Тег: Violence

Decision-makers and security forces

Many have expressed optimism regarding the recent series of searches of LP members, claiming that this is a mark of quality and a sign that the party is on the right track. I would say that today, repression against political activists is not a sign of fear among those in power, but rather a businesslike scurrying, carried out with a cold heart and without much thought. The grass has grown—it is time to mow. Meanwhile, the grass may comfort itself with the thought that the more it is mown, the thicker it grows.

To be honest, I had a vague hope that since the LP differs from other parties in its radical rhetoric of freedom, this would also be reflected in its behavior in the face of repression. It was not. Protest as performed by the LP is just as legalistic as that performed by Navalny. When security forces burst into a libertarian’s home, they leave just as intact and with the loot as if it had been an ordinary Navalny volunteer or an employee of Open Russia.

So, if anyone believes that Russian libertarians are grim, armed anarchists who will not let themselves be stepped on, or that an attempt to break into one of their homes will immediately trigger a spontaneous rally under their windows—they will have to part with these harmful illusions. Libertarian ideas are not so deeply rooted in the libertarian community that rhetoric regarding the state has translated into practical actions against it.

After all this, I even feel somewhat awkward discussing what the libertarian doctrine of action is in the event of one aggression or another: such discussions begin to look very irrelevant.

Therefore, in this post, I am not providing recipes, because I do not know them. I do not know how I would behave if I were a member of the libertarian party, against whose elected leader blatant state aggression has been undertaken. For me, this is a serious reason to continue refraining from joining the party. I fear that if I begin to declare my views openly, then when the state reaches me—which will happen quickly—I will find myself alone before its functionaries, and at most, I will receive a few pickets in my support.

Please be responsible for your words; there is already too much empty chatter in the world. If you do not feel the resolve to bite the boot that tramples you, do not raise the banner with the motto “Dont Tread On Me.” It is better to hide your libertarianism than to openly discredit it.

Libertarianism ex machina

Bitarch, Ancap-tyan

In many plays staged in ancient theater, an unusual technique for resolving character conflicts was often used — “Deus ex machina” (“God from the machine”). It consisted of the sudden appearance of a new god-like character on stage at the end of the work, who had not been mentioned previously in the performance and had the ability to quickly resolve the heroes’ problems. Simply put, external forces solved the heroes’ problems without delving into the essence of the conflict. This technique is suitable not only for works of art, but can also be useful for political transformations aimed at the destatization of society.

Let’s look at any libertarian public page on social media, chat, website, stream, podcast, or channel. What will we see? Most likely, an endless discussion of the same topics — how libertarian courts work, who will build roads under ancap, contractual slavery, abortions, the agency of children, nuclear weapons, drugs, the Austrian School of Economics versus Keynesianism and state planning, minarchism versus ancap, ancap versus panarchy, territorial communities versus ECUs. Often, this boils over into an endless holy war, where people spend many days in a row defending their point of view.

But the thing is, if you argue endlessly among yourselves and spend all your resources on it, you won’t achieve much! And is it even necessary? Perhaps there exists a single universal recipe for how to resolve all these problems at once and spend our scarce resources for the benefit of the movement?!

Yes, it exists and is found in the very nature of the state — a stationary bandit can conquer a society only when the balance of violence potential (BVP) is disrupted, while when this balance is maintained, a stateless society exists quite stably, as proven within the methodology of neo-institutionalism. You can hear about this briefly and clearly in the first part of Alexander Auzan’s lecture “Evolution of the Stationary Bandit.” After the formation of centralized coercive structures (the state), movement in the opposite direction toward a decentralized society becomes impossible without applying external effort to the system (this pattern is analogous to the second law of thermodynamics: heat will not spontaneously transfer from a colder body to a warmer one).

If we restore the BVP, the costs of initiating violence become higher than the costs of defense, and the territorial monopoly of the state simply disappears. Beyond that, everything else simply doesn’t matter! Of course, it is better to know the answer in advance as to who will build roads or how to determine the agency of children, but even without that, people will have no choice but to solve this without the state. It simply cannot exist when the BVP is maintained. If you are a programmer or simply know Boolean logic, you understand well: after calculating the value of the first operand in a conjunction (&&), you don’t need to calculate all the other operands if it is FALSE, as the result of the conjunction will be FALSE anyway. Or for a disjunction (||), you can skip calculating the other operands if the first is TRUE, because the result will be TRUE anyway.

It follows that a sufficient condition for the transition to libertarianism is merely bringing the violence potential in society to a more uniform distribution. As you have probably already guessed, this can be achieved by creating and spreading tools for the doctrine of deterrence (DD).

The advantage of this approach is that the development, production, and implementation of DD tools into wide use can be carried out by a much broader circle of people than those currently involved in political campaigning and protest actions. Co-opting techies who can assemble a drone, a blinding laser, or other interesting tools from freely available parts to fight the regime is far more promising in terms of expanding the protest base than limiting recruitment to humanities scholars and economists who are well-versed in the nuances of ideology. Even more useful is the involvement of engineers and managers capable of organizing the mass production of such items, which is also a very numerous category. It should also be noted that semi-cottage production or writing a software product is easily hidden from the state and is therefore safer than attending rallies, which serves as an additional stimulating factor.

When reliable, mass-produced, and inexpensive tools for deterring aggressors are available even to a grandmother, it won’t be long before the “market decides” the fate of the state. After the deus ex machina does its work, all of today’s theoretical disputes about how to organize under ancap will abruptly move into the practical plane. We observed something similar relatively recently, when economists argued about whether it was possible to return to the gold standard in the era of fiat money, and then Satoshi arrived, and now instead of the gold standard we have the bitcoin standard. That’s it, the subject of the dispute has vanished; the agenda is now the widespread practical implementation of private hard money.

How will ancap prevent the formation of the state?

Deterrence doctrine? Yes, yes, hilarious — 25 people against one. He’ll stop them with a deterrence doctrine, uh-huh. He’ll blow up his own house with a “dead hand” system so the bastards get nothing. Sounds like nonsense. It’s like saying: if I have a weapon, 25 people with the same weapon won’t stop me because they’ll miss.

Gangs and organized crime under ancap cannot be stopped by any means whatsoever. Self-organization? Sure, look at the protests — there’s your free and voluntary self-organization for you.

The market will sort it out, so they can only be stopped by a PDA (Private Defense Agency) or another gang — that is self-organization, just for money — everything according to the market.

Consequently, panarchy is the future structure of society, and ancap is a fantasy about what would happen if people didn’t organize into gangs, just like in ancient times.

анонимный вопрос

When making predictions about what society will look like, a person holds a certain image of society in their head. Following Laksi Katal (and perhaps for the same reasons, namely the experience of the nineties, which I myself didn’t have enough time to fully drink in), you see society as a collection of people who are eager to unite for joint looting, but extremely reluctant to unite for mutual assistance in defending against looting.

I am constantly asked how ancaps can withstand millions of Chinese hordes and other collectivist bullshit — behind all these questions lies the same fear of being alone in the face of an aggressive crowd.

So here it is. The dominance of anarcho-capitalist (i.e., free market) relations in society is possible only when being part of an aggressive crowd is far less profitable than not being part of it. Just as in South Korea any schoolchild knows that while you sleep, your competitor is studying, under ancap it should be a fairly common belief that while you are risking your life snatching phones behind garages, your competitor is launching a startup — and you’ll be lucky if it’s not a startup for delivering remote kicks to those who snatch phones.

As a salvation from gangs, you suggest PDAs or other gangs (meaning something like the insurance rackets described by the aforementioned Laksi Katal). This truly is capable of reducing organized systematic aggressive violence in society, if there is a lot of it. The other thing is that the reduction of violence will quickly reduce the demand for expensive insurance services against violence. For instance, in earthquake-safe areas, people are unlikely to insure against earthquakes. For this very reason, I am quite ready to consider the PDA system as a transitional stage to ancap, but I find it hard to believe that they would have a noticeable influence for long enough. Right now, the most profitable business in the world is running your own state. But competition will quickly lower the margin, and the lack of sacred reverence for this field of earnings will do its part. Protection rackets in a society with a developed free market will be about as significant as pest control companies are today. Yes, someone suffers from harmful rodents and uses the services of specialists to exterminate them. And someone had their phone snatched, and they also turn to specialists to eliminate this inconvenience.

Rats, cockroaches, the state, and other problems that can arise in society are the result of poor hygiene. Assuring people that the only way to get rid of rats is to bring out the rat king, and the only way to eliminate armed gangs is to hire other armed gangs, looks like a quite reasonable idea, but only when society is very poor and the mentioned plagues are literally at every step. Wealth and social hygiene skills provide a greater variety of methods to prevent all this nonsense.

The state from the perspective of a rich and developed society

Who will protect children from violence (on the part of parents)? How can a child prove their agency?

Immanuel Kant

In fact, with the same justification, we could ask: “Who will protect the individual from state violence? How can a person prove their agency?”

In response to state violence, a person can resist directly, attempt to appeal to one branch of government regarding violence committed by another branch, flee to another state, or to a place where state orders do not operate. Finally, a person can resign themselves, repent, and become an exemplary citizen so that the state violence directed at them becomes more or less tolerable. None of this will help them prove their agency to the state, but it may somehow influence the severity of the violence.

As is easy to see, a child can do exactly the same in relation to their parents. They can fight with their parents and even kill them, complain to the father about the mother or to the mother about the father, run away to other people, or simply try to survive on the street. Finally, they can become an exemplary child and fulfill all parental whims. None of this helps them prove their agency within the existing orders, but it may somehow influence the severity of the violence they are subjected to.

The power of the state over its subject and the power of parents over a child are equally total in the absence of external factors. To protect human dignity from the power of the state, people organize into a civil society that directly opposes the state, both using tools provided by the state and through direct moral pressure on individual state representatives (we leave political terrorism outside the scope of this consideration, although it glares quite menacingly from the sidelines). Similarly, the family’s power over a child is limited by society, both through official channels, such as complaints to state authorities, and through direct moral pressure on the parents (methods of physical coercion glare menacingly from outside the scope of this issue).

To summarize. The power of one human over another is dangerous and undesirable in itself. Wherever possible, the “ruler-subject” relationship should be transitioned into relationships between negotiating subjects. Wherever this is not possible—for example, due to the weakly expressed agency of one of the parties—power can and must be limited through pressure from other subjects who form public opinion.

Of course, public opinion should not be idealized—it is a tool for interference in private relationships by third parties; it is not for nothing that public opinion is often called the opinion of those who weren’t asked. Libertarianism provides the principle by which the legitimacy of public opinion’s interference in private relationships can be determined: the now-clichéd NAP. The more obvious its violation within the family, the more the opinion of those who weren’t asked becomes sought after.

The Efficiency of Violence

What do you say about the idea that the costs of ensuring security and protecting property rights are higher for private companies than for the state, and that the state, by virtue of its exceptional efficiency in applying force and maintaining order, can better provide the protection and guardianship of law and order, as well as courts, than private companies, and therefore it is necessary in this regard?

анонимный вопрос

How can the state’s costs for protecting property rights be lower than those of a private company? Only through games with budget line items. Yes, for a police officer, it is enough to hang a sign saying “forbidden, fine is so-and-so” and carry out a couple of exemplary fines—whereas a private entity would have to constantly hover and be vigilant to ensure the prohibition is not violated. But this does not mean the police officer is mega-efficient. It means that he himself might receive pennies, or even feed entirely on bribes, while the state must bear the primary costs of ensuring that people are afraid to contradict this police officer. And the costs of maintaining this fear are spread across a heap of budget items, from education to the maintenance of prisons.

A private entity, on the other hand, often has to compete with the state under completely unequal conditions. Where the state provides a service already paid for via taxes and requiring no additional money, the private entity is forced to charge the client additional money, since the state does not share taxes with them.

The state introduces distortions, often quite unpredictable ones, into the market picture, and as long as these distortions persist, judging market efficiency becomes more difficult. One might start a business relying on the current market conditions, only to encounter a completely new regulatory framework in the middle of the project, and that’s it—the project must be shut down and the losses written off. State institutions can usually count on their interests being considered during legislative innovations, so planning is a bit easier there. But it is somehow strange to conclude based on this that the state is necessary. This is simply an example of unfair competition, which is created by the state itself.

To summarize. Indeed, the state can impose arbitrarily high costs on private companies for anything by using force or the threat of force. But who needs such a state? Certainly not the consumer, onto whom all these costs will eventually be shifted.

Distortion of the market efficiency picture

Fighting repressions through the harassment of security forces

Bitarch’s Column

An interesting and quite popular idea for a non-violent struggle against employees of state security agencies was voiced in a conversation on the SVTV channel by Mikhail Svetov and Pavel Nikulin (the stream “Federal Torture Service”). This strategy is successfully applied in the West by far-left organizations such as SJWs. Libertarians should also adopt it if we want to achieve any significant results and avoid being “crushed by the system.”

The essence of the idea is to publicize the names, photographs, home addresses, social media profiles, and other personal data of state employees (FSB, police, Rosgvardia, FSIN, OMON, etc.) found guilty of repressions against oppositionists. This can be done both online (in the form of a site like “Myrotvorets”) and offline (in the form of flyers near the home where the “sadist” lives). To counter expected censorship attempts, it is better to host such sites on the darknet (TOR) or, in the future with the development of blockchain technologies, in decentralized data storage systems with IPFS.

Fearing the loss of reputation and harassment of both himself and his family, this employee will surely think twice before “putting on a bottle” another oppositionist.

For my part, I will add that it would also be good to have a unified database with as many employees of the repressive apparatus as possible, creating for them a risk of guaranteed retribution in the event of mass state terror (and preventing it—similar to the deterrence doctrine between states themselves, after which wars between all developed countries completely ceased in the second half of the 20th century).

Addition from Ancap-chan

I am not aware if Bitarch is a Russian citizen, but I want to note that Russian legislation protects the personal data of its citizens; therefore, if any such data appears online, it will, of course, be posted by unknown State Department agents, and if it appears right by your entrance, it is personally from the retired US President Mr. Obama, out of boredom and malice.

I also want to note that much easier targets for such measures are not even the security forces, but much more defenseless categories of citizens: PEC employees who commit violations during vote counting, administration employees who do not approve mass protests, and similar silent executors who are ready today to violate citizens’ rights for a mere pittance. If it turns out that such activity leads to significant personal inconveniences, some of them will either refuse such side jobs or start negotiating for an increase in the rates for their thankless labor.

A court in Chechnya, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, forgave debts to Gazprom. Gazprom challenged this decision in court. What are the prospects for this process, in your view? Which side do your personal sympathies lie with?

Dad

I’ll start from the end. My personal sympathies, of course, lie with the residents of those Russian regions who regularly pay for the gas supplied to them, while the inefficient monopolist, enduring losses in the Caucasus, justifies every new tariff increase with non-payments. This time, the regional legislative assemblies, impressed by the fact that Chechnya was once again declared a privileged subject of the federation, also began to compete in demanding the cancellation of their residents’ far more modest debts.

Whether this trolling was successful, or simply competing Caucasian security officials used this quirk to assert themselves at each other’s expense, interesting facts began to emerge immediately following the court decision to write off the debts. It turned out that the debts being written off were pinned on the population without any basis, whereas in reality, the gas was either stolen or squandered (while money for infrastructure repairs was stolen) at a higher level. And now, cases are being opened against those who managed the gas distribution, and in general, it seems that quite a few heads will roll as a result of all this.

In a peaceful region, a utility non-payer will quickly have all supplied resources cut off, and recovery for what has already been consumed will begin. In regions like Chechnya, whoever makes such a decision will be forced to start worrying about their health, so they will prefer to ignore the problem for as long as possible, although with a much greater probability, being unable to defeat the theft, they will lead it.

It is unlikely that as a result of all these investigations, Gazprom will recover any noticeable part of the stolen money. The most sensible thing its management could do is try to get rid of the loss-making asset and sell its Caucasian divisions to those ready to conduct business in the region according to the much more brutal local rules. Gazprom would then only have to honestly supply gas to a regional private gas operator at domestic Russian rates and on a prepayment basis. Let them continue to sell it at three times the price on the spot and try to get at least some money for it.

Since ancient times, representatives of the military aristocracy have considered it shameful to pay for what can be taken by force, for then allies might consider them weakened and turn away, and enemies, for the same reasons, might decide to attack. Therefore, of course, the costs of ensuring the fulfillment of contracts in Chechnya and other bandit enclaves must be monstrous. In such an inefficient system, maintaining even a modicum of stability requires a constant influx of external resources, but those are exactly what are starting to run out.

So, in the foreseeable future, we will see fierce infighting there over dwindling flows of budget funds, over any poorly controlled resource supplies, and simply for the right to dispose of people. Unfortunately, there is also a high probability that violence will spread outward from there even faster.

However, if one does not try to drown the problem in money—which only makes it swell—then all these inefficient practices die off relatively quickly, especially if there is strong opposition to attempts to spread archaic orders to territories where more efficient ones are adopted. And this applies not only to Chechnya, but also to the wonderful, tolerant Europe, which also prefers to appease its internal bandits with handouts rather than presenting them with the fact that this is not that place, and things are not done this way here.

Actually, Chechnya has its own hydrocarbons, but it’s like in Venezuela: the political regime is not the right one for extraction

Will this be within the norm under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CoAlxgwXcM

In this case, the norm has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is anpcap or socialism. There is a broad global trend toward the reduction of aggression, including toward children. When you read someone like Kassil, far more brutal customs are described, both between children and between children and adults. I suspect that in those times, such an episode would not have attracted any attention at all. He didn’t kill or maim; he simply forced a fussy child to get up and led them by the hand—what’s the big deal? A hundred years have passed, and this episode is now perceived as clear coarseness of manners, though still not so egregious as to make one jump out into the yard and immediately intervene for the child instead of continuing the filming, or, say, to lean out of a window with a rifle and demand an immediate stop.

It is very difficult to predict what the norms regarding violence against children will be in the foreseeable future. The trend may continue, and then the ideas currently being promoted—for example, by the Dobroum project—will over time seem banal, or even self-evident. Or the trend may reverse, and then our era will seem to descendants as a time of softness and degeneration.

At the same time, ancap can develop within the framework of any current of this trend. If the world becomes more non-violent, the key principle in relations with children will be the principle of non-aggression. Did the child attack? No, they were just lying there and didn’t want to get up. How can they be hit? How can children be hit at all? If greater violence becomes the norm, the emphasis will shift toward legal capacity. Is the child not a legal subject? Then they are in the zone of the guardian’s responsibility. See a child being hit? Well, ask whose child it is. If the guardian is the one hitting—well, they are probably hitting for a reason. If it is not the guardian hitting, it is an attack on someone else’s property, an impropriety, and should be stopped—for example, by blowing the aggressor’s brains out.

To me, of course, the first scenario seems more natural and probable. The trend toward non-violence is accompanied by an increasing value of human life and is largely driven by this. Ancap presupposes the elimination of the state, which, among other things, is a systemic factor that reduces the value of human life (firstly, it produces violence, meaning violence becomes commonplace; secondly, it makes people poorer, thereby reducing the value of life). This means that under ancap, the value of life will increase, and there will be less violence.

But, alas, the reasons for the trend are not fully clear, and I cannot guarantee anything on this matter. After all, the softening and hardening of manners throughout world history clearly does not follow a simple linear dependency.

P.S. When the post was already ready for publication, news arrived that Anastasia Shevchenko’s daughter died in intensive care. For those who do not know: the mother was accused of membership in an undesirable organization and placed under house arrest until trial, deprived of the right to communicate with her daughter. The daughter was seriously ill and required constant care. The court, choosing the preventive measure, ignored this circumstance.

So: under ancap, this would not only not be the norm, but would become completely impossible. The state kills. It is not just a machine of violence, but also a completely irresponsible machine.

Why is the ancap utopia better than the socialist one?

Studying libertarianism, I still haven’t understood why the “ancap” ideal model of social organization is better than some socialist utopias from the 18th-19th centuries.

In utopias, there are hypothetical people with a different morality—free, equal, happy, and always ready to help one another. A number of conditions that are clearly fantastical in modern realities are taken as given; there is no clear program for transitioning to such a wonderful society.

It is roughly the same with you, but there is exploitation, economic dependence, and so on. A number of rather debatable assumptions are taken as given—about the NAP, about the idea that something resembling affluent consumerism will emerge from the free competition of guys with guns, and about the need to convince people that “collective subjects” do not exist.

There is no transition program to the “better” social order (let me remind you that the caricatured mass-culture perceptions of leftists as lovers of mass shootings came,
firstly, from Cold War era propaganda, and secondly, from the practice of building an industrial society in Russia).

Why prefer inhuman ancap fantasies to the humane utopian fantasies of men from the 18th-19th centuries?

Vasily Vasiliev

Oof. Well, let me try to answer.

Why prefer the utopia of anarcho-capitalism specifically? It does not require the emergence of some special humane “new man” for its implementation, it is ready to work with any starting situation, and it quickly and guaranteed makes people’s lives wealthier and more prosperous than they were at the start. And, what is not unimportant, this is easily verifiable in practice.

Suppose we have Somalia. A country devastated by a socialist dictatorship and numerous wars. The state is abolished. People begin to organize their lives independently. They have a very short planning horizon, so they are quite ready to obtain resources from neighbors through direct violence. This means they have to spend significant resources on self-defense. Neighborhoods bristle with checkpoints; movement requires convoys. Hobbes arrives and strolls around business-like. “So, what do we have here? A war of all against all? Well done, boys. Now, who here isn’t fighting? Get to fighting, damn it, immediately!”

Fine, the last pre-war canned meat will soon run out, something needs to be eaten, but there’s not much to take from the neighbors either. Sooner or later, people will have to disperse and divert some individuals from the exciting process of shooting neighbors from ambushes to the conduct of boring and banal farming. And suddenly, someone is herding livestock, someone is growing vegetables, someone is running a gas station, someone is maintaining mobile communications and the internet, and someone is pirating. The difference in starting conditions (some have the sea nearby, others a savanna) leads to the division of labor. The division of labor gives rise to trade. Trade brings peace. Peace increases the planning horizon. The elegant fruits of tactical thinking fade into the past. Yesterday’s brave warrior today drives tourists on safari, because it is more profitable than arranging a safari on the tourists. Yesterday’s pirate today peacefully catches fish and takes divers for rides, because he’s had enough of fighting. And his pirate tales give him a charisma bonus and generous tips. Hobbes cries quietly on the beach: his beloved Leviathan never emerged from the sea due to a lack of demand.

What could hinder this rosy scenario? Firstly, the actions of neighbors who stubbornly wish to install a state on this territory. So far, society resists such attempts, but this consumes strength, and the path to ancap becomes thornier. Secondly, long-standing and venerable traditions of redistribution. If you’ve risen a bit—be so kind as to share with your clan comrades. They covered your skin during the war, and in general, don’t stick your head out. Over time, this tradition will evolve into insurance companies and various mutual aid funds operating on a voluntary basis, but initially, simply due to poverty, such redistribution will greatly slow the development of the institution of private property.

Ancap will establish itself more easily the harder it is to maintain a subsistence economy on territory liberated from the state. If all the resources for survival are right there, then why trade with neighbors? You have to shoot at neighbors; they are enemies, they are coming to take our beer and women. So, in the jungles of the Amazon, ancap will not be seen for a long time even without a state, but where living conditions are more diverse—where could it possibly go?

And what is wrong with socialist utopias? That there is no natural transition to them; a revolution is absolutely necessary, which will forcibly establish freedom, equality, and brotherhood—even if without mass shootings, the French managed quite well with the guillotine.

They seem like savages—yet they have trigger control

Is the use of violence by ancaps against representatives of law enforcement agencies, such as the police or army, who are violently enforcing the state and its laws, aggressive or nonetheless defensive?

анонимный вопрос

To be honest, such questions feel somewhat dogmatic to me. It’s as if someone started pestering an imam, for example: “Is the killing of infidels a defensive jihad—or an offensive one?”

Well, in the name of the great and merciful Market, I shall begin!

Since the state is a system of institutionalized violence against private property, then, of course, any person who is a subject of any given state has grounds to present property claims against that state. Since no state not only refuses to consider the possibility of restitution for property forcibly seized from people, but also applies sanctions for the very act of contesting such seizure, it must be concluded that an open conflict exists between the state and the individual, which is essentially a euphemism for the term “war.” In our case, it is a form of guerrilla warfare.

Thus, the question of how appropriate it is for an individual to use violence against certain state employees is merely a question of the laws and customs of war, as well as a question of tactics and strategy.

I remind you that the primary element in this war is the existence of property claims the individual has against the state, arising from the state’s forced seizures of the individual’s private property and the restriction of their freedom. Therefore, victory in the war is brought closer by reducing the rate of seizures and restrictions, reducing the share of state property in total wealth, and reducing the number of civil servants and other persons supported by the state.

So, can you beat up cops after all—or not? Theoretically—you can. Practically—there is usually no point. Privatizing something state-owned or securing a tax deduction is far more useful. Achieving a reduction in tax rates is an extremely noble cause indeed. But killing a state employee is simply killing a human being. It is permissible if they are carrying out a direct attack dangerous to your life, but it will in no way diminish the state, reduce taxes, or weaken regulations. On the contrary, it more often leads to a tightening of the screws and personal bitterness toward you from the deceased’s previously indifferent colleagues. So, this offensive jihad is not the duty of a libertarian.

Now, the widespread looting of state property kills the state quickly and reliably, even one as powerful and creepy as the late USSR. Widespread sabotage of taxes and regulations does the same. It is this defensive jihad that is more pleasing to the Market.

May the Market guide you on the straight path and be favorable to you. Amen!

The omnipotent Market knows best!