As I expected, on the way I read “The Snail on the Slope” by the Strugatskys, which I had promised to review for a long time.
I’ll be banal: the book is exceptionally strange and almost incoherent, which is probably why so many people want to find deep meanings in it. The plot is available on Wiki, so I won’t retell it.
Trying to understand what the authors meant, I made a few assumptions, then decided to check them and looked at the transcript of Boris Strugatsky’s presentation from 1987, shortly before the book was published in full (before that, it had been published in parts). I was surprised. The style of the book is so different from what I had read previously that I was certain it was something written by the later Strugatskys sometime in the eighties, amid the general fascination with “chernukha” (dark realism). But no, it turned out that although this work was written later than everything else of theirs I had read so far, it wasn’t by much; it was still the same sixties.
Overall, the book slightly reminded me of Marquez’s “No One Writes to the Colonel”: the same sluggish and useless fussing while waiting for long-promised things that the protagonist has no power to influence. Naturally, one wants to draw parallels with the Soviet reality, where the Administration is Soviet bureaucracy, the Forest is the Soviet people, the main character Perts is the Soviet intelligentsia striving to be closer to the people but unable to understand them, and the main character Candid is the same Soviet intelligentsia, only exiled, say, to the depths of the Siberian mines. This analogy would be no worse and no less plausible than the one intended by the authors, where the Administration is the present and the Forest is the future.
In the previous Strugatsky books I encountered, there was practically no sex, if one doesn’t count the completely filler episode between Don Rumata and Dona Okana in “Hard to Be a God.” Here, they expanded significantly, but continue to push the same line as they did when depicting medieval society: sex is crude, it is philistinism, such baseness is unbecoming of a human, who should be satisfied with spiritual closeness alone. This is exactly what happens with all the positive characters in the Strugatskys’ works: they enter purely platonic relationships and certainly do not reproduce. I don’t know what this says more about: the Soviet censors or the position of the Strugatskys themselves, but it is a quite characteristic detail.
At the same time, it seems to me that they generally understood that something was wrong with this position of theirs—and by depicting a single-sex parthenogenetic society as the Future, they made it no less repulsive than the straightforward philistine obscenity of the Present. I don’t know where they picked up such misanthropic ideas; it seems their senior comrade Ivan Efremov by no means demonized the sexual question (I’ve only read “Tais Athena” by him, but I believe that in his sci-fi he did not deviate from his ideology on this matter). So far, the best picture of a bright future with a healthy attitude toward sex I’ve seen was by Alexander Rozov in the Meganesian cycle.
I have arrived safely in Montenegro. Although “safely” is not entirely the correct word, because many mistakes were made and a lot of money was lost in the process. In general, traveling has become much more difficult compared to 2019, when I last traveled outside of Russia.
The most unpleasant discovery was that you can no longer trust aggregators when buying plane tickets. They will readily sell you a ticket for a flight that you fundamentally cannot use, which the seller already knows at the time of the transaction, and it will be impossible to refund this ticket. Thus, I failed to fly to Belgrade via Istanbul relatively cheaply, and had to urgently buy literally the penultimate remaining direct ticket to Belgrade, in business class, for an insane amount of money. Then, in Belgrade itself, I was not allowed into the city because I didn’t have a PCR test, and I had to spend the night in the transit zone. And when it came time to check in for the flight to Tivat, it turned out that no one would transfer my luggage from one flight to another for me. In the end, I was assigned a manager who literally led me by the hand through passport control (the lack of a test miraculously stopped being an obstacle), then I collected my luggage at the lost & found desk, then at check-in it turned out that the system could not see my ticket, we went to the airline desk where the system finally spotted me, they printed a paper copy of the ticket, and with that, the quest to board the plane was finally completed… What I liked about the Serbs was that everyone took the fuck-up with humor; any formalities were immediately set aside as soon as a real problem appeared, so the journey through the airport was filled with cheerful laughter and jokes in broken English.
In Tivat, I ignored the services of taxi drivers (that was actually difficult), walked to the bus station, bought a ticket to Budva, used public Wi-Fi to tell the person meeting me when to expect me, and after that, there were no more problems.
Heinrich, until the day before yesterday the representative of the only family that had moved to Montenegro as part of the Montelibero project, turned out to be just an ordinary libertarian, exactly as they should be according to libertarian propaganda: businesslike, energetic, polite, paying great attention to building his reputation—and without any obsessive fetishes, which are not uncommon among political and social activists. In short, he and I will undoubtedly get along. I gave him cash for the project fund—although, only someone else’s, since my fuck-ups on the way are unlikely to let me invest a significant amount in the near future, and I’d rather save the remaining money for a deposit for a future landlord to get more attractive terms.
Yesterday, Heinrich and I went from Budva to Bar. If Budva is a purely tourist town, located in a rather narrow coastal strip between the sea and the cliffs, and actively climbing those very cliffs—then Bar is much more spacious, there is plenty of empty space right within the city limits, and it looks somewhat more self-sufficient. At the same time, it doesn’t look poor or neglected, although a certain residual “Soviet-ness” is felt in it. In general, I will try to find housing specifically there; at the same time, it will be significantly closer to the location of our future libertarian locale.
Unexpectedly, they decided to make me the project director—this is mainly due to a staff shortage and the cleanliness of my documents, rather than any outstanding business qualities. But, of course, I will try not to let them down. Naturally, the fund cannot yet afford any competitive salary, so this looks more like a public service. As I understand it, as of today, the fund has already collected about 25 thousand euros out of the 70 thousand required to buy land, and this pace clearly allows for the completion of what was started, most likely without any single participant holding a controlling stake. The day after tomorrow, we welcome another family of settlers.
As for the channel, I hope to maintain the usual pace of publications in the future, about one per day. By the way, a huge thank you to those who, hearing about my troubles with the tickets, sent several unusually large donations. This already covers about a fifth of the losses—and I didn’t even ask anyone directly, because it felt awkward to ask people to pay for the results of my own stupidity.
The view from the hostel window of the old town of Budva. In Bar, of course, the view will be significantly more ordinary.
In the modern world, surveillance using various digital means, especially surveillance cameras, is actively practiced. Most major cities in developed countries are already covered by them from top to bottom. This is promoted to the public as a method of fighting crime, including violent crime. If there are cameras everywhere, few people will dare to steal property or attack others due to the inevitability of punishment. But it is not that simple. Surveillance cameras do help in preventing non-violent crimes. But in the case of violence, they are useless.
An analysis of 41 studies on this topic shows that everything depends on the type of crime. Cameras are best at preventing car thefts and property theft. Accordingly, the greatest effectiveness of cameras is achieved specifically in parking lots (a 51% reduction in crime), while in city centers, the impact of cameras proved to be insignificant. But most importantly, no evidence was found that cameras have any influence whatsoever on the number of violent crimes.
This fact only confirms that violence is not a rational and conscious act; the tendency to commit violent acts depends on the “nature” of the specific person. One cannot stop violence, which is irrational in its essence, by resorting to rational stimuli and deterrence mechanisms. Neither surveillance nor the punishment following a violent crime can reduce the level of violence.
The tendency to commit acts of violence, or more precisely, the inability of a specific person to restrain their aggressiveness, can generally be explained by a weak version of the Lorenz mechanism that inhibits intraspecific violence. Given that it is observed in a wide range of very diverse species, its presence in humans would be unsurprising. The only difference is that there was no evolutionary pressure on humans to develop a strong version of it, so some people possess precisely the weak version.
Understanding the irrational nature of violence, the fight against it must be based exclusively on an understanding of human biology and psychology. An obvious alternative to surveillance cameras is universal armament (a uniform balance of violence potential). Almost every aggressor has a self-preservation instinct, so knowing that a potential victim is highly likely to have a weapon, they will not attack. And if someone attacks anyway, the victim’s armament will not only allow them to deal with the violence specifically at the moment it is committed but will also exert that very evolutionary pressure to strengthen the innate inhibitor of violence, as in the case of some species that are heavily armed by nature and possess a strong version of it. Post-factum punishments, again, do not work. This includes even the adoption of the elimination of violent offenders after the fact, as this also requires people capable of violence outside the framework of self-defense (that is, initiating violence on their own part), which means this will not help reduce aggressiveness.
A more humane and effective option would be the development of gene therapy for violence, which would activate and strengthen that very Lorenz mechanism. In this case, pressure could be applied to violent offenders to stimulate them to take the corresponding drug. Alternatively, a dart could be fired at them during a direct attack, using this alongside non-lethal means of self-defense.
From what I understand, the main point of the club is as follows: weapons are, of course, cool, but they are rarely managed to be used for self-defense, and safely—even more rarely. Meanwhile, for a libertarian, it is not only useful to know how to defend oneself in a wide variety of situations, but this skill, when applied, also advertises libertarian ideology in its own right.
The proposed article describes how, within the framework of private security production, the world does not revolve solely around private security companies—since this field is very strictly regulated by the state, and therefore such companies, firstly, provide their services at a disproportionately high cost, and secondly, the spectrum of services does not cover all types of demand.
Instead of private security companies, the revival of such a soft and humane means of reasoning with unfriendly counterparties as hiring a team of trained musclemen with powerful fists is proposed. Of course, in most cases, this cannot be seen as an alternative to hiring a professional security firm, but for organizing some libertarian events, such heavy artillery as professional security firms is not required. Yes, actually, hiring trained fighters to guard a hall is either excessive (usually, admonishment and the threat of calling the police are sufficient) or insufficient (if the aggressor is the police themselves).
On the other hand, it’s stylish. After all, a press wall provides no direct benefit either; one can take photos against a bare wall—but people still order them to be printed. Thus, proper ancap security should not be neglected for roughly the same reasons.
The article ends with a call to join the club (which presumably wants to mutate over time into such a fighting corporation) and to subscribe to the channel People of Good Will. I went to take a look at the channel, and there is a curious Code of the Person of Good Will. The Code is imbued with the values of republicanism, which Rodion Belkovich talks about so convincingly, and generally paints a rather attractive image. So read it; it is beneficial for the soul.
I continue to write the introductory part of the book about ancap bit by bit, describing the main principles of libertarianism. I think that later I will reformat the text a bit, but for now, it’s becoming quite a large chapter in one piece.
Usually, when I answer a question, I do it in a detailed manner, with examples, metaphors, and other rhetorical gems. In the book, I try not to ramble, and now I’m wondering if I should, and whether it’s becoming too dry. I would like to know your opinion.
On May 20, I fly to Montenegro. This may affect the regularity of posts for about three days, or it may not. I usually don’t schedule publications, so such things are not very predictable.
Since living in Montenegro will be more expensive for me than in Russia, I will have to pay more attention to making money. If you want me to be less distracted from working on the channel, send donations. It will be especially helpful to chip in for the book — the more financial enthusiasm it generates, the faster I will write and the sooner I will finish. The same applies to current translation projects.
Since I will need to register a company to obtain a residence permit in Montenegro, I will try to take advantage of this and organize the acceptance of donations directly in Telegram — Durov created this possibility quite a long time ago, but I didn’t use it because connecting a Telegram store requires a legal entity — and that’s exactly what I will now have.
Also, in the comments of the donations page, I was asked to set up a Monero wallet. I downloaded the wallet from the official website, synchronized the blockchain, and now I’ve even started mining, although that is just for fun, of course. So, here is the Monero address for donations:
Most likely, I will use the flights to read the Strugatsky brothers’ “Snail on the Slope,” which was ordered for a review long ago — what else is there to do on a plane besides reading books? It’s getting a bit embarrassing; payment for the review was received back in April, which is quite untidy.
Possibly, I will post some fresh travel impressions if they don’t clash too much with the general theme of the channel. If they do — I’ll post them on Boosty.
In the Russian Frontier channel, which I recently promoted, a brief summary has begun to be released of Titus Gebel’s book “Free Private Cities.” The ideas covered in the book are currently being used in the construction of a contractual jurisdiction such as Prospera. It is possible that some of them will be applied in Montellibero in the future.
So those who are too lazy to read the book itself can subscribe to the channel and gradually absorb the material along with its author.
Sometimes it seems that there are many people prone to violence all around us. Almost every day in the news, you can see how someone beat, maimed, or even killed someone else. Perhaps you often encounter various kinds of hooligans and “gopniks” on the streets. Therefore, it is difficult to even imagine how to fight violence if so many people commit it. However, this is a quite deceptive perception that does not correspond to reality. In fact, there are very, very few people prone to violence, and therefore, by applying certain strategies, the problem of violence is entirely solvable. Now we will perform a detailed calculation of the actual number of violent offenders to ensure that there really are not that many of them in society.
The peculiarity of acts of violence is that, in their visibility, they far outpace all other events. Millions of different events happen every day, but it is exactly a few cases of violence that end up on the front pages of news resources and on television broadcasts. Hundreds of thousands of people live beside you, leading their ordinary lives, and you don’t even notice them. On the other hand, you will easily notice a dozen hooligans whose behavior will naturally stand out strongly among everyone else. You see them; you don’t see the other people. That is the whole point. In reality, violent offenders and the acts of violence they commit are very, very few on the scale of society as a whole; it is simply that acts of violence are among the most noticeable deeds.
How does this assertion relate to real data? Let’s look at the statistics of violent crimes in Russia. Non-violent crimes do not interest us, as they are not related to the infliction of direct physical harm to a person or forced coercion. Material damage can be fully compensated, including obtaining compensation from the perpetrator himself by applying various reputational and financial sanctions, and moral harm can be avoided by not maintaining relationships with people who might inflict it (of course, there are situations where a person is forced to interact with someone against their will, but here everything again boils down to forced coercion itself). Only the infliction of physical harm and forced coercion are real problems. Furthermore, our topic is the determination of the number of violent offenders specifically, and not just dishonest and unscrupulous people.
In 2020, 2,044,221 crimes were registered in Russia. Of all crimes, 1.53% are murders (7,695), intentional infliction of severe physical harm (20,019), kidnapping (411), and rapes (3,535). Another 0.26% of crimes are robberies (5,280). Let’s also add 2.7% threats of murder or infliction of severe physical harm (55,223). Of course, this is not the infliction of physical harm itself, but we will consider these acts as failed attempts to commit violence by people prone to it. And finally, 1.66% of crimes consist of intentional infliction of moderate health damage (28,185) and battery (5,716). In total, about 6.1% of crimes are violent in nature [1].
We find that on average, 1,393 crimes were registered per 100 thousand people. Of these, 85 crimes are violent. Of course, far from all acts of violence are registered. This may include domestic violence, small fights, and many other cases. It would be quite reasonable to multiply this number by 4. I made this choice based on the results of a study by the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University, which discusses how many people actually report to law enforcement agencies and for how many reports a case is initiated. Unfortunately, the study does not have such a clear division of crimes by category as in the case of official crime statistics, so I will assume that about 25% of violent crimes fall into these statistics, based on the percentage of initiated cases for assault (55% of assault victims report to the authorities, and cases are initiated for 44% of reports) [2].
This gives us 340 acts of violence per year per 100 thousand people. The number may seem too small because some violent offenders commit violence frequently and regularly (for example, a bad parent may beat their child, or a bad husband may beat his wife every day). Therefore, for 1 act of violence, we will take all violent actions of one specific person toward another specific person, especially since the repeated commission of similar acts of violence by one person against another in official judicial proceedings will most likely be registered as one crime, and therefore will enter the statistics as only one crime. Out of 852,506 identified criminals, 492,107 (57.7%) had previously committed crimes. The statistics do not specify the number of previously committed crimes; most likely, in reality, 1 violent offender commits more than 2.36 acts of violence on average, but due to the lack of data, we will accept exactly 57.7% of acts of violence as those that do not increase the total number of violent offenders, but only indicate which of them committed violence again. Additionally, it is worth noting again that the vast majority of crimes you notice are non-violent in nature (most often they relate to the economic sphere), whereas we are considering exclusively the commission of acts of violence.
As a result, we find that 144 violent offenders are discovered per year per 100 thousand people, which is 0.144% of the total population, or 1 person out of 695. A very insignificant number, right? Some might say that in their place of residence there are clearly more violent offenders, however, the statistics we are considering concern all of Russia at once, where crime is distributed very unevenly. For example, if we consider severe violent crimes (including robbery), which make up 1.79% of all registered crimes in the general statistics, in Moscow they account for only 1.13% [3]. The total number of crimes registered in Moscow is 146,559, which is 7.2% of all crimes, which is also a more positive result than for Russia as a whole, since Moscow accounts for about 8.6% of the population.
From these calculations, of course, it is impossible to draw exact conclusions about how many violent offenders we have in society at a specific moment, i.e., at what level their number remains. However, as we have seen, the growth of violent offenders is minuscule, and it should be noted that there is also a decrease in violent offenders; they are no more invulnerable or long-lived than other people. Quite the opposite—violent offenders live less on average, as they more often expose themselves to risk due to active participation in violent clashes, whereas other people will not initiate them and will try to avoid them. The absolute number of violent offenders will, of course, grow with population growth, but their percentage ratio to the total population, all other things being equal, will not change.
Note that this result, revealing one violent criminal per 695 people per year, is the worst possible scenario, since we made a series of assumptions in the worst direction: all threats of murder and infliction of severe physical harm were taken as unsuccessful attempts to commit violence; the number of registered violent crimes was multiplied by 4 because many people do not report to law enforcement agencies or they do not initiate a case upon report; we assumed that 1 violent offender commits 2.36 acts of violence on average, but this would be true only for a single recidivism (whereas many violent offenders have multiple). There are all grounds to assume that the real number of violent offenders is many times smaller. However, it is not possible for us to find it, so we calculated the worst possible value, below which it certainly cannot be.
Another important point to mention is that we considered only cases of inflicting fairly serious physical harm. The least brutal of violent crimes that can be found in official statistics is battery. Of course, there are many more people capable of violence that is very weak compared to battery, for example, hitting someone with a fist once or intentionally pushing. This is the kind of violence you notice most often, which is why it may seem to you, again, that there are many violent people. Of course, this violence is also a problem, but far from such a large one, considering the following factors:
1) such violence is not enough to maintain a violent hierarchy of dominance in society (one form of which in human society is the state), nor can it seriously threaten people in general;
2) it is very easy to control through upbringing, condemnation, as well as the threat of ostracism and other reputational methods;
3) it is easy to defend against using simple means of self-defense, such as pepper sprays;
4) its danger is not that great, so there is no need for a priority struggle against it; it is sufficient only to concentrate efforts on fighting violence exhibited by a small percentage of brutal violent offenders, and weak violence can be dealt with later.
From everything we have now considered, a simple conclusion can be drawn—real violent offenders are not that many; they make up a very tiny percentage of the population. This means that the deterrence, and in perspective the complete eradication of violence, is a completely achievable goal, which clearly does not face the problem that there are too many violent offenders and therefore we cannot deal with all of them.
In one of the streams, he mentioned to an interlocutor that economic schools are irrelevant and that everything best from those schools has been integrated into the mainstream. Do you agree? Has he gotten too fat?
P.S. It’s a pity the site crashed. I hope all is well with you. I haven’t figured out crypto yet, but I’ll donate somehow.
Some Kazakh
Thank you for the explication from Vatoadmin, because I would have been too lazy to sift through his streams in search of specific quotes. As for the thickness, he is still far from Kakha Bendukidze; let him keep trying.
Now, to the main part of the question.
Economic mainstream today, indeed, has long ceased to be some kind of cohesive theory. It is simply a set of views on economics, none of which are perceived by economists as complete nonsense. At the same time, taken together, they can be internally contradictory—to this, an economist will say that each economic tool has its own area of application, and that is perfectly normal—and the task of economics is precisely to study when a wise regulator should apply what.
The Austrian school is indeed part of the mainstream. It primarily describes exactly how economic agents behave in a free market, and also shows with disdainful curiosity what distortions are introduced by this or that form of coercion. The mainstream also describes how economic agents behave in a free market (and often does so using an apparatus that grew out of the Austrian school), and then asserts that the market can and should be regulated, that it is done in such-and-such a way, for such-and-such goals, and produces such-and-such results. Or it doesn’t, in which case one must study what went wrong and make corrections to economic policy next time.
Regarding the Austrians’ dislike of using mathematical apparatus to describe complex phenomena, I would explain it roughly like this. A mainstreamer will imperturbably calculate how many human bodies and how many horse bodies a White Walker needs to lay out a pattern in the snow, how much time he will spend on it, and by how much the temperature in the forest will drop as a result of performing this ritual. An Austrian simply postulates that White Walkers are an evil that has no place in the forest, and he will not require mathematical models for this.
Now tell me, how can a decent economist not despise such primness?
I subscribed to the channel Russian Frontier. Today, the author posted a review of the Montellibero project, in which he notes our ideological closeness in everything except for the assessments of the investment climate in Russia. He suggests that today, the creation of contractual jurisdictions in Russia is not officially regulated in any way, which means one can and should enter this market—until the state shows a keen interest in them, after which they should be repurposed into something else, even swingers’ clubs.
Indeed, there is still a niche in Russia today (and perhaps it will remain for a long time) for the relatively free pursuit of agriculture and trades—in regions where there is a relative surplus of land. In other words, it is impossible to expand in the conditional Krasnodar Territory, but in Altai, like Justus Walker, or even in the not-so-distant Moscow region, like Mikhail Shlyapnikov or Herman Sterligov—why not? Thus, an enthusiast can indeed create a strong farm with quite original customs, and it is unlikely that this farm would even be seized, since the basis of its prosperity is labor and entrepreneurial talent, not capital.
Of course, such benevolent ignorance from the state will continue only until a specific entrepreneur gets into politics or at least makes loud media statements that clash with the general background. And if such entrepreneurs start getting in the way not as an exception, but literally every second person, then a standard solution will be quickly devised for them that will either abolish them or distract them significantly.
How well are such solutions replicated? It seems not very well. Most likely, associations of free farmers will be weeded out more eagerly than loners, and the positive scale effect of any given association in this particular industry is small. A milk producer in Belgorod will in no way help a honey producer in Bashkiria; each deals with a unique environment of varying degrees of aggressiveness.
How well do such solutions scale? This is likely dangerous. As soon as a farm advances significantly from the exploitation of labor to the exploitation of capital, it becomes a tempting morsel for a takeover.
So, I would view the Russian frontier as a good training ground for those who have sufficient competencies to build a sole proprietorship. At the same time, cultural originality can provide such a farm with media visibility—which can attract investors, product buyers, and even serve as some kind of vaccination against raids that are not too motivated. So, donning the guise of a contractual jurisdiction for such a farm is also an excellent idea; it’s worth considering.
But once some experience and capital have been accumulated, it makes sense, instead of expanding the current project, to invest in a farm in countries with more reliable protection of private property. Fortunately, globalization allows one to avoid making a hard choice between the Russian and Montenegrin frontiers. In the best case, this will simply be diversification, and in the worst—also a platform for evacuation.
And I still hope that the experience accumulated on the Russian frontier will simply create a desire to be applied to something greater, and then welcome to Montellibero.
Between different jurisdictions, there has always been the question of maintaining strategic parity—that is, an equality of chances of emerging victorious in the event of a military conflict. Without this, it is impossible to either deter a potential aggressive attack or repel it should it occur. But what strategic parity can there be in the case of an excessive difference in power potential? And the problem here consists not only in the quantitative and qualitative difference in weaponry, but also in the difference in violent tendencies among people. However, a solution exists even for absolutely pacifist societies, which we will now discuss.
Imagine Scandinavia, where although violence has not been completely eradicated, certain social factors have clearly reinforced low violent tendencies in the vast majority of the population over time. Even among state security agents, violent tendencies there are relatively low; at the very least, they are not even close to the violent tendencies of similar agents from other countries, such as Russia. If we assume that a military conflict arises between the Scandinavian states and Russia, the latter would be able to seize them almost without a fight. Even weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons or a class 4 pathogenic virus, would not help if they suddenly came into the possession of the Scandinavians, for because of their pacifism, they would hardly dare to actually use them. And given a similarly pacifist army and the lack of a balance of violence potential (general armament of the population), for security forces highly prone to violence—those who previously toured actively in Donbas and Syria—it would be no problem at all to march across the entire territory of Scandinavia and easily deal with any possible resistance in their path.
This same problem can be transferred to a potential free stateless society in which different contractual jurisdictions exist. Imagine that in such a society there is a jurisdiction of pacifists, in which violence is completely eradicated, and any offenses are punished by non-violent methods (ostracism or financial sanctions). But alongside this, there exists a violent jurisdiction, in which all problems are solved by brute force and cruel physical punishments (such a jurisdiction might be created, for example, by some conservatives). Obviously, there is no strategic parity here either; the order of the second society will lead to the reinforcement of violent tendencies in its participants, whereas in the case of the first society, these tendencies will be maximally suppressed (reinforcing a strong version of Lorenz’s violence-inhibiting mechanism). I think it is easy to understand who would win in the event of a direct military conflict.
An excellent solution to the problem of maintaining strategic parity on the part of more pacifist jurisdictions and societies is the creation of gene therapy against violence. It could be implemented in the form of a drug delivered to attacking agents via a fired dart. In an extreme case, implementation as a pandemic virus is possible (we do not approve of this option). Of course, the latter faces many risks, including the fact that bystanders would be affected, some of whom might die (even with the highest quality vaccination, not everyone tolerates it). However, such a “non-violence virus” is not a traditional weapon of mass destruction in terms of the physical destruction of the attackers; it is intended only for the forced eradication of violence in the aggressor’s army and is therefore the best possible solution within the framework of the classical MAD doctrine (Mutual Assured Destruction) that can be imagined if there is no chance of stopping the aggressor through immediate resistance.
Both darts with the drug and a pandemic “non-violence virus” (personally, I do not approve of this option, but the opinions of others regarding the admissibility of such a “weapon” may differ) could be used even by fierce pacifists, given that such a “weapon” does not initiate violence in the biological sense, and even a person with a strong version of the Lorenz mechanism would be able to apply it. They would allow for the deterrence of potential aggressors, as they would fear losing their violent tendencies as a result of attacking pacifists. But if someone still decides to attack, then we will arrive at the following scenarios:
1) Security agents sent to the front by the aggressor will come under fire from darts with gene therapy. And these darts will reach their target far more often than bullets do now, because soldiers, for the most part, are not rapists or violent criminals; they most often try to simulate activity at the front, avoid shooting, and if they do shoot, it is not at people on the other side of the front, but into the air, again, merely to create the illusion of performing some activity. There are quite few actual violent criminals in war, and this is confirmed by research, which you can find here. But anyone can fire a dart. And if the darts accurately hit the soldiers on the other side of the front, including those actually prone to violence, then the aggressor will soon find themselves completely without people capable of pushing the war further.
2) It is impossible to stop the attack; even darts with gene therapy are not enough to deter the overwhelming forces of the aggressor. In such a case, a pandemic “non-violence virus” is deployed across the front. After this, a few weeks may be enough for the aggressor’s forces to be completely disorganized and the soldiers to turn into pacifists incapable of attack. The war ends quite quickly.
Do you see now what an effective means of deterrence and ending war gene therapy against violence is? In principle, this is the only possible salvation for peaceful and non-violent societies from attack by violent aggressors. Moreover, compared to the weapons of mass destruction that are currently suggested as means of deterring aggressive attacks, this solution is extremely humane.
By the way, this solution is an excellent answer to the question of how a free society can protect itself from aggression by surrounding states in the event of a local rather than global achievement. It is also very useful in the very process of achieving a free society—the same darts with gene therapy can be successfully launched at security agents who beat and arrest peaceful protesters. Ensuring a balance of violence potential (general armament of the population) to achieve a state of affairs where any aggressor can be eliminated upon immediate attack can be a quite difficult task, but it is not necessary to provide everyone with darts with gene therapy—a small number of activists ready to fire them upon seeing another security officer in case of need will suffice (this is especially effective if security officers are deanonymized, as is currently done in Belarus; then they can be caught even in everyday life). And activists will be able to do this even while being less violent people than the security officers, or even absolute pacifists, because, again, this is not a means of inflicting physical harm or killing another person, but merely a means of depriving them of their violent tendencies.
As we can see, for the sake of maintaining strategic parity on the part of pacifist societies and for the sake of ensuring an effective struggle of peaceful protesters against the security agents of the state, it is very advantageous to develop gene therapy against violence. What is very important for us is that this is advantageous even to many modern governments, for example, in Scandinavia, and it is quite likely that they will want to help us. This would be the best and most humane solution to these problems that could possibly be imagined.
