Тег: Weapons

Who exactly will guard the inviolability and maintain non-violence in a libertarian paradise?

After all, if I am just a small entrepreneur, a local gang could seize everything I have. And there would be an unthinkable number of such gangs due to the crude nature of humans and an unwillingness to work. Am I supposed to rely only on a gun in my pocket?

Tigrenok

I analyzed this topic in great detail in the script for the Libertarian Band video on the conditions for the stability of anarchy; you can even skip reading further and just watch the video instead.

If you happen to find yourself in an impoverished society where robbery is significantly more profitable than peaceful labor, then you, as a small entrepreneur, will indeed have to rely on both your gun and a good “roof” (protection)—you will spend a very significant share of your income on protection in one form or another, and the cost of your distrust toward everyone will be factored into the price of the goods you sell, which consumers will have to pay for. Thus, your life will be poor and dangerous, and you will be seriously outperformed in labor productivity by your peaceful neighbors—and it will remain this way until a certain critical mass of people in society crawls out of the swamp of poverty: money provides confidence in tomorrow, meaning it expands people’s planning horizon. In this way, they unlearn the principle of “you die today, and I’ll die tomorrow” and switch to a “let’s let each other live” mode.

In any case, regardless of your starting conditions, you will not be able to transition to a peaceful, stable, stateless society until you are personally ready to defend your individual freedom. That is, as you quite correctly noted, rely on the gun in your pocket. A gun in a safe that you do not dare use, regardless of what happens, will not help you at all.

How will a country without a state represent itself to other states?

Choosing a private representative? An armed population is great, but tanks, planes, and missiles—who sells them, who buys them, and consequently, who stores them? And obviously, how does a private individual profit from this? Donations? Or will they offer to protect a certain part of the population? Quite strange. Military personnel will go, for example, into various PMCs and become mercenaries, but what about deterrent weapons? A private individual will be paid from the outside, and that’s it. Kaput. Cosmopolitanism is cool, but this scenario is quite real. Again, terrorist attacks carried out for the purpose of intimidation, or due to disagreement with the population based on certain criteria. Who will investigate them? Private security organizations that engage in security activities? People who are interested in what happened? Quite likely. What about firefighters, who are supposed to arrive after the fact? They arrive, but the homeowner is gone, or simply doesn’t exist because the plot of land is a wasteland. Let it burn? Will the city saved from the fire pay them via donations? “Donations” is a crude word, but essentially, if people aren’t obligated to pay for it, they will more likely pay into insurance, and the insurance companies will handle it? Consequently, each insurance company will have its own ties with firefighters, etc. Okay, I answered that myself. But as for weapons of mass destruction and heavy military equipment, it’s still unclear.

Royal hacker

It is quite difficult to answer such broad questions, so I will focus on the very first part.

Indeed, there is a rather peculiar service that seemingly only a state can provide to a person: the service of representation before another state. States do not consider citizens of other states to be subjects of treaties. They negotiate with other states, while citizens and companies act as objects of agreements. This applies to trade tariffs and regulations, visa regimes, and the extradition of criminals. How can the market respond to such rudeness?

Fortunately, states can make decisions regarding foreigners not only in a bilateral but also in an autistic mode. For example, issuing an order that products receiving certain certificates are not subject to customs duties. This means nothing prevents the company issuing the certificates from working with influence groups in those countries that are of interest as a sales market. Similarly, some consortium of travel agencies could work with lobbyists regarding a visa-free regime for buyers of certain tour packages. In general, the task looks difficult but solvable, although it seems more likely to me to obtain visas by purchasing some convenient citizenship (and the more wealthy apatrides wanting to travel there are in the market, the more various small island states will compete for them, and due to the volume, the price of the matter will quite quickly drop to a quite acceptable level).

It is more difficult with the pursuit of criminals. I once wrote about the functions of a prison under ancap, arguing that the criminal needs it primarily as a refuge from retribution. If a criminal has the opportunity to flee to the territory of a state, they effectively receive the same refuge, just without being locked within four walls. On the other hand, the state in terms of protection is a prison for the poor. That is, protection exists, but it is purely nominal. So, if someone hiding on the territory of a state manages to be discovered (which is a quite feasible and legal task for private detective agencies, which they can perfectly perform on the territory of a state), then one can either enter negotiations with them or deal with them in one way or another, since state structures are unlikely to be able to or want to protect them. Finally, one can threaten the criminal not with retribution, but with deportation to the state whose citizenship they acquired to cross the border, and there they can be judged by a state court. A mediocre solution, but threatening to hand one bandit over to other bandits for retribution if they don’t compensate for the damages is more or less permissible.

The rest of your long question is mainly devoted to issues of the use and sale of heavy weaponry. Nothing prevents a private company, operating on stateless territory, from producing weapons and legally supplying them to the territories of states if appropriate contracts are concluded with buyer companies (defense ministries can also act as such). Of course, national armies usually follow standards, and if a specific tank model has been adopted for armament, pushing through a procurement decision for another model is quite a hassle. But these are issues that are already being solved without state patronage, so under ancap, arms companies will handle this—they aren’t children.

As for the purchase of heavy weaponry by some hypothetical ancap PMCs, I personally do not believe in the market justification for such purchases, but I cannot provide clear arguments. Perhaps a few PMCs on stateless territory will go all out; after all, a tank biathlon is a quite monetizable show, something to keep them occupied in peacetime.

How will phone pranks and IRL pranks work in Ancapistan?

Will everyone really be on edge and ready to defend themselves immediately (with weapons), ruining all the fun?

анонимный вопрос

Alexander Rozov, in his recent books from the endless Meganesian cycle, painted a rather vivid picture of what unfortunate pranksters face in a society where everyone is on edge and ready to defend themselves immediately. In those stories, the pranksters took a severe beating, but since the footage of them getting beaten was broadcast live, their ratings only grew, along with their monetization. It’s a strange way to make a living, but people commit to even more serious eccentricities just for the sake of a joke.

Generally, a sense of humor is the ability to derive pleasure from the discrepancy between what is observed and what is expected (not my definition; I don’t remember where I read it). In a society where everyone is on edge, it will indeed be difficult to maintain a sense of humor in situations where you have every reason to perceive a subject’s actions as an attack, only for it to turn out to be a prank. However, the already famous prank with Vader and the street toilet is perfectly suitable for replication in any armed society. Even if the girl in the screenshot had a submachine gun instead of a bag, she would hardly have opened fire, but she certainly could have raised her weapon to see how these guys liked a counter-prank, and whether Lord Vader would wet his pants.

What to do about preventive measures under the conditions of the NAP?

I understand that this can be settled within contract jurisdictions, but how should one act in general? For example, if I see someone drawing a weapon in a public place, can I shoot first before they have harmed anyone?

Han Solo

I understand your desire to remove the responsibility for choosing the best course of action in an extreme situation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

You see someone drawing a weapon in a public place. You can also draw a weapon and shoot first, or you can choose not to. You don’t know which decision will be correct because you do not have full information about the situation. There are real-life examples where a person drew a weapon to defend themselves from an attack, but bystanders decided that he was the attacker and shot him. What if that person is drawing a weapon to protect themselves from someone outside your field of vision?

Therefore, a safer practice is considered to be shouting the sacramental “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” before shooting anyone—this is done primarily to inform witnesses that you did not start the attack and that you are hoping for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. By the way, this is taught in firearm safety courses, so I’m not reinventing the wheel here.

Yes, any delay before firing carries the risk that you will not be the first to shoot. But no one in that specific situation will decide better than you which risk is preferable: shooting without warning and answering for having attacked, or giving a warning and taking a bullet.

Hello, what do you think about the second part of the TrashSmash video about how civilians should not be given weapons, and that arguments for the legalization of weapons are pointless?

anonymous question

In the second part of his hoplophobic video, TrashSmash actually managed to say one smart phrase, I quote:

The only remaining convincing argument for easing access to weapons is personal freedom.

43:09-43:15

For a libertarian, this argument indeed outweighs any others. The right to own property, the right to use it for self-defense, sports, hunting, collecting, and other peaceful activities—these are above any statistical data and other appeals to public benefit.

Therefore, instead of digging into the depths of fragmented data collected through dubious methodologies for manipulative purposes at the expense of taxes, and using it to argue with another apologist for the disarmament of citizens, simply seduce them.

Just don’t take them hunting with drunken old-timers; it’s better to take them to a shooting range, let them listen to the safety briefing, fire a few dozen rounds, and hear “Thank you for safe shooting, come again” at the end. And once their fears subside, you can congratulate yourself: there is one less hoplophobe in the world.

It brings people so close!

And what do you think?

Как правильнее либертарианцам вести оружейную политику в современной России?
Results

It’s good when friends are nearby!

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

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

Vladimir Popov’s Lecture in Piter

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

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

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

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

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

Psychos and Guns

Following up on the last post about the legalization of weapons. A topical issue: what about mentally unstable people who own weapons? Won’t legalization trigger mass shootings and such? What about road rage, when firearms instead of fists will be used?

anonymous question

As the practice of mass shootings in the States shows, they are often committed by mentally unstable people for whom this fact was recorded long ago, but it did not prevent them from acquiring a gun, despite the fact that a background check is supposedly required.

So, after the deregulation of weapon acquisition, the situation with mentally unstable people will not get worse. However, law-abiding citizens focused strictly on self-defense will have noticeably more guns in percentage terms. And the more criminogenic the situation was before deregulation, the greater the incentives will be to acquire self-defense weapons. Accordingly, the curve of armed crime will decline more sharply.

As for road rage, practice shows that the best prevention is liability insurance. There is no point in being rude to someone who doesn’t owe you money when you know that the money won’t come out of your own pocket.

A pistol and a glue gun are simply two different tools

Are there examples of successful legalization of firearms (without a noticeable increase in the number of offenses)? Perhaps there were negative consequences of legalization? I know that the legalization of drugs has almost no effect on the amount of abuse. Is this also true for weapons?

anonymous question

The most successful example of the beneficial influence of legalization for a Russian-speaking audience is, of course, Moldova. A post-Soviet country introduces the legal acquisition, carrying, and use for self-defense of rifled short-barreled firearms—and the curve of violent crime drops sharply. The same occurred in the Baltics, although the example of phlegmatic Balts is not as convincing to the listener as a story about hot-blooded Moldovan guys. But the most statistics come, of course, from the States, where half of all crime is concentrated in just two percent of counties with the strictest gun laws, which are ethnic ghettos, while in the most armed areas, violent crimes are practically non-existent.

There are also downsides to legalization—they appear when legalization is carried out partially and thoughtlessly.

For instance, in Kazakhstan, instead of legalizing rifled short-barreled firearms, they only made the acquisition of traumatic weapons extremely simplified. As a result, traumatic weapons became a convenient tool in clashes between gangs: this weapon is very useful as support in a fight since it cannot be tracked by any ballistic examination, and the psychological threshold for its use is extremely low, as it is supposedly not a “real” gun. Consequently, the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction, and Kazakhstan has begun to tighten the screws, as hoplophobes now have an excellent argument for doing so.

In Russia, gun legislation is generally tolerable, although it is quite inconsistent regarding rifled short-barreled firearms. Law enforcement practice is much worse here; in many ways, it is this, rather than the law on weapon circulation, that encourages criminals—since they know that the victim will hesitate until the last moment before using a weapon, not wanting to deal later with much more frightening criminals: the Russian police.

The main thing to understand about weapons is that a criminal always has one. He will simply buy a gun on the black market using bitcoins, as it is far less dangerous for him to be caught with a gun than to be unprepared for a showdown with competitors. Meanwhile, someone who earns a living in more peaceful sectors would rather spend their bitcoins on donating to Ancap-chan, and for them, it is important to have a legal gun, as well as the right to use it legally for self-defense.

Who will you choose: a tyan or a kun?

anonymous question

Murmur! A series of cute questions about personal relationships has started! I’ll answer with pleasure.

I am very, very much lacking tyans. In the best case, they make up about ten percent of the total roster.

Tyans rarely interest themselves in firearms. This is a terrible, unforgivable mistake! With your own shotgun, you’ll be the star at any shooting range, and with your own carbine at 23, you’ll strike any kun dead without any violation of the NAP, so get your first gun right at 18.

Tyans rarely interest themselves in bitcoins. They can actually be understood here: because even under the new law, a tyan will retire a couple of years earlier than a kun, which means her bitcoins won’t grow as much. But, girls, why be so petty?

Tyans rarely interest themselves in economics. It’s terrible, but it’s true. You’d think it’s forgivable for a kun to think that money is bred in a bedside table, but we should know about all these matters much more fully. Girls, fuck the etatist mainstream, study the Austrian school of economics—there’s none of that nasty, nasty mathematics!

But the strangest thing is that tyans rarely interest themselves in politics. You should have heard how Yabloko-tyan lit up the stage at the rally on July 29! The whole square just melted!

Politics is kawaii.

This is the kind of tyan that’s missing

Yes, you’ve noticed that now you can donate bitcoins to me not only by a direct transfer to the wallet 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8, but also simply via bank card? Everything for you!