Contracts, restitution, and pocket courts

The Austrian School denies objective value—value is determined by the subjective assessment of the parties at the moment of the transaction. However, Rothbard’s theory of restitution requires that a penalty correspond to the “actually transferred asset.” If value is subjective, then a corporation’s private court is entitled to recognize a $10 million fine for resigning from a post as a legitimate “transferred title”—and qualify the employee’s departure as fraud, opening the way to forced restitution through labor.

Who determines the proportionality of a penalty clause in a contract, and on what basis, if objective value does not exist and the interpretation is carried out by a court hired by one of the parties?

Konweni

As stated in the wording of the question, value is determined by the subjective assessment of the parties at the moment of the transaction. Accordingly, if a penalty amount is specified in the contract in case of its termination, it means that at the time of signing, the value of concluding the contract was higher for the potential payer of the penalty than the amount of the penalty itself. And if the penalty specified in the contract seems absurdly high to an outside observer, this tells us that it was absolutely imperative for the party in question to conclude this agreement at that moment. Another explanation is that the party signing the contract did not read the penalty clause or rashly assumed that it was some kind of nonsense that no one would take seriously, the key points were discussed verbally, and everything else is just empty legal blah-blah-blah.

However, since the question specifically refers to Rothbard’s opinion, he does not make the qualification about the actually transferred title of ownership for nothing. If an employee had been paid an advance and then left the job without working it off, then the penalty is justified, and its size can be calculated precisely from the amount of the advance (for example, the unpaid amount plus the costs of an urgent search for a replacement employee). But if the labor has not yet been paid for, then the asset has not been transferred, which means that penalty sanctions are inappropriate. This is simply a matter of a broken promise. The employer can try to demonstrate to the court what costs he incurred as a result of the employee’s actions, and the court may well take these calculations into account.

Of course, the contract may contain a clause stating that all disputes are settled in a certain court, which is a pocket court of the employer, unknown to the hired employee at the time of signing. The problem, however, is that the court itself does not engage in the enforcement of its decisions, and in the absence of a state, the plaintiff will have to do this themselves at their own expense (and they will also have to put the court entirely on their payroll, as clients are unlikely to flock there on their own). Of course, through his pocket court, he can impose a crazy penalty on the employee who fled from him, and then send thugs to force him to work it off, provided that the employee does not have such funds. But the economics of such actions only begin to add up in colonial conditions, that is, in the presence of overwhelming military superiority of a cohesive group of colonizers over a fragmented mass of natives. Directly in a free society, being a part of it, it will not be possible to pull off such tricks systematically; the non-legal nature of such an organization of work would be far too obvious. Even if this does not lead to unexpected sanctions from actual or potential counterparties, the employer will have to organize forced labor in a society with free labor, where no one will help him, for example, catch runaway workers. You need it, you catch them. And new workers will likely go and be hired by a competitor.

And now I will answer the asked question directly. Who will assess the proportionality of the penalty and on what basis? The employee will assess it, based on their own subjective considerations. If they pay voluntarily, then it is tolerable. If not, see the paragraph above.

— Hm, maybe I should sign? But that portrait on the wall is far too suspicious…

Shame as a Weapon: What Libertarians Should Learn from Progressives?

There is one technique that progressive activists have mastered to virtuosity—the imposition of collective guilt. Look at modern Britons: half the country walks with their heads bowed because their great-great-grandfather once drank tea in Bombay. The result? A non-white migrant there today is almost a sacred cow. Deporting them is harder than convincing a cat to take a bath. The police shyly look away from “cultural peculiarities.” Courts acquit migrants in cases where a native Briton would have long since been sent behind bars. Meanwhile, for some white engineer from Poland, obtaining a visa is a bureaucratic hell of blood and sweat.

Whether you like it or not—the method works! Shame is a nuclear weapon in the information war. And while libertarians are writing another clever post about the Austrian School and the Laffer curve, our opponents have long since rewritten the moral code of society. So it’s time to take the tool in hand, not to lie, but to finally call things by their real names. Let’s look at a few examples of what statisticians can be shamed for.

Shame : It is YOUR fault that grandma is working until she’s 70.

Heard that the retirement age was raised? Crowds of migrants brought in? The demographic pit has turned into a demographic canyon? Congratulations, statist—this is your doing!

Any zoo worker will tell you: animals do not breed in captivity. Stress, a cramped cage, the inability to lead a natural way of life. Now look at your country—the very one where you demanded to “restore order,” “ban this,” “regulate that,” and “there should be a fine for this one.” Where every sneeze is a potential “victimless crime.” Where a person wakes up and the first thing they think about is whether they messed up yesterday according to point 87 of some regulation.

You built a zoo. And now you’re surprised that the population isn’t recovering. But now your pension will be paid by Abdullah, who had to be brought in because the locals stopped giving birth. Enjoy it, because you deserved this—in the most literal sense.

Shame : Your “good law” is someone else’s pain.

Do you know what you and a guy with a bat demanding money from a neighbor for a “good cause” have in common? The method. When you write a petition to “ban X,” lobby to “oblige everyone to Y,” or vote to “introduce liability for Z”—you are not participating in democracy. You are hiring a stationary bandit to go and beat up those who want to live differently.

“But I didn’t do it myself, the state did!” Sure, a hitman doesn’t kill by himself either—he just pulls the trigger. And the client is completely innocent; he only handed over the money. Every time you say “there should be a law that…”—you are literally demanding that people with weapons come to another living human being. If they don’t comply—they get fined. If they don’t pay—they get imprisoned. If they resist—they might be killed. This is the finale of any state norm. It’s just that usually, it doesn’t reach the finale; people surrender before the state decides to kill them. So next time you want to “force everyone”—look in the mirror. There stands a person ready to pay for their own comfort with someone else’s blood.

Shame : A ballot is not a civic duty, but complicity.

“I just voted, what’s the big deal?” Well, let’s break it down. You went to the polling station and checked a box for someone who promises to “restore order in sphere N.” This “order” means new bans, fines, inspections, and imprisonments. Against people who did nothing to you personally and just wanted to live their own way. You didn’t “express an opinion”; you signed a delegation for the use of violence. You signed the ledger: “Yes, I am for these people to be squeezed, those to be taxed, and those over there to be put behind bars.”

Statists should look at the British once more. They have learned to be ashamed of things they have no personal connection to—the actions of ancestors in the century before last. Therefore, let them not think that they cannot be made ashamed of what they are committing right now. With their own hands, voices, and “wants.” And this is not radicalism, but elementary honesty with oneself. Freedom begins not with a rally, but from the moment you stop wanting to command someone else’s life!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Why parents should be interested in treating psychopathy in their children

Considering various approaches to solving the problem of violence using biomedical technologies, such as strengthening the violence inhibition mechanism and bio-enhancing morality, one can quite quickly conclude that the most appropriate and effective approach would be to perform such procedures as early as possible. Moreover, signs of psychopathic traits, which are the strongest predictors of violent behavior and indicate dysfunction of the violence inhibitor, can be detected as early as childhood, even at the age of 2-4 years, as demonstrated by research.

It is important to understand that if an individual with a risk of developing a violent and psychopathic personality undergoes morality bio-enhancement very early, they will essentially not even have a chance to be such a personality for even a short time. Furthermore, the nervous system at this age is still developing, which makes it possible to achieve an effective result even with gentle intervention. Widespread practice in detecting and correcting violence inhibitor dysfunction could solve the problem of violence in society long before it even arises.

This should already be enough to convey to many parents how important it is to carefully monitor a child’s behavior and emotional reactions (for example, empathy and whether they have an aversion to causing harm to someone), and to intervene in a timely manner upon detecting any anomalies. However, if some parents are suddenly not very concerned about what kind of personality their child will grow into, or if they see no problem with violence at all, then it is worth reminding them of another very strong motivation to consider this issue—personal well-being and the preservation of their own nerves.

Research on violence and psychopathy is often focused on the person with such a condition—their behavior, the risks to society, and criminal manifestations. Some of it discusses the role parents may play in the development of psychopathic traits in a child. At the same time, the opposite problem remains in the shadow—when parents become the very first victims of heartlessness, manipulative behavior, lack of empathy, and even cruelty on the part of their own child.

Of course, it is not customary to label children as psychopaths, but they may demonstrate early signs of this condition or so-called callous-unemotional traits—emotional numbness, lack of guilt, and an inability to empathize. Such signs indicate that the child does not simply have a “difficult character”; we are talking about deep-seated personality characteristics which, among other problems, can seriously destroy family dynamics.

For parents, such a child becomes a severe psychological trial. Parenthood brings them no pleasure, only daily problems. They find themselves in a trap: on one hand, the social expectation to love and support their child, and on the other, constant stress, fear, and a sense of helplessness. Often, such families face a lack of understanding from others and even accusations of poor parenting, which only increases their sense of isolation and guilt. Parents may also face very serious problems if their child begins to behave antisocially in society, as they will have to bear responsibility for their actions.

All this being said, it must be understood that good upbringing and a favorable environment alone may not be enough to prevent a child from developing a psychopathic personality (although this is, of course, also important for reducing the risk). Therefore, all parents have an interest in detecting early signs of this condition and resorting to therapeutic intervention if they are present. This will certainly help them preserve their own family, and with widespread practice, it will also lead to a reduction in the level of violence throughout society, and over time—to the complete eradication of this problem!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The Problem of Cartel Collusion in the Sphere of Protection under Ancap

Mancur Olson, in “The Logic of Collective Action,” proved that small groups with concentrated interests always win the coordination game against a diffuse majority due to the free-rider problem. Three CEOs will agree over dinner; a million customers never will, because each rationally waits for others to take the risk first.

What specific mechanism in ancap prevents a cartel agreement between two or three of the largest protection agencies to divide territories?

Konweni

This is a question that also concerned David Friedman. In the chapter “The Mechanics of Freedom,” concerning economies of scale, he reasons that in the law enforcement market, there seems to be a more pronounced positive economy of scale than he initially thought, which in turn increases the likelihood of a cartel agreement.

It seems to me that the cause of this excessive pessimism is the overestimation of the importance of direct armed protection in the security market. Literary descriptions of the security market under ancap are filled with some kind of universal protection agencies that are responsible for security in general across the most diverse aspects and scale easily. Of course, such an initial monopoly, already given in the problem statement, leads an honest analyst to conclude that such agencies will tend to grow significantly and enter into cartels, and their impact on people will be completely total, making the sale of such security services terribly dangerous for clients, as it is only one step away from total enslavement.

But where will these protection agencies come from? Who will be their clients, and what services will they buy from them?

Suppose I don’t live in peaceful Montenegro, where every house has a legal shotgun plus a couple of black guns left over from the war, but, say, in some place like Brazil. I have reasons to fear street attacks, car theft, and break-ins at my home. And then, a startup opens in the city that is ready to serve me, even if I wander into the favelas. What does such a startup need, within the technologies relevant at the time of writing this post? To reach an agreement with the company that owns the lamp posts to place cameras on them, as well as landing pads for drones with a charging function. Then, AI tracks suspicious actions, such as breaking into a house door or a car; a drone takes off from the nearest pole and demands a justification for the legality of the actions. In the case of an aggressive response, it applies measures of influence to the suspect, for example, firing a taser, after which it calls a live squad to process the detention. Similarly, in the case of an attack on a person: it flies in, demands they stop, reasons with those who ignore the instruction, waits for the squad, and returns to the nest. And then comes the court proceeding regarding how much to recover from the aggressor.

After working in this market for six months, the startup is surprised to find that its services are becoming less in demand because the city has become noticeably safer. And what, should they now start harassing me clandestinely so that I renew my subscription? No, of course not; they will simply make the subscription cheaper, and the drones that spend most of their time idle will be used, for example, for delivering pizza.

And what about peaceful Montenegro—do I not need protection agency services there at all? Of course I do. I need it so that when I break my leg while hiking in the mountains, brave rescuers in a helicopter fly to me and pull me out of that hole. Or pull me out of a car that flew off a cliff. Or find me in the sea when a storm carries me far from shore on a SUP board. Or get a cat down from a tree.

You realize that a Brazilian security startup won’t be able to enter the Montenegrin market because that market is completely different? Protection agencies are doomed to locality due to the local nature of threats, and are also doomed to a small size because the nature of threats also tends to change. It is harder for a large company to change, which means inefficiency, and inefficiency means saying goodbye to market share.

But surely there are functions for protection agencies that would be in demand globally? Of course there are, but these are specialized functions. For example, to find someone anywhere on planet Earth who owes me a vast amount of money and refuses to return it. Or a person who killed my mother and knows that I would like to burn him on her funeral pyre because she will need a servant there. Such agencies will not sell a subscription for service; they will have to take on rare one-off orders, as this market is too specific. It is impossible to build global dominance with the prospect of bending anyone to your will and subjecting them to your sinister market power based on this.

And what about the prospect of an external armed invasion? Shouldn’t private military companies be the backbone of any respectable social order if it wishes to call itself ancap? Shouldn’t such companies unite into a mega-cartel dictating its will to all of humanity? To the great regret of the adepts of this branch of human development, in peacetime, the peaceful average citizen is not inclined to finance the military. He doesn’t need war; he doesn’t buy it. An invasion army can only be equipped if you establish taxation on your territory. However, a militia for protection against an invasion army organizes itself in the presence of a free market—quickly, efficiently, and not too expensively, as shown by the experience of at least the Ukrainian war.

Fight, flight, freeze… or just hack someone else’s brain?

As we know, there are three basic survival strategies in the wild. Encountered danger? In that case, fight, flee (“run”), or play dead (“freeze”/”hide”). But here’s the thing: while we thought this was an exhaustive menu, evolution decided not to stop there. As it turns out, there is a fourth, far more sophisticated path in the wild. Let’s call it “hack your neighbor’s neurobiology.”

Imagine: you are a huge, strong tropical cockroach. An emerald cockroach wasp (which is about three times smaller than you) flies up to you and gives you a quick sting. You are alive, you are conscious, your legs are working. But you… don’t want anything anymore. The wasp delivers a second, surgically precise sting directly into the cockroach’s subesophageal ganglion (the brain). Its venom acts as a perfect blocker of octopamine—the neurotransmitter responsible for initiative and the motivation to move. The cockroach is not paralyzed! It simply completely loses its free will. It is in a state of severe apathy. The wasp takes the giant by its antenna and, like a compliant dog on a leash, leads it to its burrow, where it will lay an egg on it. The larva will eat the cockroach alive, and the cockroach won’t even attempt to escape.

There is also the famous Toxoplasma (Toxoplasma gondii). This single-celled parasite desperately needs to get into a cat’s intestine—that is the only place where it can reproduce. But how do you get there if you are currently inside a mouse? Toxoplasma doesn’t just wait for the mouse to be eaten by chance. It takes control! The parasite forms microscopic cysts in the amygdala of the mouse’s brain, as a result of which the mouse completely loses its innate terror of the smell of cat urine, or even begins to experience slight sexual arousal from it. The mouse goes out into the open on its own, searches for a cat, and predictably becomes its lunch.

Another very cool example: the lancet fluke—a flatworm that needs to get from an ant into the stomach of a sheep or a cow. It penetrates directly into the ant’s subesophageal ganglion and takes the helm like a seasoned truck driver. In the evening, when it gets cold, the parasite forces the ant to separate from the colony, climb to the very tip of a tall blade of grass, and cling to it firmly with its jaws. The ant hangs there and waits to be swallowed by a cow. But do you know what is most amazing? If the cow doesn’t come during the night, and in the morning the sun begins to blaze (which could cause the ant to dry up and die along with the parasite), the worm releases control! It allows the ant to unclench its jaws, descend to the ground, and hide in the shade. The ant spends the whole day living its usual ant life, and in the evening, the parasite presses the button again: “Time to climb the blade of grass!”. And so it goes until they are eaten.

Why is this so cool? When we hear the word “parasite,” we imagine someone who just drinks blood or steals nutrients. But evolution has shown: information and control over behavior are the most valuable resources. These creatures do not control the victim through fear. They use perfect knowledge of neuropharmacology. They synthesize analogues of dopamine, serotonin, various alkaloids and proteins that “hack” the neural circuits of other species. This is not a random system glitch, but the result of millions of years of harsh evolutionary selection. Those who learned to change the host’s behavior in their favor survived and reproduced much more effectively than those who just sat and waited for a miracle. And nature didn’t give a damn about philosophical concepts like “free will”!

What does this mean for us, humans? Acting upon the neurobiology of an opponent who threatens us with harm—for the sake of bio-enhancing morality or as a violence inhibitor—is also not some “madman’s rambling,” but a fully successful strategy supported by millions of years of evolution, which is becoming technologically more accessible to us every day. If you don’t like such an approach at all, then look at yourself and propose full recognition of the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) and the impermissibility of violence in exchange for the limitation of biotech weapons that affect behavior.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Continuing to settle into Nostr: building a pyramid

In my previous post on this topic, I told you how I set up my own personal Nostr relay. I used strfry, which is quite popular for large relays because it is stable and performant. However, I also wanted ease of configuration so that I wouldn’t have to work magic with console commands every time. An attempt to attach a web control panel on top of the existing relay was unsuccessful. The Khatru relay suggested by Grok turned out to be a project abandoned in early 2026. But its developer is @fiatjaf, the author of Nostr itself, and he doesn’t just abandon projects. So I started looking into what he is developing as a replacement and came across Pyramid. This is a specialized relay for community management; meaning, while it can handle basic relay functions, it also helps manage various private and club-like features.

After some tinkering, I uninstalled strfry and installed pyramid. Voila — I have an engine for developing an online community, and half a day later, the first invited client of the new relay appears. We discuss the process on Nostr in the comments of my previous post, and I tag the software creator. Fiatjaf likes this comment and then comes to me on Telegram, congratulates me on installing Pyramid, and starts asking for feedback on both the relay and Nostr in general. We already had a chat history from the time when he created a popular custodial Lightning wallet in the form of a Telegram bot, and I actively promoted it (that project was wound down, and Nostr emerged to replace it).

Anyway, I gave all the feedback I was capable of, given my limited experience and competence:

  • I asked for a more convenient format for adding a new user to the relay: the user clicks to leave a request, I click to approve or deny the request — basically, the familiar Telegram method. I received a promise that this would be done soon.
  • I asked for a monitoring service for relay availability from different corners of the network, suggesting an implementation option that doesn’t require renting servers all over the world. Fiatjaf said the option was doubtful, but he would try to attach one third-party service instead.
  • I asked for a service for local key generation so that new users could be sure that the Nostr client would not have access to their private key. He replied that he had already built a whole set of such utilities — both for offline key generation and for offline event signing, so security advocates can sleep soundly.

That’s where my imagination ran out for now, but I certainly assume that readers have or will soon have their own brilliant ideas.

Anyway, for anyone interested in testing a specialized relay for community management, welcome. Leave requests in the comments, and I will send the invitation link via DM — for now, this is the not-so-convenient connection mechanism in place.

https://stuff.fiatjaf.com — a collection of various things from the author of Nostr

https://github.com/fiatjaf/pyramid — description of the Pyramid relay

https://relay.ancapchan.info — my relay, where you can observe the community participant tree growing and publications appearing from them

I hope you won’t need a special guide on how to set up a Nostr account. Since it is a very decentralized ecosystem, there are already tons of ways to enter it, as well as ways to use it. But anyway, let me recommend that you start exploring via the Nostria client. I also know the developer there, Sondre Bjellos, a participant in the Liberstad and Montelibero projects; he lives three kilometers away from me (when he doesn’t head back to his native Norway, of course) and is very actively developing his client.

VPN in Russia 2026: a guide for those who do not want to live in a digital GULAG

The current internet situation in Russia resembles a joke: “We have freedom of speech, but no freedom after speech.” Only now, it’s no longer a joke, but daily reality. Roskomnadzor has blocked 800+ VPN services, TSPU has learned to recognize protocols in seconds, and since March 2026, “white lists” have even begun to be tested in Moscow—meaning only what is approved from above is allowed. Welcome to the sovereign internet! But we aren’t the type to give up, are we? So let’s break down what actually works.

Why are options like NordVPN and ExpressVPN no longer viable? In short: mass commercial VPNs are dead in Russia. OpenVPN is detected in seconds by the first byte of the packet. WireGuard is detected by its UDP structure. L2TP, PPTP, and SOCKS5 have been blocked since December 2025. Classic Shadowsocks is identified via entropy analysis. What works? Next-generation protocols: VLESS + Reality (mimics regular HTTPS to a legitimate site), AmneziaWG (a modified WireGuard with mimicry), Hysteria2 (based on QUIC), and xHTTP (fragments traffic to bypass TCP Freezing). But which VPN provider should we choose then?

1) Mullvad (Sweden) – the absolute gold standard of privacy. It doesn’t require an email—it generates a random account number. It accepts cash in an envelope (yes, literally put euros in an envelope and send it to Sweden), Monero, and Bitcoin. In 2023, Swedish police conducted a search at the request of Germany—and didn’t find a single byte of user data. This is the best proof of a “no-logs” policy imaginable. Of course, there is a downside: Roskomnadzor deliberately blocks Mullvad IP addresses, so you have to cycle through servers. The app has been removed from the Russian App Store.

2) IVPN (Gibraltar) – Mullvad’s closest competitor in terms of paranoia (in a good way). Also no email, just a random Account ID. Cash, Monero (they have their own Full Node—no third-party payment gateways), and Bitcoin. A security audit by Cure53 has been conducted. V2Ray obfuscation (VMESS/QUIC and VMESS/TCP) is built into all clients. Exemplary split tunneling—both direct and inverted. Ideal for those who need to access Gosuslugi and read blocked media simultaneously.

3) Proton VPN (Switzerland) – Stealth protocol, four Securitum audits, and a history of rejecting all legal requests for data. There is a free plan with unlimited traffic. However: it requires an email (you can use an anonymous ProtonMail registered via TOR), it doesn’t accept Monero directly, and Roskomnadzor actively tries to block it. Lifehack: manually loading WireGuard configs often works when the app cannot connect.

Note that as of May 2026, the Ministry of Digital Development has required large platforms to block access via VPN. The solution: split tunneling—route banks and government services outside the tunnel, and everything else through the VPN. There is also an advanced scheme against “white lists”: Client → Russian VPS (on the white list) → foreign server. TSPU sees domestic traffic and leaves it alone.

Why will you never be punished for the mere fact of using a VPN?! This is a favorite scare tactic of propagandists, but it collapses against reality. First, TSPU physically cannot distinguish VPN traffic from regular HTTPS with 100% accuracy—that’s exactly how VLESS and Reality are built. Fining people for “suspicious traffic”? How many people and on what grounds would they even have to sue. Second, VPNs are the backbone of legal business. Every bank, every corporation, every remote worker uses a VPN daily. And third: introducing liability for the “fact of using a VPN” would immediately lead to millions of people connecting via other people’s Wi-Fi networks. We would end up with millions of criminal cases against 80-year-old grandmothers whose routers “used a VPN.” Imagine the headlines: “Pensioner from Saratov fined for bypassing blocks.” No government can afford such a level of absurdity—it would be political suicide. Therefore, the state’s strategy is different: not to punish users, but to make VPNs as inconvenient as possible. Our task is to stay one step ahead. After all, freedom is not something given, but something taken!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

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).