I don’t think we need hundreds of complicated laws. We need a few simple rules that make corruption dangerous and competition profitable. All accusations should be decided by an open jury trial, with journalists allowed to attend.

1. A person who offers or pays a bribe is fully immune from prosecution if they voluntarily report it before an investigation begins, provide the evidence, and cooperate with the authorities.

2. Any politician, public official, or judge convicted of accepting a bribe loses their position, illegally obtained assets, and the right to hold public office—and receives a prison sentence.

3. If one party proves in court that a member of another party accepted a bribe, the corrupt party loses that parliamentary seat, and the party that proved the corruption may appoint its own representative.

4. The first member of a cartel who voluntarily exposes the agreement before an investigation begins, provides full evidence, and helps prosecute the other participants is completely immune from liability for taking part in the cartel.

5. The government may not restrict entry into a legal market to protect existing companies. Restrictions should be allowed only when there is a proven threat to life, health, or public safety, and the same rules must apply to both existing and new businesses.

I think this would produce simple results: officials would be afraid to accept bribes, parties would choose their candidates more carefully and investigate their rivals, cartel members would stop trusting one another, and large companies would find it harder to close markets through legislation.

We do not need to ask people to be honest. We need to make corruption and collusion too dangerous.

What do you think? What is the biggest weakness in this idea?

I don’t think we need hundreds of complicated laws. We need a few simple rules that make corruption dangerous and competition profitable. All accusations should be decided by an open jury trial, with journalists allowed to attend.

1. A person who offers or pays a bribe is fully immune from prosecution if they voluntarily report it before an investigation begins, provide the evidence, and cooperate with the authorities.

2. Any politician, public official, or judge convicted of accepting a bribe loses their position, illegally obtained assets, and the right to hold public office—and receives a prison sentence.

3. If one party proves in court that a member of another party accepted a bribe, the corrupt party loses that parliamentary seat, and the party that proved the corruption may appoint its own representative.

4. The first member of a cartel who voluntarily exposes the agreement before an investigation begins, provides full evidence, and helps prosecute the other participants is completely immune from liability for taking part in the cartel.

5. The government may not restrict entry into a legal market to protect existing companies. Restrictions should be allowed only when there is a proven threat to life, health, or public safety, and the same rules must apply to both existing and new businesses.

I think this would produce simple results: officials would be afraid to accept bribes, parties would choose their candidates more carefully and investigate their rivals, cartel members would stop trusting one another, and large companies would find it harder to close markets through legislation.

We do not need to ask people to be honest. We need to make corruption and collusion too dangerous.

What do you think? What is the biggest weakness in this idea?

Libertarianism: The Premium Subscription to “Figure It Out Yourself”

Libertarians are offering an incredible political deal: give us your money, waste your youth, organize collectively, and sacrifice your personal interests for the greater cause. And after the victory? Congratulations: now nobody owes you a goddamn thing. Hooray—we came together as a society to earn the right to be abandoned individually.

Healthcare. Socialists want healthcare to be available to everyone. Libertarians fight for your right to pay for your own dentist by freely selling pictures of your hairy ass on OnlyFans. May the algorithm be with you, young Jedi.

A libertarian breaks his leg and opens a GoFundMe: “Friends, let’s collectively prove that collective healthcare funding is communism.” The free market offers four plans: a cast, a loan, crowdfunding, or crawling. So much choice. Under socialism, they would simply treat you like some kind of slave.

Family and parental leave. Those damn socialists want to interfere with your family and torment you with paid parental leave. Thankfully, under libertarianism, your wife can pay for everything herself by sucking a couple of dicks. Protein, vitamins, and entrepreneurship—the complete freedom package.

The economy needs children. Businesses need future workers. Stores need future customers. The government needs future taxpayers. But paid maternity leave? No, no, that is communism now, apparently. Everyone needs the child, but somehow the mother gets the bill. Profits are private; continuing the human species is a woman’s hobby.

Housing. A libertarian says, “Housing is not a right. Anyone can buy a house.” A hungry man can also buy a steak. Thanks, asshole. The economic problem has officially been solved.

In a social democracy, a person without a home is considered a problem. Under libertarianism, he simply selected the “studio without walls” plan: panoramic ceiling, natural ventilation, and a bathroom at the nearest McDonald’s. There is no homelessness—only minimalist living.

The affordable-housing program is even simpler: is a house too expensive? Wait. Sooner or later, there will be a coffin within your budget.

Work. “Nobody is forcing you to work under bad conditions.” Of course. You can voluntarily quit. Nobody forces you to starve either—your body merely begins aggressive collective bargaining.

A worker is free to choose one terrible job, two terrible jobs, three terrible jobs, or a course called How to Achieve Financial Independence, taught by a guy whose father bought him an apartment. Your boss is free to fire you, your landlord is free to raise the rent, and you are free to update your résumé on the bus. So much freedom, and you still cannot afford any of it.

Paid vacation. In Europe, workers get paid vacation. Libertarianism has vacation too. It usually begins with: “We’ve decided to move forward without you.”

The market provides rest to everyone: some people get two weeks in summer; others get it immediately after being fired and until their savings run out. You are free to take unpaid leave, free not to pay rent, and your landlord is free to change the locks. A perfectly balanced ecosystem of freedom.

Education. A rich child attends a school with laboratories, robots, and a swimming pool. A poor child attends one where the globe still shows the Soviet Union. But both schools participate in the free market. Equality achieved: they both have a front door.

Education is an investment in yourself. That five-year-old should have chosen his parents more responsibly. Terrible financial literacy. He did not receive a bad education—he purchased the basic human-capital plan. Advertisements included. Updates no longer supported.

Drugs. The libertarian program is simple: legalize drugs, leave rehabilitation to the market, eliminate social housing, and make people pay for their own psychiatrists. Then ask, “Why is this irresponsible person lying in the street?” Because your entire social policy ended at the word “legalize.”

The dealer received entrepreneurial freedom. The addict received personal responsibility. The risks were distributed perfectly. The right to buy drugs is guaranteed; the right to survive them is sold separately. Premium tier.

Sex work and OnlyFans. The libertarian economy first strips you financially, then offers you a way to monetize the process. Socialists want families to receive healthcare and paid parental leave. Libertarians want the family to earn it themselves through a group OnlyFans subscription. Finally, a family business they are willing to support.

Everything is voluntary: she voluntarily sells her body, he voluntarily works without days off, and the family voluntarily lives in a car. “Voluntary” here means: “What the fuck else were you going to do?”

Private discrimination. A private business should be free to reject anyone. A restaurant refuses to serve Black people, a landlord refuses to rent to Jews, and an employer refuses to hire women. But the market will punish the racist: he will lose customers he never wanted in the first place. Devastating.

When a café owner is forced not to discriminate, that is “violence against the property owner.” When a person is rejected because of skin color, that is a “private business decision.” The building has sacred rights. The human being gets opening hours and terms of service.

Police. Minarchists want a government that does nothing except protect people. Of course, when the police fail to protect you, the government never guaranteed anything. But when you fail to pay a fine, the responsibility is entirely yours.

When you call the police: “All units are busy.” When the bank calls the sheriff: “We’re already at the door.” Incredible service. You are simply not the customer. The government is a night watchman—it just sleeps next to the bank vault instead of your house.

Private courts. You choose one court. The criminal chooses another. The courts issue opposite rulings, and then private armies hold the final hearing in a parking lot. But that is not civil war. It is competitive arbitration with enhanced volume.

A thief steals your car. You say, “I’m taking you to private court.” He says, “I don’t recognize your arbitrator. His rating is 3.6,” and disables notifications. Either the court cannot force anyone to appear, in which case it is a board-game club, or it can—congratulations, you just reinvented the state, except now it has a subscription fee and forty minutes of hold music.

Fire departments. The fire service works by subscription. Your house is burning, you give them the address, and the dispatcher replies, “We need the email address connected to your account.”

Your neighbor did not pay for the fire plan. His house caught fire and burned yours. The market has finally united paying and non-paying users. Fire still refuses to respect private-property boundaries. Probably a socialist.

Roads. All roads are private. Your commute now involves four owners, six subscriptions, eight toll gates, and an argument over who owns the intersection. But at least there are no taxes—only a service fee for turning left.

Your GPS says: “In two hundred yards, turn right. To continue your route, upgrade your plan.” And if the only road to your home belongs to someone who hates you, the market still offers plenty of choice: stay home.

Taxes. “Taxes are theft,” says the libertarian, before driving on a road, calling the police, demanding enforcement of a contract, and using the courts. It is like eating everything on the restaurant menu and announcing, “The bill is aggression.”

He does not want to pay for other people’s children, but he definitely wants those children to grow up, become doctors, engineers, and customers for his business. He needs society. He just wants the free plan.

Taxes do not disappear under libertarianism. They simply become insurance premiums, road subscriptions, private security fees, tuition payments, and arbitration plans. Same thing, except now it comes with five logos and five sales departments.

Charity. Government assistance says, “You meet the requirements; here is your support.” Private charity says, “Tell your tragedy in a more engaging way. The last poor person got more views.”

You need a good photo, an emotional story, a favorable algorithm, an active audience, and the hope that the internet is not currently distracted by a raccoon on a skateboard. Libertarians are not against helping poor people. They just want the poor person to pass an audition first.

The environment. A company poisons a river. “The victims can sue.” All they have to do is prove which molecule from which company’s pipe damaged which specific kidney. Please keep your receipts.

Reputation will punish the company. It changes its name, puts a green leaf in the logo, and releases an ad featuring children and dolphins. Done. The environment has been restored by the marketing department.

Monopolies. There will be no monopolies in a free market. A company buys its competitors, suppliers, platform, road network, and arbitration service. “That is not a monopoly. Consumers simply made an extremely consistent choice.”

When the government controls a market, it is tyranny. When a corporation controls a market, it is an industry leader. Please use the correct terminology.

Pensions. The libertarian retirement plan: invest correctly for forty years, never get sick, never lose your job, never experience a crash, never trust a scammer, and do not live too long. Then everything works perfectly.

Did you make the wrong investment decision in 1997? Congratulations on your exciting new career as a cashier at seventy-eight. The free market has no retirement age. You can work until death. Freedom without artificial limits.

Child labor. “Why should teenagers be forbidden from working?” Of course. A child is completely free to choose between attending school and helping pay the family’s rent. A mature financial decision. He is already twelve.

Child labor is not exploitation. It is early access to the career ladder. The ladder just happens to be located inside a mine. A rich child gets an internship at his father’s company. A poor child gets a night shift. Both gain valuable experience. One puts it on a résumé; the other puts it in a medical record.

Free speech. “A private platform can ban anyone it wants.” Then the platform bans the libertarian. “This is digital fascism!”

The sacred right of private property lasts exactly until his own account gets suspended. When the corporation bans somebody else, it is freedom of business. When it bans him, Western civilization has fallen.

The ideal libertarian. The most rational libertarian never helps the libertarian movement at all. While activists donate, argue, and sacrifice their careers, he buys stocks, land, and apartments.

If the movement loses, he is rich. If it wins, he is rich in a society where money matters even more. The activist enters the new world holding a book by Mises. This guy enters holding the lease to the activist’s apartment.

The ideal member of the libertarian movement is someone who did absolutely fuck-all for it. At last, individualism has achieved a team result.

Libertarianism asks you to fight politically for everything a poor person already receives for free: isolation, no guarantees, total responsibility for everything, and a lecture explaining why it is all your fault.

You are asking for money, time, discipline, and collective sacrifice so that, after the victory, you can proudly announce: “Now figure it out yourself.”

Your subscription to “figure it out yourself” is fucking expensive. Your competitors already gave me that service for free.

Libertarianism: The Premium Subscription to “Figure It Out Yourself”

Libertarians are offering an incredible political deal: give us your money, waste your youth, organize collectively, and sacrifice your personal interests for the greater cause. And after the victory? Congratulations: now nobody owes you a goddamn thing. Hooray—we came together as a society to earn the right to be abandoned individually.

Healthcare. Socialists want healthcare to be available to everyone. Libertarians fight for your right to pay for your own dentist by freely selling pictures of your hairy ass on OnlyFans. May the algorithm be with you, young Jedi.

A libertarian breaks his leg and opens a GoFundMe: “Friends, let’s collectively prove that collective healthcare funding is communism.” The free market offers four plans: a cast, a loan, crowdfunding, or crawling. So much choice. Under socialism, they would simply treat you like some kind of slave.

Family and parental leave. Those damn socialists want to interfere with your family and torment you with paid parental leave. Thankfully, under libertarianism, your wife can pay for everything herself by sucking a couple of dicks. Protein, vitamins, and entrepreneurship—the complete freedom package.

The economy needs children. Businesses need future workers. Stores need future customers. The government needs future taxpayers. But paid maternity leave? No, no, that is communism now, apparently. Everyone needs the child, but somehow the mother gets the bill. Profits are private; continuing the human species is a woman’s hobby.

Housing. A libertarian says, “Housing is not a right. Anyone can buy a house.” A hungry man can also buy a steak. Thanks, asshole. The economic problem has officially been solved.

In a social democracy, a person without a home is considered a problem. Under libertarianism, he simply selected the “studio without walls” plan: panoramic ceiling, natural ventilation, and a bathroom at the nearest McDonald’s. There is no homelessness—only minimalist living.

The affordable-housing program is even simpler: is a house too expensive? Wait. Sooner or later, there will be a coffin within your budget.

Work. “Nobody is forcing you to work under bad conditions.” Of course. You can voluntarily quit. Nobody forces you to starve either—your body merely begins aggressive collective bargaining.

A worker is free to choose one terrible job, two terrible jobs, three terrible jobs, or a course called How to Achieve Financial Independence, taught by a guy whose father bought him an apartment. Your boss is free to fire you, your landlord is free to raise the rent, and you are free to update your résumé on the bus. So much freedom, and you still cannot afford any of it.

Paid vacation. In Europe, workers get paid vacation. Libertarianism has vacation too. It usually begins with: “We’ve decided to move forward without you.”

The market provides rest to everyone: some people get two weeks in summer; others get it immediately after being fired and until their savings run out. You are free to take unpaid leave, free not to pay rent, and your landlord is free to change the locks. A perfectly balanced ecosystem of freedom.

Education. A rich child attends a school with laboratories, robots, and a swimming pool. A poor child attends one where the globe still shows the Soviet Union. But both schools participate in the free market. Equality achieved: they both have a front door.

Education is an investment in yourself. That five-year-old should have chosen his parents more responsibly. Terrible financial literacy. He did not receive a bad education—he purchased the basic human-capital plan. Advertisements included. Updates no longer supported.

Drugs. The libertarian program is simple: legalize drugs, leave rehabilitation to the market, eliminate social housing, and make people pay for their own psychiatrists. Then ask, “Why is this irresponsible person lying in the street?” Because your entire social policy ended at the word “legalize.”

The dealer received entrepreneurial freedom. The addict received personal responsibility. The risks were distributed perfectly. The right to buy drugs is guaranteed; the right to survive them is sold separately. Premium tier.

Sex work and OnlyFans. The libertarian economy first strips you financially, then offers you a way to monetize the process. Socialists want families to receive healthcare and paid parental leave. Libertarians want the family to earn it themselves through a group OnlyFans subscription. Finally, a family business they are willing to support.

Everything is voluntary: she voluntarily sells her body, he voluntarily works without days off, and the family voluntarily lives in a car. “Voluntary” here means: “What the fuck else were you going to do?”

Private discrimination. A private business should be free to reject anyone. A restaurant refuses to serve Black people, a landlord refuses to rent to Jews, and an employer refuses to hire women. But the market will punish the racist: he will lose customers he never wanted in the first place. Devastating.

When a café owner is forced not to discriminate, that is “violence against the property owner.” When a person is rejected because of skin color, that is a “private business decision.” The building has sacred rights. The human being gets opening hours and terms of service.

Police. Minarchists want a government that does nothing except protect people. Of course, when the police fail to protect you, the government never guaranteed anything. But when you fail to pay a fine, the responsibility is entirely yours.

When you call the police: “All units are busy.” When the bank calls the sheriff: “We’re already at the door.” Incredible service. You are simply not the customer. The government is a night watchman—it just sleeps next to the bank vault instead of your house.

Private courts. You choose one court. The criminal chooses another. The courts issue opposite rulings, and then private armies hold the final hearing in a parking lot. But that is not civil war. It is competitive arbitration with enhanced volume.

A thief steals your car. You say, “I’m taking you to private court.” He says, “I don’t recognize your arbitrator. His rating is 3.6,” and disables notifications. Either the court cannot force anyone to appear, in which case it is a board-game club, or it can—congratulations, you just reinvented the state, except now it has a subscription fee and forty minutes of hold music.

Fire departments. The fire service works by subscription. Your house is burning, you give them the address, and the dispatcher replies, “We need the email address connected to your account.”

Your neighbor did not pay for the fire plan. His house caught fire and burned yours. The market has finally united paying and non-paying users. Fire still refuses to respect private-property boundaries. Probably a socialist.

Roads. All roads are private. Your commute now involves four owners, six subscriptions, eight toll gates, and an argument over who owns the intersection. But at least there are no taxes—only a service fee for turning left.

Your GPS says: “In two hundred yards, turn right. To continue your route, upgrade your plan.” And if the only road to your home belongs to someone who hates you, the market still offers plenty of choice: stay home.

Taxes. “Taxes are theft,” says the libertarian, before driving on a road, calling the police, demanding enforcement of a contract, and using the courts. It is like eating everything on the restaurant menu and announcing, “The bill is aggression.”

He does not want to pay for other people’s children, but he definitely wants those children to grow up, become doctors, engineers, and customers for his business. He needs society. He just wants the free plan.

Taxes do not disappear under libertarianism. They simply become insurance premiums, road subscriptions, private security fees, tuition payments, and arbitration plans. Same thing, except now it comes with five logos and five sales departments.

Charity. Government assistance says, “You meet the requirements; here is your support.” Private charity says, “Tell your tragedy in a more engaging way. The last poor person got more views.”

You need a good photo, an emotional story, a favorable algorithm, an active audience, and the hope that the internet is not currently distracted by a raccoon on a skateboard. Libertarians are not against helping poor people. They just want the poor person to pass an audition first.

The environment. A company poisons a river. “The victims can sue.” All they have to do is prove which molecule from which company’s pipe damaged which specific kidney. Please keep your receipts.

Reputation will punish the company. It changes its name, puts a green leaf in the logo, and releases an ad featuring children and dolphins. Done. The environment has been restored by the marketing department.

Monopolies. There will be no monopolies in a free market. A company buys its competitors, suppliers, platform, road network, and arbitration service. “That is not a monopoly. Consumers simply made an extremely consistent choice.”

When the government controls a market, it is tyranny. When a corporation controls a market, it is an industry leader. Please use the correct terminology.

Pensions. The libertarian retirement plan: invest correctly for forty years, never get sick, never lose your job, never experience a crash, never trust a scammer, and do not live too long. Then everything works perfectly.

Did you make the wrong investment decision in 1997? Congratulations on your exciting new career as a cashier at seventy-eight. The free market has no retirement age. You can work until death. Freedom without artificial limits.

Child labor. “Why should teenagers be forbidden from working?” Of course. A child is completely free to choose between attending school and helping pay the family’s rent. A mature financial decision. He is already twelve.

Child labor is not exploitation. It is early access to the career ladder. The ladder just happens to be located inside a mine. A rich child gets an internship at his father’s company. A poor child gets a night shift. Both gain valuable experience. One puts it on a résumé; the other puts it in a medical record.

Free speech. “A private platform can ban anyone it wants.” Then the platform bans the libertarian. “This is digital fascism!”

The sacred right of private property lasts exactly until his own account gets suspended. When the corporation bans somebody else, it is freedom of business. When it bans him, Western civilization has fallen.

The ideal libertarian. The most rational libertarian never helps the libertarian movement at all. While activists donate, argue, and sacrifice their careers, he buys stocks, land, and apartments.

If the movement loses, he is rich. If it wins, he is rich in a society where money matters even more. The activist enters the new world holding a book by Mises. This guy enters holding the lease to the activist’s apartment.

The ideal member of the libertarian movement is someone who did absolutely fuck-all for it. At last, individualism has achieved a team result.

Libertarianism asks you to fight politically for everything a poor person already receives for free: isolation, no guarantees, total responsibility for everything, and a lecture explaining why it is all your fault.

You are asking for money, time, discipline, and collective sacrifice so that, after the victory, you can proudly announce: “Now figure it out yourself.”

Your subscription to “figure it out yourself” is fucking expensive. Your competitors already gave me that service for free.

In response to the mathematics of opportunity cost, some of you tried to hide behind a convenient philosophical shield:

>

Congratulations. You have just publicly admitted that your movement is not a rigorous economic science, but a religious cult. From the standpoint of material benefit, your activism is meaningless.

But let’s take off the philosophical blinders.

Relying on game theory, specific dates, and history, I will prove that you are not just bad economists. You are historical ignoramuses fighting for a system in which you yourselves will become disenfranchised fodder.

And no, you won’t be able to blame everything on “the state.”

We are going to talk about the pure, unregulated free market.

Part 1. The Activist’s Matrix: Why Socialists Always Win, and You Never Do

Let’s compare the life paths of a leftist activist and a libertarian.

The Socialist Matrix

1. Victory

The activist gains status.

Their children receive guaranteed free higher education, medicine, and housing. In the leftist USSR, housing was given away for free.

In the capitalist US, you surrender 30 years of your life to mortgage slavery, terrified of being fired every single day.

Freedom from the basic fear of poverty is true freedom.

2. Partial Success Without Revolution

Labor unions secure:

• the eight-hour workday;
• paid vacations;
• maternity leave.

The activist monetizes their struggle and buys back their own time here and now.

3. They Abandon Activism and Invest in Themselves

They build a career and accumulate personal capital.

If society shifts left, they integrate into the system. If not, they are simply wealthy.

Result: the socialist expands their material or personal freedom in any outcome.

The Libertarian Matrix

1. Victory

You burned 20 years of your life.

The state is gone.

And nobody owes you anything.

You enter this new world with no capital. Meanwhile, corporations and lobbyists enter it with billions and buy up the private courts.

2. Defeat

You threw 20 years of your life into the trash for “subjective morality.”

3. You Abandon the Movement and Make Money

Only by betraying your ideals do you end up in the black.

From the perspective of game theory, libertarian activism is pure political cuckoldry.

You spend your resources to freely build a system that will be ruled by the very people who exploited you this whole time.

You are unpaid laborers building the foundation for someone else’s castle.

Part 2. The Collapse of Ancap: Your Ideals Are Worth Two Dollars

Let’s quickly dispense with the anarcho-capitalists.

You scream:

>

Remember the shameful experiment in Grafton, New Hampshire.

Your “free citizens” got exactly what they wanted: they slashed taxes and cut the police.

What did the market do?

A group of idiots started dumping trash and feeding wild bears on their properties. The bears began attacking people. Citizens suffered severe, debilitating injuries.

Moreover, after the police force was gutted, quiet little Grafton experienced the first double murders in its history.

Where was your vaunted ostracism?

Ideological libertarian store owners could have easily announced a boycott and refused to sell food to the NAP violators.

But they didn’t.

Why?

Because earning two dollars in profit from selling a can of beans turned out to be more important than the safety of their neighbors.

You sold your ideals, your NAP, and people’s lives for two bucks.

If you couldn’t subject a dozen misfits to ostracism, you will never stop a mega-corporation.

Part 3. The Minarchist Trap: Your Ideal Already Existed, and It Was Hell

“Fine,” a minarchist will say.

>

Let’s open a history book.

Your minarchist utopia already existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England and the United States.

There were no social regulations.

And how did the market handle this “freedom”?

Myth 1: “The Market Is Humane”

Child Labor

The state didn’t force children to work.

Free private capitalists voluntarily hired eight-year-old children to work fourteen-hour shifts in Pennsylvania coal mines and Manchester textile mills.

Why?

Because child labor is cheaper.

The market was never going to stop this. It was unprofitable to do so.

They were liberated by socialists, labor unions, and government bayonets, which legally forbade the private sector from exploiting children.

Myth 2: “The State Invented Discrimination”

You love “freedom of contract.”

In the United States until the 1960s, private businesses—cafés, hotels, private schools, and banks—voluntarily refused to serve Black people.

Banks voluntarily introduced redlining, denying mortgages to minorities.

Nobody forced private laundries to hang “Whites Only” signs. The market simply served the racism of the mob.

Do you know who brought freedom there?

The state.

In 1957, in Little Rock, the federal government sent an airborne division with assault rifles to force private citizens to let Black children into school.

For the record: at this exact same time, the totalitarian USSR legally and practically ensured absolute equal rights for all nations, with African students studying for free at Moscow State University, while the free US market forced them to the back of the bus.

Myth 3: “Private Medicine Will Save Everyone”

In the United States, before government intervention through the 1986 EMTALA law, private hospitals practiced “patient dumping.”

If a man having a heart attack or a woman in labor had no insurance, free private doctors simply threw them out onto the street.

People died on hospital doorsteps.

The invisible hand of the market decided it was unprofitable to save them.

And what about today?

In 1921, Frederick Banting discovered insulin and sold the patent for one dollar so it would be available to everyone.

Today, the unregulated free market of US pharmaceuticals sells it for 300 dollars a vial.

People die because they ration their doses.

For the record: in the planned USSR, the Semashko system guaranteed any surgery and any medication for free. No one died on the street for lacking a credit card.

Myth 4: “The Market Breeds Innovation, the State Breeds Monopoly”

Look at England and the United States.

In free England in the mid-twentieth century, the poor literally froze to death in their apartments because they didn’t have coins to put into the heating meters.

Access to goods was strictly limited by the market. Millions of people for decades couldn’t afford color televisions, washing machines, or proper food.

In the USSR, central heating was practically free and covered 100 percent of cities.

Freedom is when you are not afraid of freezing to death in your own home.

Myth 5: “Minarchism Means Freedom”

No.

Minarchism is a state that keeps the baton, the courts, the prisons, and the power to throw you out of your home—but frees itself from every obligation it has toward you.

It can still:

• arrest you;
• seize your property over a debt;
• enforce a contract against you;
• evict your family;
• use violence to defend someone else’s property.

But when you need healthcare, education, a roof over your head, paid leave, or police protection, it suddenly becomes helpless.

That is not a small state.

It is a one-sided contract in which the citizen must obey, while the system accepts no responsibility for what happens to the citizen.

And here is the most humiliating fact for minarchists: even the USSR—the state they describe as totalitarian hell—accepted more responsibility for the material freedom of ordinary people than their supposedly futuristic ideology does.

The 1936 Soviet Constitution recognized rights to:

• employment;
• rest and paid vacation;
• social security;
• free healthcare;
• education.

The 1977 Constitution also explicitly recognized a right to housing and committed the state to expanding public housing while keeping rents and utilities low.

The Police May Arrest You—but May Not Be Required to Save You

In 1989, in DeShaney v. Winnebago County, the US Supreme Court held that the Constitution generally does not impose a duty on the state to protect an individual from private violence.

In 2005, in Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Court ruled that a woman did not possess a constitutionally protected entitlement to police enforcement of her restraining order.

Her husband, against whom the order had been issued, murdered their three daughters.

Read that again.

The state demands that you recognize its police, courts, and laws.

But it does not always recognize a corresponding constitutional right requiring that police machinery to protect you.

That is already a disgraceful weakness in the modern system.

Minarchism does not propose fixing it.

It proposes turning it into a principle:

>

Housing: The USSR Built Apartments; Minarchism Explains Why You Deserve the Pavement

Soviet housing was not paradise.

People waited years for apartments. Many lived in communal housing, cramped conditions, or depended on the restrictive residence-permit system.

Homelessness was not literally eliminated. It was hidden, criminalized, and often excluded from official visibility.

But the Soviet system did not declare sleeping in the street a normal and morally acceptable outcome of free exchange.

It built and allocated public housing on a massive scale, kept rent extremely low, and legally treated housing as a social right.

In the United States, the official one-night count in January 2024 identified 771,480 homeless people living in shelters, temporary accommodation, cars, tents, or directly on the street—the highest number recorded since the count began.

What does minarchism offer them?

Housing? No.

A guaranteed roof? No.

Protection from eviction? No.

It offers philosophical anesthetic.

It is a brilliant trick.

If you do not want to fail a social obligation, simply declare that the obligation never existed.

The man is not homeless.

He is free from government-imposed housing.

The child is not freezing in a car.

His family merely made an unsuccessful market choice.

Soviet Women Had Rights the American Market Still Does Not Guarantee

Russia granted women the right to vote and stand for election in 1917.

To be precise, this was done by the Provisional Government before the creation of the USSR, and the 1918 Soviet Russian Constitution preserved women’s political equality.

The United States ratified nationwide women’s suffrage in 1920.

Early Soviet labor law provided eight weeks of paid maternity leave before childbirth and eight weeks afterward—a total of sixteen paid weeks.

These protections were introduced after the revolution and reaffirmed in the 1922 Labor Code.

The United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act only in 1993.

Even today, federal law generally guarantees eligible workers up to twelve weeks of job-protected leave—but does not require that leave to be paid.

A Soviet woman a century ago was entitled to paid time to give birth.

A modern American woman may receive legal permission not to be fired—provided she can somehow survive without wages.

Apparently, childbirth is the private choice of the woman, while future workers, taxpayers, consumers, and soldiers are a public resource.

The benefits are privatized.

The cost of reproducing society is dumped on the mother.

Paid Leave: The USSR in 1936; the United States Says, “Negotiate It Yourself”

The 1936 Soviet Constitution recognized annual paid leave as a worker’s right.

Federal law in the United States still does not require employers to provide:

• paid vacation;
• paid sick leave;
• paid public holidays.

These benefits are generally left to negotiation between employer and employee.

In the supposedly totalitarian USSR of 1936, the worker was at least legally recognized as a human being who required rest.

In the minarchist utopia, the worker is a perfectly free seller of labor who may voluntarily choose between:

• working without paid leave;
• losing income;
• losing the job;
• going hungry.

But the contract was signed voluntarily, so freedom has apparently been preserved.

Education: A Right in the USSR, a Product Under Minarchism

The 1936 Soviet Constitution recognized a right to education, including free education.

The 1977 Constitution promised:

• free education at every level;
• scholarships;
• textbooks;
• broad access to vocational and higher education.

In 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the US Supreme Court refused to recognize education as a fundamental right under the federal Constitution.

Yes, the United States has public schools, and state constitutions provide educational guarantees.

But minarchism does not seek to strengthen the child’s right to education.

It moves in the opposite direction:

>

Inherited advantage is then renamed:

>

“But the USSR Had Repression!”

Yes, it did.

There was:

• censorship;
• political imprisonment;
• suppression of real opposition;
• an enormous gap between constitutional promises and political reality.

But this does not rescue minarchism.

It makes the comparison more humiliating.

The USSR violated many of its own obligations.

That was a failure of the state.

Minarchism proposes deleting those obligations entirely—and then declaring failure impossible.

If a state promises housing but fails to provide it, the failure is visible.

If the right to housing is abolished, the person under the bridge no longer counts as evidence against the system.

He becomes a private individual who exercised freedom badly.

Minarchism Is Not Freedom from the State

It is the freedom of the state from responsibility for you.

Minarchism does not abolish coercion.

It preserves every form of coercion necessary for the wealthy to defend their property, while removing every obligation necessary for ordinary people to defend their lives.

It is not a night-watchman state.

It is an armed guard standing beside the safe, calmly watching while the owner throws you into the street.

Deregulation and Monopoly

You believe that deregulation gives birth to competition?

In the United States, they cut corporate taxes, froze the minimum wage, and removed merger controls.

The result?

Capitalism devoured competitors and birthed Boeing.

The corporation became a monopoly, fired its engineers, hired “effective managers,” and spent billions on stock buybacks.

Now their planes are literally falling apart in mid-air.

The market killed safety for the sake of profit.

At the same time, the “monopolistic” USSR artificially created competition by funding dozens of independent design bureaus:

• Tupolev;
• Ilyushin;
• MiG;
• Sukhoi.

The USSR built reliable planes and millions of buses, while your market degrades.

The Bottom Line: What Are You Fighting For?

Take off your rose-colored glasses.

You are not fighting for freedom.

1. Your Economics

Your economics is unpaid labor for future corporate monopolists.

2. Your Morality

Your morality is worth two dollars for a can of beans sold to a man whose bears will kill your neighbor tomorrow.

3. Your Historical Ideals

Your historical ideals belong to an era when a private owner could, with impunity:

• force a child into a mine;
• throw a dying person out of a hospital;
• hang a “No Blacks Allowed” sign on the door.

True political freedom, safety, the eight-hour workday, medicine, and education were gifted to you by socialists and state coercion.

You are fighting for the right of corporations to wipe their feet on you with impunity, and you cowardly call it “minarchism.”

P.S. Watch Their Reaction

Now they will try to forget about:

• the racism of private businesses;
• the corpses on hospital doorsteps before 1986;
• the price of insulin;
• the disabled victims of Grafton.

They will scream hysterically:

>

Or:

>

They will hide behind theoretical slogans once again.

Because to admit the facts is to admit that socialism gave the world a thousand times more human lives and freedoms than all libertarian fantasies combined.

In response to the mathematics of opportunity cost, some of you tried to hide

behind a convenient philosophical shield: "We are not fighting for money! The

very process of fighting for FREEDOM brings us subjective satisfaction!"

Congratulations. You have just publicly admitted that your movement is not a

rigorous economic science, but a religious cult. From the standpoint of material

benefit, your activism is meaningless.

But let’s take off the philosophical blinders. Relying on game theory, specific

dates, and history, I will prove that you are not just bad economists. You are

historical ignoramuses fighting for a system in which you yourselves will become

disenfranchised fodder. And no, you won't be able to blame everything on "the

state." We are going to talk about the pure, unregulated free market.

Part 1. The Activist's Matrix: Why Socialists Always Win, and You Never Do

Let's compare the life paths of a leftist activist and a libertarian.

The Socialist Matrix:

1. Victory: The activist gains status. Their children receive guaranteed free

higher education, medicine, and housing. In the leftist USSR, housing was

given away for free. In the capitalist US, you surrender 30 years of your

life to mortgage slavery, terrified of being fired every single day. Freedom

from the basic fear of poverty is true freedom.

2. Partial Success (without revolution): Labor unions secure the 8-hour

workday, paid vacations, and maternity leave. The activist monetizes their

struggle and buys back their own time here and now.

3. They abandon activism and invest in themselves: They build a career and

accumulate personal capital. If society shifts left, they integrate into the

system; if not, they are simply wealthy. Result: The socialist expands their

material or personal freedom in ANY outcome.

The Libertarian Matrix:

1. Victory: You burned 20 years of your life. The state is gone. And nobody

owes you anything. You enter this new world with no capital. Meanwhile,

corporations and lobbyists enter it with billions and buy up the private

courts.

2. Defeat: You threw 20 years of your life into the trash for "subjective

morality."

3. You abandon the movement and make money: Only by betraying your ideals do

you end up in the black.

From the perspective of game theory, libertarian activism is pure political

cuckoldry. You spend your resources to freely build a system that will be ruled

by the very people who exploited you this whole time. You are unpaid laborers

building the foundation for someone else's castle.

Part 2. The Collapse of Ancap: Your Ideals Are Worth 2 Dollars

Let's quickly dispense with the anarcho-capitalists. You scream: "We don't need

the state, conflicts will be solved by private courts, the NAP, and ostracism!"

Remember the shameful experiment in Grafton, New Hampshire. Your "free citizens"

got exactly what they wanted: they slashed taxes and cut the police.

What did the market do? A group of idiots started dumping trash and feeding wild

bears on their properties. The bears began attacking people. Citizens suffered

severe, debilitating injuries. Moreover, after the police force was gutted,

quiet little Grafton experienced the first double murders in its history.

Where was your vaunted ostracism? Ideological libertarian store owners could

have easily announced a boycott and refused to sell food to the NAP violators.

But they didn't. Why? Because earning $2 in profit from selling a can of beans

turned out to be more important than the safety of their neighbors. You sold

your ideals, your NAP, and people's lives for two bucks. If you couldn't subject

a dozen misfits to ostracism, you will never stop a mega-corporation.

Part 3. The Minarchist Trap: Your Ideal Already Existed, and It Was Hell

"Fine," a minarchist will say, "ancaps are daydreamers. We need a minimal state,

but with no market regulations, no public medicine, and no welfare! The market

will fix everything!"

Let's open a history book. Your minarchist utopia already existed in the 19th

and early 20th centuries in England and the US. There were no social

regulations. And how did the market handle this "freedom"?

Myth 1: "The market is humane" (Child Labor) The state didn't force children to

work. Free private capitalists voluntarily hired 8-year-old children to

work 14-hour shifts in Pennsylvania coal mines and Manchester textile mills.

Why? Because child labor is cheaper. The market was never going to stop this—it

was unprofitable to do so. They were liberated by socialists, labor unions, and

government bayonets, which legally forbade the private sector from exploiting

children.

Myth 2: "The state invented discrimination" You love "freedom of contract." In

the US until the 1960s, private businesses (cafes, hotels, private schools,

banks) voluntarily refused to serve black people. Banks voluntarily introduced

"redlining," denying mortgages to minorities. Nobody forced private laundries to

hang "Whites Only" signs—the market simply served the racism of the mob. Do you

know who brought freedom there? The state. In 1957 in Little Rock, the federal

government sent an airborne division with assault rifles to force private

citizens to let black children into school. (For the record: At this exact same

time, the totalitarian USSR legally and practically ensured absolute equal

rights for all nations, with African students studying for free at Moscow State

University, while the free US market forced them to the back of the bus).

Myth 3: "Private medicine will save everyone" In the US, before government

intervention (the 1986 EMTALA law), private hospitals practiced "patient

dumping." If a man having a heart attack or a woman in labor had no insurance,

free private doctors simply threw them out on the street. People died on

hospital doorsteps. The invisible hand of the market decided it was unprofitable

to save them. And what about today? In 1921, Frederick Banting discovered

insulin and sold the patent for $1 so it would be available to everyone. Today,

the unregulated free market of US pharma sells it for $300 a vial. People die

because they ration their doses. (For the record: In the planned USSR, the

Semashko system guaranteed any surgery and any medication for free. No one died

on the street for lacking a credit card).

Myth 4: "The market breeds innovation, the state breeds monopoly" Look at

England and the US. In free England in the mid-20th century, the poor literally

froze to death in their apartments because they didn't have coins to put into

the heating meters. Access to goods was strictly limited by the market: millions

of people for decades couldn't afford color TVs, washing machines, or proper

food. (In the USSR, central heating was practically free and covered 100% of

cities. Freedom is when you are not afraid of freezing to death in your own

home).

Myth 5: “Minarchism Means Freedom”

No.

Minarchism is a state that keeps the baton, the courts, the prisons, and the power to throw you out of your home—but frees itself from every obligation it has toward you.

It can still:

• arrest you;
• seize your property over a debt;
• enforce a contract against you;
• evict your family;
• use violence to defend someone else’s property.

But when you need healthcare, education, a roof over your head, paid leave, or police protection, it suddenly becomes helpless:

>

That is not a small state.

It is a one-sided contract in which the citizen must obey, while the system accepts no responsibility for what happens to the citizen.

And here is the most humiliating fact for minarchists: even the USSR—the state they describe as totalitarian hell—accepted more responsibility for the material freedom of ordinary people than their supposedly futuristic ideology does.

The 1936 Soviet Constitution recognized rights to employment, rest and paid vacation, social security, free healthcare, and education. The 1977 Constitution also explicitly recognized a right to housing and committed the state to expanding public housing while keeping rents and utilities low.

The Soviet system told the citizen:

>

The minarchist tells you:

>

The police may arrest you—but may not be required to save you

In 1989, in DeShaney v. Winnebago County, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution generally does not impose a duty on the state to protect an individual from private violence.

In 2005, in Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Court ruled that a woman did not possess a constitutionally protected entitlement to police enforcement of her restraining order. Her husband, against whom the order had been issued, murdered their three daughters.

Read that again.

The state demands that you recognize its police, courts, and laws. But it does not always recognize a corresponding constitutional right requiring that police machinery to protect you.

That is already a disgraceful weakness in the modern system.

Minarchism does not propose fixing it. It proposes turning it into a principle:

>

When the state needs to use force against you, it is fully real.

When you need protection from it, the free market suddenly appears.

Housing: the USSR built apartments; minarchism explains why you deserve the pavement

Soviet housing was not paradise.

People waited years for apartments. Many lived in communal housing, cramped conditions, or depended on the restrictive residence-permit system. Homelessness was not literally eliminated; it was hidden, criminalized, and often excluded from official visibility.

But the Soviet system did not declare sleeping in the street a normal and morally acceptable outcome of free exchange.

It built and allocated public housing on a massive scale, kept rent extremely low, and legally treated housing as a social right.

In the United States, the official one-night count in January 2024 identified 771,480 homeless people living in shelters, temporary accommodation, cars, tents, or directly on the street—the highest number recorded since the count began.

What does minarchism offer them?

Housing? No.

A guaranteed roof? No.

Protection from eviction? No.

It offers philosophical anesthetic:

>

It is a brilliant trick. If you do not want to fail a social obligation, simply declare that the obligation never existed.

The man is not homeless. He is free from government-imposed housing.

The child is not freezing in a car. His family merely made an unsuccessful market choice.

Soviet women had rights the American market still does not guarantee

Russia granted women the right to vote and stand for election in 1917. To be precise, this was done by the Provisional Government before the creation of the USSR, and the 1918 Soviet Russian Constitution preserved women’s political equality.

The United States ratified nationwide women’s suffrage in 1920.

Early Soviet labor law provided eight weeks of paid maternity leave before childbirth and eight weeks afterward—a total of sixteen paid weeks. These protections were introduced after the revolution and reaffirmed in the 1922 Labor Code.

The United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act only in 1993. Even today, federal law generally guarantees eligible workers up to twelve weeks of job-protected leave—but does not require that leave to be paid.

A Soviet woman a century ago was entitled to paid time to give birth.

A modern American woman may receive legal permission not to be fired—provided she can somehow survive without wages.

And the minarchist looks at this arrangement and declares:

>

Apparently, childbirth is the private choice of the woman, while future workers, taxpayers, consumers, and soldiers are a public resource.

The benefits are privatized.

The cost of reproducing society is dumped on the mother.

Paid leave: the USSR in 1936; the United States says, “Negotiate it yourself”

The 1936 Soviet Constitution recognized annual paid leave as a worker’s right.

Federal law in the United States still does not require employers to provide paid vacation, paid sick leave, or paid public holidays. These benefits are generally left to negotiation between employer and employee.

In the supposedly totalitarian USSR of 1936, the worker was at least legally recognized as a human being who required rest.

In the minarchist utopia, the worker is a perfectly free seller of labor who may voluntarily choose between:

• working without paid leave;
• losing income;
• losing the job;
• going hungry.

But the contract was signed voluntarily, so freedom has apparently been preserved.

Education: a right in the USSR, a product under minarchism

The 1936 Soviet Constitution recognized a right to education, including free education. The 1977 Constitution promised free education at every level, scholarships, textbooks, and broad access to vocational and higher education.

In 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to recognize education as a fundamental right under the federal Constitution.

Yes, the United States has public schools, and state constitutions provide educational guarantees.

But minarchism does not seek to strengthen the child’s right to education. It moves in the opposite direction:

>

The rich child receives teachers, laboratories, security, and elite connections.

The poor child receives a lecture about personal responsibility.

Inherited advantage is then renamed “merit earned through free competition.”

“But the USSR had repression!”

Yes, it did.

There was censorship, political imprisonment, suppression of real opposition, and an enormous gap between constitutional promises and political reality.

But this does not rescue minarchism.

It makes the comparison more humiliating.

The question is:

>

The USSR violated many of its own obligations. That was a failure of the state.

Minarchism proposes deleting those obligations entirely—and then declaring failure impossible.

If a state promises housing but fails to provide it, the failure is visible.

If the right to housing is abolished, the person under the bridge no longer counts as evidence against the system. He becomes a private individual who exercised freedom badly.

Minarchism is not freedom from the state

It is the freedom of the state from responsibility for you.

It is a system where:

>

Minarchism does not abolish coercion.

It preserves every form of coercion necessary for the wealthy to defend their property, while removing every obligation necessary for ordinary people to defend their lives.

It is not a night-watchman state.

It is an armed guard standing beside the safe, calmly watching while the owner throws you into the street.

You believe that deregulation gives birth to competition? In the US, they cut

corporate taxes, froze the minimum wage, and removed merger controls. The

result? Capitalism devoured competitors and birthed Boeing. The corporation

became a monopoly, fired its engineers, hired "effective managers," and spent

billions on stock buybacks. Now their planes are literally falling apart in

mid-air. The market killed safety for the sake of profit. (At the same time, the

"monopolistic" USSR artificially created competition by funding dozens of

independent design bureaus: Tupolev, Ilyushin, MiG, Sukhoi. The USSR built

reliable planes and millions of buses, while your market degrades).

The Bottom Line: What Are You Fighting For?

Take off your rose-colored glasses. You are not fighting for freedom.

1. Your economics is unpaid labor for future corporate monopolists.

2. Your morality is worth $2 for a can of beans sold to a man whose bears will

kill your neighbor tomorrow.

3. Your historical ideals belong to an era when a private owner could impunity

force a child into a mine, throw a dying person out of a hospital, and hang

a "No Blacks Allowed" sign on the door.

True political freedom, safety, the 8-hour workday, medicine, and education were

gifted to you by socialists and state coercion. You are fighting for the right

of corporations to wipe their feet on you with impunity, and you cowardly call

it "minarchism."

P.S. Watch their reaction. Now they will try to forget about the racism of

private businesses, the corpses on hospital doorsteps before 1986, the price of

insulin, and the disabled victims of Grafton. They will scream hysterically:

"But the USSR had repressions!" or "That's crony capitalism, not the real free

market!" They will hide behind theoretical slogans once again. Because to admit

the facts is to admit that socialism gave the world a thousand times more human

lives and freedoms than all libertarian fantasies combined.

Libertarianism prides itself on its intellectual foundation. You despise idealism, relying instead on rational choice theory, Mises’ praxeology, and economic cost-benefit analysis. You claim the free market is the perfect mechanism and that people act exclusively to maximize their own utility.

But if we apply your own laws of economics, game theory, and opportunity cost to the very fact of your participation in the libertarian movement, a fundamental paradox emerges.

This article is not a debate about whether freedom is good. It is an audit of your personal life strategy. Try to answer these questions while staying within the framework of rational economics, rather than switching to the language of religious preachers.

Part 1. The Accounting of Opportunity Cost: The Mathematics of Your Illusions

Let’s drop the abstractions and look at dry numbers.
The main platforms of your community have existed for years:

• r/Libertarian — created in January 2008.
• r/Anarcho_Capitalism — created in November 2008.
• r/AskLibertarians — created in October 2013.

Combined, that’s hundreds of thousands of members and millions of reads. Imagine an "average" ideological libertarian. If, since 2008, he spent just 1 hour a day reading Rothbard, arguing in comments, proving the inefficiency of the Fed, and fighting leftists, by today he has burned about 6,000 hours of his life.

What is 6,000 hours in the free market?
It’s not just "free time after work." It is writing the code for two IT startups from scratch. It is reaching fluency in Mandarin. It is an MBA and a fully built network of useful connections. It is seed capital that would already be generating compound interest.

You might say: "I do this not for money, but for morality and freedom!" or "I can work and browse Reddit at the same time." But praxeology is ruthless: by choosing to spend a marginal hour on political activism, you did not spend it on building your capital.

Hence the first questions:

1. If you claim to act out of moral duty, sacrificing your time with no guaranteed return so that future generations can live in a free society—how do you economically and psychologically differ from the communists who urged people to endure hardships today for a brighter tomorrow?
2. Imagine the outcome: libertarianism wins, the state disappears. But the former bureaucrats, lobbyists, and "crony capitalists" who milked the state for those 18 years and fought against you will enter the new anarcho-capitalism with millions of dollars, connections, and real estate. Meanwhile, you enter it with a deficit of 6,000 hours. In your brave new world, private capital decides everything. Where is the rational egoism if you single-handedly, and for free, built a system where your bosses and the owners of the private courts will be the very people who exploited the state while you were writing posts?
3. Look at the platform owners, podcast creators, and thought leaders in your movement. They monetize your traffic, receive donations, and sell books and lectures. From a game-theory perspective, they act entirely rationally—converting your ideological rage into their private capital. Are you, the rank-and-file activists, not the very "useful idiots" you so love to mock among the left?

Part 2. The Leftist Contrast: Why Socialists Turned Out to Be Better Investors

You despise the left and labor unions for their economic illiteracy. But let’s compare the ROI (Return on Investment) of leftist and libertarian activism from the perspective of the participant's cynical self-interest.

When a socialist, union member, or leftist activist spends their 6,000 hours, they receive dividends before the global victory of their ideology.

• Unions in France strike—and secure a reduction of working hours to 35 a week while maintaining their salary. They physically claimed back their free time.
• The left in Scandinavia achieved free childcare, healthcare, and education. They reduced their personal out-of-pocket costs for raising children.
• Members of kibbutzim or cooperatives receive a share in collective property and insurance in case of illness.

The leftist movement rewards its adherents. It converts political time into material benefits and social protection here and now.

Now look at yourselves:
4. The libertarian movement gives you no protection from being fired, no insurance, no capital, and no exclusive rights after victory. You demand colossal sacrifices from your followers, guaranteeing them in return only the right to compete under disadvantageous conditions. If leftist structures pay their participants with tangible benefits, and your structure demands unpaid labor for an abstraction, who between you actually fails to understand the economics of incentives?
5. The perfect game-theory strategy for living under anarcho-capitalism is to accumulate maximum capital under the state (including government contracts) so you can later buy the best private security and courts. Doesn't the math prove that the most profitable strategy for a pragmatic libertarian is to publicly support the state, get rich off it, and wait for the naive fanatics from Reddit to bleed while overthrowing the government at their own expense?

Part 3. The Grafton Failure: A 20-Year-Long Hypocrisy

You often say: "We don't need the state; we have reputation institutions, the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), ostracism, and contracts."

But history gave you the perfect chance. The "Free Town Project" in Grafton, New Hampshire (USA). This wasn't the wild jungle—it was a town protected from external enemies by the US military, integrated into a massive economy, with a great climate. For 100 years before the libertarians arrived, there had been no bear attacks.

Hundreds of ideological anarcho-capitalists moved there. Taxes were cut. Police budgets were slashed. And what happened? A group of "free citizens" started dumping garbage and feeding bears. This is a classic negative externality. Their actions created a direct threat to life (a NAP violation) for their neighbors. Bears started killing pets and besieging homes.

And this is where your main myth collapses. You claim the free market will instantly solve the problem through private courts and reputational damage (boycotts).

1. More than 15 years have passed since the experiment. In that time, millions of posts have been written on r/Anarcho_Capitalism and r/Libertarian. Why have the intellectual base of libertarians, your authorities, and your channels never officially condemned those specific individuals who fed the bears and acknowledged it as a crime against the NAP?
2. Where was your vaunted institution of reputation? Why didn't you subject the NAP violators to global libertarian ostracism? Why didn't local private businesses in Grafton refuse to sell them food to force them to stop endangering the community? If the desire to sell a can of beans to a violator is more important to you than the basic safety of your neighbors, how will your system handle a mega-corporation dumping toxins into a river?
3. There was no dictatorship in Grafton; no one forbade you from opening private arbitration. But no one took responsibility. The threat was stopped only by the arrival of a state game warden who threatened fines. If, in 15 years, you couldn't apply your own laws to a dozen misfits in the greenhouse conditions of a small town, why should we believe your laws will work on the scale of a 140-million-person country?

Your Move

You cannot answer "we do this for freedom" or try to drape yourselves in the mantle of holy martyrs.

First, because this makes you altruistic idealists working for free for the benefit of society (which destroys your own praxeology and turns you into the very leftists you despise).
Second, what great lack of freedom are you talking about? You live (or ideologically orient yourself) in the USA—a country where in most states private ownership of a combat arsenal is allowed, light drugs are legalized in many places, power is decentralized, and corporations wield colossal influence. You already have a baseline that many in the world can only dream of. You are burning your life for the right not to pay taxes for roads and to ignore environmental regulations. Is this marginal increase in "freedom" worth thousands of hours of your life?

And you cannot hide behind morality, because your children pay for your morality.
Those 6,000 hours you spent arguing on the internet, reading theory, and fighting political battles—those are hours you stole from your family. You didn't spend them setting up a trust fund for your child, paying for their elite education, or passing down hard skills. You are making your children poorer right now.

And now remember the finale: in that very anarcho-capitalism you are building, your children will need capital to buy private justice, good security, and healthcare. But you didn't accumulate this capital because you were busy "fighting for the idea." With your own hands, you are preparing your children to become wage laborers (or disenfranchised outsiders) for those former state bureaucrats and crony capitalists who spent all this time hoarding money. Your "morality" is the economic betrayal of your own offspring.

And you cannot say "we will regulate everything through the NAP and private courts," because Grafton will forever remain a monument to your inability to punish violators of your own rules. If you didn't apply ostracism to the neighbor with the bears, you will never apply it to a billionaire with a private army.

So, my final question to libertarians:
After the math of opportunity cost has been exposed, after it has been proven that you are enriching your enemies and stripping your children of their competitive advantage—who among you is ready to honestly raise your hand and say: "Yes, I am an irrational altruist, ready to sacrifice my family's well-being for a utopia whose fruits will be reaped by others"?

Answer directly. No slogans.

P.S. For outside readers (observers):
Watch closely how they respond to this article. Libertarians love to accuse everyone around them of economic ignorance, appealing to cold logic, egoism, and market incentives. But trapped in this logical snare, they will be unable to use their own tools.

You will witness a miracle: pragmatic capitalists will transform before your eyes into religious fanatics. They will start talking about "faith in a righteous cause," "sacrifice," "moral duty," and abstract ideals—meaning they will start speaking exactly like those very socialists they hate so much. Watch the comments; it will be the best proof that libertarianism is not economics. It is just another religion.

Libertarianism prides itself on its intellectual foundation. You despise idealism, relying instead on rational choice theory, Mises’ praxeology, and economic cost-benefit analysis. You claim the free market is the perfect mechanism and that people act exclusively to maximize their own utility.

But if we apply your own laws of economics, game theory, and opportunity cost to the very fact of your participation in the libertarian movement, a fundamental paradox emerges.

This article is not a debate about whether freedom is good. It is an audit of your personal life strategy. Try to answer these questions while staying within the framework of rational economics, rather than switching to the language of religious preachers.

Part 1. The Accounting of Opportunity Cost: The Mathematics of Your Illusions

Let’s drop the abstractions and look at dry numbers.
The main platforms of your community have existed for years:

• r/Libertarian — created in January 2008.
• r/Anarcho_Capitalism — created in November 2008.
• r/AskLibertarians — created in October 2013.

Combined, that’s hundreds of thousands of members and millions of reads. Imagine an "average" ideological libertarian. If, since 2008, he spent just 1 hour a day reading Rothbard, arguing in comments, proving the inefficiency of the Fed, and fighting leftists, by today he has burned about 6,000 hours of his life.

What is 6,000 hours in the free market?
It’s not just "free time after work." It is writing the code for two IT startups from scratch. It is reaching fluency in Mandarin. It is an MBA and a fully built network of useful connections. It is seed capital that would already be generating compound interest.

You might say: "I do this not for money, but for morality and freedom!" or "I can work and browse Reddit at the same time." But praxeology is ruthless: by choosing to spend a marginal hour on political activism, you did not spend it on building your capital.

Hence the first questions:

1. If you claim to act out of moral duty, sacrificing your time with no guaranteed return so that future generations can live in a free society—how do you economically and psychologically differ from the communists who urged people to endure hardships today for a brighter tomorrow?
2. Imagine the outcome: libertarianism wins, the state disappears. But the former bureaucrats, lobbyists, and "crony capitalists" who milked the state for those 18 years and fought against you will enter the new anarcho-capitalism with millions of dollars, connections, and real estate. Meanwhile, you enter it with a deficit of 6,000 hours. In your brave new world, private capital decides everything. Where is the rational egoism if you single-handedly, and for free, built a system where your bosses and the owners of the private courts will be the very people who exploited the state while you were writing posts?
3. Look at the platform owners, podcast creators, and thought leaders in your movement. They monetize your traffic, receive donations, and sell books and lectures. From a game-theory perspective, they act entirely rationally—converting your ideological rage into their private capital. Are you, the rank-and-file activists, not the very "useful idiots" you so love to mock among the left?

Part 2. The Leftist Contrast: Why Socialists Turned Out to Be Better Investors

You despise the left and labor unions for their economic illiteracy. But let’s compare the ROI (Return on Investment) of leftist and libertarian activism from the perspective of the participant's cynical self-interest.

When a socialist, union member, or leftist activist spends their 6,000 hours, they receive dividends before the global victory of their ideology.

• Unions in France strike—and secure a reduction of working hours to 35 a week while maintaining their salary. They physically claimed back their free time.
• The left in Scandinavia achieved free childcare, healthcare, and education. They reduced their personal out-of-pocket costs for raising children.
• Members of kibbutzim or cooperatives receive a share in collective property and insurance in case of illness.

The leftist movement rewards its adherents. It converts political time into material benefits and social protection here and now.

Now look at yourselves:
4. The libertarian movement gives you no protection from being fired, no insurance, no capital, and no exclusive rights after victory. You demand colossal sacrifices from your followers, guaranteeing them in return only the right to compete under disadvantageous conditions. If leftist structures pay their participants with tangible benefits, and your structure demands unpaid labor for an abstraction, who between you actually fails to understand the economics of incentives?
5. The perfect game-theory strategy for living under anarcho-capitalism is to accumulate maximum capital under the state (including government contracts) so you can later buy the best private security and courts. Doesn't the math prove that the most profitable strategy for a pragmatic libertarian is to publicly support the state, get rich off it, and wait for the naive fanatics from Reddit to bleed while overthrowing the government at their own expense?

Part 3. The Grafton Failure: A 20-Year-Long Hypocrisy

You often say: "We don't need the state; we have reputation institutions, the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), ostracism, and contracts."

But history gave you the perfect chance. The "Free Town Project" in Grafton, New Hampshire (USA). This wasn't the wild jungle—it was a town protected from external enemies by the US military, integrated into a massive economy, with a great climate. For 100 years before the libertarians arrived, there had been no bear attacks.

Hundreds of ideological anarcho-capitalists moved there. Taxes were cut. Police budgets were slashed. And what happened? A group of "free citizens" started dumping garbage and feeding bears. This is a classic negative externality. Their actions created a direct threat to life (a NAP violation) for their neighbors. Bears started killing pets and besieging homes.

And this is where your main myth collapses. You claim the free market will instantly solve the problem through private courts and reputational damage (boycotts).

1. More than 15 years have passed since the experiment. In that time, millions of posts have been written on r/Anarcho_Capitalism and r/Libertarian. Why have the intellectual base of libertarians, your authorities, and your channels never officially condemned those specific individuals who fed the bears and acknowledged it as a crime against the NAP?
2. Where was your vaunted institution of reputation? Why didn't you subject the NAP violators to global libertarian ostracism? Why didn't local private businesses in Grafton refuse to sell them food to force them to stop endangering the community? If the desire to sell a can of beans to a violator is more important to you than the basic safety of your neighbors, how will your system handle a mega-corporation dumping toxins into a river?
3. There was no dictatorship in Grafton; no one forbade you from opening private arbitration. But no one took responsibility. The threat was stopped only by the arrival of a state game warden who threatened fines. If, in 15 years, you couldn't apply your own laws to a dozen misfits in the greenhouse conditions of a small town, why should we believe your laws will work on the scale of a 140-million-person country?

Your Move

You cannot answer "we do this for freedom" or try to drape yourselves in the mantle of holy martyrs.

First, because this makes you altruistic idealists working for free for the benefit of society (which destroys your own praxeology and turns you into the very leftists you despise).
Second, what great lack of freedom are you talking about? You live (or ideologically orient yourself) in the USA—a country where in most states private ownership of a combat arsenal is allowed, light drugs are legalized in many places, power is decentralized, and corporations wield colossal influence. You already have a baseline that many in the world can only dream of. You are burning your life for the right not to pay taxes for roads and to ignore environmental regulations. Is this marginal increase in "freedom" worth thousands of hours of your life?

And you cannot hide behind morality, because your children pay for your morality.
Those 6,000 hours you spent arguing on the internet, reading theory, and fighting political battles—those are hours you stole from your family. You didn't spend them setting up a trust fund for your child, paying for their elite education, or passing down hard skills. You are making your children poorer right now.

And now remember the finale: in that very anarcho-capitalism you are building, your children will need capital to buy private justice, good security, and healthcare. But you didn't accumulate this capital because you were busy "fighting for the idea." With your own hands, you are preparing your children to become wage laborers (or disenfranchised outsiders) for those former state bureaucrats and crony capitalists who spent all this time hoarding money. Your "morality" is the economic betrayal of your own offspring.

And you cannot say "we will regulate everything through the NAP and private courts," because Grafton will forever remain a monument to your inability to punish violators of your own rules. If you didn't apply ostracism to the neighbor with the bears, you will never apply it to a billionaire with a private army.

So, my final question to libertarians:
After the math of opportunity cost has been exposed, after it has been proven that you are enriching your enemies and stripping your children of their competitive advantage—who among you is ready to honestly raise your hand and say: "Yes, I am an irrational altruist, ready to sacrifice my family's well-being for a utopia whose fruits will be reaped by others"?

Answer directly. No slogans.

P.S. For outside readers (observers):
Watch closely how they respond to this article. Libertarians love to accuse everyone around them of economic ignorance, appealing to cold logic, egoism, and market incentives. But trapped in this logical snare, they will be unable to use their own tools.

You will witness a miracle: pragmatic capitalists will transform before your eyes into religious fanatics. They will start talking about "faith in a righteous cause," "sacrifice," "moral duty," and abstract ideals—meaning they will start speaking exactly like those very socialists they hate so much. Watch the comments; it will be the best proof that libertarianism is not economics. It is just another religion.

https://preview.redd.it/ck4ao8ao8yah1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=96a9a72af6f0271609b1336fea7daa3d4ebe8d6f

Libertarianism prides itself on its intellectual foundation. You despise idealism, relying instead on rational choice theory, Mises’ praxeology, and economic cost-benefit analysis. You claim the free market is the perfect mechanism and that people act exclusively to maximize their own utility.

But if we apply your own laws of economics, game theory, and opportunity cost to the very fact of your participation in the libertarian movement, a fundamental paradox emerges.

This article is not a debate about whether freedom is good. It is an audit of your personal life strategy. Try to answer these questions while staying within the framework of rational economics, rather than switching to the language of religious preachers.

Part 1. The Accounting of Opportunity Cost: The Mathematics of Your Illusions

Let’s drop the abstractions and look at dry numbers.
The main platforms of your community have existed for years:

• r/Libertarian — created in January 2008.
• r/Anarcho_Capitalism — created in November 2008.
• r/AskLibertarians — created in October 2013.

Combined, that’s hundreds of thousands of members and millions of reads. Imagine an "average" ideological libertarian. If, since 2008, he spent just 1 hour a day reading Rothbard, arguing in comments, proving the inefficiency of the Fed, and fighting leftists, by today he has burned about 6,000 hours of his life.

What is 6,000 hours in the free market?
It’s not just "free time after work." It is writing the code for two IT startups from scratch. It is reaching fluency in Mandarin. It is an MBA and a fully built network of useful connections. It is seed capital that would already be generating compound interest.

You might say: "I do this not for money, but for morality and freedom!" or "I can work and browse Reddit at the same time." But praxeology is ruthless: by choosing to spend a marginal hour on political activism, you did not spend it on building your capital.

Hence the first questions:

1. If you claim to act out of moral duty, sacrificing your time with no guaranteed return so that future generations can live in a free society—how do you economically and psychologically differ from the communists who urged people to endure hardships today for a brighter tomorrow?
2. Imagine the outcome: libertarianism wins, the state disappears. But the former bureaucrats, lobbyists, and "crony capitalists" who milked the state for those 18 years and fought against you will enter the new anarcho-capitalism with millions of dollars, connections, and real estate. Meanwhile, you enter it with a deficit of 6,000 hours. In your brave new world, private capital decides everything. Where is the rational egoism if you single-handedly, and for free, built a system where your bosses and the owners of the private courts will be the very people who exploited the state while you were writing posts?
3. Look at the platform owners, podcast creators, and thought leaders in your movement. They monetize your traffic, receive donations, and sell books and lectures. From a game-theory perspective, they act entirely rationally—converting your ideological rage into their private capital. Are you, the rank-and-file activists, not the very "useful idiots" you so love to mock among the left?

Part 2. The Leftist Contrast: Why Socialists Turned Out to Be Better Investors

You despise the left and labor unions for their economic illiteracy. But let’s compare the ROI (Return on Investment) of leftist and libertarian activism from the perspective of the participant's cynical self-interest.

When a socialist, union member, or leftist activist spends their 6,000 hours, they receive dividends before the global victory of their ideology.

• Unions in France strike—and secure a reduction of working hours to 35 a week while maintaining their salary. They physically claimed back their free time.
• The left in Scandinavia achieved free childcare, healthcare, and education. They reduced their personal out-of-pocket costs for raising children.
• Members of kibbutzim or cooperatives receive a share in collective property and insurance in case of illness.

The leftist movement rewards its adherents. It converts political time into material benefits and social protection here and now.

Now look at yourselves:
4. The libertarian movement gives you no protection from being fired, no insurance, no capital, and no exclusive rights after victory. You demand colossal sacrifices from your followers, guaranteeing them in return only the right to compete under disadvantageous conditions. If leftist structures pay their participants with tangible benefits, and your structure demands unpaid labor for an abstraction, who between you actually fails to understand the economics of incentives?
5. The perfect game-theory strategy for living under anarcho-capitalism is to accumulate maximum capital under the state (including government contracts) so you can later buy the best private security and courts. Doesn't the math prove that the most profitable strategy for a pragmatic libertarian is to publicly support the state, get rich off it, and wait for the naive fanatics from Reddit to bleed while overthrowing the government at their own expense?

Part 3. The Grafton Failure: A 20-Year-Long Hypocrisy

You often say: "We don't need the state; we have reputation institutions, the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), ostracism, and contracts."

But history gave you the perfect chance. The "Free Town Project" in Grafton, New Hampshire (USA). This wasn't the wild jungle—it was a town protected from external enemies by the US military, integrated into a massive economy, with a great climate. For 100 years before the libertarians arrived, there had been no bear attacks.

Hundreds of ideological anarcho-capitalists moved there. Taxes were cut. Police budgets were slashed. And what happened? A group of "free citizens" started dumping garbage and feeding bears. This is a classic negative externality. Their actions created a direct threat to life (a NAP violation) for their neighbors. Bears started killing pets and besieging homes.

And this is where your main myth collapses. You claim the free market will instantly solve the problem through private courts and reputational damage (boycotts).

1. More than 15 years have passed since the experiment. In that time, millions of posts have been written on r/Anarcho_Capitalism and r/Libertarian. Why have the intellectual base of libertarians, your authorities, and your channels never officially condemned those specific individuals who fed the bears and acknowledged it as a crime against the NAP?
2. Where was your vaunted institution of reputation? Why didn't you subject the NAP violators to global libertarian ostracism? Why didn't local private businesses in Grafton refuse to sell them food to force them to stop endangering the community? If the desire to sell a can of beans to a violator is more important to you than the basic safety of your neighbors, how will your system handle a mega-corporation dumping toxins into a river?
3. There was no dictatorship in Grafton; no one forbade you from opening private arbitration. But no one took responsibility. The threat was stopped only by the arrival of a state game warden who threatened fines. If, in 15 years, you couldn't apply your own laws to a dozen misfits in the greenhouse conditions of a small town, why should we believe your laws will work on the scale of a 140-million-person country?

Your Move

You cannot answer "we do this for freedom" or try to drape yourselves in the mantle of holy martyrs.

First, because this makes you altruistic idealists working for free for the benefit of society (which destroys your own praxeology and turns you into the very leftists you despise).
Second, what great lack of freedom are you talking about? You live (or ideologically orient yourself) in the USA—a country where in most states private ownership of a combat arsenal is allowed, light drugs are legalized in many places, power is decentralized, and corporations wield colossal influence. You already have a baseline that many in the world can only dream of. You are burning your life for the right not to pay taxes for roads and to ignore environmental regulations. Is this marginal increase in "freedom" worth thousands of hours of your life?

And you cannot hide behind morality, because your children pay for your morality.
Those 6,000 hours you spent arguing on the internet, reading theory, and fighting political battles—those are hours you stole from your family. You didn't spend them setting up a trust fund for your child, paying for their elite education, or passing down hard skills. You are making your children poorer right now.

And now remember the finale: in that very anarcho-capitalism you are building, your children will need capital to buy private justice, good security, and healthcare. But you didn't accumulate this capital because you were busy "fighting for the idea." With your own hands, you are preparing your children to become wage laborers (or disenfranchised outsiders) for those former state bureaucrats and crony capitalists who spent all this time hoarding money. Your "morality" is the economic betrayal of your own offspring.

And you cannot say "we will regulate everything through the NAP and private courts," because Grafton will forever remain a monument to your inability to punish violators of your own rules. If you didn't apply ostracism to the neighbor with the bears, you will never apply it to a billionaire with a private army.

So, my final question to libertarians:
After the math of opportunity cost has been exposed, after it has been proven that you are enriching your enemies and stripping your children of their competitive advantage—who among you is ready to honestly raise your hand and say: "Yes, I am an irrational altruist, ready to sacrifice my family's well-being for a utopia whose fruits will be reaped by others"?

Answer directly. No slogans.

P.S. For outside readers (observers):
Watch closely how they respond to this article. Libertarians love to accuse everyone around them of economic ignorance, appealing to cold logic, egoism, and market incentives. But trapped in this logical snare, they will be unable to use their own tools.

You will witness a miracle: pragmatic capitalists will transform before your eyes into religious fanatics. They will start talking about "faith in a righteous cause," "sacrifice," "moral duty," and abstract ideals—meaning they will start speaking exactly like those very socialists they hate so much. Watch the comments; it will be the best proof that libertarianism is not economics. It is just another religion.

https://preview.redd.it/hwzhgsxh8yah1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=f6917480466b65321ffd2e9418e30ab761ee03e8

Libertarianism prides itself on its intellectual foundation. You despise idealism, relying instead on rational choice theory, Mises’ praxeology, and economic cost-benefit analysis. You claim the free market is the perfect mechanism and that people act exclusively to maximize their own utility.

But if we apply your own laws of economics, game theory, and opportunity cost to the very fact of your participation in the libertarian movement, a fundamental paradox emerges.

This article is not a debate about whether freedom is good. It is an audit of your personal life strategy. Try to answer these questions while staying within the framework of rational economics, rather than switching to the language of religious preachers.

Part 1. The Accounting of Opportunity Cost: The Mathematics of Your Illusions

Let’s drop the abstractions and look at dry numbers.
The main platforms of your community have existed for years:

• r/Libertarian — created in January 2008.
• r/Anarcho_Capitalism — created in November 2008.
• r/AskLibertarians — created in October 2013.

Combined, that’s hundreds of thousands of members and millions of reads. Imagine an "average" ideological libertarian. If, since 2008, he spent just 1 hour a day reading Rothbard, arguing in comments, proving the inefficiency of the Fed, and fighting leftists, by today he has burned about 6,000 hours of his life.

What is 6,000 hours in the free market?
It’s not just "free time after work." It is writing the code for two IT startups from scratch. It is reaching fluency in Mandarin. It is an MBA and a fully built network of useful connections. It is seed capital that would already be generating compound interest.

You might say: "I do this not for money, but for morality and freedom!" or "I can work and browse Reddit at the same time." But praxeology is ruthless: by choosing to spend a marginal hour on political activism, you did not spend it on building your capital.

Hence the first questions:

1. If you claim to act out of moral duty, sacrificing your time with no guaranteed return so that future generations can live in a free society—how do you economically and psychologically differ from the communists who urged people to endure hardships today for a brighter tomorrow?
2. Imagine the outcome: libertarianism wins, the state disappears. But the former bureaucrats, lobbyists, and "crony capitalists" who milked the state for those 18 years and fought against you will enter the new anarcho-capitalism with millions of dollars, connections, and real estate. Meanwhile, you enter it with a deficit of 6,000 hours. In your brave new world, private capital decides everything. Where is the rational egoism if you single-handedly, and for free, built a system where your bosses and the owners of the private courts will be the very people who exploited the state while you were writing posts?
3. Look at the platform owners, podcast creators, and thought leaders in your movement. They monetize your traffic, receive donations, and sell books and lectures. From a game-theory perspective, they act entirely rationally—converting your ideological rage into their private capital. Are you, the rank-and-file activists, not the very "useful idiots" you so love to mock among the left?

Part 2. The Leftist Contrast: Why Socialists Turned Out to Be Better Investors

You despise the left and labor unions for their economic illiteracy. But let’s compare the ROI (Return on Investment) of leftist and libertarian activism from the perspective of the participant's cynical self-interest.

When a socialist, union member, or leftist activist spends their 6,000 hours, they receive dividends before the global victory of their ideology.

• Unions in France strike—and secure a reduction of working hours to 35 a week while maintaining their salary. They physically claimed back their free time.
• The left in Scandinavia achieved free childcare, healthcare, and education. They reduced their personal out-of-pocket costs for raising children.
• Members of kibbutzim or cooperatives receive a share in collective property and insurance in case of illness.

The leftist movement rewards its adherents. It converts political time into material benefits and social protection here and now.

Now look at yourselves:
4. The libertarian movement gives you no protection from being fired, no insurance, no capital, and no exclusive rights after victory. You demand colossal sacrifices from your followers, guaranteeing them in return only the right to compete under disadvantageous conditions. If leftist structures pay their participants with tangible benefits, and your structure demands unpaid labor for an abstraction, who between you actually fails to understand the economics of incentives?
5. The perfect game-theory strategy for living under anarcho-capitalism is to accumulate maximum capital under the state (including government contracts) so you can later buy the best private security and courts. Doesn't the math prove that the most profitable strategy for a pragmatic libertarian is to publicly support the state, get rich off it, and wait for the naive fanatics from Reddit to bleed while overthrowing the government at their own expense?

Part 3. The Grafton Failure: A 20-Year-Long Hypocrisy

You often say: "We don't need the state; we have reputation institutions, the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), ostracism, and contracts."

But history gave you the perfect chance. The "Free Town Project" in Grafton, New Hampshire (USA). This wasn't the wild jungle—it was a town protected from external enemies by the US military, integrated into a massive economy, with a great climate. For 100 years before the libertarians arrived, there had been no bear attacks.

Hundreds of ideological anarcho-capitalists moved there. Taxes were cut. Police budgets were slashed. And what happened? A group of "free citizens" started dumping garbage and feeding bears. This is a classic negative externality. Their actions created a direct threat to life (a NAP violation) for their neighbors. Bears started killing pets and besieging homes.

And this is where your main myth collapses. You claim the free market will instantly solve the problem through private courts and reputational damage (boycotts).

1. More than 15 years have passed since the experiment. In that time, millions of posts have been written on r/Anarcho_Capitalism and r/Libertarian. Why have the intellectual base of libertarians, your authorities, and your channels never officially condemned those specific individuals who fed the bears and acknowledged it as a crime against the NAP?
2. Where was your vaunted institution of reputation? Why didn't you subject the NAP violators to global libertarian ostracism? Why didn't local private businesses in Grafton refuse to sell them food to force them to stop endangering the community? If the desire to sell a can of beans to a violator is more important to you than the basic safety of your neighbors, how will your system handle a mega-corporation dumping toxins into a river?
3. There was no dictatorship in Grafton; no one forbade you from opening private arbitration. But no one took responsibility. The threat was stopped only by the arrival of a state game warden who threatened fines. If, in 15 years, you couldn't apply your own laws to a dozen misfits in the greenhouse conditions of a small town, why should we believe your laws will work on the scale of a 140-million-person country?

Your Move

You cannot answer "we do this for freedom" or try to drape yourselves in the mantle of holy martyrs.

First, because this makes you altruistic idealists working for free for the benefit of society (which destroys your own praxeology and turns you into the very leftists you despise).
Second, what great lack of freedom are you talking about? You live (or ideologically orient yourself) in the USA—a country where in most states private ownership of a combat arsenal is allowed, light drugs are legalized in many places, power is decentralized, and corporations wield colossal influence. You already have a baseline that many in the world can only dream of. You are burning your life for the right not to pay taxes for roads and to ignore environmental regulations. Is this marginal increase in "freedom" worth thousands of hours of your life?

And you cannot hide behind morality, because your children pay for your morality.
Those 6,000 hours you spent arguing on the internet, reading theory, and fighting political battles—those are hours you stole from your family. You didn't spend them setting up a trust fund for your child, paying for their elite education, or passing down hard skills. You are making your children poorer right now.

And now remember the finale: in that very anarcho-capitalism you are building, your children will need capital to buy private justice, good security, and healthcare. But you didn't accumulate this capital because you were busy "fighting for the idea." With your own hands, you are preparing your children to become wage laborers (or disenfranchised outsiders) for those former state bureaucrats and crony capitalists who spent all this time hoarding money. Your "morality" is the economic betrayal of your own offspring.

And you cannot say "we will regulate everything through the NAP and private courts," because Grafton will forever remain a monument to your inability to punish violators of your own rules. If you didn't apply ostracism to the neighbor with the bears, you will never apply it to a billionaire with a private army.

So, my final question to libertarians:
After the math of opportunity cost has been exposed, after it has been proven that you are enriching your enemies and stripping your children of their competitive advantage—who among you is ready to honestly raise your hand and say: "Yes, I am an irrational altruist, ready to sacrifice my family's well-being for a utopia whose fruits will be reaped by others"?

Answer directly. No slogans.

P.S. For outside readers (observers):
Watch closely how they respond to this article. Libertarians love to accuse everyone around them of economic ignorance, appealing to cold logic, egoism, and market incentives. But trapped in this logical snare, they will be unable to use their own tools.

You will witness a miracle: pragmatic capitalists will transform before your eyes into religious fanatics. They will start talking about "faith in a righteous cause," "sacrifice," "moral duty," and abstract ideals—meaning they will start speaking exactly like those very socialists they hate so much. Watch the comments; it will be the best proof that libertarianism is not economics. It is just another religion.

links:

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: Author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling on the Free State Project | Vox

One simple rule that could fit almost any democratic constitution

I do not care whether a country has a president or a prime minister.

I do not care whether its parliament is elected through proportional representation, single-member districts, two-round elections, or some complicated mixed system.

Those choices matter, of course. But I do not think they solve the main problem of modern democracy.

The main problem is much simpler:

The same political system that writes a law also gives that law the power to rule everyone.

Parliament writes the bill. Parliament votes for it. A president or monarch signs it. Then millions of people are expected to obey it.

The public may vote for different politicians four or five years later, but that is not the same as approving the law itself.

I think we need one additional rule:

>

That is the whole idea.

Parliament writes.
The people approve.
The government carries it out.
The courts protect the constitution.

Everything else can stay almost exactly as it is.

This is not direct democracy

I am not suggesting that ordinary citizens should sit at home and write tax codes, banking rules, criminal procedures, or medical regulations.

Most people do not have the time or expertise for that. And honestly, crowds can be emotional, badly informed, and easily manipulated.

That is why we need a parliament.

Members of parliament should hear experts, debate the details, calculate the cost, consider unintended consequences, and produce a complete legal text.

The public should not design the law.

The public should answer a simpler question:

>

These are two different jobs.

Writing a law requires knowledge and professional work.

Giving that law democratic legitimacy requires public consent.

Today, those two jobs are usually performed inside the same political class. That is the flaw.

Four voting days a year

The system does not need a referendum every week.

Parliament could collect all completed bills and place them on the ballot once every three months.

Each law would be voted on separately:

Law A — Yes or No
Law B — Yes or No
Law C — Yes or No

A voter could support one law and reject the others.

Parliament would still decide which bills to prepare. It would still hold hearings, negotiate, amend drafts, and vote on the final text.

But after parliament finishes its work, the law would remain only a proposal.

It would become binding only after the people approve it.

Why this matters even when voters make mistakes

This system would not guarantee good laws.

The people can be wrong. Parliament can also be wrong.

That is not the point.

The point is to stop one institution from both creating a rule and declaring its own rule legitimate.

Think of it as a system with two keys.

The first key belongs to parliament. It creates a serious, workable proposal.

The second key belongs to the public. It gives the proposal the authority to govern everyone.

Neither key works alone.

A foolish public may reject a good law. A clever campaign may convince people to approve a bad one. No constitution can remove human error.

But this system would force every law to pass through two different kinds of judgment.

Parliament would test whether the law can work.

The public would test whether the law is acceptable.

That is a healthier balance than allowing lawmakers to grade their own work.

The biggest change would happen before the referendum

The most important effect would not be the final vote.

It would be the way parliament behaves while writing the law.

Today, politicians can pass unpopular measures through party discipline, coalition deals, late-night votes, or giant legislative packages that few people fully understand.

They can hide a benefit for one company inside a bill about hospitals, roads, or national security.

Later, everyone avoids responsibility.

One politician says the coalition forced him to vote for it.

Another says she personally disagreed but followed the party.

The government says it was only following the law.

The party says the public can judge them at the next election, several years later.

Under public ratification, none of that would be enough.

Every party supporting a bill would know that it must defend the final text before the whole country.

It would have to explain:

What does this law actually do?

Who benefits?

Who pays?

How much will it cost?

What are the risks?

Why should an ordinary person vote yes?

Even a corrupt parliament would have to think more carefully. Buying a few politicians might get a proposal through parliament. It would not automatically turn that proposal into law.

The public could still be manipulated. Wealthy groups could still spend money on campaigns. But corruption would become more difficult because it would need to survive public attention.

At the very least, politicians would have to put their names on the proposal and defend it openly.

Responsibility would become clearer

Modern politics is full of people blaming someone else.

Citizens say:

>

Politicians say:

>

Parties say:

>

Officials say:

>

The result is a system where power exists, but responsibility disappears.

Public ratification would make responsibility harder to escape.

Parliament would be responsible for writing the law.

The parties would be responsible for supporting it.

The people who voted yes would be responsible for approving it.

The people who voted no could honestly say they opposed it, but they could not say that no peaceful way existed to stop it.

A person who did not vote would not automatically count as a supporter. Not voting is not the same as saying yes.

But that person could no longer honestly say:

>

The choice was offered. They chose not to use it.

That may sound harsh, but democracy requires some responsibility from citizens too.

This could work in almost any constitutional system

This idea does not require one perfect form of government.

It could work in a presidential system.

Congress would pass a bill. The president could sign it or veto it under the existing rules. Once the bill completed that process, it would go to the public for final approval.

It could work in a parliamentary system.

Parliament would still choose the government. The prime minister would still depend on parliamentary confidence. Parties and coalitions would still exist.

The referendum would only decide whether a completed bill becomes law.

It could work in a semi-presidential system like France.

The president, government, and parliament would keep their current roles. Public ratification would simply become the final stage of lawmaking.

It could work in a constitutional monarchy.

The monarch could keep the traditional formal role. Parliament would still operate normally. The people would provide the final democratic approval.

It could work in a federation.

Federal laws would be approved by the voters of the whole country. State or regional laws would be approved by the voters of that state or region.

It could work with proportional representation or single-member districts.

The electoral system answers one question:

>

Public ratification answers another:

>

The two systems do not conflict.

A country would need to amend its constitution, of course. But it would not need to destroy its entire political structure.

It would only need to add one final step.

What about emergencies?

Sometimes a government cannot wait three months.

War, natural disasters, epidemics, banking crises, and other emergencies may require immediate action.

The solution is simple.

An emergency law could take effect immediately, but only temporarily.

It would automatically expire at the next scheduled referendum unless the public approved it.

This would allow the government to act quickly without giving it permanent emergency powers.

Temporary necessity would not become a permanent excuse.

The constitution would still protect basic rights

Public approval should not mean that 51 percent of voters can remove the basic rights of everyone else.

A referendum should not be able to abolish fair elections, freedom of speech, equal protection, due process, or the right to a court.

Every proposed law should still be reviewed for constitutionality before it reaches the ballot.

The public would decide whether a constitutional law should take effect.

It would not have the power to make an unconstitutional law valid through a simple majority vote.

Democracy is not only majority rule.

It is majority rule inside a system that protects every person.

Bad laws should also be removable

Public control should not end after a law is approved.

Citizens should also be able to collect a reasonable number of signatures and place an existing law back on the ballot.

Then the public could vote to keep it or repeal it.

This matters because nobody can predict every consequence of a law before it is used.

A proposal may sound reasonable and later create serious problems.

People should not have to wait years for political parties to admit their mistake.

The law should remain reversible.

What this system would not do

It would not make people wise.

It would not eliminate propaganda.

It would not end corruption.

It would not guarantee high voter turnout.

It would not make every decision popular.

But it would remove one of the strongest complaints against modern government:

>

A person might still say that the majority made a terrible decision.

That is fair.

But it is different from saying that a distant political class imposed the decision without public approval.

Disagreement would remain.

Alienation could be reduced.

Democracy should not end after an election

Elections are important, but they answer only one question:

>

They do not necessarily answer:

>

We currently ask citizens to choose a party or politician and then accept thousands of separate decisions as part of that one choice.

That gives political institutions too much room to claim consent they never actually received.

Voting for a party does not mean agreeing with every law that party may pass years later.

A better democracy would separate representation from consent.

Representatives would do the complicated work.

The public would give the final approval.

Not because the public is always right.

Not because politicians are always corrupt.

But because no institution should be allowed to write a binding rule and then certify its own authority to impose it.

The principle is simple:

>

Perhaps we do not need to invent a perfect new ideology.

Perhaps we only need to add a second key.

One simple rule that could fit almost any democratic constitution

I do not care whether a country has a president or a prime minister.

I do not care whether its parliament is elected through proportional representation, single-member districts, two-round elections, or some complicated mixed system.

Those choices matter, of course. But I do not think they solve the main problem of modern democracy.

The main problem is much simpler:

The same political system that writes a law also gives that law the power to rule everyone.

Parliament writes the bill. Parliament votes for it. A president or monarch signs it. Then millions of people are expected to obey it.

The public may vote for different politicians four or five years later, but that is not the same as approving the law itself.

I think we need one additional rule:

>

That is the whole idea.

Parliament writes.
The people approve.
The government carries it out.
The courts protect the constitution.

Everything else can stay almost exactly as it is.

This is not direct democracy

I am not suggesting that ordinary citizens should sit at home and write tax codes, banking rules, criminal procedures, or medical regulations.

Most people do not have the time or expertise for that. And honestly, crowds can be emotional, badly informed, and easily manipulated.

That is why we need a parliament.

Members of parliament should hear experts, debate the details, calculate the cost, consider unintended consequences, and produce a complete legal text.

The public should not design the law.

The public should answer a simpler question:

>

These are two different jobs.

Writing a law requires knowledge and professional work.

Giving that law democratic legitimacy requires public consent.

Today, those two jobs are usually performed inside the same political class. That is the flaw.

Four voting days a year

The system does not need a referendum every week.

Parliament could collect all completed bills and place them on the ballot once every three months.

Each law would be voted on separately:

Law A — Yes or No
Law B — Yes or No
Law C — Yes or No

A voter could support one law and reject the others.

Parliament would still decide which bills to prepare. It would still hold hearings, negotiate, amend drafts, and vote on the final text.

But after parliament finishes its work, the law would remain only a proposal.

It would become binding only after the people approve it.

Why this matters even when voters make mistakes

This system would not guarantee good laws.

The people can be wrong. Parliament can also be wrong.

That is not the point.

The point is to stop one institution from both creating a rule and declaring its own rule legitimate.

Think of it as a system with two keys.

The first key belongs to parliament. It creates a serious, workable proposal.

The second key belongs to the public. It gives the proposal the authority to govern everyone.

Neither key works alone.

A foolish public may reject a good law. A clever campaign may convince people to approve a bad one. No constitution can remove human error.

But this system would force every law to pass through two different kinds of judgment.

Parliament would test whether the law can work.

The public would test whether the law is acceptable.

That is a healthier balance than allowing lawmakers to grade their own work.

The biggest change would happen before the referendum

The most important effect would not be the final vote.

It would be the way parliament behaves while writing the law.

Today, politicians can pass unpopular measures through party discipline, coalition deals, late-night votes, or giant legislative packages that few people fully understand.

They can hide a benefit for one company inside a bill about hospitals, roads, or national security.

Later, everyone avoids responsibility.

One politician says the coalition forced him to vote for it.

Another says she personally disagreed but followed the party.

The government says it was only following the law.

The party says the public can judge them at the next election, several years later.

Under public ratification, none of that would be enough.

Every party supporting a bill would know that it must defend the final text before the whole country.

It would have to explain:

What does this law actually do?

Who benefits?

Who pays?

How much will it cost?

What are the risks?

Why should an ordinary person vote yes?

Even a corrupt parliament would have to think more carefully. Buying a few politicians might get a proposal through parliament. It would not automatically turn that proposal into law.

The public could still be manipulated. Wealthy groups could still spend money on campaigns. But corruption would become more difficult because it would need to survive public attention.

At the very least, politicians would have to put their names on the proposal and defend it openly.

Responsibility would become clearer

Modern politics is full of people blaming someone else.

Citizens say:

>

Politicians say:

>

Parties say:

>

Officials say:

>

The result is a system where power exists, but responsibility disappears.

Public ratification would make responsibility harder to escape.

Parliament would be responsible for writing the law.

The parties would be responsible for supporting it.

The people who voted yes would be responsible for approving it.

The people who voted no could honestly say they opposed it, but they could not say that no peaceful way existed to stop it.

A person who did not vote would not automatically count as a supporter. Not voting is not the same as saying yes.

But that person could no longer honestly say:

>

The choice was offered. They chose not to use it.

That may sound harsh, but democracy requires some responsibility from citizens too.

This could work in almost any constitutional system

This idea does not require one perfect form of government.

It could work in a presidential system.

Congress would pass a bill. The president could sign it or veto it under the existing rules. Once the bill completed that process, it would go to the public for final approval.

It could work in a parliamentary system.

Parliament would still choose the government. The prime minister would still depend on parliamentary confidence. Parties and coalitions would still exist.

The referendum would only decide whether a completed bill becomes law.

It could work in a semi-presidential system like France.

The president, government, and parliament would keep their current roles. Public ratification would simply become the final stage of lawmaking.

It could work in a constitutional monarchy.

The monarch could keep the traditional formal role. Parliament would still operate normally. The people would provide the final democratic approval.

It could work in a federation.

Federal laws would be approved by the voters of the whole country. State or regional laws would be approved by the voters of that state or region.

It could work with proportional representation or single-member districts.

The electoral system answers one question:

>

Public ratification answers another:

>

The two systems do not conflict.

A country would need to amend its constitution, of course. But it would not need to destroy its entire political structure.

It would only need to add one final step.

What about emergencies?

Sometimes a government cannot wait three months.

War, natural disasters, epidemics, banking crises, and other emergencies may require immediate action.

The solution is simple.

An emergency law could take effect immediately, but only temporarily.

It would automatically expire at the next scheduled referendum unless the public approved it.

This would allow the government to act quickly without giving it permanent emergency powers.

Temporary necessity would not become a permanent excuse.

The constitution would still protect basic rights

Public approval should not mean that 51 percent of voters can remove the basic rights of everyone else.

A referendum should not be able to abolish fair elections, freedom of speech, equal protection, due process, or the right to a court.

Every proposed law should still be reviewed for constitutionality before it reaches the ballot.

The public would decide whether a constitutional law should take effect.

It would not have the power to make an unconstitutional law valid through a simple majority vote.

Democracy is not only majority rule.

It is majority rule inside a system that protects every person.

Bad laws should also be removable

Public control should not end after a law is approved.

Citizens should also be able to collect a reasonable number of signatures and place an existing law back on the ballot.

Then the public could vote to keep it or repeal it.

This matters because nobody can predict every consequence of a law before it is used.

A proposal may sound reasonable and later create serious problems.

People should not have to wait years for political parties to admit their mistake.

The law should remain reversible.

What this system would not do

It would not make people wise.

It would not eliminate propaganda.

It would not end corruption.

It would not guarantee high voter turnout.

It would not make every decision popular.

But it would remove one of the strongest complaints against modern government:

>

A person might still say that the majority made a terrible decision.

That is fair.

But it is different from saying that a distant political class imposed the decision without public approval.

Disagreement would remain.

Alienation could be reduced.

Democracy should not end after an election

Elections are important, but they answer only one question:

>

They do not necessarily answer:

>

We currently ask citizens to choose a party or politician and then accept thousands of separate decisions as part of that one choice.

That gives political institutions too much room to claim consent they never actually received.

Voting for a party does not mean agreeing with every law that party may pass years later.

A better democracy would separate representation from consent.

Representatives would do the complicated work.

The public would give the final approval.

Not because the public is always right.

Not because politicians are always corrupt.

But because no institution should be allowed to write a binding rule and then certify its own authority to impose it.

The principle is simple:

>

Perhaps we do not need to invent a perfect new ideology.

Perhaps we only need to add a second key.

Imagine three equally capable people in 2008.

The first spends one free hour every day promoting libertarianism: reading theory, writing posts, arguing online, persuading people, and fighting against the state.

The second simply focuses on his career and business.

The third cooperates with the state: he joins the political or bureaucratic establishment, receives government contracts, licenses, connections, privileged information, cheap capital, and access to protected markets. He may even actively oppose libertarian reforms because they threaten his position.

Over eighteen years, the first person invests roughly 6,000 hours in an idea.

The second and third invest those same hours in money, property, and influence.

Now consider the two possible outcomes.

The state survives

The libertarian activist loses.

He spent thousands of hours fighting for a reform that never happened.

The ordinary entrepreneur accumulated capital.

The political insider accumulated capital, connections, assets, and political influence. He earned the highest return precisely because he cooperated with the system and helped prevent it from changing.

Libertarianism wins

It may seem that the activist has finally won.

But the new system does not reset the game.

The money, real estate, companies, connections, information, and managerial experience accumulated under the state do not disappear.

The political establishment enters the new market economy not as a defeated class, but as a wealthy one.

Its members can buy privatized infrastructure, land, companies, housing, media outlets, arbitration services, and private security.

Their networks will not disappear either. Former officials, bankers, government contractors, and owners of state-protected monopolies already know one another and already know how to coordinate.

And what does the person who spent eighteen years fighting for libertarianism receive?

He is not entitled to any share of the new society.

Nobody compensates him for his 6,000 hours.

Nobody gives him an advantage over the people who fought against his ideas.

He is simply told:

>

And he must compete against people who accumulated capital while he was building a free market for them at no cost.

He may even end up working for a former government contractor who spent decades opposing libertarianism, but then used money earned through the state to buy assets in the new libertarian society.

The payoff matrix therefore looks like this:

Strategy	The state survives	Libertarianism wins
Promote libertarianism	Wasted time	Freedom without capital
Accumulate capital	Greater wealth	Greater opportunity
Cooperate with the state and resist reform	Maximum rent and influence	Capital and networks carry over into the new system

Even fighting against libertarianism may be more profitable than fighting for it.

If the state survives, the political establishment keeps its rents.

If libertarians win, the political establishment enters their society with money, property, connections, and organizational superiority.

It can lose politically and still win economically.

The libertarian activist can win politically and still lose economically.

This is not merely a free-rider problem. The system rewards the counter-player: the person who exploited the state, resisted reform, and then captured a large part of the benefits created by someone else’s victory.

The incentive structure of socialist activism is different.

A union, party, or cooperative can reward its participants before any final political victory: with higher wages, legal protection, financial assistance, bargaining power, jobs, positions, or a stake in a collective institution.

The stronger the socialist movement becomes, the more resources it can potentially distribute among the people who helped build it.

A libertarian movement, by contrast, effectively dissolves its own coalition after victory:

>

Socialism at least attempts to reward cooperation.

Libertarianism rewards the accumulation of private capital—even when that capital was accumulated through state privilege and through active resistance to libertarianism itself.

The rational strategy is therefore:

>

So who has a commercial incentive to promote libertarianism at all?

Why should a rational person spend eighteen years building a system in which the main prize goes to the people who exploited the state, fought against reform, and accumulated capital while he was arguing on Reddit?

Libertarians build the free market. Their opponents accumulate the money required to buy it after the libertarians win.

In the end, those who fought against freedom inherit it as owners.

Those who fought for freedom inherit it as employees.

Libertarianism Is Economically Irrational Even for the People Fighting for It

Imagine three equally capable people in 2008.

The first spends one free hour every day promoting libertarianism: reading theory, writing posts, arguing online, persuading people, and fighting against the state.

The second simply focuses on his career and business.

The third cooperates with the state: he joins the political or bureaucratic establishment, receives government contracts, licenses, connections, privileged information, cheap capital, and access to protected markets. He may even actively oppose libertarian reforms because they threaten his position.

Over eighteen years, the first person invests roughly 6,000 hours in an idea.

The second and third invest those same hours in money, property, and influence.

Now consider the two possible outcomes.

The state survives

The libertarian activist loses.

He spent thousands of hours fighting for a reform that never happened.

The ordinary entrepreneur accumulated capital.

The political insider accumulated capital, connections, assets, and political influence. He earned the highest return precisely because he cooperated with the system and helped prevent it from changing.

Libertarianism wins

It may seem that the activist has finally won.

But the new system does not reset the game.

The money, real estate, companies, connections, information, and managerial experience accumulated under the state do not disappear.

The political establishment enters the new market economy not as a defeated class, but as a wealthy one.

Its members can buy privatized infrastructure, land, companies, housing, media outlets, arbitration services, and private security.

Their networks will not disappear either. Former officials, bankers, government contractors, and owners of state-protected monopolies already know one another and already know how to coordinate.

And what does the person who spent eighteen years fighting for libertarianism receive?

He is not entitled to any share of the new society.

Nobody compensates him for his 6,000 hours.

Nobody gives him an advantage over the people who fought against his ideas.

He is simply told:

>

And he must compete against people who accumulated capital while he was building a free market for them at no cost.

He may even end up working for a former government contractor who spent decades opposing libertarianism, but then used money earned through the state to buy assets in the new libertarian society.

The payoff matrix therefore looks like this:

Strategy	The state survives	Libertarianism wins
Promote libertarianism	Wasted time	Freedom without capital
Accumulate capital	Greater wealth	Greater opportunity
Cooperate with the state and resist reform	Maximum rent and influence	Capital and networks carry over into the new system

Even fighting against libertarianism may be more profitable than fighting for it.

If the state survives, the political establishment keeps its rents.

If libertarians win, the political establishment enters their society with money, property, connections, and organizational superiority.

It can lose politically and still win economically.

The libertarian activist can win politically and still lose economically.

This is not merely a free-rider problem. The system rewards the counter-player: the person who exploited the state, resisted reform, and then captured a large part of the benefits created by someone else’s victory.

The incentive structure of socialist activism is different.

A union, party, or cooperative can reward its participants before any final political victory: with higher wages, legal protection, financial assistance, bargaining power, jobs, positions, or a stake in a collective institution.

The stronger the socialist movement becomes, the more resources it can potentially distribute among the people who helped build it.

A libertarian movement, by contrast, effectively dissolves its own coalition after victory:

>

Socialism at least attempts to reward cooperation.

Libertarianism rewards the accumulation of private capital—even when that capital was accumulated through state privilege and through active resistance to libertarianism itself.

The rational strategy is therefore:

>

So who has a commercial incentive to promote libertarianism at all?

Why should a rational person spend eighteen years building a system in which the main prize goes to the people who exploited the state, fought against reform, and accumulated capital while he was arguing on Reddit?

Libertarians build the free market. Their opponents accumulate the money required to buy it after the libertarians win.

In the end, those who fought against freedom inherit it as owners.

Those who fought for freedom inherit it as employees.

The more I look at modern governments, the less I believe the main problem is simply bad politicians.

Politicians change. Parties change. Sometimes even the form of government changes. But the machine itself stays the same: it keeps expanding its powers, creating new restrictions, new taxes, new licenses, and new ways to interfere in people’s lives.

Almost all of it is justified with good intentions.

We are told that these measures are necessary to protect us from danger, crisis, poverty, crime, monopolies, misinformation, or dishonest businesses. But too often, the final result is not protection for ordinary people. It is protection for established corporations, bureaucracies, and political groups.

A large company can afford hundreds of lawyers, political connections, licenses, and years of regulatory procedures. A small entrepreneur cannot. Rules that are supposedly meant to protect society often become walls that protect existing players from new competitors.

That is why I have come to believe that a good constitution should not try to explain in detail how the state should manage the economy and society.

Its main purpose should be to make intervention difficult.

My ideal system would look something like this.

Parliament would be elected through closed-list proportional representation. The country would be divided into small multi-member districts, with five seats in each district.

Five seats is small enough that parties do not disappear into enormous national lists, but large enough for several different political forces to win representation.

I prefer closed lists not because I completely trust party leadership.

The reason is simpler: a political party usually exists longer than an individual politician.

An individual member of parliament or president may have an incentive to take the benefits now, because in a few years they may be gone anyway. A party has to think about future elections. It has to live with the reputation of the people it puts into power.

But the most important part is this:

Parliament should not have the power to pass laws by itself.

It should only have the power to prepare a complete, final legal text and put it to a referendum.

Not a slogan.

Not a question like, “Do you support protecting children?” or “Do you support fighting crime?”

The public should vote on the full legal text, including every power, restriction, tax, expense, and punishment contained in it.

Parliament writes the law.

The people decide whether it is allowed to take effect.

Once approved by referendum, a law should not automatically expire. Society needs a certain degree of stability, and the entire legal system should not become an endless cycle of repeated votes.

But citizens should always retain the power to repeal an existing law.

If a required number of signatures is collected, a repeal referendum could be held once a year on that specific law. The public would vote on whether to keep it or abolish it.

At the same time, citizens should not be able to write new laws directly.

I think this distinction is extremely important.

Mass voting is good for answering yes or no. It is much worse at drafting complex legal systems. Otherwise, laws can be created through fear, anger, slogans, or hatred, while voters may not fully understand the consequences of the text they are supporting.

So the public should have the power to approve and repeal laws, but not to draft them.

Any substantial change to an existing law should require another referendum.

The government should not be allowed to pass a relatively harmless law and then slowly transform it through amendments into something completely different.

The executive branch should also be prohibited from rewriting laws through administrative regulations.

A ministry may organize implementation, but it should not be able to create new restrictions, fees, licenses, or punishments on its own.

Otherwise, the public will approve ten understandable pages, while the real state hides inside thousands of pages of agency rules.

The constitution should also contain a strict limit on federal taxation.

All federal taxes, mandatory contributions, fees, duties, and other compulsory payments combined should never exceed 15 percent of a person’s or a company’s income.

Ideally, the limit could be even lower.

The important thing is that the limit must cover the total burden.

Otherwise, the government will simply rename a tax as mandatory insurance, a licensing fee, a special contribution, or an administrative charge.

The state should not be able to escape constitutional limits by changing the name of the payment.

The constitution should also contain a strong protection for free entry into the market.

Any peaceful economic activity should be legal by default.

The state should be allowed to restrict it only when it can demonstrate a specific and serious danger to other people.

For example, the government should protect people from poisoned food, unsafe medicine, fraud, pollution, violence, or structurally dangerous buildings.

But it should not decide whether the market needs another shop, bank, doctor, transport company, manufacturer, or technology firm.

The state should test the safety of a product.

It should not decide whether a new competitor deserves to exist.

The number of licenses should never be artificially limited.

A new business should never have to prove that society “needs” it.

The government should not create individual tax breaks, subsidies, or exemptions.

It should not write rules that only a few existing corporations can realistically afford to follow.

When a restriction is genuinely necessary for safety, it should be equal for everyone, measurable, and no broader than required.

The constitution should also strongly protect private property, freedom of speech, equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, and the right to engage in peaceful activity without first asking the government for permission.

Not because markets are always right.

Markets can also create monopolies, deception, exploitation, and dangerous products.

But the role of the state should not be to manage the market or choose winners.

Its role should be to protect people from provable harm and preserve the ability of new participants to enter and compete.

I do not believe it is possible to write a perfect constitution that no one will ever distort.

Any text can be twisted.

Any institution can try to expand its own authority.

Any political party can claim that the current emergency is so important that old limits no longer apply.

That is why I am not looking for a system that depends on honest politicians.

I am looking for a system in which even a dishonest politician finds it difficult to cause large-scale harm quickly.

My ideal formula is simple:

Parliament debates and writes.

The people approve or reject.

Citizens can demand repeal.

The government executes the law but does not create law.

The state protects people from harm but does not close the market.

Taxes are limited by the constitution.

Property and free speech are protected not by political promises, but by the structure of the system itself.

Such a country would pass laws more slowly.

But maybe that is an advantage.

Today, governments are often judged by how many programs, restrictions, and reforms they produce.

I would judge them differently:

How well do they protect people?

And how rarely do they interfere in peaceful life?

I do not want a weak state.

I want a state that is extremely strong where it must stop violence, fraud, and real harm—and almost powerless where a person is simply trying to work, speak, create, and compete.

The more I look at modern governments, the less I believe the main problem is simply bad politicians.

Politicians change. Parties change. Sometimes even the form of government changes. But the machine itself stays the same: it keeps expanding its powers, creating new restrictions, new taxes, new licenses, and new ways to interfere in people’s lives.

Almost all of it is justified with good intentions.

We are told that these measures are necessary to protect us from danger, crisis, poverty, crime, monopolies, misinformation, or dishonest businesses. But too often, the final result is not protection for ordinary people. It is protection for established corporations, bureaucracies, and political groups.

A large company can afford hundreds of lawyers, political connections, licenses, and years of regulatory procedures. A small entrepreneur cannot. Rules that are supposedly meant to protect society often become walls that protect existing players from new competitors.

That is why I have come to believe that a good constitution should not try to explain in detail how the state should manage the economy and society.

Its main purpose should be to make intervention difficult.

My ideal system would look something like this.

Parliament would be elected through closed-list proportional representation. The country would be divided into small multi-member districts, with five seats in each district.

Five seats is small enough that parties do not disappear into enormous national lists, but large enough for several different political forces to win representation.

I prefer closed lists not because I completely trust party leadership.

The reason is simpler: a political party usually exists longer than an individual politician.

An individual member of parliament or president may have an incentive to take the benefits now, because in a few years they may be gone anyway. A party has to think about future elections. It has to live with the reputation of the people it puts into power.

But the most important part is this:

Parliament should not have the power to pass laws by itself.

It should only have the power to prepare a complete, final legal text and put it to a referendum.

Not a slogan.

Not a question like, “Do you support protecting children?” or “Do you support fighting crime?”

The public should vote on the full legal text, including every power, restriction, tax, expense, and punishment contained in it.

Parliament writes the law.

The people decide whether it is allowed to take effect.

Once approved by referendum, a law should not automatically expire. Society needs a certain degree of stability, and the entire legal system should not become an endless cycle of repeated votes.

But citizens should always retain the power to repeal an existing law.

If a required number of signatures is collected, a repeal referendum could be held once a year on that specific law. The public would vote on whether to keep it or abolish it.

At the same time, citizens should not be able to write new laws directly.

I think this distinction is extremely important.

Mass voting is good for answering yes or no. It is much worse at drafting complex legal systems. Otherwise, laws can be created through fear, anger, slogans, or hatred, while voters may not fully understand the consequences of the text they are supporting.

So the public should have the power to approve and repeal laws, but not to draft them.

Any substantial change to an existing law should require another referendum.

The government should not be allowed to pass a relatively harmless law and then slowly transform it through amendments into something completely different.

The executive branch should also be prohibited from rewriting laws through administrative regulations.

A ministry may organize implementation, but it should not be able to create new restrictions, fees, licenses, or punishments on its own.

Otherwise, the public will approve ten understandable pages, while the real state hides inside thousands of pages of agency rules.

The constitution should also contain a strict limit on federal taxation.

All federal taxes, mandatory contributions, fees, duties, and other compulsory payments combined should never exceed 15 percent of a person’s or a company’s income.

Ideally, the limit could be even lower.

The important thing is that the limit must cover the total burden.

Otherwise, the government will simply rename a tax as mandatory insurance, a licensing fee, a special contribution, or an administrative charge.

The state should not be able to escape constitutional limits by changing the name of the payment.

The constitution should also contain a strong protection for free entry into the market.

Any peaceful economic activity should be legal by default.

The state should be allowed to restrict it only when it can demonstrate a specific and serious danger to other people.

For example, the government should protect people from poisoned food, unsafe medicine, fraud, pollution, violence, or structurally dangerous buildings.

But it should not decide whether the market needs another shop, bank, doctor, transport company, manufacturer, or technology firm.

The state should test the safety of a product.

It should not decide whether a new competitor deserves to exist.

The number of licenses should never be artificially limited.

A new business should never have to prove that society “needs” it.

The government should not create individual tax breaks, subsidies, or exemptions.

It should not write rules that only a few existing corporations can realistically afford to follow.

When a restriction is genuinely necessary for safety, it should be equal for everyone, measurable, and no broader than required.

The constitution should also strongly protect private property, freedom of speech, equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, and the right to engage in peaceful activity without first asking the government for permission.

Not because markets are always right.

Markets can also create monopolies, deception, exploitation, and dangerous products.

But the role of the state should not be to manage the market or choose winners.

Its role should be to protect people from provable harm and preserve the ability of new participants to enter and compete.

I do not believe it is possible to write a perfect constitution that no one will ever distort.

Any text can be twisted.

Any institution can try to expand its own authority.

Any political party can claim that the current emergency is so important that old limits no longer apply.

That is why I am not looking for a system that depends on honest politicians.

I am looking for a system in which even a dishonest politician finds it difficult to cause large-scale harm quickly.

My ideal formula is simple:

Parliament debates and writes.

The people approve or reject.

Citizens can demand repeal.

The government executes the law but does not create law.

The state protects people from harm but does not close the market.

Taxes are limited by the constitution.

Property and free speech are protected not by political promises, but by the structure of the system itself.

Such a country would pass laws more slowly.

But maybe that is an advantage.

Today, governments are often judged by how many programs, restrictions, and reforms they produce.

I would judge them differently:

How well do they protect people?

And how rarely do they interfere in peaceful life?

I do not want a weak state.

I want a state that is extremely strong where it must stop violence, fraud, and real harm—and almost powerless where a person is simply trying to work, speak, create, and compete.

https://preview.redd.it/azgwpk1kz6ah1.png?width=1672&format=png&auto=webp&s=567561d341243c0453c3b7b6b7568a8025d97d81

The more I look at modern governments, the less I believe the main problem is simply bad politicians.

Politicians change. Parties change. Sometimes even the form of government changes. But the machine itself stays the same: it keeps expanding its powers, creating new restrictions, new taxes, new licenses, and new ways to interfere in people’s lives.

Almost all of it is justified with good intentions.

We are told that these measures are necessary to protect us from danger, crisis, poverty, crime, monopolies, misinformation, or dishonest businesses. But too often, the final result is not protection for ordinary people. It is protection for established corporations, bureaucracies, and political groups.

A large company can afford hundreds of lawyers, political connections, licenses, and years of regulatory procedures. A small entrepreneur cannot. Rules that are supposedly meant to protect society often become walls that protect existing players from new competitors.

That is why I have come to believe that a good constitution should not try to explain in detail how the state should manage the economy and society.

Its main purpose should be to make intervention difficult.

My ideal system would look something like this.

Parliament would be elected through closed-list proportional representation. The country would be divided into small multi-member districts, with five seats in each district.

Five seats is small enough that parties do not disappear into enormous national lists, but large enough for several different political forces to win representation.

I prefer closed lists not because I completely trust party leadership.

The reason is simpler: a political party usually exists longer than an individual politician.

An individual member of parliament or president may have an incentive to take the benefits now, because in a few years they may be gone anyway. A party has to think about future elections. It has to live with the reputation of the people it puts into power.

But the most important part is this:

Parliament should not have the power to pass laws by itself.

It should only have the power to prepare a complete, final legal text and put it to a referendum.

Not a slogan.

Not a question like, “Do you support protecting children?” or “Do you support fighting crime?”

The public should vote on the full legal text, including every power, restriction, tax, expense, and punishment contained in it.

Parliament writes the law.

The people decide whether it is allowed to take effect.

Once approved by referendum, a law should not automatically expire. Society needs a certain degree of stability, and the entire legal system should not become an endless cycle of repeated votes.

But citizens should always retain the power to repeal an existing law.

If a required number of signatures is collected, a repeal referendum could be held once a year on that specific law. The public would vote on whether to keep it or abolish it.

At the same time, citizens should not be able to write new laws directly.

I think this distinction is extremely important.

Mass voting is good for answering yes or no. It is much worse at drafting complex legal systems. Otherwise, laws can be created through fear, anger, slogans, or hatred, while voters may not fully understand the consequences of the text they are supporting.

So the public should have the power to approve and repeal laws, but not to draft them.

Any substantial change to an existing law should require another referendum.

The government should not be allowed to pass a relatively harmless law and then slowly transform it through amendments into something completely different.

The executive branch should also be prohibited from rewriting laws through administrative regulations.

A ministry may organize implementation, but it should not be able to create new restrictions, fees, licenses, or punishments on its own.

Otherwise, the public will approve ten understandable pages, while the real state hides inside thousands of pages of agency rules.

The constitution should also contain a strict limit on federal taxation.

All federal taxes, mandatory contributions, fees, duties, and other compulsory payments combined should never exceed 15 percent of a person’s or a company’s income.

Ideally, the limit could be even lower.

The important thing is that the limit must cover the total burden.

Otherwise, the government will simply rename a tax as mandatory insurance, a licensing fee, a special contribution, or an administrative charge.

The state should not be able to escape constitutional limits by changing the name of the payment.

The constitution should also contain a strong protection for free entry into the market.

Any peaceful economic activity should be legal by default.

The state should be allowed to restrict it only when it can demonstrate a specific and serious danger to other people.

For example, the government should protect people from poisoned food, unsafe medicine, fraud, pollution, violence, or structurally dangerous buildings.

But it should not decide whether the market needs another shop, bank, doctor, transport company, manufacturer, or technology firm.

The state should test the safety of a product.

It should not decide whether a new competitor deserves to exist.

The number of licenses should never be artificially limited.

A new business should never have to prove that society “needs” it.

The government should not create individual tax breaks, subsidies, or exemptions.

It should not write rules that only a few existing corporations can realistically afford to follow.

When a restriction is genuinely necessary for safety, it should be equal for everyone, measurable, and no broader than required.

The constitution should also strongly protect private property, freedom of speech, equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, and the right to engage in peaceful activity without first asking the government for permission.

Not because markets are always right.

Markets can also create monopolies, deception, exploitation, and dangerous products.

But the role of the state should not be to manage the market or choose winners.

Its role should be to protect people from provable harm and preserve the ability of new participants to enter and compete.

I do not believe it is possible to write a perfect constitution that no one will ever distort.

Any text can be twisted.

Any institution can try to expand its own authority.

Any political party can claim that the current emergency is so important that old limits no longer apply.

That is why I am not looking for a system that depends on honest politicians.

I am looking for a system in which even a dishonest politician finds it difficult to cause large-scale harm quickly.

My ideal formula is simple:

Parliament debates and writes.

The people approve or reject.

Citizens can demand repeal.

The government executes the law but does not create law.

The state protects people from harm but does not close the market.

Taxes are limited by the constitution.

Property and free speech are protected not by political promises, but by the structure of the system itself.

Such a country would pass laws more slowly.

But maybe that is an advantage.

Today, governments are often judged by how many programs, restrictions, and reforms they produce.

I would judge them differently:

How well do they protect people?

And how rarely do they interfere in peaceful life?

I do not want a weak state.

I want a state that is extremely strong where it must stop violence, fraud, and real harm—and almost powerless where a person is simply trying to work, speak, create, and compete.

https://preview.redd.it/mes9tlqsn38h1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=009997cb6a8c43708f16b8bf9213002aafdf6e8c

I know this sounds alarmist. But I don’t think the biggest danger right now is “panic”. I think the biggest danger is that people are still looking at this outbreak as if it is a normal Ebola outbreak that can be contained by the usual playbook.

My view is different.

I think the official numbers are already starting to describe the capacity of the monitoring system, not the real size of the epidemic.

Right now the outbreak is officially near 900 confirmed cases and over 200 deaths. Africa CDC/AP reported around 894 confirmed cases and 204 deaths, with almost 40% growth in one week. That weekly growth is important: +40% per week is roughly equivalent to doubling every 14–15 days.

But that is only the official confirmed curve.

The real curve could be worse.

Why?

Because Africa CDC estimated around 35,000 potential contacts, and only around 4,000 have been traced. That leaves more than 30,000 people in the grey zone. Even if only 1% of those contacts become cases, that is 350 new cases. If 2%, that is 700. If 5%, that is 1,750. And these are not just “numbers”. Every one of those people requires observation, transport, isolation, testing, food support, family tracing, and safe burial planning if they die.

This is where the response starts to break mathematically.

Contact monitoring for Ebola is not just putting names in a spreadsheet. It means following people for 21 days. So 35,000 contacts means 735,000 person-days of monitoring.

Africa CDC reportedly has only 84 people on the ground out of 540 needed. Even if all 84 people did nothing except contact monitoring, that would be more than 400 contacts per person per day. That is impossible in remote, insecure areas with displacement camps, poor roads, mistrust, miners moving between sites, and people hiding sick relatives.

The CDC has 23 field staff in DRC and over 125 across DRC and Uganda. That is useful for coordination, surveillance, analysis, diagnostics, and technical support. But it is not a field army. It cannot physically trace 35,000 contacts, staff isolation centers, transport patients, disinfect houses, and safely bury the dead across dozens of health zones.

This is why I think the outbreak has crossed an operational Rubicon.

Not a biological Rubicon. Not necessarily a mutation. But an operational one.

The response capacity is below the epidemic’s production capacity.

There are already reports of shortages of personnel, ambulances, transport, protective equipment, isolation materials, safe burial teams, and disinfection teams. There have also been reports that some suspected-case alerts were not even processed. Once that happens, official numbers stop being a clean epidemic curve. They become a bottleneck curve: how many cases the system can confirm.

So if the official curve slows, I will not automatically interpret that as good news. It may simply mean the thermometer broke.

The most dangerous part is the burial/home-care cycle.

In real conditions, if a family hides a sick person and then hides the body after death, nobody is following a safe burial protocol. In rural conditions, moving a body usually requires at least two people, often more. Then there are relatives, people preparing the body, people touching clothes or bedding, and people cleaning the house.

Historical Ebola data suggest that unsafe burials can generate multiple secondary infections. A conservative working assumption of 2 secondary cases per unsafe burial is not extreme. Some burial clusters can infect far more.

So imagine only 100 deaths outside proper isolation and safe burial. At 2 infections per unsafe death, that is 200 new infections. At 5 infections per unsafe death, that is 500. At 10, that is 1,000. And those infections become the next generation of home care, deaths, funerals, and hidden chains.

This is why displacement camps are the nightmare scenario.

A camp is not just “many people in one place”. It is density plus weak sanitation plus shared toilets plus queues for water and food plus fear plus poor access to care plus distrust of authorities. Ebola does not need to become airborne to spread there. It only needs vomiting, diarrhea, contaminated bedding, unsafe cleaning, unsafe burial, and people afraid to report symptoms.

If the virus gets sustained transmission in camps, hospitals, or schools, the official case count will probably lag behind reality by weeks.

Now the projection.

Let’s assume the real number is already above the official count. That is not a wild assumption. Official cases are near 900. With only 20% undercounting, the real number is already above 1,100. With a larger blind spot, it could already be 1,500–2,000.

From there:

If the outbreak doubles every 14 days:

• 1,000 becomes 10,000 in about 7 weeks.
• 1,500 becomes 10,000 in about 6 weeks.
• 2,000 becomes 10,000 in about 5 weeks.

That gives a 10,000-case scenario by late July or early August if the hidden base is already large.

If the outbreak doubles every 21 days:

• 1,000 becomes 10,000 in about 10 weeks.
• 1,500 becomes 10,000 in about 8 weeks.
• 2,000 becomes 10,000 in about 7 weeks.

That gives a 10,000-case scenario by August or early September.

If the response improves and doubling slows to every 28 days:

• 10,000 may be delayed toward September.

So when I say “10,000 by August/September”, I do not mean that as a fantasy doom number. It follows from the current growth rate and the known response gaps.

Now look at the end of the year.

If there are 10,000 cases by late August or September, then reaching 50,000–100,000 by December does not require some insane new mutation. It only requires continued growth with partial slowing.

From 10,000 to 100,000 is a 10x increase. Over roughly 3–4 months, that is possible with doubling times around 25–35 days. That is slower than the current official growth rate. In other words, 100,000 by year-end is not a “worst possible exponential curve”. It is a bad but plausible scenario if the outbreak is not brought below R=1.

And right now, I do not see the force that brings it below R=1.

There is no approved Bundibugyo vaccine available for immediate mass deployment. Vaccine candidates may enter early trials, but that does not stop the July/August wave. Funding pledges are large, but less than 10% of pledged money has reportedly been received. International support is real, but not at the scale of a 5,000–6,000-person sanitary-logistics operation.

And that is what this would actually require.

Not just doctors. Drivers, lab technicians, logisticians, burial teams, disinfectors, translators, security, food supply, fuel, water, mobile isolation centers, local mediators, communication teams, and a unified command center. This is closer to a humanitarian military-scale operation than a normal medical mission.

The uncomfortable conclusion:

This outbreak may not be stopped by knowledge. We already know the Ebola playbook. It may not be stopped because the system does not have enough physical capacity to execute the playbook at the necessary scale.

The key indicators to watch are no longer just official case counts.

Watch:

• number of untraced contacts;
• isolation bed occupancy;
• safe burial capacity;
• suspected-case alerts not processed;
• deaths outside treatment centers;
• new health zones affected;
• cases in displacement camps;
• cases linked to schools;
• infections among health workers;
• new cases in Uganda or other neighboring countries after a pause.

If official numbers rise fast, that is bad.

If official numbers slow but those indicators worsen, that may be even worse — because it means the outbreak is becoming less visible, not less dangerous.

My current working model:

• Real cases may already be above 1,000.
• 10,000 by August/September is now a realistic baseline bad scenario.
• 50,000–120,000 by the end of the year is plausible if the response does not massively scale up.
• A faster scenario, with 10,000 by July/August, becomes possible if the 35,000-contact blind spot starts producing cases and burial/camp transmission accelerates.

This is not about panic.

It is about arithmetic, logistics, and institutional capacity.

Ebola does not need a miracle mutation to become a regional catastrophe. It only needs enough time inside a system that cannot see, isolate, transport, test, bury, and support people faster than the virus creates new chains.