indignation. And the most interesting part is that they often develop a peculiar addiction. Every new comment, every reaction from the “victim,” is pure dopamine for them. The troll throws out the “bait” and waits for a reaction, like a fisherman at dawn. That explains why they literally live in the comments: their self-esteem and enjoyment of life directly depend on how many people they manage to anger today. Interestingly, according to research, narcissism is linked to social media addiction.

Their obsessive need to have the last word in an argument reaches the point of absurdity. Even if everyone has long since gone home, the troll will return and write one more comment. Because they must. Because they can. And the trolls’ main trump card is anonymity. While in real life one could easily lose friends and be ostracized, there are no consequences online. The troll is protected by a nickname, an avatar, and the ability to create a few dozen more fake accounts. They are like James Bond in the world of forums: no one knows their face, and they always return.

Why do some people engage in endless trolling? There are many options. For example, such people usually have little power in their real lives. However, in the comments, they can feel like Napoleon—even if their “empire” is limited to a couple of discussions on Telegram. For some, trolling is like an extreme sport; they are simply bored living without drama. And sometimes, personal grudges are the cause. If the neighbors didn’t let them sleep peacefully, now they won’t let the entire internet sleep peacefully.

An interesting nuance: many trolls mask their behavior as freedom of speech. They love to say, “I’m just expressing my opinion!” But there is a huge chasm between constructive criticism and aggressive trolling. Freedom of speech is the right to express one’s opinion, not the right to boundlessly insult and humiliate others within their own communities. Trolls who hide behind liberal/libertarian ideas actually discredit the very essence of freedom of speech and only contribute to increased censorship and control. The irony is that their behavior only brings them closer to what they supposedly fight so fiercely against.

So what can be done about this? Resource owners and administrators should be tougher on their private territory. A troll who tries to infuriate and insult others is best sent to “read-only” mode—let them observe adequate communication from the sidelines. Sometimes this is the only way to restore a healthy atmosphere in the comments and let others know that rules of decency exist even online.

And the main piece of advice for ordinary users: don’t feed the trolls. Your reaction is vital to them. The best punishment for a troll is being ignored. A troll without attention is like a rock star without an audience: sad and meaningless. And remember: on the other side of the screen, there is most often an unhappy and insecure person! This doesn’t excuse them, but it explains it. Sometimes it’s enough to just remember this to stay calmer in the face of such provocations.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Does it not turn out that from all this libertarian freedom, the end result is one continuous nihilism? How does nihilism even mesh with libertarianism?

Nihilist (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00009₿)

Nihilism is a perfectly logical consequence of Hume’s guillotine. It is impossible to derive an “ought” from an “is”; therefore, there is nothing objectively obligatory. There is no objective morality (hello, Dobroum), no natural law (hello, Rothbard), and this whole objectivism of yours is some kind of stupid joke (hello, Ayn Rand).

But a nihilist is not a solipsist. He is aware that there are other individualities in the world besides himself, with their own subjective tastes, values, and needs.

Nihilists are often attributed an intention of opposing the entire world, pitting themselves against it, and even almost waging war upon it. This is understandable, as nihilism was born precisely as a negation of imposed values and duties toward higher powers and society. You think I owe someone something? Push kurats.

Similarly, early libertarians are known not so much for their positive agenda as for their criticism of all sorts of statist filth. Nevertheless, a libertarian is usually not very inclined to physically exterminate all statists; likewise, a nihilist, despite all his aggressive and cynical rhetoric, if left alone from the moralizing that irritates him, will still be forced to contact people, negotiate with them, and even unite based on the coincidence of specific values and interests—though, one might ask, where is the nihilism and where are the values? However, even a subjective will has preferences. And where there are coinciding preferences, the possibility of cooperation emerges. And so, Stirner’s Unique unites in unions of egoists.

Of course, if left to their own devices, nihilists will inevitably change their rhetoric. “No higher values exist, no one owes anyone anything by default.” “Well yes, that’s obvious, but what was your point?” Will nihilists necessarily appeal to the right of the strong? At first, quite likely, they will. Then they will realize that no single natural law exists, and this applies to the right of the strong as well, which means they will have to negotiate with each person individually and state obligations in an explicit form.

In short, any ideology that puts individualism at its core (and nihilism is exactly that) will inevitably arrive at more or less libertarian practices, even if at the start people are full of cynical bravado about the possibility of bending everyone over. Universal bending only works where there is the consent of those being bent. And why would nihilists give such consent?

Ugodan dan, prijatna kafica!