Тег: Dictatorship

Who do dictators benefit?

I promised to respond to Sperry’s longread On the Utility of Dictators, and I have finally gotten around to it.

Sperry’s objective was to show, using the example of Asian tigers such as Japan and Korea, that the reason for the rise of their capital-intensive industries was direct, prolonged, and brazen state intervention in the economy, rather than the free market. Compared to monstrous corporations merged with states, the free market is a poor market, and it is left with industries that are not as capital-demanding. I believe he fully achieved his goal.

Indeed, the state is an institution that is very good at concentrating effort, and as for which specific sphere the state will concentrate those efforts in—that is a matter of politics. Thanks to this concentration of effort, a mega-army, a mega-fleet, or a mega-corporation can be created; pyramids in the desert and in the jungle; mega-statues of gods and leaders; bridges with mega-traffic and bridges to nowhere; people can fly into space or burn in gas chambers—there is no end to the applications of state effort.

And yet, Sperry’s article is titled “On the Utility of Dictators,” not, for example, on their greatness. So who do they benefit—those dictators he examined in his review of the Asian electronics market? The answer is obvious: they benefit the consumer. The Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, or American state takes money from its citizens, borrows from gullible investors, simply prints money—and pours it into building an industry that will provide the average consumer from god-forsaken Montenegro or Costa Rica (where dictators are too pathetic and unable to concentrate such frantic resources) with cheap and high-quality gadgets.

Thus, dictators can be considered conditionally useful if they spend looted funds on the production of consumer goods, conditionally useless if they spend looted funds on the production of cultural mega-monuments, and conditionally harmful if they spend looted funds on the extermination of neighbors. How did it happen that “useful dictators” appeared as a class at all? What forced the proud descendants of plunderers and religious fanatics to switch to trade wars in the spirit of “open your market to our goods, or we will close our market to yours”? There is a simple and boring answer to this: the Industrial Revolution. The previous revolution, the agricultural one, allowed for the concentration of resources to create giant armies, using those armies to seize new lands and concentrate even more resources. The Industrial Revolution, however, ensured global dominance for a country with a very modest army through manufacturing and a merchant fleet. It was the Industrial Revolution that led to the emergence of a new type of war: for the opening of markets. Not for the right to plunder a particular colony, but for the right to trade and invest. The Opium Wars, Commodore Perry, all of that.

It remains to understand: are these useful dictators, who lead national markets toward prosperity with an iron fist, necessary or optional? Fortunately, we have an example of an Asian tiger that managed without useful dictators—Hong Kong. The number one country in economic freedom achieved significant prosperity. This means that even in Asia, one can get by without developmental dictatorships. On the other hand, Hong Kong is not particularly famous for microelectronics. It turns out that the free market in Asia somehow bypassed this sphere, preferring the organic growth of many small companies over the super-concentration of resources in a few chaebols. Had there been no dictators, the global economy today would be different. We can only guess which industries would have flourished if they hadn’t been crushed in the pursuit of primacy in the chip race. But it seems that without dictators, there would be no AI bubble, thanks to which I easily draw beautiful pictures for my posts and do other cool things that I hope to tell you about soon.

Collective Stockholm Syndrome or How Authoritarian Authorities Psychologically Traumatize Citizens into Complete Loyalty

You’ve all probably heard about this phenomenon – Stockholm syndrome – when a victim of abuse starts forming a strong emotional connection with the abuser, acquiring sympathy and complete loyalty to him. It got its name from one incident that occurred in Stockholm, where after an attempted bank robbery, hostages began justifying the captor’s actions, hiring him a lawyer and even sending him admiring letters. This kind of reaction is extremely dangerous because it forces the victim to act against her own interests, sometimes even defending the abuser at the cost of her life.

But why does it actually occur? Of course, it’s all about neurobiology. When someone is under chronic stress, periodic abuse and manipulation, a biochemical cocktail of cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin is released. A traumatic attachment forms in which the abuser becomes both a source of fear and a perceived source of safety. In this case, the victim follows the abuser’s mood, behavior, and expectations and begins to prioritize his needs over her own, in order to maintain the relationship and avoid further harm.

This kind of attachment relies on a convergence of factors such as an imbalance of power, periodic cruel treatment, manipulation, as well as the emergence of a situation where escape seems unimaginable. But what’s also important is that its flourishing requires an environment of narcissistic abuse. The presence of “dark traits” in the abuser is particularly important: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Being around such a person, the victim is forced to rationalize his behavior and suppress her awareness of the situation in order to simply survive.

Of course, this phenomenon doesn’t necessarily limit itself to interpersonal relationships – it can also be observed at the sociopolitical level. When society is full of betrayal, intimidation and false assurances, citizens become attached to an abusive or narcissistic political leader who manipulates their existential fears, while offering periodic psychological rewards such as national pride, economic promises, or symbolic protection from exaggerated threats.

As a result, people begin to justify authoritarian abuses in order to cope with their helplessness and avoid cognitive dissonance. A collective Stockholm syndrome emerges, manifested at the cultural level. The political leader becomes simultaneously both a protector and a punisher, providing a sense of belonging while threatening rejection, promising prosperity while simultaneously inciting fear. Like in personal and cultural traumatic bonds, people are inclined to minimize harm, discredit critics, and remain emotionally connected with those who undermine their rights and well-being.

Resistance to the cultural traumatic bond requires understanding this phenomenon. We know that, depending on their psychological traits, different people are prone to forming it to varying degrees. Moreover, there exist emotional methods of strengthening acceptance of authoritarian leadership, such as creating a “we versus they” dynamic, exaggerating existential threats, and presenting oneself as the sole solution to social problems. Finally, authoritarianism thrives in conditions of disorientation, offering a sense of certainty and identity in exchange for obedience. All of this is important to take into account when developing strategies for destroying the traumatic bond.

People who have experienced interpersonal trauma need support, recognition, and education so that they can be freed. Citizens who have experienced cultural trauma also need this to free themselves from authoritarianism. Among other things, it’s important to expose disinformation and teach critical thinking. It is also necessary to restore voluntary and trusting relationships between people, return them a sense of dignity and collective strength. In this case, they will be able to heal from the trauma and become capable of acting against politicians who destroy trust between them.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Working with arguments against freedom

In my recent article on ideological diversity, I talked about how ideas of freedom spread and why this is better than direct missionary work within a single rigid doctrine. Now I would like to look at a related problem: what to do with ideas of un-freedom and their carriers.

Why are ideas of un-freedom attractive?

First, they are relevant to the current state of affairs. Today’s world is far from the ideals of freedom both de jure and de facto. Therefore, the desire to think within a realistic approach and not bother with utopias is quite natural. Understanding that the state was born as a purely bandit formation and then evolved into a modern corporate structure for the purpose of even more effective and stable suppression of the dissatisfied, seizing funds from subjects, and capturing new subjects from neighbors, will in no way help in communicating with state structures. What will help is studying the interconnections between these very structures, both formal and informal, making acquaintances with state functionaries, and other real topics that can bring money, influence, and a decent quality of life.

Second, there are many examples of the collapse of state structures and the transition of a territory to a failed state status—and every time it invariably turns out that the territory turns into a bandit enclave, and freedom in it can only be spoken of as the freedom to rob and kill without fearing retribution from the state, due to its absence. In other words, the state obviously curbs the rampage of private banditry, and therefore should be viewed as a blessing, and these “ideas of freedom” of yours shake the foundations, so please pay a fine for extremism and be thankful you aren’t serving a prison sentence.

The failed state argument: shaken foundations in the background

Third, there is a simple and clear principle: if it works, don’t touch it. Supporters of the status quo will always prefer the current, more or less understood situation, and even if they clearly see the flaws of the system, they will prefer to put up with them rather than choose the uncertainty of the future. If a potential reformer does not have a clear, realistic, step-by-step plan with which the opponent fully agrees at every point, that opponent will always prefer to touch nothing.

How to work with this?

With supporters of living in the real world, everything is quite simple. As soon as they see real-world examples that some free technology effectively handles and withstands the blow of the state, they simply incorporate it into their picture of the real world. For instance, any realist knows for sure that nothing can be blocked on the internet; it is a simple, clear, and easily observable fact. And the realist will themselves laugh at the naive dreamers from some Roskomnadzor, in whose fantasy world adding a resource to the register of blocked resources immediately destroys the corresponding information or service. Similarly, for realists, it is beyond doubt that the state is unable to block Bitcoin transfers, and therefore they logically perceive the complex of anti-money laundering legislation as a set of poorly working spells that should not be taken to heart. So just feed them facts from life, and after some time, they will themselves ridicule the naive etatists who rely in any way on this pathetic seventeenth-century rudiment, the so-called state.

It is also not difficult to find an approach to the adepts of the “don’t touch what works” idea. In general, they are psychologically ready to support a concept such as “everything new is free.” They can be shown how a certain endeavor worked and developed wonderfully after its appearance, and then the state came along and started “fixing” what was working. After that, it usually started working worse. This applies to attempts at state regulation of the internet, the enslavement of the electronic transfer sphere, KYC regimes in banks and exchanges, and all sorts of platform services like Uber—everywhere the principle of “if it works, don’t touch it” was violated specifically by the state. In the same way, it tends to interfere in any voluntary transactions. Finally, one can provide numerous examples of how the state “fixes” already working mechanisms directly related to the functioning of the state. Citizens learned how to achieve a relatively honest vote count in elections—the state changes the election law, making it harder for citizens to control falsifications. A danger arises that a district might go to the opposition—the state engages in gerrymandering or removes the opponent from the election. In short, the state itself so actively violates the principle of not fixing what works that suggesting one should not touch the state because it works turns out to be, at the very least, inconsistent.

All that remains is to deal with the failed state argument. Here, the main counterargument is that this state arises not because people strove for ancap. A failed state always arises after a dictatorship. If the dictatorship ignored reality, made external and internal enemies, and accumulated critical vulnerabilities in the system, then eventually the state broke, leaving citizens poor, fragmented, and incompetent in matters of peaceful cooperation. This created the failed state situation, where people trust only the strongest social ties, the crudest arguments, such as the threat of weapons, and the shortest-term strategies, since under conditions of strong uncertainty, there is no point in long-term planning.

Accordingly, if citizens are already learning to trust weak social ties, plan for the long term without including state handouts in their plans, and do not base their wealth strategies on robbery—then the more of them there are, the less likely a failed state will appear when the next dictatorship collapses. A number of countries that failed to overcome their dictatorship nevertheless did not collapse into a failed state after the dictators died, but began to build something more decent. Spain and Portugal serve as good examples. It turns out that the more actively the supporters of the dictatorship uproot civil society in the country, even if it is disloyal to the dictator, the higher the probability that it will end in a failed state. So they are simply fighting the wrong battle.

With such a civil society, for example, Europe’s penultimate dictatorship is no longer threatened by a failed state