I thought it would be interesting to compare the reactions of various targets of state attacks to the fact of the attack, especially since there have been several multi-level examples recently.
The Libertarian Party of Russia has been recognized as a foreign agent organization
Reaction:
LPR members are wondering which of the two LPRs specifically.
The LPR(s) posted an official statement: “we are patriots and condemn this decision.”
Those not in the LPR congratulate both LPRs on the state recognizing their existence.
Montelibero reminds about the assistance program for moving to Montenegro.
A popular Ukrainian defense minister has been dismissed
Reaction:
The dismissed official posted a report on the work done and held a press conference.
Like-minded people of the dismissed official in the troops publish public statements in his support.
Foreign officials express bewilderment.
The general public: protests in support of the dismissed official.
Balaji Srinivasan’s Network State was subjected to swatting
Reaction:
The founder politely asks on Twitter whether Malaysia would like capital flight from this toxic jurisdiction to more welcoming ones for such startups, such as Kazakhstan.
The founder’s like-minded associates specify exactly how much has been invested and how much will be withdrawn if Malaysian officials do not swear that it was a stupid mistake and that they will not dare do such a thing again.
Commonalities in all three reactions
No one expresses any doubt that the state is committing overt aggression against the interests of its citizens.
The targets of the attack officially express loyalty to the state, although they condemn its decision.
The targets of the attack try to convince the state to revoke its decision amicably.
The uniqueness of the reaction in one of the cases
Only the founder of the Network State communicates with the territorial state as an equal.
Conclusion
The state is effective in violence. The targets of state attacks prefer not to give it a forceful response in order not to provoke escalation. Nevertheless, they lean towards an asymmetric response. In the case of the LPR and the Network State, this is emigration, meaning the deprivation of the state of economic resources. In the case of the dismissed minister, it is the delegitimization of the decision through public pressure. I have arranged the cases in increasing order of the probability that the toxic decision will be overturned. In the case of the LPR, the probability is vanishingly small. With Fedorov, I think the probability is about thirty percent. With Balaji, about seventy percent. I will follow the last two cases.
After the release of the movie “Citizen Vigilante,” some viewers saw the main character as almost a libertarian avenger: the state is failing, the courts release criminals, and an armed citizen takes the protection of society into his own hands.
It sounds impressive. But this character has about as much in common with libertarian philosophy as a sea pirate does with the protection of private property. The external attributes are similar: distrust of the state, weapons, independence, and contempt for bureaucracy. But inside, there is a completely opposite system of values.
Libertarianism begins not with a pistol, but with the recognition of every person’s right to life, liberty, and property. From this follows the non-aggression principle: violence cannot be used against someone who has not initiated it themselves. And this is where the image of the “people’s avenger” falls apart. The vigilante kills not only criminals. He executes the relatives of a rapist—people who did not participate in the rape. Yes, they say disgusting things, justify the crime, and blame the victim. Their words are loathsome. But libertarianism does not presume the death penalty for vile views.
A person is responsible for their own actions, not for the crimes of a son, brother, father, or neighbor. Collective responsibility is a favorite practice of authoritarianism. Today, a family is shot for the act of a relative; tomorrow, property is seized from the “wrong” class; and the day after tomorrow, people are sent to camps for having an unfortunate last name. The path is well-trodden, and the signs have long been in place.
Even more terrifying is the scene with the oncoming car. The hero intentionally drives into the opposite lane, forcing an innocent driver off the road. The car falls into a ditch and explodes. People die simply because the vigilante needed a vivid illustration for another monologue. This is no longer “private justice,” but the murder of innocents for the sake of a political spectacle.
At the same time, the film tries to endow the hero with a moral code. On the bus, he pays the fare for teenagers and gives them a lecture: if some do not pay, the costs are shifted to others. Everyone must follow the rules! The thought itself is clear. Only it is preached by a man who entered the country illegally, did not legalize his status, hides the real owners of real estate behind a network of holdings, and raises questions with tax authorities. The result is a surprising moral compass: if you don’t pay for a public transport ticket, you undermine society. If you hide your business, money, and legal status—well, that’s something else, that’s an “extended vacation.”
Of course, a libertarian is by no means obligated to consider state law just. Immigration restrictions violate natural human rights, taxes are theft, and financial regulation is a violation of property rights. Breaking any law that punishes “crimes” without a victim does not make a person a villain and is entirely permissible.
But then one must be consistent. You cannot declare yourself an opponent of the system when the rules hinder you, and become a stern defender of order when a teenager doesn’t buy a ticket. This is no longer a philosophy of freedom, but the good old “everything for friends, the law for everyone else.”
“Citizen Vigilante” could have raised an interesting question: what should society do when the state justice system truly fails to protect victims? Where is the line between self-defense, civil resistance, and vigilantism? But instead of a complex conversation, the film presents the viewer with a man who has appointed himself investigator, judge, and executioner. Moreover, evidence, proportionality of punishment, and the rights of the innocent interest him about as much as a cash receipt interests a bank robber.
The film’s protagonist does not protect individual freedom. Instead, he creates his own pocket state: he writes the laws himself, determines the guilty himself, passes sentences himself, and exempts himself from the rules. This is not libertarianism, but the dictatorship of one man—just without a coat of arms, a parliament, and boring meetings.
Very few manuals have been written on the transition from a society with a state to a free anarcho-capitalist society. The best of what has been created, in my opinion, is Konkin’s New Libertarian Manifesto. There is also a clear lack of fictional works on this subject, at least those demonstrating all stages of the transition rather than just one striking moment.
However, there is the somewhat separate Meganesia cycle by Alex Rozov, in the initial part of which the transition to a stateless society is covered in quite some detail, although, of course, from slightly different ideological positions. I would like to talk about the first work of the cycle, “Maui and Pele Holding the World“, which describes the events of the so-called Aluminum Revolution.
Part 1. Playing as Rebels on the Initial Difficulty Level
Briefly, the plot of the book.
Christian sectarians from Guyana board Muslim sectarians from Yemen in the waters of the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean and seize five tons of gold from them. The gold was intended to be spent on weapons for the Christian sect, but the US intelligence services acted faster and exterminated the sect; only the commandos with the gold remained. They decide to continue the sect’s cause right on the spot and get acquainted with the local authorities. These turn out to be:
cocaine smugglers from Mexico and Haiti;
producers of unlicensed electronics and mechanics from New Zealand, and joined by a clever and beautiful woman from a family of American Baptist missionaries, who is friends with North Korean Komsomol members;
a bored Australian philosopher on a yacht and his son, who develops military strategy games;
steampunks led by a certain Czech;
descendants of German colonists from the Solomon Islands;
a squadron of mercenary pilots from South Africa;
and a very few actual Polynesian natives.
Next, all this crew notes that they were pushed out of the civilized world into this armpit, but now the civilized world is encroaching here too. They must fight it before it “civilizes” this armpit in its own way, because there is nowhere left to run. They instantly bring in several thousand Indians from Guyana and Blacks from Haiti, release from captivity and immediately recruit several thousand North Korean Komsomol members, start a war, and easily win it in a landslide, destroying along the way:
a US carrier strike group, plus about a marine battalion, plus two stealth bombers;
a combined international military flotilla along with half of Singapore;
a British PMC;
a brigade of the French Foreign Legion;
more than ten thousand armed Indonesian migrant workers;
several tens of thousands of peaceful civilians, predominantly ethnic Europeans and Indians, plus a few Arabs;
a liner with several hundred billionaires on board;
a plane with a prince from the UAE.
The total losses of the rebels were not named, but in the bloodiest of operations, the capture of New Caledonia from France, they amounted to 78 people. I think I would hardly be mistaken if I said that in total the People’s Fleet of Meganesia lost a couple of hundred killed and as many seriously wounded. Oh, yes, the whole war is run by that same developer of computer strategies without a single armed minion, whom all the local authorities unanimously put forward as the leader and subordinated their sizeable military contingents to him.
Then they conclude peace with the USA, as favorable for the States as Trump’s peace was with Iran.
And somewhere in the middle of the text, they realize that they have already executed a lot of people according to some Charter, however, they forgot to actually draft the Charter itself. They had to gather in an assembly where the Australian philosopher presented a draft, and right then the local authorities almost shot each other. But everything, of course, worked out, and thereafter they executed people according to the Charter in full compliance with procedure.
A logical question arises: if defeating the state by military means is so simple, what prevented this from being done earlier? Of course, I will not give the most obvious answer that this is all the author’s empty fantasies and that it is simply impossible to defeat the state in a war. Let us agree that the key factor was the pushing of all anti-state elements into a single point, which resulted in this kind of synergy.
It is clear that there are still a mass of complaints regarding the internal logic of this military strategy, and here the most obvious explanation is as follows: this game was played on the minimum difficulty level. The opponents are stupid, unorganized, and neglect reconnaissance and planning. The allies have infinite resources and work perfectly as a team.
Why was this done? Obviously, to awaken maximum interest in all potential participants of the movement. A venture investor needs attractive brochures, and a detailed description of all possible risks will only deter him. Moreover, states indeed demonstrate such stunning inefficiency at times that the chances of success for a hypothetical Aluminum Revolution truly exist.
Part 2. Ancaps Join the Game
Now let’s imagine that at the start of the game there was another faction on the field — a libertarian one. Let’s say it went like this.
According to Rozov’s original plot, after robbing the golden galleon, the sectarians retreat to lick their wounds on Suvorov Atoll, where a secret transit point of the Cocaine Trail is located. Now let’s step back a quarter of a century…
In 2011, Russian political technologist Anton Bakov announced the establishment of the Russian Empire on Suvorov Atoll — the heir to the RI destroyed during the 1917 coup. In current reality, Bakov’s project withered away after a few years, never leaving the bounds of internet discussions. The course of events was similar in Rozov’s book. However, in the plot we are constructing, Bakov turned out to be more successful (since we are playing on a low difficulty level). He managed to agree with the government of the Cook Islands to create a memorial complex on Suvorov Atoll in honor of the discovery of the atoll by Lazarev’s Russian expedition. By 2014, a memorial, a Russian cultural center, and an Orthodox church were opened on the atoll. Then the “Crimea-grab” happened, and at the insistent request of the USA, Russia’s funding of the project was wound down. The Chekists and intelligence officers from the cultural center returned home; the priest remained, as well as some settlers.
There were two factions in Bakov’s project: conservatives and libertarians. The conservatives wanted to cosplay the Russian Empire; the libertarians wanted to build a free society. After the winding down of state funding, the etatists left, while the libertarians felt it was not the right time to return to a country suffering from imperial hysteria. On the contrary, they invited a number of like-minded people from all over the world. Let us remember that Vit Edliczka announced the creation of Liberland only in 2015; the Free State Project announced reaching the threshold of 20,000 signatures only in 2016, after which relocation to the Free State officially started; the first land for the future Prospera was bought in 2017; the Montellibero project started as late as 2021. Thus, in our 2014, the Pacific libertarian project had a head start, thanks to which the most passionate people ended up specifically on Suvorov Atoll, rather than in the Granite State or on an island in the middle of the Danube or the Caribbean Sea, not to mention a piece of land in Montenegro.
Main factions among the first Suvorovians:
Russians from Bakov’s project. Their move was partially sponsored by murky Bakov capitals for the sake of crowd-filling, and thereafter they were left to their own devices. Mostly IT specialists; their share among Russian libertarians has always been disproportionately high.
Americans who never made it to New Hampshire. The relatively wealthiest, and thus having the ability to relocate in comfort. They brought a developed individual gun culture and the cult of Bitcoin.
Australian and New Zealander libertarians — these simply lived nearby and therefore easily fit into the ideologically close movement. Predominantly yachtsmen.
By the start of the book’s action, the libertarian colony on Suvorov Atoll has already existed for a quarter of a century, and a second generation of colonists has grown up. The size of the colony directly on the atoll is a maximum of a few hundred people, because the atoll itself is quite small. However, participants of the project live across all the Cook Islands.
How did technology develop in the world of the Meganesia cycle? The neural network revolution didn’t happen, nor did Starlink. Instead, biotechnology turned out to be more developed than in our world. Therefore, organic microchips exist — weaker than advanced silicon ones, but more accessible for decentralized production. There are also transgenic crops of all kinds and colors. Why did it turn out this way? The answer is obvious: because with the start of the Ukrainian war, the PRC took the opportunity to seize Taiwan by force, and the global semiconductor industry went down the drain. Thus, global scientific thought surged in another direction.
Satellite communication is weak, and our ancaps need reliable broadband internet, as they have IT specialists here, moreover soaked in Bitcoin, plus yachtsmen. Therefore, they willingly get involved in a messy project with a network of relay airships over the entire Pacific Ocean. Rozov does not describe what the network nodes looked like, but it is known that communication did not collapse despite the USA destroying the factory producing the corresponding equipment. This means the airship is extremely autonomous and does not require regular repair and maintenance. I think, given the abundance of biotechnology, this airship is something like a Westerveld jellyfish, only better. A colony of microorganisms feeds on alcohol, decomposing it into carbon and hydrogen. From the carbon, it grows the graphene walls of the aerostat. It fills the aerostat with hydrogen. The decomposition reaction is exothermic; the heat generated is enough to power the electric motor and transmitter. When the alcohol runs out, the jellyfish gradually loses hydrogen through the walls, descends to the ocean, and begins to eat phytoplankton, processing it into alcohol. At this time, if desired, the jellyfish can be caught and the server equipment can be maintained. Jellyfish are territorial animals. They exchange signals with each other and try to position themselves in space so as not to approach at an uncomfortable distance, but also not to drift far enough to lose the signal. The jellyfish relays the signals it receives. I don’t know if the jellyfish can reproduce. Most likely, for this, it still requires an incubator where it assembles around a server with pre-installed software, and then begins to live its jellyfish life, carrying the server on its back.
Forgive this long technical digression; sci-fi writers always sin with this, it’s the law of the genre.
In short, by the start of the book’s action, we have a fairly large agorist community engaged in IT, logistics, and decentralized finance. The community has hit the limits of development since it has no opportunity for expansion where state regulations are strong. From time to time, groups branch off and settle on various islands, but maintain contact with the community, primarily thanks to the Bitcoin standard and tokenomics à la Montellibero. However, this is quite slow expansion. The libertarians have nothing to fight over with the cocaine dons, but they do have some economic contacts. The dons get communication and help with traffic. The libertarians occasionally order enforcement services from the dons.
And then, like Robert in Ruanapur, socialist sectarians from LiRe fall upon their heads, with five tons of gold and plans to start a war.
It is often possible to see how some “libertarians” (in quotes) continue to look across the ocean with breathless admiration. They pray to the US Constitution, quote the Founding Fathers, and seriously believe that America is the bastion of a “free republic.” Except they are stuck in the 18th century. That republic has long been gone, and what we see today is “Pindostan.” This is not a federation of equal states, but a real, classical, bloated, and last surviving empire of our days. And do you know what happens to empires? They collapse, and that is great! So let’s break down exactly what is what.
What is an empire in the classical sense? It is when one center, greedy for taxes, forcibly holds under its power absolutely different peoples and territories that are culturally alien to one another. Now look at the map. How can Alabama and New York seriously be called a “single country”? Wyoming and California? These are different universes. In one state, people want to go to church on Sundays, own an AR-15 to protect their families, pay minimum taxes, and have bureaucrats simply leave them alone. In another, they demand total control over the economy, a ban on plastic straws, insane taxes, and regulation of how you breathe.
But as soon as the subject of a possible breakup of the USA into separate independent states (or at least a confederation) comes up, conservatives and mainstream libertarians begin to panic: “This will be the end of the world! Madness! The collapse of civilization!”. But let’s take a breath and open a history textbook. Do you know who screamed like that a hundred years ago? Supporters of the “One and Indivisible” Russian Empire. When the Russian Empire began to crack at the seams in 1917, it seemed as if the heavens were falling to earth. But let’s ask the Poles and Finns how they like this “terrible collapse”? For them, it was the best thing that ever happened to them.
Poland and Finland jumped away from the imperial corpse in time. They stopped feeding bureaucrats in a foreign capital, stopped sending their guys to die for someone else’s imperial ambitions, and built their own countries. No one in Helsinki today is crying: “Oh, what a pity that we no longer send taxes to Petersburg!”. The collapse of an empire is not the end of the world. It is spring, decentralization, and secession in its purest form—the sacred right to self-determination that Rothbard wrote about.
Why is the collapse of Pindostan beneficial to libertarians worldwide? First, it is the death of the global policeman. For the last 80 years, Washington has exported not freedom, but bombs, sanctions, and inflation. The breakup of the USA into 5-10 independent jurisdictions means that none of them will any longer have a budget for 800 military bases around the world. There will be fewer wars, less intervention, and less blood.
Second, it is the collapse of dollar hegemony. The Fed (Federal Reserve System) is the main sponsor of global etatism. They are the ones who allow budgets to bloat and print candy wrappers, for which the entire world pays through a hidden inflation tax. The collapse of the empire will bring down the fiat system and open the way for hard money—gold and crypto.
Additionally, this will create a market of jurisdictions. Imagine that in place of one monster, half a hundred states of various sizes will appear. A brutal competition for minds, capital, and labor will begin. California wants a 90% tax? Please! Only all businesses will move to an independent free Texas or Nevada within an hour. This will be the greatest experiment in jurisdictional competition in history.
It is time to get rid of the cargo cult! The fact that the Founding Fathers wrote a cool piece of paper 250 years ago does not make modern Washington a holy place. Today it is the same kind of imperial center as Rome was before its fall, London at the beginning of the 20th century, or Petersburg in 1917. There is no need to fear the balkanization of America. This should be welcomed! Division is the path to freedom. After all, the smaller the state, the closer the power is to the land and to the specific person, and the fewer opportunities it has to build a digital GULAG.
It is clear that incentives in commercial dating apps do not always align with the expectations of clients and society as a whole (to quickly find a spouse and never use the app again). They have to keep the business afloat somehow. What else is there to hope for if not some government uncle, a state-approved dating site, and standing in an electronic queue for a “wife voucher”? Perhaps philanthropy, as a stopgap for awkward moments in a market economy—that Musk will create a less mindless dating app for us that will get family formation and birth rates back on their feet?
Saddam Hussein’s rotating aluminum pipes
Let’s go through the problem you’ve outlined. People want to meet, and the market monetizes the fulfillment of this desire. People want to meet for different purposes and in different manners, so the market is naturally segmented.
Online dating services theoretically allow a user to quickly obtain information about people with complementary needs and to meet more purposefully. After going through enough options, a spherical client in a vacuum finds a suitable partner, after which they move to communicating via less specialized tools, leaving the dating service. This is unprofitable for the service creators; they are interested in the client returning again and again, and, of course, purchasing a premium subscription. As long as dating apps have not gone out of style, this model works quite well; people really do return. Furthermore, since the market is already quite saturated, the success of dating apps cannot be linked to simply attracting new clients; it is precisely that the use of these apps has managed to become a lifestyle for a fairly broad segment of people. I am not one of them, so I do not claim to provide a deep analysis—I am simply noting their existence.
Of course, there are those who have not succeeded in using dating apps. The reasons can vary. The most banal is that the process of meeting itself can be perceived by some people as a source of intense stress. They are not opposed to finding a partner in life, and would even settle for a fading interest after a year, after which they would need to find a new one, but they will do this as rarely as possible, and are certainly not ready for a queue of candidates from which they must choose, say, one and reject the rest. And they are even less ready for a series of rejections or being ignored. If every failed encounter becomes a reason for serious distress, then an app capable of providing dozens of such experiences a day turns out to be a hellish invention that drives a person into the depths of depression and from which one should stay far away.
Of course, psychological difficulties are not the only reason for not using fast-dating services. A person may have certain preferences regarding a prospective partner and the method of meeting them that simply do not fit into the typical application scenario of an app.
So, does it turn out that there are tons of people in the world who wish to meet, but this desire cannot be monetized through specialized mass-market apps? Yes. There are tons of people who happily buy fast food, and tons of people who do not consider this option at all because for them it is: too shabby, too expensive, too unhealthy, too anything else—in short, it doesn’t fit. But these bastards eat something! Yes, and these bastards meet somewhere, even if they don’t have a Pure account.
But the author of the question is not concerned with getting everyone hooked on fast-dating. On the contrary, they likely believe that fast-dating kills marriages, childbirth, and the replenishment of the taxpayer ranks. I find this concern baseless. Mises once wrote that it is foolish to blame an entrepreneur for producing guns instead of butter; this only means that investments in guns are more profitable. However, he will gladly switch to butter when the conjuncture changes, so it is foolish to blame him for starting wars just to sell more guns—that is the prerogative of politicians, who are, of course, always happy to blame entrepreneurs for their own ignoble dealings. And while many may wish to dispute this thesis regarding guns, claiming that dating app creators are to blame for the decline in birth rates is a bit too much. At the very least, the dates don’t match; the second demographic transition began much earlier. So this is merely a symptom: people want fast encounters—here is a service for fast encounters. People have always wanted fast encounters; they just used to pick each other up in bars or even hit on each other in the streets, and now apps have not only greatly simplified their lives but also saved a lot of people from random harassment.
OK, but people also need strong, exclusive relationships, not just fast and disposable ones, so where is the app for finding them? Why is this need not being monetized?
Fine, let me imagine how I would monetize the need for people to establish strong family relationships in the IT sphere if I had access to serious capital. I would create a service that provides a person with a personal AI advisor, which can be configured to support a certain type of relationship. To start, you simply communicate with it, send it your favorite books and movies, discuss them, tell it what you value in relationships and what you cannot stand—and this in itself is a consumer benefit, allowing one to better realize their needs and learn how to communicate them. But the assistant also communicates with other clients. At some point, it might ask, “Are you acquainted with so-and-so? Great guy, and it seems he might suit you.” You ask the assistant questions about the proposed candidate, the assistant asks questions about you, and at some point the AI confidant reports: “You know, when he read about you, he became interested, and it seems he’s not opposed to meeting. Maybe we should start a three-way chat?”
And now, you are communicating directly, but the confidant is invisibly with you, and you can still privately discuss the details of your communication with it. Then you meet, grow closer, and at some point decide to join your destinies. And here you receive an offer: why remain in the general database, wouldn’t it be better to take care of privacy? And you rent a personal server where your confidant moves with all the knowledge about you. It continues to care for the well-being of your marriage, and you continue to pay for the service. At this stage, the company no longer receives your data and limits itself to model updates and technical support.
Such a monetization model is anything but fast food. For lovers of fast dating, all this is too troublesome, expensive, and excessive. Therefore, there is no danger that you will be pushed toward people looking for a one-time hookup; on the contrary, only virtuous husband candidates. Right at this stage, one could hit their forehead and shout: “Aha, I have an excellent candidate to implement all this magnificence,” and push him toward Dobroum. But I am a libertarian, not some conservative, so let’s think further.
It may very well turn out that you prefer open relationships, or even polyamorous ones. At this point, we lose Dobroum as a potential founder of our startup, as well as the possibility of government grants. Nevertheless, I see no reason why an AI confidant could not serve cute polyamorous kittens, same-sex couples, and all others: as long as they have a need for long-term, stable, ecological relationships based on love and trust in each other, this need can be monetized using the proposed tool. But, of course, the more exotic the kitten, the harder it will be for them to find that very partner or group of partners. However, as the service grows, simply by the theory of probability, options will appear for them as well.
Thus, the market will once again make the world more beautiful.
There is a traditional opinion: a boy needs to “harden” his character to grow into a full-fledged man and be ready for life. Following this position, or simply using it as a justification for violence, some abusive fathers deliberately harm their sons. Victims encounter this form of violence at a very early age, which makes it important to examine.
At the core of such an approach is the belief that a boy must grow up to be tough, insensitive, aggressive, and dominant, and that any manifestations of vulnerability, emotionality, and softness allegedly make him weak and unable to survive in society. However, a recent article published on the Psychology Today website correctly notes how such “upbringing” actually only causes serious damage to the child’s mental and emotional development.
The methods used for such “hardening” include physical “punishments,” psychological pressure, humiliation, and intimidation. A child may be forced to participate in aggressive or painful activities, or encouraged to fight or engage in excessively harsh sports such as boxing, martial arts, and even American football. Simultaneously, he is required to suppress his emotions—especially fear, sadness, and affection. The boy is taught not to cry, not to complain, and not to show weakness, forming an internal belief that sensitivity is something shameful. These practices may be accompanied by direct instructions on what a “real man” should be.
It is important to understand: such actions cannot be justified by “good intentions,” partly because in practice they are often used by the abuser purely for personal interests, as a method of control and dominance over family members. A son may be used as a tool—for example, to strengthen the father’s power, exert pressure on the mother, or pass on the same beliefs and behavioral models to the next generation, making violence an inherent trait of the family. Abusive fathers also tend to destroy the bond between the son and mother, which is crucial for psychological development and a sense of security.
The consequences of such actions for the child’s emotional development are very profound. The constant suppression of feelings leads to the child stopping the recognition of his own emotions and the emotions of other people. His capacity for empathy decreases, and difficulties with self-regulation and the expression of experiences arise. In the future, this may manifest as emotional detachment, an inability to build close relationships, and outbursts of uncontrollable aggression.
Ultimately, the boy may begin to identify with the aggressor and adopt his model of behavior. He is deprived of the ability to build healthy relationships, becomes cruel himself, and passes this cruelty on to future generations, forming a closed cycle of violence and traumatic experience. Alternatively, he may suppress himself, leading to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Often, both outcomes blend to some extent. This only decreases, rather than increases, the child’s social adaptability.
Beyond psychological harm, such treatment can lead to physical consequences—injuries, chronic stress, and related health problems. And even if the child is not a direct victim of physical violence, the mere observation of aggression in the family already has a destructive effect on his psyche and health.
Therefore, only one conclusion can be drawn: “hardening” through violence has nothing to do with care or upbringing. It is a form of abuse of power by a domestic tyrant, which destroys the child’s personality and even exacerbates the problem of violence at the societal level. Such practices are simply incompatible with a free, non-violent society, and they must be completely replaced by models of upbringing based on respect, empathy, and the development of emotional resilience not through the suppression of feelings.
The idea for this text has been floating around in my head for quite a while, because I really dislike it when words lose any semblance of meaning and turn into simple labels, like the Blues and the Greens at the Constantinople Hippodrome. What is the difference between them? Well… uh… some are blue because they root for the Blues, and others are green because they root for the Greens, makes sense, right? Patsaks and chatlans, as is well known, are not nationalities, not professions, not races, and not religions; they are simply patsaks and chatlans. In the same way, over the last hundred years or so, the meaning of the words “politically right” and “politically left” has undergone total and absolute erosion. It’s not even that the radical right and radical left essentially do the same thing (shedding rivers of blood / calling for them to be shed), as the famous horseshoe theory teaches us. It’s not even that anyone at all is called “left,” right down to the insane regime of the ayatollahs who hanged communists and gays with crane trucks, while the entire Western LGBTQA+++ agenda is convulsing in paroxysms of passion for HAMAS, ISIS, and other Islamic cannibals. The point is that these words have literally, completely, and entirely lost their original meaning (and quite some time ago), yet they have failed to acquire a new one.
Back in 1945, the famous “Nazi Pope” Pius XII (theoretically an ultra-right Catholic conservative), together with Juan Perón (theoretically a left-wing progressive reformer), were together saving Nazis (who are generally considered ultra-right by the public for some reason, though in fact they are further left than Stalin) from Stalin (theoretically an ultra-leftist, at least that is how the West sold him in horror stories about the “red menace” to capitalism). Since then, the question has not become clearer; on the contrary, it has only become more confused, because liberation theology appeared (a left-wing Latin American version of essentially right-wing Catholicism), the People’s Mujahideen (a left-wing Iranian version of essentially right-wing Islam, successfully wiped out by the insane Shiites), and there are left-libertarians (which in itself seems like an oxymoron).
Putin is supported by the same left-wing American woke establishment that supports HAMAS (despite the fact that half of this establishment are neither left nor right, but rainbow-colored, and in Russia you get imprisoned for that, but for them Putin is still the Great Left Leader because he is against the damned America), yet their embodied vox populi — the US Democratic Party — for some reason fought Russia far more fiercely than the supposedly right-wing Trump (simultaneously, moreover, championing transgender transitions for children from age five, unlimited migration, and 56 gender pronouns). Again, if old-school right-wingers, including libertarian icons like Cecil Rhodes, Rockefeller, or Carnegie, looked at all this, they would have unleashed their Gatling guns.
In short, using the adjectives “left” and “right” at present is completely, utterly, absolutely meaningless. They convey exactly zero information because they don’t even work as political labels: we hear “right-wing” and don’t understand if he is for Volodya Pu, or for Khamenei, or for Andrew Jackson (the founder of the Democratic Party, by the way), or for Trump, or perhaps for Hitler or Netanyahu. As we can see, the only thing all these characters have in common is their membership in Homo sapiens.
Of course, a devout libertarian will exclaim that we have long been aware of these problems, and we have long had a solution for them! It is our beloved Political Compass by David Nolan, a libertarian himself and therefore possessing typical libertarian cognitive biases. Firstly, he naturally placed himself in the most prestigious square of “right-wing individualists,” tossing everything tasty in there — personal freedom and freedom of entrepreneurship. Secondly, like all libertarians, he is obsessed with economics, because libertarianism was born as an opposition to Marxism, a movement designed to lash capitalism from a scientific and ethical standpoint, relying specifically on economics. Consequently, to lash communism as effectively as Marx hit capitalism, libertarians were forced to concentrate on the exact same thing. Bob Black, I recall, in one of his scandalous essays called this labor fetishism: the very idea that for both capitalists and communists, the message has not changed in 150 years; they are still obsessed with only one thing — who owns the labor.
Accordingly, Nolan could not have excluded the problem of labor from his diagram simply by definition, otherwise he would not have been a capitalist; however, the result turned out to be extremely unsatisfactory. Why is that? Because both extreme idealist an-caps and genuine state sharks of capitalism, whom libertarians pray to, ended up in his favorite corner: all these Rockefellers, Morgans, gold cufflinks with a dollar sign, etc., etc., who not only spat on the personal freedom of their workers (Ford went as far as prying into everything: who they sleep with and how, whether they go to church, play cards, or swear), but also relied on the state, lived in a touching synergy with it, and had no desire at all to abolish it (like Theodore Vail, the father of the AT&T communications monopoly, which was made possible only thanks to the state).
And here is where the funniest part comes out: formally, according to Nolan, there is simply nowhere to put them! There is not a single cell for cynical bastards who spat on any ideologies (and the American robber barons were as much libertarians as Stalin was) and simply sought power. Well, Rockefeller, let’s say, considered himself a good WASP, was a Baptist fanatic, went to church every Sunday (and many hyper-capitalists of that era did too), but this is the common legacy of Calvinism: if you are rich, you are blessed, so become rich and disregard everything else. The nightmarish Dutch V.O.C., the first transnational corporation in history, slaughtered more people in Indonesia than Pol Pot did in Cambodia, and its Heren XVII (Seventeen Lords, an omnipotent board of directors that had its own private army and fleet, minted its own currency, and declared war on states) were good Calvinists and people who deeply believed in the righteousness of their actions; nevertheless, they acted quite rationally, selfishly, and cold-bloodedly, suffering from no excess of idealism; their only true god was profit.
Accordingly, I propose to finally send these labels to the dustbin of history and not use them for anything other than what they were historically intended for, i.e., describing the sessions of the National Assembly of the Great French Revolution. Attempts to fix the Nolan scheme by adding extra dimensions can also be considered unsuccessful, as the scheme becomes cluttered, and it doesn’t become any clearer where our left and right are. What can replace it that is closer to reality? Two new, simpler, and more logical axes. Horizontally, we will plot Idealism (faith in dogma, utopia, a higher goal) against Cynicism/Realpolitik/Social Darwinism (pragmatism, cold calculation, survival, profit). Vertically, we will take the Will to Power (control, suppression, hierarchy) against a generalized Drive for Freedom (decentralization and personal autonomy). This is a broad and integral criterion, because a person might, for example, advocate for freedom of religion but oppose the freedom to use drugs; in such a case, we would not recognize them as being high enough on this scale. This thesis was most simply formulated once by the famous anarchist mathematician Verbitsky: “If you want freedom, demand freedom for Nazis, pedophiles, homosexuals, everyone. Because people are divided into supporters of freedom and opponents. Those who do not love freedom do not need freedom anyway. And those who love freedom have earned it.”
This compass finally stitches up the holes in political science that we mentioned above, because it evaluates politicians not by their slogans (“for the workers” or “for capital”), but by their psychotype, motivation, and actual method of action.
Let’s see what this gives us in practice. Into the quadrant of powerful cynics and pragmatists of total control, Joseph Stalin and John Rockefeller will fly in like they belong there and settle side-by-side (as well as all the robber barons, from Armour, Morgan, and Gould to Ford, Carnegie, Vail, and Thomas Watson), along with Cecil Rhodes, Mussolini, and Saddam Hussein. All of them wanted only power for power’s sake, stability, and personal triumph. Utopias do not interest them; they use them only as a screen for the masses. The main thing is the efficiency of the system and total control over resources. Benchmarks and regulars of this sector are also the Venetian Signoria, the father of Realpolitik Otto von Bismarck, both ruling parties of the USA, and Latin American dictators almost across the board — from Perón and Batista to Pinochet. Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Nasser, and Marshal Tito also fit here. Many figures of the Third Reich who did not suffer from fanaticism will also end up here, such as the completely honest epicurean, sybarite, corrupt official, cynic, and drug addict Göring (“I decide for myself who is a Jew to me”) and the technocrat Speer (“just let me build something already”), as well as Dönitz, Guderian, and other commanders.
Into the most terrifying quadrant — the powerful idealists and butchers of utopia — will go Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini, Robespierre, Savonarola, the leadership of ISIS, Calvin, and similar figures. These are people obsessed with a great idea (building communism, a Caliphate, the Kingdom of God), for the sake of which they are ready to burn millions of people. Power for them is a tool for reshaping humanity. Many traditionally left-wingers also fall here, from Karl Marx to Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara. With some stretching, Napoleon Bonaparte will settle here too (though closer to the border with cynicism). He sincerely believed in Reason, Progress, and the Code, and believed he was building an orderly, secular, advanced world, rid of medieval chaos. For the sake of this beautiful legal empire, he put millions of people in the ground and subordinated all of Europe. Mao is the true titan of this quadrant. Unlike Stalin, who was a pragmatic manager, Mao was a fanatical ideologue. He was not concerned with the stability of the state or the economy; he believed in the utopia of the new communist man until the very end. Enver Hoxha and Ceausescu are of a much smaller caliber, but they also reside here. On the border with the Free Idealists, the Fabians and utopian socialists like Bernard Shaw, Herbert Wells, and other Saint-Simonians will settle. Almost all of them believed that society should be rigidly and totally controlled by the state, and managed by an expert elite of scientist-officials. Many of them (including Shaw) openly admired Stalin and Mussolini for their abilities as “efficient managers.” We will also find Hitler here, although his utopia was pure madness (like many other utopias), along with his main priests — Himmler and Goebbels.
Into the quadrant of Free Idealists and romantics of autonomy will go people such as Diogenes of Sinope, early Christians before they became a state church, Mahatma Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, the hippies of the 1960s. They believe in a beautiful, just future or in absolute morality, but categorically reject the apparatus of violence, the state, and coercion, and want people to come to freedom voluntarily. Many sincere libertarians with their NAP also fall here. They all idealize human nature and believe that if oppression (state, taxes, army) is removed, people will organize themselves into beautiful, peaceful communities. Due to the lack of will to power, this quadrant is historically defenseless — its representatives are usually the first to be put to the knife by Powerful Idealists or subordinated by Powerful Cynics. Mikhail Bakunin fiercely hated the state in any form and fell out with Marx, brilliantly predicting that if the Marxists came to power, they would build the most terrible tyranny in history. But Bakunin was an idealist: he believed that one only needs to light the fuse of a general revolt for people to unite on their own into free federations without any coercion, so he also falls here. Nestled next to him are Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the anarchist prince Peter Kropotkin, perhaps the most noble and pure free idealist. He sincerely believed that without a state, people would live in absolute harmony, sharing everything necessary according to the principle of anarcho-communism.
The most adequate, from my point of view, is the last quadrant, the Free Cynics and pragmatists of freedom. They passionately want freedom for themselves and their group, but they have no illusions about humanity. They do not believe in the brotherhood of man or a bright future. They understand that the world is cruel and selfish, and they build freedom on the basis of pure pragmatism. This includes the more militant wing of libertarians, cypherpunks and crypto-anarchists, Father Makhno, the pirates of the 17th-century Caribbean, and the authors of the US Constitution. They do not try to build a utopia, but try to carve out a piece of freedom for themselves in this bleak world. This also includes outstanding practitioners of anarchy, such as Ross Ulbricht and even, in part, Ayn Rand. She is often mistakenly placed with the conservatives, but she despised them. Rand is a free cynic in the purest sense. No “brotherhood of man,” no altruism and self-sacrifice (in this, she saw the very root of fascism and communism). Society, according to Rand, should consist of tough, independent egoists who interact exclusively through a free market and capitalist exchange, where no one owes anyone anything.
As usual, for a theory to be working, it must explain the shortcomings of the previous one, and the new compass well covers all the shortcomings of the old one. It instantly explains why modern woke activists find a common language so easily with ISIS and Iran, when on the traditional compass they are at opposite poles. Simply because both have a sacred dogma and a colossal will to power; psychologically, they are blood brothers. Stalin and Rockefeller are completely identical here — they are simply two managers managing human cattle, while Pol Pot and Khomeini are two mad prophets who decided that they have the right to remake this cattle. Marx and Bakunin were comrades in the First International, but Marx moved into the upper quadrant of Powerful Idealists, while Bakunin, conversely, moved into the lower one — Free Idealists, and they became mortal enemies. Rockefeller and Ayn Rand are considered icons of capitalism. But Rockefeller (a Powerful Cynic) destroyed the free market, creating a monopoly with the help of state regulation and bribes, while Rand (a Free Cynic) considered such monopolists to be traitors to capitalism and parasites on the body of free creators.
In the following text, I assume that everyone has already seen the movie and formed their own opinion, and if not, it doesn’t matter much whether you watch it before or after reading this text.
Reviews often call the film a piece of propaganda, a pamphlet, or a political manifesto. That is not the case. What we have here is an instructional film. It does not criticize the current state of affairs. It provides instructions on how to act and what is needed for that. Here are the narratives that need to be transmitted: if you are a vigilante; if you saw a news story about a vigilante; if you are a TV presenter talking about a vigilante; if you are a witness being questioned by the police about a vigilante. No wide field of opinions is given — only clear, correct answers; the viewer must not be confused, they need clear instructions. The key message is: look, I’m showing you how it’s done. Later, you will do it yourself. This is the only take that is repeated several times in the film, including right at the curtain call.
A successful vigilante needs: to have combat skills, a stable source of income, the ability to articulate their position, neatness and attention to detail, to demonstrate professional integrity, and not to leave the regime with hostages in the form of family members, sticking to superficial connections; always offer simple executors on the opponent’s side to retreat, and shoot only in case of refusal. Outsiders need: to express a clear public demand, saying, “it’s cool that there are such people, we need them very much in such-and-such a country.” Journalists need: to hammer the public and the establishment with the question, “should our system protect victims of violence or criminals? And if it handles criminals poorly, then why hinder those who handle them better? Or are you in favor of more crime?” Witnesses need: while demonstrating a willingness to cooperate, to sabotage police actions to capture the vigilante.
A separate important feedback mechanism is shown, which is necessary for the vigilante to remain within the framework of the public demand, without replacing it with personal notions of morality. The main character always asks the victim if they are satisfied with the procedures of restoring justice already carried out. And only when the victim states that they are not satisfied do they give the vigilante sanction to act. However, a vigilante can, of course, search for injustice directly perceived through the senses in order to correct it immediately. To do this, he simply needs not to move around the city in a Batmobile, but to occasionally use public transport, walk, drop by bars, and so on. In short, not to be detached from life.
With that, I will end the general conclusions and move on to various sweet details.
The film takes place in a kind of averaged Europe, but from the visuals, it is obvious that it is Croatia. It is clear why. First, Croatia is almost devoid of the shortcomings that the main character fights against: it is an almost mono-ethnic and quite racist society, without a painful law-abidance drilled into its citizens. In short, Uwe Boll is using the sacred right of a Soviet citizen to shout on Red Square that Reagan is an idiot. Second, the target audience of the film is not Americans at all, and for them, all European countries look more or less the same. Third, those who are slightly familiar with regional specifics can get an extra laugh out of this.
For example, it is precisely in light of Croatian specifics that the episode in the brothel acquires additional meaning. The girl is unaware of why mold is appearing on the walls, which means that this is her first winter on the Adriatic. Obviously, in her native Ukraine, this problem does not exist. And for us, this is a clear signal: the author shows that not all migrants are equally harmful; there are useful, hardworking ones, ready to perceive local cultural values, and they need the local specifics to be explained delicately and to be paid honestly for honest work.
There are probably other cool moments, but I will leave you to discover them on your own. The main thing I wanted to say was said at the very beginning. Before you is an instruction. Take note and apply it creatively.
Every time you start a conversation with someone about a voluntary society, you inevitably encounter the trump card of any statist: “But what about the free-rider problem? If people aren’t forced to pay under threat of a club or prison, everyone will just enjoy the benefits, and no one will chip in! Everyone will want to be a free-loader, and society will collapse!” It sounds logical. Yet, an interesting thing happens: in nature, the free-ride problem was solved millions of years ago, and completely voluntarily, without a single tax inspector or ministry of coercion.
Let’s look at an unexpected example—vampire bats. Life for these creatures is certainly not a walk in the park. They feed exclusively on blood, and night hunting for large animals is a highly unpredictable business. About a third of the colony returns home empty-handed every night. This is where the harsh mathematics of survival comes into play: if a bat does not eat for three consecutive nights, it dies of hunger. Individually, this species would simply have been wiped off the face of the earth. This means they needed an insurance system. And they created one.
When a lucky, well-fed bat returns to the cave, it regurgitates part of the obtained blood to feed a hungry neighbor. From the outside, this might look like a socialist’s dream—from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. But there is no need to rush to rejoice for the leftists, because we are talking not about a common pot, but about a system of decentralized mutual aid built on reputation.
And here we return to the argument of the fans of the “strong hand.” What stops some cunning bat from simply sitting in the cave, squeaking pitifully, collecting tribute from neighbors, but never sharing its own prey? How will that end for it?
Bats are far from stupid. They have a disproportionately large neocortex, an excellent memory, and they recognize each other without fail by voice. They practice strictly targeted cooperation. Bats do not dump resources into an abstract fund; they invest in specific social ties. They remember who shared with them and who withheld their prey.
If a bat only takes but does not give, its social rating drops to zero. Neighbors simply stop feeling sympathy toward it. The next night when it is unsuccessful and begs for food, its yesterday’s “friends” will simply turn their backs to the wall. Through its dishonest behavior, this bat will kick the bucket without any coercion, bat courts, or prisons!
Now for the most interesting part. How does this mechanism work at the level of neurobiology? Evolutionary selection was not tasked with inventing this form of cooperation from scratch. There was already a powerful, perfectly tuned chemical circuit—maternal bonding (the mother’s attachment to the child), which forces an adult individual to spend colossal resources on a helpless offspring and derive pleasure from it. Selection simply took and extended this mechanism to non-related individuals.
When a bat shares blood with a neighbor or grooms its fur, its brain is flooded with the same cocktail of oxytocin and dopamine as a mother’s during contact with a child. Oxytocin forms deep attachment and trust, and dopamine reinforces this feeling with powerful pleasure from the very fact of mutual aid.
This is why bats, like you and me, help each other not out of cold calculation, but on emotions, which also serve as a biological detector of cheating. If a partner plays a one-way game, oxytocin simply stops being produced in your brain in their presence. The attachment breaks, and you no longer want to help them.
Of course, you might say now: “But we aren’t bats; we have millions of people in our society!” And you would be absolutely right, because our brain has a biological limit on the number of social ties it can maintain. However, today we have the tools (institutions and technologies) to scale this natural mechanism to all of humanity. Though, that is a completely different story, which we can discuss in future publications.
Just as I started to be glad that I can now post long-form content directly into Telegram, Sperry released a mega-long post that definitely won’t fit anywhere. I even initially thought about posting it on my own website in chapters rather than on a single page, but in the end, I decided not to overcomplicate things.
The scariest part is that he isn’t joking when he calls this a short essay; I also had the chance to hear several historical anecdotes that didn’t make it into the text, and if he wanted to, it could have been significantly longer. I can’t do that!
So: Prediction Markets. A brief essay on libertarianism, rationalism, ludomania, and mathematics. It turned out to be a very interesting mix. For me personally, the essay is useful primarily because it allows me to distinguish more confidently between the spheres of the predictable—and therefore the plannable—and the unpredictable, i.e., that to which one should merely adapt.
