Systemic Lying in Russia Destroying Growth and Increasing Hobbesian Outcomes, Vasilyev Says

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 19 – Systemic lying, imposed by the Putin system on Russia, not only is destroying the trust on which any society must rely and increasing transaction costs in all areas to the point where nothing can be achieved but also is attacking the nature of humanity and making a Hobbesian world of “all against all” ever more likely, Vladimir Vasiliyev says.

            “Total systematic lying has become the norm of daily behavior in society, destroying all human social links and human relations between people and leading to the atomization of society toward its most aggressive form, a war of all against all,” the Moscow commentator says (newizv.ru/article/general/19-09-2020/vse-protiv-vseh-kak-lozh-stala-natsionalnoy-ideey-rossiyskogo-gosudarstva).

            Many observers have noticed that in ever more spheres, the Russian authorities simply lie; and some have pointed out that this pattern is infecting the Russian population as well. But few have considered that this has the effect of destroying any trust and raising transaction costs to the point that economic and social activity become almost impossible, Vasiliyev continues.

            That is because in a situation in which lying is so commonplace, individuals have to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to determine what if anything is true and whether, once they determine that, whether it will make any difference given that others will not be reaching the same conclusions.

            The normal social mechanisms thus do not function; and that in turn, the commentator says, means that “total systemic lying destroys all human social ties and human relations between people thus leading to the atomization of society to its most extreme and aggressive form, ‘a war of all against all.’”

            As lying makes the costs of any transaction higher, he argues, both economic activity slows and “social production of material goods and of society and the human being as a whole stops.”  That is because “systemic total lying not only destroys social relations.” It destroys that which makes society and the individual human.

            In brief, Vasiliyev says, “systemic total lying” leads to “the systemic and total destruction of the human being as a human being” and reduces him to the animalistic status Hobbes so feared. Expressed another way, “this is nothing other than the genocide of the individual and society.”