Tag: Agora! Anarchy! Action!

All Progress is Due to Anarchy

Although the term anarchy is often incorrectly used as a synonym for chaos the true definition of the world means “without rulers.” While various branches of anarchism disagree about what is meant by “without rulers” most branches agree that it means an absence of coercive rule (the reason for the disagreement is the varying criteria regarding what is coercive). Within the realm of politics many people often refer to rights. Like the various branches of anarchism, the various political philosophies disagree about what constitutes a right but most of them share the definition of a right, which is the absence of coercive rule used to prohibit actions. The right to free speech really means an absence of coercive control over what somebody expresses. The right to keep and bear arms really means an absence of coercive control over possessing and carrying arms. In essence rights are anarchy. The debate between gun rights and gun control activists can therefore be boiled down to whether or not coercive force should be used to prevent somebody from possessing or carrying firearms and to what extent that force should be employed.

JayG over at MArooned made an excellent statement regarding rights:

Look, freedom is messy. It’s scary, and dangerous, and unpredictable. Living in a free society means, yes, it is possible that the wrong people might do something that winds up in innocent people getting hurt.

Rights are frightening to many people because the absence of control also means an inability to predict outcomes. Will an absence of control over firearm ownership lead to a more peaceful society or a more violent society? Although deductive logic and available research indicate the latter, there is no way to know what the future will bring. However we do know what the presence of control will bring, the status quo. To quote Jeffrey Tucker:

Anarchy is all around us. Without it, our world would fall apart. All progress is due to it. All order extends from it. All blessed things that rise above the state of nature are owned to it. The human race thrives only because of the lack of control, not because of it. I’m saying that we need ever more absence of control to make the world a more beautiful place. It is a paradox that we must forever explain.

Progress is only possible when there is an absence of coercive rule. Henry Ford didn’t streamline automobile production because a state goon put a gun to his head and said, “Make building cars more efficient.” Mr. Ford’s advancement of automobile production only came about because he was free to act on his idea. Steve Wozniak didn’t create the first affordable mass-produced personal computer because some thug told him to. The Apple I came about because Mr. Wozniak was a brilliant inventor who wanted to bring the power of computing to the average person. This wonderful communication system we call the Internet is another demonstration of the power of anarchy. While the infrastructure remained under the control of the state little happened. Once people were given unfettered access to the Internet is began to change society and we not sit here and enjoy the ability to watch movies and television shows on demand, listen to music on demand, and do our shopping from the comfort of our living rooms.

While freedom, that is to say the recognition of rights, may seem scary in the long run it usually turns out for the better. Coercive rule, on the other hand, tends to turn out far worse. Most of the scary things we learn about in history stem from extremely coercive regimes and individuals. It’s not surprising when you consider that those in power have an interest in maintaining the status quo. Politicians who expropriate wealth from the general population have a good reason to advocate for the disarmament of the general populace. Without doing so the general populace may decide to rise up when the politicians begin taking too much.

Gun control advocates believe they can make society better by inflicting more control on it. Their theory may sound good on paper but historically it’s unprecedented. More control generally means less progress. In fact enough control seems to return humanity to more barbaric times. As regimes or individuals gain more control over a population violence is often the result. This may be because people have an innate desire to be free, having control over a populace reduces the cost of inflicting violence upon them, more violence must be continuously implemented in order to gain more control, or some other reason(s). But history tends towards freedom being far less messy than the lack thereof. While bumps may occur in a free society those bumps tend to be relatively mild to the genocides and death camps that are so common with the most tyrannical regimes. In the end less control tends to be better for everybody and because of that more actions should be recognized as rights everyday.

More Thoughts on the Bitcoin Crash

It appears that Bitcoin hasn’t hit the floor yet. This news has left many members of the Bitcoin community scrounging for a scapegoat. Reading various Bitcoin communities (although the /r/bitcoin subreddit has provided me with the most entertainment) it seems the recent devaluation of Bitcoin was caused by automated trades performed by bots, fake libertarians (I guess you can only be a libertarian if you invest heavily in Bitcoin), and a secret cabal of central banks. While the last scapegoat sounds the most plausible of the three (those central banks are ruthless bastards) I think the community is ignoring the most likely cause: Bitcoin is a new technology.

Bitcoin really is the first notable crypto-currency. Although previous crypto-currenciies have existed none of them enjoyed the prominence that Bitcoin enjoys today. Most people alive today have lived their entire lives using state controlled fiat currencies. Bitcoin is the opposite of what we call money today. It’s a decentralized currency that cannot be inflated past a certain point (only 21 million Bitcoin will ever exist). The decentralized nature of the currency means no single entity can wield monopoly control over it. It is also the first free-market monetary system that most of us have experienced. In other words, Bitcoin is a revolutionary idea and, like all revolutionary ideas, nobody can predict how it will, or won’t, change things.

Speaking in software terms the concept of Bitcoin (not to be mistaken for the network, clients, or services) is in the alpha stage of development. People participating in the Bitcoin community should understand that they are testers and should expect to find copious amounts of bugs that need to be worked out. Is Bitcoin vulnerable to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks? If so, that must be corrected. Is Bitcoin too reliant on single points of failure? If so, that must be corrected. Is it too hard for the average person to acquire Bitcoin or use it in everyday transactions? If so, that must be correct. Growing pains are unavoidable when working with a technology that few, if any, understand the ramifications of.

Instead of playing the blame game I believe the Bitcoin community would be better served by noting the failure and thinking of methods to utilized the currency’s main features to overcome that failure. For instance, I’ve seen a lot of blamed aimed at Mt.Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange. Bitcoin is a decentralized currency, why was one exchange allowed to gain so much influence over the exchange rate of the currency? Having a single point of failure is always a bad idea. Trusted members of the Bitcoin community should start developing more exchanges. More Bitcoin exchanges would mean more resiliency as it would be difficult for attackers to bring down or manipulate all of them simultaneously. Members of the Bitcoin network should put more work into developing easy methods for the average person to buy Bitcoin. In today’s world people like the convenience of credit cards. Credit cards, due to the ability of a purchaser to perform a charge back and the inability to recover sold Bitcoin, don’t work well for purchasing Bitcoin so some other convenient method must be created. The idea of Bitcoin Automated Teller Machines (ATM) is a good start, but they need to be located in high traffic areas such as grocery stores and gas stations. Until people can acquire Bitcoin as easily as they can buy things with their credit cards they won’t adopt the currency.

Another feature that should be leveraged more is the mostly anonymous nature of the currency. I’ve seen a lot of comments from Bitcoin advocates trying to refute the claim that Bitcoin is most heavily used in the drug trade. Stop that. Embrace it! Expound the fact that Bitcoin is used by drug dealers and purchasers because transactions cannot easily be tied to physical individuals. As the world governments continue to wring more and more money out of their people those people are going to look for a place to hide their wealth. A currency that is outside of the state’s control, can be used to store wealth in a mostly anonymous fashion, and allows individuals to perform transactions in a manner that that state can’t record for taxing or prosecution purposes should be huge and will be necessary as the state’s rate of expropriation increases. By denying that Bitcoin is used for “black” market purchases members of the Bitcoin community are downplaying its most valuable feature. Don’t try to control its image, let its image develop freely.

As an agorist and a crypto-anarchist I want to see Bitcoin succeed. In order to succeed I believe the Bitcoin community needs to understand that Bitcoin is a revolutionary idea, will have growing pains, and must be rid of state dogmas against the “black” market. Trying to shoehorn it into mainstream monetary and political principles will relegate it to always being an interesting idea that never gets widely adopted.

Working Through the System

Those of you who are new to libertarianism or unfamiliar with the history of the libertarian movement may not be familiar with the name Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3). Although not the originator of counter-economics he was the first libertarian to express in detail how counter-economics, which he called agorism, could be used to topple the state. His strategy conflicted with that of another famous libertarian, Murray Rothbard. Instead of advocating counter-economics, Rothbard attempted to change the United States government by working within the political system through the Libertarian Party. Rothbard was a brilliant man when it came to economics and put forth a convincing ethics system built upon Austrian economics. With that said, I find it unfortunate that he was the one of the two to rise to prominence within libertarian circles. Konkin and Rothbard enjoyed, what I would call, a friendly rivalry. Rothbard would criticize Konkin and agorism and Konkin to rebut Rothbard and the political means.

I think history has demonstrated that Rothbard’s chosen tactic, the political means, failed miserably to establish a libertarian society. That being the fact most people new to the libertarian movement will be exposed to the political means and will only come across agorism if they’re fortunate enough to meet an anarchist in libertarian political circles or venture off of the beaten path to research the more radical side of libertarianism.

The two factions within the libertarian movement don’t always seen eye to eye. Libertarian working within the political system, who often refer to themselves as pragmatists, often vehemently oppose libertarians who use counter-economics as their means of fighting for liberty. During a debate Konkin explained the danger of libertarians who attempt to work their way through the system (the explanation starts at about the 11:50 mark):

And of course, the ultimate nightmare, which I’ve described in a few pamphlets for those of you who don’t remember it, the idea of a libertarian working his way through the system. Who arrests one of us counter economists, one of us people who go and break laws and things because we don’t believe in the government. And he takes us in front of a libertarian who works his way through the system as a judge and he takes us in front of a libertarian, you know he sentences us, and a libertarian working his way through the system as a bailiff, takes us to the jail where a libertarian working his way through the system as a turnkey. Holds us prisoner until eventually a libertarian working his way through the system as a court, or the prison priest, brings us up to the electric chair where a libertarian working his way through the system as a state technician is making sure it’s in good working order and a libertarian working his way through the system as a burly guard slaps us down on the chair and another libertarian working his way through the system as an executioner throws a switch and wipes out the one person who was, in fact, a libertarian not working his way through the system.

The danger of pragmatism rears its ugly head. A libertarian working through the system can be a frightening prospect because, as I explained in my post about the dangers of pragmatism, they often become willing to sacrifice their principles for political gain. This willingness to sacrifice principle can have a devastating effect on libertarians who choose to use counter-economics. By turning in agorists libertarians working through the system can gain favor from other statists, which they often believe will allow them to further their goal of advancing liberty.

My reason for poking fun at libertarians who work within the political system is because they can actually be a danger to us libertarians who work outside of the system (whereas us libertarians who work outside of the system are no danger to those working within the system). I wish Konkin was more popular than Rothbard because then, perhaps, a majority of new libertarians would participate in counter-economics instead of being sucked into the political machinery that has a habit of turning would-be libertarians into slightly less fascist statists.

Progressives Will Never Accomplish Their Expressed Goals Through Statism

Today’s political climate is so muddled with doublespeak and doublethink that it’s difficult to have any meaningful conversation. Consider the term progressive. The term indicates a forward movement for society that will hopefully mean a better future for everybody. People who identify themselves as progressives generally claim a desire to support the poor through government programs. They tend to advocate universal healthcare, a guaranteed living wage, welfare, and other programs supposedly aimed at ensuring everybody has the bare necessities of survival. In practice their goals tend to oppose one another.

One of the demographics often exploited by modern progressives is the homeless population. Progressives often claim that they want more government programs to help the homeless. Helping the homeless is a noble cause that I want to see society embrace. However, unlike progressives, I want to see voluntary methods used. Voluntary methods tend to avoid the hypocrisy that runs rampant in statist solutions. On the one hand progressives claim to want to support the homeless, on the other hand they support programs that make it difficult or impossible to help the homeless. There have been numerous instances where state officials used force to stop individuals from providing food to the homeless. Most of these instances were done under the guises of health safety. State officials claimed that there was no way to ensure the donated food met nutritional or safety standards. Instead of being allowed to partake in the generosity of giving individuals the homeless were forced to go hungry because some government thug in a city health department didn’t issue a stamp of approval.

Such an outcome in inevitable when medical costs are paid by the state. As I explained in my post about the state and its love of surveillance, the state has a vested interest in keeping its costs down. Programs that return little, no, or, worst of all, negative profit are either axed or retools to be more profitable. Military might, by allowing the state to expropriate from other states, and police, by allowing the state to expropriate locally, will always receive priority for funding. Healthcare, on the other hand, would normally cost the state money. In order to get around this issue states have done several things. First, most states that claim to offer universal healthcare also maintain an ever diminishing list of covered operations. Second, those states generally maintain a skeleton crew in the healthcare sector meaning the wait time for operations becomes great (and if you die the state doesn’t have to foot the bill for your operation). Third, and for this post most importantly, these states implement regulations aimed at reducing their healthcare costs. Any behavior that may incur healthcare costs by the state are made illegal. New York, being one of the most progressive cities in the United States, has continuously implemented prohibitions aimed at reducing the state’s healthcare costs. The most famous prohibition was the one placed on the sale of sugary drinks exceeding 16 ounces.

In addition to axing or retooling unprofitable programs the state also tries to shed itself of unprofitable population. A homeless individual, being without income and able to buy very little, is unprofitable for the state. They generally pay no income tax and very little, if any, sales or use taxes. Compounding the issue is their general lack of possessions. If you have a home, a bank account, or any other property you have value that the state can seize from you. Therefore you, in the eyes of the state, are profitable population. Just as a dairy farmer has an interest in maintaining the health of his dairy cattle the state has an interest in maintaining your health, so long as you’re not consuming so many of its available resources that you become unprofitable (in other words if you actually need a major medical operation the state would rather see you dead).

Here is where things come full circle. In the hopes of reducing healthcare costs the state ends up waging war against the homeless. In the state’s eyes donated food is a potential healthcare cost because it has set itself up to cover the healthcare costs of those who don’t have insurance or possession to seize. Homeless individuals don’t have insurance or possessions so the state is literally better off if the homeless are dead. Preventing the homeless of eating donated food reduces the state’s infinitesimal risk of caring for uninsured individuals who have nothing to steal. If homeless individuals end up starving to death the state has shed unprofitable population. In other words shutting down programs aimed at providing food for the homeless is a win-win for the state.

Herein lies the problem with progressives: their goals are mutually exclusive. By involving the state in healthcare progressives ensure that the state wages a war against the homeless. Voluntary methods of providing healthcare and helping the poor don’t suffer from such conflict of interests because the interests of the people involve is to help those in need. In other words those donating food to feed the homeless are doing so because they want to help feed the homeless. Since they’re not expropriating wealth they don’t suffer from helping those without wealth. I believe that most self-declared progressives mean well but their strategy ensures that their expressed goals will never be accomplished. Only through voluntary cooperation can people help one another. Once the voluntary component is removed costs will inevitably be faced by those who don’t want to face them. At that point the primary focus moves away from helping those in need to reducing costs.

3D Printed AK Magazine

Via The Firearm Blog I learned of some great news, Defense Distributed has successfully printed an AK magazine:

Since all but the most expensive 3D printers lack the ability to work with metal (that will change) you still have to supply a spring but the rest of the magazine can be printed. You can count this as yet another nail in the coffin of gun control. Advancements like this effectively render New York and Colorado’s recent magazine bans meaningless.

Head over to Defense Distributed’s website and download the plans.

The Need for Civil Disobedience

Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned has written up a post discussing what he believes is the best strategy to restore gun rights to the entirety of the United States. It’s an interesting read but I feel as though he left out a major point:

In nearly all other civil rights struggles in this country, it’s been a combination of Congress and the Courts acting to preserve liberties. The early Civil Rights Acts, authorized by Congress’ powers under the 14th Amendment, were intended to protect the rights of newly freed Blacks during Reconstruction. There have even been government agencies created for the protection of civil rights. Even today, under Congress’s enforcement powers found in the 15th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act provides for extensive federal oversight over state election matters and over state redistricting in states with a history of discriminatory behavior. There is ample precedent for Congressional involvement in the protection of civil liberties. I would propose that when the political environment improves for us, our focus ought to be on a comprehensive bill that restores Second Amendment rights to all Americans.

What precede those events? What has preceded every advancement cheered by civil liberty activists? Civil disobedience. The labor movement, civil rights movement, and gay rights movement all started off as massive acts of disobedience.

There is a reason all of those movements began as acts of civil disobedience, it’s the only effective strategy to gain or regain liberties under a state. As an entity that exists solely off of expropriated wealth, the state has a vested interest in increasing its power over the general population. Reducing the state’s power can only be achieved in one way, rendering it irrelevant. The state knows this, which is why civil disobedience has proven an effective strategy historically. Civil disobedience accomplishes two things: it allows the immediate exercise of desired liberties and it sows seeds of doubt in the minds of the general populace. One of those things directly leads to the other. By immediately exercising desired liberties it can be demonstrated that those liberties are not dangerous to the general populace. Fear is the state’s primary weapon and it uses it to gather popular support. During each of the above mentioned movements the state produced propaganda aimed at convincing the general populace that those movements were dangerous to society. When the propaganda was demonstrated to be false the general populace began supporting, or at least caring little one way or the other, about the movements.

It was upon that swing of popular opinion that the state realized it needed to begin damage control. Great swaths of the population no longer viewed the state’s power to regulate those liberties as legitimate and if the state didn’t perform damage control the population would soon begin to question the legitimacy of other state powers. What’s the best way to control such damage? Make people believe they control the state.

The only reason the state grants civil liberties is to convince the general population that they have some say in how the government works. When people began turning against the state’s implemented restrictions against blacks the state turned and passed legislation to undo its previous damage. By doing so the general populace became convinced that they controlled the actions of the state and the state way able to maintain its legitimacy.

If those of us in the gun rights community want to remove the state’s restrictions against gun ownership we need to start by performing acts of civil disobedience. The only way to win this fight is to demonstrate how ineffective the state’s power is. Until we have accomplished that no amount of begging, pleading, or petitioning is going to accomplish anything of value. Sure, we may gain an absolutely minor victory here or there but we’ll lose in the long run. The time for begging masters for scraps from the liberty table is over, if we want to feast on freedom we must ignore those masters, sit down at the table, and eat our fill.

Taxing Self-Defense

Do you want to protect yourself? If you live in Cook County you must now pay the state yet another fee in order to enjoy the privilege of self-defense:

Buying a gun in Cook County officially became more expensive this week.

A new $25 tax on every gun purchased in the county took effect Monday as part of County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s plan to pay for the violence she says crowds jails and drives up health care costs.

“Gun violence is a real problem for us,” Preckwinkle said when she proposed the tax in October. “It’s a problem for us in our criminal justice system and it’s a problem for us in our health care system, and I make no apologies for the proposal.”

When this tax was first proposed I pointed out that it had nothing to do with stopping violence. What this tax is aimed at is erecting another barrier between non-state individuals and the ability to defend themselves. Your life, in the eyes of the state, is less than worthless. The only way your life becomes worth anything to the state is to surrender a portion of your wealth to it. When you do that the state may be benevolent enough to allow you to preserve it but only so it can continue to extract wealth from you.

I do have some good news for those of you living in Cook County, there is an easy way to get around this tax. Instead of buying a firearm from a dealer in Cook County buy one on the “black” market. Buying on the “black” market allows you to avoid all of the hoops state-licensed dealers are forced to make you jump through and you can avoid buying a permission slip from the state to protect your life.

Asteroid Mining Rights

Popular Mechanics has posted an article asking who has the right to mine asteroids. Those of us in libertarian circles have been passing this article around as a joke. The article points out the fact that states generally maintain monopolies on mining rights and, in addition to those monopolies, implement numerous regulations on the mining industry. What the article appears to be asking is what laws will the lawyers create regarding asteroid mining:

But remember that open question. If you go get an asteroid and bring it back, is it yours? On Earth, of course, no one would open a mine without being sure they owned the land or at least the mineral rights. The same is true in space. But while mining law on Earth is pretty much settled, asteroid-mining law isn’t so clear yet.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents nations from making territorial claims beyond Earth: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means,” it states. But what is “national appropriation”? And what is a “celestial body”?

Those are the kinds of issues that lawyers grapple with. Space law used to be mainly an academic pursuit, but no longer—in fact, the American Bar Association just published a guidebook in the field. Most experts—including me—believe that a ban on “national appropriation” doesn’t prohibit private property rights. The Outer Space Treaty was designed to prevent the winner of the 1960s space race from claiming the moon for itself. The United States and the Soviet Union were each worried about what would happen if the other nation beat it there. They were thinking of missile bases and territorial disputes, not mines or lunar tourist resorts. The “celestial bodies” language was added by way of expansiveness, but the Outer Space Treaty doesn’t define the term, except to make it clear that the moon is one.

Who cares what the lawyers think? The question that should be asked is, who can stop non-state entities from mining asteroids? We must remember that the state accomplishes all of its goals through the use of force. When people are outside of a state’s ability to inflict violence on them they are free to act outside of its law. That is the reason people in the United States don’t comply with Saudi Arabia’s laws, the Saudi Arabian state is unable to inflict violence on those of us living in the United States. Therefore we must ask what kind of violence the states of Earth can wield against those in orbit. As it turns out there likely isn’t a lot of violence Earth-based states can inflict on spacefaring individuals. One need only look at the condition of each state’s space program to see how ineffective they are in space. No state, as far as we know, possesses armed spacecraft capable of inflicting its will off of Terra.

What good are state decrees if they cannot be enforced with violence? They’re pointless, just as every unenforceable law. In fact I would say the key to mining asteroids isn’t just getting to the asteroids but is also preventing the states of Earth from inflict their violence off of the planet’s surface. Even if miners aren’t capable of preventing Earth’s states from getting armed craft off of the planet there is still the fact that space is so vast that no entity can patrol even a fraction of it. Once you’ve escaped Earth the only thing you need to do to keep yourself outside of the state’s grasp is to run a little further than it. This fact renders the question of state regulations of asteroid mining irrelevant.

Frontiers have traditionally been refuges from state power. People fled to the American colonies to escape the British Crown’s prejudice. Eventually the American colonies severed their ties entirely with Britain and established their own government. People wanting to flee the United State’s authority began moving into the western frontier. History gives us a numerous examples of individuals fleeing state persecution in frontiers and we are now seeing the beginning of people fleeing Earth to escape the tyranny of its states.

Climbing the Political Ladder

It’s not secret that I’m not a fan of politicians, even politicians such as Rand Paul who are often considered advocates of liberty. Often when I mention my dislike of Rand I’m told by other liberty advocates that one must climb the liberty ladder one rung at a time. My question is always this: why should we climb the ladder? The only thing waiting for us at the top is the sad realization that we’ve spent so much time, money, and effort climbing the ladder that we didn’t have time to partake in things that really matter. If your goal lies at the top of the ladder then don’t waste time climbing up to get it. Instead knock the ladder over and bring your goal to you.

Colorado Falls

I don’t think anybody was surprised to hear that John Hickenlooper signed the asinine Colorado gun control bill:

The governor of Colorado signed bills Wednesday that put sweeping new restrictions on sales of firearms and ammunition in a state with a pioneer tradition of gun ownership and self-reliance.

The bills thrust Colorado into the national spotlight as a potential test of how far the country might be willing to go with new gun restrictions after the horror of mass killings at an Aurora movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.

The approval by Gov. John Hickenlooper came exactly eight months after dozens of people were shot at the theater, and the day after the executive director of the state Corrections Department was shot and killed at his home.

The bills require background checks for private and online gun sales and ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

I’ve read several blogs urging Colorado gun owners to start tooling up for the 2014 election. Don’t worry, I’m not going to waste your time urging you to beg politicians next year to restore some of your liberties. I do want to see denizens of Colorado tooling up, just not for politics. Once again I’m going to bring up what I’m calling Plan B, the decentralized production of verboten firearms and accessories. But there is something those of us living outside of Colorado can do for those suffering under that state’s regime, get verboten products into their hands. Magpul has been trying their best to flood the Colorado market with standard capacity magazines but their operation doesn’t have to stop just because they’re leaving the state. Those of us living outside of Colorado can still put standard capacity magazines into the hands of Colorado gun owners and we should.

Yes, I’m urging gun owners to break the law. Just because some dude wearing a suit and sitting behind a fancy desk in a large marble building says something is a law doesn’t mean it’s just. When the state makes an unjust decree it is right to actively disobey it. If you’re living in Colorado don’t waste your time begging politicians for freedom, even if they grant it to you you’ll face the threat of future politicians taking it away. Instead render their power irrelevant, let them know you will not obey them, let them know that the people no longer view their decrees as legitimate. The only way you’ll gain freedom is if you take it.