Тег: Agorism

You will be punished for what was legal yesterday (or why it is deadly dangerous to be “law-abiding”)

You surely know people who say the following: “I pay all my taxes, my business is completely white, I’m not interested in politics, I have nothing to hide.” This is a very cozy position. And although such people are often called “hamsters” in libertarian circles, it must be understood that the desire to simply live, create, raise children, run a legal business, and not play hide-and-seek with the state is an absolutely normal and natural need of a healthy person.
 
But there is one little nuance. By trying to play by the state’s rules, you are playing chess with a pigeon. Or more accurately—with an armed cheat who has learned to change the rules of the game after the match has already been played.
 
This is precisely why agorism (that very counter-economics, crypto, working for cash, hiding assets, and quietly disappearing from the radar of the stationary bandit) has become a matter of survival even for those who bake legal cakes or write legal code. Because the Leviathan across the world—and in Russia, by already kicking down the door—has begun to massively apply laws retroactively and nullify statutes of limitations.
 
Let’s first look into the history of law. Why did humanity come up with statutes of limitations in the first place? Even in Ancient Rome, jurists understood a simple thing: society needs legal certainty like air. If you honestly bought an anvil, you shouldn’t have to wake up in a cold sweat for the rest of your life thinking that in 20 years, the grandson of the previous owner will come for you and take it away due to an error on a parchment. Evidence decays, witnesses forget everything, and people die. A statute of limitations is a guarantee that society will not sink into an abyss of eternal paranoia, endless vendettas, and the revisiting of old cases. It is on this foundation that trust in the future is built.
 
And now let’s return to our reality. What is the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation doing now? It is churning out lawsuits in batches to seize factories (like “Solikamsk Magnesium” or “Maxfa”), lands, and companies privatized in the 90s. That is, 30 years ago! Businessmen invested money, paid taxes, and were crystal “white.” But the courts, with an unperturbed face, declare: “Statutes of limitations do not apply to the requirements of the state.”
 
Or take the laws regarding “foreign agents,” “undesirable,” and “extremist” organizations. Did you transfer 500 rubles to a foundation five years ago when it was not just legal, but respected and encouraged? This means today they can come to you with a search and charge you with financing extremism. You were absolutely legal yesterday, but they made you a criminal today—for your action yesterday.
 
One might think this only happens to us. But the erosion of law is a global trend. In the US and Europe, ideas of retrospective taxes are heard more and more often (“you earned too much last year, let’s have you pay extra at the new rates”). In Canada, authorities could freeze the bank accounts of protesting truck drivers and those who simply sent them 20 bucks for coffee at the snap of a finger. In the US and the UK, there is a retrospective stretching of modern moral norms onto the deeds of days gone by regarding “sexual harassment.” If the state needs to expropriate you or shut you up, it will find a reason, ignoring any old guarantees.
 
And this is where we return to agorism. “Going underground,” using cryptocurrencies, working outside the legal field, refusing to register property in one’s own name—this is no longer the romance of cyberpunks or the domain of darknet smugglers, but basic insurance. Even if you sell teddy bears today and sacredly honor the Criminal Code, tomorrow they might pass a law declaring plush to be a toxic material, and all sellers from the last 10 years to be enemies of the people with confiscation of property.
 
Disappearing from the “legal field” is the most rational choice for a person who has understood the essence: it is impossible to be “law-abiding” where the law is one today, another tomorrow, and you are punished by it for the day after tomorrow. Therefore, it is necessary to study counter-economics, hide assets, use cash and crypto, and most importantly—build horizontal connections with those you trust!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Svetov

There is something humiliating about reacting to an information agenda set by other people whose influence far outweighs their usefulness, so this post appears somewhat late, after everyone who wanted to has already spoken out. The formal reason for this text was a question from a subscriber who introduced himself as Tidvik’s dad:

Please share your opinion on Svetov’s latest text about abandoning idealism and merciful rule. Is this a departure from libertarian ideals and a transition into cynical realpolitik? Or is it simply disillusionment and an admission of the opposition’s impotence? And what does Hoppe have to do with it?

On March 5, Mikhail Svetov posted the text Farewell to Idealism (on the mercy of power), which he characterized as “my best text since the state is anarchy” (I also did not want to react to that video, and I also managed to hide behind answering a subscriber’s question).

In the video “The state is anarchy,” Svetov attacks the idea of natural rights and explains its emergence by stating that people had only just killed God and were fascinated by materialism. In the new article, Svetov, on the contrary, repents for having been an idealist (though he says “we” instead of speaking for himself, and his former party colleague goes hard on this topic).

Actually, I rather admire it when a person states: “previously I said this or that, such and such facts forced me to change my position, now I believe this or that.” All Svetov lacks is to add, “because of my mistake, I caused harm to such and such people, I apologize, and I am ready to compensate somehow, if possible.” However, even Navalny never managed to reach such heights of self-awareness. But even this is already better than the classic mid-air flip-flopping, where a change in discourse goes uncommented, and reminders of former views are met with bewilderment, in the spirit of “Did I say that? I can’t believe it. Next question.”

As usual, Svetov introduces strange definitions of terms. If he previously defined anarchy as a state of war of all against all (meaning that since 2019, he can no longer call himself an ancap), he has now defined power as the ability to induce desired behavior from people. Thus, power belongs to a good advertiser whose product is bought, to a good orator whose agenda catches on with the masses, to a rapist dragging a victim into the bushes, and to an official issuing a demolition order for a house. And, of course, to a tyrant deciding what to smear on his political opponent’s underwear. Such a definition does not allow a libertarian to distinguish which power is worth striving for and which is not, but now Mikhail can confidently assert that “there is no scenario in which principles can rely on anything other than power.” Of course it would be, if we expand the definition of power so disgracefully that it includes absolutely any influence.

Svetov’s post was quite warmly received by the Center for Republican Research. It was dedicated two whole reviews from different authors — Daria Kormanovskaya and Andrey Bystrov. Mikhail was congratulated on his position approaching the republican one, recommended literature, and noted minor flaws — in short, they effectively welcomed him into their ranks.

It is also said that his post was warmly received by official Russian propaganda, but fortunately, I am not obliged to familiarize myself with it, so I am completely unaware of the details.

Among Svetov’s sharp critics, I would mention Michael Naki, who emphasized the most important thing lacking in Mikhail’s activities: for quite a long time now, they have been far from any practical application. Mikhail Svetov’s last practical project was the late Moscow club Novaya Iskrennost. But since emigrating, he has focused entirely on maintaining his information resource, which, nowadays, amounts to nothing; bloggers have become as common as dirt, and the activity itself has significantly devalued, unless, of course, a blogger directs their earnings toward something practical, such as Michael Naki organizing fundraisers for the AFU. So it turns out that in this Farewell to Idealism, Svetov simply stated that you, supposedly, are doing everything wrong, but did not outline new landmarks for his potential supporters. It is not surprising that quite many readers concluded: Svetov is suggesting you throw up your hands and surrender to the mercy of the authorities, claiming they are more merciful than how you write about them.

I think Svetov doesn’t engage in practical activities simply because he is bad at it. All the public organizations he belonged to were dismantled by him. His offline business was opened flagrantly late and, quite predictably, was killed by the merciful authorities. So he devotes himself to those pursuits he still feels an affinity for: following the news, commenting on it, and occasionally reflecting on the vanity of existence. Maybe just let the old man rest in retirement instead of demanding action?

And finally, some positivity so as not to resemble Mikhail Svetov. If you want action, in conditions where the merciful authorities are diligently weeding out any public organizations, then the action must be partisan. If you believe it is more important to weaken Putin—your path leads to Rospartizan. If you believe it is more important to empower yourself and gain that very strength without which there is no right—your path leads to agorism. Implementing various agoristic practices is exactly what I am doing.

How the state nudges people to become more “illegal”

Voluntarist, Bitarch

You are likely already aware that recently the Russian authorities decided to issue summonses in electronic form and consider them received by conscripts simply by the fact of their appearance in the database. And if a conscript does not come to the military recruitment office on their own, various sanctions await them: a ban on leaving the country, registering an individual entrepreneurship or housing, driving a car, refusal of loans, and others. What will such measures lead to in practice?

Obviously, they will push people to move from the legal framework into relations that are more illegal from the state’s point of view. There are millions of potential conscripts, and far from every one of them will risk appearing at the military recruitment office of their own free will, regardless of the threatening sanctions. But at the same time, they are unlikely to give up leading a life that is at least somewhat full. Therefore, people will increasingly engage in the conscious violation of a number of state laws. In turn, this will create an overload of law enforcement agencies, as they will lack the time, strength, and resources to effectively deal with all the violations due to their excessive number, and will also contribute to the development of grey and black markets operating beyond the reach of the state and its regulations. The stationary bandit, as we see, is digging his own grave with such measures.

It is also worth noting that the Russian state authorities have so far only announced a number of sanctions against a conscript in case of failure to appear following an electronic summons. However, given that a summons will now be considered delivered after its placement in the database, and repeated failure to appear for delivered summonses is grounds for criminal prosecution, those same millions of potential conscripts could end up as “illegal” people, which would only increase the consequences described in the previous paragraph by orders of magnitude. However, most likely the stationary bandit will not create such a large problem for himself. If serious punishments follow, they will be selective and exemplary, but not mass.

Although, just in case, one should expect anything from the stationary bandit for the sake of one’s own safety. However, the good news is that the stationary bandit will only destroy himself further if he decides to do this. And an alternative to him will always be found, especially if millions of people need it and the stationary bandit proves too overloaded to control and suppress everything. This could lead to the flowering of agorism—a voluntary free market existing outside state interference—and in the case of stronger pressure on millions of “military-obligated” persons, the emergence of so-called “unregistered people,” who simply do not exist legally from the state’s point of view.

40 years ago, SEK3 wrote in the New Libertarian Manifesto that California is ahead of the entire planet in the transition to libertarianism and agorism.

Right now we observe that California is a top statist socialist state in the USA. How did it happen?

L29Ah

I avoided this question for quite a while because I didn’t understand how to provide a detailed answer without falling into a tedious chronicle, which is not so much useless as it is meaningless on its own. Every tax increase and every tightening of regulations had its own unique reason, and digging into them is not the level of a popular channel.

To put it very briefly, California became “Commifornia” because its voters wanted it. It remains in this status now largely despite the will of the voters, but that is usually how socialism works: people try this drug because it is trendy and advertised everywhere, and then it turns out that it is easier to die than to get off it; thus California (as a system of effective resource management for the territory to improve the territory in the interests of its residents) is dying.

It seems possible to get off this drug—the example of Thatcher’s Britain shows this. But relapses are also extremely likely, as shown by the example of modern Britain. Anyway, let us leave the medical metaphors and the abuse of holistic constructs alone. I would like to draw attention to another point.

Generally speaking, Konkin did predict the crisis of the state, because if people had the opportunity to use political methods for the constant and irreversible reduction of state interference, there would be no need for agorism. At the same time, Californian crypto-anarchists indeed seriously pushed humanity toward the implementation of useful agoric technologies, so Konkin’s notion that California would play an important role in the struggle was also justified to some extent.

Thanks to open borders between states, many agorists and libertarians found it easier to bail out to tiny New Hampshire rather than try to turn the tide in massive California; therefore, those who wish to focus on business and legal politics rather than survival naturally leave the leftists alone with the governments they chose, heading where their efforts will bring more benefit. For some reason, Konkin warned against such tactics as a kind of simple and wrong solution, calling it anarcho-Zionism. On the other hand, he also predicted the emergence of certain agoric ghettos where people could effectively resist the state’s attempts to regulate them into oblivion, thanks to the fact that their concentration there would be higher, making it difficult for hostile agents.

In short, Konkin was hardly concerned with the fate of a specific state that was one way or another in the hands of statists, and nitpicking that his territory is not the current locomotive of agorism is like nitpicking Ayn Rand for the absence of Rearden Metal based on an iron-copper alloy in our lives.

Soberly on Agorism. A new video from Libertarian Band

The Libertarian Band team continues to discuss agorism.

I liked the analysis: the pros, cons, pitfalls, limitations, prospects, and so on are listed. I will separately note the point that not everyone practicing counter-economics methods is an agorist. For example, North Korea earns from counter-economics, but they are not our bros.

It seems to me that for agorism to succeed, two factors must coincide. First, there must be an anocracy in the country (I would even say a failed state, but this term has many negative connotations because that state is mainly associated with contempt for private property). Second, agorism must be fashionable. Ideally—on the level of the movie Alongside Night. And if we can do little in terms of weakening the state, then as for the second condition, the cards are in our hands.

New Libertarian Band video – about army dodging

Libertarian Band has released the third video from the “Agorist Cookbook” series, this time dedicated to how to avoid the army. The video is long, over 15 minutes, but includes timecodes. You can skip directly to the “Practical Tips” section at 5:23, because before that there is a long historical introduction about what conscription was like during the times of Ochakov and the conquest of Crimea, and this introduction has no connection to the subsequent detailed and useful practical instructions.

To the tips suggested in the video, I will add my own. Instead of trying to abuse the system through courts and begging for the right to alternative civilian service, you can simply leave the country in advance. Montenegro, where I am moving, is not the only option; there are many other places where a Russian person lives more freely and prosperously than under the jurisdiction of Moscow.

This is precisely the most agorist way to avoid the army draft. This is the method described by Ayn Rand in her most famous work. Our ancestors, by dismantling the Soviet Union, achieved the most important freedom for us: the freedom to leave. If they had had this freedom, how many Russians would not have perished in the 20th century at the hands of the Soviet state! So let us not undervalue this crucial achievement. We are now left with no other way to vote for a better future for ourselves than by voting with our feet.

Online Anonymity: Recipes from Libertarian Band

Libertarian Band has released the second video in their series on agorism, and since I am no longer involved in production, I am personally very curious to see what they’ve put together this time.

It’s about methods for ensuring anonymity. Judging by the thoroughness of the presentation, Bitarch acted as the consultant. The set of recipes looks even more hardcore than in Svetov’s video on a similar topic.

In my view, the video feels like a “how to assemble a class five body armor” guide, with a hint that the real pros actually build tanks, but this will do for a start. In other words, it’s clear that if you want to, you can secure yourself very effectively, but it’s not very clear how to actually walk around town with all that. Perhaps it would have been better to structure the material differently: here are the possible threat levels, and here are the recommended protections for each threat, what the consequences of ignoring the recommendations are, and what the probability of getting caught is.

In this regard, from a purely screenwriting perspective, Svetov acted more competently, because he didn’t talk about abstract online anonymity, but tied it to a specific case involving a Chechen who beat up some “cosmonauts” at a rally. Perhaps in this case it would have made sense to tie it to the case of Bitarch himself. Like, if you want to be unrestrained in your expressions while communicating on VK and not have anything happen to you for it—here is a set of tools to satisfy this urgent need.

And so it goes: all it took was to look at the material of a favorite channel from the outside, and instead of an advertisement, it turned into a critical review.

Fighting crypto-anarchists is a shot in the foot

Bitarch

I often hear objections against agorism, crypto-anarchism, Bitcoin, darknet platforms, TOR, VPNs, and everything else that allows for fighting the stationary bandit (“the state”) using non-violent methods online. Critics argue that it is easy for the state to ban and block all of this.

Indeed, purely theoretically, the state is capable of blocking all this with a flick of a finger, but as always, the ratio of benefit to cost comes into play. Currently, network connectivity is so high that blocking a single IP address, protocol, or even a specific DPI signature will inevitably lead to collateral damage.

Roskomnadzor (RKN) tried to block Telegram, but eventually abandoned the idea because as a result of the blocking attempts, completely different services stopped working: online stores, payment processing for MasterCard, courier services, and even the Odnoklassniki website. Banning VPNs won’t work either—they are used by companies. Banning them for individuals while allowing them for companies sounds like complete madness—the appearance of 140 million legal entities in Russia would be a DDoS attack on the entire bureaucratic system. Could they create a powerful firewall with DPI “like in China”? Also not an option—all halfway decent VPN services provide tools to bypass it.

Some might mention whitelists, where all resources are blocked except those permitted. That won’t work either—a great deal of imported industrial and medical equipment requires network access to connect to the manufacturer’s servers. Talking about “import substitution” for equipment of this class is simply laughable. And let’s be honest, the authorities need to develop their own next “wonder-weapons,” and for that, they need access to many different “pirate” resources like Sci-Hub, where scientific articles from foreign publications are posted.

An objection also occasionally slips in that the state can simply intimidate crypto-anarchists with repression in real life. In reality, you can only intimidate some random guy playing a “pirated” version of Call of Duty. Ideological fighters against the stationary bandit, which is what most agorists and crypto-anarchists are, will quickly find ways to bypass surveillance and blocks. They will only become more resentful of the state and, instead of innocent internet mischief, will move toward developing tangible tools to deter the aggression of tyranny, such as drones, blinding lasers, and even weapons of mass destruction, since they have plenty of skills.

So it turns out that while blocking the activities of crypto-anarchists is theoretically possible, in practice it would result, for example, in the failure of tomographs and life-support systems in hospitals, along with the shutdown of many industrial enterprises and the collapse of the economy. Will the state take on such costs? I don’t think so!

Overloading the stationary bandit

Bitarch, Voluntarist

Sometimes, as an argument regarding the impossibility of implementing any serious attempts to achieve a free society while violent state power still exists, the fact is cited that the state’s enforcement agents (i.e., the stationary bandit) will simply stop all related activities. For this reason, in particular, it is impossible to practice agorism—all agorists will be caught and imprisoned as economic criminals evading taxes and engaging in “illegal” entrepreneurship. And without the practice of agorism, it is impossible to build social institutions alternative to the state, that is, to create the initial infrastructure of a free society. This will also prevent the balancing of the Balance of Violence Potential—law enforcement will simply imprison those who produce and distribute self-defense weapons at the very beginning of the process. And without the BVP, there can be no talk of opposing the stationary bandit. However, there is a solution to this problem: it is necessary to make it so that the state cannot apply force, and one way to achieve this is to organize an overload of its enforcement structures, analogous to a DDoS attack on online services.

To begin with, it is still necessary to address the issue of self-defense weapons. Naturally, their production and distribution will require financial resources, even if the cheapest and most accessible options of such weapons are used. These can be collected through crowdfunding; it is also possible that anonymous patrons, beyond the reach of the state’s enforcement structures, will appear. With sufficient funds, the production and distribution of weaponry will not be a problem. Look, for example, at the situation with the production and distribution of drugs. Despite persecution by the authorities, they are produced quite successfully, albeit underground, and there are always people willing to make “dead drops” for them—many people are not afraid of punishment from the stationary bandit. This example shows us that engaging in the underground production of self-defense weapons and finding people willing to distribute them is entirely realistic.

Next, the self-defense weapons fall into the hands of the people. Of course, it will not be possible to provide them to the entire population immediately; however, even a small percentage of people will be enough, especially if they are chosen carefully. The best candidates are those most likely to become victims of persecution and violence by other people, or those who already are.
What will this lead to? To a sharp increase in injured and deceased persecutors and rapists. The police will be overwhelmed with cases of this kind. Furthermore, the representatives of the enforcement structures themselves may become victims if they attempt to use force against people, as there is a significant probability they will encounter an owner of a self-defense weapon. And let us not forget the protests and rallies that occur from time to time, where law enforcement will also suffer if they decide to attack an armed crowd.

All of this will simply overload the enforcement structures of the stationary bandit. They will lose the ability to effectively perform their duties. Due to the workload, they will be far from worrying about economic criminals—agorists will be able to quietly conduct their activities and expand the agoristic infrastructure. Even an attempt to introduce total control over citizens will not help—this will only hit the economic position of the authorities and diminish their enforcement capabilities.

Of course, some will say that people themselves will suffer from this, as there will be no one left to protect them, including from a judicial point of view, since the state courts, again, will be overloaded. But this is already a question of agoristic activity, during which self-defense measures and independent conflict resolution institutions can be organized. By the way, in the event of the state’s inefficiency due to the overload of its structures, many people in search of protection will decide to join these alternative solutions themselves, which will only expand agoristic activity and infrastructure.

USA

Many reflections on the situation in the USA have already been written, from the banal to the very deep, authored by quite respected people. I will try to survey the state of affairs from a slightly different angle.

From my two previous posts, you know that a republic is a society of people who agree on questions of law. In the USA right now, there is nowhere near an agreement on questions of law, which means there can be no legal assessment of either the electoral procedures, the performance at the Capitol, or the subsequent purges in the information field. If the jurisdiction of a court is not recognized by both parties to a conflict, then the court does not perform the function of resolving conflicts; therefore, it is not a court at all, but a more or less ritualized execution. In short, I interpret the state of affairs in the USA as a civil war. In a war, elections are only capable of recording exactly which personalities end up at the helm as the leader of the dominant grouping. This is still a more legitimate procedure than the direct rule of military commanders, but in fact, at the federal level, the elections in the USA were not between Trump and Biden, but between Biden and Sanders (from the Republican side, there were no elections at all). And then, Biden, having won the election, simply led the troops during the forceful crushing of the Republican side of the conflict.

What position do ancaps find themselves in this situation? The position of the third party who rejoices. In the confrontation between the toad and the viper, the toad emerged victorious, and now the viper temporarily finds itself on our side. An alliance between agorists, who defend market freedom regardless of the desires of any power groups, and those who continue to chant the mantra about law and order is potentially a very powerful thing. Because now we will be talking about our law and our order.

Using the information field as an example, this will mean the following. We will get a serious solvent demand for free social networks, free hosting, free domain registrars, free operating systems that do not prevent us from managing user devices, free hardware without hardware backdoors, and free money to pay for all the above. The network effect is exactly what the tools of freedom are currently lacking.

Today, it is a matter of honor for every American Republican to sell all their Apple and Alphabet shares, not to mention shitty Twitter, invest the proceeds in bitcoins, and use them to support those free market tools that best satisfy their client demand for the free exchange of information, money, and goods, for self-defense, for building peace and order around themselves, for the destruction of the aggressors’ property, for provoking discord among them, and for tools that ensure the state’s blindness, whether through anonymizing network actions or paralyzing the will of the overseers. Gouging out the Cyclops’ eye is an important part of the strategy.

The enemy is fucked – we grow stronger