Under a state, practically no one ever jams signals from radio stations or telephone towers, because the perpetrator would be found instantly (this is a very simple task) and then forcibly compelled to pay fines, compensation, etc. (it is difficult to deny that this is fair).
Under ancap, however, such actions by this perpetrator would essentially not violate the NAP, would not infringe on someone else’s property, etc., which means, logically, they would not face punishment. But that is surely unfair.
Anonymous question (accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.00047976 BTC)
As it happens, I have already answered a very similar question in great detail regarding how property rights to radio frequency bands are established under ancap, so first, please read that answer, and we will continue the discussion.
Having analyzed the principle of using radio frequency bands, I stated that in an economic sense, this is a scarce resource, and therefore it can be converted into property. Moreover, as you yourself note, the violation of property rights (unauthorized use of a reserved band) is quite easily recorded. In an ancap environment—that is, a developed market decentralized legal order—such disputes are easily taken to court. The grounds for filing a lawsuit are obvious: communication collisions lead to quite measurable losses, all logs are kept, so the damage can be calculated with very high precision.
Under the dominance of the state, it happens frequently that, for example, security forces jam communications in a certain area, and usually, these are states of a sufficiently authoritarian nature that they wouldn’t even bother with the issue of compensation for damages. Nevertheless, even under a state, there are precedents for the judicial protection of the right to use radio waves. For instance, a year ago, by a court decision in Sudan, the plaintiff’s access to mobile internet was restored, after the military junta had previously disconnected the entire country. Thus, if it is sometimes possible to restore property rights even under conditions of weak protection, then under ancap, where much more attention is paid to such things, similar problems would be extremely rare.
Lawyer Abdelazim Hassan guarantees: the right to use radio waves is respected even in Africa, let alone under ancap
Perhaps you have read the latest book by the famous philosopher Nassim Taleb, “Skin in the Game“. If not, let me remind you of its main idea: in order for a person to have the motivation to carefully consider their action and its consequences before acting, they must not only benefit from the action but also risk something valuable (be prepared to face negative consequences).
The most famous example is the difference between a business owner and a hired manager. If the owner makes an important decision, they can either make a good profit or bankrupt the company, leaving themselves without means of subsistence. A manager is a completely different story: if they make a profitable decision, they will receive a substantial reward from the owner, but if they make a mistake, the company will go bankrupt, while they personally will lose, at most, their job and will most likely quickly find employment at a new company. Understanding this asymmetry of risks, business owners often offer managers stock options so that they are more invested in the fate of the company, “risking their own skin” by losing money if they screw up.
The same idea from Taleb’s book applies to politics. Every time you vote in elections or referendums, you are exercising violent coercion against all peaceful people in society while risking nothing. Suppose you believe that casinos should be banned in the country. If you were acting independently, you would have to go to every casino in the country and force their owners to close. Obviously, you wouldn’t do that—the very first casino owner you approached would simply shoot you. But it is a completely different matter when you, like some vile, cold-blooded pedophile, take advantage of the uneven balance of the potential for violence (BPV) between a casino owner and a stationary bandit (the state). You anonymously vote in a referendum to ban all casinos, pay a vanishingly small portion of your own income in the form of taxes (the enforcement of a specific ban that benefits you personally costs 0.01% of the total taxes you pay), and meanwhile risk nothing personally (you don’t have to go to each casino owner personally and risk being killed; the security forces will do it for you).
It is clear that such behavior leads to the degeneration of society. It is like giving maniacs free rein to rape children without risking meeting resistance. This must not continue… and it won’t! Participating in voting is not like receiving a billion bucks in your bank account; it is just a small moral satisfaction from the possibility of trying to coerce your neighbor for free. Since the satisfaction is small, the negative stimulus needed to deter participation in voting needs only to be tiny.
A fairly simple scheme emerges for how to raise the costs of complicity in initiating violence against one’s neighbor by participating in some vote. Did you find out that Vasyan from the next entrance voted for “United Russia” in yesterday’s elections? Pay 100 rubles to local hooligans and they will write “A maniac lives here” on his apartment door or post a flyer with his photo in the entrance saying “This person from your building rapes children.” The photos end up on social networks, and in the next elections, members of the election commissions sit in proud solitude. Coercing one’s neighbor has become “too expensive,” so one has to learn how to negotiate with them.
For the mass application of the described scheme, it is possible to create a crowdfunding service analogous to the previously described service for the deanonymization of officials and security forces. Harassing Vasyans will be a thousand times cheaper than harassing a well-guarded official, so one can count on mass appeal.
Why is it that in many ancient narratives, ostracism/exile was mentioned as the only punishment, even for the most terrible criminals—murderers and rapists?
A truly interesting observation, for which even I could not find an answer for a long time. After all, no one was running a campaign for the humanization of punishments back then. Nor were there opportunities for a criminal to threaten significant damage to the entire society in the event of their arrest (the first mention of such a deterrence model was described by John von Neumann as “M.A.D.” after World War II, and even then it was realistic only for large group subjects—states, but not for individual actors).
So, the most plausible version is the extremely high value of human life in the described societies. For if people tried to arrest a criminal who was not initiating violence at that moment, he would likely be able to kill several people who came for him. In those societies, such a risk was considered unacceptable, so people simply motivated the villain to leave the community, ceasing all interaction with him. In mathematical terms, this solution was optimal in the game-theory matrix.
A different matter is strictly hierarchical etatist societies, where the phrase “The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is statistics” is a norm of life. There, sacrificing even a hundred security officers to arrest one person is a good way to demonstrate the power of the stationary bandit (the state), so that others fear to contradict it. As for the fact that the mothers of the fallen security officers will cry at their graves, that is nothing terrible; “when the forest is cut, chips fly.” You can provide a survivor’s benefit in the amount of two minimum wages, and they will even kiss the portrait of the “radiant leader.”
What conclusion can be drawn from this? If you support physical punishments, including the use of violence for the confiscation of property, and justify this by a “court decision,” then you are not a libertarian! You are a vile authoritarian bastard like Hitler and Pol Pot, for whom “the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is statistics.”
Many people see nothing wrong with cooperating with the state in every possible way, taking grants from it, working as a civil servant, or even building their entire career within the state sphere. Some may believe that there are certain prospects in this field, others think the state will help them, and still others believe they are working for the good of society. But let us look at what it actually means to tie oneself to the state.
1) You are easily framed
By working in the state sphere or even simply associating yourself with the state in any way, you automatically sign up for the risk that the crimes of other, more influential state officials will be pinned on you, or that you will be thrown behind bars simply because you displeased them in some way. Politics is characterized by cases where some bureaucrats shift their sins onto other bureaucrats, subordinates, or agents otherwise connected to them, and send those people to prison. In the private sphere, an attempt to set someone up can cost significant reputational and legal expenses. In the case of the state apparatus, a frame-up costs nothing, especially considering that the judicial system is under the patronage of the state itself.
The “Seventh Studio” case provides a good example of this phenomenon. In the end, state grants backfired on the founder of this theater troupe and some of his colleagues. This is a good example of why one should not get involved with the state, even if it promises help.
2) You will achieve nothing
If you decide to train for a profession in a field of activity that is either strictly regulated and subordinate, or entirely monopolized by the state, it is unlikely that anything good will come of it. In the private environment, different organizations compete with each other for employees. They have an incentive to raise wages and improve working conditions. But in the case of the state sphere, there are no alternative competing agents. That is why there are no economic incentives to raise wages and improve working conditions. Ordinary workers in the state sphere have nothing to gain!
Although, of course, a certain group of employees can lobby for their interests and get what they want, but in this situation, we move to point No. 3.
3) And if you do achieve something – at what cost and who will you become?
Suppose you were able to achieve something in the state sphere. Using your social skills, connections, bribery, and other corrupt methods, you either obtained certain privileges for yourself or occupied an important post in the state apparatus. In this case, you seem to be doing well. But this “well” is the same as the “well” of a thief who has robbed other people, or a rapist who torments their victims.
Unlike the market environment, where everyone within their private framework can promote their ideas without conflicting with other subjects, politics is always a conflict. And by winning this conflict, you only obtain benefits through the forced subordination of other subjects. Here, your interests are important, and the interests of others can be brutally ignored.
If you like this state of affairs, it is obvious what conclusions can be drawn about you. You are a robber, a rapist, and a maniac! And do not try to justify yourself by saying that you work for the good of society as a whole. You have certain beliefs and programs that require the implementation of specific ideas regarding the entire society at once, disregarding the desires of those who disagree and would want something else. Again, in a market environment, everyone can try to implement their ideas without a violent struggle against those whose ideas are completely opposite; no one needs to subordinate other people to their ideas for them to work (politicized ideas, however, cannot work without this).
Furthermore, let us not forget point No. 1. No matter what privileges you have now, it is unknown where they will lead in the future. Perhaps the highest state officials will dislike you for some reason, and you will have to prepare for the worst. Or perhaps power will change, and you will also be sent far away as a supporter of the wrong ideas.
Getting involved with the state is harmful to oneself. You may become a victim of a frame-up, you are unlikely to find anything good in the state sphere if you are an ordinary worker, and if you do achieve something, it will only be through robbery and violence against other people. Obviously, it is not worth it!
Suppose road #1 is the only one leading from point A to point B. Accordingly, a monopoly arises, and entrepreneur #1 raises the price to an enormous value. In theory, some entrepreneur #2 should appear who will break the monopoly and build their own road #2; let’s assume that is what happens. After this, the owner of road #1 simply lowers the price to the market rate, and entrepreneurs 1 and 2 compete. So what is the benefit for entrepreneur #2 to break the first one’s monopoly if they get no advantage from it?
The situation modeled in this question does not correspond to the processes that actually occur in the market. Following this logic, after a certain business appears in a specific location, no one else would open a similar business there because it would be unprofitable. However, we observe something entirely different. On one street, you can almost always see several grocery stores; in one shopping center, several restaurants; in one building, several offices of different insurance companies, etc. A new business opens as long as any acceptable profit can be made from it, because that too is profitable.
Furthermore, let’s consider the specific case of roads. Even a monopoly owner of a road on a certain straight line between two points is unable to excessively inflate the toll cost simply because they are not actually a real monopolist. If people feel that this “monopolist” is hiking prices too high, they will decide that it is more profitable, for example, to take a detour that goes through point “C” between points “A” and “B,” or to use some alternative mode of transport (rail or air), or, in the extreme case, to travel off-road entirely. Therefore, even without direct competition, the monopolist cannot set the toll significantly above the market rate, as such a decision would bankrupt them. Nevertheless, it is still profitable for them to own the road, as they are still capable of generating an acceptable profit from it. Similarly, it will be profitable for any agent who decides to build another road parallel to it.
Among the authoritarian right, there is a widespread belief that capitalism and the market can exist and function only through strict state control. They believe that this is the only way to ensure the protection of property rights, the honesty and security of agreements, and to correct certain alleged deficiencies of the free market. Naturally, alongside this, they deny that such state intervention in market processes is an act of violence. In their view, this intervention is precisely what protects everyone from violence. But is this actually the case?
1) State intervention harms market processes
From economic theory, we know that by intervening, the state disrupts market equilibrium. The most obvious example of measures leading to such a process is the establishment of minimum and maximum prices. The first measure leads entrepreneurs to believe that the production of a certain good is more profitable than it actually is. As a result, an overproduction of this good occurs, and the entrepreneurs themselves, unable to sell it, only go bankrupt. The second measure, conversely, leads to a shortage of the good, as it becomes unprofitable to produce and sell, and the fact that the cost is lower than the market price leads to those first in line for the product buying up the entire available assortment immediately, leaving nothing for those who find themselves at the end of the line.
Usually, proponents of state control say that these measures are necessary to support entrepreneurs and to guarantee that all people are provided with a certain benefit, and that the listed problems are solved by additional measures (subsidizing entrepreneurs and controlling the redistribution of benefits among people). But, of course, these measures require additional bureaucratic expenses, which negate the alleged benefits obtained from introducing these regulations.
The state also takes a portion of the population’s funds through taxation, and thereby partially deprives people of the ability to invest their funds in the types of production in which they are genuinely interested. Furthermore, through its regulations, the state makes it difficult for businesses to enter certain economic spheres, which also distorts market equilibrium and complicates people’s access to certain types of benefits.
Let us also not forget that in some spheres, the state declares itself to be an indisputable monopolist. Unable to compare the results of its activities with possible alternatives, and unconditionally receiving profit in the form of tax funds regardless of the quality of these results, the state monopoly is an inefficient producer, which harms the well-being of citizens.
Finally, the state corrupts the private sector. Under conditions of a free market, companies have only one option to continue functioning and increasing their wealth—providing people with benefits of the highest quality and at the lowest prices. Otherwise, people will simply leave for competitors. The state, however, gives some entrepreneurs an alternative option—corruption. An entrepreneur bribes officials (or promotes their relatives, friends, and acquaintances into the state apparatus) and gains legal grounds to restrict competitors from conducting a certain activity. At the very least, he can avoid the application of state regulations to himself and achieve the active imposition of these regulations on everyone else. At most, he can lobby for a law that makes him the only legal producer in a specific economic sphere.
Through its regulations and monopolistic coercive control, the state severely harms economic processes, distorts market equilibrium, and reduces the well-being of people. Capitalism, as a type of economic system in which legal equality as well as the principle of freedom of activity and agreement must be observed, is absolutely incompatible with the actions undertaken by any governments.
2) The state does not protect property rights and does not ensure the security of transactions
An important point in the program of etatists is that the state is necessary for the protection of property rights and guaranteeing the security of transactions, without which capitalism and the market cannot function at all. Minarchists—proponents of a minimal state that should engage only in this—place particular emphasis on this.
Yes, I agree that property rights and the security of transactions are necessary for the functioning of the economic system as a whole. However, the state cannot provide them in any way.
Let us remember that the state is a monopolistic and indisputable instrument of power. Being in specific hands at a specific moment, it serves only the interests of its owners. And nothing can stop them from abusing their authority and violating the norms they themselves have prescribed. Of course, it can be said that this is solved by the democratization of politics, or by creating a system in which only intelligent and kind rulers come to power. But in reality, neither will work. Ensuring the first, even in its absolute (that is, in the form of direct democracy), only means the observance of the interests of the majority to the detriment of the interests of the minority. Ensuring the second completely collapses against the phenomenon of corruption and the potential incompetence of the agents and agencies engaged in searching for and bringing to power supposedly pure and innocent angel-rulers.
Even in the case where the government is more or less reasonable, it still, unlike market and competing agents, has no incentives to act in the most efficient way. It only needs to act as efficiently as the population’s indignation does not exceed a certain critical level, above which the actions of security forces become either ineffective or cause the government significant reputational damage, thereby stimulating the rest of the population and the global community in general to also express indignation.
As Mikhail Svetov always correctly notes, the state is the One Ring of power. And regardless of whose hands this ring is in, one should not expect it to work for the good.
The observance of property rights and the security of transactions can be ensured only by the Balance of Violence Potential and Reputational Institutions. The first concept states that monopolistic power should not exist at all, and that different subjects and groups of subjects should possess approximately equal capabilities to inflict unacceptable damage on one another. In such conditions, cooperation will be far more profitable than coercion. The second concept asserts that reputational institutions and services can be used as tools for guaranteeing the security of transactions. Furthermore, they provide ostracism as an effective and powerful tool for punishing those who were not honest in their intentions.
You can read more about the concept of the Balance of Violence Potential here. You can learn how Reputational Institutions function, why Reputational Services are useful, and what ostracism is here.
3) State intervention is always violence
What do you call a subject (a person or an organization) who unilaterally imposes certain conditions on me, forces me to give them a part of my funds, and threatens to take away even more of my funds or forcibly lock me behind bars in case of non-compliance with the conditions imposed by them? Obviously, this is a rapist and an aggressor, and the actions they carry out are violence and aggression. And the institutionalization of these phenomena in no way changes their essence.
Even in the case where the state exists exclusively to protect its citizens from violence, it still first commits an act of aggression toward them, because it establishes itself as their protector regardless of the desire and choice of the people. In fact, this is common gangster protection (“kryshevanie”). If someone breaks into my house, points a gun at me, and says, “give me this much money, and I will protect you, otherwise you will be punished yourself,” then that too would be an obvious act of aggression.
A rapist and aggressor cannot be your protector, because to provide this protection, they must first apply aggression to you. Based on this, the state, politicians, bureaucrats, and all those who clearly support state activities are rapists and aggressors, because their activities assume that people must be attacked first, covering themselves with stories allegedly about how if we don’t attack you, someone else will. Naturally, the attitude toward the listed subjects should be appropriate.
We can draw the following conclusions: the state hinders the functioning of the economy and market processes, it is unable to ensure the protection of property rights and the security of transactions, and it is merely a rapist who has imposed their will on you through methods of aggression. And after all this, how can one even support the idea of state control and intervention? No sane person will do so, and whoever does—they themselves admit that they lack the slightest competence in matters of economics, public management, and in general are an open rapist and maniac!
In order to familiarize Russian-speaking libertarians with English-language libertarian discourse, we intend to occasionally post translations of articles from major libertarian websites. Today, we present for your attention an article about contact tracing apps, which have become a challenge to privacy due to the pandemic.
The pandemic provided governments with a pretext to justify the mass collection of geolocation data.
Many academics, entrepreneurs, and governments claim that new technologies are a critical part of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. They argue that by using the latest tracking methods to obtain information, people will be able to easily check whether they have come into contact with identified COVID-19 carriers.
Contact Tracing Apps
Two models for such apps are proposed. The first model involves the collection and processing of a person’s location information by governments. Such proposals were met with a barrage of criticism from privacy and consumer rights groups, as they involve unprecedented total surveillance. Given that many tech companies already provide such services to their governments—YouTube, for example, blocks any information contradicting WHO statements—these fears seem quite real.
The second model is the collection and processing of information about movements and contacts directly on users’ devices. This decentralized form of data collection has received broad academic support because, in theory, it would allow for contact tracing without giving companies and governments real-time access to data on citizens’ movements and habits.
But even this decentralized data collection scheme raises many questions. Even with the development of a legal framework for privacy protection—which currently simply does not exist—the level of public awareness regarding information protection makes these apps extremely dangerous.
In this article, we will examine how contact tracing apps are developed and why they pose a threat.
Centralization or Decentralization?
Let us first note that some contact tracing apps implemented by governments outside Europe and the US are a serious problem. The Israeli government recently passed a law giving its security services the right to access the personal data of all users, as well as allowing the centralized storage of the obtained information. South Korea and China have done the same.
The danger of involving governments in the collection of such data is noted by many personal data protection organizations in Europe and the US. Despite this, the governments of these countries believe that such apps are necessary, also because these governments themselves were unable to develop contact tracing apps on their own.
It is intended that contact tracing apps will be developed according to a decentralized model. In theory, the user’s phone will store data about contacts with COVID-19 owners itself and exchange data with other devices. Information will not be transmitted to centralized cloud storage, and even the companies developing the apps will not have access to users’ personal data or their location.
This model was proposed by companies such as Apple and Google, the PACT project from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], and many European groups. Most proposals include Bluetooth technology, which will notify the user if there is another user nearby who has been in contact with the virus.
(Missing) Legal Framework
At first glance, apps with a decentralized data collection model are flawless in protecting users from surveillance. They are built on a policy of individual responsibility, comparable to the policy of the Swedish government, which proved its effectiveness despite non-interference in the private lives of citizens.
However, two unresolved problems remain with decentralized contact tracing apps. First, there is currently no legal framework to protect users of these apps from surveillance. Second, even if such a framework were created, any data from smartphones could be stolen by hackers or security services.
To start, let’s consider the legal aspect of the issue. In our article on the legality of such apps, we already pointed out that the lawfulness of such a form of mass surveillance is questionable at best. With the increasing instances of internet censorship, there is a possibility that governments will use such apps to create databases of users and track them.
But the questions related to contact tracing apps—centralized or not—are much deeper. It is unclear even if these apps will fulfill their original function. For these apps to be effective, people would need to be required to install and use them. Otherwise, an infected user could simply delete the app, which undermines the effectiveness of the entire system. Giving governments the right to impose the use of a specific app on citizens would be an unprecedented and extremely dangerous step.
Privacy and Security
Even with the most thoughtfully designed legal framework for such apps, even if it truly protects the user’s personal data, these apps will still pose a threat. Companies are making great efforts to increase cybersecurity, especially now that many are working remotely, and are surprised to find that their employees know very little or nothing at all about cybersecurity. This means that any data obtained through contact tracing apps—even if stored on the user’s smartphone—is very vulnerable.
And this circumstance, of course, is taken into account by existing data privacy legislation. The European GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]—widely accepted as the gold standard when it comes to data protection—unequivocally states that data privacy cannot be achieved without information security. This is intended to be achieved through a simple rule: companies cannot collect data they do not need. In other words, the best thing that can be done for the safety of user data is not to collect it at all.
In the context of contact tracing, this means that even if user data on contacts and location is stored on the user’s smartphone—rather than in a centralized accounting system—no one guarantees its safety. This data can be stolen, or national security and surveillance services may gain access to it. Research also proves that even when users try to secure their data, their attempts may only undermine their information security.
On the other hand, a counterargument naturally arises that many apps already collect geolocation data and one more app cannot become critical for privacy. However, the most important difference of such new apps is that they collect data about the user’s contacts. This data could be used by law enforcement agencies to obtain information about citizens’ movements in real time.
The Future
There is no need to pretend that these are new problems that we have never encountered. Activists , defending privacy, have been talking about the illegitimacy of mass surveillance for over ten years. The pandemic only gave governments a pretext to justify the mass collection of geolocation data. As we have already pointed out, there are currently no technologies capable of collecting this data without violating the fundamental human right to privacy. There are no legal acts that regulate the use of contact tracing apps. Even if there were, the insecurity of data on most smartphones makes this data extremely vulnerable to theft or legal requests from law enforcement agencies.
It is important that later, after the pandemic, we remember the lessons of the present. We must, of course, rebuild our economic policy, which made the world so vulnerable to COVID-19. But we must also use this opportunity to challenge the level of surveillance that has become possible in our new digital world.
It all comes down to the fact that we must make technology serve those who use it, rather than as a tool for building a “surveillance economy” that is so rapidly enslaving our society. And resistance to tracking apps is only the beginning of this struggle.
Arguments about the possibility of ancap often arise, and in theoretical terms, ancap is doing fine. Until recently, I was a confident ancap myself, until I thought about one idea of classical conservatism: in theory, just as people find the most profitable paths in a free market, society finds the most effective social institutions for itself. Thus, can it be said that the state is the most effective and natural way to combat crime, without which things would be bad? Preferably without Hoppean gimmicks: his theory is mainly devoted to Western Europe, and besides, centralized states like the Roman Empire existed in Europe even before feudalism.
anonymous question
Of course, the free market leads to the most effective solutions. However, the basis of the processes occurring in the market is freedom of activity and agreement. Any solution arising in the market cannot contradict these principles; it operates precisely as long as the agents involved agree to conduct their activities based on the terms of the agreement established between them. This solution ceases to operate in relation to anyone if the subject decides to break the agreement and refuse further cooperation. Thus, in the market, no one can forcibly compel someone to be a client of a particular organization, buy its products and use its services, or participate in any jurisdiction or any other form of collective of people. Indeed, market solutions do not use coercion.
Suppose that such a form of social management as centralized political power is, at a certain point, accepted by people as the most effective solution. However, living conditions gradually change, and people’s interests change as well. Naturally, no single solution can be effective forever. In the market, ineffective solutions are usually replaced by other solutions that are effective relative to the new conditions. A solution such as the “state” establishes itself as an eternal and indestructible solution, which no one has the right to challenge under any circumstances, and even less so to replace it with some other solution. Therefore, even if we assume that the state could have arisen through a market path of voluntary agreement, this in no way makes it an effective solution at any point in time other than the one in which it was accepted by everyone, since subsequently living conditions and people’s interests changed, yet the state provided no right to challenge it.
However, I would not even be quick to assume that states arose through a market path. Most likely, they arose through violent coercion. This is indicated to us by the theory of the stationary bandit, which states that states arose as a result of the settling of nomadic bandits who decided to subjugate the population of a certain territory and collect a regular tribute from it. You can read more about this theory here. Furthermore, history is known for numerous conquests and subjugations; therefore, even if one of the centralized territorial formations did arise through agreement, it ceased to be a market solution as soon as it was either forcibly subjugated by someone or decided to engage in the subjugation of others.
The state is not the most effective option for social relations simply because it consists of violence against people, as well as prohibits the implementation of any alternative solutions and establishes itself as an unshakeable and eternal truth.
In discussions with subscribers, I occasionally encounter the opinions of “moral monsters” who believe that morality does not exist, that it is all “talk for the poor,” and that only a fool would forgo such an effective tool as physical violence. Such people, of course, deserve the harshest condemnation and ostracism, following the example of how anti-racism and anti-homophobia activists do it in the USA. But to convince the general public, it is still necessary to outline utilitarian arguments regarding the inadmissibility of aggressive violence in society. After all, deontological morality does not appear “out of thin air”; it is the product of repeated interactions between subjects in society.
To begin, let us note that a morality of non-aggression exists even in many animal species. As proven by the famous biologist Konrad Lorenz, an innate, inherited morality of non-aggression toward members of one’s own species is present in all animals with “innate armament” (for example, hedgehogs, porcupines, echidnas, venomous snakes). It became fixed in their DNA through natural selection, as individuals prone to aggression died in clashes without leaving offspring.
When do you think a moral prohibition on a certain behavior emerges in society? I assume the answer is obvious—when such behavior causes inconvenience, reduces the quality of life, or creates excessive risks for the majority of society members. In economic terms, the behavior of one subject creates enormous negative externalities for all members of society, even though such behavior may be very profitable for that specific subject.
We can find plenty of examples of such negative externalities if we look at world history. Here are some examples of such externalities:
1) Various environmental challenges (the ban on leaded gasoline, the insecticide DDT, freons in refrigeration units, and in recent years—internal combustion engines in some countries).
2) Problems of socially unacceptable risk (the closure of nuclear power plants in many countries after the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, the limitation of carbon dioxide emissions to reduce the risk of global warming).
3) Child abuse (the ban on the use of violence against children has already been introduced in most countries of the world). It has been proven that this leads to an increase in cases of drug addiction, alcoholism, and suicide, reduces their chances of success in life, and also leads to an increase in the average level of violence throughout society.
4) Animal cruelty—leads to an increase in the average level of violence throughout society.
As we can see, in all these cases, there is a conflict between the individual, for whom selfish dangerous behavior is profitable, and the entire society, which will bear the costs of that behavior. For example, for negligent parents, spanking a child is much easier than explaining in words why they should behave in a certain way, but the consequences of this act will be spread across society as a whole. The same applies to the use of a diesel car—it is cheap and convenient for the owner, but for other city residents, it means poor air and various diseases. Such externalities only begin to be seriously discussed when the harm from them becomes noticeable to a significant part of society.
The use of aggressive violence as a tool for achieving any goals (usually coercion and punishment) carries the greatest externalities that exist on Earth. Far, far greater than even the use of Chernobyl-type reactors or a coal-fired power plant without any filtration systems in a city. Here are just a few utilitarian arguments as to why aggressive violence is bad:
1) The average level of violence in society increases. If a stationary bandit (the state) uses cruel methods of coercion against its “serfs,” they quickly become hardened and no longer consider it shameful to beat a wife and child or take money and a phone from the weak. Constant shootouts and police chases lead to frequent injuries of accidental (unrelated) persons. The stress level of many people increases, leading to an increase in mental illness, suicides, drug use, a decrease in creative abilities, and a slowing of economic growth. For these reasons, in Scandinavian countries, the state now sends people to prison only for intentional murder, and the prisons themselves are more like health resorts.
2) The risk of a man-made global catastrophe or even the self-destruction of humanity. With the development of technology, the total harm that one person can inflict is constantly growing. If aggressive violence in society is the norm (especially state violence, as it is the hardest to escape), then sooner or later a person driven to despair will decide to use some dangerous technology as a doomsday weapon (DDW)—threatening to blow up a nuclear reactor or release a deadly virus. When a stationary bandit threatens to lock you in prison forever, there will be no talk of humanity; any means are good to be left alone, even the threat of causing a global pandemic. For society, even an infinitesimally small probability of such an event is unacceptable, as the potential damage would be simply catastrophic and could even lead to the extinction of humans as a species.
3) The productive development of the economy and quality of life stops because violence becomes the “objective function” of societal development. Instead of developing technologies and producing goods and services that benefit the majority of the population, society’s resources are spent on creating tools of violence. There is a common misconception that the “arms race” drives scientific and technical progress. This is true, but only over a very short period of time. The potential for violence can be viewed as an analogue to the concept of an “objective function” in mathematics. It strives toward a very specific value that practically does not change over time (or rather, is constantly decreasing)—inflicting unacceptable damage on the opponent (tolerance for violence has a constant tendency to decrease; accordingly, the threshold of unacceptable damage also decreases). This distinguishes violence from all other areas of human activity, in which the goal is the improvement of human life. Human needs constantly grow, and this provides a stimulus for scientific and technical progress, the emergence of new niches in the economy, and the growth of quality of life. However, a society that develops through an “arms race” comes to collapse, as already happened with the USSR. When the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on each other became available to all developed states, technological development slowed down sharply.
4) The formation of a military hegemon, a hierarchy of dominance, and, as a result—the collapse of the birth rate and the extinction of humanity. In Jack Hirshleifer’s research, a proven assertion is presented that the disruption of the uniform distribution of the balance of violence potential (BVP) in society leads to the emergence of a hierarchy of dominance (the state in human society is one example of this), and if the unevenness of BVP continues to increase—a global “military hegemon.” The danger of the long-term existence of a rigid hierarchy of dominance was identified in various animal experiments, such as “Universe 25.” The population simply died out due to a decrease in the birth rate. You will probably say now that “the conditions are different,” “a human is not a rat,” “an analogy is not an argument,” but look the truth in the eye and at the statistics of the total fertility rate in various countries of the world: in most countries, it is already below the replacement level (averaging 2.1 children per woman). There is also a certain dependence between the birth rate and the actual degree of state interference in a person’s life. In Africa and India, there may formally be many regulations in various spheres of life and high taxes, but in reality, the state is physically unable to reach every resident. But in Singapore, with exit visas and caning for dissent, the population for some reason is in no hurry to reproduce, despite even a high level of income. As in South Korea, where the level of personal freedoms, if viewed impartially, is not much higher than in the North.
Conclusions. As we can see, the morality of the inadmissibility of aggressive violence is not just someone’s “wish,” but a banal condition for the survival of civilization and even humans as a biological species. The rejection of this morality essentially means exactly one thing: “I am the boss here and I don’t care if all of humanity dies.” All normal people should have a corresponding attitude toward such a person—as toward the worst scoundrel, a new Hitler or Pol Pot.
In the entire developed world, society has accepted the inadmissibility of using leaded gasoline, DDT, the operation of nuclear power plants, and violence against children for utilitarian reasons. Next in line is violence by the stationary bandit (the state).
An interesting study by biologist Konrad Lorenz shows how natural “armament” in animals leads to the emergence of morality against aggressive violence. Similarly, restoring the balance of violence potential (BVP) in human society will lead to the adoption of the non-aggression principle (NAP).
There are many species whose armament is so devastating and whose methods of application are so lightning-fast that a real combat clash between rivals would end with the death of one of them, or even both. Take, for example, venomous insects and snakes. Therefore, it is not surprising that natural selection develops a prohibition against using weapons in intra-species clashes for such species. Ethologists, following Lorenz, call this system of instinctive prohibitions that limit animal behavior “natural morality.” It is stronger the more powerfully the animal is armed by nature. During a territorial clash, venomous snakes exaggerate their size by stretching out to see who can stand taller, swaying, and pushing each other, but they never bite, nor do they even demonstrate their weapons. Some species even threaten each other with their heads turned away. It is no wonder that not only ordinary people but also many zoologists mistook the tournament battles of snakes for mating dances.
Well-armed animals can threaten each other for a long time, and when one of them grows tired, it abruptly changes posture, exposing its most vulnerable spot to the opponent for a decisive combat strike. The moral prohibition acts on the winner like an electric shock: all their angry fervor evaporates, they turn away from the opponent and hide their weapon. Similarly, a proud boy, feeling that he will lose a fight, suddenly puts his hands behind his back, lifts his face to the victor and shouts: “Go on, hit me!” Unlike a wolf or a snake, a human may actually strike in response.
After analyzing many species, Lorenz reached a conclusion of stunning simplicity more than 50 years ago: a strong animal has strong morality, while a weak one has weak morality. In terms of its natural history, a human is a very poorly armed animal; unlike monkeys, humans cannot even bite properly. Therefore, humans initially have weak instinctive prohibitions and weak natural morality. An unarmed man cannot cause significant damage to another in a clash: one will tire of hitting, and the other can always run away. Innate prohibitions in humans correspond to this. But subsequently, humans began to create and improve weapons and became the most armed species on Earth. Morality, however, has hardly changed.
Shareholder Viktor Rafaelevich “Ethological Excursions to the Forbidden Gardens of the Humanities”
