Libertarian Theory of War, Woven from Contradictions

Alex Rozov, a left-wing anarchist and author of the transutopia cycle, has read my “Libertarian Theory of War” and shared his impressions on his channel. I felt it necessary to add the word “left-wing” to his description so that the reader would better understand where he gets such a strange conception of ancap:

Ancap society is based on the non-aggression principle. Every member of society recognizes the established distribution of property and promises not to seize by force what is recognized as belonging to someone else.

It is quite characteristic for leftists to speak not of the ways of acquiring property, but of the distribution of property; not of methods (exchange), but of results (inequality), and so on. However, it would be a sin for me to be indignant about someone else’s inclination toward such holistic constructs, since I myself operate with the concept of collective speculative subjects, aka spirits, in my book.

I view war for resources within my classification as one of three causes of war, and I separately indicate that for libertarians, this type of war is marginal: although the forceful acquisition of resources may be legitimate (in the case of restitution), it is usually too expensive to make sense. Alex, however, interprets the text as if it were entirely about the seizure of resources, while everything else is apparently insignificant lyrical digressions—some kind of war for freedom, what are you even talking about. I don’t know if the entire pathos of the book completely passed him by, if this part of the reasoning is too banal for him and therefore does not require separate analysis, or if it is simply uncharacteristic for Alex to speak of ethics where it is not verified by economics. To some extent, the epigraph to the book is precisely my polemic with such a purely economic approach to conflicts.

Upon reaching section 2.3.3 (I hope he progressed further afterward), Alex saw a logical dead end: war is expensive, a temptation may arise to forcefully extract resources from uninvolved parties, and that is lawlessness, so that’s the end of your ancap. That is essentially where his analysis of the book ends.

Meanwhile, the text explicitly states that even if such requisitions are accompanied by promises to compensate everything, the person subjected to the requisitions still has the full right to resist this by any means, up to lethal ones. In other words, he may consider this the beginning of a war against him, where he is the defending party, and you can’t argue with him, damn it, because he is right; therefore, try to remain within the framework of voluntary transactions with outsiders even during wartime, and do not make new enemies for yourself. Perhaps I should have articulated this point more clearly. Perhaps Alex was simply looking for something to nitpick. If you think the text should be adjusted, please suggest options.

The Myth of “Selfish Nature”: How Science Showed That People Are Naturally Generous

You have likely had to argue at least once in your life with fans of the “strong state hand” or amateur cynics who, with an air of wisdom, proclaimed: “Humans are extremely selfish by nature. Just look at small children; they behave like egoists and sociopaths until they are taught to adapt to society.” The claim is that this is precisely why we need a Leviathan with its taxes and regulations; otherwise, we would all tear each other’s throats out over an extra piece of bread.

Well, next time, you can boldly point them toward an excellent study that was recently featured in the journal Developmental Science. Scientists decided to check whether we are indeed born as self-centered egoists and tested the most “uneducated” people, those free from social attitudes—toddlers (children aged one and a half to two years).

What was the essence of the experiment? Imagine the scene: 134 children were invited to a laboratory. Each was seated at a table (the parents, by the way, sat nearby but wore headphones and kept their eyes closed to avoid exerting any influence). A scientist sat opposite them, along with a plush toy monkey. First, the toddler was given a bowl of treats—fish crackers. Then a game began with the monkey, who also “really loved fish.” The children were presented with different scenarios in a random order:

1) Watch the scientist feed the monkey.
2) Give the monkey a “foreign” cracker (from the scientist’s secret stash).
3) Take another cracker for themselves.
4) Share their own cracker from their own bowl (in science, this is called “costly altruism”).

It is important to note another point: the scientists didn’t just observe who exhibited greedy or generous behavior. They also video-recorded the children’s faces so that independent experts, who were unaware of the experiment’s goal, could rate their level of happiness and the sincerity of their smiles on a 7-point scale.

And what do you think? The children were happy and literally beamed with joy when they treated the plush macaque. But the most striking part: their level of happiness hit the ceiling precisely when they gave away their own cracker! The joy from voluntary charity was statistically significantly higher than the joy from simply receiving treats “for free.”

Skeptics will immediately jump in: “Oh, they were just happy to follow an adult’s command; children love to please!” But that’s not the point. When the scientist said, “Now take a cracker for yourself,” the children did so with complete indifference. No joy from obedience.

Some might also say: “Then they were just copying the emotions of the happy monkey!” Again, wrong. The monkey “rejoiced” exactly the same way in all scenarios, but the children smiled sincerely only when they themselves acted as the giver. There was no emotional contagion—the joy came precisely from the fact of the kind act itself.

Why is this important from a libertarian perspective? The point is that solidarity, mutual aid, and generosity are not artificial constructs that need to be hammered in from above. Humans are literally biologically programmed to derive pleasure from voluntary cooperation and helping others. Evolution made us empathetic because voluntary, mutually beneficial coexistence is the most effective way to thrive.

The problem begins exactly where a third force crudely interferes in this wonderful natural process—that is, when a stationary bandit comes along and says: “Right, now charity is an obligation. We will take your crackers under threat of a fine or prison and decide for ourselves which monkey to give them to” (spoiler: officials will eat half the crackers while carrying them).

Coercion kills the very essence of humanity. When your earned resources are taken by force, you feel not joy, but a dull irritation (and a sharp desire to Google tax avoidance schemes). The state does not make us kinder—it only atomizes society, forcing people to think: “Why should I chip in to help a neighbor or repair the street if I’ve already paid giant taxes for it?”.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Decentralization of publications, homework

Yesterday, I felt a sudden urge to have my own personal relay for Nostr. My system administration skills are practically zero; even the ancapchan.info site was once built and configured for me without my involvement. But since then, LLMs have appeared, and it would have been a sin not to use them. So, I dug into Grok, and after a few hours of tinkering, the relay relay.ancapchan.info was up and running. This fully revealed the peculiarities of the protocol’s decentralization. For instance, broadcasting a test message only through my single relay turned out to be convenient via the Snort client, syncing relays is convenient via Amethyst on Android, and Nostria knows how to broadcast an arbitrary event as raw JSON, and so on.

The purpose of a personal relay is to store a full archive of my publications, private messages, and everything else, as well as the content of those I follow. This is a good step toward local autonomy, although still far from the ideal I described in the third “Notes on Decentralization”. I still have to figure out backups and content management, and then, perhaps, it will come to providing this relay for use by the local community. And if it proves to be in demand by the community, then it will be, again, a step toward centralization: someone bothers with their own server, and someone uses shared ones—why not.

At this rate, I’ll even properly connect a wallet to Nostr (currently it only works conveniently for receiving), set up a Lightning node, or even start “vibecoding” something…

Readers are also pleasing me with their examples of using neural networks. For instance, one of them opened a resource where they post AI-narrated books for free, including those on libertarianism/Austrian Economics. Of course, a certain amount of cringe remains in AI narration, but it is so much cheaper that it’s a sin not to use it. For those who find it easier to listen than to read, welcome: website, Telegram bot. By the way, the AI narrations of my two books are already there (I’ve already added direct download links to my book pages: Ancap, War).

How Psychology Predicts Support for the War

Debates about war often revolve around questions of morality, law, or geopolitics. However, modern psychological research reveals a very interesting point: a person’s attitude toward war is largely determined not by arguments, but by their personality traits. For instance, a recent study in Britain showed that support for war is closely linked to certain stable psychological characteristics, rather than just a rational assessment of the situation.

First of all, it should be noted that so-called social dominance orientation (SDO)—the tendency to believe that society should be hierarchical and that some groups of people deserve to have power over others—plays an important role. As it turns out, people with high SDO scores are more likely to support military actions because they perceive the world merely as an arena of competition and a struggle for power. Conversely, people with low SDO scores tend toward more egalitarian views: they are more likely to consider all people equal and are therefore less inclined to justify violence as a tool of policy.

Another point worth noting is childhood abuse. As is well known, there is a connection between childhood experiences and attitudes toward violence in adulthood. Accordingly, it was found that people who were subjected to both emotional and physical abuse by family members in childhood are far more likely to come out in support of war.

We should also consider the willingness to obey authority. People with an extremely submissive personality type tend to align themselves with the aggressive policies of the state, including the waging of wars. In their understanding, one must not speak out against authority or sow useless doubts in people’s minds. On the contrary, people with low scores in obedience to authority who support the freedom to oppose it are not inclined to speak in favor of war.

Finally, let us not forget the dark personality traits. As it turns out, sadism is very strongly linked to support for war. People with this trait derive pleasure from cruelty and causing harm to others, and are therefore highly inclined to advocate for violence as a method of conflict resolution. Support for war is also characteristic of personalities with psychopathy, as they are emotionally detached from other people and feel no aversion to committing violence.

All this shows that the choice “for” or “against” war cannot be explained by a person’s rational assessment of the situation alone. In practice, the opposite often happens: first, a person has a certain psychological predisposition, and only then are arguments selected that fit well into it. Certain personality traits lead a person to rationalize military aggression, exaggerating convenient arguments and ignoring everything else.

From a libertarian perspective, this is especially important, because if support for war is linked to personality traits such as a drive for dominance or psychopathy, it calls into question the very idea of granting a “monopoly on violence” to a stationary bandit. In such a case, decisions about war would reflect not objective necessity, but the psychological distortions of those given the power to make them.

It is also interesting that such attitudes are closely linked to views on freedom and control in general. People who accept violent hierarchy as the norm are more likely to justify not only external aggression but also internal restrictions—from the strengthening of security forces to the suppression of civil rights. The presence of such people in society is very beneficial to the state, as it allows it to introduce authoritarian orders without hindrance.

Therefore, any debate about war is not just a clash of arguments, but a clash of psychological types. This means that to achieve peace and freedom, it is not enough to simply “convince.” It is necessary to understand which psychological predispositions make people inclined to justify violence, and to work specifically with them. For as long as there are enough people in society who are psychologically ready to accept war, a reason to start one will always be found.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Notes on Decentralization, Part 3. Publications.

The Internet began when people started publishing data in electronic form: that is, not just storing it for themselves, but providing access to it via remote connection. To ensure this, a minimum set of components is required: 1) a data storage device; 2) a communication channel to which the storage device is connected; 3) a protocol for providing remote access to this data. There can be many different types of devices, channels, and protocols, as long as they can somehow interface with each other. This looks quite promising in terms of ensuring decentralized data exchange, doesn’t it? Of course. But there is also a vast open field here for deepening centralization.

It is cheaper to produce identical devices. Identical communication channels are cheaper to maintain. The use of a single protocol is an invaluable asset. But the main thing is the functional separation that occurs between different system components when, for example, it turns out that storing data is cheaper on a large stationary server with a thick, uninterrupted communication channel, while accessing it is more convenient from inexpensive personal clients. And just like that, a platform economy begins, in which those who need to store and consume data become completely dependent on the rules established by the storage and publishing platform.

Naturally, throughout history, this state of affairs has greatly irritated both data producers and consumers, who would prefer to retain control. However, the question is how to have this control without spending too much money, ensuring everything works fast and doesn’t require mega-skills from every user. The struggle for the user, accompanied by the involvement of the state as a conflict regulator and the state’s own initiatives to ensure the interests of politicians, is all well-documented and generally well-known. The struggle for digital autonomy is also well-documented and quite known. One could provide an overview of the dynamic equilibrium between centralization and decentralization processes at the time of writing this text, but I want to approach this from a different angle. Specifically: how do I personally see the ideal functioning of the Internet given the current level of technology?

Current snapshot of the technological level

  1. Data storage. Without investing in specialized devices, the average user easily secures volumes on the order of hundreds of gigabytes on a phone and several terabytes on bulkier personal devices.
  2. Communication channels. A more or less settled user can relatively easily afford a 24/7 unlimited channel with speeds ranging from units to tens of megabytes per second. An actively traveling user, without additional investment, may occasionally be offline, have traffic limits, and a more modest channel width.
  3. Clouds. For a price comparable to the cost of personal internet access, a user can rent cloud capacity for data storage and processing that slightly exceeds the power of their personal devices.
  4. Money. Thanks to cryptocurrencies, a user can technically pay for any services over the network directly to their providers in arbitrarily small fractions with an arbitrarily high frequency.

Now I will daydream

I produce only a few gigabytes of data per month, mostly crappy photos. With crappy videos, let’s say it would be tens of gigabytes (the highest subjective value for me, of course, is text, which is a mere few hundred kilobytes, and with all the chatter in chats, let’s say a few megabytes). I want to have unconditional access to all this content from any of my devices, as well as the ability to share access to individual pieces of content with both a limited and an unlimited circle of people. To achieve this, I need my texts to be fully synchronized between several of my personal devices and cloud storage, while photos and videos gradually settle into cheaper and higher-capacity storage, unobtrusively leaving, say, the phone—but with the ability to easily return any archived data back to local access.

Beyond this, I consume other people’s content. Here we are talking about hundreds of gigabytes per month. I need the ability to selectively save any data into personal storage. Ideally, while preserving metadata about where and when this content was obtained by me. It would also be good to substitute locally saved content when surfing the same network resource again to avoid re-downloading—and if the content on the network has updated, to have the ability to replace my version with a fresh one or save an archived version.

I also value a convenient way to donate directly for someone else’s content and receive donations for my own. For this, I need the ability to attach payment detail metadata to an arbitrary object.

So, effectively, I need an operating system for working online that would link locally stored materials with the network addresses where they should be available, provide flexible data synchronization between storage systems, allow for configuring access rights, contain tools for viewing and editing data, as well as a toolkit for managing money. Naturally, all of this must be sufficiently protected from unauthorized access.

It turns out that in order to provide me with the most decentralized workflow on the web, a quite comprehensive centralized solution is required. It could, of course, consist of modules from different providers, but these modules need to work together seamlessly, so centralization practically invites itself here.

And what do we have today?

There are separate services for organizing local data storage and for organizing cloud storage. There are services for synchronizing local folders with cloud ones. There are tools for various network activities: publishing photos, videos, texts, tracks, exchanging messages, money, plans, task lists, and a ton of other types of data. There is the ability to rent servers and host websites on them. There is the ability to rent a domain name. In short, there is a huge, flourishing variety of tools for working on the web, the development of which is quite decentralized. And none of this gives me the possibility of full control over my data.

Such is the paradox.

Why the sated is no comrade to the hungry, and technology is driven by those whose asses are on fire

Do you know what a cozy chair at Stanford, a patent for 20 years ahead, and a lifetime grant from the NSF have in common? Exactly—the desire to change nothing. Why bother? The bread is already buttered, topped with caviar, the competition has been squeezed out by copyright laws and NDAs, and any new idea is a risk that your beautiful, multi-year body of work might become obsolete even before it hits the pages of Nature. Therefore, when yet another overfed professor curls his lip at a new technology, it’s not “weighted scientific skepticism,” but simply the instinct to preserve a comfortable spot.

A case that should be tattooed on the forehead of every skeptic: EUV lithography. In the mid-1980s, Japanese engineer Hiroo Kinoshita from NTT became the first in the world to produce an image using extreme ultraviolet light and reported it at a meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 1986. The reaction from the room? To quote Kinoshita himself: “The audience was extremely skeptical. However, my faith did not change.” During the same period at Bell Labs, Aubert Wood and Bill Sylfvast tried to push the same idea in the US—and received an “extremely negative reaction” from reviewers: they claimed that even if every component were assembled, the system would be so complex that its uptime would be “negligibly small.” Now look at 2026. Every chip in your smartphone, every graphics card, every AI accelerator—all of it is made on machines that use the exact same EUV lithography that the mainstreamers laughed at. What would have happened if Kinoshita had listened to his “esteemed colleagues” and gone to teach optics to freshmen?

Now let’s move to the Ukrainian trenches. Remember how back in 2020, serious men from military academies chuckled at the idea of FPV drones? “Toys for children,” “unserious weapons,” “real war is tanks and artillery.” Military science is generally one of the most conservative swamps on the planet—careers there are built over decades, and you certainly don’t get patted on the back for “unserious ideas.” But in 2022, when the AFU faced a question of physical survival, it suddenly turned out that a dirt-cheap FPV drone with a shaped-charge warhead could take out a million-dollar tank. And the conservative soldiers, for whom all this was “not according to regulation” just yesterday, turned enthusiast home-builds into an entire branch of service in a year and a half. Because the alternative was to die. And death is an excellent motivator to cast aside corporate pride and take what works.

The pattern is simple: technology is not pushed forward by those who are “doing fine.” Technology is pushed forward by those who have a choice between “accepting the new” and “dying” (metaphorically or literally). So let’s list some categories of people who are truly desperate:

– Startuppers with no money. They have nothing to lose but their over-commits. That’s why garage teams, not IBM’s R&D departments, give birth to the things that change industries.
– Fighting armies of the weaker side. Ukraine with drones, Mujahideen with Stingers, Finns with Molotov cocktails. The stronger side always has the temptation to “crush with mass,” while the weaker side only has their brains.
– Scientists from the “wrong” countries and institutes. When you can’t get an NSF grant simply because you aren’t from the “right” laboratory, you are forced to make a breakthrough just to be noticed at all. Half of the Nobels in the last 30 years went to people who were first dismissed by the mainstream.
– Patients with incurable diseases. The most desperate drivers of biohacking and DIY medicine. They literally have nothing to lose, so they are the first to test gene therapy from a garage.
– Victims of domestic violence in third-world countries. When you have no option to turn to the police or social services against an abusive father, the covert addition of drugs to food to enhance a violence inhibitor no longer seems like some kind of psychosis.

The conclusion? If you want to see the future—look at those who have no choice. They are the true engine of progress. And the “esteemed experts” will catch up in about 15 years—once the technology can be used to defend another dissertation and they can quietly live until retirement.

P.S. Hiroo Kinoshita, by the way, lived to see it. And let’s hope that he sometimes smiles cunningly while reading ASML’s annual reports.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The “Rich Pauper” Strategy: How to Cheat the State and Preserve Capital

Imagine two guys. The first drives a shiny Ferrari, wears a Brioni suit, and posts photos of oysters on Instagram. He has a mountain of debt, insomnia, and breaks into a cold sweat every time a letter from the tax office arrives. The second takes the subway in an inconspicuous logo-less hoodie, eats shawarma on the corner, and sighs during a conversation with a neighbor about how utilities have gone up again. But in his head is a seed phrase for a wallet containing hundreds of bitcoins. Which one of them is truly free? For any self-respecting agorist, the answer is obvious.

We are living in an era where the state has turned into a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex. And as we remember from “Jurassic Park,” a T-Rex’s vision is based on movement. In our reality, it is based on showing off. If you want to live freely, build your capital, and avoid attracting the attention of “comrade major,” the tax inspectorate, or simply criminal elements, you need to master the greatest art of the 21st century: being a “poor” rich person.

First and foremost, you should rent everything rather than owning it. Do you know what buying a luxury home or car in your own name is? It’s voluntarily pinning a huge target to your back that says: “I’m here! Milk me!”. It is the ideal asset for confiscation, seizure, or exorbitant taxes. Rent your housing and transport. Ideally, not even in your own name, but through trusted representatives, cooperatives, or anonymous companies, if the scale allows. You can live in a penthouse and drive a Bentley, but on paper, you are just a passerby.

It is also important to give up luxury: Rolexes, Birkin bags, Gucci belts—these are taxes on insecurity. In agorism, your clothing is camouflage. Dress neatly, but in a way that makes you impossible to remember. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t popularize basic t-shirts for no reason. When you have no labels, people (and officials) cannot “appraise” you. You blend into the crowd.

Of course, you must not talk about your assets! Friends will start asking for loans (and get offended if you refuse). Acquaintances might accidentally blurt out about your wealth in a bar where the wrong person is sitting. Money loves silence, and crypto loves graveyard silence. To everyone, you should be that guy who “does something on the internet, seems to have enough for food.”

It would be a good idea to learn how to professionally play poor. In our society, successful people are envied, while the poor are pitied and left alone. Complain about inflation, sigh when paying a bill at a cafe, always ask for discounts and promo codes, and haggle at markets. It’s not about the 5 dollars saved—it’s about creating an alibi. When you constantly demonstrate that you are counting pennies, no one will even think that you can be “de-kulakized.”

Another tip: delete Instagram to hell, or at least stop posting photos from business class. Social networks are an open database for tax collectors and scammers. Your profile should look as if you spend your vacation at your grandmother’s cottage, not in the Maldives.

Furthermore, invest your money in things that cannot be taken away. Instead of gold chains, invest in your health (best medicine, quality but simple food, biohacking) and in knowledge. And foreign passports and residency permits (which, of course, you will tell no one about) are the best insurance, invisible to neighbors.

And finally, use cash and P2P. If you pay for everything with a named bank card, your consumption profile is visible as clear as day. Pay for daily expenses in cash wherever possible, as paper money leaves no logs.

In conclusion, it should be said that agorism is not just a philosophy of the free market, but a daily spy game. The stationary bandit wants you to be transparent, predictable, and tied to a place. But you can live in such a way that you will only smile, watching the system try to grab you by the throat, while its fingers grasp emptiness. Because for the system, you simply will not exist; you will be a ghost. A very wealthy, free, and invulnerable ghost.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

How politics deprives science and medicine of the opportunity to develop

Imagine this: scientists are actively researching a new approach to treating various mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and even violence. They are achieving decent results, which indicate that this approach has significant potential. But then politicians, relying on personal interests and considerations rather than scientific data, strictly ban this approach as something extremely dangerous and unacceptable, often not even allowing scientific research in this direction behind closed laboratory doors. At the same time, for some reason, they are in no hurry to ban other equally risky things so strictly. Do you think this is a fiction or the plot of some novel? However, precisely such a story has already happened in real life.

In the middle of the 20th century, psychedelic substances such as LSD and psilocybin were actively researched for scientific and medical purposes. Scientists saw immense therapeutic potential in them, which is also confirmed by numerous modern studies conducted in recent years. However, there is a gap of almost half a century between those and these studies. Why is that? The answer is simple: psychedelic substances became associated with a number of things that politicians found objectionable.

First of all, in the pursuit of sensations, the media began to vilify them in every possible way, actively spreading reports about possible risks: psychoses, addiction, social degradation, and danger to youth. Of course, such risks cannot be completely denied, but they were extremely exaggerated. Claims of high addiction or mass social consequences had virtually no convincing evidence; the scientific basis cited in such claims was very limited.

Additionally, the spread of such claims coincided with the growth of countercultural movements, especially in the USA and Western Europe. Psychedelics became associated with hippies, anti-war protests, and broader cultural changes. As a result, drug policy began to be viewed not only as a matter of public health but also as a tool for social control. After all, one cannot expect a stationary bandit not to want to ban everything associated with movements opposing his policies. And psychedelics were caught in the crossfire.

The geopolitical context of the Cold War also played its part. The USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries actively used the topic of drugs in their propaganda as an argument against Western societies, depicting them as morally degrading. Naturally, in response, Western states decided to show that they were capable of controlling the drug problem and protecting public health.

Besides all the above, there was simply no one to protect psychedelics. Few would argue that tobacco, alcohol, as well as many sedatives and stimulants, pose no less risk to human health. However, their production had strong support from industry and governments. This helped them avoid the strictest restrictions. Psychedelics, on the contrary, had no powerful economic or political lobbyists; they were produced by the private sector, which gave politicians the opportunity to take harsher measures.

As a result, international policy regarding psychedelics was formed far from being based on scientific data about risks. Moreover, strict bans were imposed not only on their private distribution and use but also on their study. For example, in the USA, researching psychedelics was allowed only under the strict control of regulatory bodies, effectively closing this possibility to most laboratories, while the governments of France and the USSR at one point advocated for a total international ban even on limited scientific research of psychedelics. The policy of strict bans on psychedelics was shaped under the influence of cultural fears, political struggle, and institutional interests. This is precisely how science and medicine were deprived for a long time of the opportunity to develop a promising direction in the treatment of many disorders.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Libertarian Theory of War. Epigraph.

David Friedman’s laurels wouldn’t leave me alone, and I wanted to add a bit of pathos to the book. So, spending an evening, I finally provided the book with an epigraph. Now an audiobook can be recorded, if there are any volunteers.

People strive to live in peace with themselves.
People strive to live in peace with others.
What then punishes us with war?
The spirits of war — what lurks behind them?

To build cunning, secret plans,
To amass strength, to stock up on weapons,
To practice the art of deception…
Is this necessary? Who needs this?

Is the master an offspring of hell?
Have you not grown accustomed to slavery over the years?
To rise and strike? Or perhaps, there is no need?
Do it. Thus demand the Spirits of freedom.

Mechanics of “Freedom”

I don’t quite understand publishing books on paper, unless they are books for small children that can be physically chewed on or, at a slightly older age, creatively doodled in. Even if a person leads a sedentary life in their own home, storing paper books at home is a luxury, as it requires acquiring such a strange vintage interior item as a bookshelf (if there are few books in the house, a small shelf in the toilet would be more suitable). And if a person rents housing, is forced to move from time to time, and doesn’t even know in which country they will be in six months, then for them the expression “paper book” is definitely something for the rich. Therefore, paper books migrate to public spaces, and they can more often be seen in some time-cafes next to board games. The few paper books that for some reason ended up with me in recent years quickly migrated to one of these spaces, and now in the apartments I rent there lies a single comic in Serbian about Corto Maltese, which wandered in from a comics festival.

Nevertheless, paper books, this deeply niche product, are still not only being bought but even produced in new editions. For example, my acquaintances were engaged in this back in Russia, founding the “Svoboda” publishing house, then continued in Montenegro, and now in Germany. However, they are still oriented towards the Russian market and are sold mainly on Ozon. I doubt that my own books will be published in this way because they are extremely small in volume, which means that the share of postage costs in the expenses of obtaining the finished product will be disproportionately high. However, if I happen to write another work, then three books under one cover would already have a chance.

On the other hand, “Svoboda” published my translation of Friedman’s “Mechanics of Freedom,” and there are even a couple of dozen reviews on the Ozon website. You can perfectly well read the translation absolutely free in electronic form, but if you enjoy owning a hefty souvenir brick, then you are welcome. As I understand it, the links I will provide here contain a mention that they were received specifically from me. I think this is for analytics, so that the publishers understand how effective advertising in this way is. I have no idea myself; we’ll see.

What’s there on libertarianism, besides Friedman?

2. Alya Zanoza. A Guide to Rational Egoism. Well, I’ve started with my trump card, of course. You are probably familiar with Alya from her YouTube channel, which will likely be soon renamed to “Serbian Political Stove.” The text of the book is not in the public domain, so buying a two-hundred-page brick is not only a souvenir but also an extremely perverse way to get acquainted with the content of Alya’s creativity. If the author throws the text my way, maybe I’ll even post a review.

3. Linda and Morris Tannehill. The Market for Liberty. This is another exclusive, previously unpublished in Russian. Friedman and the Tannehills almost certainly actively cross-pollinated each other’s ideas (judging by the nearly identical publication years and references in Friedman, since I am not directly familiar with the Tannehills’ work). For instance, the famous idea of private security agencies, which are intended to replace the most toxic function of the state, was launched to the masses in the 20th century specifically by the Tannehills.

4. Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. This is no longer an exclusive of “Svoboda” publishing, but a reprint of an edition by the Novosibirsk Hyde Park Library. Judging by the annotations, the most valuable part of the book is not the discussions on socialism and capitalism at all, but Hoppe’s argumentative ethics, upon which he presumably builds all further constructions.

5. Ayn Rand. Capitalism: An Apologia. This is a noticeably less popular author, judging by the number of reviews on Ozon. This is a collection of various articles in which Ayn Rand applies the tools of her developed objectivism to discuss different political concepts. Maybe in my old age I’ll also put together a collection of appendices to different aspects of reality for my own theories…

6. David Bergland. Libertarianism in One Lesson. Somehow it happened that I knew about this book with the basics of libertarianism, but didn’t get around to reading it in my time, immediately rushing to gnaw through Rothbard. As a result, I have no idea how good this direct competitor to my Ancap is for carriers of Russian culture. If anyone has compared them, please share your opinion.

Perhaps in the foreseeable future I will make more detailed reviews of these books, as well as new releases from the publisher, should any appear.