Category: Liberty

Breaking the Law, It’s More Valuable than Most People Realize

One of the most annoying claims I hear people make is, “I’m a law abiding citizen!” No, you’re not, nobody is. In fact everybody in the United States, on average, commits three felonies a day. Considering there are approximately 27,000 pages of federal statutes it shouldn’t surprise anybody that obeying the law is impossible.

When I discuss civil disobedience and agorism as an alternative to politics the most common rebuttal I hear is that both are illegal. What critics often fail to realize is that those methods are illegal by design. Breaking the law is critical if one wants to change society:

What’s often overlooked, however, is that these legal victories would probably not have been possible without the ability to break the law.

The state of Minnesota, for instance, legalized same-sex marriage this year, but sodomy laws had effectively made homosexuality itself completely illegal in that state until 2001. Likewise, before the recent changes making marijuana legal for personal use in WA and CO, it was obviously not legal for personal use.

Imagine if there were an alternate dystopian reality where law enforcement was 100% effective, such that any potential law offenders knew they would be immediately identified, apprehended, and jailed. If perfect law enforcement had been a reality in MN, CO, and WA since their founding in the 1850s, it seems quite unlikely that these recent changes would have ever come to pass. How could people have decided that marijuana should be legal, if nobody had ever used it? How could states decide that same sex marriage should be permitted, if nobody had ever seen or participated in a same sex relationship?

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The more fundamental problem, however, is that living in an existing social structure creates a specific set of desires and motivations in a way that merely talking about other social structures never can. The world we live in influences not just what we think, but how we think, in a way that a discourse about other ideas isn’t able to. Any teenager can tell you that life’s most meaningful experiences aren’t the ones you necessarily desired, but the ones that actually transformed your very sense of what you desire.

We can only desire based on what we know. It is our present experience of what we are and are not able to do that largely determines our sense for what is possible. This is why same sex relationships, in violation of sodomy laws, were a necessary precondition for the legalization of same sex marriage. This is also why those maintaining positions of power will always encourage the freedom to talk about ideas, but never to act.

Why would anybody advocate for legalizing homosexuality if they didn’t partake in it or know somebody who partook in it? The same goes for cannabis, strong cryptography, and standard capacity magazines. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words.

The whole point of civil disobedience is to partake in an illegal activity to raise awareness of its prohibition, demonstrate that there are people who derive enjoyment from the prohibited act, and demonstrate that the prohibited act’s practice isn’t harmful to others. Cannabis would have almost certainly remained illegal in Colorado and Washington if it wasn’t for disobedient individuals demonstrating that smoking the plant is enjoyable to many and harmless to everybody else. The same goes for homosexuality. It took individuals participating in same-sex relationships to demonstrate that same-sex relationships are enjoyable to many and harmless to everybody else.

Agorism, in my opinion, is, in part, meant to demonstrate that a functioning society is possible without the state. The only way to demonstrate such a thing is to participate in actions outside of the rules established by the state. Commerce, being the area of our lives the state attempts to control the most, is a prime candidate for demonstration purposes. When you think about it, almost everything we do in our lives is made possible through commerce. The simple act of eating food is made possible, for most people in the United States, by farmers selling their goods to wholesalers, who hire truckers to haul food to trains, which haul the food to barges, which transport the food to a packaging plant, which packages up the food and gives it to more truckers, who transport the food to distribution centers, which put the food on their trucks, which transport the food to grocery stores, which sell the food to consumers.

The state claims that each and ever step along that path must be tightly regulated in order to ensure consumer safety. Agorists can prove the state wrong by providing food, transportation, or packaging outside of the state’s regulations. Doing so in a manner that satisfies customers’ demands demonstrates the viability of commerce that isn’t tightly regulated by the state.

Just as you have to break eggs to make omelets you also have to break laws to make societal changes.

Five Reasons to Abandon Politics

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know that I’ve moved away from the political means to attain my goals. Instead of begging politicians and destroying my soul by working within the political machinery I’ve decided to rely on civil disobedience and agorism. Oftentimes people still working within the political machinery ask why I can’t participate in politics and perform acts of civil disobedience and participate in agorism. Well, here are five good reasons:

  • It eats up a horrifying amount of time and energy
  • It’s an addiction
  • It doesn’t change anything
  • In the end, it’s about violence
  • Politics is a relic of a barbaric past

Details about each reason are provided at the link but suffice it to say each reason is an inescapable reality of participating in politics. If I still participated in politics I wouldn’t have time to perform acts of civil disobedience or participate in agorism. When I did involve myself in the political system I was constantly bombarded with demands to phone bank, drop literature, march in parades, attend meetings, donate money to candidates, and other activities I refused to do. Every campaign wanted my time and money and, in the end, they failed to change anything. Some of the candidates won, some of them lost, but the country is still a shit hole.

I don’t believe civil disobedience and agorism are strategies guaranteed to win but they are fun to do and radically different, which is necessary because their alternative, politics, has failed to achieve anything other than tyranny since its inception. When one strategy has failed miserably the need to do something radically different arises.

Independence Day

It’s July 4th, which means millions of people across the United States are waving red, white, and blue flags; launching off fireworks; and feeling patriotic. I will be partaking in the ritual of blowing shit up because such a ritual should be practiced every day but I will not be celebrating my patriotism as I have none.

But in the spirit of Independence Day I will take a moment to reflect on how I’ve made myself more independent. Years ago I moved my cloud services to my personal cloud. I am no longer reliant in Google for my e-mail, calendaring, and address book as I host all of those services on my own system. When I say my own system I mean my own system. My server is sitting in my dwelling, not on a rack in a data center located somewhere I’ve never heard of. I’m still living within my means, which means I have no debt and can declare myself independent of the banking cartel. Although I’m no model of physical perfection I do exercise regularly and try to eat healthy so I’ve been able to keep myself independent of the pharmaceutical industry that grips this nation with an iron fist. I carry a firearm, which allows me to protect myself and those I care about instead of relying on, and hoping that, the police to keep me and mine safe.

Waiving flags and declaring your love for Big Brother is no way to celebrate a holiday called Independence Day. If you want to do the holiday justice celebrate by making yourself more independent. Even little things like learning to brew beer or repair your means of transportation can make you a more independent person.

Have a great Independence Day and try not to blow yourself up.

Rebellion Exists Everywhere

New York City, which is ruled be the despotic dictator Michael Bloomberg, is generally ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing a complete police state. To paraphrase a Star Wars quote, the more you tighten your grip, the more people will slip through your fingers. While New York City has a prohibition against gatherings larger than 50 people, unless the group buys a permit, people have decided to give the oligarchy of that city a giant middle finger and hold massive illegal gatherings underground:

In the distance, beyond the bend in the trackbed, a weird chanting began to ripple out and echo through the space. I saw the glow of candles, and as I approached I saw that everyone had been drawn to the end of the line. On what would have been part of a subway platform, a few people were leading the group in some sort of wild incantation. By the time I got there it reached a euphoric crescendo, and one of the performers overlooking the crowd yelled something like, “Bring your candles to the Echo Vault!”

By the time I drifted back to the vault with the others, a woman on “stage” (Jessica Delfino) was singing a hypnotic a cappella ballad about New York. Then a drummer, Joel Saladino, joined her, bashing away at the kit in a series of increasingly ferocious drum solos.

I climbed the stairs up another two stories and carefully tiptoed across one of the crossbeams extending the width of the Vault, trying not to think about how I’d probably break an ankle or worse if I fell. The view from back there was incredible, and when the stage at the opposite end filled with the Extra Action Marching Band, I could see the party was really getting started. It was like the Zion dance party in Matrix Reloaded, but with fewer douchebags. The music was thunderous and suddenly the mood was exultant—everyone danced, because that was the only way to deal with the inexplicable joy that was exploding down there.

If we’d gotten caught, the organizers would no doubt have faced some serious criminal charges. But if it was up to me, I’d give them the keys to the city for raising such an audacious middle finger to the notion that New York City’s underground is dead and gone.

What Stark and Austin and the musicians managed to create, almost miraculously, was a Temporary Autonomous Zone to remind us that this is still a city worth living in, despite the creeping feeling that New York’s being bled dry by an ever-expanding corporate vampire real estate army.

No matter how tight the rulers of New York City, or anywhere else, clamp down the people will always find a way to bypass the authorities. This is why human progress, which is only possible thanks to anarchy, can continue. The state tries to prevent change from occurring by passing laws but laws are meaningless when they can’t be enforced.

Knowing that illegal underground gatherings like the one mentioned in the story, albeit on a much smaller scale, occur here in the Twin Cities puts a smile on my face. Rebellion is everywhere and it’s a beautiful thing.

Dismissing Criticisms You Can’t Counter

A couple of weeks ago Michael Lind, an writer for Salon, thought he had the ultimate trump card against libertarianism. He asked why no libertarian countries exist. As I, and many other libertarians explained, libertarianism is a philosophy built upon the idea of non-aggression, which is ultimately incompatible with statism. Mr. Lind, looking to generate more page hits from outraged libertarians, decided he would attempt to rebut that argument:

An unscientific survey of the blogosphere turns up a number of libertarians claiming in response to my essay that, because libertarianism is anti-statist, to ask for an example of a real-world libertarian state shows a failure to understand libertarianism. But if the libertarian ideal is a stateless society, then libertarianism is merely a different name for utopian anarchism and deserves to be similarly ignored.

The caricature created by Mr. Lind is that everybody who advocates anti-statism is a utopian anarchist and therefore can be dismissed without argument. It’s a classic straw man fallacy. Apparently Mr. Lind is not able to argue against the claim so he has created a much easier caricature to argue against.

Most anarchists, myself included, are not utopian. We don’t claim that a stateless society will be perfect. There will always been some amount of theft, rape, murder, and other acts of violence. Likewise, fraud and other nonviolent transgressions will almost certainly be ever present in human society.

What we do argue is that statism, being a system based on violence, is worse than a system based on mutual cooperation. In my previous post I provided several examples of societies that succeeded without a state, one of which still exists today. The fact that such societies have existed and continue to exist today demonstrates that statelessness isn’t an impossible reality that can be dismissed without argument. If Mr. Lind doesn’t believe anarchism can succeed he needs to provide some argumentation to backup his claim. Simply labeling anarchists as utopians doesn’t count since most of us aren’t utopians.

Seeing Mr. Lind’s dismissal of anarchism also raises a question, why does he think statism is the best foundation to base a society on? Why is a society that has one group of individuals ruling over everybody else better than a society where nobody rules of anybody else better? I could never find a satisfactory answer to those questions, which is why I eventually became an anarchist.

The Difference Between Libertarianism and Authoritarianism

A lot can be said about social and political philosophies by looking at the solutions proposed by their advocates. Authoritarians tend to advocate violent revolution so the existing power structure can be replaced with a new power structure. Libertarians tend to advocate for nonviolent solutions, often seeing flight as a better solution than fight. Consider seasteading, the idea of building a libertarian city in international water. Ephemerisle, a floating celebration where participants create a small floating village, was recently the subject of story on n+1.

Seasteading really epitomizes libertarianism in my opinion. Seasteaders are so desperate to find liberty, and so unwilling to use violent tactics, that they’re willing to invest the tremendous resources required to build a floating city. While the authoritarians are discussing revolution to force everybody to submit to their will the libertarians are moving to the frontier to found a new society that people can come to voluntarily. The difference speaks volumes in my opinion.

The Purge: An Absurd Idea that’s Fun to Play With

Many of my friends have been discussing the movie The Purge. I haven’t seen it yet because I’m not a fan of siege movies (unless it’s Judge Dredd performing the siege because, well, he’s fucking Judge Dredd) but I’ve been informed about the concept. The Purge plays with the idea of a society where all laws are suspended for a 12-hour period. Several people have noted that the movie demonstrates why anarchism can’t work. Setting aside the fact that people are using a fictional movie to argue against a real societal philosophy we’re still left with the fact that the idea of The Purge, that a period of lawlessness will result in unimaginable violent crime for that entire period, is absurd.

Judging by the movie’s preview and statements my friends have made about the movie, I’m lead to believe weapons are no prohibited The Purge’s version of the United States. In fact it appears as though prohibitions against weapon ownership are nonexistent, at least for the 12-hour period where all law is suspended. Knowing that an annual purge takes place I’m also lead to believe that most people would acquire weaponry to defend themselves, which would likely mean the cost of violence would increase greatly.

Today the cost of performing violent acts in the United States is pretty low. Most people don’t carry weapons on their person and many people either own no weapons or are prohibited from possessing them. In addition to that the general attitude towards violent crime held in America is to let the police deal with it. We’re told not to intervene when we encounter a violent crime and can actually face legal repercussions for doing so. Such an attitude gives violent criminals a good sized window of time to commit their violent act, before dealing with possible resistance (because the police can’t teleport to a location instantly). In a society where all law was suspended for a 12-hour period every year, people would likely arm themselves so they could defend their lives during the lawless period. The cost of violence would increase, which would have the likely affect of discouraging violent crime. Violent criminals generally exploit the fact that they are unlikely to encounter notable resistance while committing a violent crime. When they chances of notable resistance increases it discourages violent criminals from performing violent crimes.

In addition to the likely increase in arms that would occur in a society where no laws were enforced for a 12-hour period there is also the social roadblocks between criminals and crimes. Humans are generally social creatures. We form relationships and those relationships influence our actions. For example, friends and families are likely to help one another. How many people would stand idly by while somebody attempts to murder their mother, father, sister, or brother? How many people would look the other way while one of their friends was killed? In most cases the family member of friend would intervene because they have a vested interest in defending the would-be victim.

If a period of lawlessness was declared by the state, local communities would ban together to defend each other. My claim isn’t unprecedented. The Los Angeles riots were, effectively, a period of lawlessness. During that time period members of the community referred to as Koreatown banned together, loaded their rifles, and defended their community from marauding rioters.

Many people believe that the state is the only thing that separates society from complete collapse but those people are ignorant of history. Consider the American Old West. Hollywood portrays the time period as one of great violence but the actual Old West was notable for two things. First, the state was absent [PDF]. Second, there was a very low rate of violent crime. Medieval Iceland is another example of a society that enjoyed freedom from a state and a low rate of violence. Unlike much of Europe during the time period between the years 1000 and 1300, Iceland had no civil wars because its society was based primarily on arbitration. Violence wasn’t absent but it was mostly ritualized, which helped keep it under control compared to many other societies of the time.

What makes society possible is the general tendency of humans to form communities. Though that tendency we choose mutual cooperation of exploitation most of the time. If the state declared a period of lawlessness communities would simply take responsibility for enforcing laws against violent crime themselves. A realistic version of The Purge would likely involve an increase in cannabis smoking for a 12-hour period followed by run on the local grocery stores to buy up all the Doritos. I would even predict that violent crime would decrease since the police would be roaming the streets and initiation violence against nonviolent individuals.

Edit: 2013-06-11: 20:39: Corrected a few grammatical mistakes graciously pointed out by Steven.

Why There are No Libertarian Countries

This article has been making the rounds in libertarian circles for the last few days. In it Salon author Michael Lind believes he has finally found the argument that discredits libertarianism in its entirety. His argument is that the complete lack of libertarian countries demonstrates that libertarianism can’t succeed:

Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

Before I continue I should note that Mr. Lind has some criteria that determine whether or not a country qualifies as a real country:

But this isn’t an adequate response. Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.

In order to be a real country there must be some kind of entity providing defense, an unspecified amount of interference in the economy, law enforcement, and some system of support for the poor. Based on Mr. Lind’s previous writings and the tone of this article I am lead to believe that he thinks the state should provide those services and therein lies the problem. Based on Mr. Lind’s criteria there can never be a libertarian country because a libertarian country, by definition, wouldn’t have a state providing those services, they would be provided through voluntary means.

With that said it is now time to jump into the meat of my rebuttal. Although libertarianism is often seen as a political philosophy it is more accurately a philosophy regarding human interaction. Most branches of libertarianism build off of the non-aggression principle, which is a principle that simply states initiating aggression is wrong. Theft, rape, and murder are acts of initiated aggression and are therefore seen as wrong under libertarianism whereas self-defense is seen as a response to aggression and is therefore right. The insidious part about libertarianism is that we live it every day without realizing it. Every time you go to a restaurant and decided to buy your food instead of stealing it you are performing a libertarian act. Voluntary interactions are, by definition, libertarian in nature.

States are the opposite of libertarianism, they are entities built on initiating aggression. The state raises wealth through expropriation. Taxes and fines are both examples of theft because the state is giving the people an ultimatum: pay taxes and fines or face kidnapping, detainment, or death. In fact every law declared by the state has the same ultimatum: obey or be enslaved or killed. Something as minor as a parking ticket can lead to your death. Most people scoff at that claim because they’ve never heard of somebody actually being killed. The reason people aren’t killed over parking tickets isn’t because of the state’s benevolence, it’s because most people perform a cost-benefit analysis and decide paying the ticket offers a greater benefit than a standoff with a state thug. However, if you failed to pay a parking ticket you will likely be kidnapped by a cop who will put you in a cage. After spending some time in a cage you’ll likely be brought before a man in a robe who will order you to pay the ticket. If you don’t pay the ticket that robed man will decided to either put you back in a cage or garnish your wages. The latter option may lead you to work underground so you have no visible income for the state to take and then the state will come after you for not paying income tax. Eventually the only option that will be given to you is a cage and if you refuse to go into the cage you will be forced into it. If you refuse to go quietly, that is to say if you defend yourself, you will be killed. That’s how the state works.

Countries, by definition, are entities recognized by other entities. In our world an entity is recognized as a country if it is ruled by a state. This criteria for recognition isn’t surprising since it’s usually other states that decide whether or not another state is a valid country. The reason there are no libertarian countries is because libertarianism is the opposite of statism and in our modern vernacular the word country is synonymous with state.

Libertarian societies have existed and still exist. Medieval Ireland [PDF], medieval Iceland, the American West, and Neutral Moresnet were all historical examples of, what could be properly referred to say, libertarian societies. Today the region referred to as Zomia still exists as a libertarian society. In the case of Zombia many states claim jurisdiction over the area but none have any actual authority over the people living there because those people refuse to bow down. Instead, for the past 2,000 years, they have preferred a voluntary society based on cooperation, ritual, and tradition instead of coercion.

There are no libertarian countries but there are libertarian societies and each and every one of us lives most of our lives in a libertarian manner. Those who live outside of libertarian manners generally end up in a cage, dead, employes as cops, or politicians.

Business Opportunities are Everywhere

Smokers of Minnesota are up in arms over the increase in cigarette taxes:

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Outside downtown office buildings, many smokers didn’t want to talk about the possibility of a tax that will push a lot of cigarette packs into the $8 range.

Dan Jones says the tax may be the push he needs

[…]

The state says it has built the expected drop in smokers into their revenue projections. The current tobacco tax pulls in $423 million, and the state is predicting the higher tax would pull in $618 million a year.

The tax hike isn’t surprising since Mark Dayton stated plundering from smokers was one idea to subsidize billionaire Zigy Wilf’s stadium. What is surprising is the reaction many are having to the news. Many smokers are pissed, other smokers are thinking about quitting, and small government advocates are rightly pointing out that smoking is an activity enjoyed by many poor individuals so a tax on cigarettes is a burden on the poor (to enrich the top 1% no less!). I guess, to borrow an old marketing phrase from Apple, I think different. A tax increase on cigarettes in Minnesota is a business opportunity! Anybody willing to buy cheaper cigarettes out of state, deliver them to Minnesota, and sell them to people addicted to nicotine stands to make a tidy profit.

Tax increases, while depriving some portion of the population of wealth, generate business opportunities for smugglers. Increasing the tax on cigarettes makes the unprofitable enterprise of buying cigarettes in one state and selling them in another profitable. In fact, depending on the tax difference between the state cigarettes are purchased in and the state they are sold in, the profit could be very high.

One of my goals in life is to show people how statism can be exploited for personal profit without resorting to the statist tactic of initiating violence. Smuggling cigarettes into Minnesota is looking to be one of those wonderfully exploitable endeavors.

To My Friends Who are Upset About Minnesota’s New Definition of Marriage

Minnesota is now the 12th state to repeal its prohibition against same-sex marriages. Needless to say some of my friends, specifically my deeply religious friends who believe its the state’s duty of uphold their religion’s definition of morality, are a bit upset. As you will soon learn I have no sympathy for them. The religious organizations that told them to oppose the repealing of the prohibition on same-sex marriages are the same organizations that made this outcome possible. Although I touched briefly on the subject I feel it’s important to drive home this fact.

Back in the day the stated told various religious organizations, “Hey guys, we’re going to define marriage.” Most of the religious organizations at that time were perfectly fine with that news because the state said it was going to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. The Mormons weren’t overly enthusiastic about the news but they were a small enough minority that nobody cared what they thought. Likewise, homosexuality was stigmatized so great in those days that few would dare admit they were gay and therefore no opposition was raised against prohibition same-sex marriages. In other words statism worked exactly as it always does, the politically influential were able to wield the state’s capacity for violence against those who weren’t politically influential. What those short-sighted fools failed to realize is that things change.

Fast forward to modern times. Religious organizations have lost a great deal of their influence over the state. They can no longer wield the state’s capacity for violent reliably. The tables have turned and the same religious organizations that enjoyed the state’s power in the days of yore now lack a great deal of political influence. Now that the state isn’t favoring their definition of morality those religious organizations are pissed. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Those organizations made their bed when they agreed to ceded the power to define marriage to the state. Once the state declares a power for itself and remains mostly unchallenged it is practically impossible to rip that power from its hands. To make matters worse the longer the state holds power the more difficult it becomes to take it back. People living today never knew a time when marriage didn’t require some kind of permission slip from the state. Since things appear to be working and they know no alternative they’re unlikely to challenge the state’s declared power to define marriage. It really sucks to be one of those religious organizations that wants the power to define marriage back because, in all likelihood, they’re not getting it. The state didn’t just declare the power to define marriage, it sunk its claws deep into that declaration by tying anything and everything to its stupid permission slips.

Like it or not, marriage is no longer a religious institution, it’s a state-defined relationship used to determine who can have special privileges. Had those fools resisted the state’s power grab this entire fight probably wouldn’t have happened. The religious organizations could still choose to recognize only marriages between one man and one woman and everybody ignore those organizations. But those fools didn’t resist, they accepted the state’s power grab with open arms, and allowed marriage to become more than a religious institution. Why do you think homosexuals give a shit about marriage? It’s because they are relegated to being second-class citizens without having the ability to enter marriages. When you have a man getting arrested because he refused to leave his partner’s side at a hospital and he knows his arrest could have been avoided if the state recognized same-sex marriages you can damn well bet that he will fight for state-recognized same-sex marriage. When the state tells same-sex couples that they can’t adopt children [PDF] because their relationship lacks the state’s seal of approval you can damn well bet those couples are going to fight for a state-recognized seal of approval. And guess what, they and their allies (which I am) have the political influence and therefore can wield the state’s power.

If you oppose same-sex marriages for religious reasons let this lesson sink in. The next time the state tries to grab additional power, even if the power grab stands to directly benefit you, oppose it. Fight that power grab with every fiber of your being. Because once the state has that power it will keep that power, it will tie that power into its political machinery so tightly that it can’t be removed, and eventually that power will change hands and you’ll no longer receive the special privileges you once did.