Category: Liberty

The Peer-to-Peer Economy

Technology has allows us, as a society, to move further away from centralization. Now that we are able to communicate with anybody in the world, perform pseudonymous transactions, and ship products we can more easily avoid the crushing state and its regulatory bodies. This is an excellent article that discusses how activists have begun to remove themselves from the system and create their own communities:

The Occupy Movement recently celebrated its second anniversary with very little fanfare leaving many to wonder where all the activists went. It seems they, and many anti-establishment activists, are vacating the system rather than occupying it.

Progressives may call it the “sharing economy” while Libertarians may refer to it as Agorism – a “society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging in a manner with aspects of peaceful revolution.”

Whatever it’s called, together, they’re opting out of the current socioeconomic matrix and creating a new alternative economy where trading occurs peer-to-peer and increasingly without government-issued currency.

It’s a space where mutual trade occurs without burdensome taxes, regulations, or licenses. Simply put, it’s an underground black market enabled by the Internet and regulated by social feedback mechanisms — and it’s growing exponentially.

As I progress down the path of anti-statism it has become more apparent to me that eliminating the state isn’t a winning strategy. Instead we need to create “underground” communities that exist within the state. If we want to win against the state we must make a community that people prefer over the one controlled by the state. When enough people move into the “underground” communities the state with die without the need for civil war.

#Anarchy in Detroit

The Reason Foundation has started a four-part series titled #Anarchy in Detroit (I’m pretty sure the pound sign is there merely to promote the series on Twitter). Unlike statists who like to point at the ills brought on by statism as examples of anarchy, Reason is showing events that actually arise from anarchy (i.e. spontaneous order). The first part of this series covers a group of individuals who have taken it upon themselves to mow the public parks:

But while politicians, unions, and investors slug it out in bankruptcy court and grasp for their share of what little cash is left, ordinary citizens are left to fend for themselves in a city with no functioning government. This is Reason TV’s coverage of what happens when people are left to their own devices and forced to come up with creative ways to pick up the pieces and find solutions in a city they once loved.

This is #Anarchy in Detroit, a four-part series showcasing what actual Detroit residents are doing to make the Motor City a better place to live.

In Part I, Tom Nardone is tired of seeing Detroit’s public parks go unmowed by the city government. He thinks that children should have a place to play. So, he hops on his mower and does it himself. Then, he invites others.

“I was surprised when the first person showed up. I was like, ‘All right. I guess someone’s as crazy as I am,'” says Nardone.

Hence, the Mower Gang is born.

During discussions of anarchism statists will often ask asinine questions thinking they’re checkmates. One of the most common questions, a question so common that it is mocked relentlessly in anarchist circles, is “Who will build the roads?” The answer to that question is the same answer to other such questions: those who see a need for them. Who will maintain the public parks? The people who see value in maintained public parks. Who will teach the children? The people who see value in educating youths. Since the state is composed of people anything it can do anybody else can do.

Spontaneous order can be summed up as the outcome of people doing what they believe needs to be done. Instead of a top-down method of dictating what needs to be done, spontaneous order allows each individual to act on what they believe needs to be done. Generally the former ends up with tremendous amounts of resources being put towards building weapons to expropriate wealth from others while the latter generally results in neighborhoods and markets.

Anarchy isn’t something to be feared, statism is.

The Folly of Basing Society Agreements of Geographic Regions

In one of my ever fewer forays into /r/Libertarian I found an interesting link by a user who was looking for feedback on a proposted libertarian constitution he wrote. I decided to take a look at it and noticed that it started off with “We the Citizens of the State of New Hampshire…” That brought up a criticism I have of most attempts by libertarians to establish a libertarian society: they have a tendency to based their society on geographic regions.

I believe it’s time to free ourselves of those imaginary lines drawn on pieces of paper. Geographic regions mean far less today than they did a century ago. The advent of efficient and quick transportation technology combined with effective real-time communication technology has allowed humanity to live a more mobile existence than it did in the past. Thanks to modern avionics I can be anywhere in the Continental United States in a matter of hours. Likewise, I can communicate with my associates via e-mail, instant messenger, video conferencing or telephone from wherever I end up. These technologies have allowed me to become members of geographically separate groups. Throughout the year I communicate with my Defcon friends and once a year we all travel to Las Vegas to meet. I would argue that I’m more of a member of the Defcon community than I am of the Minnesota community. The same goes for my membership in the shooting, gun blogging, agorist, and anarchist communities.

Communities, when all said an done, are groups of people who interact with one another. The Internet has allowed these interactions to take place regardless of geographic separation, which has rewritten the rules on social agreements. Libertarian societies, in my opinion, should take shape in the form of mutual aid societies. What other reason would libertarians get together other than for mutual benefit? Libertarian philosophy, especially when you begin moving towards complete anti-statism, isn’t based on geography; it’s based on voluntary interactions. Those interactions can largely take place regardless of physical location. If one of my fellows is in need of assistance I can transfer a quantity of Bitcoin (or pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents) to him instantly and he can use that to access needed resources local to him.

There are times when geographic agreements make sense. A group of people living around a lake, for instance, would likely benefit from laying down some common mutually agreeable ground rules. But general agreement between fellows one voluntarily interacts with need not be so restricted.

It would do the libertarian community well to toss off the shackles of physical location. We live in a great big world that floats around in a great big universe. Why restrict ourselves to infinitesimal points in a practically limitless area?

Politics is Depressing

Politics has to be one of the most depressing subjects one can talk about. Seriously, it’s always bad news. Whether the state is cracking down on a new technology, declaring a fun activity verboten, starting another war, shooting another dog, running a campaign for another wannabe psychopathic ruler, or kidnapping people for smoking a weed it’s depressing to read about and watch. This is one of the reasons I have distanced myself from politics. Believe it or not, I don’t like writing about political matters. It’s not so much the subject matter that depresses me as the outcome. Although I’d rather not have to read anybody about the state spying on us I would receive the news more happily if that news lead to the end of the spying. Instead the news will get wall-to-wall coverage for a week or two followed by nothing. The news will cease covering it, the state will continue to spy on us, and we will await the next great political catastrophe.

What’s the point of politics is it only leads to anxiety, high blood pressure, and rage? One of the things I like about agorism is that it’s apolitical and enjoyable. I enjoy working with my fellows an conducting business with them in an entirely voluntary market. Even if agorism doesn’t undermine the state I still have fun doing it. Politics, on the other hand, isn’t fun to participate in regardless of the outcome.

For those of you participating in the political system and wondering why us dirty agorists refuse to join you, the answer is simple: we’re tired of being depressed. We’re tired of investing our time, money, and energy into a system that bears no fruit. Why would any sane person want to spend hours at a caucus, hours at a basic political operating unit (BPOU) convention, hours at a state convention, and days at a national convention when you’re going to have jack shit to show for it? Who in their right mind would invest time, money, and energy into a campaign when you have no reasonable assurance that the campaigner is going to do what you want? I only have a finite amount of time on this planet and I plan to spend as much of it as possible doing what I enjoy. Agorism is something I enjoy. If not for the possibility of putting an end to the state’s power then for the friendships I’ve developed and the good times I’ve had.

Agorists and Apathy

Apathy is one of the more comical criticism politically involved individuals make towards agorists. In the world of the politically involved any failure to participate in the political process is a sign of laziness. I say the criticism is comical because it implies agorists are doing nothing while politically involved individuals are pulling all the weight.

Consider what political involvement entails. When one is politically involved they are working on campaigns, attending party functions, volunteering their time at events, and showing up to the voting booth on election day. What do all of these acts have in common? They all involve a proxy. One of the criticisms us gun rights activists make towards gun control advocates is their inconsistency. Gun control advocates claim to oppose guns but they almost unilaterally are willing to use a gun by proxy. When somebody breaks into their home they are unwilling to use a gun to defend themselves. However, they are willing to call a police officer with a gun to defend them. Working for a campaign is effectively trying to make social changes by proxy.

A politically involved individuals is usually trying to get a specific person or party in power in the hopes that that person or party will change things in a favorable way. Electing a pro-gun candidate in the hopes that he or she will fight for gun rights is an act by proxy. Instead of doing the footwork themselves, most politically involved gun rights activists are trying to get somebody else to do the work for them. Mind you, this isn’t to say all politically involved individuals are trying to pawn off their work on another. Many gun rights advocates introduce new people to the shooting community, teach people how to shoot, and research ways to make gun laws irrelevant.

Agorists seldom rely on proxies to do their work. An agorist tends to take direct action by performing economic activity that undermines the state. It is through underground economics that agorists hope to end the state, which is the intended goal. Taking direct action strikes me as far less apathetic than asking somebody to go to a marble building and vote a certain way in the hopes that those votes will eventually lead to a desired end goal. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Agorists are being the change they want to see. Can the same be said about politically involved individuals?

Five Stages of Becoming an Anarchist

I used to be a statist libertarian. Back in those days I foolishly believed that all of the major ills we face in American society could be fixed if the federal government would simply follow the Constitution. Unbeknownst to me, it was. But I was stuck in the little statist cage that I was thrown in by the public education system. I escaped that cage and now enjoy the free life of an anarchist. But the transition wasn’t instant, it took me almost three decades to arrive at this point. Joseph S. Diedrich explains the five stages of becoming an anarchist, which is a fairly accurate list for how my transition went. The stages Joseph lists are:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

I managed to skip stages two and four. Anger was never a problem for me because, back in my statist days, I believed that anarchists were still fellow liberty lovers who simply misunderstood the facts of life. Depression never affected me because I wasn’t heavily vested in statism, I was merely under the misguided belief that the state was necessary because it was pounded into my head by the public education system.

Interview with the Dread Pirate Roberts

After what must have been a great deal of effort, Andy Greenberg managed to get an interview with the Dread Pirate Roberts, the mystery person behind Silk Road. The Dread Pirate Roberts is one of those individuals I look up to. By operating the Silk Road, a truly free market for many things that are prohibited by the state, he or she has done far more to advance liberty than the throngs of people who sink their time into politics. He or she has actually created a mechanism that allows individuals to live freer today. Although the entire interview is of interest I think the most telling part is the following paragraph:

All my communications with Roberts are routed exclusively through the messaging system and forums of the website he owns and manages, the Silk Road. Accessing the site requires running the anonymity software Tor, which encrypts Web traffic and triple-bounces it among thousands of computers around the world. Like a long, blindfolded ride in the back of some guerrilla leader’s van, Tor is designed to prevent me–and anyone else–from tracking the location of Silk Road’s servers or the Dread Pirate Roberts himself. “The highest levels of government are hunting me,” says Roberts. “I can’t take any chances.”

I doubt this is an understatement since anybody who unveils the Dread Pirate Robert’s identify and manages to arrest him will become legendary in the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and other law enforcement agencies. For the crime of operating an online market place that allows individuals to sell what they want he or she is being hunted like a dog.

Still, with all of its power and might, the state has been unable to locate the Dread Pirate Roberts or Silk Road. The state’s inability to find and strike against either is a testament to the power of location hidden services.

Jeffery Tucker on Optimism

Jeffery Tucker, for those who don’t know of him, is one of my favorite activists in the anarchist community. The man is well spoken, well dressed (I’m convinced that his bow tie is surgically attached), and ever optimistic. His optimism is probably my favorite trait because many anarchists seem to have a never ending feeling of hopelessness and it’s nice to see somebody who has an apparently never ending feeling of hope in the community. On his Facebook page, Tucker posted an explanation of his optimism that I thought was worth sharing:

The state in all times and all places wants a population of despairing, dreary, hopeless, and weighted-down people. Why? Because such people don’t do anything. They are predictable, categorizable, pliable, and essentially powerless. Such people offer no surprises, threaten no change, destabilize nothing. This is the ideal world that the bureaucrats, the plutocrats, and the technocrats desire. It makes their life easy and the path clear. Today is just yesterday and tomorrow – forever. This is the machine that the state wants to manage, a world of down-in-the-dumps and obedient citizens of the society they think they own.

In contrast, hope upsets the prevailing order. It sees things that don’t yet exist. It acts on a promise of a future different from today. It plays with the uncertainty of the future and dares imagine that ideals can become reality. Those who think this way are a threat to every regime. Why? Because people who think this way eventually come to act this way. They resist. They rebel. They overthrow.

And yet look around: we see progress everywhere. What does this imply? It implies that non-compliance is the human norm. People cannot be forever pressed into a mold of the state’s making. The future will happen and it will be shaped by those who dare to break bad, dare to disagree, and dare to take the risk to overthrow what is in favor of what can be.

I realized all this some years ago, and then when you begin to look around and see how the power elites do not and cannot rule, you discover the whole secret to social order. It turns out that they are not really in control, not finally. Then it all becomes fun. It is a blast to see the powerful topple from the thrones they want to sit in so badly. It is a thrill to use and hold technologies that no one among the elite ever gave permission to exist. It is a kick to see how the market — meaning human beings acting with vision toward the future — is so constantly outwitting the arrogant planners who want to freeze history, control our minds, and wreck our world.

To defy them is so simple: just imagine and future better than the present. You become a enemy of the state, and you begin to love every minute of it.

The Problem with Anarchy

Critics of anarchism always claim that anarchy results in lawless chaos where survival of the fittest becomes the law of the land. That isn’t the problem with anarchy. The problem with anarchy is that it sneaks up on your and blindsides your ass:

As Detroit’s call-it-anything-but-bankruptcy budget crisis drags on and the city government is unable to provide the most basic of services, residents have discovered an alternative to lawless anarchy: cooperative anarchy!

[…]

On the wealthier side, the philanthropic Krege Foundation coordinated with automakers and local businesses to purchase 23 new ambulances and 100 new police cars. Okay, perhaps providing equipment to the municipal government doesn’t fall under cooperative anarchy. But at the rate the city’s going, they’ll probably all be driven by volunteers any day now.

The chaos of ever dwindling statism hasn’t stopped at a handful of crazy philanthropic individuals buying ambulances:

Dale Brown and his organization, the Threat Management Center (TMC), have helped fill in the void left by the corrupt and incompetent city government. Brown started TMC in 1995 as a way to help his fellow Detroit citizens in the midst of a rise in home invasions and murders. While attempting to assist law enforcement, he found little but uninterested officers more concerned with extracting revenue through traffic tickets and terrorizing private homes with SWAT raids than protecting person and property.

In an interview with Copblock.org, Brown explains how and why his private, free market policing organization has been so successful. The key to effective protection and security is love, says Brown, not weapons, violence, or law. It sounds a bit corny, yes, but the results speak for themselves.

[…]

The reasons TMC has been so successful is because they take the complete opposite approach that government agencies, in this case law enforcement, do. Brown’s philosophy is that he would rather hire people who see violence as a last resort, and the handful of Detroit police officers who actually worked with Brown in the earlier years and have an interest in genuine protection now work for TMC. While governments threaten their citizens with compulsion, fines, and jail if they don’t hand over their money, TMC’s funding is voluntary and subject to the profit-loss test; if Brown doesn’t provide the services his customers want, he goes out of business.

A security group that’s more concerned about protecting its customers than expropriating wealth through traffic citations? Is there no end to the insanity anarchy is bringing? What’s next, efficient bus services?

Law enforcement isn’t the only “essential government service” that the private sector is taking over and flourishing in. The Detroit Bus Company (DBC) is a private bus service that began last year and truly shows a stark contrast in how the market and government operates. Founded by 25-year-old Andy Didorosi, the company avoids the traditionally stuffy, cagey government buses and uses beautiful vehicles with graffiti-laden exterior designs that match the heart of the Motor City. There are no standard bus routes; a live-tracking app, a call or a text is all you need to get picked up in one of their buses run on soy-based biofuel. All the buses feature wi-fi, music, and you can even drink your own alcohol on board! The payment system is, of course, far cheaper and fairer.

As you can see, anarchy really sneaks up on a society suffering collapsing statism. At one moment people are enjoying the rampant crime and wealth expropriation taking places as the state begins to collapse and its employees strive to expropriate whatever wealth they can manage before the inevitable end then, out of nowhere, people get sick of that shit and begin to bring a cooperative attitude that raises civilization from the ashes.

Everything Old is New Again

Edward Snowden’s leak that made the public aware of the fact that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on everybody ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back for many. Those people finally realized that the United States isn’t the freest country on Earth and that our government isn’t any better than the communist regimes they were told to fear throughout the entire Cold War. Of course, many of those people also believe that the state’s act of rampant spying is new and that, historically, such things were unthinkable. As it turns out, a snoopy federal government is nothing new in the United States:

In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stanton’s letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: “The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.”

[…]

Having the telegraph lines running through Stanton’s office made his department the nexus of war information; Lincoln visited regularly to get the latest on the war. Stanton collected news from generals, telegraph operators and reporters. He had a journalist’s love of breaking the story and an autocrat’s obsession with information control. He used his power over the telegraphs to influence what journalists did or didn’t publish. In 1862, the House Judiciary Committee took up the question of “telegraphic censorship” and called for restraint on the part of the administration’s censors.

History repeats itself. Today’s states are advantaged by technologies that makes snooping easier than ever. But states have always utilized the most advanced technologies of their time to keep tabs on what the people were up to. Fortunately, technology is a double-edged sword. While it enables states to spy on people it also allows people to fly under the radar of Big Brother. In Lincoln’s time one could prevent Stanton’s office from knowing what was being transmitted on telegraphs by encoding their messages. We have the same capability today. Modern cryptography allows us to keep prying eyes from reading our communications, so long as we use the tools available to us correctly (which isn’t always easy).

Since humanity continues to repeat old mistakes it makes sense to get into the habit of expecting those mistakes and developing plans to mitigate the consequences. The states of today, just like the states of yesterday, are allowed to snoop on the people because the people continue to make the mistake of entrusting monopoly powers to handfuls of individuals. That being the case, one should always assume that those holding power are watching. Making such assumptions the default helps get us into the mindset necessary to develop and utilize techniques to slip by the watchmen. If enough people get into such a mindset it could, finally, give rise to a society where the watchmen are rendered mostly harmless.