Well, the time has come for terror too

In the post What to do with Russia from July 1, I wrote:

I am currently reflecting on how justified it would be at this stage to move from sabotage against war-sustaining infrastructure to individual terror. This is a topic full of subtle psychological nuances; it is important that, as a result, the executors of the sovereign’s will end up demotivated, rather than receiving, on the contrary, an impulse to unite against internal enemies. Nevertheless, individual terror is practically an inevitable stage in the gradual escalation of efforts to dismantle the regime; there is no escaping it, and it is advisable to come to terms with it in advance, acquire the necessary competencies in a timely manner, and identify a list of targets. I will try to formulate my thoughts on this topic more concretely in a while; they have not yet fully crystallized.

After that, I had somewhat forgotten the topic, but just the other day, deep in the enemy’s rear, somewhere near Moscow, Fascism-chan was blown up as a result of a terrorist attack. Exactly who blew her up does not matter, just as it does not matter which of the socialist-revolutionaries in the early 20th century collaborated with the Okhrana. Much more important is exactly who was blown up. Perhaps I should still reflect on the optimal choice of targets for individual terror.

Judging by the hype caused by this attack, the target was chosen very successfully. It was demonstrated that the war is not happening somewhere far away, but can knock on the door of any “sofa-front” fighter at any moment, even a very glamorous one. Perhaps future terrorists should designate such a category of rear rats as “charming cannibals” as a priority target. For example, someone like Girkin and the like; I am not very well-versed in them. The category of “loathsome cannibals”—like a conditional Margarita Simonyan—are second-tier targets. The category of “useful idiots,” like a conditional Yuneman, is the third tier.

Compiling lists is also useful. For instance, a liquidation list, provided with links to the figures’ creative works and justifications as to why the elimination of a particular figure will contribute to demotivation in the pro-war camp and a drain of people from it. Plus, criteria for exiting the list: leaving the Russian Federation, public condemnation of the war, or transferring a significant sum to pro-Ukrainian funds (specifically those dealing with troop supply, not humanitarian aid). The benefit of the list is obvious. Someone on it discovers one fine day that two figures have already died in two weeks, there are ninety figures in total, and if the trend continues, they have a year and a half to live at best, so isn’t it time to run and repent?

And, of course, it would be especially effective to carry out attacks in locations where farewell rites for the bodies of previous victims of terrorist attacks are taking place. The goal is to ensure that not only the people on the lists, but their entire circle of acquaintances, begin to live in the mode of a special operation being conducted right around them.

It would be very useful to focus the terror primarily on Muscovites: it is beneficial to increase the rift between Moscow and the surrounding territories. Let the provincials, on one hand, gloat, and on the other, be wary of drawing fire upon themselves and prefer to distance themselves from the capital and its absurd war.

P.S. Why do I write only about attacks targeting propagandists, those collecting donations for the SVO, and the like? Because the destruction of military personnel during a war, even in the deep rear, is not a terrorist attack, but sabotage. Military personnel are legitimate targets. Propagandists are illegitimate.

P.P.S. And what about the NAP and all that? That’s just how it is. Not armies, but states fight. Combatants are merely the most obvious targets, who are also usually within the reach of the combatants of the second warring party. Non-combatants of a warring state who support the war are exactly the same targets of war. Moreover, non-combatants who do not support the war can also be quite justifiably destroyed by the second warring party if they failed to escape the jurisdiction of their state abroad or into captivity. It is simply that it is most useful to show maximum humanity toward them, but that is a question of tactics, not of law.

Why is it forbidden to sell children into slavery? And how will private police maintain order if it is more profitable to steal?

Anonymous question

The second question is quite simple, so I will answer it first. For a private security guard, it is also more profitable to steal products from the store than to ensure others do not steal. But only in the short term; afterwards, he is fired, with more or less of a scandal. It is important not to give him powers beyond those strictly required to perform his job duties; otherwise, he will not only steal but also intimidate other staff to cover up the theft by creating fictitious reports for the owners. I do not exclude that such schemes do arise in some places due to the negligence of store owners, but usually, there is a system of incentives that makes such behavior unlikely and prevents it from going too far.

Now let’s talk about children.

To begin with, I will note that even now, under the state, children are quite readily sold into slavery. And I am not even talking about state slavery, such as the forced labor of Uzbek schoolchildren collecting cotton, but about private slavery, which is forbidden by that very same state. Nevertheless, it is precisely under the state that the incentive system for the police, as highlighted in the answer to the first question, is such that it may be more profitable for the police to sell children into slavery themselves or to protect such trade. Private child labor slavery is more characteristic of some part of Sub-Saharan Africa with its rather primitive mining industry. In wealthier countries, sexual slavery is more prevalent.

The question is, why does all this hardly concern the authors of questions about child slavery under ancap? It is easy to answer. Under the state, private child slavery is considered marginal; it takes place somewhere far away and does not catch the eye. The authors of the questions are concerned specifically about a potential situation where such slavery is respectable. When you encounter it on the street and in the information space at every step, and therefore have to put up with the existence of this phenomenon, and if you try to fight it with means of moral pressure, you yourself find yourself in the skin of a marginal who prevents decent people from behaving in their usual way.

Could child slavery become a respectable practice in the ancap community? Of course, it could. According to the principles of libertarianism, restitution is a perfectly legitimate way of acquiring property, and if, for example, a child damaged some expensive property (which children sometimes do), then it is perfectly permissible to demand compensation from the child and even collect it by force, since the child possesses self-ownership, and at what age full legal capacity is assigned is a matter of convention. Restitution is perfectly permissible not only in monetary but also in-kind form; there you have the prerequisite for slavery.

Thus, practices where a child works off a broken neighbor’s window by mowing the neighbor’s lawn are more than likely under ancap, as they do not cause moral repulsion. What could prevent the development of harsher practices, where, for example, something is demanded from a child as restitution that an adult would find humiliating for themselves, such as filming in a BDSM video? It is that very moral repulsion that will prevent it. Too many people would be found who, applying the situation to themselves, would state that they would not agree to this for any amount of money, and therefore, to them personally, such restitution seems unfair (the subject of the conflict is valued as disproportionately less significant than the damage caused during restitution). Libertarian morality requires intervening in conflicts on the just side, so a child in such a situation would easily find defenders.

Well, if that is the case, then the authors of questions about child slavery under ancap can breathe a sigh of relief: it will certainly not get worse than under the state. They can continue to boycott manufacturers of clothing made using forced child labor and leave the ancaps alone.

How will the problem of a “federal fleet” be solved under minarchism and even more so under full ancap?

This problem is clearly visible in the US Civil War, where the Southerners had a larger army, a more powerful economy, and more money, but they lacked one thing: naval supremacy.

In other words, the essence of the problem is simple: maintaining ships is hellishly expensive, more so than any other weaponry, and there are great doubts that a single firm could maintain a nuclear aircraft carrier. If it were maintained by several firms, there is a high chance it would turn into a “federal” aircraft carrier.

Without a fleet, self-defense is impossible. With a fleet, controlling counter-revolution is impossible.

How is it proposed to deal with such a problem?

P.S. This is, of course, referring to minarchism or ancap in a specific country.

Anonymous question

In many ways, this question resembles the problem of cities being buried under layers of horse manure as the population grew in the late 19th century. In other words, the problem belongs to one technological era, while the circumstances for which a solution is being sought already belong to another.

Proto-ancap existed in Iceland for three hundred years and then surrendered to the state. Proto-minarchism existed in the USA, conventionally speaking, until that very Civil War—meaning less than a hundred years—and was then crushed with great bloodshed by the federal center. So, of course, the problem of power centralization itself is not imagined, but at its core lies a pronounced positive effect of scale when increasing armament. If this effect disappears, the problem of power centralization also disappears.

Today, naval supremacy is a thing of questionable effectiveness. Let’s say there is some mega-bandit who has robbed his subjects of such an astronomical sum that he can afford a mega-fleet superior in strength to all other fleets. What is the profit from this? The ability to ensure an effective naval blockade of any chosen coastal territory? The ability to control the sky over any territory within the reach of carrier-based aviation? And how do these capabilities convert into money? For the mega-bandit as some unified entity—almost not at all. These expenses will never pay off, and naval muscles serve the bandit almost exclusively as decoration.

On the other hand, the mega-bandit is a conceptual entity; in fact, decisions are made by specific people, and for them, what matters is not what income the mega-bandit receives, but what income they personally receive—by reducing the overall efficiency of the mega-bandit. Again, if instead of increasing one’s own efficiency, one reduces the efficiency of others, then this is also a quite effective strategy for remaining the coolest, even at the cost of reducing one’s capabilities in absolute terms; and the mega-bandit can indeed act quite rationally based on this extremely “smart” strategy of “you die today, and I tomorrow.”

How could a conditional ancap community prevent such moronic attacks from these atavistic predators? First, as the episode with the cruiser Moskva showed us, anti-ship missiles are quite effective against a fleet at a significantly lower price. Second, the elimination of individual regime functionaries is usually even cheaper than the destruction of thousand-ton tubs. Third, the idea of the nation-state is becoming less popular, and with it, the popularity of patriotism falls, which is expressed, in particular, in the unwillingness to serve in the army. As a result, today even countries with huge military budgets have serious manpower shortages. It is already difficult to man a fleet, and when the situation develops to the point where the first significant territorial ancap communities appear on Earth, the situation will become even more depressing for etatists.

Yes, horses will not give way to cars overnight, but cities will no longer be buried under manure; the trend has changed. Conflicts will become increasingly market-justified, which means minimum costs for maximum efficiency. Not the time for aircraft carriers.

The difference between aggression and violence using the example of American football players and police officers

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Aggressive feelings and behavior are a natural part of human nature. But this naturalness of aggression is often, and absolutely erroneously, perceived as a capacity for its boundless manifestation, up to such violent actions as murder. And from such an incorrect interpretation of the nature of aggression, a conclusion is drawn about the impossibility of eradicating violence from human behavior, since without it a person would become a “willless vegetable,” incapable of many types of activity that require aggressiveness from them. But this absurd substitution of concepts can be easily refuted with one practical example—the statistics of domestic violence in the families of American football players and police officers.

If you believe that aggressiveness is a necessary component of many types of human activity and social communication, then you will agree that American football is a fairly aggressive sport, and a person cannot do without this component to participate in it. Why it is necessary for police officers, I think, does not even need to be explained. But there is one categorical difference between players and police officers. As American domestic violence statistics show, the level of violence in police families is up to 4 times higher than the national average. At the same time, in the families of players, it occurs almost 2 times less than the average.

Why is this so? While players simply need to achieve good sporting results, the immediate task of a police officer is to carry out violent attacks on other people, who themselves often committed no violence at all, but were merely accused of violating some state laws and “victimless crimes.” Obviously, the first profession may attract people who clearly demonstrate their aggressiveness but are still non-violent, and whose aggression is limited and under inhibiting control. The second profession will more often attract precisely violent people, since their official duties require violence.

Using the example of these two professions, we can clearly see the difference between functional aggression under inhibiting control and pathological violence that has spiraled out of control. The former is absolutely sufficient for a person to perform any activity, provided, of course, that it does not consist of committing violence itself. A person will not become some kind of “willless vegetable” if their aggressiveness is limited. Moreover, it is naturally limited in the vast majority of people, who could never intentionally cause serious harm to someone, let alone kill, feeling a strong repulsion toward such acts. Therefore, calling the capacity to commit violence an important trait for many types of human activity would simply be an absurd substitution of concepts.

Eric Mac. Libertarianism. The chapter in which the author first brushes against ancap.

In the chapter Anarchy, the minimal state without taxation and the minimal state with taxation, Eric Mack first touches upon the topic of ancap, which he had previously disdainfully neglected. It is amusing that the section where this topic arises is the final one in the book, concerning not even the exposition of libertarian doctrines, but rather the critique thereof. Well, what can you expect from academic philosophers.

Thanks to Alex Dvoretsky for the donation that motivated me to translate. In full accordance with the economic mainstream, the funding of public goods such as publishing things in open access should be underfunded, and yet your donations consistently feed me, although not to satiety.

There are only three chapters left to translate in the book. Usually, this means the process should speed up, because everyone is curious whether there will be a happy ending and if the main characters will get married. We shall see.

Network State

The friendly channel Russian Crypto Frontier has begun translating the recently published book by Balaji Srinivasan, Network State. So far, only the preamble has been posted, but feel free to encourage Yuri in the comments and shake him down for donations to make his work more enjoyable.

I read a brief list of the book’s concepts. The author develops panarchic ideas floating in the air and proposes the idea of a network state as a startup combining elements of the cryptocurrency community, role-playing games, and a national diaspora. This is not at all like the other trendy idea of creating charter cities, but in some places, it strongly resembles the Montellibero project — we also have developed tokenomics, a real population on the ground, an extensive diaspora outside Montenegro, and our own set of traditions, self-governance practices, and dispute resolution.

In short, I will follow the translation process with interest and occasionally announce the appearance of new translated chapters.

As for tomorrow, I want to post the translation of a new chapter from Eric Mack — Alex Dvoretsky donated for it on Boosty a couple of days ago, so there you go, I’m almost finished.

The Question of Instincts and Reflexes in Human Aggression

Voluntarist, Bitarch

It has become a fairly established opinion that human beings possess no instinctive behavior. Sometimes, even the instincts of highly developed animals (especially primates) are subject to partial doubt. Priority is given to the crude satisfaction of immediate needs, while all other behavior, it is claimed, is purely social in nature. Based on this position, the idea that humans have innate predispositions regarding social behavior—for example, a tendency toward either violent or non-violent behavior—is also criticized. Thus, human behavior is seen as purely a product of upbringing and environment, unless it concerns certain pathologies already described by medicine. Or even if an individual does have some innate predispositions, they can be easily “overwritten” by upbringing.

To understand whether humans have instincts or not, it is necessary to define the concept of instinct itself, as well as another similar concept—the reflex. An instinct is defined as a set of complex hereditary and preset behavioral acts, whereas a reflex is a standard reaction to a stimulus. It is immediately apparent that the difference between an instinct and a reflex comes down to the complexity of the structure of these phenomena, without a clear boundary being drawn. This can lead to some confusion in the study of innate behavioral predispositions. However, while instincts are generally considered not to be present in humans, no one doubts the existence of reflexes.

Perhaps the most criticized is the maternal instinct. However, it is an indisputable fact that an attachment between mother and child usually does arise. Research clearly shows that during pregnancy and breastfeeding, oxytocin—a hormone that plays an important role in this process—is produced in the mother. However, researchers agree that this cannot be called an instinct.

At the same time, for some reason, the innate human fear of certain threats encountered during evolution is explicitly called an instinct. For example, research has shown that the fear of snakes and spiders is present in 6-month-old infants. In general, the concept of the threat superiority effect, which explains the human ability to react quickly to threats in the environment, suggests a protective reaction to both innate and experience-acquired stimuli, not just the latter.

Let us now turn to the topic of aggression. As ethologists claim, the restraint of intraspecific aggression in animals, expressed, among other things, through the ritualization of battles, is instinctive in nature. However, the model of the violence inhibition mechanism in humans calls the rejection reaction—which arises in a normally developing individual from childhood when observing distress signals (expressions of sadness, fear, pain) from victims of violence—merely an unconditioned reflex. It should also be noted that this mechanism is important in the development of empathy, and children as early as 2-3 days after birth show an empathic response by reacting to the crying of other children with reactive crying, which is more intense than their reaction to other irritating stimuli.

We know that it is primarily the correct functioning of such a mechanism—which causes a feeling of rejection toward violence, plays an important role in the development of empathy, and leads to the development of a number of important conditioned reflexes—that makes a person non-violent, and only after that comes upbringing. Is such behavior instinctive, or is it simply a reflex? It is impossible to say for sure until a clear boundary is drawn between these concepts. However, if researchers nonetheless call the innate fear of threat, which influences the regulation of aggressive behavior, instinctive, then why can the violence inhibition mechanism not also be called instinctive? Especially since in many people it is so strongly expressed that it absolutely prevents the commission of violence, at least in its serious forms.

Correcting Libertarianism

As it happens, Carl Franco’s recent article Rethinking Libertarianism resonates strongly with the recent chapter I published lately from the nearly completed ancap handbook.

The author quickly sketches his own set of basic libertarian principles, then declares that advanced state redistribution and regulation can be perfectly derived from these principles, and if a typical libertarian for some reason refuses to follow these conclusions, then something is clearly wrong with them.

Next, it is demonstrated that if libertarians threw away their silly ideals of freedom and instead adopted the far more popular ideals of order, purity, reverence for authority, care, and other wonderful things, they would, of course, manage to make this new reshaped doctrine more popular than the current loser sect of freedom-worshippers.

There is a lot of quite valid criticism in the article; I won’t recount it all. I can only recommend rereading the chapter Anarchist Politics: On the Libertarian Party from Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. I see no point in adding anything more to the grandfather’s words; he showed the direction of the evolution of libertarian politicians’ views and how to relate to it long ago.

The sweaty, burning rage of compassionate libertarians

Book about ancap – fresh chapter

I’m not sure if I chose the most suitable chapter structure, but the one that I finished writing today relates to the resolution of the problems outlined in the chapter before last. The chapter was quite difficult to write because I don’t like all these quasi-psychological matters, but there was no way to avoid this topic. As usual, I hope that it didn’t turn out too banal, is concise enough, and perhaps even convincing.

Myths about violence

Libertarian Band has released a video on the very important topic of myths about violence, which we have raised more than once. Were killings truly the norm for prehistoric humans? What percentage of soldiers feel no resistance to committing murder and act as the driving force of wars? How many people are actually responsible for the millions of victims of genocides? Where lies the falsehood in experiments demonstrating human violence? You will find the answers to these and other similar questions by watching the video “Myths About Violence”.