Tag: Agora! Anarchy! Action!

The Death of Politics

One of my friends posted an excellent article on Facebook last week by Karl Hess. The article is titled The Death of Politics and, as you can guess by the title, discusses the various ills of the political process:

This is not a time of radical, revolutionary politics. Not yet. Unrest, riot, dissent and chaos notwithstanding, today’s politics is reactionary. Both left and right are reactionary and authoritarian. That is to say: Both are political. They seek only to revise current methods of acquiring and wielding political power. Radical and revolutionary movements seek not to revise but to revoke. The target of revocation should be obvious. The target is politics itself.

Radicals and revolutionaries have had their sights trained on politics for some time. As governments fail around the world, as more millions become aware that government never has and never can humanely and effectively manage men’s affairs, government’s own inadequacy will emerge, at last, as the basis for a truly radical and revolutionary movement. In the meantime, the radical-revolutionary position is a lonely one. It is feared and hated, by both right and left — although both right and left must borrow from it to survive. The radical-revolutionary position is libertarianism, and its socioeconomic form is Laissez-faire capitalism.

Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit: that all man’s social actions should be voluntary: and that respect for every other man’s similar and equal ownership of life and, by extension, the property and fruits of that life, is the ethical basis of a humane and open society. In this view, the only — repeat, only — function of law or government is to provide the sort of self-defense against violence that an individual, if he were powerful enough, would provide for himself.

If it were not for the fact that libertarianism freely concedes the right of men voluntarily to form communities or governments on the same ethical basis, libertarianism could be called anarchy.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist I believe this article has a lot of valuable points regarding the political process that is worth reading. Namely the article touches on several points I’ve discussed regarding the political process including the fact that it is the system established by our rulers and that the system has a habit of devouring the lives of those who participate in it.

Politicos often criticize individuals who don’t participate in the political process. They will accuse those who refrain from political participation of being lazy and unwilling to do the work necessary to instill change in society. I believe that political participation is an act of laziness. It is what people do in lieu of the work necessary to instill change in society. Instilling change requires changing the opinions of the masses and the most effective way of doing that is to live by example. People generally seem to gravitate towards those who live lives consistent with the principles they espouse.

Political participation is an attempt to seize the power structure for your own gains. When people win political battles they merely win at gaining control over a system that allows them to instill their will on society at the point of a gun. It doesn’t mean people in that society will believe what you believe it only means they will comply with what you believe because a great deal of force is being used to make them. Living by example, on the other hand, tends to convince people that your beliefs are good enough that you live your life by them. Even if they don’t agree with your beliefs they will often respect them and more often than not they will adopt aspects of your beliefs into their own lives.

Libertarianism is a philosophy of peace. Specifically it is a philosophy that teaches the initiation of violence is wrong. Politics is an act of initiating violence and is therefore, in my opinion, incompatible with libertarian principles. Sadly we have all grown up being taught that the political process is the method of instilling change in our society and it is very difficult for most to escape that belief. But unless we do we will find yourselves forever under the boot of rulers.

Taking Out the Trash

I believe most people reading this post are aware of the rate of corruption that exists in Mexican police forces. In many place the drug cartels effectively own the police. When you think about it it makes sense. Drug cartels are generally composed of psychopaths who have no quarrel with hurting people as are police departments. A strategic alliance between the two seems inevitable. Unfortunately, if you’re not a member of the government or the drug cartels, you’re in a pretty bad position. You must make a choice between submitting to the police-cartel alliance or taking out the trash:

Small groups of local vigilantes took up arms and joined forces to storm Paracuaro, headquarters of the Knights Templar gang, where they arrested police officers and seized control of the town in a blaze of gunfire.

They drove into the town in black armoured vehicles shouting ‘Don’t be frightened, we are vigilantes’, before expelling drugs traffickers, whom they accuse of kidnapping people and bribing them to make money. Several gun battles were reported, leaving at least one dead.

Police officers, whom the vigilantes accuse of being in league with the cash-rich drug gangs, were rounded up by machine-gun toting locals, along with others suspected of associating with gang members, and a checkpoint was set up at the entrance to Paracuaro.

Many people will likely be quick to point out that the town merely swapped one set of rulers, the police-cartel alliance, for another set of rulers, the vigilantes. That may be true but it’s also likely that the vigilantes won’t be as ruthless as an alliance between two psychopathic organizations. I would also say that the vigilantes were likely members of the local community who became fed up with the alliance and simply wanted to rid their town of violent offenders and not claim rule over it.

As things continue to deteriorate in the here United States I won’t be surprised if we begin seeing actions like this. Many police departments, such as the ones in Los Angeles and New York, are known for their brutality and violation of civil rights. As economic matters continue to worsen these departments will likely try to take advantage of the situation by increasing the rate of arrests so property can be confiscated. A breaking point will eventually be released and the people will decide to so the cops out and establish a superior, and far less violent, system of neighborhood protection.

Reasons to Abandon Politics

My journey as a libertarian has seen me through a gun rights activist who looked at few other political issues, to a Constitutional libertarian who believe most of societies ills would be fixed by strictly adhering to the United States Constitution, to an anarcho-capitalist, and finally to an anarchists (without adjectives). During this journey I’ve come to many conclusions and learned many lessons. One of the lessons I’ve learned is that statism, regardless of its form, will always take the shape of an oligarchy. This is why I’m an anarchist. If nobody rules then everybody rules. So long as any individual enjoys privileges above another individual then the disease of statism will spread. By leveling the playing field, by ensuring nobody enjoys privileges above another the foundation for a free exists.

My journey has also seen me drudge through the political system. During my time in politics I believe I learned my most valuable lesson: freedom cannot be had through political participation. This realization has lead me to pursue agorism. Through counter-economics, that is performing as many transactions within the untaxed “black” market, the state can slowly be starved and the services it provides can be replaced by voluntary alternatives. The agorist community in my area is slowly growing as more people face the realization that freedom cannot be had through politics. By participating in agorism they are taking the first step in separating themselves from statism. They are abandoning politics. Abandoning politics is something I urge every anarchist to do. Why? Because it is the antithesis of what anarchists fight for.

The political process is necessarily hierarchical. Participation means you are either running for a position that will grant you power over others or are helping somebody else gain a position of power over others. Worse yet, the system is rigged in such a way as to make radical change impossible. Preventing radical change is the only activity for which real checks and balances exist in the political system. Demonstrating this fact is as simple as looking at the history of America’s political system. When was the last time you can recall an actual radical change, that is to say when power was taken from the political elite and their cronies, happened through the political system? Although every rule has its exception you’ll be hard pressed to find one for this.

Besides being the antithesis of anarchism, participating in the political process has another problem: dependency. I have seen more friends succumb to political dependency than I care to admit. They live for politics. It consumes them. In fact I can think of no less than five marriages that were destroyed because one of the two spouses became politically addicted. I have other friends who even depend on politics for their livelihood. Recently one of my friends has begun shilling for a local political campaign. I’m not talking about a little promotion, it was as if my friend was being paid to shill for this campaign. This seemed odd to me because he had been discussing his disgust of political campaigns and continuously described himself as an anarcho-capitalist. After looking through financial records for said campaign (thanks to the Internal Revenue Service for publishing that information, it is the only thing I will ever thank it for) I saw that $4,500 had been paid from the campaign to my friend over the span of roughly two months. Suddenly his advocacy of this candidate made perfect sense. Getting paid approximately $2,250 per month just to shill for a candidate isn’t bad money. But he is now dependent on the political system for a good chunk of his income. The main downside to such a dependency is that eliminating the state has become the antithesis of his survival. If the political system went away he would be out roughly $2,250 a month.

Putting yourself into a position where you are dependent on your enemy to survive ensures you will probably never make a real attempt to defeat your enemy. Consider the average political addict. They often depend on one or more campaigns for their financial well being. Their friendships begin to revolve more and more around politics. As their time in politics increases their interest in non-political activities decreases. I’m sure you have or have had a friend who attempts to bring up politics at every social gathering. Such behavior tends to push non-political friends and friends with differing political views away. From my observations this has a habit of not only creating an echo chamber around political participants but makes them almost entirely reliant on politics for their general happiness. For an anarchist this becomes a vicious cycle because they don’t want to destroy the political system as it would also destroy their primary source of happiness.

Politics also has many similarities to cultism. The longer somebody is involved in the political process the more they push away non-political friends and friends who have differing political opinions. Cults tend to isolate themselves from outsiders. This isolation reinforces dependency on the cult. Social circles hold a lot of power over us. At some point most people want to fit in with some crowd. Even rebels tend to want to fit in with their fellow rebels. So if your only friends are fellow members of your cult you will likely attempt to appeal to them by being a good cult member. Failing to abide by a political party’s, campaign’s, or candidate’s beliefs can lead to ostracization. Again, this is another thing political participation shares with cultism. I’ve seen this happen numerous times. For example, anybody who espoused a belief in public schooling at a Ron Paul gathering tended to get humiliated, shouted at, and shutdown rather quickly. Seeing a majority of participants disagree with somebody espousing public education wasn’t surprising but seeing how zealous they were at ensuring the heathen wasn’t heard was frightening. Needless to say such people quickly learned to keep their dissenting opinions to themselves less they be ostracized by their friends.

If your goal is to abolish statism then you should abandon the political process and find a more radical way of pursing your goal. Political participation will only lead to ruin. In fact it is designed to lead to ruin if your goals are something other than further empowering the oligarchs. To paraphrase a famous saying, if politics could change things it would be illegal. Always remember that the political process is the system put in place by the current rulers. Nobody is going to give their enemies an effective way to defeat them and anarchists are the enemies of the current rulers.

Minimum Wage and the Corporate Welfare State

There has been a lot of talk recently about raising the state mandated minimum wage again. One side argues that many workers don’t make enough money to live off of and the other side argues that raising minimum wage will cause another jump in unemployment. Both sides are actually right on this issue. But both sides are also missing part of the picture. Why are many employers paying employees so little? The answer is quite simple. Low wages are subsidized by the state through its welfare programs:

Wal-Mart’s low wages have led to full-time employees seeking public assistance. These are not the 47 percent, lazy, unmotivated bums. Rather, these are people working physical, often difficult jobs. They receive $2.66 billion in government help each year (including $1 billion in healthcare assistance). That works out to about $5,815 per worker. And about $420,000 per store. But the federal and state aid varies widely; in Wisconsin, a study found that it was at least $904,542 a year per store. (See the accompanying chart.)

The author advocates raising the minimum wage to reduce welfare spending. That doesn’t address the root of the problem, which is the state introducing distortions in the market. Wal-Mart doesn’t just receive benefits in the form of welfare benefits being provided to its employees by the state. It has also received benefits in the form of tax deductions, tax credits, road improvements, water service improvements, and a slew of other deals. These deals give Wal-Mart an advantage over its competitors. When the competitors, unable to compete with a subsidized giant like Wal-Mart, goes out of business the Wal-Mart employees also lose leverage in wage negotiations. One of the most effective tools that employees have when negotiating for better wages is the ability to go somewhere else. When there is less competition in a market there are less places for employees to go and that weakens their position.

So long as the root of the problem, subsidies, isn’t address no governmental decree in regards to wages is going to make a damn bit of good. Minimum wage laws effect everybody. A large corporation like Wal-Mart can absorb paying employees more money but many of its smaller competitors cannot. Raising the minimum wage can therefore further reduce competition and therefore often act as another subsidy to the largest corporations. Taking away Wal-Mart’s subsidies, on the other hand, will take away its major advantages over competitors. Once this advantage is removed Wal-Mart’s competitors will have a better chance surviving and that will increase competition. With more competition in the market employees will have one of the most effective tools for fighting for better working conditions.

Scott Adams: Possible Future Anarchist

I work in an office environment so it should go without saying that I’m a fan of the Dilbert comic. In a strange but positive turn of events, a recent post by Dilbert’s author, Scott Adams, leads me to believe he’s traveling down the road to anarchism:

I have a hundred-year plan to eliminate government.

The key to making this work is picking one element of government at a time and using technology to eliminate it. Remember, we have a hundred years to develop and test lots of little plans. So we won’t permanently eliminate any part of government until citizens have seen proof it can work on a state level, or for a brief test period nationally, or in another country.

He gives several examples of how technology could be used to replace government functions. If you’re a neophile anarchist, such as myself, what he’s saying is nothing new. I’ve been advocating the use of technology to eliminate the state by providing competition and alternatives to its programs. One of the state’s greatest weaknesses is its inability to adapt to long term changes. We see this whenever the state moves to regulate a new technology, often before the ramifications of that technology are understood.

Its regulations are seldom sensible and usually take the form of outright prohibitions or licensing. My favorite example of this is Wisconsin’s ban using electromagnetic weapons for hunting. Electromagnetic weapons, as far as hunting goes, are still fantasy but the Wisconsin government has already banned such usage even though we have no understanding of how such technology would effect hunting.

I theorize that the state’s hatred of new technologies stems from its fear of being supplanted by them.

Happy Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving, which is soon to be known as Black Friday Eve. But as long as we still have Thanksgiving some people are probably interested in the holiday’s history. A couple of years ago I wrote a post detailing that Thanksgiving was really brought on by a failure of socialism. This year I’m going to present an alternative viewpoint courtesy of Kevin Carson, a mutualist whom I greatly respect. According to Mr. Carson there is one key element many libertarians have ignored when using Thanksgiving to rail against socialism. Namely, the Pilgrims were victims of statism and its beloved tool incorporation:

The Plymouth story is sometimes compared to that of agriculture in the last days of the Soviet Union, where most of the food consumed came from private family plots — essentially kitchen gardens with some small livestock thrown in. Had the entire Soviet population been forced to subsist on the output of State and collective farms alone, the result would have been mass starvation — exactly like in Plymouth. This parallel is entirely accurate. What the received version of the Plymouth story leaves out, however, is that the role of the “collective farm” in the little drama is played not by the naive Puritan zealots seeking to “hold all things in common” but by a private corporation chartered by the English crown.

And as Curl describes it, the system of private plots adopted after the rebellion against the Merchant Adventurers wasn’t much like modern fee simple ideas of “private property,” either. It sounds more like the open-field system the settlers had experienced in Nottinghamshire: The family plots were ad hoc, to be periodically redivided, and not subject to inheritance.

So the proper analog to what almost killed off the Pilgrims is not, as Stossel says, “Karl Marx” or “today’s [presumably left-wing] politicians and opinion-makers.” It’s the lord of an English manor — or a Fortune 500 corporation. But the story as it actually happened is still a testament to the evils of statism and the benefits of voluntary cooperation. The Merchant Adventurers, like the Fortune 500 companies of today, was a chartered corporation that depended entirely on benefits and legal privileges conferred by the state. The living arrangements it attempted to impose on the Plymouth settlers were the same as the extractive arrangements that prevailed on an English manor, enforced by the legal privileges the state conferred on the landed nobility. And the new system the Pilgrims replaced them with were the age-old open field system that peasant villages had spontaneously created for themselves, in the absence of coercive interference, since neolithic times.

Anyways it’s something to think about while you’re scarfing down Turkey. Now you’ll have to excuse me. I plan on gorging myself and doing nothing productive for the remainder of the day.

Philadelphia Attempting to Ban the Impossible

You have to hand it to politicians, they always try to accomplish the impossible. Shall Not Be Questioned has a post discussing Philadelphia’s status as the first state to ban 3D printed firearms:

Today, the Philadelphia City Council voted unanimously to ban the manufacturing of guns by 3-D printers, making Philly the first city to do so. Which is interesting, because the author of the bill, Kenyatta Johnson, isn’t aware of of any local gun-printing 3-D printers. ”It’s all pre-emptive,” says Johnson’s director of legislation Steve Cobb. “It’s just based upon internet stuff out there.”

As I discussed last year, decentralized manufacturing of firearms is impossible for the state to shut down. The only way Philadelphia could begin to enforce this law is if police officers made daily searches of every building within city limits. Even then very clever people could find ways of hiding their setup.

Banning 3D printed firearms is the last gasp of desperate control freaks. In the hopes of maintaining some semblance of control they pass their ineffective laws. These laws only serve those of us who oppose those in power. When these laws are passed and continuously violated we can point it out and demonstrate that, in effect, the emperor wears no clothes.

3D Printed Firearms and the Undetectable Firearms Act

Talk about a panty wadding combination of events. Firearms that can be printed on 3D printers are becoming more advanced and the Undetectable Firearms Act is set to expire on December 9th of this year. That can only mean one thing. Chuck Schumer is going to step up to the plate and attempt to perform the impossible act of prohibiting the advancement of technology:

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — As the technology to print 3-D firearms advances, a federal law that banned the undetectable guns is about to expire.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer says he’s seeking an extension of the law before it expires Dec. 9.

He said the technology of so-called 3-D printing has advanced to the point anyone with $1,000 and an Internet connection can access the plastic parts that can be fitted into a gun. Those firearms can’t be detected by metal detectors or X-ray machines.

I don’t think Schumer realizes how incredibly stupid he sounds at the moment. He states, truthfully, that firearms that are undetectable by metal detectors and X-ray machines can be created on 3D printers. Then he claims that the Undetectable Firearms Act must be renewed to prevent these firearms from becoming available. Of course the law hasn’t expired yet and the plastic firearms are already being created. In other words, the Undetectable Firearms Act is pointless. People are already creating firearms that cannot be detected by metal detectors or X-ray machines even though the law hasn’t expired yet. Renewing the law is a moot point.

To borrow a famous Taoist saying, no one rules if no one obeys. The advancement of technology is leaving the old hierarchy in the dust. We are outpacing their ability to control us. While people like Schumer are arguing for a need to extend the Undetectable Firearms Act people are already creating firearms that violate that act. To make matters better, the people creating the blueprints for these unlawful firearms can remain anonymous. Creating one of these firearms carries little risk since it can be done by a single individual from the comfort of his or her own home. Without a target to attack the state cannot enforce its decrees. Since the threat of state violence is beginning to become less of an issue fewer people are seeing a need to obey, which means the state’s power is slowly crumbling.

Second 3D Printed Metal Gun Unveiled

Solid Concepts, the company that brought us the first 3D printed firearm made out of metal, have unveiled their second 3D printed metal gun:

Solid Concepts announces the successful creation of the world’s second 3D printed metal gun. Our second iteration is composed entirely of Inconel 625, a material that is stronger than Stainless Steel (and a bit heavier) save for the springs which were not 3D Printed. The gun is once again composed of thirty-four 3D Printed components. Our second gun will be stress relieved and post processing will be by hand once again.

Inconel 625 is a harder, stronger alloy than 17-4 Stainless Steel. We modified the geometry for this second iteration to incorporate different tolerances in order to make hand finishing sufficiently easier. With our first prototype, we had to hand sand to perfect a few tolerances, but our tweaks to the design should remove the need for such sanding. Our first gun is now up to 700+ rounds.

Once again I feel that it’s necessary to stress two facts. First, 3D printers capable of working with metal are extremely expensive. Second, as the technology of printing with metals advances it will also become cheaper. It is only a matter of time until 3D printers capable of working with metals become affordable to small groups of individuals. Gun control, never an attainable goal anyways, is now all be entirely dead. Once small groups of people can afford 3D printers capable of working with metals gun control will be entirely dead.

As the technology of 3D printers advance gun control advocates will almost certainly resort to attempted censorship. But that battle is already lost. The Internet was designed as a mechanism to share information. It’s very good at that task. What it isn’t good at is restricting the flow of information. Any attempt to censor information on the Internet is a lost cause from the word go. In other words, gun control cannot succeed because in this day and age the only tool in its arsenal, controlling access to firearms, is a pipe dream.