In connection with the recent publications from Bitarch regarding the construction of a non-violent society, I would like to recommend the anime series Psycho-Pass to everyone. Three seasons have been released, plus some side stories; so far, I have only watched the first.
The main protagonist of the series is a quasi-minarchist society in which an effective method for the prevention of violence has been developed, but not through genetic modification and BPN, as Bitarch suggests, but through the creation of a Big Brother capable of rapid diagnosis of tendencies toward violence. In all other matters, the state does not particularly interfere, although in the area of material production, it is unclear whether it is a market or socialism—under conditions of robotic abundance, it is easy to confuse the two.
The series is intelligent. It quotes Weber, Shakespeare, Pascal, Foucault, and discusses William Gibson and Philip K. Dick—in short, it is the kind of thing that our Ekaterina Schulmann would not be ashamed to recommend, although she prefers Pixar studio productions. It might be a bit difficult to watch at first; I got into it on my second attempt—but it is definitely worth the time spent.
Many believe that conducting effective campaigns to eradicate aggressive violence from society is impossible through the activities of volunteers alone. However, the eradication of violence is beneficial not only to those for whom it is a personal interest, but also to high-tech entrepreneurs and corporations. Now, we will examine why they will inevitably invest in such an initiative.
Before answering this question, we should examine the current state of affairs regarding Scientific and Technological Progress (STP). Three subsequent scenarios can be listed:
1) Rejection of STP. In this case, the limited resources of our planet will not be enough to provide for the needs of humanity, even if the population decreases and people consume less. Resources will still run out, just a bit later. Furthermore, Earth’s existence is allotted a limited amount of time. Rejection of STP means the extinction of humanity in any case.
2) Promotion of STP without the eradication of violence. But STP is inevitably linked to an increase in energy consumption and the creation of potentially dangerous technologies. It can be expected that in the future, this will lead to the mass proliferation of very high-capacity but dangerous energy sources and carriers, such as atomic batteries, or even antimatter. Obviously, in such a case, any person could cause a local, or even global, catastrophe.
3) The promotion of STP is inextricably linked with the eradication of violence. Dangerous and energy-intensive technologies no longer threaten people; on the contrary, they serve their development and the survival of humanity as a whole.
Obviously, only the third scenario can be acceptable. But what do entrepreneurs and corporations have to do with this? It’s simple. This scenario is also the most profitable for them, even in purely monetary terms. A very large fortune can be made from the sale of products based on dangerous technologies. Imagine for yourself how much profit the sale of flying cars with built-in nuclear reactors, DNA synthesizers (although this technology does not threaten a big explosion, it can be used to create some deadly virus), or private transport for space travel would bring?
Of course, some will say that such technologies are still far off. But it does not matter whether we are close to this or far. The moment when only one step remains toward such inventions will come sooner or later, and perhaps it has already arrived. Government regulations, and overall the fear of catastrophic consequences of introducing new technologies into operation, will become barriers to further progress. STP, which is critically important for the survival of humanity, will cease.
But what is also important, within the framework of the topic we are considering, is the loss of profit for entrepreneurs and corporations. They will not be able to sell what cannot be sold due to bans or fears. But they will not be able to give up potential profit. That is why we can confidently expect that the initiative to eradicate violence will find support among them; they will certainly invest a lot of funds into such a cause, because in the end, it will all pay off handsomely!
By the way, for the reasons listed above, it is not profitable for corporations to become violent agents themselves (for example, states), because this will inevitably lead to the use of dangerous technologies, which, in turn, will destroy their entire business.
Friedman devoted two chapters of The Machinery of Freedom to the problem of territorial defense against an aggressor of the “nation-state” type, with an interval of forty years between them. In the first part, he estimated the chances of an anarcho-USA fending off nuclear aggression from the Soviet Union and concluded that for the sake of defense against such a serious aggressor, he was willing to accept the existence of a state. In the second part, once the USSR was reliably dead, he breathed a sigh of relief and began to fantasize about how territorial defense is ensured without a state.
In my view, Friedman pays excessively much attention to the territorial aspect of the problem. For example, when he dismisses the model of financing defense through insurance, he puts the cart before the horse and assumes that clients will be tried to be sold “national defense” specifically (and that they will hope to save money, counting on their neighbor buying it). But the client does not need national defense. They need assurance that if an insured event occurs personally to them, they will receive the money. Whether they are on territory near where they bought the policy or on the other side of the planet is unimportant to them. And exactly what means the company uses to reduce its own risks of having to pay out insurance does not concern them either, as long as the company does not commit fraud.
Thus, if the organization of territorial defense truly reduces the chances of an attack by an external “state”-type aggressor, insurance companies are capable of calculating how much to invest in it to keep it profitable, and how to interact with other insurance companies to share the costs, for example, proportionally to the client base.
Friedman also presents an interesting thesis that the absence of a single jurisdiction over a certain territory is not in itself a guarantee against an aggressor’s claims. And when a conditional USSR arrives in a region where ancap reigns, it is sufficient for them to smash one city with a nuclear bomb and declare something like: look, see, Alderaan was here, it is no more. If the residents of Yavin do not wish the same fate, they owe five hundred million credits by the day after tomorrow, and we don’t care that they have neither a single administration nor taxation; if they want to live, they’ll figure it out somehow.
Effectively, he suggests that when it is too costly for a stationary bandit to expand its territory, it retains the option to act toward that territory as a nomadic bandit. Further, as you understand, everything depends on how coordinated the response will be. If a community is capable of reaching a level of coordination sufficient to pay a large tribute, it is reasonable to assume that further resistance will be coordinated at a level at least no less. This means that the second Death Star will indeed be destroyed without firing a single shot, unlike the first, which managed three.
At the same time, let us note that it is the free market that contributes to the fastest scientific and technical progress. And if, at the initial stage of ancap, states will still be able to oppose network market structures due to the difference in scale, then by the end of the transition period, the technological backwardness of states will become too obvious, and they will have to focus rather on holding onto the remnants of power over their own subjects.
Perhaps by ancap’s foreign policy you did not mean defense. But since for ancap the state is nothing more than a bandit, relations with a bandit amount to nothing more than deterring it from banditry directed at oneself, and other diplomacy is reduced precisely to this aspect. Visa regimes? That is about ensuring the bandit does not attack travelers. Customs regimes? That is about ensuring the bandit does not rob caravans. Regulatory regimes? That is about ensuring the bandit does not interfere with contracts. All these negotiations will come down to the interested party spending money on a payoff. As long as this money is less than the money required to eliminate the bandit, the latter will have a chance to survive.
Balance of Violence Potential (BVP), or more accurately, the uniform distribution of violence potential, is a certain state in society where any person is capable of inflicting unacceptable damage on another in a local clash. For simplicity, BVP can be viewed as maximum universal armament in society, where absolutely every resident of a given territory possesses a weapon for personal self-defense, for example, a pistol or even such ersatz weaponry as a blinding laser or a poison dart, preferably several units, so that it would be impossible to disarm anyone. It is assumed that residents of this territory have the opportunity (or rather an obligation in the form of a cultural norm) to possess weapons based on their physiological capabilities without any legal barriers (for example, age, citizenship, “criminal records” for activities undesirable from the state’s point of view) and financial need (volunteers and high-tech corporations will help the poor obtain weapons for free, just as vaccination is currently helped in poor countries, since this is profitable for them as well).
By what means will BVP reduce/eradicate violence? In a multitude of different ways:
1) Classical deterrence doctrine (“deterrence by punishment”) against rational aggressors. Knowing that the victim of violence can inflict unacceptable damage on the aggressor, including even killing them, the aggressor will think carefully and decide that the benefit from violence will be less than the costs and will ultimately renounce violence.
There is a good example of such a model in the wild — porcupines. Cheetahs also frequently live in porcupine habitats, and they are hundreds of times superior in physical strength. But here is the surprising part: a cheetah can theoretically maul and eat a porcupine, but practically never does. There are occasional stupid individuals who decide to do so, but as a result, they either die or sustain such injuries that they never dare to try again.
2) Deterrence through denial (“deterrence by denial”) against invader states. The authorities of such a state set a specific goal — to conquer a territory and subjugate its residents. An aggressor can, of course, drop a nuclear bomb, but radioactive land without residents is worth absolutely nothing. As for the political elite of the aggressor, this is the end, because their own population will tear them to pieces for such an act. It would also create a dangerous precedent for the permissibility of using WMDs against civilians and legitimize the creation of strategic deterrent weapons by everyone capable of doing so (even now, a biohacker student is capable of multiplying a deadly virus and does not do so only for moral reasons).
3) The impossibility of creating and maintaining a violently hierarchical structure in a society with BVP. In such a society, the use of violence locally between people becomes unprofitable; accordingly, it is impossible to create and maintain a larger hierarchy of dominance (for example, a state) through the sequential accumulation of resources in the format of a “military hegemon.”
For example, an aggressor Vasya, having only a pistol, attacks Petya to use his resources to buy a Kalashnikov assault rifle. With it, he can attack Sasha with doubled force, buying a tank with the resources taken from him. Using this tank, he can attack billionaire Vanya with tripled force, who can even afford serious security, and use the obtained resources to hire a large army to conquer the entire country. But in the case of universal armament (uniform BVP), Vasya would be destroyed at the very beginning of his bloody path.
Imagine what would have happened if “little aliens” in the 1960s had arranged a “rain of pistols” over St. Petersburg? A teenager Pynya, who was prone to violence from birth, would with a probability close to 100% have died in a clash the next day, and the question of how to deal with him now would simply not be on the agenda.
4) Forcing natural selection that removes those prone to violence from the population. Analyzing many different species, biologist Konrad Lorenz found an interesting pattern — in animal species with strong innate armament (for example, hedgehogs, poisonous snakes, and insects) that allows them to very effectively inflict unacceptable damage on any opponent in a clash, an innate intra-species morality of non-aggression developed (more precisely — an instinct of aversion to initiating physical violence against a member of their own species), because otherwise the survival of the species would be under threat. This happened as a result of the most violence-prone individuals being destroyed during acts of aggression and thus failing to produce offspring. In humans, such a morality of non-aggression did not develop because humans are not a naturally heavily armed species; the mortality of fights with bare fists without the use of any additional means is very low, therefore there was no pressure from natural selection to develop this trait. More precisely, such a neurobiological mechanism also exists in the species homo sapiens, but in a very weak form. But if BVP is leveled in society, the pressure of natural selection will strengthen it in homo sapiens to the level of heavily armed species, since carriers of gene variants that cause less aversion to the initiation of violence in humans will be removed from the population before they even have a chance to pass them to the next generation.
That’s it, I’m publishing the last chapter of The Mechanics of Freedom, Welcome to the Future, hooray! Here, Friedman discusses what ensures digital privacy and what hinders its widespread adoption, why anonymous altcoins provide less anonymity than bitcoin mixers, and touches upon a topic I raised in Digital Identity — that it doesn’t matter how strong your ciphers are if the observer is omnipresent.
All I have left is to edit and post the appendices. Next, I’ll need to go through the entire text to make final corrections — the translation took over a year, so some stylistic inconsistency is inevitable for now. Then, I’ll need to format the text for e-books as well as for print. After that, I’ll upload all this wealth to the website, send it to Friedman, and offer the print version to both the DPRs and the Tea Club — in short, let it spread as widely as possible, for all our joy.
To make the joy complete, you can throw me an encouraging portion of bitcoins. Oh, right, I mustn’t forget to include an acknowledgments page in the finished book: for those who sent donations, those who translated, and the person who obtained the full version of the text from the author — in short, let no one be left out.
This is my fourth text about Belarus (others can be found via the hashtag #Belarus), and this time it was prompted by watching a conversation between Mikhail Svetov, Roman Popkov, and Elena Borovskaya, as well as Roman’s post summarizing the stream on his channel.
Roman Popkov’s account of the current state of Belarusian civil society was very informative and explained why things are going the way they are, but right now I want to talk about something else.
During the conversation, Roman reproached “Moskals” for their excessively technological mindset. Ponasenkov took the brunt of it with his Die erste Kolonne marschiert, die zweite Kolonne marschiert, but Svetov, who agreed with Ponasenkov, also got hit. I, for one, although I live separated from Moscow by a considerable distance and the Ural range, am still one of those very same “Moskals,” and therefore I also have a purely technological approach to this political science problem: how to ensure the transit from an illegitimate dictatorship to a transitional government, constitutional reform, and a new legitimate government. And I see exactly two options.
Option one. Do you want it to be like in Ukraine?
If the dictator previously had enough strength to weed out combat organizations (hello to Roman Popkov and his NBP) by the root, then now, with constant street protests occurring, it is quite easy to disguise combat coordination training as episodic spontaneous coordination. Tens of thousands of people daily search for the most effective ways to exhaust the opponent’s resources, get to know each other, find out what everyone is capable of, and if the degree of anger continues to rise, then at some point the hundreds of corpses mentioned by Roman will stop seeming like a serious restriction on the path to overthrowing the dictatorship.
Of course, they don’t charge head-on toward administrative buildings, but, as we saw in Ukraine, they seize military warehouses and armories in police stations. After that, a transition to the hot phase of street fighting is inevitable, even if no one is injured during the seizure of weapons. And street fighting will inevitably end with the overthrow of the dictator.
Option two. What is the name of the President of Switzerland?
What follows is a fantasy story; do not take it as a forecast.
Tikhanovskaya arrives for Biden’s inauguration. This is an excellent pretext to discuss exactly how to overthrow Lukashenko. The invasion option is dismissed, and a cheaper one is proposed. Lukashenko is placed on an international wanted list, and a serious reward by Belarusian standards is set for his capture, dead or alive—say, a conventional hundred million dollars. Simultaneously, a second very important person enters the fray; his name is Guy Parmelin. He is the Vice President of the Swiss Confederation, who by the time of Biden’s inauguration will be the new president (hello to Mikhail Svetov and his constant rhetorical question about the name of the President of Switzerland). Switzerland is a neutral country with a very stable political system. Only it can give Lukashenko a guarantee of lifelong political asylum (Russia or the USA cannot).
That’s it; now we start the clock and watch to see what happens first: one of Lukashenko’s guards presents his head and demands the reward—or Lukashenko seeks guarantees from Mr. Parmelin and leaves the country immediately after they are confirmed.
While the Adam Smith Readings were taking place, I was commenting on them via text on Telegram and Facebook, but now the organizers have uploaded the final recordings to their YouTube channel, so those interested can watch specific lectures targetedly rather than watching a continuous recording of the broadcast.
Personally, I found the lectures by Lyudmila Petranovskaya on the ethical aspects of COVID discussions, as well as Evgeny Varshaver’s on the integration of migrants, to be the most interesting. Let me know in the comments what you enjoyed.
Yesterday, I published a post describing my modest user experience installing a single program on Linux. The verdict was that for most people, even if they are libertarians through and through, convenience in the here and now can easily prove more important than abstract ideals. This is true in far more cases than just when choosing between a graphical interface and a console. In the same way, people neglect to carry means of self-defense, don’t set passwords on their phones, and have sex without a condom.
Naturally, the post sparked a lot of debate, because the war between adherents of different approaches to interacting with computers has dragged on since deep antiquity. And, as I understand it, every revival of this eternal bickering always consists of at least two posts: the first condemning Linux, and the second defending it. Today is time for the second.
I installed a version of Linux that was positioned to me as being quite close to Windows in terms of interface. It installed easily and effortlessly. All typical applications, such as office suites, browsers, Telegram, or password managers, are installed without any console via the graphical shell. If my task were to move all my daily work to open-source software, I would move to Linux without any problems and wouldn’t notice much of a difference. Meanwhile, there are many atypical tasks for which I would need the help of someone with deeper system knowledge even under Windows.
The world is full of technically complex devices that no one has the slightest need to study thoroughly. The magic of the division of labor lies in the fact that everyone focuses on what they have a relative advantage in. Every object has its nuances, and some people specialize in them to increase their value. But at the same time, for the average user, it generally makes no difference which system they use to perform most of their tasks; any will do.
So, I will clarify my answer from yesterday to the question of why libertarians don’t use open-source software. Yes, they use what is convenient, but often a large part of that convenience boils down to the network effect. If advertisements for computer technician services mentioned not the setup of Windows and installation of antivirus, but the selection of a Linux distribution and system configuration for the user’s tasks; if information on government resources were stored in odt rather than docx; if hardware Bitcoin wallets were sold in mobile phone stores—that would be clear evidence of the network effect working in favor of open-source software and decentralized money.
What is needed for libertarians to use open-source software? Simply to start using open-source software.
This post was written on Linux, and future ones will be written on it as well. There is no reason to delay adopting useful habits.
Why do libertarians dislike talking about open-source software and its advantages? Shouldn’t a libertarian use only free software (Linux instead of Windows and MacOS, LineageOS instead of Android and iOS) if they respect their own freedom and privacy? Free software helps protect against surveillance by the state and corporations—it allows one to achieve true freedom. Or do most libertarians not respect their own privacy? If it is too difficult to understand all the technical intricacies, why not pay others to create accessible programs and educational materials?
Richard Stallman
Someone recently tried to teach me how to write Telegram bots. For some reason, this meant I had to install Linux. The system was installed without any problems, but then the “dancing with a tambourine” began. Let’s install Python. Open the console, write this specific incantation. Did it work? Come on, send a screenshot. Aha, a correction, write this incantation instead. Now let’s install these libraries. Write this incantation. That’s it, launch PyCharm. Why not from a shortcut on the desktop? Why must even such an elementary action be done from the console? And now in PyCharm, open its internal console and write this incantation there to install the libraries. Wait, we already installed them! It doesn’t matter, they need to be installed locally for each project. And don’t forget to select the interpreter. I’m already in PyCharm; it’s an IDE, why do I need ten interpreters to choose from? What prevents them from making one by default and ten optional ones for the masochists? Who taught you UX?..
I have nothing against open-source software or content. I went to Wikipedia and made edits to the article about David Friedman. Five minutes—and millions of Russian-speaking users get access to up-to-date information. Spontaneous orders are power! But if handmade clothing is expensive and uncomfortable, then only historical reenactors will wear it. If an open-source OS requires far more effort for simple things than a proprietary one, then only geeks obsessed with security will use it.
Whoever steals the Windows source code from Microsoft and posts it in the public domain on some maximally decentralized platform will do humanity a huge favor. Because this system quite deservedly holds its market share—even despite being proprietary and spying on the user. I have written repeatedly that we are already ready to live in conditions of “new sincerity,” where everyone can and has the full moral right to spy on everyone else, so the system’s spying is not perceived as something terrible—as long as it doesn’t steal your money or snitch on you to the Investigative Committee (and people stay on VKontakte even knowing that it snitches on users). There are many examples of software that was proprietary for some time and then was released into the public domain, and thereafter is developed by the community. And obviously, the weaker the state protection granted to IT giants, the more often this will happen.
I had never heard of Lineage OS, so I looked it up, and it turned out that my phone model is not supported. So, when I change my phone, I’ll buy one with this factor in mind (if supported models don’t turn out to be disproportionately expensive), and then we’ll see. I hope it will be more like the Wikipedia experience than the Linux one.
Using open-source software is like being a vegan. If you live in India, it’s no problem; there’s plenty of delicious vegan food everywhere. If you’re in Russia, you pointlessly condemn yourself to a more expensive life of lower quality for the sake of certain ethical principles. The more these principles mean to you, the greater the sacrifices you will make to follow them. Free software is cool, but software that is convenient to use is much cooler for the vast majority. The market has decided.
The key idea in the video is that the balance of violence potential is ensured not only by possibly equal armament—this is unattainable, as players with more resources will easily win an arms race. The factor of solidarity is far more important. The willingness to not allow violence to be used not only against oneself, but also against others—if one can speak of a silver bullet regarding the construction of a non-violent society—then this is the closest candidate.
Of course, the video is not reduced to this single thought; I won’t retell it in full, watch it for yourself. The technical quality of the video continues to grow, but don’t forget to feed the studio with your donations. A critical dependence on one large sponsor strongly disrupts the balance of the potential for independence in decisions, if one may put it that way.
