agora (1) – n. A place of congregation, especially an ancient Greek marketplace.
agora (2) – n. A market free of forceable regulation, taxation, and government
(The) Agora – The aggregate of all such markets of any size.
95 Theses
- Trade that is free, unregulated, untaxed, and unmonitored is the natural right of all human beings
- In a voluntary trade, both parties receive more than they give up, otherwise neither would trade.
- Nobody gets taken advantage of through mutually voluntary trade.
- Taxation forces people to pay for things that aren’t worth the cost
- Government regulation forces people to abstain from trades they would otherwise voluntarily make.
- Markets collect, organize, and distribute information more rapidly, accurately, fairly, and efficiently than any central authority could ever do, even with superior resources.
- Prices are information.
- Force distorts market information.
- Governments’ only means of action is force.
- Governments operate blindly because they only see information distorted by force. The more information they gather, the less clear their vision becomes.
- Aggression is a reaction to unpleasant or unwanted information. Its motto is “kill the messenger”.
- A market is smarter than any of it’s participants. A government is stupider than most of its participants.
- Governments require markets for their survival; markets thrive in the absence of government.
- The more efficient a government is, the more dangerous it is.
- Markets improve the material well-being of all people. Governments improve the material well-being of some people at the expense of other people.
- Markets are more powerful than governments.
- Human survival and well-being require free markets.
- Human survival and well-being require the absence of government.
- The best humanitarian aid that can be brought to impoverished people is to allow them access to the Agora, usually by removing their governments.
- Productivity is the application of intelligence to labor for creating something of value to someone.
- Labor is equivalent to value in the same way crude oil is equivalent to a vacation.
- The non-productive have always and will always try to live off the value created by the productive.
- The productive will by right decide how much, if any, to allow it.
- Charity is offered and received face-to-face, or it is no longer charity.
- Wealth is the natural and honorable reward from trading value for value.
- Wealth is a store of productivity, not a store of value.
- In the Agora, the wealthy have already given back far more than they received. That’s the only way to get rich in the Agora.
- Those who get rich outside the Agora could never give back all they have taken.
- Wealth has a short shelf-life, it dissipates when not used productively.
- Money laundering is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
- Price gouging is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
- Unfair competition is either not one, or not the other, or not in the Agora.
- Market price is an observation of history.
- Market price is related to value in the same way news photographs are related to current events.
- “Intrinsic value” is a lie told by parasites to try to steal from producers.
- Fiat currency is theft by fraud.
- Gold and silver are usually the bases for real money because they have properties that best serve that purpose.
- Paper is the basis for fiat currency because it has properties that best serve that purpose.
- Communication strengthens markets and undermines governments.
- Markets are the way communities stay organized when they are too large for face-to-face interaction.
- All resources are human. The term “human resources” is demeaning to the nature of both humans and resources.
- Resources are what raw materials become by the application of human intelligence and purpose.
- Resources are produced. Raw materials in the ground are not resources until they are brought to market.
- Competition is not the purpose of a market, it is one of its methods.
- Natural selection in the Agora is more Lamarckian than Darwinian.
- Natural selection in the Agora does not destroy resources, it reallocates them.
- Natural selection in the Agora does not kill people, it frees them to be more productive.
- “Dog eat dog” is a feature of governments, not of markets.
- Monopolies can only be created and sustained by governments.
- Freedom to fail is every bit as important as freedom to succeed.
- The Agora guarantees neither, and resists the perpetuation of both.
- Markets don’t have goals, values, or ambitions. Markets are a tool for human beings to pursue those things.
- “Market Failure” is an oxymoron. People sometimes fail to use markets properly.
- Innovation is an inherently Agorist activity, even when it happens outside the Agora.
- A primary goal of government is to restrain innovation.
- The owners of private property tend not to destroy it. Commons are routinely destroyed or exhaustively consumed.
- Agorist exploitation of the environment increases resources, and protects the environment. Government “protection” of the environment reduces resources, and harms the environment.
- No species is endangered when it is owned. The best way to keep a species from extinction is to allow it to be property in the Agora.
- “Public property” is an oxymoron, and privatization of profits is not privatization.
- Property is authority. It’s not a market without private property and private authority.
- Where there is private property authority, there is an agora..
- Private property let open to the public is not a commons.
- Shortages do not exist in the free market, government obfuscation of price information is the only way to acheive a general shortage.
- Being unable to buy something at the price you want to pay is not a shortage.
- Markets are, in part, a process of voluntary rationing.
- Corporations are evil only to the extent they rely on government power. Corporations with a monopoly are branches of government.
- Markets rely on trust. Markets rely on suspicion.
- Individuals in the Agora expect suspicion and earn trust. Governments demand trust, and earn suspicion.
- A government truly of the people, by the people, and for the people would have no powers whatsoever.
- If the measure of virtue for a society is how it treats the least among it, then the Agora is the most virtuous society ever known to man.
- Governments thrive on opposition, antagonism, provocation, confrontation, and defiance. What they cannot tolerate is to be ignored.
- The central idea behind the Agora, and one of the things it does best, is to ignore governments.
- The effectiveness of the Agora’s self-regulation is proportional to the extent to which external regulation is absent.
- The Agora cannot be managed, controlled, regulated, or destroyed. It can only be interfered with.
- Voting is nothing more than an expression of the voter’s preferred way to interfere with the Agora.
- The Agora is a network, and like all networks, it routes around damage.
- Government is damage.
- Public education is an oxymoron.
- One of government education’s primary functions is to instill fear of the Agora.
- The Agora is all around you. It’s nothing to be afraid of.
- The Agora is peaceful. Violence and war are results of failure to embrace the Agora.
- Guns are often required to deal with people who operate outside the Agora, because guns are the primary way people outside the Agora operate.
- The Agora does not require permission.
- Anyone with the power and inclination to grant the Agora permission is a threat to all honest men.
- Anyone offering the Agora permission will be ignored.
- The Agora ignores creed and color.
- When it comes to markets, black is beautiful.
- Wherever there are human beings, there is an agora. It may be hiding, but it is there.
- The Agora is a select community – the strict qualification for membership is to want it. Most people don’t.
- The Agora does not recognize borders or artificial boundaries. It is everywhere, and it is no where.
- The Agora welcomes you, but does not need you.
- You need the Agora. Even if you oppose it, you benefit from it.
- An Agorist movement is an oxymoron. Agorism is the natural state of humanity.
- Practicing agorism is the only way to achieve agorism. Isolated networks will eventually find each other.
- Governments are on notice the world over: your days are numbered.
NOTE: This has been modified slightly from the version posted at the Fr33 Agents social site. Details of the changes are in the comments there.
Kyle is 44 year old computer programmer and wannabe writer currently living in Tucson, AZ. He has been a libertarian for nearly half of his years, though the political expression of that has evolved from Newt Gingrich Republican to the Libertarian Party to market anarchy to 
So let’s get to work. And btw agorism *is* market anarchy.
George are you seeing something that implies otherwise? That would certainly be an error I’d want to root out.
You say you evolved from “market anarchy to agorism”.
Ahh, the profile. I think of agorism as a superset of market anarchy. So what I evolved from was a more basic MA, closer to straight up ancap, that did not include all of the agorist ideas such as counter-economics as a revolutionary means instead of just the ends.
Disagree in part. Market anarchism itself is a broader thing. Agorism is a theory of revolution toward attaining a market anarchist society.
If it’s not a school of market anarchist thought, then what school of thought does it fall under?
Market anarchist strategy, as opposed to a broader ideology — at least in my view. One could, for example, be a market anarchist who advocates a “via electing abolitionist politicians, until the last government employee turns out the lights” approach.
Put a different way, market anarchism is a theory of utopia. Agorism is a theory of revolution toward achieving that utopia.
IOW it’s part of market anarchism.
Part of market anarchism, yes, but not congruent with market anarchism. If we (perhaps narrowly) point to SEK3 as originator of the agorist “canon”, we see that he incorporated a great deal of the larger background of market anarchist theory set forth by Molinari, Rothbard, D. Friedman, the Tannehills, etc., often simply by reference. The unique contribution of agorism, in my mind, is in having produced a theory of “how to get there from here consistently”, a coherent theory of market anarchist revolution where such was previously lacking.
Mind you, we are changing definitions here as we evolve the thought. Kyle labels his manifesto “agorist” and includes a great number of observations which fall on both sides of the utopia/revolution line.
I’m not suggesting that my definition be adopted, though, just related how I define the term to myself — and to others
Jesus, guys. The political/economic philosophy underlying agorism is market anarchy. Agorism is a branch of market anarchy that includes specific theories on how to acheive it, while market anarchy in general encompasses a variety of means. “Agorism is market anarchy” is accurate in a general context, but there are enough minor differences to justify distinguishing them in some specific contexts.
Does that make you both happy?
I was already kinda happy, Kyle
I am ALWAYS happy.
LOL to the both of youse.
this sure made me happy (and I barely finished my first cup)….
[r]
I agree with Mike. Market Anarchism is the philosophy, Agorism is the strategy.
Gorgeous, beautiful in its simplicity. I want to make a work of art with the words, they’re so inspiring. I don’t have a damn thing to add or comment on, it’s so good (which makes me feel a little stupid – not your fault!)
This is a definite win!
Kyle, mind if I repost on thenewactivist.org?
Anywhere you like, Mike. Thanks.
That’s great Kyle. Thanks for putting all of those thoughts into words. There are only two I am having trouble with…
- Governments operate blindly because they only see information distorted by force. The more information they gather, the less clear their vision becomes.
If governments need the agora in order to exist at all, doesn’t the info (ie prices) it gathers from the agora clear its vision? Why does the government only see info distorted by force?
- Charity is offered and received face-to-face, or it is no longer charity.
Where are you coming from here? Maybe it is just wording, but I have given to causes through my computer that I think is charity…
Thanks for your help clarifying!
SimpleMan,
The Agora is the only way to produce the resources governments need, which is why governments need the Agora. But while the Agora produces “clean” information, it does not do so in the aggregate way that governments want in order to set policy. For instance, the price of butter at your corner store, in the Agora, pretty well reflects the state of the market as far as that storekeeper’s context and to the extent he can know it. But even within the Agora, data such as the nationwide aggregate market price for butter is not so easily available. Under Austrian economics, it’s not even a fully valid thing to be known.
When governments try to collect this data, they are generally doing so via some kind of force, whether it is reporting requirements or what have you, that distorts the information. But beyond that, the fact that their purpose is to use it to set policy, whether they are actually presently doing so or just threatening to do so, that fact becomes an input into people’s calculations and further distorts the information.
Sure, it’s theoretically possible to collect some of this info passively (aside from the question of its economic validity to begin with), but in practice, that does not happen, ever, when government is involved.
When I say charity is “face to face”, what I mean is that it is direct and individual. Doing so via a computer does not necessarily violate that. For instance, you could give money to “the homeless”, or you could give it to the actual homeless guy sitting in front of the mini-mart where you get your coffee every morning.
The less direct and individual you make your charity, the more removed your intent becomes from the actual outcome. Giving charity collectively is giving to an abstraction, not an actual person. You bring in intermediaries, not all of whom are honest, but even with the honest ones some of the value gets skimmed off for administration, etc. The more indirect one’s giving is, the more likely it is that that money (or whatever) will go to those who the giver would not otherwise deem deserving (by whatever standards you hold for such evaluations).
In today’s world, the biggest single intermediary of “charity” is government (welfare, social security, medical care, etc.), which means that very little of your “donations” go to where you would want it, and most of it probably goes to those who you would never want any of your money to go to.
That’s not to say there are not good reasons to give to some larger entity if you value their goals and works. But doing that is something different than charity. The term in common usage covers both cases, but there are really two subtly different concepts here. I included this to encourage direct giving when a person wants to give, and to be wary of intermediaries, and in particular government intermediaries. In many cases, the exchange does more for the intermediary than the intended recipient, and one thing Agorism is about is retaining your control not only of the possession of your resources, but the broader effects of how you use them. If the intermediary you are strengthening is working against your interests in other ways, you are undermining your Agorist goals.
Is number 67 correct? “Markets rely on trust. Markets rely on suspicion.” Shouldn’t it be “Markets rely on trust. Governments rely on suspicion.”?
Ayn, think in the sense of “trust but verify”. Participants in free markets, since they do not have a universal outside authority to pretend to keep them safe and orderly, must of necessity be suspicious of other participants initially, yet have to trust at some point in order to effect any trade at all. Because of this, participants realize that suspicion cannot mean the malicious kind, where it is assumed that everyone is out to screw everyone, but a recognition that trust has to be established and earned (see #68). Therefore markets create mechanisms and protocols for establishing trust that fit the needs of that particular market. The wording is correct, markets rely on both trust and suspicion, and have to find a way to balance them.
Governments rely on suspicion in the sense of suspicion (the malicious, paranoid kind) being a tactic they use to divide people and to gain more power over them, but that is not the sense I am using it in. #68 says that governments require you to trust *them*, without their having to earn it or even live up to it. This attitude, and the way they exercise their power, reduces people’s trust in it. They earn suspicion.
Beautifully done, Kyle!
Thank you!
Kyle, this is excellent. Since we’re both in the same town, I should buy you a drink sometime.
D, I added you over at ning, PM me there. You don’t have to buy me a drink, but I appreciate the thought. Thanks.