Тег: Panarchy

Incels, a discussion

I received a wealth of feedback on the article about how to cook incels.

There were so many absolutely enthusiastic reviews—more than any of my other articles have ever gathered—that I’m bewildered. By all journalistic standards, the article is terrible because a hostile attitude toward the subject matter literally seeps through. On the other hand, standards are one thing, and reader sympathies are another!

But there was criticism too.

I’ll start with the simplest. A photo of a decision-maker’s secretary was used as a clear illustration of the fact that a woman’s success is roughly not determined by male appearance, and therefore, the entire high-minded incel theory simply crashes against practice. Perhaps the caption for the photo wasn’t clear enough, but generally, I wanted to pay a compliment to the subject of the photo. It didn’t work—oh well. Here, I am in an extremely advantageous position, where taking offense means raising suspicions of one’s own affiliation with the group being studied.

A huge number of extremely detailed recommendations were received regarding the nuances of using psychoactive substances. Among the unusual suggestions, cocaine is recommended to increase self-confidence. Well, that’s for the truly desperate; I wouldn’t prescribe that to just anyone. I’m glad my readers are experienced and well-educated people.

But the most serious complaint was the accusation of failing to fully explore the topic. I was reminded of my joint article with Bitarch about the targeted promotion of libertarianism, and people wondered why, in this case, I am admitting helplessness and writing some off-topic piece about individual salvation instead of putting together universal arguments for representatives of the group in question. My mistake. Here it comes.

Targeted promotion of libertarianism for incels

1. The state benefits from the destruction of the institution of the family because it wants the individual to depend only on the state and not be able to rely on their loved ones. But if the state becomes a nanny for the person, the person becomes infantile, and the woman does too. Instead of looking at truly important things, like a groom’s wealth or his prospects, she acts on the principle of “this one is handsome, I want him, and this one is ugly, get him out of my sight.” Without the state and its hyper-protection, a woman would have to behave more responsibly, and a man’s appearance would be far from the primary consideration when choosing.

2. The state caters to immigrants. In the US, these are sultry Latinos. In Europe—sultry Arabs and Blacks. In Russia—hot southern guys as well. This further increases the competition for women. Without the state, the local community would quickly kick out outsiders who do not respect local cultural norms.

3. Speaking of cultural norms. There is such a thing as panarchy. You can establish your own contractual jurisdiction, and it will have everything you need: fines for refusing sex, a ban on divorce, no prosecution for so-called marital rape, and so on. The only restriction is that joining the jurisdiction must be voluntary. Do you think too few girls will join your jurisdiction? Well, then choose the jurisdiction of some Puritans; there, submission to the husband and all that other stuff will be preached, and paying a tithe and attending church on Sundays is not such a high price for strict biblical family morality. But first, of course, you’ll have to push the state aside.

Look, so many submissive tyans! Just lovely!

New translation!

We present for your consideration a translation of the article by Rainer Eichenberger and Bruno Frey “Functional Overlapping and Competing Jurisdictions (FOCJ): Developing the Idea of Modern Federalism”.

The article examines a model for a soft, evolutionary transition to a libertarian society through functional panarchy. The model was developed for actual implementation via political means (which is why it is non-radical and complies with the requirements of legislation on political parties). It could serve as a strong foundation for updating the program of the Libertarian Party of Russia, as it is well-suited for heterogeneous political entities such as the Russian Federation. Although a significant portion of the article is dedicated to proposals for reforming the European Union, a separate chapter analyzes the specifics of implementing FOCJ in developing countries.

Translation: Kreadon
Editing: Ancap-chan
General coordination: Bitarch

Minarchists are not marginals? Well, excuse me.

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.

Minarchism is a marginal ideology

Bitarch’s Column

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).

minarchists examining their electoral rating

Extraterritorial identity. The example of the Netherlands.

Bitarch’s Column

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.