How much nonsense is there in Netesov’s cycle on the mistakes of libertarianism, and how should one respond to it?

Danila

This is about the following cycle of three articles: Libertarians have shrugged their shoulders, Soviet society is not 1984, and Corporate Wastefulness in the 21st Century.

Shoulders

§1. The concept of Schumpeter’s entrepreneurial function and Hayek’s dispersed knowledge is described, as well as the problems that arise in a planned economy lacking access to this knowledge, since it is embedded in market prices. Everything is quite correct, with various amusing examples from life in the USSR.

§2. Mises’s calculation argument is described, according to which in the absence of market prices, a planning agency has to assign them arbitrarily, leading to suboptimal resource allocation, making the planned economy wasteful and inferior to the market economy. As a partial answer to how the USSR managed to survive for 70 years, it is pointed out that it was able to peek at some market prices from its capitalist neighbors. There are no complaints about this paragraph either.

§3. Here, the author, on one hand, shows that the lion’s share of innovations appears in small startups, but on the other hand, says that the world has long been ruled not by shopkeepers, but by corporations, and therefore classical liberalism is a libertarian’s dream. Essentially, “pipe down and return to the real world from your beloved 18th century.” Generally, the facts presented are quite correct, but the author’s pathos is unclear: the fact that the current economy is not fully market-based does not mean that its state is optimal or even inevitable. It’s just the way it is now.

1984

§4. Here the author points out that both Mises’s calculation argument and Hayek’s argument about dispersed knowledge neglect empirics. Since a global planned economy has never been built, it cannot be verified that it is incapable of economic calculation. Since the Soviet economy contained some rudimentary elements of a market rather than being fully planned, it again cannot be verified that a planned economy is unable to account for this dispersed knowledge. In short, the unverifiability of the arguments regarding the impossibility of building a planned economy is confirmed by the fact that no one has ever been able to build a pure planned economy. I would say that the absurdity (okay, let’s say more gently—the paradox) of such argumentation is quite obvious.

On the other hand, it is pointed out that both Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and Orwell in 1984 clearly overdid the pessimism of their forecasts, because the inefficiency of a totalitarian society quickly begins to require a minimum of market lubrication, and only with its presence is this planned machine somehow able to move forward. Again, the criticism seems strange. Hayek says: if you are consistent in your madness, this is what will happen. Then Netesov claims: look, Soviet society was not consistent enough in its madness, therefore Hayek was wrong. Well, sort of…

§5. Here it is said that Hayek claimed: under a system of centralized planning, all plans are handed down from above by one leader. But this is not the case: huge, cumbersome structures were built to create plans, which worked terribly, and these plans were not properly fulfilled. It is clear that empirical data should differ somewhat from theoretical ones: the Soviet Union was not an ideal system of centralized planning because such an ideal system is simply unattainable, just as absolute zero is unattainable.

But essentially, the author is right: The Road to Serfdom is not a detailed description of a specific USSR, nor even of socialism as a system. It is simply a political pamphlet, a warning to British society not to flirt too much with the Labour Party. For studying socialism, Hayek’s book is too superficial; if anyone is interested, there are many established Sovietologists, and the author suggests getting acquainted with them.

Greedy Escort

§6. Here, the author first suggests that libertarians get rid of praxeology. Then he begins to reason that a corporation is not some single and indivisible entrepreneur, but a multitude of people, each acting in their own personal interests, which do not necessarily coincide with some conceptual interests of the corporation as a whole or even its management. The question arises: why should we discard praxeology if it is precisely concerned with the consideration of individual human interests, which are much broader than economics?

It is also pointed out that Mises’s calculation argument regarding the impossibility of economic calculation in a planned economy applies to corporations in the same way. That is, the more internal transfer pricing within a corporation is detached from the market, the worse resources are distributed within it. Next, positive and negative economies of scale are mentioned, which Mises touched upon only slightly. Well, Mises wasn’t the only one; Ronald Coase did a lot of work in the field of firm theory, and supporters of the Austrian School of Economics can perfectly well use his constructions; they fit into the general economic theory and do not violate the principles of praxeology.

Further in this very long paragraph, there are reflections that the efficiency of a corporation becomes even lower when it reaches the state trough, and Mises is accused of ignoring this circumstance. Here, one can only be surprised, because the entire sixth part of Human Action is devoted to various distortions that the government can introduce into economic activity.

§7. Here, referencing Hernando de Soto, explanations are given as to why supercomputers are unable to save a planned economy, and then a question is left hanging about what prevents these same arguments from being applied to TNCs. Nothing prevents it. Centralization has its costs, and decentralization has its own.

§8. Here the author repeats a number of theses from previous paragraphs and mentions that Joseph Salerno proved: market prices convey a reliable signal to entrepreneurs only under proximal equilibrium. He uses this as an argument that Hayek is outdated, and along with him, the entire Austrian School. But Salerno is also a representative of the Austrian School, so we are seeing an evolving school rather than a dead dogma, so what’s the problem?

§9. In conclusion, Netesov lists the reasons why, in his view, the rapid expansion of the influence of the Russian-speaking libertarian movement has slowed down significantly recently. The selection looks like a set of random facts that caught the author’s eye and serves as a warning to me personally not to do the same, because it looks very funny from the side. There, literally, as reasons for the end of the golden age of libertarianism in Russia, he lists the publication of a feuilleton with 13 thousand reads (I first learned about it from Netesov’s article), Usanov’s weak performance in debates with Vatoadmin, and the failure of Zelensky’s reforms. Where is my pre-New Year depression? I also influenced the fading interest in libertarianism in Russia!

In my view, the problem is more that almost all the low-hanging fruit have been picked, and further, if one wants to continue spreading their ideology at the previous pace, new approaches must be found. The second problem is, undoubtedly, the COVID restrictions, which completely cut off the sphere of offline agitation. The third is the recent split of the libertarian community. However, the latter circumstance, on the contrary, may provide new growth points due to increased competition for fresh minds.

Is there perhaps a card number where a donation can be transferred?

The “Money and Apocalypse” channel (close in spirit)

I took a look at your channel; there are some interesting thoughts, and I subscribed, although in my opinion, there are too many reposts, materials are released too frequently, and the overall content is more about the apocalypse than about money. So, after some time, I might unsubscribe, once I’ve had my fill. It’s a bit strange that an economist and a financier, not unfamiliar with reading materials from Simon Cordonsky and reposting figures of Bitcoin’s annual growth, prefer to request a bank card number for donations, even though it could be done in Bitcoins, whether on-chain or via Lightning. But a potential donor has the right to their own quirks, so I added a form for sending rubles to the donations page.

Of the interesting thoughts in the channel, I’ll mention the last one. The graph of returns on education, which shows a growth in returns in the nineties, followed by a decline in the two-thousands. You and some of your readers suggest that this is due to the decrease in economic freedom, where loyalty replaced competence. Other readers point out that it might be due to the general decay of higher education, because the world has become too fast for long-term study. I haven’t seen a similar graph for, say, the USA; it would be interesting to compare, as rumors suggest they have similar problems there as well. In short, there is something to reflect upon here.

I would also like to note the thought migrating from post to post that the decline in real disposable income of citizens, observed for almost all the “tens” (decades), is not just man-made, but also deliberate. A subject must be poor so that they think about their daily bread, rather than pondering strange non-material questions like changing the regime. Moreover, a low level of wages provides the country with some degree of investment attractiveness, regardless of country risks. This is an interesting conspiratorial consideration that explains the observed facts, but is not substantiated by any leaks of secret instructions or similar things, which are, in fact, the only way to confirm conspiratorial theories.

Forced Protest

The friendly channel Anarchy+ is publishing a multi-part longread about how the presence of a radical wing, ready for violent action, affects the course of protests. Five parts have been released so far, and more are coming. The series explores various subtleties, such as how the effects differ when the radical wing is friendly with the moderate one, and when there is no coordination between them—and so on. Two or three more episodes are expected, which will then be collected into a single post, but I preferred not to wait for the end because an interesting practical example has come along.

The most notable protest of last year was, of course, Belarus. In its aftermath, political scientists either gently lamented that a regime relying on a compact, loyal security core remains stable regardless of the dissatisfaction of the rest of the population—as confirmed by two examples, Venezuela and Belarus—or they expressed indignation toward the protesters, arguing that by taking off their slippers before standing on benches, they demonstrate their complete toothlessness to the regime’s dogs and give a carte blanche for repressions, the severity of which is directly proportional to the size of the demonstrations.

And then I am handed a link to an extremely curious channel, which is used to promote specifically violent actions in Belarus, and in an extremely harsh form. Read it carefully; it is quite young, so you can manage its entire content. In short: the channel intends to launch a full-scale guerrilla war against the regime. The tactics proposed make it clear: the authors of the channel, whoever they may be, know very well how courts work under ancap, and they also perfectly understand that very influence of a radical wing on the protest as a whole.

I have attempted to roughly formulate what these anonymous organizers of decentralized violent protest are guided by:

  1. Today, the overwhelming majority of those dissatisfied with the regime are indeed not ready for an open armed rebellion, but many are extremely irritated by the complete lack of concessions from the regime in response to peaceful actions.
  2. The lack of readiness for open rebellion in some is caused by a principled unwillingness to escalate violence, while in others, it is an unwillingness to bear serious costs.
  3. A person is capable of developing habits and skills. Starting small, they get drawn in, and then can gradually train for serious violence.
  4. Violence must not be heroized. Heroes take off their slippers before standing on benches. Terror is carried out by scum. And society has a demand for the appearance of these loathsome characters who will fight the regime out of the lowest motivations.
  5. For a socialist country, the textbook lowest motivation is money. It is best if servants of the regime are killed by other servants of the regime for the sake of money. But any other lumpen will do.
  6. How much to pay for which actions? Who will pay? Let the “market” decide that; the channel’s job is to describe the business model, which anyone wishing to do so can then adopt.

What can we extract from these materials?

Firstly, keeping in mind that Belarus is something of a testing ground for the Russian regime, one can assume that something similar may await us in the RF, so why not keep a closer eye on the underside of the protest as well, trying it on for size in advance.

Secondly, the channel provides a number of practical tips on anonymization that will also be useful for peaceful agorists.

Thirdly, we see vivid confirmation that market relations work perfectly even when fighting the state, which means the market will survive without the state. Not that this is exactly some discovery, but we’ll add this to the pile of evidence.

Nothing special, just an open registry of targets

OMP is ineffective? Debunking the myth of Boris Boyarshinov and his supporters.

Column Bitarkh

It turns out there is a fairly large “sect” of supporters of Boris Boyarshinov, who denies the danger of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He constantly repeats a “mantra” of sorts about the uselessness of nuclear weapons (NW). His background is in physics, so most of his arguments concern NW specifically, but he sometimes says something similar about viruses (I remember Mikhail Svetov asked Boyarshinov directly about the idea of viral WMD, and Boris answered in roughly the same spirit as he did about NW).

The main point of his theory is that none of the currently existing WMDs are capable of destroying humanity or even a specific geographical region. He claims that the scale of destruction from a nuclear explosion grows as the cube root of the charge’s power (i.e., as the number of “megatons” in a bomb increases, the destruction increases very, very slowly), that nuclear winter is a calculation error and will not happen in reality, and that viruses can be contained by a vaccine and are inconvenient to store in a ready-to-use state.

Now, Boyarshinov and his supporters do not understand the very essence of deterrence theory and confuse doomsday weapons (DDW) with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The latter are sometimes called strategic deterrence weapons.

DDW, in the literal sense, is a device capable of completely destroying all of humanity or making the planet uninhabitable.

WMD is a deterrence weapon that operates on a game-theory model of costs and benefits. None of the supporters of nuclear/viral deterrence ever claim that WMD must kill all of humanity in the literal sense, as is understood in the case of DDW. Even at the peak of the Cold War, when the USSR and USA had tens of thousands of thermonuclear charges, experts spoke of inflicting “unacceptable damage,” but never the total destruction of the planet. The concept of M.A.D. (“Mutual Assured Destruction”) is deceptive in its name—it is not total mutual annihilation, as many think, but merely the infliction of unacceptable damage.

Nevertheless, for deterring an aggressor in the form of a state, WMD is entirely sufficient. The example of North Korea’s Kim demonstrates this perfectly; even the most powerful state in the world—the USA—is afraid to attack him. There is no need to even discuss the destructive power of North Korean missiles—as experts say, in the best case, only 1-2 missiles with a simple nuclear warhead would arrive, which would blow up a few blocks of dense housing in a city like New York. There are opposite examples—Gaddafi and Hussein had no WMD, and we all know perfectly well what happened to them.

From animal ethology, we know how the dominance hierarchy is structured in animal species that form them (the very fact that such a hierarchy forms is an evolutionary error [local extremum] arising from a disruption in the uniform balance of violence potential [in animals, this is a lack of innate weaponry]). In such a hierarchy, the dominant (“alpha”) can apply violence to submissive individuals (“omegas”), and the latter are in no way capable of inflicting retaliatory damage. If they are capable, a dominance hierarchy does not arise.

Generally speaking, all states, in relation to both their own citizens and other, weaker states, are capable of applying violence without the risk of receiving retaliatory damage. In making the decision to attack Hussein, the US government considered the risks of a retaliatory strike and, understanding that the most Saddam Hussein was capable of was killing some soldiers sent there voluntarily and ready for the risk, easily decided on aggression.

The situation with North Korea’s Kim is completely different—taking even a weak bomb to New York is unacceptable damage; voters would not understand this, and the US political system would risk spiraling out of control, which the authorities cannot allow.

Now let’s consider the confrontation between a stationary bandit and an individual. As you think—you can even apply this to yourself personally—would society agree to sit in quarantine for 2 weeks to allow the state to apply violence even to the person most unpleasant to you, such as a pedophile maniac? Want to execute one maniac—welcome to a two-week quarantine! I highly doubt you would agree to that.

A state can coerce through violence only when there is no even minimal retaliatory strike using WMD, otherwise “voters will not understand.” Thus, for deterring a modern state, nuclear weapons or Level 4 danger viruses are even excessive. A weak flu virus is enough, which can literally be multiplied “in a garage” using simple, easily accessible materials such as chicken eggs and an incubator, and the virus sample for multiplication can be easily obtained from any hospital. The main thing is the inevitability of a retaliatory strike using such WMD in the event of “impaling” [brutal repression], which can be implemented as a “dead hand system” or an “assassination market.” After a couple of such episodes, the country will quickly return to a state of separate pre-state societies, where the most that could be done to a criminal was ostracism. On this point, the philosopher Steven Pinker said it well: “Revenge is a risky business because if the enemy is dangerous enough to have harmed you, he is unlikely to accept punishment without resistance.” In matters of coercion to obey the orders (“laws”) of a stationary bandit, it is the same (we talked about this in the video “The Non-violent State”). The possession of even the simplest WMD by a potential victim of the state makes the initiation of violence “political suicide” for the authorities. It will come to the point where society, tired of continuous quarantines and overcrowded hospitals, will pressure the state using its own forces to root out aggressive violence (it may be hard to believe now, but life will force it).

Will there be a New Year under ancap?

Libertarian Band suddenly delighted us with a bonus New Year’s video, in which they examine the question mentioned in the title. Someone in the team is clearly a fan of Bazhenov, because the analysis is conducted from the perspective of economic mainstream. Thus, most of the video consists of discussions on how profitable holidays are for the state economy, which has a very indirect relation to ancap. However, in any case, such a video is clearly better than my dismal year-end review yesterday, and the conclusions drawn in the video are quite correct.

Happy New Year, if you so desire!

Violence and Non-violence: The Revival of Statehood

Voluntarist

Certain forms of violence are often legitimized as a tool necessary for maintaining public order. This is especially true regarding the pursuit of people who have previously committed acts of violence or have simply violated certain agreements through non-violent means, and the forced application of power measures for restitution and punishment. In the first article of this cycle, we already examined how the issue of restitution and the punishment of criminals can be resolved without resorting to force. However, some people, including supporters of a free stateless society, may still consider violence to be a necessary or, at least, permissible tool in certain situations. One of the arguments that can be countered with is that the use of power measures leads to the rebirth of a violent hierarchy of dominance in the form of a state with uncontested and monopolistic power. This is another negative externality of violence.

To implement power measures against people, there must exist bodies or entities that have the ability to apply violence to them without hindrance (or with minimal obstacles). In effect, someone must have the right and the ability to violate the Balance of Violence Potential (BVP) — an important component of a free society, without which its stable and long-term existence is fundamentally impossible.

Insufficient equalization of the BVP in a free society may be caused by the fact that the majority of society’s members do not wish to defend themselves against acts of violence; that is, they are fundamentally unconcerned with the issue of security, are willing to tolerate aggressors, and voluntarily submit to them. In such a case, there is little to be done other than distributing means of self-defense and popularizing the idea of the need to protect oneself. However, if a free society is achieved based on the current state of affairs, such a scenario is unlikely, as equalizing the BVP by these methods is one of the key components of this process. And by achieving a free society through the equalization of the BVP, we will create conditions under which the existence of bodies with the right to the unhindered use of force should not be possible in principle.

However, it is possible to assume that a state of insufficient BVP equalization has nonetheless occurred. For example, we have eliminated violent monopolistic power, but decided not to get rid of the use of power measures, but instead to transfer this function to various independent agents, providing them with certain advantages over everyone else, which would allow them to engage in such activities without hindrance. In this case, I have only one question: what would stop such agents from one moment deciding to stop fulfilling their obligations under agreements and begin applying violence to pursue their own goals, including the establishment of their own coercive and monopolistic power over people and entities who lack the ability to defend themselves?

Obviously, nothing would stop them. Thus, violent and monopolistic political power will be created anew. This is precisely why supporters of a free society cannot be consistent in their views if they adhere to the legitimization and permissibility of certain forms of violence for various purposes, including the pursuit of forceful punishment and the extraction of compensation, since this, again, would require the existence of bodies or entities with a greater potential for violence than everyone else, and thus capable of establishing their own power at any moment.

2020, results

The year was terrible. The channel barely gained any subscribers, posts became less frequent, and generally, a crisis of genre began to be felt. The video course on libertarianism on the Libertarian Band channel stalled back in the spring and soon broke off mid-sentence. I am now answering questions quite reluctantly because, in essence, I have already answered everything, and I don’t want to repeat myself. Commenting on current events from my own perspective is the only outlet, but it is a rather secondary product, and I wouldn’t want to focus on it entirely. Translations remain, but overfeeding the subscriber with them is also harmful.

In such a situation, of course, it is necessary to start some new project, if possible while preserving existing developments.

The most obvious thing is the systematization of what has already been written, in the form of a single coherent text about libertarianism. The project has a clear downside. Many such books have already been written; none of them are perfect, and mine clearly will not be.

Another direction is to create a wiki instead of a book, so that for any term or concept, a person can be referred to a specific address, thereby cutting off most disputes over definitions. The downside is that such activity is not very convenient to cover in the channel. Another downside is that a wiki is an engine for decentralized content creation, so it will either happen slowly and gloomily as a solo effort, or this prank will quickly spiral out of control.

Many also complain about a serious lack of libertarian fiction, and this is potentially a very rich field. Truth be told, I fear that I will be even more stilted than Ayn Rand. I have to try.

In short, I am ending this year in complete creative turmoil, and what surprises me most is that there are still some crazy people who donate to me. It really is much more cheerful to work with donations, but it is very strange when someone believes in you more than you believe in yourself.

Erik Mack. Libertarianism. Chapter on Mill.

About a month ago, I received a small donation for the translation of Eric Mack. It’s not that I was in a great rush with this translation, but I didn’t want to completely ignore the fact that someone felt it was important to encourage the process a bit. So here is a fresh chapter, the penultimate one in the part dedicated to the philosophical prerequisites for the emergence of libertarianism. The translation took some effort: John Stuart Mill wrote quite convolutedly.

The chapter is dedicated to utilitarian arguments in favor of freedom—in other words, attempts to justify its necessity not only by so-called natural rights (which is not a justification at all, but a simple postulate, as if there is such a right, and that’s that), but also by social utility. Of course, with the transition to methodological subjectivism, straightforward reasoning about the common good began to look somewhat like an anachronism, though not entirely, which surprised me a little. In essence, in his utilitarian arguments, from which any totalitarian doctrine can be easily derived if desired, Mill arrives at our old acquaintance, self-ownership, the primacy of individual security, and other liberal attributes.

From our current perspective, this, of course, looks like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Mill was a priori convinced of the value of individual freedom, and thereafter his task was reduced to selecting arguments as to why it is necessary to ensure the highest common good. Had he been a priori convinced of the value of Sharia norms or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, he could have constructed arguments in exactly the same way, proving that these very crucial things were needed to achieve the highest common good.

Don’t forget to encourage the translation process with your donations.

The Limits of Violence

Bitarch, Voluntarist

Supporters of etatism and the use of force generally divide violence into illegitimate violence—that is, “bad” violence, which must be fought against—and supposedly “legitimate” violence, which is considered beneficial and may be, or even must be, applied. Violence may be declared legitimate for the sake of achieving certain goals which, according to etatists, are worth treating people as nothing more than a soulless resource in the hands of a “wise” government. Violence may be declared legitimate for the sake of revenge and the forceful punishment of those who committed an act of violence in the past, or even those who simply violated some agreement through non-violent means; this is supposedly a necessary measure in the fight against crime, and generally allows for a kind of “social revenge,” letting people blow off steam on those who have done something wrong.

Of course, based on different ethical models and views on social organization, one can attempt to legitimize any form of violence. They can even be legitimized based on certain practical considerations, but only in a very limited sense, by avoiding a full consideration of the final results. However, if one stops engaging in purely subjective theorizing and fully examines the results of violent practices, it becomes evident that violence only leads to catastrophe, regardless of whether it is called legitimate or not.

To understand what the issue is, let us imagine a situation. A specific person has been accused of committing some crime; the court has found them guilty and ordered them to pay compensation or submit to other measures (for example, go to prison). However, they refuse to do so. Of course, a number of non-forceful methods of pressure can be used, especially various reputational and financial tools. But this does not satisfy you, and you want to achieve your goal by force? Then let us see how far you are willing to go, especially considering that we live in a modern high-tech world in which the destructive potential of a single individual grows every day.

1) Using one or another weapon of self-defense, the convicted person destroys the agents who came to their home and are forcing them to comply through threats of violence.

2) Using explosives previously planted in an apartment building or a crowded place, the convicted person demands to be left alone; otherwise, they will have no choice but to detonate them (or fail to prevent a detonation via a pre-set timer, if they have already been caught and are not being released), thereby killing many people.

3) Using a previously planted container with a non-dangerous virus (for example, flu or coronavirus), the convicted person follows the same scheme to infect several people in the city, thereby forcing the authorities to impose a strict two-week quarantine throughout the city (assume that you personally would be forbidden from leaving your home during this quarantine).

4) Using a previously planted “dirty bomb,” they turn a large city into a second Pripyat; the population is completely evacuated, and many die from cancer. All real estate and some of the movable property of the city’s residents are lost forever (becoming unusable due to radioactive contamination).

5) Using a previously planted container with a very dangerous virus obtained or synthesized earlier (which, with technical progress, will also cease to be a major problem), the convicted person launches a pandemic that leads to a large-scale quarantine across the entire country for a long period, a high number of victims, and the collapse of the economy.

6) Using thermonuclear missiles (the convicted person being wealthy enough to produce them) or ultra-high-capacity energy sources (which, like virus synthesizers, could become quite accessible, even common everyday tools), they turn the entire planet into a scorched desert barely fit for life and destroy civilization in the form it currently exists. A small portion of survivors reverts to the Stone Age.

I think the maximum risk you would be willing to take is what is described in the first point; otherwise, the consequences would be catastrophic. And in the event that the Balance of Violence Potential is achieved (meaning universal armament), this option will inevitably end with the liquidation of enforcement agents, which will make forced coercion fundamentally impossible!

Who Benefits from the Fight Against Violence. A New Video from Libertarian Band.

Towards the end of the year, Libertarian Band finally put out the final video of the cycle on violence. It turned out to be somewhat relaxed and encouraging, just what is needed at the end of December. The idea is that yes, violence is certainly a problem, but it is a problem for many, and many stand to benefit from solving it. And since it looks technically solvable, and since both the goal and the means exist, it will, of course, be solved.

I have two main grievances with the entire cycle. First, it is quite abstract. The problem of violence in general is like the problem of poverty in general. People are more concerned with their personal safety and personal well-being, and discussing macro-parameters significantly reduces engagement. Second, the postulated division between self-defense and revenge is largely artificial. Accordingly, arguing that the former is virtuous while the latter is not will inevitably spark disputes: why exactly is it not, and where is the line? For instance, I am hit, I hit back, and I am told that I am wrong, that revenge is bad, and that I should use non-violent methods. I claim it was self-defense, and I am told that it cannot be self-defense if I have already been hit. Why is a one-second difference in the exchange of blows acceptable, but a one-day difference is not?

Nevertheless, personal safety correlates with the overall level of violence, just as personal well-being correlates with the overall level of poverty, and non-violent methods of conflict resolution are very effective in a vast number of cases. So, for the time being, the adepts of the approach promoted in this cycle remain my allies. Specifically, exactly until the general obsession with this approach reduces my own personal safety, and that is still a long way off.