Тег: Greeting

2024, results

The statistics bot sent over the usual postcard about how the channel is doing. It is evident that it has grown slightly, which is due to a couple of cross-promotion campaigns organized by the magazine Fronda, for which I am grateful. I write an author’s column in that magazine, and I hope that for some, this will be a reason to subscribe to it. Another ongoing collaboration this year is writing articles for thematic collections in the magazine “Yozh“.

This year, I completed two long-term projects: the translation of David Friedman’s book “Legal Systems Very Different from Our Own“, as well as Eric Mack’s “Libertarianism” (and also Balaji Srinivasan’s “The Network State“, which by my standards didn’t quite reach “long-term project” status, although the translation did drag on quite a bit). In 2025, I expect to finish the last long-term project — Stephan Mol liqueur’s “Practical Anarchy“, and I will think thrice before taking on anything new. I am writing my own book, “Libertarian Theory of War“, terribly slowly, and the finish line is not yet in sight.

My personal discovery of the year was the website “Anarchonomicon“, run by a Canadian catgirl, pagan, white racist, and connoisseur of violent methods of problem solving — everything we libertarians value and are inspired by. An indirect result of this was me creating a Substack account, although so far I only read there; I haven’t dared to write or comment yet.

In Montelibero, I help promote the ideas of decentralization by participating in the movement to attract P2P investments into local businesses, as well as in organizing Tikhiy Omut — a libertarian club owned by its members. My contribution to filling the decentralized directory https://monte.wiki/ and the decentralized social network BSN is still completely insufficient, but I hope to increase it over time. I am also slowly adding Montenegro to OSM maps.

I hope that this year I have been a good girl and deserve some gifts.

I congratulate all readers on a year in which there should clearly be a global turn toward greater freedom. Stay on trend, join promising endeavors, promote your own projects, grow wealthy, and assert yourselves. A successful ideology deserves successful carriers!

2023, results

As usual, I note that I am unable to follow my own plans. Books I started translating earlier are still not finished, my own book on ancap has still not been recorded, but instead, I’ve started translating a new one about the Network State, and writing my own new one about libertarian theory of war.

The Telegram channel is not developing much: there are slightly more subscribers, slightly fewer publications and views, and citations have decreased slightly. Overall, this is logical: the project is mature, there is no aggressive advertising, free time is becoming scarcer; we simply continue to run the channel because how could we not?

Things are quite interesting with Montelibero. This year, the project continued to increase its systemic complexity, and now it can be confidently said: no single person knows how many people are in the movement or how the movement is doing as a whole, because one cannot embrace the infinite. Nor is there any need to. Therefore, certain major milestones are well-known to everyone (MTL-fest, moving into MTL-City), and alongside them are many small local achievements that look like breakthroughs to some and cause bewilderment to others. This is why I haven’t released Montelibero news for a long time; instead, I will most likely choose a segment that interests me and start covering it directly on the movement’s general channel.

In general, segmentation has become the main trend for Montelibero, and this is generally healthy: people try not to waste effort on things that interest them little and focus on what is important. At the same time, various companies interpenetrate somehow and are united only by these loose communications, similar value systems, and a set of approaches to working with reality. Such a Montelibero is not tied to any state borders at all, although, of course, most of the circles in the movement are geographically localized. I expect that next year this trend will become more institutionally shaped, the network nodes will take on a more explicit form, and their activities will receive diverse and more decentralized coverage.

Nothing interesting happened in Montenegro, except for a new government, a new president, the tightening of screws, and a census. In the RF, also nothing interesting, except for a failed coup. On the other hand, Argentina unexpectedly appeared on the scene. Now one can observe with joyful curiosity how etatists are fought with etatist methods, and add individual cases to the collection.

In the New Year, I want to wish my readers two of the most important things: a sense of self-worth and purposefulness. Do not tolerate shit neither in yourself nor around you, and move consistently toward a world where there is less of it.

Pre-New Year address and year-end results

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Although 2022 was marked by a surge of violence in one of its most terrible forms—armed conflict—within the framework of our work on studying violence in human relationships and society, it was not without achievements in the opposite, better direction, aimed against violence. Previously, when arguing that violence should be called a deviation and a pathology rather than a natural social phenomenon, we relied only on individual facts and observations that did not demonstrate the full picture of what was happening. This could have caused distrust in such assertions given the brutal events still observed in human society.

But now everything has changed. We can confidently call the existence of a violence inhibition mechanism not just a hypothesis and a theory, but an indisputable fact. Evolutionary, archaeological, anthropological, military, psychological, neurophysiological, genetic, and many other pieces of evidence—demonstrating the same conclusions and forming a complete system that explains everything regarding violence—only confirm this. Violence is undoubtedly a pathological form of behavior, the result of a breakdown of a person’s internal inhibitors of aggression, due to which they stop experiencing a reaction of rejection and resistance to causing harm to other people. And the reason we observe so much violence in society is only because it exerts an enormous influence—even one violent person in certain circumstances is capable of causing harm to thousands of other, peaceful people.

All the evidence against the position that justifies and normalizes violence has been successfully gathered in one place—on the website Antiviolence.io. The main material of the site begins with definitions of the concepts of aggression, violence, and self-defense. Then we move to archaeological and anthropological evidence, examine cases of genocides, debunk various myths about violence, and confirm that in any war, even the most brutal one, never more than 2% of soldiers with psychopathic predispositions experience no resistance to committing murder, and in general, the overwhelming majority of people never kill or attempt to kill anyone. Further, we examine the evolutionary reasons for the emergence of the violence inhibitor in animals and humans, and become acquainted with a model that explains in detail how this mechanism functions.

Based on neurophysiological and genetic evidence, we conclude that people capable of easily committing violence should be treated as mentally ill and pathological personalities in need of therapy to restore the function of the violence inhibitor. Such therapy could contribute to the complete eradication of the pathology of violence from human relationships and society.

We have also not ignored many other questions about violence, which you can explore on the same website or in the materials of this channel. Of course, we will have to examine many more topics and problems, as it is impossible to answer all questions at once. But we have at least already created a solid foundation for the continuation of our activities without encountering serious controversial points.

I would like to congratulate you all on the upcoming New Year! In the coming year, we must definitely advance even further in understanding the problem of violence and how this phenomenon can be eradicated. And of course, how to popularize this understanding among an even greater number of people, which will undoubtedly only bring us closer to achieving a free, non-violent society. Stay with us in the coming year so as not to miss this!

2022, results

It is a bit funny now to reread with what enthusiasm I looked forward to the new year 2022. Nevertheless, this enthusiasm was largely justified.

The Montelibero project is developing successfully, and while a year ago we all gathered to celebrate in one house, now such an opportunity is not even close; there are over a hundred of us in Montenegro. At the MTLcity site, the construction of the first two houses is nearing completion, the third has been laid, plus a geodesic dome has been erected, where seasonal residency can be tested. In Bar, the libertarian club is flourishing, where people regularly gather to hang out, drink delicious coffee, attend lectures, play board games, participate in podcast recordings, and so on. The capital of the MTL investment fund already exceeds 170 thousand tokens, and the token price has grown from 1 euro to slightly over 3. The fund has more than 600 shareholders. There are already so many tokens of all sorts and colors circulating around the Montelibero project that I have lost count, and each corresponds to some activity that, at one point or another, required tokenization. In short, things are very lively on this front, and so far it is not apparent that we are hitting any ceiling.

On the other hand, the activity around my channel did find its ceiling. The number of subscribers decreased by a hundred over the year, and the number of publications also dropped noticeably. The voice-over for the text Mechanics of Freedom was completed and my own book on ancap was finished, while translations of several other books are moving along quite smoothly. No significant community ever formed around the channel, and now it is no longer required, since there is Montelibero. By the way, they also recently summarized the year’s results there and, in particular, compiled a list of the most significant personalities for the project. And while in the first year I would clearly have been in the top three, now I am only in the second five, which, however, seems to me a completely objective assessment.

The strangest direction of my channel management was a series of anti-Russian posts where I allowed myself to give recommendations on what to do with Russia. Calls to burn military recruitment offices were successful; all others—not so much. Russia has not collapsed yet, but it is heading that way. However, it is not so important what happens to this state, but what happens to Russians, and for them, I maintain my previous wish. I would like Russians to scatter across the world as widely as possible, settle in as comfortably as possible, preserve and develop their great Russian culture, and forget the Russian state like a bad dream, or, demonstrating their historical responsibility, businesslike-ly invest in its dismantling.

Overall, I am satisfied with the past year. In the coming year, I still want to complete all current prolonged translations, record an audio version of the book on ancap, and, of course, continue to cover the construction of our libertarian utopia in sunny Montenegro. Happy New Year to everyone!

2021, results

I have reread the summaries of past years: 2018 (joyful), 2019 (confident), and 2020 (gloomy). Fortunately, I managed to reverse the trend, and I look forward to 2022 with much more enthusiasm than I once did for 2021.

The year was devastating for the Russian opposition, to which I belonged to some extent, although I didn’t pay much attention to politics. Many left the country under the threat of immediate criminal prosecution, fleeing into a void, and I imagine it was not easy for them. I was far luckier: I left the country to build an offline libertarian utopia, and this utopia, Montelibero, has made decent progress in its implementation. There are already two dozen of us who moved to Montenegro to build a local ersatz-ancap, and on New Year’s Eve, for the first time in the project’s history, we will gather together at one table (one bomb could take us all out). Nevertheless, I still hope that we won’t be hit by a bomb, and that next year we will build a sufficiently reliable platform here for receiving and settling libertarians.

Another milestone for the channel was that I finally completely translated Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, and it is the largest of my projects implemented so far. Now, as a bonus, Oleg Teterevlev is recording the audiobook, and as of today, he has reached chapter 45 out of 66. I think the audiobook will also be completed in 2022. The translation of three more books is being carried out in parallel, encouraged by your donations, and will sooner or later be finished as well—at least after The Machinery of Freedom, I am now certain that I am capable of tackling something large-scale without abandoning it halfway.

A third important undertaking that is in full swing is the writing of my own book on ancap. The first part, containing an outline of the libertarian worldview, is completely ready; the second part—about life under ancap—is being written. Who knows—maybe I’ll manage to finish it in 2022 as well.

As for the channel’s metrics, they can be seen below on the postcard kindly sent by the statbot. In terms of the number of readers, I’ve hit a plateau; the channel turned out to be a mid-tier one, and it’s unlikely to grow at a noticeable pace without aggressive marketing. This doesn’t really bother me now, because other interesting activities have been found. Again, while my readers may be few in number, they are proactive: among the settlers in Montelibero, more than half joined the project specifically through my channel, which is, of course, flattering. I hope this trend continues in the future.

Happy New Year to all libertarians. Do not be afraid to take on ambitious projects, stick by each other, and do not forget that against the backdrop of the main enemy, small internal quarrels mean nothing.

Digital gold of El Salvador

El Salvador now has a second national currency alongside the US dollar — bitcoin. Thus, since the autumn of 2008, in just under 13 years, bitcoin has grown from a project posted by an anonymous person for open discussion into a currency equal to the dollar. Although, so far, only in one country.

Now the world should wait for El Salvador to implement something like Estonian e-residency: then anyone wishing to do so will be able to remotely open a business in El Salvador and conduct completely official settlements in Salvadoran currency, because Salvadoran laws will mandate it.

To mark this giant step in bitcoin adoption, discounts have been announced: some lucky individuals managed to buy in today at a price of around 43 thousand US dollars per bitcoin. But it is still not too late: at the time of this post’s publication, bitcoin costs only 47 thousand dollars.

Vladimir Milov is preparing to make the first bitcoin transaction of his life: a hairdresser is telling him how to install a Lightning wallet

April 12

When a couple of years ago I congratulated readers on Cosmonautics Day, I mentioned that while the state might have fucked things up in space, the market has arrived there for real and for the long haul, and it won’t be possible to kick it out anymore. Since then, many interesting things have happened in space, but the most promising, of course, is Elon Musk’s Starship.

And as for everyone’s preferences, ancaps care about the displacement of the state. I’ll allow myself a simple extrapolation. Musk perfects Starship and organizes more or less regular communication with Mars. An orbital station, a base on the surface, supplies for that very base; some of the population works on a rotational basis, some settle for the long term. Nothing stops Musk from declaring that his private colony has its own jurisdiction, a certain legal code, contractual citizenship, an embassy on Earth in the city of Starbase, and other state attributes.

What grounds, precisely, would other states have to prevent this? Would the US claim the surface of Mars based on the fact that it is being colonized by an American company? It’s unlikely this would pass through the UN. Would the US begin criminal prosecution of Musk for secession? That’s bad PR; moreover, the PRC is nipping at their heels, and while you’re putting spokes in the wheels of an American entrepreneur, the red planet will be annexed by the red Chinese.

But if an independent sovereign contractual state forms on Mars, the majority of its citizens will be Earthlings who have never left Earth. Formally, they would, for example, be waiting in line for relocation, hold a residence permit and a correspondingly broad list of civil rights associated with that permit. They would even pay taxes, for instance, in the form of fixed regular contributions as a subscription fee for the maintenance of their interests by a diplomatic mission before Earthly states. In short, all the attributes of a state will be present, but its sole function for citizens will be the provision of legal norms; in all other respects—complete freedom of entrepreneurship. This means that the space offshore will rapidly grow its citizenship, while states will face the prospect of being left high and dry.

Why do I think that something like this could quite possibly happen? Why not, that’s why. Musk has repeatedly demonstrated that “it’s not done that way” is not an argument for him. The idea of getting rid of state dictate is in the air, as is the idea of space expansion. I don’t see why the noble Don shouldn’t combine two promising ideas.

Mechanics of Freedom — it’s all over!

I am happy to announce that I have finished translating David Friedman’s book The Machinery of Freedom and am finally posting it as a single file for e-readers. Download it, share the book with those you deem worthy, and be sure to visit the donations page to choose the size of the “like” you want to give.

Additionally, the creation of an audiobook based on the translation is gradually continuing; as of today, the entire first part of the book has been fully voiced, and the second has begun. The text is read by Oleg, and if you would like to thank him for this in some way, message him privately on Telegram and let him provide his details. Or use the payment bot for dash and send him some crypto directly via his Telegram name.

Happy Anniversary!

Bitcoin has just broken a trillion dollars in market capitalization. That is more than the Russian ruble, but still less than the Swiss franc. If any of my readers still haven’t bought at least a little bit—believe me, I sincerely sympathize with you, but you should still try to make a decision. Even at the cost of slightly reducing consumption.

By the way, speaking of reducing consumption. Zolotorev recently posted a translation of an article by Jeffrey Tucker about how Bitcoin is changing consumer behavior. The article is very interesting, and I have fully experienced this effect myself. So, if anyone wishes to immerse themselves in the spirit of the 19th century—welcome to Bitcoin.

To the moon

A little over two weeks ago, Bitcoin came very close to its historical all-time highs in US dollars. It reached the mark on some exchanges and began to hesitate near the peak. And today, it has finally confidently captured this height. So, we can officially congratulate each other on the end of the three-year decline. To everyone holding bitcoins, you have my respect. To everyone who isn’t, you have my pity. To everyone trying to halt its adoption, you have my disdain.