When I read about Navalny’s poisoning, I felt completely hopeless. This year, ruling regimes all over the world have finally gone off the rails and have already managed to cause an unimaginable amount of damage to people. And it’s only August! And there is no reason to believe that 2020 is just an anomaly and that things will settle down later. In short, I wanted to fully retreat into internal emigration. To a place where there are no political news, where you have no idea what new orders the disposers of other people’s lives are giving, where there is only a market around—peaceful, cozy, and benevolent. To the place where all decent people actually belong.
I beg you: please, do not feed yourselves to the Leviathan. Stop with these pickets of yours, for which you will be fined—one; jailed for a day—two; given a criminal case—three. Stop the performances with Putin dolls and other risky nonsense. This will not shame the bandits in power. This does not help the victims of the bandits. It simply forces the security forces to turn their extremely unfriendly attention toward you, with a predictable result. You cannot be proud of being a victim of the regime. You should be proud of causing damage to the regime with impunity. But be proud in silence, otherwise, the impunity will turn into a failure.
One should act openly only when backed by power. Until then, we are partisans in this war declared upon us by the state. We must not be visible. Only grotesque rumors should be known about us—that we are everywhere, that 90% of the country’s economy is in the shadows, that no one follows the regime’s orders except for completely naive weirdos, that only suckers keep their money in fiat while the right people keep it exclusively in crypto, that official employment for a normal person is just a smokescreen for shadow earnings, that a normal person has contacts for every occasion, and it is thanks to them, not the state, that he peacefully prospers.
Of course, it is not like that now. But such rumors and beliefs have the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is why it is useful for us to broadcast them. This is a far more effective struggle against the regime than rallies or, Lord forgive me, anti-corruption investigations. Against any regime, not necessarily Putin’s. Against the phenomenon of political power as such.
A video of atypical content has been released on Libertarian band. One of the team members, Alexei Nefedov, also works in a precinct election commission. He decided to join the strike of election commission members and briefly explains the motives why other members of election commissions should follow his example.
For my part, I will add that on one hand, it is useful for as many election commission members as possible to strike, and on the other — it is useful to create as much workload as possible for those remaining, so that they curse everything and regret not joining the strikers. Call the commission to your home; for once, this is allowed for everyone, so we should take advantage of it and let them run around. Are we agorists or what?
I heard an interesting thought from Ekaterina Schulmann last night—that the difference in the style of protests in the US and Russia is not related to some special “slave mentality” of Russians, but simply to what is customary. Russia, in her words, is more similar to Scandinavia in this sense: in both places, people protest modestly, expressing a gloomy silent reproach, without all your outbursts of anger, shouting, and arson. If you go out to protest against injustice, you are a decent person, and decent people do not scream on the street, and they do not beat people.
Similarly, rallies in Russia are not intended for listening to whoever is rambling on stage. The speakers talk for YouTube, meaning for those who didn’t come to the rally, but want to feel the atmosphere and leave a like. But the people came to socialize with one another and to be happy that many like-minded people share their position. They certainly understand that, formally, they have formulated demands, and that pressure must be put on the authority to make them fulfill these demands, but they will not go storm the Kremlin, because decent people do not do things that way. They would rather sign a resolution.
This is precisely why Russian agorism takes on some characteristics of AUE. Agorism is not so much about the state dying of starvation, but about a moral choice. By avoiding interaction with the state and especially avoiding payments to it, a person simply feels morally cleaner.
That is exactly why any calls to chip in to help people pay their finesy are so infuriating to me. How can you consciously call upon people to get dirty by making payments to the state, and moreover, voluntarily act as the state’s tax agents? You go out to the street to express your reproach to the state, you unfurl a banner, you get detained, you get a summons to court, the court imposes a fine. Well, express your reproach once more and refuse to pay right there in court. Let them replace it with arrest or carry a wardrobe out of your house. They will wreck your house at any moment anyway, as soon as they want to, especially if you choose the tactic of open confrontation with the regime.
Russian libertarians are now pushing the hashtag #russianlivesmatter and holding single-person pickets against the extrajudicial killings committed by Russian security forces. I support this hype. But when in a week they start collecting donations for the fines of detained activists, I will be spitting in their direction. Just warning you in advance.
I will not condemn liberals who value the institution of the state itself, as something that brings law and order, for paying their fines. For them, this is an element of law and order. They will legally challenge this fine in court, hoping to fix a bad state. These are their rituals for maintaining purity, and this can be respected, although one can still hope for their enlightenment.
I have promoted agorism quite a bit here, and you may have gotten the impression that it is the only worthy way to fight the state: minarchism quickly stalls, panarchism also bogs down in the very first stages of implementation, and only agorism is indestructible, actually helps many people live, and forms useful qualities in them, meaning it strengthens itself. Nevertheless, it has its downsides. Today I will try to bring them together, but, of course, I will provide a counter-thesis for every thesis, because the goal of the post is not to induce gloom.
As a reminder, by agorism I mean any non-violent entrepreneurship that is either directly prohibited by the state or, at the very least, not regulated by it in any way.
Thesis 1. Due to state opposition, the agorist must spend effort on disguising their activities or other ways to stay out of harm’s way. The costs for this are not zero even for micro-businesses, and they grow rapidly as the scale of the enterprise increases.
Counter-thesis. Russians, as well as subjects of other natural states, might object that for white businesses in their jurisdictions, the costs of opposing state raiding also grow rapidly with the success of the enterprise; therefore, it is important to hide turnover and profit not only to avoid taxes, but also so that the security forces do not seize the enterprise itself.
Thesis 2. Speaking of raiders. Besides state ones, there are also private ones. Black businesses cannot use state protection from such raiding and are forced to defend themselves with their own resources, and the costs for this also grow rapidly as the scale of activity increases.
Counter-thesis. Russians or subjects of other natural states will pat you, you naive soul, on the head upon hearing the words “state protection,” and then tell you many grim tales. De facto, the forceful seizure of business in such jurisdictions is a public-private partnership, where the state seizes and a private person buys for pennies, or where a private person seizes and the state confirms their right through its court, or, finally, where the state pressures lawlessly until the business is rewritten to a private individual.
Thesis 3. It is difficult for an agorist to maintain their libertarian purity—on the black market, they will quite quickly be forced to engage in forceful entrepreneurship themselves, or cooperate with forceful entrepreneurs, or fall into a vassal dependency on them. Legal activity will not make the question of deals with conscience so acute.
Counter-thesis. Yes, this is not ruled out; much depends on the situation. In some places, every street vendor is forced to pay off the mafia, while in others, every government employee may be sent to a pro-government rally or forced to vote according to their boss’s instructions. So legality or illegality itself guarantees nothing, and one will still have to defend their principles, simply out of self-respect.
Thesis 4. The idea of starving the state through agorism could work in the USA, where small business constitutes a significant share of the economy, but in Russia, it languishes on the brink of extinction, and its share of taxes in the state budget is small. Therefore, in Russia, with its gigantomania, agorism will not be able to fulfill its declared task.
Counter-thesis. It is precisely the small business operating “in the white” that languishes on the brink of extinction, which only increases the attractiveness of agorist practices. Nevertheless, I am forced to agree: as long as agorists fundamentally fly below the radar, they will not have a significant influence on the state; for the failure to pay money to the state from scattered individual secret practices to turn into a powerful campaign of civil disobedience, the legitimacy of the state must be seriously undermined by its own failures. The Russian state is currently handling this task confidently; we must seize the moment.
And in conclusion, I will reinforce the message given at the beginning of the article. The main task of agorism in today’s Russia is educational. Nothing rid one of paternalism in their own consciousness better than crude practice. And without eradicating paternalism, you cannot abolish the state.
My channel has a VK mirror run by one of the readers. I don’t monitor it myself, so if anything interesting appears in the comments, let me know in private messages. In particular, the description of a business idea for an agorist prompted Alexander Tatarkov, whose YouTube channel I have already recommended here once, to provide a detailed supplement, which I decided to put into a separate post.
I will allow myself to generalize a bit and formulate the main principles of agorism.
1. Work with a private client, not an organization. A private individual doesn’t care whether you paid taxes or not. 2. Work for cash. Only cash can be “black.” (a reminder from Ancap-chan: Bitcoin is cash) 3. Do not underestimate barter. On paper, no money passes through at all, yet each party gets what they wanted. 4. Corruption is not bad, but good. You have an agent in the enemy’s camp (the state). You are not giving money to the enemy (the state). You reduce the official’s dependence on the state by providing them with an alternative income. He is your accomplice. He will cover for you because you are the compromising material on him. And he is more interested than you are in ensuring your scheme is not exposed. 5. Sell things that are impossible to account for or count. For example, portions of lunches, or booklets, or business cards (printing). 6. The purchase of materials should also be in “black” cash. 7. Avoid cashless payments, even to a personal card. Let the client transfer money to someone you owe. My clients even paid for my daughter’s music school! This way, it’s as if you did nothing. Your creditor doesn’t care who paid your debts. And the state only collects taxes from one transaction. 8. A wonderful scheme involving the gifts of nature. No purchasing needed. The money is “clean,” completely black and untraceable. For example, in the 90s, we harvested cedar nuts. Sold them under the table for cash. It’s impossible to prove how much was sold. 9. Working with things that cannot be touched. For example, design. You create a design, you receive money. From whom, for what—try and figure it out. You might not have even seen this person! They sent you the order via WhatsApp, received the sketch by email. They topped up your phone balance for payment. 10. And various on-site or at-home services. Like computer repair, manicures, apartment renovations, dog training/walking. Even if the tax office comes to you via an advertisement, you say that there have been no clients yet. When the first one appears, I’ll get a patent. Proving that half the city is served by you can only be done through an informant. Well, you just have to work properly so that no one informs on you…
Something like that. This is the first thing that came to mind. Much of it is from personal experience in the 90s. I consciously discarded criminal schemes. Perhaps I missed a lot. The main thing here is to outline the direction of thought.
Mikhail Pozharsky has released a very good video about the illusion of control. Be sure to watch it in full if you haven’t already, and I, as usual, will provide the key points as I understand them.
The experience of falling into a hopeless situation (one in which the subject’s position does not depend on their efforts) triggers the development of learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness sharply reduces the subject’s competitive potential in situations where their actions actually do make a difference.
An important psychological defense against learned helplessness is the illusion of control. In a hopeless situation, one can believe that something still depends on them, and thus learned helplessness will not arise.
However, the rituals of psychological defense designed to create an illusion of control can themselves worsen the hopeless situation.
Therefore, the skill of reflection is more effective, where the subject analyzes what they can actually control and what they cannot, and does not waste strength on the illusion of control, accepting force majeure as it is.
Such a skill is formed through the experience of independently finding a way out of difficult situations, and in no other way.
Therefore, creating cumbersome centralized structures and shifting the responsibility for everything onto them is an illusion of control, whereas a real fight against difficulties implies a decentralized approach based on personal responsibility. Period.
This is why, having outlined three main paths toward ancap — minarchism, panarchism, and agorism — I pay special attention specifically to agorism.
One can start a political party, like the big shots do, hold rallies, like the big shots do, and believe that through political pressure you are somehow influencing the policies pursued by the authorities — and when asked why life isn’t getting better, answer that the efforts undertaken are insufficient, and not a hundred thousand, but a million people must take to the streets.
One can propose reforms to create functional competing jurisdictions, dream of Facebook citizenship or the Bitnation project, and when asked why none of this is being implemented, answer that everything is heading that way anyway, but it would be good to double the propaganda efforts.
Or one can simply make a deal and not pay a tax. Or bypass an inconvenient ban. Or invent a service that is useful to people but invisible to the state’s servants. This is no longer an illusion of control. This is control itself. Through such things, a person learns to independently find a way out of difficult situations. And if they find themselves in conditions where they cannot control the possibility of getting out of the situation, they will already be resistant to learned helplessness, and will not fall back on rituals for the sake of an illusion of control.
One can remain an atheist in the trenches under fire. While one is shitting their pants and another is praying, the agorist digs the trench deeper.
For example, I want to open a cafe. Opening a cafe in the city center, I run a high risk of losing money to the state. How can I avoid this, and is it even worth risking opening an illegal business in modern Russia with a physical space and people inside? It feels like agorism right now is only about selling substances, but I don’t want to sell substances on Tor; I want to run, for example, a cafe, and there is absolutely not that kind of anonymity—you need people to know about it, and it needs to be out in the open. That is completely different from the substances market, for instance, where you can do business via Tor. Furthermore, if some problems with the authorities arise, the courts and law enforcement are monopolized, and no one will protect me from the arbitrary actions of tax officials. What should I do? Wait until avoiding taxes becomes the norm? Grease palms with bribes? Then the money will go to government officials and increase their interest in creating problems (so there would be more bribes). It’s some kind of vicious circle.
The question is accompanied by a donation in the amount of 0.0001985 btc
Agorist practices always imply a certain solidarity between counterparties against the state; this is what you should focus on when figuring out how to build your shadow business. For instance, if you set up a tax-free establishment in an open square in the city center, you have only one chance to avoid repressive pressure from the state: if, in response to such attempts, your customers immediately shoot the state representatives to hell, and the state knows this in advance. Outside the Chechen Republic, you cannot count on this, so let’s move on.
Since we are talking about the catering sector, I would suggest a different business model. Find a business center that isn’t too posh, with a lax access regime, visit every office, and present your simple commercial proposal—that every working day during the lunch break, you are ready to deliver a hot set meal at a fixed low price, with payment in cash. Here is a link to a Telegram bot; every morning until 11:00, an order can be placed by choosing one of three set meals, and from 13:45 to 14:15, the order will be delivered to the office. That, essentially, is the whole model. You will need to rent a kitchen space as a private individual, hire staff under the table—and get to work. You don’t even have to introduce yourself by any name; your name is the Telegram bot. Oh, and you’ll also need to spend some money on writing the bot. Alternatively, the bot can be replaced by a website, but that depends only on how widespread Telegram is in your city.
By the way, to avoid walking around with your advertisements in vain, when you promote your hot lunch service, bring some tasty pastries with you; they’ll go down great in offices whether it’s closer to lunch or closer to five o’clock. Then you won’t just be “some guy who came by with brochures,” but “those people with the buns who can also bring hot lunches.”
Of course, this model works better when there is some life in the offices, so the period of total self-isolation is not the best time to start such a business. On the other hand, right now you can organize free meals for doctors in hospitals, funded by donations. Some NGOs are already doing this; nothing stops you from starting to hone your organizational skills right now. Any charitable organization spends part of the collected funds on its own needs, so, as long as you aren’t greedy, you will at least be able to provide a minimal income for yourself and your employees, plus earn a reputation and visibility, and the object of charity will be grateful to you and, if necessary, will provide a ventilator out of turn.
Of course, this idea is not new, but there will be space for agorism in this sphere for a long time, especially outside the capitals
In medicine, there is a class of diseases known as autoimmune. These include muscle weakness (myasthenia gravis), type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and others. The essence of these diseases is that antibodies (killer cells) begin to recognize the host’s tissues (human, animal) as harmful and attack them. Most often, this happens after infection by a specific virus that, in terms of recognition by the host’s immunity, resembles healthy tissues (to put it simply). The antibodies simply fail to see the difference between whom to attack—the virus or healthy tissues—and kill everyone.
Autoimmune damage can be observed in any complex system, not just biological ones. For example, many users of computer antivirus software are familiar with the problem of the deletion of normal files that the antivirus mistook for malicious. Those who use browser extensions for ad blocking (AdBlock) know well that they often disrupt the normal operation of a website. This happens precisely because the blocker takes normal website code for an advertisement—and removes it.
The state also represents a complex system and can easily be subjected to an autoimmune attack. An interesting situation arises here—the more security forces and various services a state has, the more effective the autoimmune strike will be. This strategy bypasses the well-known assertion that “the state is stronger, it can easily crush you, therefore a forceful struggle is useless,” since for the forceful struggle against the state, it uses the state’s own force.
How can an autoimmune strike against the state be implemented? There are many ways; the main thing is to understand the general meaning. Here are some examples:
1) Realistic silicone masks of the faces of officials, security personnel, and other enemies of freedom (hereinafter – etatists). In them, we do whatever it takes to set up the etatists to be targeted by other security forces.
2) Imitation of the fingerprints of well-known etatists. Throw a bottle through an FSB window, and they “bottle” whoever we want.
3) Planting Trojan horses on the computers of etatists to proxy traffic. From there, one could, for example, engage in carding, stealing money from state banks and other organizations linked to bandits, and spending it on the promotion of libertarianism. They will “come” specifically for the etatists (or they won’t come, deciding that these etatists have the right to steal money from the state—the main thing here is that another Magnitsky or even Navalny does not suffer from this—note by Ancap-chan).
4) Ordering drugs from the darknet to the addresses of etatists and reporting it to the proper authorities.
5) Not hesitating to send anonymous tips for any reason against etatists: smoking in a prohibited place, parking under a sign, cruel treatment of their own children, walking a dog without a muzzle, meetings with girls under 16, non-compliance with fire safety/labor protection/health and safety regulations/taxes/illegal immigrants, and other violations at enterprises owned by etatists.
6) Registering a SIM card in the name of an etatist and committing several victimless “crimes” using a smartphone that has never been used before.
Ancap-chan’s Comment
The tactic considered above is another tool from the agorist toolbox against the state, alongside the uber-retribution that you perceived so ambiguously, for agorism is not reduced to counter-economics alone. Counter-economics is its most important part, as those claiming a life without a state must be able to demonstrate that they can provide themselves with all the most important benefits of civilization without the state. However, the state must not only be undermined but also tamed, otherwise the home-tormentor will not perish.
Hello, government, we have illegal migrants on our roof!
It seems that no other post of mine has sparked as much discussion as the description of the uber-retribution concept. Perhaps it is worth breaking down the main arguments of the opponents.
Scientific novelty
It was rightly pointed out to me that similar functionality has already been implemented in Hydra and other similar darknet marketplaces, so I find it necessary to emphasize the differences from existing services, since they proved to be insufficiently articulated in the original post.
Ads placed on the service must be open. Why? 1.1. While classic hitman exchanges aim not to scare off the target, here the target’s knowledge of the pending retribution is part of the retribution. 1.2. The more widely a specific injustice becomes known, the greater the likelihood that third parties will add their own money to the prize pool (both those affected by similar actions of the target of retribution, and simply those who are not indifferent). 1.3. The target of retribution is given a chance to settle things amicably.
The already mentioned possibility of crowdfunding the prize pool (although a similar mechanism is used by prediction markets, where a large number of people can place a bet on a death).
Third parties can apply their own expertise to the provided proofs—both proofs of injustice and proofs of the completed retribution.
And beyond this, such an aggregator of retribution requests must possess far more powerful usability than just a message board; otherwise, it will fail to gain sufficient popularity, without which there will be no network effect, and without a network effect, most requests in the service will remain a voice crying in the wilderness.
Ethics
It was pointed out that this tool could easily be used to carry out attacks on the innocent: all sorts of freaks, gays, drug addicts, lovers of voluntary sex with minors, and so on.
To this, I can say that in a society where such attacks find mass demand, people do not need a special application; they will happily stone an undesirable person anyway, or demand that their relatives commit an honor killing. In our case, the possibility of public retribution is organized against those who would be difficult to deal with without hiding: primarily, people like the hypothetical Petrunko.
At the same time, one must realize that the executor of the retribution risks getting hit back from the target, from state representatives, or even from random passers-by—if they act carelessly and get caught. At the moment the retribution is carried out, they look like the criminal to all witnesses. But, by the way, such an executor could perfectly well be a state representative, for whom it would be easier to evade responsibility.
Retribution is not justice
Retribution, normally, is only part of the justice process, while the proposed mechanism somehow ignores the judicial process: the sentence is passed by the initiator of the request themselves.
It seems to me that designing a universal instrument of justice, where investigation, trial, and punishment are all provided within a single service, is excessively cumbersome. I also want to point out to the public that there are currently no major problems with investigating injustice: this is handled by projects like Scanner and Russian Elephant, FBK, Bellingcat, and a huge number of other independent agencies. Problems arise at the stage of issuing and implementing sentences, because this area, unlike investigation, is monopolized by the state.
So I focused on expanding exactly this bottleneck. Let diligent journalists provide the facts and the evidence base—and through Wanted, a third party, having no direct connection to the hypothetical FBK, organizes the retribution. Meanwhile, by the way, several competing requests can be created for the same case. For example, one person might order a splash of green ink in the eye of the aforementioned Petrunko, while another orders acid. Which contract will more people support? Which contract will be executed? The market will decide that. Let’s trust the market.
Or perhaps no one will order this patriot-statist at all: what a brave young fellow he is
In the video about anarcho-capitalism, I fantasized about the possibility of Uber-police providing security on the streets.
Of course, right now such a service has little prospect of being implemented because the state jealously guards its monopoly on police functions. Nothing would stop police provocateurs from DDoS-ing the service with false calls, or even using paramilitaries to deal with well-meaning people rushing to help upon a call—whether driven by the heart or by profit. And the service itself would unlikely be able to gain a sufficient number of users while remaining illegal.
However, certain anarcho-capitalist services for the private production of security can be organized today within the framework of purely agorist practices. And first and foremost, I am talking about Uber-retribution.
Imagine a mobile application with the following functionality.
A user launches the app and anonymously uploads information about a certain injustice, accompanying it with a proper evidentiary base: photos, videos, links to independent testimonies, and so on. Then they specify exactly what punishment they consider acceptable for the perpetrator, as well as the amount they are willing to offer to whoever undertakes to ensure this punishment.
Another user has the opportunity to see in this application what injustices fill the world and, if they wish, add their own funds to those already promised for particular cases.
A third user has the opportunity, after choosing a case to their liking, to carry out the requested retribution—and provide proof. Then anyone wishing to do so can independently verify whether the retribution actually took place and leave their opinion on it. Those who reserved their money for the administration of justice can either perform the verification themselves, trust the opinion of third-party experts, or grant the right to manage the prize fund to someone else, for example, the author of the original description of the injustice—though not necessarily to them, and more on that below.
As everyone who placed their money in the prize fund becomes convinced that the retribution has indeed occurred, they release their funds, and their bitcoins go into the wallet of the person who identified themselves as the one who carried out said retribution. One could get fancy here with smart contracts and multi-signatures, use the principle of how OpenBazaar works, or a banal centralized escrow mechanism, although the latter is undesirable as it would mean the prize money is stored in the service’s wallets, which is potentially unsafe. I am not competent enough in crypto-technologies to unequivocally point to the best desired implementation of this specific mechanism.
And as additional functionality, the application could include the possibility of private messaging between service users, a rating system for those who administer retribution, a system of various medals and other pats on the back for those who help co-finance the restoration of justice, search by map, by categories of villainy, and so on.
As is easy to see, the service is quite universal and, with proper quality of execution, allows everyone to remain anonymous except for the object of retribution and the victim (who, however, can claim they had nothing to do with it and ordered no retribution, which may well be true). Also, the object of retribution, upon finding an announcement calling for all sorts of punishments upon their head, can anonymously contact the claimant and try to reach a friendly agreement. Although one cannot rule out attempts to reach an agreement through threats or to eliminate the claimant altogether—and for this very reason, it would be useful to be able to delegate the right to authorize payment to a third-party auditor via the app; then additional violence against the victim would in no way protect the aggressor, as the victim would no longer have the right to stop the launched mechanism of retribution.
Finally, nothing prevents any law enforcement officer, upon discovering information about a certain crime, from treating it as a criminal report—and making some extra money on the side. This would be quite in the spirit of the agorist doctrine of corrupting government servants so they get used to working for people rather than official superiors.
At the same time, it will be extremely problematic by law to hold anyone in the chain of application users accountable, provided, of course, they are not caught red-handed.
Of course, such an application would unlikely be placed in official stores, so one would have to limit it to the circle of Android users and suggest downloading the APK from the project’s website—but this is a trivial inconvenience. Again, all functionality can be perfectly provided via a website to avoid being tied to a phone altogether.
All that’s left is to come up with a name. Without straining my imagination too much, I would call it something simple and clear to all consumers of Hollywood products, meaning all inhabitants of the globe: Wanted.
Besides a service that allows organizing decentralized retribution, it would also be useful to have functionality for collecting evidence: a way to start recording video to the cloud with literally one button, and preferably to stream it, and to do all this in the background with the screen off. Of course, it is important to record the filming time and geolocation, and to have the ability to send a distress signal via SMS to a group of contacts. Various decoys would be useful, allowing the simulation of deleting information from the phone, fake passwords, secret disk space, and so on. Similar applications exist, and nothing prevents them from being posted in the store—but I haven’t heard of all such functionality being gathered into one convenient product yet. I would name such an application vividly: They’re beating our people!
If you have heard of anyone developing something similar, please let me know. If there are ideas for implementation—we can discuss them.
