Tag: Agora! Anarchy! Action!

Why Are You Begging Politicians for Freedom

Election season is fast approaching. As I type this people are currently gathered in Tampa, Florida to witness the crowning of the next Republican Party presidential candidate. Next week people will gather in Charlotte, North Carolina to witness the reaffirmation of Obama’s crowning at the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Americans all across the country will be demanding everybody vote for whichever presidential candidate they believe is the Chosen One.

If you listen to the political pundits and those involved in the political process this election will be the most important election of our lifetimes (even though it won’t be). Those backing the Republican Party will tell you about all the freedoms that will be taken from you if Obama wins the election. They will tell you that Obama, free of worry for another election (although during the next election they’ll tell you Obama plans to declare martial law an suspend elections), will now move forward with taking your guns and his socialist agenda. Meanwhile those backing the Democratic Party will tell you about all the freedoms that will be taken from you if Romney wins the election. They will warn you about the Republican Party’s war on women and how rights will be stripped form the American people in the name of God. People refusing to align with either major political party but still wanting to be involved in the political process will tell you to support whatever third-party they back because the two major parties are shit (which is true).

Here’s my question, why are you begging the state for your rights? You are born free, you don’t need permission to be free.

Some people reading this post may be confused about what I’m saying. They may be wondering why I’m saying those involved in the political process are begging for rights. My statement does a question: is the political process a form of begging? I’m here to tell you it is.

Let us first consider what the political process entails. In the United States we elect individuals to represent us at our local, state, and federal governments. The idea is that you send the people who best represent your values to fight for your political agenda. If you want to end the wars you try to elect a representative that is anti-war. If you want less gun control you try to elect a representative that is an advocate of gun rights. If you want to legalize abortions you try to elect a representative that is an advocate of women’s right to choose. What do all of these political issues have in common? If you accept decisions made through the political process all of the mentioned issues are areas where you believe the state has authority.

Let’s consider the topic of abortion for a moment. Proponents of legalizing abortion will generally gravitate to the Democratic Party while opponents of legalizing abortion will generally gravitate towards the Republican Party. Proponents will claim that having the option of legal abortions is a right whereas opponents will claim that abortions are an initiation of force against a fetus. Both sides are begging the state to make a decision regarding abortion. Does the state have a right to make a decision regarding abortion? If you accept the state’s decision, no matter what that decision is, you are answering in the affirmative. Proponents that get enraged when the state decides to prohibit abortions and react by campaigning for different representatives are saying they accept the fact that the state has authority over abortion, they disagree with the state’s decision, and they beg the state to change its mind. Why beg? Why not ignore the state? If the state rules abortions to be illegal and you believe they should be legal why not help those wanting abortions to get abortions? Why not get doctors on board who will perform abortions in secret? Why not help those wanting abortions to fly to a country where abortions are legal? Why accept the state’s decision when you can spit in its face and tell it to sod off?

Agorism is a fancy term for living free. I’m an agorist because I don’t recognize the state’s authority over my life. Begging for permission to live free is no longer in my deck the cards. Are you involved in the political process? If so, why? Do you accept the state’s decisions? If not, why give your time and money to the state through the political process? Why not put all that time and money into things you enjoy? Why not live free?

Yesterday Demonstrated Why Nothing Will be Achieved Using the Political Means

Yesterday, the Republican National Convention (RNC) demonstrated why nothing will every be achieved using the political means. Big wigs in the Republican Party finally demonstrated the extent they’re willing to go in order to keep out influence from “unpure” sources. Everything came apart when the rules were unanimously passed, and by unanimously I mean not at all unanimously. The rules, which prevented the entire Maine delegation from voting among changing other things to the establishment’s favor, was performed by a voice vote. I was listening to the convention via C-SPAN (yes, I have the C-SPAN app on my phone for these extremely entertaining events) and there was no way one could tell whether the yays or nays were in the majority but the Chairman declared the yays victorious and ignored all calls for division.

Slamming through rules in such a manner is made easier when you are able to keep a large portion of your opposition away from the convention. According to an e-mail sent out by the Ron Paul campaign, the entire Virginia delegation, which was planning to make a move against the new rules, was delayed when their bus was “lost”:

Morton Blackwell, a longtime conservative activist and RNC Rules Committee expert, found himself indefinitely detained – along with the rest of the Virginia delegation.

The RNC’s bus driver responsible for transporting delegates somehow “got lost” for well over an hour until a critical Rules Committee meeting adjourned.

Blackwell and the Virginia delegation were heading up the efforts to defeat new RNC rules proposed by Washington, D.C.-based insider attorneys.

This news was also reported elsewhere.

Calling it a nominating convention would be inaccurate, it was really a crowning of an already chosen king. As I noted previously, Ron Paul wasn’t allowed to speak at the convention because he was unwilling to endorse Romney (probably because Paul was running for the nomination himself). It seems nobody from Paul’s camp was allowed to speak because every speech was basically a talk about how great the Republican Party’s messiah, Romney, is. I think the terms religious experience and circle jerk would be fitting descriptions.

Needless to say the RNC went exactly as I expected. Rules were ignored, dissidence was crushed, and Romney was crowned emperor. Some lessons can only be learned the hard way, and yesterday’s crowning of Romney was one of those lessons. The lesson was simple: nothing can be changed through political means and if one does want to achieve change they must work through other means. Politics is made up primarily of sociopaths who want to hold power over their fellow man. These people are willing to go to any extent to obtain and hold onto that power. Thinking you can play fairly against them is naive.

It’s painful to see friends learn lessons the hard way but I think better things are in store now that the pain is over. Instead of wasting time campaigning for sociopaths, instead of donating absurd amounts of money to people who merely want to rule you, it’s time to ignore the state and use economics to achieve change. Start living free today, join the agorist “revolution.”

Supposed Savior of Liberty, Kurt Bills, Endorses Mitt Romney

I’m not sure how well-known Kurt Bills is outside of Minnesota but here the man’s name is a vernacular in the liberty movement. Ron Paul himself endorsed Kurt Bills so it was believed by many that Bills would be the next savior of liberty. His campaign was based on the fact he was an economics teacher and he garnered some fame within the liberty movement for using Ron Paul’s book End the Fed (of course nobody knows to what extent the book was used). Many of my friends donated a great deal of time and money to Bill’s campaign and often tried to get me involved.

I never involved myself with Bills’s campaign because the man never sat right with me (and I had to maintain my sweet anarchist street creds). My politician detector is very finely tuned and even though many of my friends said I had to support Bills because he was a true proponent of liberty I had a feeling that he was merely another player of the political game. What likely set my detector off was is willingness to let people believe he was a proponent of Austrian economics but his unwillingness to actually say he was publicly. A handful of my friends claimed that Bills called himself a proponent of Austrian economics behind closed doors but that was entirely hearsay. As it turns out my politician detector is still property calibrated because Kurt Bills, the supposed savior of the liberty movement, the man of unwavering principles, the one person who will deliver us from the darkness of statism… has endorsed Mitt Romney:

State Rep. Kurt Bills, who won the Republican Party’s endorsement for U.S. Senate, switched his presidential support Thursday from Ron Paul to Mitt Romney.

[…]

Bills said in a statement that Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, “alone have the ability to beat Barack Obama in November and help America rediscover its conservative principles.”

I’m going to assume Bills was just playing politics when he said Romney is the best chance America has to “rediscover its conservative principles.” If Bills honestly believes that then he’s not only a fool but completely ignorant of Romney’s voting record and I would have to believe he was entirely stupid. As with Rand Paul’s betrayal of the liberty movement, Bills betrayal is being justified by those who don’t want to face reality. They’re claiming this was a necessary political move for Bills and once Bills is elected he’ll toss off the neoconservative facade and turn into a true libertarian. Sadly that won’t be the case. By endorsing Romney, Bills has demonstrated a willingness to ignore principle for political gain. Once somebody is willing to do that you cannot trust them. If he’s willing to endorse Mitt Romney, before the man even has the nomination, what else will he be willing to do once in office? Will he bend on the Federal Reserve issue to make a small gain elsewhere? Probably. Will he sign off on a piece of statist legislation to make another small gain? It’s likely.

I feel bad for my friends still working within the political machinery. First Rand Paul betrayed them then Kurt Bills. If any of you are reading this and aren’t already furious because of my disbelief in Bills secretly being a libertarian let me inform you that there are other options. You don’t have to sully yourselves by working within dangerous political machinery. Step out of the soul crushing political world and come to the wonderful world of agorism. Through counter-economics we can fight the state without having to work with the state. Instead of betraying your principles in the hope that your masters will give you a few table scraps of liberty you can actively take your liberty back. All of it. No compromising, no begging, and no underhanded deals with sociopaths are who merely using you to secure their chance to rule.

Break the Law, Help Another in Need Today

Jay over at MArooned shows us yet again that the reason people don’t help one another today isn’t because they’re selfish, it’s because doing so brings the violence of the state upon them:

A Pennsylvania woman who offers free lunch every day to low-income children in her neighborhood faces a $600-a-day fine next summer if she continues because she did not clear the food giveaway with township officials.

[…]

Chester Township, which has a per capita income of $19,000 a year, says Prattis lives in a residential zone, hence handing out food to children is not allowed. The township says she needs to go before a zoning board to ask for a variance, which would cost her up to $1,000 in administrative fees.

If you want to help your neighbor it’s going to cost you… unless you do it under the table. Break the law, help your neighbors through the wonderful world of agorism!

Markets Cannot be Suppressed

No matter how tyrannical the state gets, no matter what controls they put into place, they cannot suppress the market. What if you want to order something anonymously? In this day and age that can be very difficult because ordering items online generally requires a credit card that is tied to an account with your name attached to it. To get around this the denizens of the Internet decided to combine Tor and Bitcoin to create The Silk Road.

For those who haven’t heard of The Silk Road it’s a Tor hidden service where people can buy and sell anything (except weapons, they allow the sale of drugs but for some reason draw the line at weapons). Being a Tor hidden service it can only be accessed through the Tor network. If you download the Tor browser bundle you will be able to gain access to The Silk Road by going to http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/ (if you don’t have Tor running that address will lead you nowhere). Once you’re there you can buy anything from homemade cookies to drugs, so long as you have the Bitcoins.

Needless to say unhindered trade is big business. The Silk Road netted an estimated $22 million in annual sales:

In the year since Senator Joe Manchin called for the “audacious” drug-selling website Silk Road to be “shut down immediately,” the world’s most high-profile underground pharmacy hasn’t just survived. With $22 million in annual sales and around double the commission for the site’s owners compared with just six months ago, its black market business is booming.

In a research paper (PDF here) released earlier this month, Carnegie Mellon computer security professor Nicolas Christin has taken a crack at measuring the sales activity on Silk Road’s underground online marketplace, which runs as a “hidden service” on the Tor network and uses tough-to-trace digital Bitcoins as currency, two measures that have helped to obscure its sellers, buyers and operators from law enforcement.

When the state attempts to make the trade of a good or service illegal they don’t make it go away, they just make it go underground. Prohibitions are pointless, an exercise in futility.

Why You Should Quit Politics

Longtime readers of my blog know that I slowly became more and more disenfranchised with politics. At one point I believed, naively, that the political system could be reformed and that liberty could be reclaimed if we could just get the right people into office. I’m over that now, I realized the achieving liberty by begging our oppressors won’t gain us liberty. This is why I’ve ducked out of politics and am focusing on economic solutions and I’m not the only one:

The whole prospect compelled me to re-examine the efficacy of the political process as a means to liberty, and I’m beginning to think that this state sanctioned mechanism for change may not actually be the most appropriate means for our desired end. Perhaps it’s time to rethink all this- to demote on our priority list the stopgap measures of the political process and to begin fervently pouring our talents, energies and monies into a ‘targeted capitalism’, if you will. Liberty lovers everywhere intentionally targeting state-monopolized resources and disintegrating those monopolies through the capitalist process. These means are by nature decentralizing and can be pursued while completely disregarding the will of power. Enough of this pleading with our oppressors not to oppress us so much! Let’s stop being depressed victims of the state and instead start imagining all the endless opportunities its incompetencies create! In the process, we can be around people we like, create wealth by offering real value for the masses, live adventurously, with a clean conscience, and most importantly, live free.

In order to remove the state’s interference from our lives we must make the state irrelevant. So long as they maintain monopolies on needed resources people will continue to falsely believe that those resources wouldn’t be available without the state. How many times have you heard the argument that the state is necessary to build and maintain roads, provide welfare to the poor, and ensure we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink? Those of us that argue markets can provide all of those things are often doubted. Market skeptics don’t consider the fact that the state prevents such goods from being provided on a free market, they just know that those goods aren’t currently being provided by a free market.

If we want liberty we must step up to the plate and begin challenging the state’s monopolies. We must demonstrate that the state isn’t required to provide goods and services. Once the state has proven to be irrelevant individuals may finally start questioning why they’re paying great deals of wealth to it.

The history of the United States has demonstrated one thing: the political process isn’t an effective means of achieving liberty. In the 236 years this country has been in existence we’ve seen the state grab more and more power. The Articles of Confederation were quickly replaced by the Constitution, which granted the federal government the power to tax. When states tried to leave the United States they were forced back into the Union by a Civil War. In the name of fighting communism more and more spying powers were granted to the federal government. Now we face an almost all-powerful state that claims control over all social and economic issues. It cements its power by preventing others from providing wanted services or helping one another. The state claims it’s necessary to help the poor, sick, and hungry and then prevents others from helping the poor, sick, and hungry. It validates itself by preventing others from doing what it does. Time has come to say “Enough is enough!” We need to start challenging the state’s monopolies, we need to demonstrate that individuals are capable of helping one another. Honestly, we all need to start businesses (not state sanctioned businesses, just businesses).

Schumer is Sending All the Wrong Signals

I’m sure you’ve heard that Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced an amendment to the Cyber Security bill that would prohibit the manufacture and transfer of magazines with more than 10 rounds of capacity:

Democratic senators have offered an amendment to the cybersecurity bill that would limit the purchase of high capacity gun magazines for some consumers.

Shortly after the Cybersecurity Act gained Senate approval to proceed to filing proposed amendments and a vote next week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a sponsor of the gun control amendment, came to the floor to defend the idea of implementing some “reasonable” gun control measures.

Needless to say it’s sponsored by all the usual suspects:

The amendment was sponsored by Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Schumer and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).

Of course this amendment makes little sense. It’s being introduced as a method to protect individuals by restricting the maximum number of rounds a criminal can have in their firearm but the Aurora, Colorado shooter’s 100-round AR-15 magazined jammed. Considering that fact wouldn’t the proper response to the Colorado shooting be to encourage people to buy ridiculously high capacity and notoriously unreliable magazines?

I know many gun bloggers are going to tell you to contact your “representatives” and demand that they oppose this amendment. That’s good and all but I think we should have a backup plan, let’s figure out how to easily manufacture reliable standard capacity magazines. Obviously this is the agorist in me speaking but I think it’s time we started ignoring these idiotic prohibitions. If we can manufacture registered parts of AR-15s on a 3D printer producing magazines shouldn’t be too difficult. Attempting to ban something that every yahoo with basic metalworking equipment can produce in a few minutes is impossible and it sends a signal to the state, we’re done complying with your stupid rules, regulations, and prohibitions. To quote Howard Zinn, “Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority.”

The Most Frightening People

I’ve been reading through R. J. Rummel’s Death by Government, which is honestly the best argument against the state ever written. A common theme runs through the book, the most dangerous individuals are those who are so sure of their ideology that they’re willing to kill others in its name.

The Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Nazi Germany (among many others) shared a common trait, any dissidence was punished severely. One of the examples noted in the book is the fact that an individual could find himself in a forced labor camp for disrespecting Mao’s Little Red Book. That book was treated like a religious text, which is funny in a rather twisted way because Communism claims to be an atheistic philosophy (which isn’t true, they merely replace the god(s) of religion with the god of the state). Mao was so sure of his ideology that merely disrespecting the book he wrote was a punishable offense.

Statism is frightening because it gives these people a platform from which to inflict their beliefs on others. Let’s look at the healthcare debate (no, I’m not claiming that debate is anywhere near the scale of the atrocities inflicted on the people of the above mentioned countries so don’t bother making such a claim). Proponents of the Affordable Healthcare Act and universal healthcare are absolutely sure that their solution is the correct one. They’re so sure of their belief that they’re willing to use the state’s gun to inflict it on the entire population of the United States. Just look at the consequences laid out in the Affordable Healthcare Act for those who don’t buy health insurances, they’re taxed (or fined, use whatever word you want as they all mean the same thing). As with any tax, the tax collected for not buying health insurance isn’t voluntary, not paying it will result is punishment (in all likelihood the state will steal actual assets from you).

Gun control is another example of an ideological belief whose proponents are so sure of that they’re willing to use physical force to make others comply. When somebody advocates for gun control what they’re really demanding is the state inflicting punishments on anybody who owns or manufactures a firearm. Once again the gun control advocates are demanding the deceptively named assault weapon ban be reinstated. What would that actually do? It would mean the state would punish, primarily through kidnapping and imprisonment, anybody in possession of a firearm that met the criteria set forth by the state to qualify as an assault weapon. Those who refused to comply with their kidnappers would find themselves at the receiving end of physical force; they may even find themselves shot dead by the state’s agents. According to the ideology of gun control I should be subjected to violence for merely owning an AR-15 even though I’ve never used it to commit an act of violence.

Individuals wanting to prohibit same sex marriages are also so sure of their ideology that they’re willing to use physical force to inflict it on others. The United States government grants married individuals benefits that single individuals do not get. What happens when two men or two women claim themselves to be married and file for taxes and benefits accordingly? In the case of taxes they’ll find themselves at the wrong end of an Internal Revenue Service (revenuers) audit and forced collection. In the case of other benefits they will likely find themselves facing charges of fraud. Both cases result in the state’s gun being pointed at the individuals.

What happened in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Nazi Germany was the epitome of statism. All three states claimed total dominion over the lives of those living within their borders and all three states were willing to inflict physical violence on dissidents. When somebody demands the state regulate the healthcare market, prohibit individuals from owning firearms, or ban same sex marriages they’re demanding the state claim more power and, as Death by Government demonstrates, the more power a state has the more people it will kill.

My opposition of the state stems from my fear of individuals who are so sure of their ideology that they’re willing to kill for them. The state not only gives these individuals a weapon to use but also masks them so that they can use the weapon anonymously and thus avoid repercussions. Nothing is as dangerous as a man on a crusade who has been availed of any consequences.

Why Opponents of Capitalism Should Oppose Publicly Funded Healthcare

One of my friends who I would describe as Marxist made a post on Facebook exclaiming that yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling was a good step but the endgame is a publicly funded single-payer healthcare system. I found it strange that an opponent of capitalism would advocate for a publicly funded healthcare system.

Let’s consider for a moment one of the most often brought up criticisms of capitalism by Marxists. According to Marxism the laborer/capitalist relationship is exploitative. The capitalist is said to exploit the laborer by taking a portion of the laborer’s productive capacity, which is kept by the capitalist as profit. Under this criteria a publicly funded healthcare option must also be seen as exploitative. Instead of the capitalist taking a portion of the laborer’s productive capacity the state is. The only effective difference, under Marxism, between the capitalist/laborer relationship and the state/laborer relationship would be who is performing the exploitation.

This is one of those inconsistencies in Marxism that is usually overlooked by its advocates. Somehow a capitalist that takes a potion of a person’s productive capability is an exploiter while a state that takes a portion of a person’s productive capability is benevolent. I never understood this belief and no Marxist has ever been able to adequately explain it to me. Of course not all communists follow such absurdities, on the topic of healthcare I turn to an anarcho-communist (the only kind of communist I respect, even though I disagree with them) named Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin wrote Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution where he correctly observed the generally cooperative nature of animal life, specifically humans. He concluded that humans beings are cooperative and that cooperation among a species is necessary for survival.

History demonstrates Kropotkin’s point as the voluntary solution reached by humans to help those in need was mutual aid. There was never a need for the state to enter the healthcare market and in fact their entering the market is what caused it to be the mess it is today. Before the state there were mutual aid societies that individuals voluntarily joined to pool their resources for the good of the membership. New members who were down on their luck were accepted into these societies without demands for payment as it was understood the members would begin paying once they got back on their feet.

Any state controlled healthcare system is exploitative because the relationship between the state and laborer, unlike the relationship between a capitalist and laborers, isn’t voluntary. If an individual fails to pay into a state controlled system they find themselves the victim of kidnapping or even violence if they should choose to resist. I’m not sure how a person who believes capitalism to be an exploitative system can support a publicly funded system of any sort.