These are some comments I posted on Facebook in November 2016. I had previously talked about these ideas in a podcast and I have since written and talked extensively about them, but this was my first attempt at summarizing them in writing. The original links are broken, so I'm republishing the texts here for future reference, including some comments by others to whom I was replying.

PB: Why is the idea that people should be left free to lead their lives as they see fit, as long as they don’t harm others, so provocative?

Because humans are social animals, descended from chimpanzee-like apes. For such animals the community they live in is everything, hierarchy is paramount and obedience to alpha individuals is not only instinctual but an actual biological need, without which individuals become confused and unhappy. For a chimpanzee, personal territory or property means very little. Far more important is determining one’s place in the hierarchy and being receptive to those above oneself in the pecking order. The other side of this coin is the importance of making sure that everyone else respects the primacy of the group and the hierarchy, in particular putting those with lower rank in their places. Chimpanzees become nervous, agitated and aggressive when someone acts outside these bounds.

Note that this is not the case with all apes. Orangutans are mostly solitary and highly territorial. For them, hierarchy is non-existent or peripheral while territory is central. The most important thing for an orangutan is to delimit and defend a piece of the forest and males even undergo an extensive physiological and hormonal transformation if/when they achieve this (about half of them do and this is why some but not all orangutans have flanges protruding from their faces, they grow out as part of a second puberty of sorts once they manage to defend a piece a territory for an extended time). Orangutans meet to mate but then split up with females rearing children and males going off to find new mates to impregnate using one of two mating strategies. Flanged males attract females to mate with by defending territory (“call-and-wait”) while non-flanged males seek out females and force mating (“sneak-and-rape”).

Humans seem to have the capacity for both sociocentric and territorial behavior. More specifically most people seem to be highly sociocentric while a small minority is also somewhat territorial. So here is the answer to your question: To most people, living as they see fit to a large extent involves controlling others through participating in hierarchical behavior and aggression. For this reason, to say that people are allowed to do anything they want except intervening in the business of others is a bit like saying they can do whatever they want except eating and having babies. It makes perfect sense to an orangutan but no sense at all to a chimpanzee. In other words, the reason that people want to control others is not only rent-seeking, although that is of course a big factor. Another important reason is that controlling others by participating in flock behavior is an instinct and a biological need.

I think this is somewhat parallel to your own pet peeve that poverty, not wealth, is the default, so we should not look for the causes of poverty but rather for the causes of wealth. Similarly, social and hierarchical behavior is the default for chimp-like apes like humans. The interesting question in my mind is rather why a few humans seem drawn to a solitary-territorial behavioral pattern. My best guess is that this is simply a continuum of possibilities, like many other characteristics among all kinds of animals. Perhaps there is also some actual chimpanzees with orangutan-like behaviors – perhaps alpha individuals can be described this way or perhaps just odd ones who are eventually eliminated from groups when they do not behave like proper chimps. Human history indicates that those who are not inclined to conform to groups and hierarchies usually become highly unpopular, are often persecuted etc.

So the problem that libertarianism tries to solve might be a problem of the libertarians themselves and their peculiar personalities. Perhaps libertarians are orangutans in a chimpanzee world. To me this actually seems like the most plausible basic explanation and from this perspective the reasonable solution can hardly be to force chimpanzees to live like orangutans – which demanding they leave others alone would amount to – but rather for those of us who are more orangutan-like to go off in the forest, stake out territories of our own and live as we please with others who have a similar disposition. In other words I am an 100% exit, 0% voice type of guy when it comes to politics and strategy, since I do not believe that most people are biologically suited to a libertarian way of life. The solution is to have sociocentric (democratic/communist) societies on some parts of the planet and territorial (libertarian/capitalistic) societies on other parts of the planet. Since sociocentrics are far more numerous than territorials, the only way for the two groups to live side by side while upholding respect for territory/property would probably be if territorials took charge and implemented a rather authoritarian type of rule which the sociocentrics were not able to resist, e.g. defeating all attempts to implement majority rule with overwhelming military force.

DB: That was the most interesting thing I have read for quite some time! This could be empirically investigated. How are the social/territorial traits distributed in and between sexes, races, cultures? How heritable are they? Is this a stable personality trait or does it change during life

Another important question is how Western civilization came to have somewhat territorial leaning institutions and how they survived for hundreds of years. This knowledge could be used to nudge the world in the happy and prosperous direction you envision.

Territorial societies, being much more economically prosperous, can defend themselves from military aggression from sociocentric societies. The hard part is to keep the territorial societies territorial and, if that is successful, for the territorials to refrain from too badly colonizing the sociocentrics. I guess we need free flow of people between the two types of society to allow everyone to go where they fit in and thus prevent social pressures from building up in either of them.

How the West became relatively territorial is a very interesting and important question but I am afraid that I do not have a solid theory about this. One could point to e.g. classical liberalism but while correct in itself, this would perhaps be too superficial since we then need to explain why such an ideology gained influence here and nowhere else.

As one possible starting point I would point to Christianity being a rather unusual religion, in many ways turning away from sociocentric tribalism and toward individualism and territoriality. At the very least I think Christianity must be said to be much more compatible with territorial morality than most other religions and certainly the decline of Christianity has come hand in hand with the reemergence of sociocentric morality.

Religion in general can be viewed as a check on or countermeasure against sociocentrism since it represents something absolute and thus independent of local group dynamics. Once religion became marginalized, there was – as it was from the beginning – no point of reference for morality beyond group loyalty. With secularism people went back to worshiping the collective, although in modern forms such as the cult of Humanity rather than traditional tribal allegiances. We are now admonished to see the whole of the human species as one enormous tribe and to a large extent the psychological mechanisms behind this are probably the same as in a band of hunter-gatherers.

I would also guess that Europe being split into hundreds of different states fostered a consciousness of territoriality and competition and the same can perhaps be said for feudalism in general. Later on the industrial revolution probably played an important role with entrepreneurs taking center stage and for a couple of hundred years the general trend was to allow exceptional individuals to build companies which can be seen as a new and very powerful form of territory. Of course, that was a long time ago. Beginning in 1789 at the latest, the trend has been the opposite and from 1914 onwards the human species seemingly went all-in on eliminating all remaining traces of territorialism, except a small band of orang… libertarians but we are obviously a highly marginalized group despite being able to make a very strong intellectual case for our position.

Regarding your last comment, about free flow of people, I would not consider this realistic. Relocating to a different place or becoming a member of a new group which conforms with your personal preferences is another thing that seems natural to some, myself included, but deeply unnatural and unpleasant to most. In particular, I do not think sociocentrics can be expected to move. Thus my focus on the territorials and getting them to take matters in their own hands, depend as little as possible on the non-likeminded and put as much distance between themselves and sociocentrics as possible. Colonizing another planet sounds a lot more reassuring than having our own country on the same continent as democratic or socialist states.

However, a related problem is that even if territoriality is hereditary to some extent, it is such a rare phenomenon in its purer forms that most children of territorials would probably be largely sociocentric. You can compare this to a community of people with very high IQs – if you gather the smartest people to start such a group it might be smooth sailing in the first generation but their children, although smarter than average, would not be nearly as smart as their parents. A person with IQ 150 and a person with IQ 160 can not be expected to have a child with IQ 155, but rather perhaps 120 or 130. Much higher than average but not even close to their parents. I would suspect that the same is true for territoriality, but on the other hand there is some historical evidence that e.g. aristocratic and royal families have been able to keep a territorial outlook going for many generations.

DB: Christianity did indeed make a radical break from the prevailing tribalism but, it seems to me, towards universalism/globalism/humanism rather than individualism. Both its scriptures and most of its incarnations emphasized obedience to authority and not upsetting the social order. Protestantism is more individualistic but that is hardly a cause of Western individualism but more likely an effect of it.

I take you point on sociocentrics being reluctant to move. How then to keep distance from them?

The rareness and insufficient heredity of territoriality is discouraging. On the other hand, we do have an existence proof a somewhat territorial society that really did make great things happen. With that to build upon, with greater knowledge and resources we could hope to do even better the second time around.

Regarding the question of authority, it is important to recongize that territoriality also depends on authority and hierarchy. The difference is that these are derived from property rights, i.e. rather than authority being based on being a superior aggressor like in a community of apes or a democratic society, it is based on lawful acquisition of property. This is central to the libertarian stance and the examples are numerous. The normal type of capitalistic businesses are neither democratic or anarchic but rather strict dictatorships, both in legal terms regarding ownership and in more practical terms regarding how a CEO runs a company, i.e. with far more wide-ranging powers than e.g. a prime minster of a country. Another example is microstates run on market-like premises, like Singapore or Liechtenstein. Especially Singapore is illuminating as an example since it is in many ways a model libertarian entity in relation to the rest of the world, but internally there are numerous harsh regulations. I think this would be the case with territorial societies generally, i.e. they would not be hippie-like free-for-alls but instead highly regulated – the difference being control emanating from a private ownership structure and exit being encouraged for dissenters.

Regarding the problem of distance, interference etc, I am a pessimist. I can not see a plausible way forward to create territorial societies in our lifetime, not even with scenarios like space colonization. What I aim for personally and advocate in various context is to implement personal decentralization and this can take many forms. The cost is naturally not zero but it is perfectly possible to “live outside the system” while sharing territory with current nation states. One might have to move to a different country, have multiple residencies, create intricate corporate structures etc to circumvent interference and surveillance, but in my view it is the best we can aim for at the moment and for those who have the stomach for it, it is a lot better than living on the standard terms. So I would suggest that those who are interested in truly living free rather than just talking about freedom in the abstract dispose of all ambitions to affect political change, create new countries etc and instead build small enclaves which co-exist as harmoniously as possible with local communities but have as little as possible to do with local governments.

Here is a list of political activists who have been imprisoned and/or seriously harassed by governments for speaking truth to power. The list is, of course, far from complete. These are just the ones I know about from the top of my head. Some people still think that we live in a free society under the rule of law. This post is an attempt to wake these people up.

• Barrett Brown is facing over 100 years in prison for posting a link to the Internet. As if this was not outrageous enough, the US government are now going after his mother, ostensibly for placing a couple of laptops in a kitchen cabinet.

• Adam Kokesh is a freedom activist running his own alternative media operation. The US government has been harassing him for some time and now they have imprisoned him for making a short video clip of himself loading a gun in central Washington DC.

• While not technically a prisoner at the moment, Edward Snowden would be one if the US government had its way. His crime, of course, is telling the truth about abuse of state power. However, as Snowden himself points out, telling the truth is not a crime.

• Chelsea Manning is a former US government employee and whistle-blower, much like Edward Snowden after her. She is currently serving a 35 year term in military prison for turning over classified files to Wikileaks. 

• Aaron Swartz was found hanged in his apartment after years of harassment by the US government. He was involved in many kinds of activism, but what they finally focused on to silence him was giving the public access to academic papers.
  

• Jeremy Hammond is being held in solitary confinement, awaiting sentencing (Nov 15) for being involved in the Stratfor leak (the one Barrett Brown linked to). He is facing up to 10 years in prison.

• Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a businessman who started talking about the rampant corruption going on in his native Russia. When he started making moves to mount a political challenge against Putin, he was imprisoned on charges of tax evasion.

• Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and others being punished for creating one of the wonders of the modern world, The Pirate Bay. Svartholm is now facing extradition to Denmark to stand trial for a crime he was acquitted of in Swedish court.

If you know about additional political prisoners or activists being persecuted by governments, send me an email and I will add them to the list!

Earlier tonight, I read a post on Facebook (non-public link) by fellow libertarian Robert Sundström which contained, among others, the following sentences:

The individual is without doubt the most important entity in society. Only the individual think, reason and act. Only it know how to satisfy its wants. [...] A group of individuals are nothing but equal potential to spontaneous order and imminent chaos - depending on the formalization of the structure. There is nothing special about it - not even when it comes to an outcome of a democratic process.

This was said in the context of economic theory, where it is not unreasonable, but it inspired me to write a few paragraphs about a wider point that I have thought long and hard about. As I perceive it, statements of this type are often made as a kind of libertarian dogma, being applied far beyond the realm of economics. I am not accusing Robert of this, only thanking him for stimulating me to think and write.

In any case, the status of the individual is a core issue for libertarianism and I think many libertarians need to think more carefully about it. Here is what I wrote about it in a comment:

Individuals are almost completely defined by the groups they come from. Just think of language, religion, all kinds of values and other customs. These things play a much bigger part in defining who you are, than your individual personality traits or even your individual actions. For example, if you had grown up in the country-side in Afghanistan, you would almost certainly be a hard-core muslim. Your individual capacity to reason about such things and come to your own conclusions amounts to almost nothing if the comparison is between cultures, rather than between individuals within a single culture.

Human beings are flock animals, like chimpanzees. Not solitary animals, like orangutans. We are biologically hard-wired to live in symbiosis with with a small group. To say that there is "nothing special" about such groups is profoundly unrealistic. So speaking from biological facts, rather than romantic ideals, the flock/tribe/village/community is the most important entity in society. Individuals are secondary, since they are basically extensions of these groups. I also think it more realistic to consider the community to be the proper level of autonomy, rather than the individual, since communities are the only entities that are actually capable of long-term self-determination.

(Incidentally, this solves a number of common problems associated with libertarianism. For example, what about the individual rights of children? That question is based on a false premise - the much more important issue is the autonomy of the groups children grow up in.)

In my view, the root of almost all societal problems, not least things like over-sized governments, is the destruction of organic communities. The reason people are dependent on the state is that they do not have local communities to support them, which was the way things worked for tens of thousands of years until the process of civilization gradually shifted the dependency from organic communities to governments. Conversely, the only way to decrease dependence on government is to recreate local communities. It is simply not an alternative for everyone to create their own lives according to their individual preferences, because again, if you are even able to reason about such things, e.g. if you can use a language, you are already created in the image of some group.

Libertarians open themselves up for ridicule when they focus too much on the individual, because everyone else is very aware of the degree to which everyone is dependent on social factors. Instead, we should focus on changing which kinds of groups are considered important. Instead of identifying with nations, we should try to form natural-sized communities (30-100 individuals perhaps) which function so well that the government becomes redundant. Without such communities, removing the state from the equation might even be very dangerous, which is why I have stopped arguing for abolishing the government, to instead focus on building a good community around myself.

In answer to this comment, I got the question whether or not individuals are to be considered as insignificant, due to their biological hard-wiring, and the objection that the human mind is adaptive and can break out of specific influences. This is an additional comment I made with regard to this:

That the individual is not the most important entity in society does not mean that individuals are not important, and indeed, most great leaps forward seem to spring from the minds of individual people. But note that progress can only happen if the ideas of a great individual takes root in a well-functioning group, i.e. when a community starts pursuing the ideas together.

This article by Edward Snowden was published today in Der Spiegel. Since I could not find a translation online, I decided to publish one (suggestions for improvements are welcome). I previously published the full text in German.

In a very short time, the world has learned much about unaccountable secret agencies and about sometimes illegal surveillance programs. Sometimes the agencies even deliberately try to hide their surveillance from high officials and the public. While the NSA and GCHQ seem to be the worst offenders - this is what the currently available documents suggest - we must not forget that mass surveillance is a global problem in need of global solutions.

Such programs are not only a threat to privacy, they also threaten freedom of speech and open societies. The existence of spy technology should not determine policy. We have a moral duty to ensure that our laws and values limit monitoring programs and protect human rights.

Society can only understand and control these problems through an open, unbiased and informed debate. At first, some governments feeling embarrassed by the revelations of mass surveillance initiated an unprecedented campaign of persecution to supress this debate. They intimidated journalists and criminalized publishing the truth. At this point, the public was not yet able to evaluate the benefits of the revelations. They relied on their governments to decide correctly.

Today we know that this was a mistake and that such action does not serve the public interest. The debate which they wanted to prevent will now take place in countries around the world. And instead of doing harm, the societal benefits of this new public knowledge is now clear, since reforms are now proposed in the form of increased oversight and new legislation.

Citizens have to fight suppression of information on matters of vital public importance. To tell the truth is not a crime.

This text was written by Edward Snowden on November 1, 2013 in Moscow. It was sent to SPIEGEL staff over an encrypted channel.

This was published today by Der Spiegel. It is currently a bit tricky to get the full text, since it is behind the Spiegel paywall, and also in a very strange format. So I decided to re-publish it.

Update: Here is the article in english translation.

In sehr kurzer Zeit hat die Welt viel gelernt über unverantwortlich operierende Geheimdienste und über bisweilen kriminelle Überwachungsprogramme. Manchmal versuchen die Dienste sogar absichtlich zu vermeiden, dass hohe Offizielle oder die Öffentlichkeit sie kontrollieren. Während die NSA und (der britische Geheimdienst –Red.) GCHQ die schlimmsten Missetäter zu sein scheinen – so legen es die Dokumente nahe, die jetzt öffentlich sind –, dürfen wir nicht vergessen, dass Massenüberwachung ein globales Problem ist und globale Lösungen braucht.

Solche Programme sind nicht nur eine Bedrohung der Privatsphäre, sie bedrohen auch die Meinungsfreiheit und offene Gesellschaften. Die Existenz von Spionagetechnologie darf nicht die Politik bestimmen. Wir haben die moralische Pflicht, dafür zu sorgen, dass unsere Gesetze und Werte Überwachungsprogramme begrenzen und Menschenrechte schützen.

Die Gesellschaft kann diese Probleme nur verstehen und kontrollieren durch eine offene, ohne Rücksichten geführte und sachkundige Debatte. Am Anfang haben einige Regierungen, die sich durch die Enthüllungen der Massenüberwachungssysteme bloßgestellt fühlten, eine noch nie dagewesene Verfolgungskampagne initiiert, die diese Debatte unterdrücken sollte. Sie schüchterten Journalisten ein und kriminalisierten das Veröffentlichen der Wahrheit. Zu dieser Zeit war die Öffentlichkeit noch nicht imstande, den Nutzen dieser Enthüllungen zu ermessen. Sie verließ sich darauf, dass ihre Regierungen schon richtig entscheiden.

Heute wissen wir, dass dies ein Fehler war und dass ein solches Handeln nicht dem öffentlichen Interesse dient. Die Debatte, die sie verhindern wollten, findet nun in Ländern auf der ganzen Welt statt. Und anstatt Schaden anzurichten, wird jetzt der Nutzen dieses neuen öffentlichen Wissens für die Gesellschaft klar, weil nun Reformen in der Politik, bei der Aufsicht und bei Gesetzen vorgeschlagen werden.

Die Bürger müssen dagegen kämpfen, dass Informationen über Angelegenheiten von entscheidender öffentlicher Bedeutung unterdrückt werden. Wer die Wahrheit ausspricht, begeht kein Verbrechen.

Diesen Text schrieb Edward Snowden am 1. November 2013 in Moskau. Er erreichte die SPIEGEL-Redaktion über einen verschlüsselten Kanal.

Celia Green writes about heredity, intelligence and education. She makes an interesting point about the beliefs people hold in regards to heredity vs environment and their relation to government intervention:

One may wonder why it is of any interest to attempt to evaluate the relative importance of heredity and environmental factors on functionality. It only becomes of interest, surely, when opportunity of various kinds is not paid for directly by the individual, or his parents or guardian, but supplied by the state.

At present, many people, or at least many among the most influential, seem to wish to believe that there is no such thing as innate ability, and that there should be equality of opportunity (and hence equality of outcome). But what are we to understand by equality of opportunity? In practice, this is taken to mean that resources should be applied lavishly to those whose performance is below the average. Thus children with ‘special needs’, for example, are to be sent in taxis, accompanied by social workers, to special schools. And, although this is less explicitly advocated, those who are far ahead should be held back.

The founding of the United States was one of the most impressive and admirable events in world history. For a long time this new country was the world's foremost beacon of freedom. At this point however, the US has become one of the leaders in oppressive government tactics, and disturbing reports are published every day about increasing tyranny.

Oh, America, how far you have fallen!

NSA infiltrates Yahoo, Google data centers

DHS Spends $500,000 on Fully Automatic Pepper Spray Launchers

Adam Kokesh, a modern day political prisoner

Free Speech T-shirt Maker Threatened By NSA

White House Forces Companies To Keep Quiet About Obamacare Problems

Interesting experiment on the willingness of ordinary people to subject themselves to invasive forms of surveillance. A body scanner is used on customers entering a candy store. Many had the appropriate reactions - disbelief, disgust, anger, walking away - but according to the producers:

The goal was to see how far we could take this scanning and if people would let us! To our surprise, most people didn't put up much of a fight and went along with the person ahead of them in line... which was our plant that we actual scanned again and again.

Last night I was talking with some fellow anarchists about what kind of practical projects we should be exploring and promoting, to move beyond the usual grind of politics and ideology. There were lots of interesting suggestions of course and over time I would like to explore many of them on this blog. Here are some types of projects that I am currently involved with or seriously exploring:

• Autonomous wireless mesh networks to complement/compete with/replace the government controlled Internet. I have been talking to people, going to conferences etc to explore this topic, with the goal of building a mesh network in Stockholm. The motivation is primarily to counter government restrictions on information exchange, by creating a parallel network which the state can not control or censor.

• New technology for small scale production of food. One of the small startups in this space that I am watching closely is AutoMicroFarm. Some friends of mine are building similar setups of their own. Don't know much about energy production, but would love to hear from some solar power enthusiasts or something.

• The interplay between government services and free software might offer some opportunities. I have personal experience of projects where the implementation of open data standards has made a substantial difference to the allocation of money and other resources. Wider implementation of free software might shift the balance of power in a favorable direction.

• Setting up secure mail hosting services, systems for encrypted mailing lists etc. I run a full-stack mail server to help friends and acquaintances improve their security, use encryption etc (let me know if you are interested). I provide these services for free, but it could easily be turned into a small business if I wanted it to. Lots of people should be doing this, i.e. making money helping others to become more free and secure.

• A while ago I collaborated with a friend to create a prediction market, something like a more up-to-date version of Intrade. The project was put on hold, but feels more relevant than ever now that Intrade has been forced by the US government to shut down. Prediction markets are powerful tools for crowd sourcing intel and we should use them.

• I have created a piece of software called Digital Demokrati, which is a decision making system based on a fluid combination of direct and representative democracy. The general idea is to challenge the conventional idea of politicians representing the people by providing a superior mechanism of representation.

If you are interested in this kind of stuff, feel free to get in touch. I am especially interested in talking to people who have practical experience of building and maintaining wireless mesh networks.

The title of this post is a reference to The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, one of the classic works on anarcho-economy. If you have not read it, you should check it out.

One of the central pieces of government propaganda in Sweden is the belief - embraced by almost everyone in Sweden - that conditions in this country were horrible until the Social Democrats came along and built the so-called welfare state. And of course, a lot of people around the world idolize this system and think of it as great success.

This is in fact an absurd inversion of what actually happened.

This recent essay by Johan Norberg digs deep into this interesting topic and describes when and how Sweden actually went from being a poor country to one of the richest. Highly recommended reading if you have some time on your hands and want to learn more about this particular corner of the world:

http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/how-laissez-faire-made-sweden-rich

From the essay:

It was not socialist policies that turned Sweden into one of the world’s richest countries. When Sweden got rich, it had one of the most open and deregulated economies in the world, and taxes were lower than in the United States and most other western countries. The Social Democrats kept most of those policies intact until the 1970s, when they thought that those excellent foundations—unprecedented wealth, a strong work ethic, an educated work force, world-class exports industries, and a relatively honest bureaucracy—were so stable that the government could tax and spend and build a generous cradle-to-grave welfare state on them.

They couldn’t. At least not without costs. Because that welfare state began to erode the conditions that had made the model viable in the first place. And the fourth richest country became the 14th richest within three decades.