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!

May my cow die, as long as the neighbor’s two die

It is widely known that the higher a person’s psychopathy scores, the less they are concerned with honesty and causing harm to others. However, researchers were interested in what values psychopathic individuals adhere to in such cases and what motivation shapes their behavior. To this end, an assessment was conducted of 3,521 adult volunteers regarding their level of psychopathy (using the Levenson test), values, aspirations, orientation toward social dominance, as well as a preference for absolute or relative well-being.

First and foremost, psychopathic individuals showed a greater drive toward achieving financial success than toward improving the world around them. Additionally, they—and especially those with high scores in primary psychopathy (traits such as callousness and lack of empathy)—identified material possessions as a central good in human life and a source of happiness, as well as the idea that a person’s success in life is determined by the amount of property they own.

However, it is unlikely that such views can be considered inherently bad, as it is an individual’s choice which values are important to them, provided they do not involve causing harm to others. But what truly can be called a problem is the preference of psychopathic individuals to be wealthier than other people, even if this means having less wealth in absolute terms. In the completed questionnaires, they expressed a reluctance to obtain a higher income, better education, or more leisure time if other people around them would receive even more of these things and have a social status higher than theirs. In absolute terms, they are willing to have less wealth if other people have even less than they do, allowing them to achieve a higher social status in comparison.

It seems that sayings like “let my cow die, as long as my neighbor’s two cows die” or “let my shed burn down, as long as my neighbor’s cow dies” did not appear out of nowhere, but describe the preferences of a specific category of individuals—psychopaths. Apparently, it is primarily important for them to assert themselves at the expense of others and to be relatively better than them, rather than to achieve a specific level of well-being. The strong inclination of psychopathic individuals toward such values once again reflects how dangerous their mental state is, caused by a dysfunction in the violence inhibition mechanism. Normal people should certainly be wary of them, as they are capable of and willing to cause any harm if, in relative terms, it elevates them above everyone else. And in the long term, such a pathology, as we have pointed out many times, requires therapy.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Imposing cultural traditions

A quite significant portion of the questions people ask about Ancap boils down to whether one can do this and that, whether it’s permissible to do this and that, how Ancap views this and that. Can you kill pedophiles and murderers? Is slavery and abortion permissible? How does Ancap view intellectual property and global warming?

As you know from memes, Ancaps have a simple, concise, and even fully correct answer to all these questions: the market will resolve it/. In other words, in response to a question about the imaginative subject “Ancap” a specific imaginative subject, “the market,” is pointed out, which will establish the corresponding norms. Of course, this answer is too brief and therefore doesn’t satisfy those asking. Let me elaborate on the topic a bit.

Mostly, people aren’t bothered by what other people do because another person’s behavior fits into another person’s notions of what is proper. And when it stops fitting, that person starts to worry about it, begins to think about how he should relate to it and what can be done with it.

A libertarian can roughly describe his notions of what is proper as “self-ownership is respected, NAP isn’t violated.” This isn’t enough, and notions of what is proper are supplemented by all sorts of “here it’s customary like this.” For example: here right-hand traffic; we let children pass ahead in line; at a restaurant the person who invites pays, and so on. But besides all these ethically neutral customs, there are also those relating to various borderline situations. For example, at what age does sex stop being an adult’s business and become the business of whoever is doing it? Or what kind of natural compensation is permissible to demand from a debtor or from someone who caused damage? Or in what cases does an author have the right to restrict other people from using his work? These things are not derived from basic libertarian principles, as is, for example, right-hand traffic.

In ethically contentious situations, a person tends to offer as a norm the option that’s more advantageous to him personally. If he’s also influential enough – it can be painful to be hit with, it can bring much good, it evokes universal love or simply annoys – then they might agree with his proposed norm; but further down, this decision can easily become a precedent, and now others will cite this version of the norm as local custom. Then, for someone who wants to revise this norm, it will be necessary to be much stronger, more useful, more charming or more annoying, because he’s going against tradition.

Thus, one can speak about the right of the strong: that person who put in efforts to create a precedent, may thereby establish a legal norm. It will be difficult for him to change this norm whenever he wants – in legal tradition this is called the Estoppel principle – if someone previously demonstrated by his actions that he adheres to such-and-such a norm, then he cannot legally insist that it not be applied to him.

In artistic form, the Estoppel principle is well demonstrated in Maxim Shapiro’s famous story “Respect for Cultural Traditions”.

Of course, whoever possesses undeniable superiority in strength, usefulness, charm or sheer annoyingness, or who leads a united group of like-minded people, will be able to promote such a legal norm as “this specific idiot has the right to act in any situation, as he pleases,” creating thereby a state. However, until he creates legal norms for transferring his power, this state will inevitably end with his death, and death is usually quite early. At least this regularity ancient history shows us. But we are considering *ankap* here – that is, the public order in which the probability of success of such idiots is deliberately reduced to a minimum.

So how will they treat heretics, slavery and the rest at *ankap*? You decide. The more effort you put into making your opinion prevail, the more intolerant you are of other opinions – the greater the probability that heretics will be given exactly as many lashes as you outlined to the first one you met. And of course, the greater the probability that in defending your opinion you will suffer unacceptable losses – and wipe out. Nevertheless, if these topics excite you vividly, I recommend boosting strength, usefulness, charm.

And annoyingness.

Respect for Cultural Traditions“

Laws exist, but protection does not: why Ubisoft is farting on the labor code

The recent loud scandal surrounding Ubisoft makes one wonder: why are all these massive codes and bureaucracy even necessary if people in the most progressive countries are still not protected from sadistic bosses? As we recently learned, bosses in Ubisoft’s French office abused employees for years: they made crude advances, drew obscenities on their desks, and sometimes literally released intestinal gas right in their faces. And this isn’t some trashy office in a basement on the outskirts of Voronezh—this is “enlightened France”!

The French state has long prided itself on laws and rights. But something went wrong. Ubisoft employees complained to human resources, only to be told to go away and not make a fuss. Only after years of public pressure and the MeToo movement did the matter reach court. “Well, it reached court, so what?” you might say. The result: the accused face suspended sentences and fines, which are pocket change for them. Did justice prevail? Yeah, keep dreaming.

If you think France is an exception, welcome to the USA! There, justice is sold at wholesale prices. Activision Blizzard, Fox News, Starbucks, and others—each high-profile case ended the same way: large corporations paid their way out with “fines” amounting to a couple of percent of annual profits and calmly moved on. For employees who dared to speak openly about the problems, life turned into hell. They were fired, harassed, and quietly silenced with money. The law seemingly exists, but it’s useless.

And how are things in Russia? Formally, the labor code guards your rights, but in reality, an employee before a boss is like a bunny before a wolf: if he doesn’t eat you, he’ll at least take a bite. And as for sexual harassment at work? One might recall Deputy Slutsky, regarding whom the “Ethics Commission” decided that grabbing women’s buttocks is somehow normal. The girls were even advised to go to the police, though going there is pointless because there is still no law against harassment in Russia. A classic vicious circle!

So what should you do if the state cannot protect you? Here, libertarians shrug and say: friends, maybe it’s time to stop believing in the mythical power of papers and bureaucrats? Maybe it’s time to take control of your own life? Because while hundreds of inspectors allegedly protect you on paper, in practice, only publicity, competition, and the right to leave freely save you.

Libertarian prescriptions are simple and sound. First of all, one must understand that reputation is a serious matter, and the Ubisoft scandal would have happened much sooner if the victims had not been afraid to speak openly. Also, workers must have the freedom to leave at any moment, because nothing sobers up a boss better than a mass exodus of talent to competitors—this will force him to use his head, and not other parts of his body. Independent employer ratings are also needed—things like Glassdoor clearly show where it is better not to go to work. If employees know the truth in advance, bad employers will quickly be left without people or money. And finally, attention should not only be paid to companies as a whole. Specific people who created the chaos and violence must be judged and punished, and their behavior should be widely publicized. Then others will be deterred!

No one wants to live in a society where a boss can afford to release gas in your face. But the state has already proven a hundred times: it is either blind, corrupt, or simply does not want to actually protect us. This means we need to trust bureaucrats less and trust ourselves and the people around us more. A free person is better protected than a subjugated one, and if people are given freedom and tools for self-defense, it will work more effectively than any cumbersome laws. And remember: changes do not come from the offices of officials—they start with each of us. If we do not respect our own dignity, no one else will. Therefore, it is worth befriending common sense rather than waiting for protection from a paper law!