Corporate Psychopathy – the Cause of the Global Economic Crisis

There is a theory developed by researcher Clive Boddy, according to which psychopaths working in corporations, particularly financial ones, played a significant role in the emergence of the 2008 global economic crisis. As is well known, not all managers are inclined to work for the benefit of the company that hired them. Some of them are dysfunctional leaders who literally destroy the company with their actions. One important type of such leaders are psychopathic personalities, which we will now discuss in more detail.

As we know, psychopaths in literature are defined as personalities who have problems manifesting empathy and sympathy toward other people, behave coldly and ruthlessly toward them, lack a conscience, and feel no guilt for causing harm to anyone. In turn, corporate psychopaths are individuals with similar characteristics who engage in organizational activities. They usually present themselves as pleasant, attractive, and successful individuals, but in reality, they merely manipulate everyone around them, usually to their detriment, to achieve purely personal goals.

Such individuals often receive rapid promotions and become leaders due to their charm and confidence, while they are prone to ignoring the needs of others, deceiving them, or even engaging in bullying. Furthermore, there is evidence that in some companies, including international financial corporations, psychopaths were even specifically selected for leadership positions due to the belief that such personalities are best suited for such work.

Usually, such individuals brought short-term success to companies through mass cost-cutting and employee layoffs. However, they were in no way concerned about the potential long-term harm of the strategies they chose, and in general pursued exclusively their own benefits, discarding their obligations and responsibility, striving to obtain as many personal “bonuses” as possible while everyone else was in the midst of financial litigation. From the actions of such “effective managers,” one can well expect that they will ultimately receive a large check for their efforts to “save” the company, after which it will simply go bankrupt.

Now imagine what would happen if, due to certain global changes in the corporate environment—such as increasingly frequent company mergers, the tendency of employees to change jobs more often and move to companies previously completely unknown to them, changes in the technological environment and others, which became common practice on the eve of the global crisis—psychopathic personalities received far more opportunities to occupy high positions, using not their actual work skills, but manipulation and political skills? In such a situation of growing corporate psychopathy, a corporate and social catastrophe can be expected, which is precisely what authors studying this problem warned about in their materials as early as 2005.

Such a problem has still not been given proper attention, which puts the very future of capitalism at risk. Of course, this problem is far from the only one in economic matters, but it deserves more detailed study and the application of appropriate measures.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

“Anti-Lorentz” is impossible in practice

We once examined the question of why using a certain drug that suppresses the function of a person’s violence inhibitor (or as we also called it, “Anti-Lorenz” agents) has little practical utility and effectiveness, but is capable of leading to serious problems. However, this was presented from the perspective of social processes, whereas now we will delve deeper into the biological essence of this issue.

As we know, the violence inhibitor is managed by the brain’s serotonergic system, specifically the 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors, as well as the MAO-A, TPH2, and SERT proteins associated with their function, encoded by the corresponding genes (for simplicity, we will call all of these “variables”). And we can assume that only a specific, quite narrow combination of these variables creates a high risk of developing violence inhibitor dysfunction in a particular individual. After all, only a tiny fraction of the population (no more than 1–2%) has increased psychopathic predispositions in any population.

Impact on at least one of these variables “upward” is quite capable of significantly strengthening the inhibitor function (eliminating the ability to initiate violence). Thus, in experiments on animals and humans, the mere activation of 5-HT1A or 5-HT1B receptors, or the enhancement of serotonergic function through impact on SERT activity, selectively eliminated violent behavior. At the same time, impact on any of the variables “downward” does not guarantee the weakening of the inhibitor (restoration of the ability to initiate violence), as was, for example, shown with the blocking of 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors in animals.

On the other hand, there are strong grounds to believe that attempts to actively exert such an influence can cause serious mental disorders—increased anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and other pathologies related to the serotonergic system. Initially, such problems are often not particularly pronounced in psychopathic personalities simply because the narrow combination of “variables” required for this is evolutionarily maintained (with a bouquet of disorders, they simply would not have had reproductive success). In fact, according to research, violence inhibitor dysfunction itself is a “point” rather than an extensive disruption in brain function.

Why is all this important in practice? In the tasks of strengthening and weakening the violence inhibitor, there is a huge disparity in complexity. To put it simply—even in a successful attempt to weaken the violence inhibitor by suppressing any “variable,” it will not be possible to guarantee that this effect will not be reversible if someone applies agents to strengthen a certain “variable” to the person who did this. However, one can certainly guarantee serious side effects. In one of the experiments on rats using the neurotoxin 5,7-DHT, which affects the serotonergic system, although it was possible to increase their aggressiveness, this effect was reversed by introducing small doses of serotonin into the brain. A similar neurotoxic effect is exerted, for example, by methamphetamine, which at high intensity of intake is capable of increasing a person’s psychopathy. But most likely this effect is also reversible in the same way, and the result of weakening the inhibitor with “meth” in such a case will be a lack of result and the causation of serious harm to health.

And what if the aggressor does not know the specific time when they will have the practical opportunity to use violence? They would need to constantly take multiple drugs to weaken all “variables.” But constantly maintaining such a balance of “variables” so that simultaneously: 1) it is enough to weaken the violence inhibitor, 2) it is not yet enough to cause neurophysiological disorders, 3) it is enough to overcome the effect of agents for strengthening the inhibitor—is hardly possible in real life at all.

Ultimately, an attempt to weaken the violence inhibitor will only lead to serious neurophysiological and mental disorders, but will provide no guarantee against its reinforcement under appropriate influence. Practically effective and safe “Anti-Lorenz” agents turn out to be simply science fiction.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The Rule of Hostile Jurisdictions

In a world where various states are divided into antagonistic blocks, there is one interesting possibility for ensuring personal security for agorists, dissidents, and others who hold any positions or engage in any activities that their own stationary bandits do not approve of and may threaten with punishment. It can be called the “rule of hostile jurisdictions.”

The essence of this idea is simple: if you are physically located in the territory of a state belonging to one block, you should use services, host websites, seek clients, store and exchange money, register companies, and employ intermediaries from states belonging to a different block. For example, if you live in Russia, you can use a VPN from Sweden or the USA, an email client in Switzerland, a crypto-card in Lithuania, a shell company in Estonia, and not worry about your security. And if you live in Europe, it will be many times safer for you to use “police-monitored” VK and Mail.ru than Facebook and Gmail.

Many services provide users’ personal information upon request from government authorities of a friendly block. This is inevitable, meaning you need to adapt to the realities of geopolitics. In reality, you only need to be afraid if the service provides information specifically to your own stationary bandit. At the same time, a resident of the RF does not care what some service reveals about them to security forces from the USA. Just as a resident of the USA does not care what security forces from the RF learn about them. As long as it does not involve committing large-scale acts of terrorism resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people—which no sane person would do anyway—it is unlikely that any risk of cooperation between jurisdictions from hostile blocks will arise.

Various fraudsters have long been aware of this. For instance, in the past, Russian hackers intentionally avoided users from Russia and targeted Americans or Britons, which made it very easy to evade punishment. Now, Ukrainian scammers do the same, calling Russians with proposals to transfer money to some “safe account” and then forcing them to perform various “tasks” allegedly to get the money back, since they know no one can do anything to them. Of course, we are absolutely against such fraud, but these cases show that the rule of hostile jurisdictions works.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Stefan Molynieux, The Practical Anarchy, translation of chapter 20

The translation of the new chapter of Practical Anarchy is ready. This chapter, with the long title Stateless Dictatorship: How a Free Society Prevents the Re-creation of the State, seemed a bit weak to me. It provides counterarguments to the well-known claim that in the course of free market competition, one protection agency will inevitably begin to dominate over others and form a new state—only this time without any checks and balances like the separation of powers, but simply as a business enterprise for robbing the natives, similar to one East India Company or another.

The weakness of Molynieu’s argumentation is that he exaggerates the inevitability of using centralized services—in an anarchic world, no less—and the possibility of horizontal coordination between multiple agencies in the pursuit of a single goal. Imagine threatening people in a world of bitcoin, drones, and 3D printing with such laughable measures as bank freezes, control over the distribution of weapons, and similar totalitarianism. It is clear that all these technologies, at the time the book was written, were either nonexistent or in their infancy, but if your forecasts collapse with just one decade of technical progress, how much are those forecasts worth? As for his hypothesis about the flawless coordination of independent economic entities around a strategic goal despite the prospect of immediate market gain (someone banned in one place will be willing to overpay in another)—that is the well-known problem of cartel agreements. They are unstable.

Molynieu should have focused on explaining specifically the decentralized mechanisms for countering attempts to re-create systems of organized robbery. In my book, they are mentioned quite briefly, because the book is not exactly about that. In general, it can be put this way: if anarchy is imposed from above, and a sign saying “Ust-Perduy District Court” is simply painted over with “Ust-Perduy PRA,” then nothing much may change under the sign compared to the dark times of etatism. However, if ancap evolved from below and the state truly withered away from obsolescence, then the very human qualities that killed the state will not allow a new one to grow. Ancap is not just a society without a state. It is a society with immunity to the state.

Nomads project

The Nomads project channel was created a month after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the RF to provide digital nomads with up-to-date information on where to flee. Initially, it mainly focused on Armenia and Georgia, but the authors’ horizons gradually expanded, and later they moved from simple informing to more proactive actions.

On March 26, a post was published in the channel stating that the project intends to open a visa center in Albania. The idea is to lobby the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a program to receive digital nomads on conditions that are as humane as possible. Then it gets a bit funny: for this purpose, they plan to hold a conference in Tirana with the participation of Albanian bureaucrats and those who hope to use their bureaucratic services. What’s funny is that the conference is being held on Albanian territory, to enter which a visa is precisely what is needed. It’s as if people are willing to make a one-time effort to enter the country in the hope of convincing the hosts to let expensive guests in under more lenient conditions in the future. The idea is noble; perhaps something will come of it.

And today the project put out a post about the issuance of NMPR tokens as part of the Montelibero tokenomics. The tokens were created back in mid-March, and half a month before the start of official sales, Montelibero insiders managed to buy up about a thousand. Well, now they are trying to promote them to the wider market. I hope the target audience of the project, namely digital nomads, will be digitally savvy enough to get some of these tokens and thereby get entangled in the Montelibero tokenomics, which is exactly what we need.

I want to wish these enthusiasts, unknown to me, luck and patience. I don’t know how to say polako in Albanian, but they will definitely need to learn this word. And if they truly manage to make Albania easier for Russian expats to live in, then they will have my heartfelt faleminderit.

The aggressor will not complain to anyone if his violence inhibitor is strengthened

According to numerous studies, psilocybin is capable of strengthening the violence inhibitor for a very long, or even permanent period, and also weakening the tendency toward authoritarian views, with just a couple of doses equivalent to 5-10 grams of dried mushrooms. It should be noted immediately that this substance is classified by the authorities of the RF and many other countries as a prohibited psychotropic agent. But such a ban could lead to one interesting scenario, where an aggressive degenerate, in the event that their violence inhibitor is strengthened, will simply have nowhere to complain!

Imagine a situation where some degenerate rapist had those same “mushrooms” slipped into their food; they found out about it and decided to snitch. They went to the police station… but instead of taking a report and searching for some anti-violence fighters, they filed an administrative charge against the degenerate himself for drug use, with all the ensuing consequences—registration with a narcologist, suspension of driver’s licenses of all categories, a ban on holding certain positions (doctor, lawyer, official), and ultimately, even dismissal from work.

The degenerate will think about this for a bit and decide: “Better to keep my mouth shut, not even tell my friends, otherwise if they find out, I’ll never see a normal life again! And besides, no one will care; I’ve said it myself many times that ‘the sheriff isn’t interested in Indian problems’ and pushed for ‘strict liability,’ without ever imagining that it could affect me as well.”

Such a scenario is entirely expected, because how is a rapist even going to prove they are right?! And in many jurisdictions, it’s unlikely that anyone would care—they would more likely just try to use him to fill a quota, especially if he has already managed to get flagged for committing violence in the past.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Social movements as conduits of the dark ego and antisemitism

Various studies show that public and activist movements of various kinds, including eco-activists, feminist movements, and even movements against sexual violence, suffer from one problem – they are often represented by individuals with certain dark personality traits. Particular emphasis should be placed on grandiose narcissism, which is characterized by an inflated sense of superiority and self-importance, as well as an obsessive need for recognition. In addition, such individuals often suffer from psychopathy – a lack of empathy toward other people, an absence of guilt for causing them harm, etc. In general, it is assumed that people with dark personality traits tend to “hijack” pro-social movements to use them as a vehicle for their own selfish needs.

One example of this, which we have already considered several times in previous materials, is the seizure of leadership in social and political movements by psychopaths. This process is well described by psychiatrist Andrzej Lobaczewski in the book “Political Ponerology: The Science of the Nature of Evil Applied to Politics.” Psychopathic personalities, being at the bottom of a movement at the start of their careers, do the dirty work for it that others would not undertake, earn a reputation within it, rise through the hierarchy by resorting to various kinds of manipulation, and displace everyone else from leadership positions. And when these individuals gain real power in society, they inevitably create large-scale catastrophes, such as repression, genocide, and wars.

In one of the current studies on this topic, researchers decided to examine the problem of antisemitism. Such an ideology also often serves as a vehicle for the dark ego. Participants in this study were 3,981 people from the USA and Britain. They underwent various tests for dark personality traits, as well as a predisposition to dark needs, such as aggressiveness, a desire to dominate others, sensation seeking, fake virtue (public demonstration of moral virtue without genuine moral conviction), and selfishness (lack of altruism). They also completed several questionnaires on adherence to various forms of antisemitism, ranging from a tendency toward prejudice against Jews (for example, viewing them as dishonest and greedy people) to radical anti-Zionist views that justify violence.

As a result, it was found that antisemitism is closely linked to dark personality traits – more than 94% of the indicators of these traits were positively associated with it. A particularly strong link to antisemitism is observed in the previously mentioned narcissism and psychopathy. And this applies to all investigated forms of antisemitism, from traditional to radical. Furthermore, the presence of dark needs in an individual was also linked to antisemitism.

Researchers believe that any ideology, prejudice, and activism that can help satisfy dark needs are attractive to people with high scores in dark personality traits. For example, according to research, both left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism are linked to them. At the same time, exactly which ideological tools people with a dark ego use depends on which ideas and narratives they encounter in their specific life circumstances and whether they recognize the possibility of satisfying their dark needs.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Stephan Molynieux, translation of “Practical Anarchy”, chapter 19

As previously indicated, my last remaining long-term translation project can no longer escape, and presented for your attention is the translation of Chapter 19 from Stephan Molneux’s book Practical Anarchy. The chapter is titled These Cages Are Only for Beasts. Previously, while describing his proposed system in which dispute resolution organizations (DROs) operate instead of modern law enforcement systems, Molneux emphasized how powerful an effect a coordinated active boycott can have on an individual. In this chapter, realizing that he went too far and created so much dread that totalitarian anarchy might seem to many a less preferable solution than existing state models, Molneux, conversely, explains that multiple checks and balances are also provided against DROs, and therefore they will not be able to act lawlessly and become a new edition of the state.

Discussion on whether to pay for security

A subscriber sent me the text of their article with a suggestion to refine and publish it. This seemed like a bad idea to me, as I find AI-generated creations uncomfortable to read, and editing them is not enjoyable at all. So I simply posted the article on Teletype so that those interested could read it, and I will reflect on the topic addressed in it.

Briefly, the article explains why someone in need of security should not buy this security, but should ensure it for themselves. As justifications, fairly standard protectionist arguments are provided, stating that the division of labor is not always a benefit because the provider of necessary services will inevitably want to dominate the market, which in the case of security services will inevitably place the consumer of these services under the complete control of the provider.

Firstly, it seems to me not entirely correct to suggest that the reader act on the assumption as if there are currently no enforcers claiming a monopoly, but rather a free market, and one only needs to try not to spoil the current blissful ancap. In fact, we already have a situation of forced collection of arbitrary sums from everyone the state can reach under fraudulent pretexts, including the argument that the state supposedly provides protection. In other words, the article essentially suggests to people who have already fallen into the crocodile’s teeth to be more careful and not walk around Africa.

Secondly, the same arguments used against the division of labor in the sphere of security can be transferred unchanged to other spheres. Wouldn’t a food supplier want to be a monopoly supplier, with complete power over your death by starvation? Let’s engage in subsistence farming to avoid this terrible danger.

In fact, in the case of state security, we have not an excessive, but an insufficient division of labor. The state tends to involve itself in any aspect of security that occurs to a bureaucrat drafting new regulations. Meanwhile, it is precisely the practice of turning to various narrow specialists for every specific issue that counteracts the potential forced merger of these specialists into a single center for providing everything. As soon as the state gets a market competitor in any sphere, the state’s position in it becomes more shaky. Of course, many initially prefer the option already paid for by taxes and therefore requiring no additional expense, rather than paying a private provider for a higher-quality solution. However, private solutions still gradually carve out their way, first in the premium segment, and then in the mass market.

Therefore, I will instead formulate the opposite call: pay for security. Buy all goods and services that are sold to you cheaper and/or of higher quality than if you were to tinker with it yourself. And only if the market choice does not satisfy you, does it make sense to combine efforts with partners and produce the missing product yourself.