Тег: NAPs

Externalities of Violence

Bitarch’s Column

In discussions with subscribers, I occasionally encounter the opinions of “moral monsters” who believe that morality does not exist, that it is all “talk for the poor,” and that only a fool would forgo such an effective tool as physical violence. Such people, of course, deserve the harshest condemnation and ostracism, following the example of how anti-racism and anti-homophobia activists do it in the USA. But to convince the general public, it is still necessary to outline utilitarian arguments regarding the inadmissibility of aggressive violence in society. After all, deontological morality does not appear “out of thin air”; it is the product of repeated interactions between subjects in society.

To begin, let us note that a morality of non-aggression exists even in many animal species. As proven by the famous biologist Konrad Lorenz, an innate, inherited morality of non-aggression toward members of one’s own species is present in all animals with “innate armament” (for example, hedgehogs, porcupines, echidnas, venomous snakes). It became fixed in their DNA through natural selection, as individuals prone to aggression died in clashes without leaving offspring.

When do you think a moral prohibition on a certain behavior emerges in society? I assume the answer is obvious—when such behavior causes inconvenience, reduces the quality of life, or creates excessive risks for the majority of society members. In economic terms, the behavior of one subject creates enormous negative externalities for all members of society, even though such behavior may be very profitable for that specific subject.

We can find plenty of examples of such negative externalities if we look at world history. Here are some examples of such externalities:

1) Various environmental challenges (the ban on leaded gasoline, the insecticide DDT, freons in refrigeration units, and in recent years—internal combustion engines in some countries).

2) Problems of socially unacceptable risk (the closure of nuclear power plants in many countries after the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, the limitation of carbon dioxide emissions to reduce the risk of global warming).

3) Child abuse (the ban on the use of violence against children has already been introduced in most countries of the world). It has been proven that this leads to an increase in cases of drug addiction, alcoholism, and suicide, reduces their chances of success in life, and also leads to an increase in the average level of violence throughout society.

4) Animal cruelty—leads to an increase in the average level of violence throughout society.

As we can see, in all these cases, there is a conflict between the individual, for whom selfish dangerous behavior is profitable, and the entire society, which will bear the costs of that behavior. For example, for negligent parents, spanking a child is much easier than explaining in words why they should behave in a certain way, but the consequences of this act will be spread across society as a whole. The same applies to the use of a diesel car—it is cheap and convenient for the owner, but for other city residents, it means poor air and various diseases. Such externalities only begin to be seriously discussed when the harm from them becomes noticeable to a significant part of society.

The use of aggressive violence as a tool for achieving any goals (usually coercion and punishment) carries the greatest externalities that exist on Earth. Far, far greater than even the use of Chernobyl-type reactors or a coal-fired power plant without any filtration systems in a city. Here are just a few utilitarian arguments as to why aggressive violence is bad:

1) The average level of violence in society increases. If a stationary bandit (the state) uses cruel methods of coercion against its “serfs,” they quickly become hardened and no longer consider it shameful to beat a wife and child or take money and a phone from the weak. Constant shootouts and police chases lead to frequent injuries of accidental (unrelated) persons. The stress level of many people increases, leading to an increase in mental illness, suicides, drug use, a decrease in creative abilities, and a slowing of economic growth. For these reasons, in Scandinavian countries, the state now sends people to prison only for intentional murder, and the prisons themselves are more like health resorts.

2) The risk of a man-made global catastrophe or even the self-destruction of humanity. With the development of technology, the total harm that one person can inflict is constantly growing. If aggressive violence in society is the norm (especially state violence, as it is the hardest to escape), then sooner or later a person driven to despair will decide to use some dangerous technology as a doomsday weapon (DDW)—threatening to blow up a nuclear reactor or release a deadly virus. When a stationary bandit threatens to lock you in prison forever, there will be no talk of humanity; any means are good to be left alone, even the threat of causing a global pandemic. For society, even an infinitesimally small probability of such an event is unacceptable, as the potential damage would be simply catastrophic and could even lead to the extinction of humans as a species.

3) The productive development of the economy and quality of life stops because violence becomes the “objective function” of societal development. Instead of developing technologies and producing goods and services that benefit the majority of the population, society’s resources are spent on creating tools of violence. There is a common misconception that the “arms race” drives scientific and technical progress. This is true, but only over a very short period of time. The potential for violence can be viewed as an analogue to the concept of an “objective function” in mathematics. It strives toward a very specific value that practically does not change over time (or rather, is constantly decreasing)—inflicting unacceptable damage on the opponent (tolerance for violence has a constant tendency to decrease; accordingly, the threshold of unacceptable damage also decreases). This distinguishes violence from all other areas of human activity, in which the goal is the improvement of human life. Human needs constantly grow, and this provides a stimulus for scientific and technical progress, the emergence of new niches in the economy, and the growth of quality of life. However, a society that develops through an “arms race” comes to collapse, as already happened with the USSR. When the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on each other became available to all developed states, technological development slowed down sharply.

4) The formation of a military hegemon, a hierarchy of dominance, and, as a result—the collapse of the birth rate and the extinction of humanity. In Jack Hirshleifer’s research, a proven assertion is presented that the disruption of the uniform distribution of the balance of violence potential (BVP) in society leads to the emergence of a hierarchy of dominance (the state in human society is one example of this), and if the unevenness of BVP continues to increase—a global “military hegemon.” The danger of the long-term existence of a rigid hierarchy of dominance was identified in various animal experiments, such as “Universe 25.” The population simply died out due to a decrease in the birth rate. You will probably say now that “the conditions are different,” “a human is not a rat,” “an analogy is not an argument,” but look the truth in the eye and at the statistics of the total fertility rate in various countries of the world: in most countries, it is already below the replacement level (averaging 2.1 children per woman). There is also a certain dependence between the birth rate and the actual degree of state interference in a person’s life. In Africa and India, there may formally be many regulations in various spheres of life and high taxes, but in reality, the state is physically unable to reach every resident. But in Singapore, with exit visas and caning for dissent, the population for some reason is in no hurry to reproduce, despite even a high level of income. As in South Korea, where the level of personal freedoms, if viewed impartially, is not much higher than in the North.

Conclusions. As we can see, the morality of the inadmissibility of aggressive violence is not just someone’s “wish,” but a banal condition for the survival of civilization and even humans as a biological species. The rejection of this morality essentially means exactly one thing: “I am the boss here and I don’t care if all of humanity dies.” All normal people should have a corresponding attitude toward such a person—as toward the worst scoundrel, a new Hitler or Pol Pot.

In the entire developed world, society has accepted the inadmissibility of using leaded gasoline, DDT, the operation of nuclear power plants, and violence against children for utilitarian reasons. Next in line is violence by the stationary bandit (the state).

An argument for BPN from evolutionary theory

Bitark’s Column

An interesting study by biologist Konrad Lorenz shows how natural “armament” in animals leads to the emergence of morality against aggressive violence. Similarly, restoring the balance of violence potential (BVP) in human society will lead to the adoption of the non-aggression principle (NAP).

There are many species whose armament is so devastating and whose methods of application are so lightning-fast that a real combat clash between rivals would end with the death of one of them, or even both. Take, for example, venomous insects and snakes. Therefore, it is not surprising that natural selection develops a prohibition against using weapons in intra-species clashes for such species. Ethologists, following Lorenz, call this system of instinctive prohibitions that limit animal behavior “natural morality.” It is stronger the more powerfully the animal is armed by nature. During a territorial clash, venomous snakes exaggerate their size by stretching out to see who can stand taller, swaying, and pushing each other, but they never bite, nor do they even demonstrate their weapons. Some species even threaten each other with their heads turned away. It is no wonder that not only ordinary people but also many zoologists mistook the tournament battles of snakes for mating dances.

Well-armed animals can threaten each other for a long time, and when one of them grows tired, it abruptly changes posture, exposing its most vulnerable spot to the opponent for a decisive combat strike. The moral prohibition acts on the winner like an electric shock: all their angry fervor evaporates, they turn away from the opponent and hide their weapon. Similarly, a proud boy, feeling that he will lose a fight, suddenly puts his hands behind his back, lifts his face to the victor and shouts: “Go on, hit me!” Unlike a wolf or a snake, a human may actually strike in response.

After analyzing many species, Lorenz reached a conclusion of stunning simplicity more than 50 years ago: a strong animal has strong morality, while a weak one has weak morality. In terms of its natural history, a human is a very poorly armed animal; unlike monkeys, humans cannot even bite properly. Therefore, humans initially have weak instinctive prohibitions and weak natural morality. An unarmed man cannot cause significant damage to another in a clash: one will tire of hitting, and the other can always run away. Innate prohibitions in humans correspond to this. But subsequently, humans began to create and improve weapons and became the most armed species on Earth. Morality, however, has hardly changed.

Shareholder Viktor Rafaelevich
“Ethological Excursions to the Forbidden Gardens of the Humanities”

Critique of Absolute Non-aggression

With some delay, I saw an article by Anton Epikhin on the RLN.Today channel, in which he discusses the idea of absolute NAP voiced by Bitarch. These thoughts seemed very interesting to me, as they appear more practical and illustrate that the same goal, if pursued as a tactical one, requires certain methods, whereas if pursued as a strategic one, it sometimes requires the exact opposite.

From the position of prioritizing a radical interpretation of the primacy and absolutization of the NAP, for example, a contract army is clearly better than a conscripted one, and the complete absence of an army is even better than its presence.

However, if the NAP is understood as a project-based direction of movement rather than a religious dogma, it becomes obvious that the existence of a national army ensures collective sovereignty for society. Therefore, it is better that it exists than not, and the presence of mass military conscription, unlike a compact conscript army, distributes power within society by involving broad layers of the population in the defensive function, preventing the repressive apparatus from being concentrated solely in the hands of the government.

Therefore, the optimal defense system for moving toward the NAP would be a ubiquitous, albeit currently compulsory, militia-volunteer force, rather than a purely “professional army,” or even more so, the elimination of the state’s repressive apparatus as such, as this would only guarantee the establishment of someone else’s repressive apparatus that is not subordinate to the local community. Gradually, once they become an accepted norm, the practices of local militias united into a nationwide defense system can become purely voluntary; however, for the NAP, the physical presence of such a militia is more important here than the voluntariness itself.

Read the full article on Dzen

What is the difference between the notorious social “spontaneous” circumstances and a “hidden” threat?

Imagine a situation: two people and a chair are in a room; only one of them has a weapon and both know it; the armed person says loudly: “it would be nice if someone sat on this chair, and also, weapons can be used to cause pain and kill” – and this is sort of a threat, but it cannot be proven in any way, and if one risks not complying with the demands, the armed person may use the weapon and finally officially exit the non-aggression pact, but a dead person will no longer care about that. Of course, if both are armed, then both threaten each other, and both are thereby protected, but if one party is deprived of their weapon at some point, it becomes the literal right of the strong.

Han Solo

The example is, of course, somewhat contrived, but we’ll make do with what we have.

A person who believes they are being threatened has some grounds for doing so. It is specifically they who feel this way right now, and for them, it is important. If they have any doubts about the fact of the threat, or believe it is important to convince third parties of the threat, they should make the situation more explicit. For example, by asking:

– Do I understand correctly that you are threatening to injure or kill me if I don’t sit down? Or am I free to leave?

The interlocutor may continue to speak in hints for some time, but sooner or later they will have to formulate an explicit demand if they want the second person to sit, or use the weapon if they simply want to cause them harm. Naturally, this involves some risk. What is it worth taking that risk for? Primarily to gain certainty for oneself and, possibly, to obtain a body of evidence for third parties who will evaluate the situation as it unfolded.

In a state, we regularly encounter situations where superiors do not give explicit orders because the subordinate is expected to understand the hints. If the situation turns out poorly for the superiors, they can always claim they were misunderstood, and the phrase “this guy irritates me” by no means meant an instruction to shoot him during arrest and declare him a terrorist. If a subordinate is poor at understanding hints, they will not stay in their position for long.

The right of the strong is as much a fiction as a non-aggression pact. Even the strong prefer to justify their claims somehow, tailoring them to some notions of justice. This is less costly than proving one’s strength every time one wants to get something. The same goes for a non-aggression pact. People have no need to specifically agree not to attack each other; they will only do so anyway when they have a reason they consider valid. But if such a reason exists, no agreement will stop them.

Therefore, it seems to me that using such theoretical constructs to describe the world is simply inconvenient. It’s roughly like discussing human activity in categories of sin, karma, or class interests.

It is far more useful to use more adequate constructs to describe one’s actions and motives. “It seemed to me that he was close to carrying out his implicit threat, and I preferred to fulfill the request, although I didn’t really want to. Next time I will try not to be alone with him while unarmed.”

Something like that.

There we go, well done, good boy

The main mistake of ancaps

Bitarch’s Column

In her recent post, Ancap-chan wrote that she is not convinced by my arguments regarding the necessity of an absolute NAP. Unfortunately, such a misunderstanding of facts and inconsistency of positions is constantly encountered among many libertarians. Since Ancap-chan was not convinced by the real threat of a global catastrophe (the example with the virus), she should be convinced by a stronger threat in the understanding of any libertarian — the impossibility of realizing a free society (panarchy and ancap) without the adoption of an absolute NAP. Without it, ancap is indeed a utopia. Here is why:

1) The study by Jack Hirschleifer on the stability of anarchy, recognized in the scientific community, mentions, among other things, the scenario of the emergence of a “military hegemon” (which is nothing other than the appearance of a stationary bandit — the state) when the uniform balance of violence potential (BVP) in society is disrupted. And where a uniform BVP exists, coercion through physical violence is impossible by definition.

2) If someone in society can be forced through violence to pay compensation, then similarly, they can be forced to pay taxes — technically, there is no difference at all! And where there are taxes, welcome back to estatism! Mikhail Svetov understands this perfectly, which is why he repeats on every stream: we must get rid of bad tools, destroy the “One Ring” (which is nothing other than the ability to apply aggressive physical violence for one’s own benefit regardless of the goals — it is simply a tool, moral categories play no role here).

3) Everyone’s understanding of justice is different. For a member of the “Socialist” ECU, organizing a strike is a heroic act; for the “Classlib” ECU, it is a crime. Suppose a worker — a citizen of the “Classlib” ECU — organized a strike, the employer sued, and he was sentenced to pay an unaffordable compensation, which essentially means being sent into slavery. He asks the “Socialist” ECU for protection, and they agree. What are your actions?

(a) If you recognize the absolute NAP, then all is well — at most, businesses from the “Classlib” ECU will no longer deal with him.

(b) If you do not recognize it — you are a corpse yourself, even if you have nothing to do with this case. “Classlib” sends security forces to the defector, “Socialist” security forces counterattack, “Classlib” launches missiles at military targets and the main office of “Socialist,” and they respond using WMDs. You will be very lucky if it is only tactical nuclear weapons. But nuclear weapons are complex and expensive, so most likely, a global pandemic of a truly serious virus with 30-50% mortality breaks out, and the virus tests the immune system already inside your body.

4) Before the appearance of WMDs and the doctrine of deterrence (John von Neumann’s M.A.D.), such a conflict between ECUs (“protection agencies,” tribes, phratries) always led to the formation of the state familiar to us, with giant extensive borders like those of Russia. Although I dislike many of Robert Nozick’s arguments, he was right here. You don’t recognize the absolute NAP — welcome back to the state!

5) Suppose we admit that violence cannot be used against an ECU, but why can it be used against one person? And why not against 10? Where is the line?! In panarchy, the ability to create your own ECU and leave the jurisdiction of the previous one is the basis of the model’s existence; without this, panarchy is impossible. Just as in ancap, there is “individual sovereignty”: one person equals one state in the modern sense. And sovereign states, as we well know, do not use violence against each other, otherwise they are not sovereign at all.

6) The world of “John Wick” will not appeal to the majority of the population. Whatever you say, even to me, a moderate state like Sweden seems a more attractive option than living in such a hell under the mafia. For most people, even more so; accordingly, the attractiveness of such an “ancap” is zero!

7) Finally — the proof of history itself. Thus, the examples of ancap in the past loved by many libertarians — medieval Ireland and Iceland — did not end their journey because of some typical ancap problems that are constantly discussed (roads, courts). But for a banal reason — they were conquered. But this did not happen by chance and was quite expected. If these societies had been ideologically voluntarist, they would have purposefully fought against aggressive violence, created cultural works, methodologies, and technologies for this purpose, and most importantly — carried these values to the whole world. In that case, the English themselves would have expelled Cromwell from society at the first attempt to initiate aggressive violence in his youth, and Ireland would still be ancap today.

By the way, in some societies, women’s rights sometimes appeared spontaneously, but then disappeared when conquerors or a new cruel leader arrived. Globally, however, women’s rights became a new normality, a given for all, only in the 20th century after the directed activity of suffragettes. It is the same with ancap — for it to become a reality and not disappear in a second, directed activity to combat aggressive violence is needed; i.e., the absolute NAP must become the new normality of life.

Scylla and Charybdis of the discourse on nonviolence

Several articles by Bitarch on “absolute NAP” have already appeared in this channel, by which he understands a ban not only on aggressive violence, but also on delayed retribution or the enforcement of sentences. I am not yet convinced by his arguments, but I consider the topic itself important enough to continue introducing you to it.

Briefly, the idea is as follows. Technical progress increases the scale of violence available to humans and reduces the relative cost of violent impact. Tomorrow, any biology student could launch a pandemic like the current one, so we need a society where people have as few reasons as possible to threaten such things and as many moral constraints as possible that prevent them from even thinking about it. As one option for action, Bitarch considers a non-violent state. To provide a hypothetical Greta Thunberg with arguments, he published an article on the externalities of violence, where he lists how violence harms society. I will briefly go through the theses of this article and several others on similar topics.

1. Referring to Konrad Lorenz, it is stated that humans have no natural morality of non-aggression toward members of their own species embedded in their genes, since human natural weaponry is small. Therefore, one alternative to violent punishments for violent crimes could be voluntary genetic correction of behavior, if it can be developed.

Humans have almost no genetically determined patterns of behavior; there are only some inclinations, while all the specifics are set through social mechanisms. Thus, references to biological evolution serve more as illustrations than as a literal guide to action. Social evolution also exists; it is better to look for examples there.

2. Examples are given of how humanity introduced a ban on certain activities and successfully enforced it (the use of leaded gasoline, DDT, CFCs). It is pointed out that in the same way, humanity successfully enforces restrictions on morally unacceptable actions (for example, cruelty to animals, children, and prisoners). Therefore, a campaign of political pressure would also help in establishing the absolute NAP.

The state is always happy to ban something; the justification is not that important. For instance, the arguments for banning CFCs, which supposedly eat the ozone in the stratosphere, and DDT, which supposedly can cause cancer, mainly boiled down to so-called scientific consensus. The same applies to the arguments for banning carbon dioxide emissions, which are supposedly responsible for global warming, which supposedly poses a threat to humanity.

So, for political pressure on a global level, serious arguments are not even needed; one only needs to seize a spot on the agenda. To do this, climate change will have to be pushed aside, but first, its younger brothers like the Rothschilds, microchipping, and GMOs must be overcome. This is a solvable task, but the methods of such campaigns require more screaming than thinking, and that is personally difficult for me, despite the fact that I am screaming in my avatar.

3. Arguments are presented regarding the long-term negative consequences of high social tolerance for violence. At the very least, widespread violence becomes a factor hindering the economy—too large a share of resources goes toward ensuring security, including the security of transactions. Conversely, the long-term positive consequences of low tolerance for violence are shown. For example, in a recent note, a study is mentioned on how a culture of hugging and freedom of teenage sex leads to a decrease in hierarchy within society.

Now, arguments are a different matter; there is something to discuss here.

To summarize. Anyone wishing to ensure the success of non-violence ideas will have to pass between the Charybdis of the sleaziness of moral hysteria and the Scylla of the limited impact of scientific discussion. I would advise Bitarch to stick closer to Scylla, as Homer enjoined us, but here let everyone who sails the waters of public discourse choose their own path.

That leftist whirlpool over there is more dangerous

P.S. We, of course, did not agree with Bitarch on the content of the article. I reworked some takes, but not all. So, most likely, a continuation of the discussion awaits us.

Absolute NAP or the death of all humanity. There is no third option.

Bitarch’s Column

There is one currently not very well-known argument as to why humanity will sooner or later have to accept the impermissibility of initiating aggression: the simple survival of our civilization. After all, with the development of technology, the conditional total harm that one person can inflict is constantly growing.

For example, now even a poorly educated fanatic in a truck can knock down a hundred people, and if they try very hard and load a mixture of fertilizer and diesel into it, they can kill a maximum of a thousand.

Now imagine the world in 30 years. Gene engineering equipment has become cheaper; biohacking has become a popular hobby for schoolchildren. Genomes of pests such as natural smallpox, plague, and influenza A/H1N1 are available on the darknet. A psychopath could trigger an epidemic, killing, say, 1 million people.

Another 50 years pass. Flying cars with compact nuclear reactors have appeared. And along with them, ways to overload such a reactor, creating a new Chernobyl in New York or Moscow. 10 million people are now at the mercy of a psychopath.

The distant future. Space ships for flights to Alpha Centauri have begun to be built. Antimatter is used as fuel. If someone doesn’t value their own life, they can take the entire population of planet Earth with them, turning it into a stream of neutrinos.

As can be seen, the population that one person is capable of destroying grows exponentially with the development of technology. Just like the trendy COVID-19 coronavirus. In such conditions, there cannot even be a thought of using violence against a person, because essentially each of us will possess not just a deterrent weapon, but a Doomsday Weapon (DDW). Humanity simply will not survive if it does not recognize the universal NAP, even toward the most unpleasant individuals like child killers.

I anticipate in advance the cries of etatists about the usefulness of the state. For example, they will say: “Look, you’ve just described the hell it will be without control by government bodies.” Only in reality, the state only increases the risks of uncontrolled use of DDWs—both by creating incentives for people to use it as a deterrent against aggressive violence from a stationary bandit (the state), and by spurring the development of such dangerous things in inappropriate conditions even without the goal of using them as DDWs.

The US government, of course, can limit biohacker experiments, but they will be gladly welcomed in some Mumbo-Jumbo, where they will work much more covertly from public control and possibly intentionally help in the creation of DDWs for the Mumbo-Jumbo government. Look at the ban on stem cell experiments in the US, which simply pushed developments to China and other countries, where they were carried out without any public notification.

I am also very surprised by the position of some libertarians who seriously consider the possibility of enforcing court decisions through physical violence. In reality, not only violence, but even harsh ostracism that puts the violator on the edge of physical survival (for example, refusing to sell food in a store) can provoke them to use a DDW (dying of hunger is no better than dying from a bullet, therefore complete ostracism can be perceived by the violator as physical violence). It is not for nothing that Kim Jong Un is not blocked from the sale of vital items, but is only forbidden from receiving luxury items like Ferraris and Swiss watches. And he doesn’t even have a DDW, but rather a fairly weak deterrent weapon.

So think about what is better for you:
1) A world with the enforcement of court decisions through reputation and soft forms of ostracism, which turn out to be sufficient in most cases.
2) A world with a slightly higher probability of enforcing court decisions through physical coercion, but with a tangible “bonus” chance of becoming one of the characters in George Stewart’s science fiction novel “Earth Without People.”

Ancap-chan’s Commentary

Morals are formed more by practice than by theoretical constructs. Trying to limit oneself now in legitimate means for the sake of possible consequences in half a century is roughly the same kind of panic-mongering as the desire to abandon carbon dioxide emissions to prevent global warming.

People indeed regularly face the question of conflict between tactical and strategic goals. The longer the planning horizon, the greater the probability that the issue will be resolved in favor of strategy. But it is unrealistic to influence someone else’s time preference with exhortations. So, either we gradually develop a stable ancap, with a habit of defending our rights and not permitting systemic violence, and then the planning horizon for people will be sufficiently distant—or we will continue to languish under the state, captive to purely short-term tasks, and watch with horror the increase in the potential for terror—both private and state—up until the collapse of humanity.

Your opinion on nap.world?

Valya

As Mikhail Svetov, the creator of nap.world, claims, medium is the message. The one who speaks is part of the message. Therefore, it is not enough to examine the proposed text of the non-aggression pact; one must look at the person proposing it.

Mikhail’s rhetoric is hate speech. Even in his New Year’s greeting, he wishes torment and death to all “bad people.” It is important to understand: the proposal to conclude a non-aggression pact is not a declaration of peace. It is a declaration of war. A war against everyone who does not sign the pact. To Mikhail and his supporters, everyone outside the NAP agreement is not a legal subject.

Most likely, you are under no threat as long as you do not draw their attention. But if you initiate violence, or even publicly approve of someone else initiating violence, that’s it—you become a permissible victim. Lies will be told about you. Your counterparties will be discouraged from cooperating with you. If you have done something illegal, a report will be filed against you. But they will not physically lift a hand against you.

What does this remind us of? To me personally, it resembles the tactics of radical feminists or SJWs. They will find any instance of harassment or racism and broadcast it loudly. They will peck at you for any approval of such things. They will twist the facts about you and do everything in their power to make you persona non grata.

Feminists started before Svetov, and we can see where such tactics lead. They lead to the world becoming less sexist. Harassment turns out to be dangerous. Sexist jokes are laughed at less. Sexist advertising sells worse. The vile feminists, whom one wants to recoil from in disgust, make the world better. For them, it remains just as dirty, patriarchal, and unjust. It becomes better for us, the more moderate ones.

The Bitarch proposes using antifragile tactics (according to Taleb) to fight the state—that is, tactics that only grow stronger through opposition. If everyone whom the state prosecutes for victimless crimes declares that the state is a bandit and that they do not recognize its jurisdiction, it will undermine the legitimacy of the state, and the wider the repression, the stronger the delegitimization. Is this an antifragile tactic? Yes. The first such cases will receive wide publicity, and the prisoners will be seen as political. As the movement develops, attention will not be as intense, but this will be compensated for by the scale of the movement. However, such blatant disrespect for the court will more often lead to longer sentences, so it will be difficult at first to decide to bring politics into one’s case.

But what if an irreconcilable community actually forms around the idea of signing the NAP and intimidating everyone who hasn’t signed it? Let’s look again at Taleb, the book Skin in the Game. He shows how an inflexible, irreconcilable minority, evenly distributed in society, gradually imposes its rules on a flexible majority. In the US, political correctness became a norm recognized by the majority. In Russia, the example of implementing an accessible environment for the blind is more obvious. You won’t find a blind person on every street, but every traffic light beeps, and everyone trips over tactile paving: this is a norm imposed by an inflexible minority. Those who shame NAP non-signatories have a chance to achieve the same effect.

First, they will purge the ranks of decision-makers. Then they will intimidate the liberal opposition. Next, they will begin to harass those who approve of the actions of security forces—and then the security forces themselves. And at this stage, the idea of massively refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of state courts looks like a completely natural progression.

In short. The nap.world project as executed by Svetov is aesthetically repulsive to me, but if he gathers enough fanatics, the world around me really might become better. And after that, it would be good if they lusted themselves. Like the djinn from Andrzej Sapkowski’s story “The Last Wish.”

NAP and contract enforcement, a discussion

Yesterday’s post about whether violent actions to enforce payment for a completed contract violate the NAP, sparked a discussion, so I am returning to the topic.

As Ekaterina Schulmann loves to point out in her lectures, the world is extremely unfair, and societies where there is little trust, bear additional costs due to this, which exacerbates their poverty and further reduces trust—while trust cannot be restored by simple preaching. This observation applies not only to the citizens of a particular state in general, but also to other groups. In the context of the transition to ancap, we are most interested in the agorist society, those engaged in counter-economics, and therefore voluntarily or forcedly cut off from state services for ensuring contract compliance.

For example, any shadow entrepreneur can easily encounter a situation where they have incurred costs while fulfilling the contract terms, after which they are refused payment. In such a situation, you cannot not only file a lawsuit, but you cannot even bring the situation to public attention, because the activity is shadow, and publicity is even more disadvantageous than the losses from unpaid work. Without publicity, the institution of reputation does not work.

Take sex work in modern Russian society as an example. It is illegal, so in case of non-payment under a contract, these funds cannot be recovered through the court, and you cannot even draft a written contract with specified sanctions for non-payment, as it would be evidence. Therefore, even an individual entrepreneur usually has to cooperate with someone to whom she can turn for protection in such cases, so that they can achieve payment through force or the threat of its application. These are additional costs that society bears due to a lack of trust, suivante which allow such a business to remain stably profitable; without the purchase of contract enforcement, sex workers quickly become sex slaves.

In legal business, this manifests itself less often, but it is quite easy to imagine, for example, how a drunk debauchee is kicked out of a bar where he is unable to pay for the damage he caused (see also my old article on vigilantism). Here, a conditional mutual offset of damages is far more common, and not an invoice for payment post-factum, although variants are possible.

Nevertheless, it must be clearly understood that all cases where direct violence is practiced instead of civilized proceedings with installments, penalties, and seizure of property, etc., are precisely excesseses, and the more trust there is between people in society, the fewer such excesses.

In the post Libertarianism ex machina, I referred to Alexander Auzaan’s lecture, where the conditions necessary for the stable existence of a stateless society are discussed. He calls the balance of the potential for violence as the key condition. When a sex worker or a bar owner hires security, they level the balance of the potential for violence, countering the potential aggression of customers with the potential aggression of security. The second condition mentioned in the lecture is a stable community composition. This factor allows the transition from a classic prisoner’s dilemma to a repeated one, launches the institution of reputation, makes it possible to predict others’ actions—and gradually develops trust in society, even if the various additional measures proposed by Ekaterina Schulmann are not used—namely, joining various social organizations to build experience in peaceful, creative interaction (though with them the process is significantly accelerated).

The Internet allows such stable communities to form even without being tied to a specific compact territory: the transmission of information is extraterritorial, and communities are based precisely on the exchange of information. Transaction guarantees, through mechanisms of collateral, escrow, insurance, and other non-violent instruments—these are services that appear on modern markets at fairly early stages of their development, and immediately radically reduce both the level of costs from contract violations, and the level of potential violence necessary to operate in such a market.

So do not violate the NAP—it is not only unsightly, but also unprofitable, there are better tools.

Should one beat someone over the head with the NAP for non-payment under a fulfilled contract?

L29Ah (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00035466btc)

To start, I would like to recommend a recent column by Bitarch about contract enforcement. It provides several historical examples of how, in a free market, contract enforcement happened not through violence, but through the refusal to cooperate, and indicates that this is an inevitable consequence of a sufficiently balanced potential for violence in society — and ancap is presumably just such, otherwise a dominant aggressor would not be long in appearing. Therefore, relatively stable markets usually already possess all the necessary tools for peaceful conflict resolution — such as arbitration, rating systems, and sanctions.

Nevertheless, reputation works well only where it is easy to refuse cooperation by replacing a defaulting counterparty with their direct competitor, and where all other market participants also monitor such situations and strive to deal with counterparties who have a good reputation.

However, if you have a short planning horizon, and it is not very important to you what long-term negative consequences the person who did not pay for your work will face, but you would like to quickly receive the money under the contract and spend it on urgent needs — then it is important to have threats in reserve that are more serious than “I will no longer do business with you, and I will try to make sure everyone follows my example.” For example, the ability to shove a barrel into his liver, after which you offer to part with the car keys as collateral that the contract money will be paid tomorrow. Or, as you indicated in your question, simply beating him up.

At the same time, it is important to understand what exact reputation you are creating for yourself with such actions. If you are satisfied with a reputation as hot-tempered but forgiving (beat them up and forgave the debt) — well, go ahead, crack some knuckles, then write off the losses, and you’re even. If you prefer the reputation of a tough guy who isn’t to be trifled with, you can try beating them up first, and then declare that this was the interest on the debt, while the principal must be returned by a certain date, or new interest will be charged. But this is already a serious claim that you are capable of completely determining the rules of the game in this area (since you have de facto revised the terms of the contract unilaterally, which is no less of a blunder than a breach of contract by the party withholding payment), and many may find a reason to challenge such a claim, even if you were previously, in essence, irrelevant to them.

So I would recommend avoiding violence whenever possible and limiting yourself to threats of violence. Demonstrate to the contract violator your ability to cause them unacceptable damage, and then offer, as an alternative to such a miserable scenario, to revise the terms of the contract by providing the possibility of payment in installments — or, if that is clearer to you, putting them “on the clock.” And, again, it is better to get their consent to the new terms in an explicit form, because what use is it to you to let go of a person whose only desire is to get as far away as possible without actually paying the bills. It is far more profitable if they leave happy, understanding that they got off easy, that it is actually realistic to pay the debt under the new terms, that their business reputation will not suffer, and that they don’t need to run from anyone.

And in conclusion, if you are concerned specifically with the formal compliance of certain actions with the non-aggression principle, I will describe the conflict from that point of view.

You weren’t paid, you act in accordance with the clause of the contract regarding delays: usually, both a penalty and a specific arbitration body are specified there. The NAP is not violated.

You weren’t paid, you beat up the non-payer, after which you proposed to consider that the parties are even, and the beaten person agreed. There was a mutual violation of the NAP followed by a reconciliation of the parties.

You weren’t paid, you beat up the non-payer, after which you demanded the return of the debt — there was a violation of the NAP on your part, unless, of course, the beating was written into the contract as a disciplinary measure in case of payment delay or even as the payment itself (the classic description of labor relations known to us, ending with the words “you shouldn’t have chased after cheapness, priest”).

You weren’t paid, there is no hope for arbitration, you insist on a revision of the contract through threats, after which the new contract is fulfilled by the counterparty — there is no violation of the NAP (but if you overdid it, the situation may only become more complicated; this is a favorite plot of action movies, and they don’t make action movies about peaceful and cloudless market relations).

Contract settlement