Тег: Popov

A little more about Zelensky

Yesterday’s spontaneous post about how Ukraine has finally waited for a libertarian president caused a number of comments from actual Ukrainian libertarians, such as, for example, Vladimir Zolotoryov. The comments boil down to the fact that there is nothing to rejoice about; Zelensky is as much a libertarian as Zolotoryov himself is a communist, so he will ruin everything no better than Balashov.

Indeed, Zelensky’s statements are quite contradictory: he simultaneously quotes Reagan, with his “government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem,” immediately proposes the concept of government as a service, and then promptly reports that it would be a good idea to imprison more people for tax evasion and introduce total income declaration. So, Zelensky is certainly not a convinced libertarian; he is an obvious populist trying to guess the demand of the target audience to gain maximum support.

What do I see as the merit of Zolotoryov, Balashov, Yurovsky, and even the—heaven forbid—late Sherstnyov? It is that they, and many other Ukrainians, broadcast the libertarian agenda so loudly and convincingly that the populist Zelensky believed: this is the people’s demand, and this is what I will latch onto. Zelensky, having no distinct program of his own, is an amplifier of someone else’s agenda. Yes, his microphone captures noise along with the signal, introduces its own distortions, and then delivers something close to a cacophony to the public. But he draws attention to the libertarian doctrine itself, and after that, interested people can already bend the ears of others and explain that taxes are theft, the state is a gangster, and this is how ancap works—take it and use it.

In Russia, however, Vladimir Popov asks an interesting question in his channel. Generally, the channel is mostly dedicated to weapons, and I love it dearly, but opinions on a wide variety of topics are found there. Vladimir asks: how is it that when Enteo says he is a libertarian, everyone brushes it off as something you’d expect from a fool. But when people say Zelensky is a libertarian, everyone rejoices wildly that Ukraine succeeded. What is the libertarianism of Zelensky, how does he differ from Enteo, and what did Ukraine succeed in?

Zelensky, unlike Enteo, does not practice direct aggressive violence, declares a desire to end the war, and defends the desire of Ukrainians to live their own private lives. And if the statement “Enteo is a libertarian” evokes nervous laughter and a response of “why don’t you call the Tsapkovs libertarians too,” here it is more of a shrug and a thoughtful “well, in some ways—yes.”

So, it makes sense for Ukrainian minarchists to express joy and start broadcasting something like “Hooray, Zelensky is a libertarian, which means he must lower taxes, reduce regulations, carry out decentralization, and privatize state enterprises. Show us the scoundrel who dares to hinder our beloved Mr. President in these libertarian endeavors, and we will cover them in shame.”

The same applies in Russia: if Putin says he is a libertarian, the reaction will be like it was for Enteo. If Navalny says he is a libertarian, it makes sense to express joy and bring the good news to the city and the world: finally, we have reached Navalny, he has become imbued with libertarianism, renounced the minimum wage and other leftism, and will now change the economic block of the program—forward, Navalny to the Duma, and so on.

In connection with the shooting, but not about shootings

As usual, after every shooting, a discussion about the regulation of gun control begins. Mikhail Pozharsky took an interesting approach. Generally being a supporter of the liberalization of such control, he points out that both those who demand a ban on weapons in connection with shootings and those who demand their liberalization are based on an illusion of control. Namely, statists are under the illusion that the state can effectively protect against shootings, and liberals are equally convinced that armed citizens can protect themselves effectively; meanwhile, effective protection against shootings does not exist, people are simply afraid to admit that their lives depend on chance. He then provides statistics.

I have already promised to refrain from formulas here, and similarly, I do not want to get bogged down in the analysis of those very statistics. There are a number of grievances regarding them; as an example, I will provide a link to a post by Vladimir Popov; more can be found, but I will not delve into the depths.

The factor that seems most important to me is practically impossible to measure with statistics, because it is psychology. I already mentioned this yesterday in the context of the fact that weapons are a powerful stimulus for the development of mutual politeness; therefore, an increase in the armament of schoolchildren will lead to them having to curb their enthusiasm for bullying and other teenage antics, and this will also affect the frequency of mass shootings. To this, Mikhail replied that he does not understand where the myth about the politeness of armed people came from. Take the States, for example—no particular politeness is observed there, “fuck” every other word.

Yes, let’s take the States. It is clear that referring to the extremely low number of murders in the Wild West is banal; one can always counter that such ancient data is irrelevant. Let’s take modern America, specifically African Americans—who, from the perspective of the average person, are all thugs with guns and complete contempt for the law.

What have these guys contributed to world culture? Rap battles! In Russia, the art of profanity is primarily the art of humiliating a completely powerless subordinate. The boatswain’s tirade, warrant officers, and so on. To a lesser extent, it is an undirected complaint about a hard life. There, however, it is precisely a dialogue between equals, in which the virtuosity of the insult is valued, and victory is awarded for exactly that; and if someone loses their temper and pulls out a gun during a battle, well, that is, excuse me, bad form.

This is simply another example for you that any armed community will inevitably develop its own means of conflict de-escalation, whereas a forcibly disarmed one is more likely to invent sophisticated ways to spite others from the shadows.

It’s good when friends are nearby!

Famous vlogger TrashSmash released a long and pompous video about how bad state militarism is, and how we should all disarm before it in the name of peace, ridding ourselves of civilian weapons and testosterone.

The weapons faction of the LPR responded to this with a double-barreled blast: Alexei Ovsienko with a text on Facebook, and Vladimir Popov with a video breakdown of the clip. As for me, I’ll just post a thematic picture from the channel of one cool Chelyabinsk girl.

Vladimir Popov’s Lecture in Piter

Recently, I answered questions regarding weapons: about the consequences of legalization and about psychos. In those answers, I consistently pointed to the logical premises for why arming citizens would reduce crime, and also noted that this is confirmed by practice in the post-Soviet space.

Right now in St. Petersburg, there is a lecture by the well-known libertarian weapons expert Vladimir Popov, host of the channel Don’t tread on me. There, he warns against engaging in propaganda games with statistics, because crime is influenced by many far more significant factors, and no correlation between the murder rate and the level of citizen armament is observed worldwide.

Not that this is a direct refutation of my thesis, but the addition is quite substantial.

Anyway, I won’t distract you; just watch the broadcast with me.

https://youtu.be/RNkWArqmfQQ
Recording of the lecture broadcast