Opponents of the idea of armed struggle against the state often discourage people from it by frightening them with the power of the state’s army. In reality, however, it can be considered that the state has no army at all! And this is not an exaggeration — it is simply unfit for this task. Only the lightly armed police and Rosgvardia will be able to realistically oppose anti-etatist fighters.
Below is an excerpt from a popular book about the decline of the era of territorial states, which every libertarian should certainly read!
“Facing armed resistance from the occupied population, the Germans soon discovered that it was the most modern components of their armed forces that were the most useless. Until then, their tanks, artillery, fighters, and bombers had experienced no particular difficulty in smashing the world’s most advanced armies to pieces (including the armies of three leading world powers, whose forces significantly exceeded their own), but, facing small detachments of partisans who were not an army, did not wear military uniforms, did not fight in open battle and tended to dissolve either into the rural landscape or among the surrounding population, the German troops found themselves completely bewildered. Like other conquerors after them, the Germans learned the lesson that when conducting counter-insurgency operations, practically the only forces that could prove useful were lightly armed police, infantry, mountain troops, special forces, signal troops and, above all, intelligence of all kinds. All of them had to move on foot or using light vehicles, preferably those that could move across rugged terrain. Outside of cities, they could be reinforced by reconnaissance aircraft, and in those rare cases when the enemy managed to be caught by surprise and forced into open battle — by a small number of artillery pieces and tanks. And there was no room in these operations for the pride of the Wehrmacht — tank and mechanized divisions, and moreover, since the scale of the operations was very small, for any divisions at all.
The discovery made by the Germans (and to a lesser but significant extent by their Japanese allies) during the Second World War has since been repeated by practically all major armed forces in the world. Some of the first to encounter guerrilla warfare at the very beginning of the postwar period were the French and the English. In terms of brutality, their operations were far from those of the Germans; and yet, especially regarding French actions in Indochina and Algeria, they were ruthless enough. In both countries, the attempt by the French, using the most modern weapons available to them, to re-establish control over their colonies led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction by fire and sword of entire villages and even regions. Although the English did not go so far (the largest number of civilian casualties in their colonial campaigns was approximately 10,000 people during the fighting in Kenya), they also frequently resorted to the death penalty, torture, and destroyed entire villages, whose inhabitants were relocated to concentration camps! Just like the Germans, the English and French armed forces discovered that it was precisely the most powerful weapons and weapon systems that were the most useless, being either too expensive, too fast, too large, too inaccurate, too indiscriminate, or all of the above simultaneously. As for the most powerful weapon, i.e., nuclear, it was simply inapplicable against an enemy whose forces were so dispersed and so elusive”
Martin van Creveld “The Rise and Decline of the State,” p. 485
To be honest, specifically in Russia, it is not particularly easier for people to realize that they won’t be smeared across the asphalt by tanks, but will instead be limited to being smeared across the asphalt by clubs. Meanwhile, there are more carriers of clubs and other light weaponry, specifically hired for war against their own citizens, in Russia than there are those hired or conscripted for war with foreign powers. So I would emphasize not so much how poorly these forces are equipped and how ineffective their tactics are, but how motivated they are — this is precisely the key factor in deterring armed civilian protest.
Meadowcroft analyzes the prediction formulated by Hayek in his famous political pamphlet “The Road to Serfdom” and shows that the prediction turned out to be incorrect: not only is minarchism unstable, but so is totalitarianism, whereas a mixed economy actually is stable. Using rich material, he demonstrates that today, the conditional norm is approximately 40-50% of GDP redistributed by the state. States that redistribute less strive to redistribute more, in full accordance with Hayek’s logic, while states that redistribute more face serious market inefficiency and social discontent—and after some time return to a stable state. Moreover, developed states that have reached this norm today confidently hold high positions in economic and political freedom rankings.
On June 13, Ved Neumann released a review in which he explained the phenomenon described by Meadowcroft through the hypothesis that the modern state is a form of secular religion. According to Ved, this explains, for example, why the stability of the welfare state is paradoxically provided by its opacity. Further, Ved predicts that the transparency brought about by the information revolution will indeed make this religion marginal, and the modern welfare state will not be able to survive this, being replaced by panarchy.
However, it makes sense to question the very thesis that the state stops expanding once it reaches a certain level of redistribution. Yes, it is true that direct levies cause discontent, and direct monopoly management of the economy undermines the foundation of economic growth. But in addition to the tax burden, there is also the regulatory burden, and many business representatives note that it can hinder work almost even more.
At the same time, by strengthening regulations, the state may even decrease the share of its presence in the economy. For example, with a single education standard and a single state exam, the state can boldly abandon the maintenance of schools: private schools will still be forced to engage in the same brainwashing, as the auditing authorities will demand of them. At the same time, it is unlikely that such a state of affairs will negatively affect the country’s position in freedom rankings—since ranking calculations evaluate access to education, not its content or the freedom to choose subjects.
State standards in many other sectors, from medicine to trade, or, for instance, vehicle technical inspections, can work in a similar way. All certification procedures can be extremely transparent and completely free of corruption (this is precisely what fundamentally distinguishes the first world from the third), but even the most pleasant packaging will only mask the continued movement along the same road described by Hayek.
So, the arrival of new transparency may not kill that very secular religion, but only lead to its reformation. Therefore, we would be better off assuming that no panarchy will build itself, and continuing our regular sermons.
I want to immediately point out the main point of his review, as all subsequent criticism will be based on this fact. Ved does not account for the difference between corporate (CorpETU) and ideological (PolitETU) jurisdiction providers. He himself is a supporter of the former, which is why a clear bias toward them is evident. CorpETU is a “cyberpunk world,” meaning ETUs that prioritize economic calculation and financial gain. PolitETU are, in essence, ideologized extraterritorial states where the criteria for membership are political views, culture, or religion. Examples could be socialist, Marxist, Catholic, Orthodox, traditionalist, transhumanist, or liberal ETUs.
Brief conclusion: Ved is completely right regarding the inapplicability of the containment doctrine (CD) to CorpETU (he promotes panarchy with an emphasis on them, so he thinks with some bias), but CD can certainly be used to “divide” the state into PolitETUs.
Next, I will try to analyze some points of this review separately.
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“The difference implicitly implied by you (which in fact is not a difference, as any separatist groups count on the same thing) is that people will consider your actions just and will not view you as terrorists and crazy psychopaths. But this is just another delusion, stemming from the fact that you think many different people can be convinced of the justice of some single ethical theory or political paradigm. ‘Since I believe in something, others believe in it or will believe if I tell them about it.’ They will not believe. Even without considering propaganda, they will not believe. For the absolute overwhelming majority of people, the state is not something bad, evil, a monopoly on violence, or even some single subject of social relations that needs to be opposed for some reason. Which is fair, because it is not such a subject — all this is merely a conceptual simplification, based moreover on a certain set of axioms. But more on this later.”
Polls show exactly the opposite — trust in the state is constantly declining even in developed countries like the USA, and is currently at a minimum level, while the polarization of views is at a maximum. This is excellent soil for the legitimization of PolitETU in the eyes of the majority of the population. Of course, a powerful advertising campaign is needed.
Supporters of the nation-state and democracy were also considered crazy at first, and a decade later it became a mainstream idea. The same can be said about the abolition of slavery.
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“If the system is fragile (very authoritarian with a strong power vertical tied to one person), then with the removal of this person, everything will simply collapse like a house of cards and a civil war will begin. It is not clear how the formation of ten warring Thailands in place of Thailand will help the hypothetical systeders; most likely, sooner or later, not one army, but two or three will come to them, and they will be much more aggressive. It is also unclear how this will help the establishment of ancap or ETU anywhere else. Local residents will definitely not be grateful to ancaps.”
In the original article, the emphasis was placed on the protection of extraterritorial sovereignty, and these systeders (who tried to create a very small but territorial state) were cited only as an interesting example. CD is indeed applicable mainly for the creation of ETUs, but not for territorial separatism.
Ancaps and CorpETUs might not be welcomed in a hypothetical Thailand immediately. But there are certainly ideological disagreements there, and they could become a good basis for turning Thailand not into ten new territorial states, but into, say, five PolitETUs.
> “More to come. How do you intend to define the target for your attack or your influence? Every state system consists of thousands of functionaries, and it is practically impossible to figure out who among them is an important actor by observing from the outside. By being interested in politics, we know a few dozen key figures in the Russian establishment, and often these are not the people that foreign journalists would notice (Indeed, how do you understand whether Milonov, Mizulina, or the head of Roskomnadzor possess real power?). And what about neighboring Turkey? How much do you know about the actors in Erdogan’s government and the balance of power in their country? What about New Guinea or Ecuador?”
On one hand, I want to point out that the victim always knows best where to direct the retribution, so even if it is decentralized, it will be targeted accurately enough; on the other hand, for a deterrent effect, indirect involvement of the object of retribution in the aggression is sufficient — for example, it could be one of the deputies who voted for a repressive norm, or a key government contractor whose affiliation is beyond doubt, even if some details remain in the shadows.
> “What such terrorist activity can really do is harm democracy by redistributing power between public and non-public figures in the governments of many countries (As we saw after September 11, 2001).”
It is worth distinguishing between terrorist activity (against the civilian population) and extremist activity (against the state). Extremism will most likely look positive in the eyes of the population (as I noted earlier, the majority of the population even in wealthy countries now hates the state). As for the destruction of democracy, it only plays into the hands of libertarians, as it legitimizes the territorial monopoly of the state.
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“And finally, it is simply madness to fight a knowingly stronger opponent using his own methods.”
What “same” methods?! The opponent is territorial; his objects are fixed and located in the same places. ETUs, however, are not tied to a territory, and an attempt to arrest even one member of an ETU will likely lead to huge collateral casualties (which is unacceptable damage for the authorities).
> “The success of Bitcoin is that it is a completely new technology that the state system has never encountered and has no idea what to do with.”
Nevertheless, the state has unerringly figured out how to maximize the difficulty of wide Bitcoin adoption and, if it wishes, easily declares its use for purchasing legal goods illegal. Law-abiding citizens are forced to remain in fiat for everyday purchases. Similarly, the state can hinder the activities of extraterritorial jurisdictions in areas where people are forced to act openly and offline. But this defensive tactic is unable to bring the state victory, both in the case of Bitcoin and in the case of ETU.
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“It is impossible to forbid performing mathematical calculations on your own computer (which is what it was originally intended for), which means it is impossible to forbid mining. It is also impossible to forbid the exchange of data about the results of these calculations (how do you imagine that?), which can happen even offline, which means the circulation of Bitcoin cannot be forbidden. Because it is not money. Blockchain can be camouflaged as something as far removed from money as possible, so that not even the most absurd regulation can do anything to it without simultaneously forbidding the Internet and computers. This is exactly the point of Bitcoin. And this is exactly how the confrontation with the state should look — through technical and intellectual superiority over its slow and clumsy system, using all its flaws and weaknesses inseparable from the state, filling all the gaps in the legal, political, and economic system. And finally, creating an alternative that is impossible within the framework of the existing state system, but surpasses it in all parameters.”
I completely agree here. Projects like Bitnation will greatly help the creation of ETUs.
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“And in the maximum volume, having achieved success, you will simply become ‘another intelligence agency,’ i.e., another machine of violence and another Gestapo, deciding who lives and who does not.”
Even if we consider a “hard scenario” (bloody meat grinder, realization of the futility of war, emergence of tolerance for people with different views, renunciation of territorial monopoly and the creation of competing ETUs), which is unlikely given the global trend toward humanization, the result will be a panarchy with peacefully coexistng people of various views, and by no means “another Gestapo.” History has a great example of such a transition — the emergence of tolerance toward non-believers and peaceful coexistence with them on one territory after the Reformation and the subsequent religious wars.
Yesterday I published an article by Bitarch “Minarchism is a Marginal Ideology”. In it, the author criticizes the minarchist approach, arguing that minarchists are unable to come to power through democratic means if they run openly on a minarchist platform.
Indeed, this thesis does not contradict history. The USA was formed as a result of a revolution, Georgian reforms happened after a revolution, Chilean reforms after a coup; in Singapore and New Zealand, minarchist reformers came to power through deception, broadcasting a social-democratic agenda before the elections. Only Margaret Thatcher was honestly elected under the banner of shrinking the state, and indeed honestly pursued it, but she failed to achieve stable success in this matter, and today statist reaction reigns supreme in Great Britain.
Bitarch concludes that minarchists, understanding their marginality, will gravitate toward violent methods of imposing their ideology, which gives him reason to state that from the perspective of the average person, minarchist politicians are liberal fascists. Naturally, such a loud thesis could not fail to provoke a sharp reaction.
Alex Kotov, host of the Crypto-Libertarian channel, published an article with objections today. Due to the somewhat disjointed nature of the article, it is difficult to comment on, so I will touch upon just a couple of theses.
Bitarch writes that a minarchist state assumes the unity of laws throughout the entire territory, meaning that conditional leftists will miss their leftist laws. Thus, they will simply vote against the minarchist party and keep their labor code, minimum wage, veteran benefits, and other achievements of the welfare state. Panarchy, however, assumes a peaceful separation, where each interest club has its own rules, including those regarding the organization of social security and the resolution of labor disputes.
Alex responds that the forced redistribution of income contradicts libertarianism, and therefore panarchy is not a variety of libertarianism, and accordingly, the article criticizes not only minarchism but libertarianism as a whole.
This is a slightly strange thesis, since within the framework of contractual relations, a subscription fee for an agreed package of services can be stipulated. Another matter is that any contract can be terminated at any moment; otherwise, it is already slavery. So it is not surprising that another of Alex’s theses — “minarchists leave only the function of ensuring the fulfillment of contracts to the state, regardless of the content of the contract” — will logically be perceived by any anarchist (and even a supporter of panarchy) as a very bad sign. It happens that people sign oppressive contracts because at that moment they see no other way to make ends meet. When circumstances change, they leave these oppressive relationships with a sense of deep satisfaction, and, of course, a court of a minarchist state that decides to demand compliance with the original terms of the contract at that moment will be perceived as a violation of justice. A well-known ancap like Mikhail Svetov speaks quite extensively and in detail about the importance of the fact that any contract can be refused.
Now, another argument against panarchy seemed quite interesting to me. Supporters of panarchy claim that free competition between contractual jurisdictions will lead to the victory of the most free in the competitive race, so that leftists will gradually dissipate on their own. However, in the real world, the opposite is observed. Free competition between states with different laws leads to the fact that freedoms are curtailed everywhere, and governments are happy to adopt each other’s experience specifically in curtailing freedoms. Thus, competition alone is not enough; a moral compass is needed. Therefore, natural law rules, and contractual law sucks.
Overall, this is a fairly strong argument, but I want to draw attention to a very important difference between territorial and extraterritorial jurisdictions. It is much easier for extraterritorial ones to expand. Take such a wonderful liberal territorial jurisdiction as Hong Kong. People are practically climbing over each other there, so great is the desire of residents of neighboring China to live under liberalism. If this jurisdiction were extraterritorial, there would be no need to go huddle on an island; you simply sign a contract and live under Hong Kong law, pay Hong Kong taxes, and receive Hong Kong social services. And if you want handouts in your old age, you enter into a contract with some leftist jurisdiction where you are entitled to a basic income. What will the competition between such jurisdictions lead to? Either leftist jurisdictions will begin to impose entry restrictions, admitting only the young and healthy, or they will break under the weight of the social burden.
So, progress in social mores occurs not by ethics alone, but also by the competition of economic systems.
In conclusion, I want to announce an article where I intend to bring ancap, minarchism, panarchy, and agorism into a more or less coherent picture. I hope to release it within a week and count on the fact that there will be fewer such disputes after that.
While reading Aleksei Shustov’s book “After the State”, I came across an interesting thought:
“Such ‘choices’ [the choice of ECU], obviously, provide a fundamentally different level of freedom and ensure real justice compared to choices in a majority democracy. The latter does not take into account individual differences and forces everyone to live by the rules of the majority. After all, if one person feels great in a system with broad independence and high responsibility, while another prefers social security and is ready for high taxes, then either one or the other will inevitably be oppressed in their self-realization.”
The author of this book cannot be called a libertarian in any way. Perhaps he had not even heard the word when he wrote his book. He arrived at the idea of panarchy purely from an understanding of the destructiveness of the “majority democracy” model, which has now become synonymous with the word “state.” Accordingly, he looks at the world impartially. Unlike many libertarian authors, Shustov takes into account the demands of broad layers of the population, whom some ideological libertarians contemptuously call “lefties.”
Be realistic — such people are the majority even in Switzerland, which is “ideal” for many libertarians. Active attempts to promote minarchist ideas did not yield tangible results even with full freedom of choice and huge funding. Let alone Russia, with its paternalistic mentality and impoverished population.
As can be seen from the quote from the book, a “lefty” will feel oppressed under minarchism and will offer the maximum possible resistance to the ruling party (most likely, simply not allowing the libertarian party to come to power). From the perspective of a conditional “average Joe,” minarchism is a certain form of “liberal fascism” — where liberal values are forcibly imposed on people who wish to live under paternalism (since under minarchism, courts hold a territorial monopoly, and laws are mandatory throughout the state’s territory).
It turns out that in the eyes of voters, minarchists will look exactly as “lefties” look in the eyes of libertarians. As a libertarian, would you vote for a “lefty” proposing to impose ideas of social justice on the whole society? I don’t think so. And will a “lefty,” seeing that you propose to impose the exact opposite on the whole society, vote for you? I don’t think so either. Given that the majority of society supports at least some form of social support, the electoral chances of minarchists tend toward zero. Many of them do not want to acknowledge this fact and begin to hint at the usefulness of applying physical violence against their opponents (“Pinochet’s helicopter tours”), showing that in their methods of struggling for power, they will not be inferior even to their extreme ideological opponents — the Stalinists.
To achieve electoral success, any libertarian party must either become a kind of “people’s party,” attracting people from as wide a spectrum of views as possible, or form a bloc with a left-wing party based on a shared agenda, which is somewhat harder to imagine. Perhaps the LPR should discard the idea of imposing liberal values and change its program from minarchist to panarchist? As history shows, the chances of success for such a program are very high (with it, Abraham Kuyper won the elections in the Netherlands — read the article on pillarization).
If you have followed Donald Trump’s election campaign, you have likely heard of his method of tailoring the political program to each group of voters. Every person has points of vulnerability in their position, and by pressing them, one can win them over. Mikhail Svetov also advises using this approach in his lecture Propaganda Tools in the 21st Century.
Let us attempt to identify large electoral groups and work with their primary fears regarding the state. Our goal is to evoke in these people a hatred for the institution of the state as a territorial monopoly on violence and to interest them in the ideas of libertarianism.
Many people belong to several categories at once; accordingly, libertarianism can be promoted to them from multiple positions simultaneously (for example, parents with children who are also entrepreneurs).
Some regulations described in the article may be absent in the country of residence of our “libertarian candidate.” For example, Russian legislation lacks liability for criticizing LGBT, which exists in Switzerland, while it conversely imposes liability for the propaganda of non-traditional sex. Here, one should explain to the person that any state regulation has a property of “position inversion.” It does not matter which side the state is currently on regarding a specific issue; the very fact that this area is regulated means that tomorrow the regulation may change to the opposite, because for currently oppressed groups, the state may seem like a natural tool for fighting for their interests, and they will use it. In the middle of the 20th century, the state repressed Alan Turing for homosexuality, but a few decades pass, and in the same country, they repress critics of LGBT. In West Germany, until 1977, the state prohibited women from working without their husband’s permission, and now it punishes men even for complimenting a girl within the framework of anti-harassment legislation. Thus, it is important to make people understand: the complete absence of state regulation is better than state regulation in your favor.
Now, let’s go through the groups
Entrepreneurs
1. State regulation prevents entry into the market or creates severe obstacles to doing business. You have an idea, but you cannot implement it due to prohibitions from the state. The state forces you to obtain licenses for many types of business, which consumes a lot of time and resources. Constant inspections (fire, sanitary, labor inspectorate) interfere with business operations. Infrastructure monopolies (electricity, gas, etc.) make business uncompetitive. Even if the building is your property, you often have no right to install a suitable sign or paint the building the color you want without permission from the local authorities.
2. High taxes prevent the ability to develop the business. Everything goes to the state rather than to the development of your enterprise. This is especially relevant in Russia for businesses where the primary share of costs consists of salaries.
3. The labor code significantly complicates the hiring and firing of employees. If an employee does not bring you profit, you cannot simply fire them; they can force you to reinstate them in the position through the court. You have to find various workaround maneuvers, which also increases your costs. You have no right to allow an employee to work more than a certain number of hours, even if they want to. The ability to hire for a probationary period is limited.
4. As soon as your asset seems interesting to some enterprising security officer, they can initiate criminal prosecution against you and seize the business. To prevent such an outcome, funds must also be spent, and this cannot provide a full guarantee of safety.
5. Bribes, kickbacks, and other non-tax costs increase the cost of doing business, complicate accounting, and carry risks of criminal prosecution.
6. Copyright and patent laws prevent you from conducting business normally (patent trolls, channel blocking of video bloggers for quoting or using music and video without complex procedures for acquiring rights to them).
7. If a new breakthrough industry appears that is not yet regulated, by default, many government officials consider such activity prohibited, so the business community has to ask for the introduction of regulations just to be allowed to work somehow. This applies, for example, to the use of cryptocurrencies or the sharing economy (Uber, AirBnB, energy).
Youth
1. Due to the obstacles faced by business, youth experience difficulties finding employment, let alone starting their own business.
2. For guys, conscription slavery is relevant, which has no practical sense in conditions where large conscript armies are completely ineffective.
3. State regulation of education means that one must study according to unified programs that took a long time to coordinate and have since become obsolete. Many subjects serve the function of indoctrination instead of transmitting current knowledge and skills. The humiliated position of teachers prompts them to vent aggression on equally powerless students. Schooling is paid for through taxes; parents who wish to homeschool their children do not receive tax deductions for this, so very few can afford an alternative to school. As a result, classes are formed by compulsion, and people forcibly driven into a collective are always in a prison, with corresponding rules.
4. A number of professions imply the mandatory presence of a state-standard higher education diploma, so even after school, the choice of further education methods is artificially hindered by the state.
Users of medical services
1. State clinics and hospitals have no interest in providing quality services, as their existence is already paid for by taxes, and customer reviews have no influence on funding. Those who wish to receive paid treatment pay twice — for compulsory health insurance and for paid services.
2. The cost of medicines is greatly inflated due to state regulation of their market entry, patent privileges, import restrictions, and customs duties.
3. An unjustifiably high entry threshold into the profession due to requirements handed down from above creates a shortage of specialists.
Public sector employees
1. The state, acting as an employer, often imposes restrictions on workers that are not written in any employment contracts. Forced participation in pro-government rallies and election falsifications, self-censorship in expressing one’s political position — all of this is quite humiliating.
2. The state hinders private business from developing, which is exactly why a person has to seek a safe harbor in public sector positions, although the pay is low and the worker is not respected.
3. In public sector professions, one spends more time filling out papers than actually working: the utility of the work for society becomes near-zero, and one works only for the approval of the superiors.
Communists
1. The state, according to Marx, is an instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling class. It is impossible to get rid of class oppression without getting rid of the state. Any ideas of nationalization are the transfer of the means of production from the people into the hands of the state, i.e., the ruling class of bureaucrats; therefore, on the contrary, one must demand the transfer of all means of production to the people.
2. In the nineties, there was a correct people’s privatization when members of labor collectives received shares, but the state retained control over the courts, police, and monetary emission, and over time either took property away from the people or depreciated it.
3. Bitcoin is the correct communist money. State slips of paper are issued in any quantity the state desires, while cryptocurrency is honestly backed by kilowatt-hours, in full accordance with the labor theory of value.
1. The state forces you to pay for abortions through taxes (thus taking indirect part in them), and in wealthier countries — for hormone therapy during gender reassignment surgeries for transgenders.
2. You are forbidden from refusing service to people (homosexuals, migrants, representatives of certain ethnicities and religions) with whom you do not wish to have any dealings (employment, renting housing, providing services), as your right to private discrimination is not recognized.
3. LGBT have already achieved a ban on their criticism in many Western states and will strive for this in Russia. Attempting to preserve existing state norms regarding the curtailment of their rights means waging a fruitless war; it is better to exclude such an unreliable ally as the state from the conflict before it stabs you in the back. Moreover, the conflict will resolve itself afterward.
4. In the nineties, there were sexual education lessons in school. Now — basics of religious cultures and secular ethics. Tomorrow they will invent some other mandatory requirement. You can never guess which lobbyist will be stronger; it would be more reliable to simply deregulate education so that everyone can choose which cultural norms their child will assimilate. Otherwise, we will reach a point where children undergo gender reassignment surgeries without your consent, as in Canada.
5. The state prohibits the possession of effective means of self-defense, and even on the path to acquiring permitted, low-effectiveness means, it has placed a heap of administrative hurdles. This not only deprives you of the right to self-defense but also undermines the defense capability of the entire country.
6. You are forbidden from killing an attacker, even if your life is in danger. Despite clarifications from the supreme court, real law enforcement practice is such that successful self-defense usually leads to a criminal case for exceeding the limits of necessary self-defense, which ends in long sentences. The state refused to adopt the Castle Doctrine, although the petition for its adoption gathered the necessary 100 thousand signatures on ROI.
7. Due to the peculiarities of how democracy functions, the state often gives in to various well-organized radical currents and groups. For example, under the influence of radical feminists, tomorrow you may be held accountable for harassment if you simply pay the bill for a woman at a restaurant. And under the influence of radical Islamists, you can already today be forced to apologize to Ramzan Akhmatovich.
Left-liberals, social democrats, supporters of social justice
1. The problem of corruption exists worldwide. Even in advanced countries like Sweden and Finland, corruption exists in large volumes; it is simply on a different level (large business) and very rarely becomes known. Soil for corruption arises wherever an official has the right to make a decision at their own discretion.
2. The state destroys “sanctioned” food products and prohibits entrepreneurs from distributing expired products for free (although they may be perfectly fit for human consumption). This is lobbying for the interests of owners of agro-holdings and food industry enterprises.
3. You hope in vain that a progressive income tax will help establish social justice: in countries with a progressive tax, wealth inequality remains very high. This happens because large business has many tricks to reduce the tax burden, and the primary weight of taxation still falls on the middle class. You do not have the opportunity to move your business offshore, classify restaurant dinners and business jet flights as representative or travel expenses, or secure state subsidies and benefits. You will be assured that robbery is useful because the rich will be robbed more, but no, it is you who will be robbed more.
4. The state spreads unscientific nonsense about the harm of marijuana, resulting in many harmless consumers sitting in prison and research on its medical use being stalled.
5. The minimum wage, the ban on discrimination during hiring, and other labor market regulations only increase unemployment, as they complicate obtaining a job for those whose labor would bring the employer less benefit at the same pay. People with disabilities, women with children, pre-retirees, and people without work experience simply will not be able to find employment, although they could do so if they had the opportunity to dump their prices on the labor market.
Pirates
Intellectual property protection laws hinder the free exchange of information and its accessibility to underprivileged strata of the population. They also limit the possibilities for creativity (due to the ban on creating derivative content) and scientific research (many scientists are unable to pay for access to collections of scientific articles and journals). Patents on medicines make them prohibitively expensive for low-income citizens, and many of them die from diseases that could be cured. So-called intellectual property is simply state privileges. You are trying to forbid the state from establishing such privileges, but why not consider the possibility of removing the state as such?
Copyright-lobbyists
Along with intellectual property protection, you will inevitably receive censorship of your content from the state. Moreover, the lion’s share of funds will still be appropriated by various intermediaries forcibly introduced by the state, such as RAO, while you will get pennies. Or you might even be forced, for example, to publish in a scientific journal at your own expense, but the journal will keep all rights to use the publication, and the state will fully support it. Would it not be better to practice non-violent methods of monetization instead of involving such an inconvenient intermediary as the state? The state will bring you more costs from a ruined reputation than you will gain benefits from how it protects your intellectual property.
Eco-activists
1. Environmental protection is of little concern to the state. An official is more likely to allow an oligarch friend to destroy the environment for a large bribe (or even for the prospect of increasing tax collections as a result of “economic growth”) than to give in to environmental activists.
2. Private ownership of forests, lakes, and hunting grounds will create a powerful incentive to protect the environment and engage in the breeding of endangered species of animals and plants. There is no need to fear that the owner will forbid you from walking in the forest, picking mushrooms, or having a picnic; they will more likely make efforts to ensure that people vacation specifically on their property and will try to provide them with decent service.
3. If a private company causes damage to nature and people suffer because of it, it can at least be sued, but when an ecological catastrophe is caused by the state, there is no one to hold accountable.
Parents with children
1. The state forbids you from choosing the style of upbringing that you consider more correct.
2. There is a mandatory educational program with many subjects that do not provide current knowledge and skills but simply serve as indoctrination. You can only manage additional education, which will finally take away the remnants of your child’s leisure time.
3. If you wish to provide your child with quality home education, no one will reimburse you for the taxes paid for the maintenance of state schools.
4. Child protective services can take your child (even forever, depriving you of parental rights) for quite harmless things — lack of renovation in the apartment, a child’s complaints that parents did not buy them a gift, an untidy appearance of the schoolchild, and so on. The quite sound idea that a child has a right to protection not only from strangers but also, if necessary, from parents, has resulted in the fact that often the family as a whole is repressed.
Unemployed
1. The state has over-regulated the labor market and burdened salaries with huge taxes, so an employer cannot afford to hire you officially, and if they break the law anyway and hire you “under the table,” it is more profitable to take an illegal migrant; they are cheaper and will not go to the labor inspectorate to complain. This corrupts employers and demotivates them from creating humane working conditions.
2. In return, you receive a pittance of a benefit from the state if you register as unemployed. You will be tossed the most illiquid vacancies from the state employment exchange, be slowly trained in courses with no guarantee of employment afterward, and be required to constantly prove that you are still unemployed; thus, if you get a temporary unofficial part-time job, you will have to hide this fact from the state to avoid losing your status.
Victims of repression and victimless crime laws
This is a very broad and diverse group. This includes political prisoners, those held accountable for the use of psychoactive substances, violators of various licensing restrictions, those accused of pedophilia for claiming that maturing happens differently for everyone and the age of consent is a harmful thing — and even those fined for crossing an empty street on a red light.
To them we explain: it is impossible to replace bad repressive laws with good ones; they can only be abolished, otherwise not you, but someone else will become their victim. If no private person suffered or was put in danger, then there is no need for punishment. If you yourself suffered or were put in danger due to your actions (for example, not wearing a seatbelt), then it is even more pointless to punish you additionally — you have already punished yourself. Therefore, one must demand from the state the abolition of all laws implying punishment for a victimless crime, and if it resists, this is an excellent reason to abolish the state: its very existence is already a punishment for innocent people.
Pensioners
This is the most difficult category of people for the promotion of libertarianism. But even pensioners can be interested in the dismantling of the state.
Every working resident of Russia contributes 22% of their earnings to the Pension Fund of Russia (PFR). In 2018, the average salary in Moscow was 80 thousand rubles, and the average pension was 19 thousand rubles. Suppose a person works from age 25 to 60 with some breaks, and as a result, pays contributions to the PFR for 30 years. If they had not paid insurance contributions to the PFR but instead saved them in their own bank account (for simplicity, let’s assume that the deposit interest rate equals inflation, meaning it can be ignored in calculations), they would accumulate 80,000 * 0.22 * 12 * 30 = 6.3 million rubles. As of 2018, the average life expectancy in the Russian Federation is 73 years. The remaining life expectancy after retirement is thus 13 years. Accordingly, if you were not the state, your annuity would be 6,300,000 / (13 * 12) = 40 thousand rubles. This amount represents the state’s real obligations to you.
How then to ensure the fulfillment of these obligations? It is necessary to demand the total privatization of state property. A program clear to any pensioner: “seize and divide.” Seize from the state, divide among those whom the state has robbed. And, of course, stop the robbery for the future, though that is a concern for the young, which, however, is also close and clear to pensioners. All that remains is to conduct a discussion on the methods: how to seize and divide so that everything is not stolen in the process.
2) Volunteering by individual authors and voluntary gratuitous development by commercial companies to “pay back society”;
3) A non-disclosure agreement, where compliance ensures continued cooperation and violations lead to a refusal to provide new content (for example, a cinema enters into such an agreement with a film studio and undertakes not to release the film during the first week of screening; in exchange, the studio provides the newest films, and if the agreement is violated, cooperation is terminated);
4) Network effect — a pharmaceutical company develops and tests a new drug, other companies naturally begin to produce generics, but the first company has already gained sufficient recognition for the safety and effectiveness of the drug; accordingly, people are more likely to trust their health to it than to an unknown (and potentially dangerous or useless) generic. The network effect applies to almost all inventions.
5) A desire to change the world for the better. For example, Elon Musk fundamentally decided not to patent his developments in the field of electric vehicles so that they would become mass-market faster due to competition.
6) Cross-subsidization — a company may fund the development of an intellectual product through the sale of a physical good, since this intangible product may indirectly increase the value or create advertising for the physical good. For example, a CNC machine manufacturer may release a free CAD, thereby increasing interest in themselves and the chance of machine purchases.
7) Advertising, product placement — do you think actors in movies accidentally open a can of Coca-Cola or Pepsi?!
Addition from Ancap-chan
Of course, the list of monetization methods is not exhaustive, and people are constantly inventing new opportunities. For instance, selling achievements like “dinner with the author” is not exactly crowdfunding, but the creation of a rare resource out of thin air for which people are willing to pay, while they are not willing to pay for text, video, or music.
The most brilliant monetization method, in my opinion, is selling merch. People pay for the high honor of wearing advertisements for their favorite author or, say, a company — is that not a miracle?
I wouldn’t want to look like a cobbler without shoes, so I hope to eventually implement something more interesting within my own project than simply publishing a bitcoin wallet for donations. Here, everything is complicated by such a fundamental condition as maintaining anonymity, which is why I haven’t bothered much with all these things until now.
I will be glad if you share your thoughts on project monetization with me. The easiest way, perhaps, is to do it through the same form that you use to ask questions. And, of course, send bitcoins. This is especially important if you’ve never had any — buy some to donate to me, and you’ll have some left for yourself. The downward trend seems to have ended, which means a price increase awaits us; don’t miss this opportunity.
Critics of libertarianism often express the idea that libertarians (both ancaps and minarchists) are very similar to Marxists. In Marx’s teaching, the base (economic relations) plays a decisive role in the development of society, while the superstructure (culture, religion, morality) merely follows it and has no particular influence. This is often said by right-wing nationalists and conservatives; for example, Olgerd Semyonov in his stream criticizes libertarianism precisely from these positions.
Whatever one may say, there is a grain of truth in this criticism. Human behavior is not determined exclusively by economic incentives. German Sterligov is unlikely to want to sell his bread to a gay person, even if the latter is willing to pay a “cosmic” price for this obviously overpriced product. Similarly, a believing Christian would not serve in the Swedish army for any amount of money if he were asked to participate in a hypothetical Swedish war against Nigeria, launched to support LGBT rights in the latter. This is also seen as a weakness of ancap and minarchism—an ideologically cohesive opponent may have a strong advantage in a war against an economically motivated libertarian army. Of course, this would only happen if they gained possession of modern high-tech weaponry. But, as we know, even the “barmaleis” from a certain well-known banned organization learned how to manufacture UAVs. Technology, although slowly, inevitably flows to “backward” peoples.
But identity does not have to be territorial. Under panarchy, when there is a free choice of the set of rules by which a person will live within an ECU, extraterritorial identity (the sense of belonging to one’s ECU) will be even stronger than the national identity (the sense of belonging to one’s ethno-territorial nation-state) so beloved by right-wing conservatives.
A good example is the history of pillarization in the Netherlands (Holland). At the beginning of the 20th century, Abraham Kuyper and his religious-conservative party “ARP” (Anti-Revolutionary Party) came to power, and they began to implement the ideology of “sphere sovereignty.” The goal of the reform was to stop the growing influence of leftist ideas by dividing society into so-called pillars (English: “pillar”, Dutch: “zuilen”). In terms understandable to us, a minarchist state was created where almost all state functions, except for the security functions, were transferred to the pillars (which could be called proto-ECUs). The pillars were completely extraterritorial and included people with specific political-religious views. There were four: Catholic, Protestant, Social-Democratic, and Liberal. Each of them had its own schools, trade unions (which regulated labor relations at the time), media, and healthcare system. Confederations of entrepreneurs were also included among them.
After World War II, leftist forces devoted enormous resources to the depillarization of Dutch society. Given the high popularity of ideas of equality in the post-war period and rapid economic growth, the functions of the pillars gradually shifted to the central government, and society began to unify. Nevertheless, remnants of pillarization exist in the Netherlands to this day. The sense of belonging to one’s political-religious group could not be completely destroyed, no matter how hard the social democrats and euro-liberals tried.
What conclusions can be drawn from all this? First—under panarchy, it is very likely that there will be a division of ECUs based on political-religious-cultural principles. People will feel a real belonging to their group and a willingness to defend it not only for money. Second—no matter in what form minarchism exists, it will eventually lead back to a “big state.” Even “panarchic minarchism” proved unstable. If Abraham Kuyper had gone further, transferring the security functions to the pillars and thereby fully completing the transformation of the state into a full-fledged panarchy, leftist forces would not have been able to impose uniform values on the entire society again.
Commentary by Ancap-chan
As far as I understand from the provided Wikipedia article, pillarization was undermined not only from above, through the desire of politicians to expand into new electoral groups, but also from below, since far from everyone wished to live in a strictly segregated society where you study at the school of your pillar, spend your leisure time within your pillar, and even make daily purchases within the same pillar. Then two compatriots accidentally meet, for example, abroad, and are surprised to discover that people in neighboring pillars are also human, and then, for example, an inter-pillar marriage occurs, and that is where the problems arise.
And delegating security functions to the pillars would not have helped. During the Second World War, resistance to the Nazis was pillarized. I would not be surprised if service to the Reich was also pillarized. The erosion of extraterritorial identities occurred not because of the forced absorption of some by others, but because of the weakening of contradictions in society that no longer required the maintenance of strict, permanent internal boundaries. Now, by the way, pillarization may find a second wind, as a powerful Muslim pillar is already de facto operating in these countries, just not formally organized at an official level.
In general, the idea of panarchy is indeed quite organic for Europe with its rich experience of religious wars—that is, wars between specifically extraterritorial identities. Russia has no such experience. Although, for instance, in Dagestan, some rudiments of pillarization are present—too many nationalities on a tiny patch of land with a high population density. As for the prospects of living peacefully in neighboring jurisdictions with those who, for example, are nostalgic for the USSR, that personally seems unlikely to me. Although recent debates between a nationalist and a communist moderated by a libertarian show that at least some semblance of dialogue is beginning.
So I would summarize more simply: do not stop people from finding ways to live peacefully with each other, and they will pleasantly surprise you.
P.S. Bitarch disagrees with a number of points in my commentary and intends to release an article on the doctrine of deterrence soon, where the issue of mutual coercion to peaceful coexistence will be examined in more detail.
Mikhail Svetov and many other libertarians often propose the model of territorial communities. These are, in essence, ordinary states (or federal subjects) with a territorial monopoly, but created “from scratch” by a group of settlers who share certain values.
Besides the obvious drawbacks of a state with a territorial monopoly, there is another very important problem in this model that, for some reason, is not publicized. The essence of it is that the values of the founding generation may not be passed down to descendants (this is practically guaranteed to happen, if not in the second generation, then in the fifth). Even when a small number of people in this community deviate from the founders’ values, the community government will have to take them into account, diluting the ideological integrity of the original project and turning the community into an ordinary modern state.
Don’t believe it will happen? Look at the history of the USA! There, too, the colonies were initially settled on religious and ideological principles. Modern states have preserved practically nothing of this, having turned into the same kind of centralized state that the colonists once fled from in Europe.
Ancap-chan’s Comment
Over time, any social associations—whether states, communities, enterprises, political parties, or interest clubs—either collapse or change beyond recognition, preserving at best their name. Transience in time can be called the Achilles’ heel of any entity existing in time, and territorial communities do not stand out from the general background. It is enough for the community’s founders that this community exists for some time and serves the interests of its members to a greater extent than the surrounding environment; and if in the future those born into this community find another environment more to their liking—well, so be it, and there is no reason to decide for the descendants, as they are surely not any stupider.
