I finished her off!

That’s it, Libertarian Theory of War is finished and even immediately formatted into epub – download it as a single file and read in comfort.

I still have some grievances regarding the cover: Rothbard’s portrait resemblance to his spirit in the image leaves much to be desired, and the neural network stubbornly insisted on depicting me in exactly that image, despite the reference I provided. Nevertheless, I generally like the result, so I’ll leave it as is. But if anyone decides to try and improve it, I’m all for it; post your versions in the comments.

I also believe that finishing the book is a good occasion to remind readers of the link for donations to the author: https://ancapchan.info/donate/

Divide, conquer, and… smile with all 32 teeth!

We usually talk about violence in physical terms. But there is another type of aggression that is far more elegant from a biological perspective. It is not the club of a Neanderthal, but a surgeon’s scalpel. Or, to be more precise, a sweet poison. Recently, a great article by Winifred Rohl on this topic was published in Psychology Today. She raises the issue of exactly how psychopathic personalities break social bonds. If we look at the market of human relationships as a free exchange of values, then a psychopath is a monopolist-fraudster. And their primary currency is confusion. Let’s now examine this problem point by point.

First, psychopaths use charm as camouflage. Rohl writes: “For psychopaths, charm is their glitter.” Biologically, this is mimicry. A psychopath cannot feel empathy, so they simulate it. Example: you see a charismatic leader who says the right things. Your brain, tuned to search for an “alpha,” screams: “Oh, this is someone to follow!”. In reality, it is a predator who has simply learned in what tone to purr.

Second, they employ the “Wedge” tactic. The article gives a chilling example: a mother (a psychopath) tells her daughter over the phone: “Speak, darling, we are alone, this is private.” The daughter pours her heart out. Meanwhile, the mother winks at the second daughter, who is sitting nearby and listening to everything. Why? To create an artificial deficit of information and trust. While you are fighting among yourselves, you aren’t looking at the one pulling the strings. A classic of statecraft transferred to the kitchen.

Third, they “hack” the hierarchy. Research by Paul Babiak (author of “Snakes in Suits”) shows that psychopaths are promoted in corporations. Why? Because they perfectly hack vertical management systems. To the boss, they “sell” confidence and flattery (psychopaths do not experience anxiety, so they appear super-competent). Meanwhile, they terrorize, sabotage, and frame their colleagues and subordinates. The result: those at the top see an “effective manager,” while those at the bottom see scorched earth. By the time the information reaches the top, the psychopath has already gained their benefit and moved to another department.

Why did evolution leave us with such personalities (approximately 1% of the population)? It is a parasitism strategy. If everyone around is cooperating and trusting (cooperative strategy), then an individual appears who can exploit this trust for maximum personal gain. Without spending resources on conscience, reflection, or fear. Pure profit.

How to avoid becoming prey? The author of the article emphasizes: the main marker that a psychopath is nearby is your feeling of “I’m going crazy.” If person A tells you nasty things about person B in secret, and then you see them hugging—you experience cognitive dissonance. You begin to doubt your own sanity.

So what should be done? Look at actions, not glitter: charisma is cheap, reputation and adherence to contracts are expensive. Therefore, decentralize your fact-checking. If you are told, “The whole department thinks you’re an idiot,” do not take it on faith. Go and speak with the department directly. Psychopaths fear the direct communication of victims like fire, because lies only live in the dark. So protect your neurons and your boundaries. Freedom begins where manipulation ends!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Libertarian Theory of War, section 3.3.4 on war between states has been completed

So, the book on libertarian theory of war has finally touched upon war itself just before the finale. A couple of paradoxical conclusions and several banal ones have been made, and recommendations have been formulated on what libertarians should do in all this mess—in short, I am rather satisfied with the new section.

Now all that’s left is to smoothly summarize the entire text, and then the book can be assembled into a single epub, illustrated, and presented to the general public in some way.

And just as the finish line is very close, one misplaced question has started to irritate me. Actually, I love juicy and atmospheric details in books. But I made both of mine—on ancap and on the theory of war—as dry and concise as possible. Compressing ideas into a minimal volume was sometimes damn difficult, and now I wonder: was it even necessary to bother with that? Perhaps it would have made sense to generously pour out a stream of consciousness, adding various historical anecdotes and lyrical digressions? Maybe that would have been swallowed much more easily?

How the state and big business pressure private farming

A huge scandal recently erupted: numerous videos have appeared online showing veterinary services seizing and destroying livestock from farmers and private household owners in various regions of Russia. People are attempting to block roads and protest, as for many families, this is their only source of income. Formally, the reason given is an outbreak of an infectious disease, but farmers claim they are not shown test results or given explanations of the diagnosis, and state veterinarians arrive without any documentation. At the same time, similar measures are not applied to large agricultural enterprises, even when they are at the epicenter of the alleged outbreak.

Of course, this is a very alarming situation in its own right. However, it is far more important that it illustrates a broader trend: in many countries, state laws and practices are aimed at the total destruction of private farming and personal households.

One of the most common tools is seed regulation. For example, in Russia, agrarians are required to enter information about purchased and used seeds into special state registries and comply with numerous requirements regarding their origin and quality. Formally, this is explained as a fight against counterfeits and plant diseases. But in practice, such a system creates an unsustainable bureaucratic burden for small farms, which, unlike large agro-holdings, cannot afford to maintain an entire legal department. There are also restrictions on the import and use of seeds, which simply leave farmers with very few opportunities and choices for developing their farms, thereby once again making them unable to compete with large players.

Similar logic works in Europe. Under EU legislation, many types of seeds that are sold or distributed must undergo official certification and quality checks. This means that growing and trading non-certified varieties becomes practically impossible. Moreover, using one’s own seeds even in a personal garden can be prohibited and punishable, and seeds for this purpose must be bought at an exorbitant price from state-licensed suppliers. One should also recall the unbearable environmental requirements and the high-profile case from the Netherlands, where after the introduction of new environmental standards in 2022, it turned out that small farms simply would not be able to afford them and would have to close.

Such laws have an obvious economic effect. Large agro-holdings easily adapt to new requirements: they have lawyers, laboratories, and access to certified planting material. Even if some laws make their lives slightly more difficult, it must be understood that for small farms, they will be completely fatal, as the latter do not have huge incomes and savings. This is why every new regulation, license, or requirement hits small farms disproportionately. For corporations, it is just another line in the budget, while for a family farm, it is a question of survival.

As a result, the agricultural market is gradually concentrating in the hands of increasingly larger players. This is the result of a typical symbiosis between the state and big business. The state bureaucracy gains the ability to keep everything under its control since only a very limited number of agents remain in the market, and the population as a whole becomes unable to even provide for its own food. Meanwhile, large companies get the opportunity to become monopolists, meaning they can manipulate the quality, volume, and price of products as they wish and keep all possible income from agricultural activities for themselves.

The more regulations there are around food, the fewer people can produce it independently. Consequently, more power over food and people themselves ends up in the hands of the stationary bandit and large corporations. This is why the right to grow one’s own food is not just an agricultural topic, but directly a question of economic and personal freedom.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Liberland

From April 11 to 13, I was with a group of Montelibero residents at the eleventh birthday of Liberland. The party took place near Apatin, the closest Serbian Danube town to Liberland. There, Liberland had purchased land and built a tourist complex The ARC — a very cozy eco-village.

guest houses
canoes
summer cafe
sauna
various livestock grazing on the opposite shore of the pond
demanding carrots
remnants of a water spillway from another pond; Liberland bought the land there too, but hasn’t landscaped it yet
the main building, where all the action was
a huge fireplace — the centerpiece of the whole house
the first floor, with a dining room, bar, and stage
first floor
second floor — conference hall

By the way, the Liberland website has a list of Diaspora villages, where, in addition to Liberland itself and Arc Village, Montelibero is featured, along with some community in Mexico unknown to me, and several settlements from a single developer, ECI Development. It seems to me that colleagues from Green Zyland should connect with Liberland so that their Georgian and Antiguan Green Zyland settlements eventually appear on their map as well.

On the first day, there was an excessively dense speaking program; by the end, my head was swollen from English, and instead of normal networking, I shied away from all English speakers just to get a little break from them, but we had some good chats with all the Russians present. There was no single theme for the presentations; it seems President Edlička simply gathered everyone he could reach, and if someone had something to say, he pulled them onto the stage. So it turned out quite eclectic, and there were relatively few talks about Liberland itself, except for an overview report on what successes it has achieved over 11 years.

On the second day, they organized a trip along the Danube to show us Liberland itself.

a small Liberland houseboat
a larger rented one
and a motorboat, which was towed behind the houseboat and served as a gangway as needed
they invited a colorful singer named Branimir, who looks like Milei
Edlička shows where an attack on Liberland was being prepared
On the left is Gornja Siga island, on the right is Donja Siga; both form the territory of Liberland
A settler named Martin has lived on Liberland territory for several weeks now and is preparing to open a summer cafe there. He was cheered on from the boat.
signed the Liberland flag
signed the sand of a Serbian island

As the excursion approached the shores of Liberland, a Croatian police boat was spotted both above and below it, and a patrol car accompanied us along the Croatian shore. Croatia jealously guards the inviolability of foreign land. The plot of the conflict is described on the wiki, so I won’t retell it. Nevertheless, a settler named Martin waved to us from the shore of the smaller of the two islands that make up Liberland. It was mentioned that he intends to build a beach cafe there, although I don’t rule out that this was said as a joke.

What can be said about Liberland in general? The project is firmly on its feet 11 years after its founding. Despite the fact that quarterly congress elections regularly take place in this pseudo-state, the executive power does not plan to be re-elected until the official establishment of the state, which fully aligns with what Balaji Srinivasan writes in his “The Network State” — namely, that without a single founder figure, nothing will work; only under the leadership of a benevolent dictator are liberty-loving voluntarists capable of moving anywhere. The project is not struggling; it lives and celebrates without excessive luxury, but quite lavishly, and its establishment consists of fairly wealthy entrepreneurs.

A business approach is also evident in the treatment of participants. Tickets for events are paid, including simply purchasing the opportunity to watch a broadcast. Electronic residency is paid. Citizenship costs a quite significant $10k, which is, of course, cheaper than from the “big brothers,” but then again, the power of a Liberland passport is currently near zero. In short, it is a very interesting venture project that can exist in a state of limbo for quite a long time, but as soon as it receives actual diplomatic recognition, the project’s shares will skyrocket, since there is certainly no overabundance of libertarian jurisdictions with open entry in the world right now.

Since I plan to relocate to Serbia within the year, I will inevitably continue to interact with Liberland. We’ll see what the prospects are for attaching one business or another to it.

I continue to perceive Liberland without excessive seriousness, yet with respect.

Serenity Mission – can the bio-enhancement of morality destroy us?

In the film titled Serenity, which takes place in the universe of the Firefly series, the main characters discover a planet with millions of deceased inhabitants. As it turns out, an experiment was conducted on this planet involving the spraying of an anti-aggression drug. However, along with this, it suppressed the very will to live, and in 10% of the population, it caused a side effect with the opposite result — a complete removal of ethical barriers, turning them into bloodthirsty predators.

Opponents of the idea of moral bioenhancement, which consists of improving people’s moral qualities through biomedical technologies, may use the plot of this film as another opportunity to criticize it. In general, they have already put forward various arguments against such a practice. But they should clearly not rush into this, because all their concerns can be answered. This is exactly what philosopher Barbara Stock did in one of her articles, which we will now examine in more detail.

The first problem lies in the impossibility of providing a general definition of morality, since different moral theories offer different answers to questions about good and bad. However, as Stock notes, this is not entirely true, as there are still some universally recognized values. If we look at the example from the film, although the main characters are smugglers who break the law (of course, as libertarians, we see nothing wrong with this), they are not devoid of basic moral principles, such as caring for one another, fairness toward the vulnerable, and a willingness to risk themselves for others.

The second problem points out that everything could end badly, as happened in the plot of the film. But it is important to understand that the film shows an extremely negligent intervention — without clinical trials, without ethically permissible procedures, and without an overall understanding of the risks. Of course, no one will dispute that real researchers must take all of this into account in any of their actions.

The third problem arises from the fact that morality is not some separate trait, but a complex system of interconnected qualities and motives. However, this is also a question of the correct approach to implementation. One should focus on interventions that are minimal and take such interrelationships into account. To Stock’s argument, let us also add the fact that in reality, it is not necessary to suppress aggression specifically — it is only necessary to strengthen inhibiting mechanisms when a person lacks them.

The fourth problem consists of the danger and repressiveness of coercion to undergo biomedical procedures. We know, of course, that total coercion is ethically unacceptable. But what about moderate social methods of pressure to undergo the procedure (and mandatory moral bioenhancement only for those who have already committed acts of violence)? Furthermore, even now there are situations where students and employees resort to taking nootropics to improve their alertness and attention, and thereby cope with the tasks assigned to them. In this sense, moral bioenhancement, which allows a violent individual to manage things so that other people do not see them as a threat and do not exclude them from social interactions, is no different from the question of other forms of human enhancement.

The final problem is the undermining of human freedom and autonomy. There are claims that morality is the ability to choose between good and evil, and if a person cannot choose to commit evil, their moral actions lose any meaning. But Stock rightly notes that any current proposals for moral bioenhancement do not consist of turning people into mechanical robots without choice, but merely in shifting their inclinations toward the more moral. And can we even respect the autonomy, for example, of a person who is directly threatening to commit violence against us? You likely wouldn’t do that yourself!

Of course, the idea of moral bioenhancement requires caution and thorough elaboration. It indeed may carry a number of serious risks. But these risks are not an insurmountable obstacle requiring a categorical rejection of the idea. They can quite well be taken into account and worked through.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

When State Grants Disappear: How to Finance Science in the Age of Obscurantists

The state likes to present itself as the “sole savior” of science. Budgetary money seems like a reliable thing, but only until the next lover of “true knowledge” comes to power. And just like that—your field of science is immediately declared an “enemy of the people” and, in the best case, simply stripped of funding.

Remember how Donald Trump, with one stroke of a pen, cut funding for climatology and research in the field of renewable energy? Scientists had spent years accumulating knowledge, writing papers, and relying on promised grants, and then—bam—the funding turned into a pumpkin. Because of “I don’t believe it” and “I don’t like it.” Science isn’t Hollywood: there might not be a sequel if the money suddenly runs out. And scientists are left either to find a sponsor themselves or to sadly wind down their research.

And this is where alternative sources of funding come into play, many of which have already proven their viability time and again throughout history.

1) Since the Renaissance, people of art and science have lived on the support of wealthy patrons. Modern philanthropists, such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or even (who would have thought!) Pavel Durov, allocate millions of dollars to education, medical research, artificial intelligence, and even space exploration. Why? Simply because they like it. Or they want humanity to stop being so boring and monotonous. Who knows! In Russia, an example was Dmitry Zimin’s “Dynasty” foundation, which gave a second wind to many talented people until the state suddenly decided it was a “foreign agent.” But the idea itself didn’t die—funds like “Trajectory,” “Evolution,” and other initiatives appeared. In short, even here, science funded by private money is a reality.

2) Don’t laugh—sometimes asking the people for money is much more effective than asking stern uncles from the Ministry of Education. People are happy to support unusual projects, whether it’s the “Mayak” satellite launched by Russian students or gut microbiota research that raised over 350 thousand dollars on Kickstarter. Yes, the gut turned out to be far more charismatic than experts thought. It works simply: you make a vivid presentation, explain to people why it’s important (or at least fun), and the people vote with their wallets.

3) If your research smells even slightly of commercial perspective, it’s worth considering venture capital and business. There are plenty of examples: from Bell Labs and IBM, which gave the world transistors and lasers, to SpaceX, which made private astronautics a reality. Yes, this isn’t “pure science for science’s sake,” but it is business that can give a push to technologies that would otherwise remain as reports on a shelf.

4) Prizes and competitions. Once, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis announced a 10 million dollar prize for whoever first flew into space twice in two weeks on a private ship. In the end, the winner spent nearly 25 million on preparation, but that’s not the point. The competition spawned an entire industry of private space transport.

5) For the truly advanced: DAO and crypto-science. DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) allow people to unite and fund science via blockchain. An example is VitaDAO, which successfully raised millions of dollars for longevity research. Perhaps crypto-enthusiasts will vote for your idea with tokens?

6) Subscription to results: people and companies pay to be the first to get access to your scientific data and discoveries. The more interesting and important your research, the more subscribers. Almost like Netflix, but instead of series—your discoveries.

7) Imagine a prediction market where investors bet on scientific ideas and results. If your project looks convincing, you will receive funding from those who believe in your success and want to profit from an accurate prediction.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

What is Wrong With the War, Part 2

Now I will add my own thoughts on the two designated topics: the degeneration of strategy and the disappearance of the willingness to make sacrifices.

What historically constitutes a successful offensive strategy? A sudden start to the war, rapid achievement of predetermined goals, and the political consolidation of success. The greatest strategist of all time and nations is Genghis Khan. A successful defensive strategy: disrupting the attacker’s plans, dealing a convincing defeat, inciting the attacker’s other neighbors against their defenseless rear, and, again, politically consolidating the success.

A failed offensive strategy is either a crushing defeat at the operational level or, having exhausted the potential of surprise, becoming embroiled in a war of attrition. A failed defensive strategy is allowing the enemy to decapitate one’s centralized management structure or failing to avoid the demoralization of the defense forces.

When a clear division emerged in the world between the club of great powers and all other countries, it quickly became apparent that offensive strategies among great powers toward one another had ceased to work: even a clearly defeated party was unwilling to accept defeat, and other great powers were even less willing to accept the defeat of a great power. As a result, for a long time, this manifested as purely colonial wars, where European offensive strategies generally worked perfectly.

But after the Second World War, a general democratization of world politics began. Countries gained formal equality, a dogma on the inviolability of borders was adopted at the interstate level, and new large interstate alliances were formed—and as a result, the era of territorial conquests, and with it the era of corresponding strategies, ended. Now, as a surrogate for conquest strategy, the strategy of supporting political instability in the target country and bringing to power a group that would subsequently declare its country an ally of the supporting state prevailed. Aggressive war became a task for special forces, and a successful army became de facto a conglomerate of tools for various special operations. The only exception remained Israel, which emerged after the Second World War through war with all its neighbors and has continued to successfully expand its territory at their expense for decades—until it receives diplomatic recognition from a particular neighbor, which allows it to fix a piece of the border.

Thus, the only successful strategy for territorial seizure became the long-term nibbling of a neighbor’s land—provided that it is possible to ignore the pressure of the global community to return to the pre-war status quo until such a return becomes unthinkable. In principle, this is exactly the strategy that Putin is currently implementing.

As for defensive strategies, they developed largely in mirror image to offensive ones. Will the enemy destabilize your political regime? A successful defensive strategy consists of completely purging the domestic political field of any seeds of opposition. Will the enemy ignore the global community? Then the global community must scream in your favor so loudly that it cannot be ignored, and primarily, the opposition in the aggressor country and its key allies should handle this. Does the enemy lean toward special operations and is not ready for a war of attrition? Then one must develop immunity to decapitation strikes and prepare to engage in partisan warfare.

It should be added that all these strategies leave no room for benefit for the people of the country whose government implements either an offensive or defensive strategy. For people who do not derive direct benefit from political maneuvering, any war is inherently loss-making. Therefore, it does not matter much whether it is a hipster accustomed to high earnings and a wide variety of smoothies, or some tire repairman accustomed to moderate earnings and a wide variety of beer—they will not become the political support for any pro-war clique. Hence the tendency of aggressive governments toward the lumpenization of their subjects, in order to strip them of sybaritic habits and make the state their only hope for survival.

Summary: both Sonya and Sperry, while generally correctly identifying the trends, exaggerate them somewhat. Strategies have not completely degenerated, although they have changed significantly following the change in the nature of wars—and it is generally possible to compel people to go to war in the interests of the government, but the entire political regime must work meticulously toward this. From this comes my main conclusion: states have not yet exhausted themselves as a systemic factor of external aggression, but they can achieve this only at the cost of a sharp increase in internal aggression, which is incompatible with long-term economic growth. Those forces within states that are interested in economic growth will restrain pro-war sentiments in governments.

What is wrong with the war?

In the Stalag Null channel, Sonya Shirogorova, first apologizing for moving from the eternal to the immediate, states that since roughly the time of the First World War, the strategic component of warfare has degraded terribly—that is, the art of employing the armed forces and other national resources to achieve military victory. Many countries have top-tier tactics, and operational art has also actively developed, but strategy is frankly sagging. Sperry UNIVAC is reflecting on a similar topic, and I will first give him the floor:

The ongoing clown show of what is currently called war compels me to comment on this marasmus. It is clear even to a blind person that military art has degraded completely and finally: weaponry is becoming smarter and exponentially more expensive, Skynet-style hunter-killers are practically flying over us, an F-35 wing has its own internet with 4K real-time video support, Musk is providing network coverage for the entire planet, the invisible B-2 drops a MOAB on the adversary, yet the utility of all this is many times less than that of a grandfather with a Mosin-Nagant in a quilted jacket in 1943. The most important thing is—no one understands what the hell is happening? Why have people, possessing far more effective means of killing than our ancestors, begun to be so desperately obtuse? Why have their balls fallen off, and why haven’t the likes of Kyiv or Tehran yet turned into Dresden or Hiroshima?

It is not at all about some terrible military technologies, like FPV; after all, the legendary butchers Cadorna, Joffre, Nivelle, Haig, and von Falkenhayn sent 200-300 thousand men into machine guns per wave, repeating this 10-20 times in a row, and people went quite briskly for years. Nor is it about the absence of certain technologies; “Bomb them all” LeMay and Bomber Harris together turned about 100 cities to dust, killing millions with airplanes that were not far removed from the Wright brothers’, which significantly accelerated the end of WWII. Now, in theory, we have everything to wage war on a completely apocalyptic scale of destruction, which is exactly what should have made wars fast (and incredibly bloody, even without the use of non-conventional weapons). The desire to wage war hasn’t evaporated either; people still passionately want to engage in it, it’s just that they do it so absolutely clumsily and stupidly.

Where does such a bias in people’s consciousness come from? Why, at the peak of Modernity, were people ready to suffer and die on scales unimaginable today, whereas now the Yanks were forced to fight so delicately in Afghanistan (and because of this, with such monstrous overhead costs that they dragged the matter out for 10 years) that they lost only 2.4 thousand—less than one person per day (from a wild, monstrous mobilization reserve of 120 million!), and this was enough to make them throw up their hands and leave ignominiously. The gold standard of meaningless slaughter in the 21st century is the war in Ukraine, where the maximum estimate of lethal losses over 4+ years is around half a million people. It is often compared to WWI, but let me tell you—Haig killed that many in a month in one operation for 10-15 km of land. At Verdun, as many fell in less than a year (and half a million were left disabled) with zero result (only 2 forts out of 28 were taken, Voumont and Douaumont, both were retaken, they didn’t even reach Souville), after which both the Germans and the French fiercely continued. Essentially, we see the same picture in Iran, just on maximum settings—only a few dozen Americans have died so far, but the people are already wailing and groaning that everything should be wound up because it’s somehow too costly.

What do we see now? Do people want war? Yes. Can they win it? With certain caveats—quite. The gist of the caveats is that in practically every country, the great military industry of the Cold War was dismantled almost to zero over the next thirty years. For example, in the USA, only one plant remains that produces RDX, and 90% of the armada of 700 B-52s were decommissioned and dismantled, so first, all of this needs to be restored. We won’t even mention the state of the RF Armed Forces. Have the methods of achieving victory changed? Not really—in the case of Iran, not only the missiles, but the population would run out faster than the bombs of the Yanks from the golden era of the Cold War (Japan showed that it is quite difficult to fight on “banzai” alone without cities, ports, roads, bridges, factories, and generally when a country is turned into a burnt-out wasteland). Do people want to pay a fair price in their own suffering for such a victory? Not at all; they don’t want to pay at all.

As a result, every modern war degenerates into a farce: spitting and loud wailing by politicians, banging a slipper on the podium, vows to crush another axis of evil (regardless of whose—Western or Eastern), the main thing is not to forget to season it with promises that everything will end by Christmas. At the beginning of WWI, they thought so too, but when it didn’t end—they tightened their belts, cursed everything in existence, and set to work for several more years. Now, in response to the desperate attempts of the EU to whip up the people for a war with Russia, Zoomer Germans claim that Putin is better than war, and NATO allies tell Trump to get lost when he hints that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to also join the mess in Iran. Only Russia and Israel have managed to somehow mobilize relative masses for a long and very bloody confrontation, but even their scales are incomparable to how people fought previously.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a fairly large shift in collective thinking, deforming many concepts familiar to our grandfathers much more strongly than the period from 1945 to 1990. How does the situation at the beginning of the 20th century differ from the beginning of the 21st? Why did the transition to Modernity quickly slide into a monstrous global slaughter that cumulatively destroyed hundreds of millions, while the transition to Postmodernity slid into a state where a government, theoretically capable of putting thirty million soldiers under arms, is unable to even conduct a ground operation on a scale that would cause Homeric laughter in Ludendorff?

Questions of this kind, generally speaking, should be answered not by military science, but by economics, because its primary profile is the study of human motivation. (Note from Ancap-chan: I would rather speak of praxeology, but that is an extension of the concept of economics, so overall everything is correct) People are complex things, managed by a dozen instincts upon which the eternal white noise of consciousness is layered; however, what remains constant is that any action a person undertakes is in accordance with what they perceive (regardless of how rationally) as their greatest benefit at the current moment (which is what allows the behavior to be categorized as a subject of economics). Thus, everyone always does exactly what they truly want in the moment; the only difference is the duration of the calculated forecast (those very instrumental and terminal values) and the extent to which a person realizes how they are thinking. The same is true for human societies, because they consist of people and generally move toward where people believe (regardless of how justified) moving to be best for themselves.

The modern person is pulled in one direction by an inextinguishable desire to gain power through war (which is indeed eternal and unchanging), and this desire is bolstered by the existence of increasingly powerful tools of war. But in the other direction, the Postmodern person (unlike their colleague from Modernity) is pulled no less strongly by a completely different desire—more accurately, a complete absence of desire to suffer and bear all the cumulative costs of war in all forms. Where ancestors were ready to rot in trenches for years and work three shifts, pouring TNT into bombs for a bowl of plastic porridge, the modern person falls into hysteria because gasoline might increase by a couple of bucks a gallon, and driving a Dodge Ram to the McDonald’s on the corner will become costly.

That is exactly why selling a war becomes almost impossible. As is known, even Trump started a Special Military Operation against Iran, copying the homework of Uncle Pu. By design, both Kyiv and Tehran must definitely fall in three days; there is no other way. The only thing Trump proved smarter in is that once a week he declares that his SMO is completely won, and the fact that the ayatollahs aren’t letting tankers through the strait is not his problem and generally they are meanies, while the Yanks have already won.

The next reasonable question is—why has motivation changed so strongly? It is difficult to answer briefly, but we will try to outline the main line. Firstly, the nightmare peak of Modernity played its part—both world wars. Whatever you say, they were an apocalypse that remained imprinted in memory for generations and prevented the world from sliding into a similarly destructive Third World War (despite the fact that there were fanatics on both sides who wanted it—every time, attempts toward it were effectively halted). The horror of the word “war” itself was so imprinted on people’s consciousness that it became deeply obscene, and openly admitting that we are waging war became something completely unacceptable, like admitting to coprophilia or incest. The words “Nazis” and “fascists” have long since ceased to be politically significant terms and have become simply dirty swear words.

Secondly, after WWII, the world changed radically and completely. All the things that Modernity glorified—the state, the nation, faith, the Führer—became very, very suspicious to all postwar generations (which ultimately resulted in the great rebellion of the sixties and the birth of postmodernism). The result of this was that two great blocks waged leisurely proxy wars for 45 years. The fever of the holy crusade against communism/capitalism of the 1950s burned out in literally 10 years. People grew tired of living in a besieged fortress and preferred sex, drugs, and rock and roll (in the USSR, the process dragged on somewhat until its very collapse). Due to the local wars of the 1970s, the Great Western economic rise was briefly replaced by a crisis, and people truly became afraid of the destruction of that beautiful way of life to which they had become accustomed. When the Union fell in 1990, there was incredible rejoicing among the masses on both sides (of course, marred by the wild nineties in Russia, but the spiritual lift at the very beginning was still great).

People were so glad of the end of the Cold War that they didn’t even bother to clean up all the loose ends left over from it, or somehow sort out the mess—whether in the Middle East or in the territories of the post-USSR—and this is haunting us to this day. Overlaid on this was the second demographic transition already in full swing in the West: the fewer children born, the more sacred the life of each of them becomes, and the more hyper-protection those who are born receive (which gave birth to the phenomenon of life-unadapted Zoomers, falling into hysteria over a wrong pronoun in a chat). Factually, only the dinosaurs continued to perceive war as a normal means of resolving conflicts: look at the old marasmatics at the helm of the USA, Israel, and Russia. Netanyahu was born in 1949 and grew up during continuous war; Putin was born in 1952 and grew up in devastated postwar Leningrad; the record-breaker Trump was born in 1946, and his entire youth coincided with the hysteria of McCarthyism, Korea, and the war against the red threat. It is not surprising that in all these countries, the main percentage of the population approving of their führers currently is aged 50 and older.

And so we come to the logical finale. Zoomers prefer to have a choice of 20 smoothies and to fight only on imageboards, which is why selling a classic war to the majority of voters is quite problematic. The problem can be dealt with in different ways: in Russia, it is solved by the fact that a clique of old madmen is in power, relying on powerful grassroots ressentiment from the nineties on the part of those over 50; in Israel and Iran—a crowd of religious fanatics (from similarly half-mad old men), relying on the status of a besieged fortress and a holy war for survival; in the USA, a similar gerontocracy of old sick bastards is in power (the average age of a senator is 67, a congressman 60), but there the desire to fight is somewhat restrained by numerous counterweights established by the founders, which prevent the country from becoming fully totalitarian for long. Will the world change when Trump, Putin, and other grandfathers finally die? The problem is that a new generation will grow up, which has already grown up amidst their wars. The only thing that is slightly comforting is—as we said—the scale of current wars is much more toy-like, so perhaps the politicians of future times will be slightly softer.

“Dark Rizz”: Why We Fall in Love with Tyrants and Vote for Psychopaths

Perhaps some of you have already seen this concept – “Dark Rizz” (Тёмный ризз) – on Western social networks. If not, it conceals a rather unsettling, yet intriguing, psychology. And recently, Psychology Today released an excellent article on this subject, from reading which you’ll only have one thought in your head: “Damn it, this is an ideal description of the relationship between a citizen and the state!” So let’s examine in detail how it operates, why our brains succumb to manipulation, and what significance understanding this has from a libertarian standpoint.

At the core of “Dark Rizz” lies the classic “Dark Triad”: narcissism (I – the center of the universe), Machiavellianism (the ends justify the means, and people are pawns), and psychopathy (there is no fear or conscience). Individuals possessing such qualities often exhibit a strange, toxic magnetism. They aren’t kind or caring, but it’s impossible to tear your eye away from them because they exude an extraordinarily attractive confidence.

Is this familiar? Simply turn on the television or watch election debates. That politician who shouts loudest of all promises to “restore order” and views opponents as dirt – that’s it. We often accept their fearlessness as competence, and their brazenness as leadership strength. But why do we fall for it? Psychologists term this intermittent reinforcement. Imagine you are communicating with a person (or living in a country) who behaves unpredictably. Today he is cold, ignores you or introduces a new ridiculous ban. The next day – he pays attention to you, reduces the mortgage rate, or simply doesn’t hit you. This contrast triggers a dopamine rush. If you were given a treat every day, you would get used to it. But when the treat is given randomly, after a week of being whipped – you begin to crave it. You become addicted.

In interpersonal relationships, this is referred to as “emotional swings.” In politics, it’s called populism and statism. A stationary bandit creates a problem (cold), you suffer, and then he slightly loosens his grip (warmth). And you feel grateful. “Thank you for letting us breathe on even days, our great leader!”

The author of the article, Dr. John Gruda, aptly expresses himself regarding this issue: “Calm, emotionally stable people rarely become heroes of drama.” This implies that healthy relationships (and a healthy market economy) are boring. You go to the bakery, pay money, and receive bread. The baker doesn’t gaslight you, doesn’t disappear for a week, and doesn’t demand worship. It is a fair deal. However, “Dark Rizz” is cinematic. It’s tension and drama. Politicians with “dark charisma” sell us this show to us. They create chaos so they can heroically resolve it. They make us feel small so that they appear large.

How to spot a trap? Psychologists advise asking yourself: “Do I feel better or worse after talking to this person?” Healthy charisma (and a healthy society) gives you a feeling of safety and autonomy. “Dark charisma” feeds on your fear and insecurity. If a leader (or partner) demands loyalty through fear, avoids responsibility and constantly changes the rules of the game – it’s not a ‘strong hand’, it’s just manipulation.

What should libertarians do with this knowledge? Of course, you need to remember about boundaries. Dark rizz only works when your personal boundaries are blurred. In politics, these are boundaries of self-ownership and private property. And if someone steps over them, you simply need to send them into the woods. It’s also worth appreciating boredom. Stability of contracts, inviolability of personality and a free market don’t cause an adrenaline rush. And that’s great! We don’t live in a blockbuster; we just need to live and work normally. And finally, you shouldn’t confuse control with charisma. If someone is trying to control every step you take, disguising it as “national interests” or “overall security” – it’s not leadership. It’s abuse, inflated to the scale of a country.

Voluntarist, Bitarch