Тег: Strategy

Panarchy

The State is a Complex Thing

It is believed that the state is something absolutely necessary for people, without which there would be chaos, banditry, and ruin. Yet, in different eras, the perception of what the state is and what it should be has differed radically. No matter which government textbook you look at, it always says that in the past, the state was very bad, oppressed people, and they rebelled. But now, the state is good, it does not oppress people, and stability is very important to us all. At the same time, the structure of the state in different countries also differs greatly, and the greater the difference between what is there and what is here, the more “incorrect” the model there is, and the better it would be for those unwise people to do as we do here. Meanwhile, we need to defend ourselves so they don’t do here what they do there.

Why the National State is Needed

Strong national states formed as a response to the constant threat of foreign invasion, as well as as a tool for such invasion. But although territorial seizures continue to this day, this is becoming less justified in the eyes of residents of other countries and less popular among their own citizens. The globalization of the economy has made trade wars far less effective. In other words, the unified national state is becoming less in demand—tasks simply cannot be found for this expensive and inconvenient tool.

The main threat to the state today is not external aggression, but the lack of civil consensus. In democratic states, candidates who rely on the people’s dislike of the political establishment are coming to power one after another. This means that people are not dissatisfied with individuals—they are dissatisfied with the system itself.

Problems of Democracy

Why is democracy providing civil consensus worse and worse? Because it is a dictatorship of the majority. If power stably belongs to the same political force, a stable dissatisfied minority forms, convinced that its interests are not being observed by the government, and therefore completely unmotivated to maintain any loyalty to the government. If the government and opposition regularly switch places, it results in an endless tug-of-war where policy becomes a compromise. Regulations are loosened, then tightened; taxes are decreased, then increased. No political program is implemented, and the voter’s frustration grows.

A minority is ready to obey the majority if it sees the need to unite in the face of external danger. But when there is no external danger, people realize there is no reason to tolerate it. And if external danger is fabricated, in our age of informational transparency, this causes even more irritation and distrust toward the establishment. The “make it the same for everyone” approach is rapidly losing popularity also because in all other sectors, a person easily receives individual service according to their requests—and only in those spheres for which the government is responsible must they somehow put up with unification. The future lies in transferring the individual approach into the political sphere.

For now, the individual approach in politics manifests in how the same candidate is tried to be sold to different categories of voters under different sauces before elections. In other words, political technologists already see the demand of the voters, but, unable to satisfy it, they try to at least give the dish different shades of flavor. But such a marketing strategy cannot work for long. More and more people want to somehow unite with those who share similar views and somehow peacefully separate from those to whom these views are offensive.

Separation

The simplest way of separation within the existing legal political tools is spatial separation. Chechens pushed all Russians off their land and now demonstrate a touching national unanimity to the outside world. American libertarians are moving to New Hampshire—and the state is rapidly deregulating its legislation.

However, physical relocation is only one way of changing conditions. If you don’t like the water company, you have to change your place of residence, but if you don’t like the mobile operator, it is enough to change operators without any moving. Government services have more in common with the services of a mobile operator than with utility infrastructure. At least, most government services look quite mobile.

Panarchy

Today’s state, through taxes, provides citizens with benefits such as education, healthcare, pension provision, law enforcement, control over fire, sanitary, ecological and a bunch of other safety measures, courts, and other small trifles—as well as that for which a strong central government was actually established: border protection against foreign invasion and services for seizing other states. Practically all these services can be perfectly provided on a competitive basis. After all, each of you calls your own insurance company when you get into an accident, so why can’t everyone contact their own police when protection is required?

Market solutions have already been invented and have a practice of successful implementation for absolutely all services that people need. Need, in this case, is determined by the willingness to pay for these services. A system of social relations in which all goods and services are supplied on a free competitive market is called anarcho-capitalism, and this is the liberal ideology brought to its logical limit.

However, such fine fragmentation of government service providers may not seem convenient to everyone, otherwise we would have long lived in such a fully competitive society. There is indeed a demand for a paternalistic state that cares for a person from the cradle to the grave, and it is even quite large. The entire twentieth century passed under the banner of armed struggle between socialism and liberalism, and despite the loud fall of odious totalitarian regimes, it must be admitted that both sides lost in this struggle: classical liberal states have also mostly vanished into oblivion. Therefore, the main challenge facing humanity today is the peaceful separation of socialists and liberals without violating the integrity of national entities (clustering by nationality, having one language and similar cultural norms, is also convenient for people). In fact, we are talking about the simultaneous coexistence of one or several socialist and liberal governments on the territory of one country or block of countries. Such a system is called panarchy, and this idea is being actively developed by intellectuals worldwide, in both developed and developing countries.

Transition Scenarios

Of course, the simplest path to embodying major social transformations is dictatorship. A coup or revolution is not mandatory. It is enough for a populist to come to power, concentrating a constitutional majority in parliament in their hands, subordinating the courts and, most importantly, having broad popularity among the people. A hypothetical Lee Kuan Yew or, conversely, Chavez.

The simplest path, however, also carries the greatest danger. Over time, someone else will replace the dictator and begin to repeal everything that was adopted.

A more complex but more reliable path is a broad public campaign. When very many people demand reforms—loudly, demonstratively and at every convenient opportunity—eventually their inevitability becomes obvious. Once they occur, they are much harder to repeal.

There is also a very simple and familiar path for Russia—catch-up development. Wait until panarchy works in the European Union and the USA, in China and Korea, in South Africa and Brazil—and then finally carry out the necessary transformations, while the lag behind Nigeria still doesn’t look completely hopeless.

And finally, those citizens who require separation can simply present the rest of the state with a fait accompli. Here is your state, here is ours. One territory, different norms. We pay taxes to our government according to the agreement, and we do not pay them to yours. Will you try to use force to return us to your jurisdiction? Guys, a civil war is not budgeted for, and in general, let’s live in harmony, because we have already charged the batteries of our drone. As the famous political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann states, the motto of our time is becoming “What, was that allowed? Yes, it was.”

And if there is no transition?

Well, what will happen if no transition to panarchy occurs?

A couple of inertial scenarios are possible. In the first, Russia sluggishly democratizes, the screws are loosened little by little, and the country gradually turns into something quite decent in Eastern Europe, no worse than some Moldova. In the second, Russia just as sluggishly tightens the screws, pushing particularly active opposition figures abroad, and gradually turns into something bleak in Eastern Europe, like Belarus.

It is also possible that what today exists more in journalistic articles than in regulatory documents will finally take shape. The sovereignization of regions, state corporations, and special services will occur, and the country will slide into clan feudalism. The tendencies for this exist, and as the current president weakens, they may become stronger.

But as long as the state, without reforming in the proper key, continues to somehow degrade, society may simply, by a process of attrition, begin to transition to alternative means of coordination—alongside the state, in spite of the state, and remaining invisible to the state. When people make deals under the table, using private money, resolve their conflicts in a private court, use the services of private security companies and so on, then from a certain moment, the uselessness of the state becomes obvious to literally everyone. In this case, Russia will transition to anarcho-capitalism, bypassing the stage of panarchy.

What to do?

So, you have encountered a fairly long text where unfamiliar terms are introduced, an unusual social structure is described, and strange predictions are made. What to do with this next?

Even if you are a supporter of the status quo, it is still useful for you to know that such a discourse exists and is gaining popularity. You can warily observe the penetration of these ideas into the masses or actively oppose them—but one way or another, it won’t hurt you to familiarize yourself with them, just as it is useful for liberals to know the basics of socialist doctrine, and for atheists—the New Testament.

If you are a convinced democrat, then perhaps you have simply never eaten any fruit sweeter than a carrot. Take a look at what is being proposed to replace modern liberal democracy; it’s possible you will find a grain of truth in these proposals.

Finally, if you like what has been presented, then it is all the more worth studying the texts on this site, discussing them with acquaintances—and from there, it may lead to gradual implementation.

What will happen to the channel once you explain all aspects of libertarianism and the questions run out? (meanwhile, I am doing everything possible to make sure they don’t)

…And justice for all

Lately, indeed, interesting new questions have begun to appear less frequently, so soon I will need to devote more attention not to new answers, but to structuring what has already been accumulated. The results of the survey indicate precisely that people wish to see not so much regular fresh posts, but rather a certain new quality.

In general, the long-term goal of the project is the formation of a community of people who have a clear understanding of libertarianism, are ready to convey their ideas to those around them, and arrange their lives in accordance with libertarian principles. So I very much hope that gradually more stories about successful libertarian practices will appear here, and not at the level of “somewhere far away something was done, I read it in a questionable article,” but rather “our readers implemented such-and-such a mechanism and are telling us how they navigated the pitfalls.”

What pleases me is that the view that it is time to work as a team is leading in the survey. Great, let’s expand.

Translators for “The Mechanics of Liberty” are very much needed. A polished literary style is not mandatory; accuracy of work is far more important. I will be editing the submitted text anyway. So, if anyone feels they have the strength and desire to participate in the translation, take any unoccupied chapter—and go for it.

There is quite a high demand for a guide on the promotion of libertarianism, so I will have to pay quite close attention to this. If you have ideas about what the structure of this text should be, please suggest them; it is easier for me to work with a semi-finished product than to invent it from scratch.

As for building a convenient catalog of previously created posts, I think I will create a more detailed category system and move it to a separate page. I hope this will make it easier for you to find something valuable in this mess.

You’ll agree, it looks quite similar to my channel: many useful things very compactly in one place, but in terms of usability, it’s far from a masterpiece.

Poll on channel priorities

Recently, I haven’t had much time for the channel, and many different projects have already been announced. I would like to find out where, in your opinion, I should focus my main efforts.

На чём мне стоит сосредоточить основные усилия?
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Results

Хвататься за всё сразу - рук не хватит. Куда лучше направить усилия в первую очередь? Выбираем один вариант.

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!

Containment Doctrine: An Attempt to Summarize

The discussion on the deterrence doctrine, conducted by Bitarch and me on one side, and the Anti-State public on the other, continues.

To ensure you don’t get confused, here is the backstory:
1. Deterrence Doctrine — Coercion to Non-Aggression. Ancap-tyan, May 8, additions made May 14.
2. Regarding the Deterrence Doctrine. Ved, May 9 (response to the first edition of the original article).
3. Again on the “Deterrence Doctrine” and Coercion to NAP. Ved, May 16 (response to the second edition of the original article).
4. Deterrence Doctrine, Response to Criticism. Bitarch, May 17.
and finally, the latest:
5. A Bit About Democracy, the Deterrence Doctrine, and Politi-ECU. Ved, May 26.

1. I described the development of the idea of a deterrence doctrine, namely, the prevention of war by designating a threat that is unacceptable to the adversary. It was argued that the only unacceptable threat to a total modern state is a threat to its leaders, whereas threats to the economy, infrastructure, army, and ordinary citizens do not prevent war and may even, conversely, lead to a total conflict until one of the parties is completely destroyed.

2, 3. Ved responded that the elimination of a leader leads either to their replacement while maintaining the previous course, or to the collapse of the state, or to the “deep state” replacing public policy—and a reversal of democracy would not be beneficial for us. Furthermore, a habit of terror tactics is fraught with danger: one gets used to them, begins using this tool left and right, like Daenerys with her “dracarys,” and then it turns out that for people, you are worse than any state. Now, crypto-anarchists are a different story: they develop their Bitcoin completely non-violently, and nothing can be opposed to them.

4. Bitarch countered that for the formation of corporate-type contractual jurisdictions—that is, rather providers of government services—the deterrence doctrine is perhaps indeed not very suitable. However, political-type contractual jurisdictions—that is, rather providers of a lifestyle, such as Catholic, liberal, or transhumanist ECUs—are characterized by greater motivation among their members and will therefore be more inclined to use force. Here, the deterrence doctrine would act as the lesser evil, since within its framework, force is only demonstrated.

5. Finally, Ved, in his rather detailed article, pointed out that not only is the service of “unacceptable damage through guaranteed destruction of leaders” migrating from a luxury category available only to superpowers into the mass segment as technology evolves, but services like a convenient flag, offshore jurisdictions, etc., will also become cheaper and penetrate business practice more widely, regardless of how large states try to fight it. Therefore, systematic political activity to develop alternatives to territorial states will yield the desired result without any waving of the deterrence doctrine.

As usual, when several intelligent people discuss correctly, it turns out they are talking about roughly the same thing, just from slightly different positions. Indeed, state leaders are unlikely to accept that some private individuals dare to threaten their power. For them, this is a familiar terrorist threat, and they will fight it with familiar anti-terrorist methods. Therefore, it is important not only that state aggression against private individuals is punished by damage to the leaders of the aggressor state. It is also important to convey to the aggressor the idea that this is specifically an interstate conflict, a conflict between equal subjects of law, which cannot be resolved unilaterally, even if it initially looked like the simple dismantling of an offshore platform.

Therefore, in a hypothetical conflict in the Andaman Sea, a contractual jurisdiction wishing to fulfill a contract for protection against aggression from the Kingdom of Thailand must clearly state that the married couple who purchased the platform are its citizens, and aggression against them is a casus belli; the conflict can be settled in an international court, but if Thailand refuses, there will be war. This is done not out of simple satisfaction of a sense of justice, but to expand the understanding of the state and state jurisdiction.

Without negotiations, it will be impossible to create a precedent. But without an explicit threat, there will be no negotiations. State representatives will simply refuse to recognize the contractual jurisdiction as a state, and therefore, as a subject of international law.

One might object that the resources of a state and a private company are incomparable, but that is a strange argument. First, they might be comparable. Second, it is like with computing power. If a laptop is sufficient for a specific task, the fact that the state has a supercomputer at its disposal does not give it a serious advantage. In other words, the deterrence doctrine begins to work precisely when the price becomes affordable for people. In this situation, individual statesmen may show off a bit, but they will quickly realize that the most profitable strategy is to be “sweeties” and truly safeguard the interests of people. As if the good old territorial state were no worse than the trendy ECUs.

Ved writes about the expansion of the practice of offshore jurisdictions, but as we see, existing offshores are quite helpless against political pressure from large powers. Even Switzerland allowed its arms to be twisted—first in the sphere of banking regulation, and recently in questions of special tax regimes for foreign companies (thus largely losing its ability to be a convenient contractual jurisdiction). What can be said about somewhere like Cyprus? Meanwhile, the use of the deterrence doctrine could help an offshore protect itself from political pressure by traditional states.

The movement toward the desired future, in which the monopoly of territorial states on aggressive violence will be trampled and the sovereignty of the individual, conversely, will triumph, occurs along several vectors simultaneously, and arguments over which one is the only important one, or which are not needed at all, smell of sheer preference. Some people undermine the territoriality of states by creating extraterritorial analogues. Others undermine the ability of states to rob people through monetary emission and develop the cryptocurrency industry. A third group undermines the monopoly on violence itself by making weapons cheap, precise, and stealthy, to launch the deterrence doctrine and prevent the doctrine of total war.

This can be viewed in different ways, but progress in this direction is already happening, and nothing can be done about it. It is within our power only to formulate a doctrine for the use of new means of warfare to minimize damage and maximize benefit. The doctrine consists of justified political demands backed by the threat of destroying the adversary’s leaders, which can be illustrated by non-lethal demonstrations.

The doctrine of tank wedges. Once very progressive)))

Containment Doctrine – Compelling Non-Aggression

If you look threatening enough, people will not dare to attack you. This simple consideration gives rise to rather complex spontaneous orders. We see them in the behavior not only of humans but of many other biological species. Even plants try to portray themselves as something very dangerous that is better left untouched. Similarly, libertarians tend to put animals on their banners that have succeeded in applying the doctrine of deterrence, such as the rattlesnake or the porcupine.

A vivid demonstration of the doctrine of deterrence in the animal kingdom

In military theory, the doctrine of deterrence began to gain popularity in the 19th century and became the dominant view after the appearance of nuclear weapons. The original reasoning was simple. It was necessary to ensure that waging war would be inherently disadvantageous. Since the goal of war, according to Clausewitz, is a peace that is better than the pre-war state, then the means of waging war must be made as horrific and large-scale as possible, so that no one would even think that a country could obtain an economic gain as a result of war. True, a contrary consideration was voiced in parallel: that war, first, would divert many working hands to the front, and second, would provide industry with military orders, which means that workers would receive a sharp increase in wages—thus, they have every reason to desire a great war. And although the First World War showed that, for some reason, famine and poverty began instead of an increase in well-being, this did not prevent Keynes from appearing shortly after with his ideas that during a crisis one must spend more, as this is the best way to achieve wealth.

During the interwar period, the Douhet doctrine spread, suggesting that an opponent’s will to resist could be easily broken by indiscriminate strategic bombing of production facilities in the rear—again, military theorists harbored the thought of how obvious economic senselessness of a confrontation could prevent the start of a slaughter. But the Second World War vividly demonstrated that losses only contribute to cohesion, and a total war begins far beyond any pre-war rational calculations.

After the end of the Second World War, humanity immediately began preparing for a new war, this time a nuclear one. Nuclear powers conducted active tests of new weapons and delivery systems, developed doctrines for their use, and built bunkers to shelter government bodies and headquarters. And then, finally, the most important event of the 20th century, in my view, occurred: the Cuban Missile Crisis. For the first time in human history, two powers, fully equipped for war, having launched their propaganda machines at full throttle, having mobilized troops, and having irreconcilable contradictions in their development doctrines implying the complete defeat of the opponent—did not dare to start a war and launched de-escalation. What happened? The governments of both countries clearly realized that if war began, they would become the first targets and would be destroyed with almost complete certainty. This realization proved to be enough.

It became clear exactly what should be the basis of the doctrine of deterrence. Not an economic blockade and sanctions, not the readiness to bomb a country back to the Stone Age, but only the guarantee of the destruction of the leadership. As long as the head of state can sacrifice his subordinates, he will be ready to fight. As soon as he himself becomes a piece on this chessboard, his motivation for war decreases sharply.

As is known, a new, previously non-existent product usually first becomes an object of fabulous luxury, but gradually, thanks to its attractiveness and the super-profits generated by its production, it attracts investment, becomes increasingly mass-market, and its price drops. Eventually, the product becomes virtually accessible to everyone.

The product “deterring the opponent through the guaranteed destruction of its leaders” was very expensive, and initially only superpowers could afford it. However, over time, on one hand, the circle of nuclear powers expanded, the cost of nuclear weapons decreased, and their consumer qualities grew; on the other hand, people’s tolerance for military losses decreased.

A good illustration of this trend was the last conventional war between civilized countries—the Falklands conflict. It is interesting because during the war, both sides more or less carefully observed the norms of international law relating to the laws and customs of war, and the conflict itself was clearly geographically localized around the disputed zone. In other words, the parties could no longer afford a total war, were forced to exercise restraint, and quickly transitioned from the hot phase of the conflict to diplomacy.

When high-precision weapons appeared, the great powers began using them to eliminate the leaders of opponents in underdeveloped countries. However, this, on the other hand, further lowered the entry threshold into the circle of countries that could afford a doctrine of deterrence through threats to leaders, since this no longer even required bypassing IAEA restrictions, as Israel did in its time, according to unofficial information.

However, progress in the relevant technologies does not stand still; high-precision weapons continue to become cheaper, and now we are frightened by something like this:

It is obvious that sooner or later, cheap, long-range, high-precision, anonymous weapons will be available to a very wide circle of subjects, including private individuals. And this means that humanity has come very close to the libertarian dream—to ensure guarantees of non-aggression from the state.

In February 2019, the first act of full-scale seasteading in history took place. A couple of bitcoiners, American Chad Elwartowski and Thai Nadia Tepdet, established a small residential platform 15 nautical miles off the coast of Thailand—that is, outside territorial waters, but within the two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone. In April, the Royal Thai Navy destroyed the platform, which according to maritime law constitutes military action against a sovereign power. Thus, states once again demonstrated that maritime law works only between sovereign subjects, which are only states, and not people.

Now let’s fantasize. Seasteaders continue to mind their own business peacefully: Chad continues to please the public with statements like “I hope my lawyer will be able to reach a reasonable agreement with the Thai government,” Nadia is waiting for political asylum in the USA. Meanwhile, a small drone drops a bomb on King Rama X, after which an entry left by an unknown person appears on the bitcoin blockchain, stating that any head of state who dares to prevent free people from settling outside the jurisdiction of the state will be destroyed in the same way. A few months after the Thai crisis, the seasteading institute announces its intention to establish a residential platform 15 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam…

Not every state is ready to trade a king for a party-goer

I think not much time will pass before people realize that placing platforms in neutral waters is already boring—look how many have been stuck there—and they will start announcing the secession of their own land-based territories, predicting, in case their sovereignty is not recognized, a sobering retribution against the head of their state by anonymous well-wishers who are simply close to the ideas of freedom and are therefore ready to defend them throughout the world…

Then more. People realize that sovereign territory is an atavism, that sovereignty can be extraterritorial—and they will begin to declare their independence from the state, without even bothering to leave its borders. Get insurance from an anonymous fund for sobering up etatists—and live your life, without taxes and repressions. A tax agent arrives—you show him your insurance policy, his face changes, he apologizes and leaves. Everything is orderly, peaceful, ancap-style.

What is needed for such fantasies to become a reality?

  1. A clear understanding that states begin to speak the language of law only with those behind whom they see power.
  2. Decentralized asymmetric defense. It is impossible to protect a territory from the state; it is not even worth trying. One can only create a threat to the decision-makers on the opponent’s side—the higher the better. Of course, moral pressure should also be exerted on the executors, but making them bitter is extremely harmful: they should not see you as a deadly enemy, otherwise you risk arriving at a total war instead of deterrence. A bitter enemy no longer needs propaganda; he hates you personally and is ready to rip your throat out.
  3. A strike against key state figures should come not from those attacked by the state, but as anonymously as possible.
  4. Exactly what means are used for deterrence is, for the most part, unimportant, as long as the restrictions are met: the weapon must provide minimal risk of collateral damage, have decent range, be as accurate as possible, and be as cheap as possible. It does not even have to be lethal; an educational effect can be achieved without such radical measures as killing. This could be the disclosure of critical personal data, such as a family’s home address, the draining of money from bank cards, slashed tires, or a bag of feces on the head instead of a bomb—after all, many analogs to the porcupine’s needle can be imagined in the modern world!
  5. Widespread advertising is needed. Actions within the doctrine of deterrence should be vividly highlighted, skillfully directed, and ideally place the targets of influence in the most idiotic position. It is public shame that works most effectively both against public elected figures and against dictators swelling with a sense of their own importance.

Modern democracies actively use the blurring of responsibility, where certain non-legal laws are passed by collective bodies. However, here lies not only strength but also weakness. It is relatively easy to protect one supreme commander-in-chief, but try constantly guarding an entire battalion of parliamentarians! The doctrine of deterrence opposes collective decisions with collective responsibility.

Of course, the doctrine of deterrence will not work with everyone; there may always be a particularly stubborn functionary who is indifferent to all your warnings. The same tactic as for public campaigns will work here: you simply need to switch to a superior, so that he will order the overzealous subordinate to stand down. In general, when constructing a strategy for deterring an opponent, all developments in conducting public campaigns can be adopted almost in full.

Yulia Latynina likes to repeat that society is structured just like an army, and one influences the other. An unintended consequence of exactly how civil society will deter an institutional aggressor will be certain changes in the structure of society itself. A maximally decentralized principle of coordination and a strive to achieve goals through indirect means will inevitably foster in society a system of those very extraterritorial contractual insurance jurisdictions that I have already talked your ears off about here on my channel. That is exactly how spontaneous orders work.

The most weighty objection against the doctrine of deterrence is as follows: Yes, of course, society can terrorize poor, frightened bureaucrats in the wet dreams of European hipsters. But these hipsters will sing a different tune when conditional “collectivos” start killing them at night—the state has a much richer arsenal of means not only for legal prosecution but also for proxy violence.

Yes, indeed, the state can very easily raise the stakes in this game, and soft “deterrence by denial” with its bags of feces and other attempts to ensure reputational damage will stop working (if the opponent’s leader cannot win beautifully, he may retreat, or he may decide “to hell with it, I will win ugly”), after which civil society will eventually have to adopt hardcore “deterrence by punishment” and use lethal means. But here it is important not to slide into total war, to conduct purely pinpoint actions and actively broadcast to the outside world through the voices of uninvolved parties: “What are you doing? Why are you driving these poor people to despair? Do you find it hard to make insignificant concessions? Why do you need this war?”

The whole point of the doctrine of deterrence is for the opponent to decide: the game is not worth the candle. Even in the most neglected cases, this is a perfectly solvable task.

Targeted Promotion of Libertarianism

Our joint creative work with Bitarch

If you have followed Donald Trump’s election campaign, you have likely heard of his method of tailoring the political program to each group of voters. Every person has points of vulnerability in their position, and by pressing them, one can win them over. Mikhail Svetov also advises using this approach in his lecture Propaganda Tools in the 21st Century.

Let us attempt to identify large electoral groups and work with their primary fears regarding the state. Our goal is to evoke in these people a hatred for the institution of the state as a territorial monopoly on violence and to interest them in the ideas of libertarianism.

Many people belong to several categories at once; accordingly, libertarianism can be promoted to them from multiple positions simultaneously (for example, parents with children who are also entrepreneurs).

Some regulations described in the article may be absent in the country of residence of our “libertarian candidate.” For example, Russian legislation lacks liability for criticizing LGBT, which exists in Switzerland, while it conversely imposes liability for the propaganda of non-traditional sex. Here, one should explain to the person that any state regulation has a property of “position inversion.” It does not matter which side the state is currently on regarding a specific issue; the very fact that this area is regulated means that tomorrow the regulation may change to the opposite, because for currently oppressed groups, the state may seem like a natural tool for fighting for their interests, and they will use it. In the middle of the 20th century, the state repressed Alan Turing for homosexuality, but a few decades pass, and in the same country, they repress critics of LGBT. In West Germany, until 1977, the state prohibited women from working without their husband’s permission, and now it punishes men even for complimenting a girl within the framework of anti-harassment legislation. Thus, it is important to make people understand: the complete absence of state regulation is better than state regulation in your favor.

Now, let’s go through the groups

Entrepreneurs

1. State regulation prevents entry into the market or creates severe obstacles to doing business. You have an idea, but you cannot implement it due to prohibitions from the state. The state forces you to obtain licenses for many types of business, which consumes a lot of time and resources. Constant inspections (fire, sanitary, labor inspectorate) interfere with business operations. Infrastructure monopolies (electricity, gas, etc.) make business uncompetitive. Even if the building is your property, you often have no right to install a suitable sign or paint the building the color you want without permission from the local authorities.

2. High taxes prevent the ability to develop the business. Everything goes to the state rather than to the development of your enterprise. This is especially relevant in Russia for businesses where the primary share of costs consists of salaries.

3. The labor code significantly complicates the hiring and firing of employees. If an employee does not bring you profit, you cannot simply fire them; they can force you to reinstate them in the position through the court. You have to find various workaround maneuvers, which also increases your costs. You have no right to allow an employee to work more than a certain number of hours, even if they want to. The ability to hire for a probationary period is limited.

4. As soon as your asset seems interesting to some enterprising security officer, they can initiate criminal prosecution against you and seize the business. To prevent such an outcome, funds must also be spent, and this cannot provide a full guarantee of safety.

5. Bribes, kickbacks, and other non-tax costs increase the cost of doing business, complicate accounting, and carry risks of criminal prosecution.

6. Copyright and patent laws prevent you from conducting business normally (patent trolls, channel blocking of video bloggers for quoting or using music and video without complex procedures for acquiring rights to them).

7. If a new breakthrough industry appears that is not yet regulated, by default, many government officials consider such activity prohibited, so the business community has to ask for the introduction of regulations just to be allowed to work somehow. This applies, for example, to the use of cryptocurrencies or the sharing economy (Uber, AirBnB, energy).

Youth

1. Due to the obstacles faced by business, youth experience difficulties finding employment, let alone starting their own business.

2. For guys, conscription slavery is relevant, which has no practical sense in conditions where large conscript armies are completely ineffective.

3. State regulation of education means that one must study according to unified programs that took a long time to coordinate and have since become obsolete. Many subjects serve the function of indoctrination instead of transmitting current knowledge and skills. The humiliated position of teachers prompts them to vent aggression on equally powerless students. Schooling is paid for through taxes; parents who wish to homeschool their children do not receive tax deductions for this, so very few can afford an alternative to school. As a result, classes are formed by compulsion, and people forcibly driven into a collective are always in a prison, with corresponding rules.

4. A number of professions imply the mandatory presence of a state-standard higher education diploma, so even after school, the choice of further education methods is artificially hindered by the state.

Users of medical services

1. State clinics and hospitals have no interest in providing quality services, as their existence is already paid for by taxes, and customer reviews have no influence on funding. Those who wish to receive paid treatment pay twice — for compulsory health insurance and for paid services.

2. The cost of medicines is greatly inflated due to state regulation of their market entry, patent privileges, import restrictions, and customs duties.

3. An unjustifiably high entry threshold into the profession due to requirements handed down from above creates a shortage of specialists.

Public sector employees

1. The state, acting as an employer, often imposes restrictions on workers that are not written in any employment contracts. Forced participation in pro-government rallies and election falsifications, self-censorship in expressing one’s political position — all of this is quite humiliating.

2. The state hinders private business from developing, which is exactly why a person has to seek a safe harbor in public sector positions, although the pay is low and the worker is not respected.

3. In public sector professions, one spends more time filling out papers than actually working: the utility of the work for society becomes near-zero, and one works only for the approval of the superiors.

Communists

1. The state, according to Marx, is an instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling class. It is impossible to get rid of class oppression without getting rid of the state. Any ideas of nationalization are the transfer of the means of production from the people into the hands of the state, i.e., the ruling class of bureaucrats; therefore, on the contrary, one must demand the transfer of all means of production to the people.

2. In the nineties, there was a correct people’s privatization when members of labor collectives received shares, but the state retained control over the courts, police, and monetary emission, and over time either took property away from the people or depreciated it.

3. Bitcoin is the correct communist money. State slips of paper are issued in any quantity the state desires, while cryptocurrency is honestly backed by kilowatt-hours, in full accordance with the labor theory of value.

Conservatives, believers, “patriots,” nationalists

1. The state forces you to pay for abortions through taxes (thus taking indirect part in them), and in wealthier countries — for hormone therapy during gender reassignment surgeries for transgenders.

2. You are forbidden from refusing service to people (homosexuals, migrants, representatives of certain ethnicities and religions) with whom you do not wish to have any dealings (employment, renting housing, providing services), as your right to private discrimination is not recognized.

3. LGBT have already achieved a ban on their criticism in many Western states and will strive for this in Russia. Attempting to preserve existing state norms regarding the curtailment of their rights means waging a fruitless war; it is better to exclude such an unreliable ally as the state from the conflict before it stabs you in the back. Moreover, the conflict will resolve itself afterward.

4. In the nineties, there were sexual education lessons in school. Now — basics of religious cultures and secular ethics. Tomorrow they will invent some other mandatory requirement. You can never guess which lobbyist will be stronger; it would be more reliable to simply deregulate education so that everyone can choose which cultural norms their child will assimilate. Otherwise, we will reach a point where children undergo gender reassignment surgeries without your consent, as in Canada.

5. The state prohibits the possession of effective means of self-defense, and even on the path to acquiring permitted, low-effectiveness means, it has placed a heap of administrative hurdles. This not only deprives you of the right to self-defense but also undermines the defense capability of the entire country.

6. You are forbidden from killing an attacker, even if your life is in danger. Despite clarifications from the supreme court, real law enforcement practice is such that successful self-defense usually leads to a criminal case for exceeding the limits of necessary self-defense, which ends in long sentences. The state refused to adopt the Castle Doctrine, although the petition for its adoption gathered the necessary 100 thousand signatures on ROI.

7. Due to the peculiarities of how democracy functions, the state often gives in to various well-organized radical currents and groups. For example, under the influence of radical feminists, tomorrow you may be held accountable for harassment if you simply pay the bill for a woman at a restaurant. And under the influence of radical Islamists, you can already today be forced to apologize to Ramzan Akhmatovich.

Left-liberals, social democrats, supporters of social justice

1. The problem of corruption exists worldwide. Even in advanced countries like Sweden and Finland, corruption exists in large volumes; it is simply on a different level (large business) and very rarely becomes known. Soil for corruption arises wherever an official has the right to make a decision at their own discretion.

2. The state destroys “sanctioned” food products and prohibits entrepreneurs from distributing expired products for free (although they may be perfectly fit for human consumption). This is lobbying for the interests of owners of agro-holdings and food industry enterprises.

3. You hope in vain that a progressive income tax will help establish social justice: in countries with a progressive tax, wealth inequality remains very high. This happens because large business has many tricks to reduce the tax burden, and the primary weight of taxation still falls on the middle class. You do not have the opportunity to move your business offshore, classify restaurant dinners and business jet flights as representative or travel expenses, or secure state subsidies and benefits. You will be assured that robbery is useful because the rich will be robbed more, but no, it is you who will be robbed more.

4. The state spreads unscientific nonsense about the harm of marijuana, resulting in many harmless consumers sitting in prison and research on its medical use being stalled.

5. The minimum wage, the ban on discrimination during hiring, and other labor market regulations only increase unemployment, as they complicate obtaining a job for those whose labor would bring the employer less benefit at the same pay. People with disabilities, women with children, pre-retirees, and people without work experience simply will not be able to find employment, although they could do so if they had the opportunity to dump their prices on the labor market.

Pirates

Intellectual property protection laws hinder the free exchange of information and its accessibility to underprivileged strata of the population. They also limit the possibilities for creativity (due to the ban on creating derivative content) and scientific research (many scientists are unable to pay for access to collections of scientific articles and journals). Patents on medicines make them prohibitively expensive for low-income citizens, and many of them die from diseases that could be cured. So-called intellectual property is simply state privileges. You are trying to forbid the state from establishing such privileges, but why not consider the possibility of removing the state as such?

Copyright-lobbyists

Along with intellectual property protection, you will inevitably receive censorship of your content from the state. Moreover, the lion’s share of funds will still be appropriated by various intermediaries forcibly introduced by the state, such as RAO, while you will get pennies. Or you might even be forced, for example, to publish in a scientific journal at your own expense, but the journal will keep all rights to use the publication, and the state will fully support it. Would it not be better to practice non-violent methods of monetization instead of involving such an inconvenient intermediary as the state? The state will bring you more costs from a ruined reputation than you will gain benefits from how it protects your intellectual property.

Eco-activists

1. Environmental protection is of little concern to the state. An official is more likely to allow an oligarch friend to destroy the environment for a large bribe (or even for the prospect of increasing tax collections as a result of “economic growth”) than to give in to environmental activists.

2. Private ownership of forests, lakes, and hunting grounds will create a powerful incentive to protect the environment and engage in the breeding of endangered species of animals and plants. There is no need to fear that the owner will forbid you from walking in the forest, picking mushrooms, or having a picnic; they will more likely make efforts to ensure that people vacation specifically on their property and will try to provide them with decent service.

3. If a private company causes damage to nature and people suffer because of it, it can at least be sued, but when an ecological catastrophe is caused by the state, there is no one to hold accountable.

Parents with children

1. The state forbids you from choosing the style of upbringing that you consider more correct.

2. There is a mandatory educational program with many subjects that do not provide current knowledge and skills but simply serve as indoctrination. You can only manage additional education, which will finally take away the remnants of your child’s leisure time.

3. If you wish to provide your child with quality home education, no one will reimburse you for the taxes paid for the maintenance of state schools.

4. Child protective services can take your child (even forever, depriving you of parental rights) for quite harmless things — lack of renovation in the apartment, a child’s complaints that parents did not buy them a gift, an untidy appearance of the schoolchild, and so on. The quite sound idea that a child has a right to protection not only from strangers but also, if necessary, from parents, has resulted in the fact that often the family as a whole is repressed.

Unemployed

1. The state has over-regulated the labor market and burdened salaries with huge taxes, so an employer cannot afford to hire you officially, and if they break the law anyway and hire you “under the table,” it is more profitable to take an illegal migrant; they are cheaper and will not go to the labor inspectorate to complain. This corrupts employers and demotivates them from creating humane working conditions.

2. In return, you receive a pittance of a benefit from the state if you register as unemployed. You will be tossed the most illiquid vacancies from the state employment exchange, be slowly trained in courses with no guarantee of employment afterward, and be required to constantly prove that you are still unemployed; thus, if you get a temporary unofficial part-time job, you will have to hide this fact from the state to avoid losing your status.

Victims of repression and victimless crime laws

This is a very broad and diverse group. This includes political prisoners, those held accountable for the use of psychoactive substances, violators of various licensing restrictions, those accused of pedophilia for claiming that maturing happens differently for everyone and the age of consent is a harmful thing — and even those fined for crossing an empty street on a red light.

To them we explain: it is impossible to replace bad repressive laws with good ones; they can only be abolished, otherwise not you, but someone else will become their victim. If no private person suffered or was put in danger, then there is no need for punishment. If you yourself suffered or were put in danger due to your actions (for example, not wearing a seatbelt), then it is even more pointless to punish you additionally — you have already punished yourself. Therefore, one must demand from the state the abolition of all laws implying punishment for a victimless crime, and if it resists, this is an excellent reason to abolish the state: its very existence is already a punishment for innocent people.

Pensioners

This is the most difficult category of people for the promotion of libertarianism. But even pensioners can be interested in the dismantling of the state.

Every working resident of Russia contributes 22% of their earnings to the Pension Fund of Russia (PFR). In 2018, the average salary in Moscow was 80 thousand rubles, and the average pension was 19 thousand rubles. Suppose a person works from age 25 to 60 with some breaks, and as a result, pays contributions to the PFR for 30 years. If they had not paid insurance contributions to the PFR but instead saved them in their own bank account (for simplicity, let’s assume that the deposit interest rate equals inflation, meaning it can be ignored in calculations), they would accumulate 80,000 * 0.22 * 12 * 30 = 6.3 million rubles. As of 2018, the average life expectancy in the Russian Federation is 73 years. The remaining life expectancy after retirement is thus 13 years. Accordingly, if you were not the state, your annuity would be 6,300,000 / (13 * 12) = 40 thousand rubles. This amount represents the state’s real obligations to you.

How then to ensure the fulfillment of these obligations? It is necessary to demand the total privatization of state property. A program clear to any pensioner: “seize and divide.” Seize from the state, divide among those whom the state has robbed. And, of course, stop the robbery for the future, though that is a concern for the young, which, however, is also close and clear to pensioners. All that remains is to conduct a discussion on the methods: how to seize and divide so that everything is not stolen in the process.

How to achieve ancap if states, and not ancap, developed from the state of nature?

It is clear that all states cannot be destroyed overnight, but then how? What should guarantee the stability of ancap?

анонимный вопрос

States evolved from a state of nature because plunder proved more profitable than non-violent methods of enrichment. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then; people are becoming wealthier, as a result of which greed for preservation becomes more characteristic for them than greed for acquisition. That is, not the desire to snatch what belongs to others, but the strive to preserve one’s own. If one attempts to snatch what belongs to others, fraud becomes preferable to direct violence.

So the path to ancap is quite clear: technological progress, an increase in labor productivity, the emergence of free market tools that do not require centralized trusted intermediaries—and on one hand, we will have less and less moral justification for the forced redistribution of resources, and on the other—less and less technical feasibility for it.

Of course, the scenario where “all states disappeared at once” is quite strange; it is even difficult for me to imagine how that could happen without reptilians. The foundations of the state will be eroded gradually, as is actually happening now. It is difficult to say exactly which path humanity will take to reach ancap. The direct and clear path of minarchists, using ordinary tools of political reform? Progressive offshoring with a transition to panarchy? Harsh agorism with a heavy mix of crypto-anarchism? Seasteading and other Liberlands—that is, the construction of anarcho-capitalism through the occupation of no-man’s lands, with subsequent replication of the experience?

Any of these paths would satisfy me; there are no fundamental, insoluble disagreements between the different routes, for the state lives in people’s minds, and exactly how to expel it from there is, in many ways, a matter of taste.

What guarantees the stability of ancap? Only economics. The less profitable plunder is compared to non-violent methods, the lower the probability of the return of systemic plunder, i.e., the state. In the form of marginal practices, it will not pose a serious danger.

Economics and rhetoric. Interest and morality. Being and consciousness. These are mutually influencing things. Based on bare economic incentives, the state will not collapse for a long time and will persist simply by virtue of tradition. Based on bare rhetoric, the abolition of the state is unlikely to be stable: a new lucky plunderer will come and declare an era of prosperity under the shadow of the paternal care of the great steersman. In short, both factors are important.

Mao is perceived by us as a funny ancient deity, but what if I posted a picture of Stalin? Leaders are attractive…