Tag: Agora! Anarchy! Action!

You Can’t Change The System From Within

Gods help me, we’re in an election year. That means every uneducated wanker in the country is spewing endless streams of bullshit and calling them facts. Worse yet, they want to use their bullshit to inflict their will upon everybody else through the political process. Even libertarians get caught up in this frenzy. And to make matters even worse (and it’s rather impressive that we can make it worse) libertarians involving themselves in the political process have a delusion even greater than most politicos because they believe they can actually destroy the State by becoming the State. The problem with that idea is that the State has contingencies built in to guard against such lofty people of principle:

Getting yourself into one of the branches of government is a process that you don’t just wake up one day and decide to do. Actually, you could wake up one day and decide to do it, but it has the same effect as deciding to be a banana. The process that you go through to get elected will destroy your anarchist/libertarian credibility (*cough*Rand*cough*). Even more if you are going to get appointed to your position. You will have to make promises (lie), fight politically (cheat) and get funded (steal) to get into that that office.

And once there?

Now you have promises to fulfill.

Now you have enemies to ward off.

Now you have debts to repay.

“But wait!” you say. “I am a principled anarchist/libertarian! I won’t play those political games! I won’t fulfill those promises (that would make government bigger). I won’t repay those debts (with government contracts) Now I’ve achieved my goal of bringing down the state from within! Now I’m going to launch my state-ending policy agenda! Muahahahaha!”

At least I have no cape1Good for you, Super Anarchist Politician (SAP). How are you planning to get your government limiting bills to the Floor for a vote? Might be that you need a co-sponsor or some other champion to help you out. Who have you got? The senior members from your State want nothing to do with you. In fact, nobody does after they found out you lied, cheated and stole your way to get in. And you didn’t even have the common courtesy to pay back your campaign contributors (tsk! tsk!). Do you really think anyone is going to jump on your bandwagon?

Getting into office requires mortgaging your soul. Once your in office getting anything done requires refinancing your soul. Ron Paul is living proof of this. He held office for quite some time and during that time the State didn’t shrink one iota. That’s because he mostly kept to his principles, which meant he was unable to broker deals with his fellow politicians. They wanted more power so they weren’t going to cooperate with a man who wanted less.

The article goes on to make other important points. If you believe the system can be changed, or even slowed down, from within then I recommend you read the entire article. But the conclusion explains the actual root of the problem:

The State exists and has power because people believe it does. People believe that the government should rule over them and society. People believe we need a group of rulers to keep us safe. People believe that voting grants special rights, powers and privileges to the elected that don’t exist for everyone else. People believe lies.

Democracies favor the majority and the majority believe in the State. The people themselves will push back against your attempts to free them because they want to be serfs. They believe their lord is the only thing that protects them from the barbarian hordes. By extent they believe anybody attempting to slay their lord is a barbarian trying to kill them.

What you can do is get together with other anarchists and try to create a community of likeminded (but not too likeminded) individuals. Much like the Christians under Roman persecution, anarchists need to keep as much of their business amongst each other as possible. By bolstering one another we can at least create a community of people we can rely on when the State inevitably collapses under the weight of everybody’s good intentions.

Those wanting to change the world for the better should focus on education. If the people you’re talking to decided what you’re selling sounds pretty good they’ll come into the community and help it thrive. Everybody else can continue living as they have been. It’s about as close to a win-win situation as we’ll likely get.

The Black Market Has You Covered

One of my favorite fairytales is the one about government regulations being able to restrict the proliferation of technology.

IMSI catchers are widely used by government law enforcers for surveillance. The devices, for those of you unfamiliar, act as cell towers and by so doing get local cell phones to connect to it instead of the legitimate cell towers. It’s a man in the middle attack that allows law enforcers to snoop any unencrypted data transmitted or received by a victim’s cell phone.

In the United States the use of such device by non-law enforcers is sternly frowned upon. With the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) restrictions on the civilian use of IMSI catchers you might be lead to think the devices are hard to acquire. Not so. There is one thing that always renders government restrictions on technology impotent: the black market:

Across a tinny Skype connection, a Hong Kong tech company is trying to sell us state surveillance equipment.

“I switched it on already,” says Edward Tian, holding up a backpack containing a box and wires. “This is the antenna. This is the battery […] Everything is this simple.”

It’s a $15,000 IMSI catcher operated via an Android app. Tian shows us the user interface in a grainy video. He hits a button on the app and information on a bunch of cellphones in the area trickles down the screen. He has their IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity, a unique identifier for their SIM card), IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity—the same for their device), and even full phone numbers.

Any perceived control over a technology is nothing more than an illusion.

But What About The Borders

Nationalism seems to be running strong in the veins of many pretend libertarians. I keep seeing people who call themselves libertarians arguing for stronger borders. Their argument usually goes something like, “In order to create a libertarian society we need a strong federal government to keep out the antilibertarians!”

Not surprisingly this attitude is more prevalent amongst politically active libertarians. There must be some kind of connection between the delusion that one can vote their way to libertarianism and believing giving the government more power will better enable voting their way to libertarianism.

But how can one create a libertarian society, that is to say a stateless society, by expanding the State’s power? I guess one could hope to expand the State’s power until it reaches that inevitable point of becoming so massive it collapses in on itself but that’s a pretty bloody road, especially for political libertarians. As a general rule the more totalitarian a state becomes the less tolerant of dissidents it becomes. Political opponents are usually the first against the wall since they made themselves very obvious to the State.

AgoraFest 2016

I’m happy to announced that AgoraFest will be happening for the fourth straight year in a row. It’ll be at the same place, Villa Maria, during the same weekend, September 22nd through the 25th.

For those of you who haven’t heard of AgoraFest (which, realistically, is probably a majority of you) it’s a small yearly festival for celebrating, discussing, and participating in agorism. I’ll post more about it as we get everything solidified. Suffice to say, I will be giving a few presentations on technology as it pertains to agorism.

An Agorist’s View On Closed Borders

Borders are a sticky issue within libertarian circles. A lot of libertarians favor tightly controlled borders. Hell, even well-respected anarcho-capitalist thinkers like Hans Hermann Hopped favor strongly controlled government borders. Any libertarian in support of controlled borders is, in my opinion, foolish. But what about the agorist view? Agorism is all about continually transitioning economic activity from the white to the black market. In the case of borders the white market consists of those preventing people from crossing government borders and the black market consists of smugglers helping people across those same borders. And black market actors have enjoyed a great deal of success in overcoming the white market.

Let’s look at a quintessential historical example of heavily secured borders: East Germany. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) erected the famous Berlin Wall in an effort to stop its people from accidentally exiting the utopia of communism. For reasons nobody quite understands there were people who were actually trying to leave. Seeing a market demand many enterprising entrepreneurs stepped up to the plate and created a black market for smuggling people out of the GDR. One of those smugglers was Rainer Schubert. Mr. Schubert operated his successful smuggling operation for three years before the Stasi finally caught him. According to the Glasgow Herald he smuggled more than 100 people across the heavily guarded border. And he wasn’t alone. It turns out that there was quite an enterprise in helping people cross the heavily secured border of the GDR.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the demand for black market operations for crossing fortified borders hasn’t diminished, but has merely shifted elsewhere. The example most Americans are probably familiar with are Central Americans crossing the Mexican border into the United States. Smugglers who bring people from Central America into the United States are commonly referred to as coyotes and they have setup quite a black market business for themselves.

Agorism is necessarily opposed to government control over imaginary lines. By attempting to prevent people from crossing its borders a government creates a white market. As a philosophy based on moving white market activity into the black market agorism supports the efforts of smugglers helping people get across those borders illegally. Such efforts end up moving a lot of white market activity into the black market. People crossing a border illegally are not paying governments for visas, passports, or other travel documents. Because they’re in the country illegally they’re not going to declare any income, which keeps money out of the hands of the revenuers. In addition to that, most of their work will likely be done “under the table” since they won’t want to risk leaving a paper trail that could get them arrested and/or deported so it’ll be paid for with cash (or some other form of exchange that is difficult for the government to surveil).

White Versus Black Markets

Agorism is built upon black markets. Most people think of black markets as seedy back alleyways where you’re just as likely to be shanked by a seller as you are to die from the drugs they peddle. Meanwhile white markets are thought of as well-lit shopping centers where everything is guaranteed to be safe by an army of government regulators. Truthfully the difference between white and black markets is the former is under the control of the State and the latter is not. Nowhere is this difference better illustrated than in Samuel Edward Konkin’s rebuttal to Rothbard’s criticism of agorism:

With the side-excursion over, we turn to Counter-Economics, admittedly the basis of agorism and the New Libertarian Strategy. Rothbard finds NLM neglecting the “white market”—yet there is one crucial point on which it is most definitely not neglected, here or in my other Counter-Economic writing. The agorist imperative is to transform the White into Black. Nothing could be clearer. To do so is to create a libertarian society. What else can a libertarian society mean in economic terms but removing market activity from the control of the State? Market activity not under control of the State is black market. Market activity under the control of the State is white market and we are against it.

To illustrate, slaves building pyramids are white market. Slaves who run away, deal on the side stones and tools they ripped off, and otherwise engage in non-slave activity are black market—and free to that extent. What should the libertarian view be toward white-market pyramid building? Or, if you think pyramids would not exist in a free society but aqueducts might, what should our new be toward aqueduct building on the white market vs. black-market water smuggling? New Libertarians urge the slaves to screw the aqueduct and go for their private buckets until such time as aqueducts can be built under voluntary arrangements. Would Rothbard suggest anything else? Gradual phasing out of aqueduct construction and hence gradual phasing out of slavery?

If anything the white market is the seedy back alleyway where government agents wait to beat you to death with baseball bats. Consider the businessman who complies with each of the State’s numerous fee generating regulations only to fail to properly file his taxes one year. Quickly he will find himself face to face with a revenuer who will make him an offer: pay the demanded tax money and you may be let off with a fine and/or some jail time otherwise the alternative is death. I’ve not heard of a single “illegal” Mexican laborer going to somebody’s home, kicking in their door, and threatening to murder them if they fail to reroof their house again after three years.

The situation quickly changes when you’re dealing with the black market though. You no longer have to company with a laundry list of regulations designed only to extract fees from your business. Since you receive no official income from black market dealings you don’t have to decide whether you are going to pay taxes or have your kneecaps broken with a man with a baseball bat and a vaguely Italian accent.

All white market activity is slave activity. Although on the surface the rules have changed with most nation states replacing chattel slavery with, what I like to call, bureaucratic slavery the outcome isn’t dissimilar. White market actors are enslaved. Like serfs from feudal times, white market actors today must pay a percentage of their gains to the State. If they fail to do so they will be kidnapped and forced to labor in a prison or outright killed if they resist. Oftentimes people will make a remark like “If you don’t like it, leave,” but even that option can be taken by the State if you fail to hand over its demanded share of your efforts.

Ultimately what separates the white market from a black market is in the latter everybody is free to transact when they want with who they want whereas the former everybody is required to transact with the State under penalty of death.

Obama Boosts The Agorist Gun Market

And so beings yet another period of standard capacity magazines becoming as rare as credibility in politicians. Obama has issued a series of arbitrary decrees that are likely to bolster the agorist gun market:

President Barack Obama directed federal agencies Monday to carry out a series of steps to reduce gun violence, including measures to restrict sales by unlicensed dealers — sometimes called the gun show loophole.

Regulators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will clarify that anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms must get a federal firearms dealers license and check the backgrounds of all buyers.

You have to appreciate a governmental system with so many checks and balances that one man can arbitrarily rewrite the rules. More importantly, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has become much stingier about who they will issue Federal Firearm Licenses (FFL) to. If you are somebody who sells a gun every couple of years it’s unlikely the ATF will issue you an FFL and therefore your act of selling is now criminal. Don’t let that get you down though, operating in the black market is far more rewarding than operating in the white market. Not only do you get to keep all of your money since you don’t have to declare the income but your customers don’t have to deal with the hassle of filling out a Form 4473 and submitting to an instant background check. Agorist gun deals and buyers win whenever additional burden is placed on commerce.

“The goal is keeping bad actors away from firearms,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

So these rules are going to keep guns out of the hands of police officers and other government agents?

ATF will also notify firearms dealers that they must file a report when guns from their inventory are lost or stolen, including those in transit. A White House statement said an average of 1,333 guns recovered from crime scenes in each of the past five years were traced back to dealers who never received them.

Another burden and another win for the agorist gun market. Who wants to make themselves a target by filling for an FFL when it carries ridiculous requirements such as constantly informing the government of the status of their inventory? It’s far better to not officially be in the business of selling guns so the ATF won’t decide to perform “random” inspections on their place of business because it suspects they haven’t been properly keeping the State informed about their inventory.

White House officials said the administration would seek funding from Congress to allow ATF to hire 200 new agents and investigators to enforce gun laws.

Excellent! There wasn’t enough agents arming Mexican drug cartels already. This should give the agency more staff so they can arm their cartel partners even faster.

There you have it, Obama is working hard to make the black market an attractive alternative to his white market. You have to appreciate a man who makes business for you at the expense of his own.

You Can’t Vote Your Way To Libertarianism

Are you a libertarian? Are you politically active? If you answered yes to both questions then I have a question for you: why? I came across a good article by Jason Farrell that addresses the contradiction of political libertarianism:

There’s a good reason libertarians remain at the ideological fringe: “Libertarian politics” is a contradiction in terms. Libertarianism is not a third party, like the Know-Nothings or the Whigs or a prescription of policy tweaks to make the government more efficient. It is a distinct value system that abhors political power itself, even if some of its adherents consider power a necessary evil.

Libertarians may disagree whether the state should be abolished or minimized, but the difference matters little to the average American: Both seem frighteningly outside his own experience. Even the most moderate libertarians will wax poetic about ending intellectual property or privatizing the welfare system. Moreover, virtually all voters are deeply invested in government services they have come to depend on, and libertarians have been unable to present hypothesized private-sector alternatives while the state forces dependence upon itself. Conceptually, libertarians are on a page that most people find bizarre.

Libertarianism is best understood as the latest in a long line of radical liberation ideologies, rooted in the principles of natural law and individualism, that have provided the intellectual basis for rebellion since the American Revolution. It is a reaction to the perpetual expansion of government power in the U.S. and its frequent abuses. But radicalism, by definition, is immoderate and cannot compromise its way to reforms. Rather than moving toward the “Overton window” of public opinion by moderating controversial views (as Rand Paul attempted), radicals must pull public opinion towards their own viewpoints. Rand’s straying from libertarian principles means that he likely has little unique appeal even for the tiny libertarian electorate his father created. David Boaz’s research shows that 70% of libertarian-leaning voters went with Mitt Romney over Gary Johnson in 2012, so we know even libertarians who believe in politics are willing to blunt their own sword.

Libertarianism is a radical ideology and therefore doesn’t enjoy popular support. Politics is a popularity contest. If your candidate doesn’t support the views of the majority of voters then they’re not going to get elected. And one need only look at some of the more popular presidential candidates to see what the majority supports.

The current frontrunner for the Republican Party is Donald Trump. Trump is a raging asshole. If it were up to him Muslims would probably be wearing armbands. Ben Caron, another popular Republican candidate, believes the pyramids were funny shaped grain silos.

On the other side of the field we have Bernie Sanders. Sanders spends most of his time bitching about economics, a field he demonstrably knows absolutely nothing about. He also supports dropping bombs on foreigners, which is something he shares with Hillary Clinton who is his primary competitor.

So the majority of voters want a candidate who will blow up foreigners, promise them free shit, or believes archeology is a made up science. They’re not interested in freedom. Quite the opposite in fact. They enjoy their comfortable slavery.

This is usually where some political libertarian tells me that victory can be achieved by slowly moving the political needle towards libertarianism. They will say Rand Paul isn’t perfect but he’s palatable to the masses. According to them his victory will show Americans that a tiny bit of freedom doesn’t hurt. This will supposedly make them receptive to a little more freedom when the next election rolls around. I’ve seen absolutely no proof of this. In fact my observations lead me to believe the opposite is true. The masses are always a crisis away from accepting more chains to wrap them in the false feeling of safety. Maybe the needle moves so slowly I can’t perceive it. If that’s the case I’ll be dead before any perceivable freedom is gained so what’s the point?

Politics is a lost cause for libertarianism just as it is for any radical philosophy. Instead you’re better off taking direct action to advance freedom:

Instead, libertarians might be more useful as single-issue activists and innovators. While U.S. politicians fail to shrink government, individualists like Erik Voorhees, Cody Wilson, Peter Thiel and the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto are using technology to forge a new path. Time will tell exactly where that leads. But Rand’s decline underlines the fact that libertarian ethics predicate disruption and revolution, not moderation and compromise. As such, it is unlikely to ever get big votes in American politics.

Cody Wilson and Satoshi Nakamoto accomplished more for freedom than Rand Paul ever will. Wilson showed the world how technological advancements will overcome restrictions against self-defense. Nakamoto gave the world a functioning alternative currency that is highly resistant to centralized control. Disarming citizens and controlling their money are two of the State’s biggest tools for dominating people.

Direct action, unlike politics, has the advantage of not needing popular support. Most people probably don’t support Wilson’s efforts to make firearms easy accessible or Nakamoto’s, probably inadvertent, contribution to empowering the underground economy. But the masses were powerless to stop either of them just as they were powerless to stop Dread Pirate Roberts from building and operating an online market for illicit substances. Even when the State managed to take him down nothing was really accomplished because alternatives sprang up like wildfire. The man that started the first major hidden service marketplace might have been taken down but the idea can’t be destroyed. Hell, the idea is only advancing. Now efforts are being made by projects such as OpenBazaar to create decentralized online marketplaces, which will be even more resilient to government interference.

Freedom is advancing but not because of libertarian politics. It’s advancing because people unwilling to accept their chains chose to rebel. If you’re willing to rebel you too can play an active role in advancing freedom. But if you’re only willing to beg the masses to see things your way you’re doomed to fail. The masses don’t want what you’re selling.

“Revolution” Versus Revolution

At times when I have little else to do I enjoy skimming some of the seedier subreddits. One of my favorite subreddits is the home of some of the whackiest socialist in the world, /r/socialism. There you will find the dregs of collectivism, “revolutionary” socialists, discussing such important topics as why it was totally justified to murder the sons of Nicholas II even though he had abdicated power to his brother, and not any of his children.

You probably noticed I used quotes around revolutionary. This is because there isn’t anything revolutionary about “revolutionary” socialists. All they want to do is get rid of the current bourgeois so they themselves can become the bourgeois. From a statist perspective this would qualify as a revolution because the idea of real radical change is entirely foreign to them. The only options they see is their state or another state. But to radicals there is nothing revolutionary about toppling one set of masters only to replace them with another set.

Radicals, being anti-political in nature, tend to find the definition of revolution used by sociologists, “A radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence,” most apt. A true revolution is one where the very shape of society changes.

Let’s consider the socialist revolution in Russia. At the time imperial power in Russia was waning. When a power vacuum opened up the bolsheviks were the only group that was poised to fill it. Under the auspices of brining revolutionary change to Russia, where the workers would enjoy power instead of the imperialists and capitalists, the bolsheviks used a union with other socialist groups, including anarchists, to solidify their power base. Once the bolsheviks eliminated every person they could credibly label a counter revolutionary threat they turned on their fellow socialist allies (after all, what is a revolution without a good purge). In the end the bolsheviks were the last group standing and Russia returned to what it had been previously: a nation of serfs brutally ruled by a handful of masters. All the tropes once assigned to the bourgeois; gulags, secret police, wealth being held by the State instead of the people, etc.; were present. The only “revolution” was in the efficiency of the brutality. And history has shown Russia’s case to be the norm, not the exception. When “revolutionary” socialists throw off the yoke of the bourgeois they merely become bourgeois themselves.

What would a real revolution look like? Since hierarchy and coercion are the norm today a revolution would be the opposite: a non-hierarchical and voluntary society. The challenge in creating revolution is that it requires revolutionary tactics. Relying on the statist tactic of war will only server to perpetuate statism, as “revolutionary” socialists have demonstrated time and again. A non-hierarchical, voluntary society can only be achieve through non-hierarchical, voluntary means. Agorism, for example (it is not the only example, merely the example I am most familiar with and believe will be most likely to succeed), is a truly revolutionary strategy to bring about a truly revolutionary world.

Agorim is itself anti-statist. In fact the entire idea is to separate one’s self from the State as much as possible. That means avoiding taxes by participating in underground commerce, preferring market currencies over government currencies, creating alternative methods for educating children, forming mutual aid organizations, and utilizing secure means of communications to thwart government surveillance.

A major emphasis of agorism is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is an attempt to empower the individual and in so doing eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, hierarchies. One area where I believe the labor movement has failed is in its focus on empowering collectives instead of individuals. When a collective has power the individual is at its mercy. Whether we call the collective a government or council is irrelevant. Whether the collective arrives at its decisions dictatorially or democratically is also irrelevant. So long as the collective is in a position to dictate the lives of individuals a hierarchy exists. Entrepreneurs, being in control of their means of attaining the necessities of life, are far less beholden to others then employees.

Agorims also strongly emphasizes voluntary interaction. When the coercive guns of the State are replaced with voluntary market action the ability for any individual or group of individuals to establish a hierarchy is diminished. Coercive powers such as taxation and arbitrary issuance of laws allow the State to get away with any number of horrible actions. But when people are truly free to interact with you or not it becomes in your best interest to be polite and honorable. If the State murders somebody everybody in society is required to continue paying taxes but in a free society nobody is required to continue interacting with a murdered (in fact many prohibitions against self-defense that are created by the State wouldn’t be in the picture so the chances of being a successful murderer would likely diminish as well).

That is a true revolution where the State is replaced entirely by a society that represents everything statism isn’t.

Fix Things, Make Money

Do you want to know a secret for making lots of money? Learn how to fix things! Seriously. Using this one weird trick you can actually save yourself a ton of cash in a short period of time.

As I noted yesterday, one of the hard drives in my server gave up the ghost. While I probably could have sent it into to Apple to have them charge me $300 to put a new drive in I opted to go the cheaper route and fix it myself. In fact that is always my strategy when something breaks and isn’t under warranty. This is why iFixit is one of my favorite companies.

In addition to creating excellent repair guides and selling a wide selection of tools, iFixit has been promoting the repair culture. Part of this promotion involves getting people over the mindset that they cannot fix things by posting articles about seemingly impossible or very difficult success stories.

But I promised a secret for making money, not saving it, and I should deliver. My fellow agorists are also looking for a way to make a few bucks under the table and knowing how to repair things is an easy way to do it. Compared to producing new products money gotten from repairing is easy to hide. Purchases of tools, spare parts, instruction manuals, schematics, and testing equipment can all be plausibly explained away as things you use to keeping your own equipment in running shape. In the case of personal electronics you don’t even need a place of business, you can either repair them in your home or your customer’s home. And when the job is finished there’s nothing left behind besides broken components that can be easily explained away.

Another benefit for an agorist repair business is it’s easy for an individual to beat their larger competitors. Consider the price Apple, Samsung, Dell, or any other electronics manufacturer charges to do a repair out of warranty. Can you honestly tell me you couldn’t beat their prices? Especially for repairs that involve little more than swapping a common component like a hard drive or RAM module. You can make a tidy profit and still beat their prices by a wide margin. This is why you see so many mobile phone screen repair businesses. The margins are still good when you’re undercutting the manufacturer and enough people drop phones to ensure a constant income flow.

Learn how to repair things. You’ll save yourself a lot of money and you can make a lot of hard to trace money with your knowledge.