I am not very fond of the genre of public spats, but in this case the resulting discussion seemed like a good opportunity to articulate some considerations.
There is a channel called Dobroum, led by the respected Alexander Elesev. It is positioned as philosophical, and a great deal of attention is paid in it to the problem of overcoming adverse childhood experiences.
For a libertarian, everything here is relatively simple. Violence against children is violence against people. No one has the right to initiate violence against people with impunity. From there, one can talk about the specific mechanisms through which violence against one’s own children, not to mention others, becomes a dangerous practice, despite the relative defenselessness of children.
Alexander, however, devotes a lot of attention to demonstrating how adverse childhood experiences negatively affect adult life. I do not know why he chose this particular tactic of dripping into people’s brains, nor am I particularly eager to find out. It does not matter to me whether it is because he lives in a country where therapists are piled on top of therapists, or because he adopted this idea from a book that impressed him, or because something happened in his own childhood that led to this result. I am almost entirely certain that there is no single reason, because life in general is a complex and multifactorial thing where there are no simple cause-and-effect relationships between two isolated events: isolated events are merely conceptual models, whereas life is actually a continuous flow of impressions.
As a result, it turns out that for Alexander, any peculiarities of someone’s behavior begin to signal some childhood traumas. Even an avatar that one of my readers from Bulgaria ordered for me became a reason for him to talk about my childhood experience. I imagine that for a fitness trainer, my condition would be just as ironcladly linked to a training regimen, for a nutritionist to a diet, and for a political scientist to the political regime in the country.
In my book on ancap, I deliberately did not engage in justifying the initial principles upon which all subsequent logic was built. Factually, the principles of libertarianism are such because that is what we want. We like it that way. It seems right to us. Of course, this may correlate with certain facts, certain childhood experiences, books read, a popular streamer heard by chance, and so on.
Yes, narrowly specialized arguments work well on some people, including arguments along the lines of “if a child is beaten in childhood, they will grow up to be a stupid loser.” But that is no reason to obsess and dump these arguments on everyone and everyone, for they will by no means work on everyone.
On my channel, I have my own little “dobroum” named Bitarch, who has also become obsessed with the single theme of the total elimination of violence. Unfortunately, the comments he gathers are more often mocking in nature, and this suggests that his target audience does not overlap much with mine. I seem to be powerless to influence such cases of monomania, and this fills me with sadness.
I hope that if you see signs in my own writing that I have been seized by some single overvalued idea, you will signal this to me.
Vitaly Tizun, whose brochure Theory of a Free Society I recently reviewed, has released a short video in which he discusses how to promote ancap. I am also working in a similar direction and hope to please you soon with a fresh video from Libertarian band, but Vitaly beat me to it.
https://youtu.be/pnpCDuMVaUE
If the video caught your interest, you can download the leaflet for independent distribution — it briefly summarizes the main message of the video. Of course, this is for the future — who needs leaflets now, while people are staying at home. For security reasons, the leaflet should not be ordered from a professional printing house — print in small quantities, on a printer, and pay in cash.
We are all familiar with the specifics of how the state functions. Its foundation is compulsory and indisputable power over its citizens. This particularly concerns the ability to regulate their activities, apply violence against them, and seize their funds through taxation.
Regardless of how the government system and political mechanisms are implemented, many people are always dissatisfied with the current state of affairs to some extent. And while in a market environment dissatisfaction is resolved simply by renegotiating agreements or switching from one service provider to another, it is not so simple with the state. A person cannot change one state for another as easily, since economic, cultural, linguistic, and other barriers will stand in their way. Because of this, such a change is completely pointless, as for the majority of the population of any state, these barriers are insurmountable, which makes states organizations that compete for people only to a very small degree. This fact confirms the monopoly position of states and all the resulting negative aspects.
An individual also lacks the ability to effectively influence the policy the state pursues toward them. In a market environment, they are able to resolve many issues privately, whereas in the political sphere, their own interests mean nothing; they are obliged to submit to the interests of others. And even if a politician whose plans coincide with their wishes wins an election, or if they themselves become a politician, this only provides the opportunity to support their interests at the expense of infringing upon the interests of other people.
As we can see, the institution of statehood and political methods of management, in contrast to voluntary and market relations, are designed such that the forced and compulsory submission of some people by others is simply inevitable. In fact, the activity of the state is equivalent to the activity of a rapist and a robber. Indeed, it emerged precisely as a nomadic robber who decided to settle in a certain territory and impose his power on the local population through violent methods, as told to us by the stationary bandit theory. The essence of the state fully corresponds to its origin.
What do we get from this? We get that any person who supports the institution of statehood and political methods of management is, in fact, a rapist and a robber themselves. For how else can one call someone who justifies the use of violence and robbery, who considers them natural phenomena? Of course, whether violence and robbery are bad or good phenomena is a purely ethical question, and none of the answers to it can be defined as an objective truth. However, we do not need that; we only need to clearly define who is a supporter of peaceful and voluntary relations, and who supports forced submission and robbery.
Naturally, in current conditions, most people are passive assistants to violence and robbery, since they perceive the state as a natural social institution. It is the revelation of this fact that will allow the positions of the currently existing system to be shaken. For it is one thing when people support violence and robbery without realizing it. However, few are capable of openly admitting themselves to be rapists and robbers; this is the lot of only a minority of people who see nothing wrong in such things, while for the rest, the very concepts of violence and robbery are primarily associated with something immoral.
Using all the above arguments, we can form a psychological strategy for promoting the ideas of freedom. The first stage is the revelation of the fact that the state is a criminal organization specializing in violence and robbery. Next, it is necessary to establish a link between the state and its supporters. Since the state is a rapist and a robber, the people who support it are accomplices in the crimes it commits. Few truly want to be criminals and are capable of declaring (at least to themselves) without any remorse that they are rapists and robbers. The facts mentioned above, since they reveal the link between the criminal state and the person who is at least its passive supporter, are capable of causing psychological discomfort and perhaps even a sense of shame for one’s own complicity in anyone who considers violence and robbery immoral. Thus, in any peace-loving and benevolent person, associations of “state – bandit” and “supporter of the state – also a bandit” should develop. After this, there can be no question of such a person supporting the state; it will be, at the very least, unattractive to them, and possibly even repulsive.
Ancap-chan’s Commentary
Rhetoric addressed more to emotions than to logic does not appeal to me, and I see little value in such argumentation, but value is subjective. I fully admit that some well-meaning statist might indeed be unsettled by these arguments. However, even while sharing the belief that the state is an evil, a statist will believe that the state is the lesser evil. The logic of statists is that without the state, we would get not a peaceful market order, but a rampage of banditry, and only unpleasant types in police caps somehow restrain this very rampage. Yes, they themselves are prone to banditry, but checks, balances, public control and other blah-blah-blah.
What seems far more important to me is the ability to demonstrate the functioning of peaceful market mechanisms in those areas that are weakly subject to state influence, or where the state fails to meet the obligations it has undertaken and for which substantial budgets are spent.
In general, I would soften the premises presented in the text. Not “every accomplice of the state is a bandit,” but “one who defends the right of the state to continue spending money knowingly inefficiently in a sphere where there is a working non-state alternative — that person is truly a conscious accomplice of bandits.”
Don’t know where to start promoting libertarian ideas to your mother or a friend? I’ll be blunt, because I’ve tried it myself more than once: don’t talk about the advantages of the free market, the absence of taxes, and regulations. Firstly, your interlocutor is unlikely to understand anything. Secondly, you must know the theory perfectly and avoid mistakes, as everyone has Google in their pocket now. You shouldn’t talk about personal freedom right away either, because a person’s views on drugs and gambling may not be libertarian at all.
What should you talk about then? The Stationary Bandit Theory (SBT). Your story should begin with the phrase “The state is a stationary bandit.” You need to instill in your interlocutor a sense of guilt for supporting the stationary bandit, as if they themselves are an accomplice to state violence and therefore a “complete maniac.” Turn them into a modern German, who feels guilt not just for themselves, but for ancestors who died long ago. The “state” structure exists only in the head; it is a quasi-religion (meaning the belief that people belonging to this structure have a “legitimate” right to initiate violence, while others are not allowed to). If a person feels guilt for supporting aggression, they will change their behavior, the state will begin to weaken and eventually lose its territorial monopoly, which is exactly what we are striving for.
If you haven’t read our article on SBT, I advise you to do so and give it to everyone to whom you are promoting ideas of freedom.
Although, it is quite possible that a slightly simplified but emotionally charged explanation of SBT will be more effective:
“States are organizations that unjustifiably appropriated supreme power over a certain territory through conquest, placing its population in direct subordination to themselves. The state arose not from freedom of association, but through a violation of the non-aggression principle.
You do not question the state’s right to kill, carry out confiscations, or arrest. Yet, if private individuals do this—you would call them murderers, thieves, and bandits. Don’t you find this hypocritical?
States are highly organized criminal organizations, like gangs that “racketeer” a particular territory, imposing their rules on its residents, collecting tribute (protection money) from them, and occasionally fighting other gangs for spheres of influence. The state has the same basis as any organized crime group—the violent imposition of its rules on captured territory. And today, there is nowhere to run from these gangs. They have divided the entire Earth among themselves.
How does the “Islamic State” group fundamentally differ from the states of “Saudi Arabia” and “Iran”? After all, their laws are roughly the same. The only difference is that IS is not recognized by other states. International recognition—that is the difference between a “legitimate” gang and an “illegitimate” one.
The main grievance against bandits is that they are bandits and take land or other goods from their victims through aggressive violence. These same bandits then write laws to create the feeling among others that what was looted belongs to them by right.
If people came to a wild land and began to develop it—they are colonists.
If they came to a land where other people lived and took it from them by force—they are bandits.
If they hold other people on their land by force—they are bandits, even if they refer to a “law” that they wrote themselves.
When you tell people that the state is a stationary bandit, it is quite possible that you will be asked one of the following questions. Be ready to answer them.
1) There is a “social contract” between citizens and the state. How can it be a bandit if it happens with the consent of the citizens?
If such a contract exists, show me the text! The Constitution is not a “social contract,” but one of the “laws” (which are actually orders, i.e., the arbitrary will of the stationary bandit); it’s not for nothing that it’s often called the “basic law.” Even if just one person in the country did not agree to this constitution, it cannot be considered a contract (which, by definition, requires the voluntary consent of all parties).
2) People are not protesting, which means they are satisfied with the status quo. Can’t the “social contract” be implicit?
Suppose a girl is raped by a maniac, and she is unable to put up a proper fight. Will you say that everything between them happened “by mutual consent” too?!
3) The state is not necessarily a “stationary bandit,” since there are examples in history of the emergence of proto-states—entities with a territorial monopoly not through violence (conquest), for example, like some poleis in Ancient Greece?
Such entities occupied in total no more than 0.1% of the Earth’s surface; the remaining 99.9% were seized by stationary bandits. Even if we assume that poleis, as voluntary associations, did indeed exist, this does not justify modern states with extensive borders that appeared through violence according to SBT. If we accept a hypothetical situation where stationary bandits never existed, we would now have, for example, 1% of the planet’s territory with voluntary territorial monopoly and 99% without it, with extraterritorial status (like international waters). Agree that this is far better than 100% of the planet under stationary bandits, which we have now. Libertarianism does not forbid the creation of voluntary communities and private cities with territorial monopoly, but this should not happen through violence, and people must retain the right to leave, and owners—to withdraw their land from such jurisdiction. This model is promoted, for example, by Mikhail Svetov.
4) At the moment when the bandits seized a certain territory, there were no laws prohibiting this, so what grievances can there be against them?
At the moment when millions of Jews were sent to gas chambers and burned in the ovens of Auschwitz, there were also no laws prohibiting this—that is exactly what the defendants said at the Nuremberg trials. As a result, they ended their lives with a noose around their necks, as befits any maniac and rapist who rejects the fundamental principles of morality and does not recognize the natural right of every person to life.
5) Yes, I agree, but what do you propose instead? Anarchy?
You can’t just simply abolish the state entirely in one or two steps. This would lead to the creation of a new and more cruel state, which would be an unmasked stationary bandit, as usually happens in a failed state situation. But you can make current states extraterritorial with competition between multiple jurisdictions in one territory. Then the current state will become just one of such jurisdictions (meaning you could choose another jurisdiction for yourself without flying to Alpha Centauri, but while continuing to live in your home in Russia). Such a system is called panarchy.
6) This will cause chaos. Without a monopoly on violence, a war of all against all will begin.
Diplomats for some reason don’t fight, haven’t you noticed? Although they have extraterritorial status (they obey the laws of their own state, not that of the territory they are on). Perhaps people fight among themselves in European cities like Basel and Geneva, where jurisdictional borders run right through houses? I haven’t noticed anything.
7) Personally, I feel more comfortable living in a familiar state with a territorial monopoly; I am a conservative and fear abrupt changes.
Currently, many libertarians would be quite satisfied with the non-interference of state supporters in the creation of new jurisdictions. People would gladly occupy unclaimed lands, experiment there with social orders convenient specifically for them, and not immediately attack capitals. This is a very moderate agenda, from which no one should experience discomfort. Various practices of social organization in these territories could be evolutionarily refined and gradually reach large cities in a mature form, without causing upheavals.
But you must also clearly understand that by opposing such a model, you directly initiate aggression against peaceful people through your support of the stationary bandit. If being a maniac does not cause you remorse, then be prepared for oceans of blood, the destruction of the economy, and the habitual way of life already in the city where you live.
8) Move to another country and build your Ancapistan there.
Why should I move anywhere?! I love my country and I hate the stationary bandit, who forcibly seized the territory and considers it, and everything on it, his property. But can a subject who acquired a thing using violence be considered a legitimate owner of anything? For example, a robber who took your phone on the street? By all principles of law—definitely not!
Comment from Ancap-chan
Everyone has their own experience of offline preaching; some find it more convenient to appeal to the Stationary Bandit Theory, and this text is for them. My practice shows that people usually understand anyway that the state is a stationary bandit, but for them, this means that it is “their own” and already tamed. And if it were removed, nomadic ones would swarm back, like in the nineties, and would act lawlessly. So one should seek an individual approach to the interlocutor, finding out beforehand what they fear.
Hello, give me a minute of your time, and I will tell you how the stationary bandit crucified our Lord Jesus; by the way, happy birthday to him!
Many reviews and critiques have been written about Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” where the book is placed within its historical context, its position among Hayek’s publications is identified, and a brief analysis of its ideas is provided. As much as I would like to avoid all this academicism, it is impossible, as the entire book is a political pamphlet on the pressing issues of the day, and the only reason the work remains relevant to this day is that ideas do not die—and this applies not only to Hayek’s own ideas, but also to those he fought against.
“The Road to Serfdom” was published in Great Britain in 1944, when the country was finishing its fifth year of war with the National Socialist Reich. Victory over the Reich was simply a matter of time, and one could have calmly begun to reflect on the postwar restructuring of the world, but the author felt it was far more important to draw the public’s attention to the fact that the dragon-slayer was beginning to increasingly resemble the one he was fighting. Hayek saw the victory of the Labour Party in the upcoming general elections as the most terrifying danger for Britain. That is exactly what happened. As a result, Great Britain accumulated an economic lag behind freer countries right up until the Thatcher reforms.
The main idea Hayek fights against in his book is the notion that economic planning brings prosperity. He painstakingly demonstrates that the temptation to slightly regulate from above for the greater benefit of society is the first step toward regulating everything and everyone to the point where it is impossible to breathe: there is no natural optimum on this road, upon reaching which the government would stop on its own and declare that things are now good and nothing more needs to be tweaked. He also shows that regulation is total, and economic freedoms are inseparable from political ones, so people far removed from economics should not look benevolently upon interventionist efforts, thinking that as long as political freedoms are left untouched, economics is a narrow specialized topic and experts know best how to steer it.
Hayek did not claim that everything was hopeless and that, having stepped onto the road to serfdom, humanity would be unable to stop. If he had believed so, he would have had no need to write the book. He did, however, argue that the further one goes down this road, the harder it is to stop, and therefore socialism is best fought at the far approaches. Unfortunately, practice has shown the exact opposite: it is extremely difficult to deny socialists small concessions while society as a whole is liberal, but when everything is already regulated to shreds, both society and the government tire of the constant tightening of the screws. A sufficiently strong demand for deregulation emerges, it is carried out, and people breathe a sigh of relief, but it soon turns out that the leviathan, having retreated in one place, is already pressing in another.
In the article Barrier on the Road to Serfdom: Dead End or Detour?, Bitarch and I mentioned John Meadowcroft’s thesis that it is the hybrid society that proves to be stable, unlike the liberal or totalitarian ones, and we also pointed out that neither increasing transparency nor reducing direct state participation in the economy helps avoid the fact that the overall regulation of society continues to grow slowly.
The book “The Road to Serfdom” is a good example of rhetoric that can and should be used when working with politicians. The fact is that most of the arguments in the book are no longer relevant, unless, of course, you are dealing with hardline Marxists; against more or less modern supporters of state regulation, it makes sense to apply Hayek’s later texts, such as “The Fatal Conceit.”
A question from the Telegram channel Right Argument, accompanied by a donation of 124 rubles. And yes, if you were wondering how advertising could be bought on my channel—this is roughly how it would look.
The reasons for apoliticism can vary, but they usually boil down to the fact that a person pointedly places their immediate self-interests above some abstract values, and therefore doesn’t consider politics to concern them in any way. Thus, we need to show the person how state redistribution and state social welfare jeopardize their self-interests. And for that, in turn, we need to understand what those interests consist of.
The most common type of apolitical person who approves of state intervention is the one who simply doesn’t want to bother thinking about all this nonsense. The state doesn’t trouble their head with taxes because the employer acts as the tax agent, yet people receive some pensions, study, get medical care, and occasionally receive some benefits. Various loud words about the state robbing someone have as much value to such a person as any annoying advertisement. If someone tries to convey this information, it means they expect to make money from it. Maybe the State Department is paying them, or maybe they’ll start extorting donations now.
In this case, it’s best to sprinkle in anecdotes of two types from time to time. The first: how a certain mutual acquaintance successfully evades taxes, made money on Bitcoin investments, or settled a complex issue within state jurisdiction through a private contact—and so on. The second: how someone was fleeced for extra money through property taxes, had some entitled social payments withheld, or had their business seized in favor of the “brass,” and so forth. In short, provoke cynicism toward the state in the person—essentially, that all the fairy tales about the state being necessary for people are written for suckers, while self-respecting gentlemen will, of course, grab a piece of the state if given the chance, but seriously rely only on themselves and other respected gentlemen.
The second type of apolitical statist is encountered much less frequently. This is a calculating guy who has all the necessary benefits and social payments, considers receiving them entirely fair, and will most likely gladly provide consultation on various nuances of welfare. Having grown accustomed to the unpredictability of politics, he doesn’t bother his head with who is there or what they promise before elections, or how one politician is better than another. You simply need to be in the state’s good graces and do what is approved by the current authorities.
Here, it makes sense to encourage such “entrepreneurship,” but remind them that when everything collapses, it’s important to know how to pivot. In the Soviet Union, trade workers were in favor, but in the early nineties, most of them turned out to be professionally unfit for the new conditions. Today’s trade workers slave away and don’t look anything like the former privileged stratum. So, when social welfare ends, it’s important not to end up on the street as a useless specialist in obtaining benefits; it would be good to have other competencies.
Fortunately, such people usually don’t need long convincing that social welfare will sooner or later collapse. Since he is consistently in the black, he knows deep down that no free ride lasts forever.
Of course, there are many other varieties of statists, but I have listed specifically those who are apolitical. If you encounter statist political activists, that’s a completely separate conversation, but that’s a whole other story.
There is a certain charm to kitchen conversations, since they successfully survived the USSR
And as a postscript, I’ll briefly share my impressions of the channel Right Argument. I would say that this young resource is still forming its own style, so the channel looks somewhat eclectic. Initially, the authors apparently assumed they would ask themselves questions, answer them, and result in a fairly concise catechism for communicating with leftists. But now the channel has expanded beyond the original intent and has begun to intersperse arguments with reactions to the current agenda. So now it can also be used as a source of those very life anecdotes that are so useful for kitchen conversations.
I often have to use a phrase like this in arguments with impenetrable estatists:
“By supporting the state, you are initiating violence, including against me, therefore the Doctrine of Deterrence (DD) will be applied to you until you stop!”
Could you write a post on this topic, arguing why this is exactly the case?
Bitarch
Allow me two quotes. The first is from the movie “Brother 2”: “Strength is in truth”. The second is from Mikhail Svetov: “You can be a thousand times right, but what’s the point if you are powerless?”
At the same time, the character who uttered the first tirade preferred to assert his truth through the use of force, while the author of the second statement limits himself exclusively to conveying his truth to people in verbal form. Both, despite the apparent contradiction between word and deed, succeeded in their endeavors.
What is this supposed to tell us? That—and here I will bring in a third quote, whose author is traditionally Al Capone: “You can achieve much more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone”.
Now then. When you threaten an estatist with the doctrine of deterrence, you are essentially saying to him: “dude, I have a gun, therefore I am right.” Meanwhile, he is convinced that strength is in truth, and the truth is that he personally did not initiate aggression against you, but merely verbally supported the state. In other words, you are threatening a person with retribution for words, and with rather vague claims at that, since anything can be declared as support for the state. For instance, many Ukrainians accuse Russians of supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine simply by the fact of Russian citizenship (and the incorrect use of prepositions, of course).
As a result, the estatist gets tense and looks for a way to deal with you, for example, through the state. And, I suspect, it will be especially frustrating for you if he manages to find a way to deal with you, but you cannot do the same to him. In other words, not only did you threaten a person with a gun, but it was a gun you didn’t even have. And here I will allow myself a fourth quote, a quite insulting one, from a character in the comedy “Spizdili”: “Just as a brainless dick should—you don’t understand the situation, and now you’re starting to shrink, and your little balls are starting to shrink along with you—and that’s because on the side of your gun it says—TOY, and on the side of my gun it says DESERT EAGLE .50”.
In order for an estatist, if not to side with you, to at least recognize your right to criticize the state, you first need to demonstrate exactly how it has wronged you. Moreover, complaints in the vein of “I may be evading taxes, but VAT is still included in the price of some goods I buy” are, of course, unconvincing to him. Similarly, pointing out that your grandfather was shot under Stalin will only serve as a supporting argument: first, it didn’t happen to you, but to a person you didn’t even know personally, and second, one can always claim it was a different state. The ideal approach would be to find a story where the state infringed specifically upon your rights, and did so lawlessly, in violation of its own laws, and where no truth could be found through other state agencies. “I was picked up at an unauthorized rally and had my leg broken”—again, this fits poorly unless you are Konstantin Konovalov—for him, this is a perfect case: he had nothing to do with the action, was detained three hours before it began in violation of the police law, suffered bodily injuries—and to top it all off, the court fined him. If you can find something equally convincing, the estatist’s sympathies will, of course, be on your side. To start with, it is important for you to demonstrate that the state is not just a bandit, but a lawless bandit who does not play by the rules.
Next, it would be a good idea to say something like “you understand it all perfectly yourself, I’m sure similar shit has happened to you too,” and let him tell something from his own experience. In Russia, it is customary to play the victim and complain about life, so the interlocutor will likely feel awkward if it turns out that the state’s boot overlooked him, and he will either make something up, or remember something that happened to acquaintances or leaked into the press.
And only then does it make sense to lead the interlocutor to the thought that if a bandit does not play by the rules, then what right does he have to demand that people treat him according to the rules. Therefore, hiding money from him is a virtue, and helping others who have been crushed lawlessly is a good cause, and those who support these thugs are shameful bastards.
And for dessert, you can savor stories about how people are fined for improving their own neighborhoods, how punks repair playgrounds, how the founder of Vimpelcom funded science only to be declared a foreign agent—in short, lead the former estatist to the thought that state people only know how to cut ribbons, while in fact, people provide all the benefits for themselves, and are even forced to bypass the traps set by those very state people.
There are no impenetrable estatists. At least not in Russia.
There is a very active discussion online about eco-activist Greta Thunberg’s speech before the UN General Assembly. People are talking about how adults are using a poor, sick girl for their own disgusting purposes, which boil down to milking even more money from taxpayers in developed countries to fight climate change.
This is bad rhetoric.
Children, like all people, possess self-ownership. A sixteen-year-old is developed enough to have partial legal capacity: they can testify in court, and therefore they are certainly entitled to speak before the UN General Assembly. Finally, the bouquet of diagnoses that doctors have given Greta guarantees that she is completely sincere in her speech. Thus, we are forced to conclude that she is sending us her message of her own free will and with full awareness. So, in this situation, there is only one thing left for me to regret.
I regret that instead of Greta, another girl did not appear on the podium of the UN General Assembly with very similar words:
Here is my message: we will be watching you. All of this is wrong. I should not be here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. But you turn to us, to the youth, for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
However, I am one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. You are driving entire nations into mass poverty. We are all on the brink of a global economic crisis, yet all you can talk about is the carbon footprint and fairy tales about terrible climate change. How dare you!
For over a hundred years, science has provided extremely clear forecasts. How dare you continue to turn away, saying that you are doing enough, when strategies and necessary solutions are still nowhere to be seen? You say that you see us and understand the urgency of the matter, but despite how much this saddens and angers me — I do not believe it. If you truly understood the situation and still did nothing — you would simply be evil people, and that is something I refuse to believe…
You collect insane social contributions from people and promise to provide them with a pension in old age, but calculations show that all pension funds will be bankrupt in thirty years. Protectionism was rejected by economic science back in the 18th century, yet you still wage trade wars and distract us with tales about protecting domestic producers. You felt constrained by the gold standard and preferred unrestrained emission, which devalues any savings. By handing out populist promises, you have created a pyramid of national debt. You adults are stealing the future from us, your descendants. How dare you!
Today, no plans or solutions based on this data will be presented. This data is uncomfortable, and you are still not mature enough to tell the truth about it. You are failing us, but the youth notice your betrayal. All future generations are looking at you, and if you decide to let us down, we will never forgive you for it.
Well, damn the high podium of the UN General Assembly. We have other platforms, so let’s not remain silent. Otherwise, they will decide that all youth are Greta Thunbergs and will dance around her as if we don’t exist. Or do you believe they wouldn’t dare?
Not Greta, of course, but I can also let some emotions slip sometimes
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…
