The Importance of Cryptocurrencies in Providing Humanitarian Aid

Voluntarist, Bitarch

When a serious crisis occurs in a society and people lose not only their rights, freedoms, and accumulated wealth, but are literally deprived of the means of existence, concerned representatives of other societies try in every way to help them. Organizing the provision of humanitarian aid is a difficult task, especially in crisis conditions. But cryptocurrencies can come to the rescue, as they make it possible to provide this aid in the most accessible way.

We are talking about Afghanistan—a country where power was seized by the Taliban terrorist group. The country’s economy has practically come to a standstill, and people have lost access to their deposits and savings. The terrorist regime was subjected to significant sanctions from the West, and although the US President exempted humanitarian aid from sanctions, banks are blocking transactions directed to Afghanistan, and the international payment system SWIFT has simply stopped working within Afghanistan. This has made it practically impossible to provide humanitarian aid to the residents of Afghanistan using classic financial instruments.

Cryptocurrencies came to the rescue, proving to be practically the only way to send funds to the residents of Afghanistan. For example, Fereshteh Forough, an Afghan-American who founded a programming school for women in the Afghan city of Herat, turned it into an improvised crypto-bank. This allowed money to be transferred to the institution’s students, which they can exchange locally for afghanis (the currency of Afghanistan) to buy food and medicine. And Sanzhar Kakar, an Afghan who grew up in Seattle, created the HesabPay mobile electronic wallet for the residents of Afghanistan back in 2019, which also works with cryptocurrencies. As he claims, 88% of families in Afghanistan have at least one smartphone, allowing them to trade, transfer money to each other, and receive transactions from abroad without ever touching banks or the Taliban regime. And this could help save millions of Afghans facing the risk of starving to death. It is also reported that the opportunities provided by cryptocurrencies are being actively studied by international charitable organizations.

Now it should be perfectly clear how cryptocurrencies are capable of saving millions of needy people from certain death. Sometimes cryptocurrencies are accused of being merely a financial pyramid operating for the enrichment of a limited circle of wealthy individuals, and therefore they must be banned for the benefit of ordinary people. Of course, such claims are incorrect, and banning cryptocurrencies is simply impossible, except by completely shutting down the internet. It can be concluded that a person who advocates for the well-being of people and the provision of aid to those in need, but is at the same time an opponent of cryptocurrencies, is completely inconsistent in their reasoning. Cryptocurrencies are a benefit for ordinary people, and especially for those who have fallen into an unenviable position.

Conclusion of the discussion of the false dilemma

In previous episodes: my summary of Konstantin Morozov’s article “Anarchism against Anarchy,” and my statement of the key thesis of this article by presenting the reader with a false dilemma.

Next, Konstantin responded to my article on his channel, and in the comments under that post, we had a more or less substantive discussion. This left each party with a feeling of being right, while simultaneously being accompanied by an adjustment by each side—not so much of their previously stated position, but of the approach to presenting it. The final response in the conversation belongs to Konstantin, and I will probably leave the last word to him, so as not to write another update on this same topic shortly.

I don’t know about you, but left-libertarianism has become a bit clearer to me. Not in the sense that I have become closer to it, but in the sense that I now expect less cannibalism from its typical representatives than from some conditional Karl Franco, even if he were thrice right-wing and thrice an ancap.

Indiscriminate Violence, “Legitimate” Violence, and Scientific and Technological Progress

Voluntarist, Bitarch

At present, society, especially of the Western model, has adopted a model of so-called permissible, selective, or “legitimate” violence. It consists of the idea that violence is permissible toward a specific person based on a law adopted by the majority of people in a given territory. However, since this is a cultural norm, it cannot be viewed as a given; it is necessary to understand that in other societies, this norm may differ. For a significant part of human history and in a significant number of societies, a completely different model of non-selective violence was practiced. Today, the Taliban, who recently took power in Afghanistan, can specifically remind us of this. This model consists of the following:

  • Violence may be applied not only to the lawbreaker but also to their family, relatives, and friends; even random people who have committed very minor offenses, or those who have done nothing at all, may become victims of violence for the purpose of intimidating society and strengthening power;
  • The absence of freedom to agree or disagree with the established law, including through changing one’s location and residence due to restrictions on freedom of movement.

All other things being equal, proponents of non-selective violence have a better chance of victory compared to those who advocate for moderate violence. They will not hesitate to intimidate society, carry out brutal purges, and even organize mass killings and genocide. Due to a much greater willingness to commit violence, their violent potential is far higher.

But in reality, conditions are usually not equal. And one of the important conditions is the level of technological development. For example, this condition played a decisive role in the colonial conquests by Europeans, or in the recent fight against terrorism in the Middle East (including against the Islamic State). If this circumstance had not existed, if the level of technological development had been equal for everyone, then representatives of the Western world would simply have lost in the vast majority of battles. There would have been no colonization of lands already inhabited by other peoples, and there would be nothing to say about the fight against terrorist groups. The side resorting to less selective violence would have had much greater chances of winning, and in those cases, the consequences would have been fatal.

In the absence of significant technological superiority, the Western world could easily be conquered by a crowd of Taliban, ISIS members, or some other psychopaths simply armed with Kalashnikov rifles. If the order of selective violence is to be maintained, it cannot do without scientific and technological progress. But scientific and technological progress, in turn, creates certain risks of violence, including catastrophic ones. The time is not far off when even small organizations, or even individuals, will be able, for example, to recreate a dangerous virus or master ultra-high-capacity energy sources. It is terrifying to imagine what would happen if high technologies were applied for violent purposes. Furthermore, these technologies may eventually be seized by the same terrorists (technologies tend to pass from hand to hand), and then the technological gap will no longer play a role—in the case of weapons of mass destruction, one does not need to be more developed or stronger than the opponent; it is sufficient only to inflict unacceptable damage upon them.

Given the critical importance of scientific and technological progress, as well as the risks it creates, one can conclude that it is necessary to fight against violence. As long as violence is accepted as a given, different groups of people will choose different approaches between selective and non-selective violence. And those who choose the second option—the less civilized and more violent people—will pose a severe threat to the lives of those who advocate for selective or moderate violence. I would especially like to convey this thought to conservatives, who often dislike progress. All that remains is to fight violence as a phenomenon as a whole. Only by completely eradicating it can we get rid of the corresponding risks.

Konstantin Morozov and the False Dilemma

Let me remind you what this is about. Here is a summary of the first article by Konstantin Morozov—about how libertarians should embrace moral realism and, along with it, agree to certain taxes; and here is a summary of the second article—about how libertarians should embrace moral realism and, along with it, agree to the state and some form of state coercion. For those who doubt whether the articles were summarized correctly, there are links to the original sources that you can review.

In my view, Konstantin is proposing a false dilemma. Here is a chair with the spikes of moral realism; if you sit on it, your desires mean nothing as long as they contradict the only correct objective morality, which will be dictated to you by the state through the mouths of court intellectuals. And here is a chair with the dicks of moral subjectivism; sit on it, and your desires mean no more than the desires of any statist.

Of course, after the marginalist revolution in economic theory, there is no longer any point in seriously talking about the objectivity of values, and moral philosophers can strain every nerve trying to invent syllogisms to prove the opposite—so, without a second thought, I take a seat on the second chair and begin to proclaim from this cozy tripod, trying to do so more coherently than is typical for Pythias.

In my book about ancap, I describe morality as follows:

  • Conflict is a state in which the same object (the subject of the conflict) is viewed as a means to achieve different goals, whereby one use hinders the other or even makes it impossible.
  • Every person develops their own internal settings regarding which behavioral tactic to choose in which conflicts. These are their personal ethical norms.
  • As for morality, it is simply the order of behavior during conflicts that garners the greatest approval in a given society.

Thus, morality is based on the subjective values of individuals, but at the same time, it constitutes an abstract object that can be roughly outlined in some set commandments, while the subtleties of one or another morality can be dissected in hundreds of treatises and thousands of literary texts. In particular, we can describe libertarian morality quite clearly; a considerable number of libertarians accept these norms in general for themselves, though, of course, they will not hesitate to argue over various subtle points.

Naturally, libertarian morality includes a norm on the permissibility of coercion for the purpose of the fair resolution of conflicts (fairness being the sense of proportionality between the value of the object of conflict and the damage caused by the conflict). But at the same time, libertarian morality also requires a person to personally enter a conflict on the fair side, and this completely negates any attempts at a monopoly in the sphere of legitimate coercion. For a libertarian, the value of decentralization is higher than the value of monetary efficiency. All other things being equal, they will prefer a decentralized solution. If a centralized one is significantly more profitable, they may permit its use as a moral compromise and continue searching for a line of behavior that is more morally comfortable for them.

I am not speaking now in categories of “ought.” No one must adopt specifically libertarian morality. But if they do, their actions will be driven by approximately the considerations outlined above. Libertarian desires are better than the desires of statists—for libertarians, because values are subjective. They are also better than the desires of statists for many other anarchists, minarchists, liberals, conservatives, and several other abstract moral types. My task is simple—to formulate these desires and follow them. As for the fluttering of individual moral philosophers around the chair with spikes, I prefer to consider it simply a variety of intellectual masochism. Why not, as long as they don’t pounce on people.

Anarchism versus anarchy, an explication

I read an article by Konstantin Morozov with the beautiful title Anarchism vs. Anarchy.

Briefly, it states that: 1) there is philosophical anarchism, meaning the belief that the state has no moral right to coerce people, and there is political anarchism, meaning the belief that the state should be abolished; 2) political anarchism does not necessarily follow from philosophical anarchism, and one can deny the state the right to coercion without seeking to eliminate the state.

Konstantin claims: principled anarchism requires moral realism—the belief that objectively true moral judgments exist… because otherwise, anarchism itself would be nothing more than a set of someone’s personal desires. Meanwhile, anarchists do not deny the legitimacy of all coercion; they allow it to prevent more terrible coercion. But if coercion is permissible, for example, to prevent even more terrible coercion, then why cannot the state handle this? In other words, if the state behaves well, why should we demand its abolition? And any examples of bad states can always be dismissed as private cases subject to targeted correction.

The article would be incomplete if the author had not taken the trouble to address the obvious question: why does the state suppress its competitors in the matter of legitimate coercion? As a justification, it is argued that a proper state, to which philosophical anarchists should have no complaints, limits competitors for the sake of adhering to uniform, transparent procedural rules—in other words, to exclude vigilantism. That is, self-defense is fine, but dismembering a neutralized offender is not fine (shout out to Alexander Tatarkov and his constant leitmotif “we don’t need state prisons, give me the person who molested my daughter, I’ll sell him for organs”).

In the second part of the article, the author analyzes the question of how one might try to bypass the holes he found in the justification of political anarchism through moral subjectivism. It will not be possible to justify the state’s claim to exercise justified coercion if there is no single and universal standard for the justifiability of coercion. Next, he gallops through Stirner, Svetov, Belkovich, and Hoppe. Konstantin’s objections to the ideas of the aforementioned individuals boil down to the following:

If the individual himself is the final authority in determining good and bad, then why would coercing someone into moral orders to which they did not consent be wrong? Their subjective judgment on this matter cannot carry more weight than the equally subjective judgment of the person exercising the coercion that this coercion is justified.

In other words, in Konstantin’s opinion, if we take the position of moral subjectivism, we leave ideas about the necessity of abolishing the state even more without any support. For some, the state is evil; for others, it is good; everyone is right, let’s move on.

In conclusion, the author states that the most promising direction of work for anarchists is the search for strong practical arguments in favor of the idea that a stateless society will be effective, while any militant rhetoric directed at the state would be better tempered, looking instead at plans for various useful reforms.

I have already summarized Morozov’s previous article on moral realism once, but I never commented on it, and in the meantime, he has written more. In the next post, I do intend to speak out on the interesting questions he has raised.

Oh, if only people were as kind as beavers!

I have one tiny but lovely channel in my subscriptions, primarily about practical agorism, but occasionally it drifts into reflecting on more abstract things. And not so long ago, it suddenly began a series of posts on the bitarchy theory of restructuring humanity based on a violence inhibition mechanism. Naturally, I couldn’t pass this up; I waited until the series finished, and now I recommend it to you, along with the channel itself.

It begins with this post, and further on, you can read many posts almost consecutively up until this one, the final one. Fortunately, they are mostly short. I usually lack the tediousness to dive into overly detailed breakdowns of complex topics, so I gladly leave those to the men, and then I assimilate the resulting product and recommend it to others if I find it worthy.

The author concludes with a significant remark:

The question remains open: “what would be the most clever replacement for Lorentz’s theory?”. I’m still thinking.

State 2.0

In a friendly project Libertarian State (formerly called Anti-State, which sort of hints at the evolution of thought), a translation of Aviezer Tucker’s article Panarchy: State 2.0 has been released. The article is not particularly remarkable, as it outlines the main ideas in defense of panarchy established by the originator of the term, Émile du Châtelet.

Following this, Wed Neuman, who actually runs this channel, released his own article on state 2.0, where he begins with a critique of Tucker and then develops his own theoretical constructs, moving from the original ideas of panarchy to the concept of charter cities.

To start, Wed redefines the concept of the state. Instead of the representation of the state as a monopolist of legitimate violence, which repels libertarians, he proposes to define the state as a stably maintained infrastructure for human habitation on a certain, not necessarily strictly fixed, territory. This is a far more “herbivorous” understanding of the subject, which brackets out all sorts of discussions about stationary bandits and other journalistic rhetoric, focusing instead on the actual organization of life.

The main prediction of the article is that as charter cities spread, state 1.0 will increasingly be reduced to the role of a concierge, receiving a fixed payment for this.

Regarding strategy, Wed still sees Paul Romer’s approach as the most optimal: on clean, uninhabited territory, from scratch, preceding construction by obtaining firm guarantees from the state, and detailing their own charter, on the basis of which further interaction between state 2.0 and its citizens will be built.

It is not hard to see that we, in Montelibero, are acting suboptimally according to Wed: we haven’t officially notified the state that we are conducting political experiments on its territory, but instead try to seep through stealthily and, if necessary, legalize ourselves only after we have developed. I don’t know, it seems to me that this is actually more reliable: it is much easier to gain factual recognition than prior permission. Imagine if Satoshi-sensei had asked someone if he could launch Bitcoin…

Stefan Molyneux. Practical Anarchy. Translation of Chapter 9, again on collective defense.

Chapter 9 concludes the first part of Stephan Molneux’s Practical Anarchy, which is dedicated to methodology; following this will be the second part on argumentation, a considerable portion of which has already been translated and published in draft form by volunteers. Therefore, in my spare time, I will refine the next six chapters slightly and will report back once they are done, to avoid making too many small updates.

While in the eighth chapter Molneux explains why collective defense against external invasion is more effective under anarchy than under a state, in the ninth he uses several historical examples to show what is wrong with the state’s so-called defense.

Unlike the translation of Eric Mack, which is funded by Alex Dvoretsky, and David Friedman, which is funded by Dima Kovalenko, a permanent sponsor for the translation of this particular book has not materialized. Bitarch was involved here, but he seems to have lost interest; I would be glad if someone else takes the initiative.

If you consider coercion justified for the sake of security, then consider the eradication of violence justified as well!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Coercive state measures are almost always justified as a necessary method of ensuring security. This position is held by all supporters of a monopoly on coercive power, regardless of their views. Even minarchists, who believe only the most minimal state is necessary, reduce this minimum precisely to the provision of security. And what can be said about those who hold authoritarian views?

Of course, people with such views have no questions regarding repressive coercive measures for the sake of fighting the coronavirus pandemic. And this is not surprising, for etatists have always said that coercive power, among other things, is necessary for such a case, to force everyone without exception to comply with restrictive measures and get vaccinated once the vaccine is ready; otherwise, ensuring security would simply be impossible. It is also worth noting that etatists very often consider it necessary to punish people for “victimless crimes,” that is, only potentially unsafe behavior. In this case, security is often equated with the stability of established social orders, and as a result, even a word spoken against these orders or the political force supporting them can become grounds for imprisonment, or something even worse.

To the supporters of coercive power, I can only say that if you are so deeply concerned about the issue of security, then why do you suddenly oppose the eradication of the greatest threat to security—violence? After all, it is not pandemics, and even less so the statements of dissenters, but specifically violence and its consequences that are the greatest threat to security! Yet why do you suddenly reject the proposal to better study the neurophysiological mechanism inherent in most people that inhibits violent behavior toward members of their own species (that is, the violence inhibitor), to determine its genetic nature, and, by resorting to the achievements of biotechnology, to develop a solution that would help correct the deficiency in the operation of this mechanism in the small percentage of people capable of committing acts of violence and, indeed, committing them?

Often, it even reaches the point where such people do not bother to familiarize themselves even slightly with the concept of the violence inhibition mechanism and begin to defend the importance of the feeling of aggression, without which a person would turn into a vegetable, although the discussion concerns only the inhibition of aggressive impulses in certain cases. Or they say that violence is important for fighting violence itself, although it is very easy to see what a foolish error is contained in such reasoning. And of course, the inhibition of violence does not contradict the capacity for self-defense, since the presence of an immediate threat to life is a stimulus that primarily activates a defensive reaction (for example, flight or, indeed, self-defense). And in the end, the vast majority of people are already incapable of violence. Even if you look, for example, at countries with the highest homicide rates, the killers themselves will turn out to be thousandths of a percent of the population (assuming that behind every murder stands a separate killer, although this is not the case).

But why do etatists suddenly have such resistance to the idea of eradicating violence? If a person can potentially harm someone by transmitting a virus, you consider it necessary to maximally restrict their freedoms until they are vaccinated. But if a person can potentially harm someone by committing violence (and I remind you that this is a minority of people, while the majority are incapable of violence and never commit it), you consider restricting and “vaccinating” them unnecessary, or even risky? By your own logic of ensuring maximum security, you should support such measures first and foremost. Or is security actually not that important to you?

Differences between the Chicago and Austrian schools

Today I came across a translation of an article by Zolotorev regarding the differences between the approaches of the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics. The author refers to a certain discussion about these differences that he conducted via correspondence. I suspect that this discussion was largely triggered by an article by David Friedman, in which he discusses this very difference in approaches in detail. He linked to it on his Facebook, and later returned to this topic several more times there. And this (I don’t rule it out) started with my question about what exactly he finds unsatisfactory about the ASE – in an online interview that he gave to Russian-speaking readers to mark the release of the Russian translations of The Machinery of Freedom.

In short, if there is public interest, I can translate Friedman’s article, as well as individual more or less substantive reactions from the Austrians. I will, of course, measure this interest by the number of donations received in the near future. There is also an interest for me here, because I am very interested in Friedman’s economic analysis of law, on which I plan to base much of the second part of my book about ancap, and I want to have a clearer idea of how compatible all these considerations are with the ASE.