Without this mindset, we will never become a developed country, and this time the problem does not lie with the state at all. It is much broader. This also applies to some libertarians, as without adopting the philosophy described below, we will never overcome the stationary bandit!
“A very important point is the tolerance for failure. That is, failing in the Valley is not a disgrace. If I am reviewing resumes and a person comes to an interview and says, ‘I failed a startup and now I’m looking for a job,’ or, say, ‘I’ve had two serious failures,’ I don’t look at it as, ‘Oh damn, I don’t want that,’ but rather as the fact that they have the experience of failure, and therefore they are more valuable than someone who has never failed. He’s a guy with experience. And moreover, a guy who has proven that after a failure, he can get up and move forward. This is super important because in what you do here, failure is practically a mandatory part of the game. You fail constantly because you are constantly trying new crazy ideas. If you aren’t failing, it means you are being too risk-averse. This is very important.”
And the last thing that, in my opinion, probably strongly affects not only business but society itself is, in principle, acceptance, tolerance for the crazy, the unfamiliar, the unusual, all sorts of crazy stuff. Because in reality, all cool ideas are crazy at first. If you cannot accept people who dress differently than you like, or behave differently than you like, or something like that, then most likely such a society will not support some new crazy idea, like: ‘Let’s make a social network where everyone has real names and they share photos there.’ This idea, when Facebook was starting, seemed crazy. Nobody used their real names on the internet. But venture capitalists believe and give money precisely because they are accustomed to the idea that crazy ideas are good. And they know that they can fail.”
I couldn’t find the third edition of The Machinery of Freedom anywhere. Found it on this wonderful site. Thank you very much for the work you do; it is very important for our idea. I wanted to ask: is there any way to get the original book, the third edition, in PDF format?
Alexander
I had it in Word from the author, but since it’s urgently needed, I converted it to PDF. I also wanted it in epub, but the quality of the automatic conversion leaves much to be desired, so let some other enthusiast handle that, while I continue to polish the translation in this format.
Please recommend an introductory book on ancap, one that I could give to an acquaintance who is not familiar with the topic, so that without stumbling over a bunch of terms, they could understand how ancap can work (money, courts, police, etc.). Thank you.
анонимный вопрос
I believe that Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom is exactly such a book; otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent so much effort on it. The author does not bother with presenting the history of libertarianism or even just ancap, nor does he retell economic theory, but rather provides a vision: how it all works in a free market, and what specific forms, in his opinion, it will take (at least in the USA).
So let your acquaintance start reading on the site, and in about a month, I very much hope to finally post the final electronic version.
To accomplish this task, it is not enough to simply, for example, give communities the right to keep most of the taxes: such rights are easy to give and easy to take away. It is important that the reforms be very difficult to reverse. In other words, they must improve people’s lives very quickly and very significantly.
How do you quickly improve people’s lives in the poorest country in Europe? Only by opening the country to a very wide flow of investment. So, the literally first package of proposed reforms is a serious reduction of state intervention in the regulation of the economy.
Right off the bat—the first thing—the abolition of customs, along with duties. If other states want to restrict the export of goods to Ukraine or the import of goods from Ukraine, that is their right. But in Ukraine, there is no one to deal with this nonsense; if people want to trade, they trade.
Second—granting communities the right to take any state functions under their own jurisdiction. If they wish to collect all taxes themselves and set their rates—be my guest. After that, let them negotiate with the center on how much money they are willing to provide as a dowry for those issues they cannot handle on their own. If they do not wish to decide anything themselves—be my guest; the center will appoint people, set the tax rates, and carry out full administration until the citizens gather for a meeting and declare that they have had a nice rest and are ready for self-governance again.
How to choose a president? You don’t need to choose him; sell this unpaid position at auction, for one year without the right of extension, and as for the powers, leave only the right to veto laws passed by the Verkhovna Rada. But that is not urgent; that is already ornamentation. If you don’t want to make money by selling the presidential office, do as they do in Switzerland—it’s not bad there either.
And what about the south-east? There, a Donetsk Sich is created. Since the country is decentralized, few communities will dare to maintain serious armed forces, but here is a region where it is vitally necessary. This means a safari park is needed, where everyone interested in hunting separatists will go, as well as representatives of volunteer organizations who will ensure that the hunt is conducted without poaching. You arrive, pay for a trip—and off you go. Whatever you capture is yours. The task of the Sich leadership is to organize coordination so that they don’t shoot each other; that’s what the money is collected for. And to promptly conduct the demarcation of those districts whose residents have decided to reclassify themselves from hunting grounds to a full-fledged territory of the Sich, handed over their separatists for trial, and elected representatives to the Sich self-government—and that’s it, the residents of the territory have regained their status as human beings. I don’t know how effectively this will reduce the size of the hunting grounds, but the question was about what measures are needed to ensure decentralization. Well, without a decentralized volunteer army, you will not hold a decentralized country.
It turns out I didn’t even invent this term. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the other advice also turns out to be sheer banality.
When viruses are considered weapons of mass destruction, many say that this is merely a hypothetical threat, impossible to implement in practice at the moment, unlikely to be implementable in the near future, and certainly never available for recreation by small organizations and ordinary people in home conditions. And since other possible weapons of mass destruction are even more inaccessible for recreation, there is no need to fear such a phenomenon as violence and try to eradicate it completely.
First of all, we need to look at the trends in the development of biotechnology. A great example is provided by an operation such as sequencing (in simpler terms, decoding) the genome. Just 20 years ago, sequencing one full human genome cost 100 million dollars, about 10 years ago – 1 million dollars, and now – 1 thousand dollars. Also, there are already quite cheap DNA/RNA synthesizers; some models can be bought for several tens of thousands of dollars, and it is quite expected that over time and with the development of technology, they will only become cheaper and more accessible. Furthermore, research has recently appeared regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence in solving quantum chemistry equations [1][2]. In the future, this will make it possible to determine the chemical and physical properties of molecules without conducting real tests, but only by virtually modeling their structure. I think it is obvious that this will greatly simplify the design of artificial viruses. And finally, let us not forget that modern vaccination and targeted treatment are based precisely on the introduction of artificial viral agents into humans, which deliver specific genetic material to the required cells and embed it into them. Factually, this is gene therapy, the reality of the technological implementation of which many for some reason also view skeptically and do not see prospects for its development and application in the near future. But do you still believe that the creation of dangerous artificial viruses is merely a hypothetical threat? Well, let’s look at real cases of this.
In 2011, virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka conducted experiments to create a flu vaccine. He tried to recreate the strain of the virus that preceded the 2009-2010 epidemic to see how the virus had changed over 4 years. As a result, he modified it so that it became resistant to human immunity [3]. Naturally, his work began to be criticized, as humanity would have been powerless if this virus had left the laboratory walls. Additionally, the US government imposed a ban on the continuation of this research in 2014 (however, it was lifted in 2019). Moreover, Yoshihiro Kawaoka had previously managed to create a laboratory analog of the well-known Spanish flu, which killed up to 100 million people according to various estimates.
Also in 2018, a group of Canadian researchers published a scientific paper on recreating the causative agent of the horsepox virus – a close relative of smallpox (variola), one of the deadliest diseases in human history [4]. The cost of this project is estimated at approximately 100 thousand dollars. In doing so, the researchers sought to create a new, even safer vaccine against smallpox. However, a significant portion of the scientific community viewed this research critically and began to express indignation as to why the scientific journal PLOS One allowed the publication of such work at all, as this could help terrorists in creating biological weapons.
Along with all this, we should consider cases where viruses accidentally left laboratory walls and what consequences this led to, in order to understand what we will face if someone wants to release a dangerous virus into the wild intentionally. Moreover, this could already be done by some laboratory assistant at any research center that stores and studies samples of such viruses. We have simply been very lucky that none of these lab assistants had violent tendencies, or if they did, something held them back or they did not realize what dangerous weapon was in their hands. We will list 5 such cases [5]:
– In 1977, the H1N1 flu strain managed to escape from a Chinese institution and spread across the world. Fortunately, it caused only a mild illness and led to only a few fatal cases.
– From 1963 to 1978, three escapes of the smallpox virus occurred in the UK from two different laboratories. They were linked to low standards and poorly conducted laboratory practice. The smallpox outbreaks led to at least 80 fatal cases.
– In 1995, 10,000 people in Venezuela and 75,000 people in Colombia fell ill with a VEE strain that escaped from a laboratory. As a result of the outbreak, 311 people died, and neurological complications were found in 3,000 people.
– Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 led to a global epidemic that infected 8,000 people and caused 774 deaths in 29 countries. Since the original epidemic, six escapes of the virus from laboratories have occurred – four in Beijing and one each in Singapore and Taiwan.
– In 2007, 278 animals in the UK were infected with foot-and-mouth disease after the virus escaped from a high-biosafety laboratory. Due to the outbreak, 1,578 animals had to be destroyed. This outbreak undermined agricultural production and exports in the UK and cost approximately 200 million pounds sterling.
Let’s also look at the current viral situation. In 2020-21, we had to deal with the coronavirus (by the way, this is one of the strains of the same SARS that left laboratory walls in 2003). Compared to other viruses, SARS-CoV-2 is not excessively contagious or deadly; to date, about 103 million people have had it, which is 1.3% of the planet’s population; about 2.2 million people died – 2.1% of all infected. Nevertheless, the pandemic led to a large number of social and economic problems.
We should also look at other modern viral threats besides the coronavirus. One such example could be the “Nipah” virus. The disease can be asymptomatic (in which case the person simply becomes a spreader of the infection) or cause serious respiratory problems, encephalitis, cerebral edema, and mortality ranging from 40% to 75%. Furthermore, Dutch researchers claim that a Nipah outbreak could happen at any moment [6]. And what could happen if a sample of such a virus fell into the hands of a person with violent inclinations?
Besides all this, the topic of the viral threat is already being raised by some well-known and authoritative figures, for example, entrepreneur and billionaire Bill Gates [7]. Back in 2015, he predicted a pandemic and warned that the world was not ready for it. He explains this lack of readiness by the fact that large pandemics occur quite rarely, people forget about them and prefer to concentrate their attention on fighting more frequent disasters. A pandemic generally always seems like something that definitely will not happen in the next few years, therefore its threat is ignored. Bill Gates also expressed concern that viruses could be used for violent purposes and estimated the probability of an artificial pandemic to be higher than that of a natural one. Now let’s imagine such a scenario – someone intentionally releases a very contagious and deadly virus into the wild, and humanity is not ready for it at all?
I think there should be no more doubts that the creation of artificial viruses is a real task, which over time is becoming less expensive and more accessible for implementation. It may even not be necessary to create new viruses – it is enough to seize and use samples of already existing ones. Therefore, it is critically important for us to get rid of violence before the moment when someone, in an attempt to protect themselves from attacks, or some terrorist in pursuit of their violent goals, releases a very contagious and deadly virus into the wild, thereby bringing humanity to catastrophe.
Mikhail Svetov has released the long-announced video on methods for disappearing from radars and setting up anonymous and pseudonymous identities. The disclaimer states that tech-savvy people are unlikely to learn much new from it. I am not a techie; I learned something.
My pseudonymous identity was created with many vulnerabilities, so I do not expect it to withstand any close scrutiny, and I view my activity more as an intellectual game. If I suddenly need to create a new pseudonymous identity from scratch, I will use Mikhail’s advice. To the extent that I already apply the methods he proposed, I have no complaints: it really works. Therefore, one can cautiously assume that there will be no serious holes in the parts I haven’t tried.
I am glad that Svetov has reconsidered his position regarding the extent to which anonymous sources can be trusted. It is a pity that he had to make many mistakes and lose a lot of money to reach this conclusion, but what can you do—that is the price for excessive snobbery and the desire to keep one’s cloak white for as long as possible.
P.S. Viewers noted that in his tutorial, Svetov did not finish typing the command to update packages in the terminal, and as a result, only updated their list. The correct command looks like this:
Some guys from Reddit bought a bunch of shares in dead companies and ruined “greedy” hedge funds for shorting those companies. Who is more in the right in this situation?
Anal Magician
Those who leave the casino and go play chess are more in the right.
I have already analyzed the topic of market manipulation, and even more specifically, the pump and dump scheme. My reflections boiled down to the fact that if traders are doing this, it is a strategy as risky as any other. And attempts to regulate it are exactly the same kind of market manipulation. So, if a trading platform in principle implies the possibility of closing trading to prevent someone from making a profit, then there is no point in being on such platforms. It’s not surprising that the Reddit guys eventually ignored the stocks and went to trade crypto. Over time, the smartest among them will even understand which crypto is better for buying and holding, and which is only for speculation. But on crypto exchanges, at least their toy won’t be taken away, even if there is a danger that they might upset someone with it.
I am reading the translation of The Mechanics of Freedom. Very interesting, thank you. My English is at the level of reading an English-Russian dictionary, so this will not be criticism, but rather a question. At the end of the chapter Rare means exhaustible, the “problem of abundance” is mentioned. This really triggered me. Abundance is the best thing humanity can hope for, and calling it a problem is blasphemy.
Then I remembered that “false friends” of the translator exist, and the meaning of “problem” is much broader than the Russian “проблема” — it can be a task, a question, or even a situation.
I’m still triggered. I want to understand: is this just a translation inaccuracy, or does the author really think that abundance has some kind of problems?
Dnar
From the text, it seemed quite obvious to me that the author is being ironic about leftists who claim that the emergence of abundance will cause problems for the existence of private property. Yes, indeed, many things that were once paid will become free, and this only means a transition to other monetization schemes, as we see, for example, in the case of copies of texts. Property as a concept will not disappear. It is precisely competition in the production of goods and services that drives their price down so much that it can even become zero. But in order for the problem of how to get money for something cheap and easily accessible to arise in the first place, capitalism is exactly what is needed. This paradox is, in fact, the theme of the chapter.
Should abortion be banned or not?
I have analyzed this topic — once and twice. I can only add to what was previously stated that the question of whether one should have an abortion is as unpleasant as the question of whether one should perform anesthesia by hitting the back of the head with a mallet. As long as we do not have available methods of anesthesia that do not cause a concussion as a side effect, there are a huge number of situations in which such a barbaric method would be better than none at all. But when science has already stepped far enough forward, mallet anesthesia may only be required in a very exotic situation. The same goes for preventing the birth of a child. Should it be banned to surgically remove it from the body without a chance of survival for the fetus? As long as there are no less barbaric methods at hand, there are a huge number of situations in which it is better to do it this way. But when science gives us a wide variety of contraceptive means, surgical abortion becomes a much rarer procedure than it could be.
How should one treat those who, on principle, force people not to use protection and to give birth? Offer them appendicitis treatment without anesthesia.
Very foolish is the conservative who implements their dreams of ethnic purity and a traditional order of life through state violence in a mandatory manner toward the entire society. But a progressivist who uses this same method to promote a multicultural and LGBT agenda will be equally foolish. This is because, regardless of which ideas are promoted by this method, one must constantly use and maintain the instruments of violence in a state of “combat readiness.”
But power is never eternal. There is no method to leave power in the hands of one interest group forever, simply because different groups always exist within society. And when one of these groups gains enough strength and popularity to remove the previous group from power, the previous interests are removed along with them.
To make this clearer, let’s ask a question as an example, considering the current state of affairs in the Western world. European and American conservatives are extremely dissatisfied that their children are forced to study multiculturalism in schools and are taught tolerance toward LGBT. Sometimes it even goes as far as conservative parents having their children taken away by social services if they decide to shield them from such education. They are also dissatisfied that their funds are taken through taxation to provide aid and additional privileges to minorities and immigrants.
But who is to blame for this? The progressivists? Perhaps, as they are using the tools of force. But the conservatives themselves are also to blame. This is because they supported and nurtured the instrument of violence. And why be surprised that this instrument simply passed into the hands of other interest groups over time? What should conservatives be surprised about after they had previously killed, imprisoned, or forcibly treated those very same LGBT representatives, and then their children began to be mandatorily taught tolerance toward values of this kind? If conservatives had gotten rid of the instrument of violence, not used it to pursue their goals, then no one would have been able to to impose their orders upon them. Yes, the proponents of multiculturalism and LGBT representatives, whom they hate so strongly, would still exist. But they would not be able to force them how to live.
The moral of this story can be expressed by a single parable: you reap what you sow! If you sow violence, you yourself will become its victim; it is inevitable. Never count on the instrument of violence being yours and only yours. It is better not to facilitate the development of such an instrument—then no one will be able to use it against you.
In the past (150-200 years ago and earlier), laws were much more primitive than they are now. Many aspects of life were not regulated at all, many definitions of terms were missing (for example, “everyone must pray loudly in the mornings” — how loud is loud, and where is the boundary of the morning?), and many points were left to the discretion of the subjects of law and the enforcers. Additionally, everyone had the right to carry weapons, and the tax burden was quite primitive. Can it be considered that the society of that time was much closer to ancap than the current one? And if so, why did we take the wrong turn?
анонимный вопрос
On this topic, it is worth first revisiting one of our videos about the stationary bandit, where we explain this simple theory and show how the natural state turned into the strange absurdity we have now.
Specifically, the video indicates where we took the wrong turn. We took the wrong turn every time we traded freedom for security. In the case of the proto-ancap of Ireland or Iceland, we are talking about the external conquest of quite blatant backwaters, so one could say it didn’t matter what the natives chose; they effectively had no choice, and brute force decided. But in the USA, you cannot rely on the factor of external conquest, as they managed to win the War of Independence in a mode of anarchy. But after that, there was indeed a turn in the wrong direction. In a free market, competition among producers is beneficial to the consumer. But to the producer, of course, a monopoly is beneficial. There are more consumers, but they are worse organized. A cohesive minority is capable of securing a disproportionately large amount of influence. Thus, in the USA, the federal government began to swell, introducing economic regulations, and the state of affairs in the states began to look less and less like ancap. They put a finger in the state’s mouth, and it bit off the whole arm.
From a slightly different perspective, but in much greater detail, this process is examined in the book by Rodion Belkovich, Blood of Patriots, which I recently pirated (don’t forget to donate to the CRI after reading, as the author dislikes pirates and needs to be re-educated). In Europe, the same processes took place with even greater permissiveness from society because they never even got a whiff of real anarchy, so they tried to invent an unreal one based on the denial of private property.
Next, check out our second video on the conditions for the stability of anarchy.
There, we talk about the main condition without which nothing will work. Looking at the macro level, it is a matter of prevailing values. The value of freedom must be higher than the value of security; otherwise, it will be impossible to turn toward ancap, and even if one manages to get there, without the personal protection of one’s rights, it is easy to return to slavery.
But how can freedom remain more valuable than security if the value of human life is growing? The thing is, there are living people on the aggressor’s side too, and they also value security. The willingness to inflict unacceptable damage on the attacker during defense is the basis of the deterrence doctrine, about which we also made a video, and I suggest finishing today’s topic with it.
I constantly hear criticism regarding the idea of eliminating aggressive violence from society using biotechnologies (the development of gene therapy). Skeptics argue that the propensity for violence is very complex, determined by many genes, and that identifying them is impossible. In reality, this is true, but only if one looks specifically for “violence propensity” genes, although this is absolutely unnecessary to solve the task at hand. Lorenz’s research describes the evolutionary path through which many animal species developed an “innate morality” of non-aggression toward members of their own species (in fact, this is not morality in the usual philosophical sense, but a behavioral instinct). For some reason, many have overlooked this, but Konrad Lorenz clearly indicates in his works that species with innate morality experience a strong feeling of aversion (i.e., a certain aggression-inhibiting mechanism is triggered) when they intend to cause harm to the body of a conspecific (for simplicity, we will henceforth call this the “Lorenz mechanism” after the discoverer). This contrasts sharply with the layman’s understanding of “propensity for violence.” For example, hedgehogs are quite aggressive in the conventional sense (since they are predators), but are incapable of causing physical harm to their own kind.
Although Lorenz himself wrote that in humans “innate morality” is very weak, nevertheless, its presence can be noticed in a significant part of society, perhaps even in the majority. You have probably noticed scenes in movies where someone wanted to take revenge for some offense, picked up a weapon, approached the unarmed offender, pointed the gun at them, but suddenly the attacker’s hands began to shake, they felt ill, and they could not fire. This is the behavioral pattern of species with a strong version of the Lorenz mechanism, but in humans, it is quite variable (unlike, for example, hedgehogs and snakes, where all individuals in the population have a strong version of this mechanism due to the pressure of natural selection). Accordingly, this trait is determined by alleles of one or several genes (different forms of the same gene located in the same sections of chromosomes). Given the high degree of variability of the strong/weak version of the Lorenz mechanism in different people, identifying the specific genes and the correct (desired) alleles is quite simple, even at the current technological level.
A rough research plan can be outlined. Activists openly demonstrate provocative behavior, for example, by showing their commitment to LGBT in places where homophobes are usually present, insulting them, but, importantly, not using any physical violence against them. If it is evident that a person is deeply offended by the insult, but nevertheless simply walks away (the ideal version is that they intended to strike but ultimately could not), we inform them that it was a scientific experiment, tell them they did well to restrain themselves, and take a DNA sample from them, marking it as “peaceful.” If, however, they attempt to hit the activist, we immediately stop the attack using pepper spray and take a DNA sample, marking it as “aggressor.” We repeat this numerous times to create samples of sufficient size.
Next, we send the collected materials to a laboratory for DNA decoding (sequencing). It could be to Silicon Valley — some of the numerous biotech startups there will surely be happy to receive the samples we have collected, as they cannot collect DNA samples in such an “aggressive” manner within California itself. Based on the comparison of the two samples, the specific genes responsible for the strength of the Lorenz mechanism and the required alleles (encoding the strong version) are identified. Once identified, it would be possible, for example, to create gene therapy for adults and a genetic test for pregnant women (which would make the woman seriously consider whether it is worth continuing the pregnancy).
I will reflect a bit on the topic of the protest’s collapse and hope that after this, I can move on from the Navalny theme for a long time.
What did Volkov tell us on the February 4 stream? That they, of course, anticipated the possibility of imprisonment, and for this occasion they have a plan: to seize the assets of Putin’s circle abroad, thereby causing a split among the elites and bringing about the “tabaquero” scenario (or the final transformation of the RF into Belarus, where the dictator’s circle doesn’t show their noses abroad, but instead enjoys themselves fully at home).
Svetov reacted to this, stating that stopping the street actions was a good idea, but it would have been even better not to start them at all: simply come to Russia and silently go to jail.
And here I cannot help but be outraged. Why go to jail at all? What, was the task of seizing the property of Putin’s circle unsolvable without the imprisonment of one Navalny and sixteen thousand people outraged by Navalny’s imprisonment? Is it impossible to speak before the European Parliament or the US Congress without this? Actually, it seems the opposite: imprisonment only hinders this, as colleagues have to speak instead. Can’t you release new exposés without being in jail? No, videos with Alexei are clearly more lively than without him. Or would fewer people have watched the video about the palace if he hadn’t arranged a promo tour from Berlin to the Kremlin Central prison? Yes, perhaps fewer. Maybe by ten million. Is that so critical?
In short, Volkov did not convince me, and I continue to believe that Navalny was completely mistaken to fear that he would fade away abroad and become uninteresting as a politician. By going to prison, he created many difficulties for many good people, and yes, this is pure victim-blaming on my part: you shouldn’t fly to such a dangerous country wearing such a short skirt.
Of course, there is a certain probability that foreign elites didn’t fully believe Bellingcat’s investigation into Navalny’s poisoning, and the self-sacrifice became simply a final demonstration: yes, look, they have truly lost their minds over there, now live with this and fight, if you can. If this is the case, it certainly casts a shadow on the impeccable moral qualities of Grandpa Biden and Grandma Merkel, and portrays them as cannibals.
But anyway. Putin successfully survived another crisis involving tens of thousands of protesters taking to the streets; the security forces stretched their legs after Covid, and are now cheerful, spirited, and ready to arrest everyone on weekends even without any mass actions. Detainees are fined, they bill the FBK, and then they win these cases in Strasbourg, but that is a slow process. And people have only just felt the drive, and now they are talking about a “drain” precisely because all activity ended so abruptly, while they had only just woken up from a year-long Covid slumber.
Forgive me, but the FBK is not your helper here. It is a machine for conducting and promoting anti-corruption investigations. The FBK will continue to act using FBK methods. And Navalny’s headquarters will not help you. That is an electoral machine. They will continue to use the doctrine of smart voting. If you desire something more—not just going to the street when asked, and donating and liking the rest of the time—you will have to organize yourselves. The main thing here is not to chase glory or mass appeal. You simply spend pleasant time in the company of reliable friends you managed to make in some other setting. And then you read in the news: “unknown persons decorated the mayor’s office building with fresh graffiti” or “unknown persons slashed the tires of a judge’s car.” “How strange,” you send the news to your friends, “what a weird story, what did the car do to offend them?”
