We lovers of Liberty are not alone — We The People. And so I am thankful that we have forums like FR33 Agents. We have blogs, we have Twitter, Facebook, Wave, torrents, and host of other media outlets with new outlets arriving all the time.

In fact it is through social networking, notably FR33 Agents, that I have seen just how large We The People really are. Jim Davidson pointed out that the number of people voting is eyebrow-raising close to the number of income tax forms filed. Others post links to articles showing how large the “unofficial marketplace” (or “shadow economy” or whatever) has grown in recent years.

We are not alone. Even if they don’t all call themselves libertarians or anarchists … if they are not voting, not paying taxes, and doing business within the alternative economy, they share a common enemy with us. Our enemy: the State.

It is easy to be discouraged. Violent. Angry. Despondent. … and then dependent. But then, this is what the political class wants of the private class. They want us to be soaked in negativity. Fear, war, sickness, mistrust of each other.

We battle that with trust, discussion, charity, and love. And today, we have many tools with which to do that.

What does the political class have? To start they have a dependence on negative emotion — so they are at a disadvantage already, both philosophically and spiritually. They also have a slow, bloated, and expensive apparatus called the State. Thus, the time has come for the New Great Experiment.

The following was originally published through AC on Dec 23, 2009. I wanted to share it here, especially after seeing so many others expressing similar hopes for the near future. Here’s to Liberty within our lifetime! Here’s to a new and much needed great political experiment.

Replacing the State with the Market

Almost a decade ago, some politicians lamented that while America was at war, Americans themselves were at the mall. There’s some truth to that, to be sure. I think a more accurate way to put it might be: while the Political Class is declaring war on everything from vaguely-defined terrorists, to a free-market … American private citizens are trying to peacefully live out their lives. It is my observation that what we have in the West generally, and in American culture specifically, are the makings of widespread American Agorism: a free people who have faith in the Market, and not in the State.

The American Democracy is on the way out. Not by violence, but by revolutionary and peaceful lack of participation. People are unplugging, so-to-speak, from the system. We Americans have a massive and widespread loss of faith in the politicians living in Versailles D.C.; while we do still have faith in the voluntary marketplace. This, despite the politician’s attempts to discredit free-market Capitalism. Let’s be honest about it, the average American will trust her hair stylist more than a politician any day of the week. The average American will trust a banker with his retirement account before any fool in Washington.

The entire Political Class has done a great job at only one thing: reminding We The People why our Founding Fathers staged a revolution against government in the first place. From taxing and spending, to gun control, to abortion, and everything in between, the entire Political Class has been unified in their hypocrisy, their elitism, and their willingness to employ violence and coercion to remain in power.

They are the plundering class, and we are the plundered. This fact was true in the days of our Founding Fathers, and it is true in our time. Our culture was built on suspicion of power, and a general contempt of the ruling class. Think about this: even those who call politics a “necessary evil’ are still acknowledging that it is, in fact, inherently evil. Our culture was built on revolution. As the American anarchist writer and speaker Voltairine de Cleyre pointed out in 1932, while criticizing the government school system:

To the average American of today, the Revolution means the series of battles fought by the patriot army with the armies of England. The millions of school children who attend our public schools are taught to draw maps of the siege of Boston and the siege of Yorktown, to know the general plan of the several campaigns, to quote the number of prisoners of war surrendered with Burgoyne; they are required to remember the date when Washington crossed the Delaware on the ice; they are told to “Remember Paoli,” to repeat “Molly Stark’s a widow,” to call General Wayne “Mad Anthony Wayne,” and to execrate Benedict Arnold; they know that the Declaration of Independence was signed on the Fourth of July, 1776, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783; and then they think they have learned the Revolution–blessed be George Washington! They have no idea why it should have been called a “revolution” instead of the “English War,” or any similar title: it’s the name of it, that’s all. And name-worship, both in child and man, has acquired such mastery of them, that the name “American Revolution” is held sacred, though it means to them nothing more than successful force, while the name “Revolution” applied to a further possibility, is a spectre detested and abhorred. In neither case have they any idea of the content of the word, save that of armed force.

Over 200 years ago, the Great Experiment successfully threw aside monarchy, and moved into modern party politics (aka “partyarchy”). The Great Experiment was indeed great because it allowed the evolution of Western society, tossing aside class restraints, shunning the possibility that a State would favor one religion over another, and scoffed at a centrally managed economy.

The Great Experiment also created a land free of government guarantees. In fact, people came here to escape the European lands of government guarantees against poverty to come to a the land where no such guarantees existed. We had no government trying to convince people of some “right” to education, medicine, food, clothing, or anything else. Yet this became the land of plenty. Why? Because unlike many other places around the globe, people here have been free to accumulate wealth … right up until the income tax earlier last century.

Why do we need the Federal Government?

What if you learned that about half of the American population doesn’t see a need to participate with the Federal State? Imagine that, at best, turnout for a vote in a major presidential election is about 50%. Consider that, at best, the number of people even bothering to fill out a Federal Tax Return is also about 50%. This means that half of the eligible population in the United States couldn’t care less about our so-called “civic duties” of income taxes and voting.

But this is exactly what is happening today in the United States. In 2004, one of the biggest turnouts for a major election, saw 122,294,978 eligible citizens bother to cast a vote. That’s a 55.3% turnout. 132.4 million individual tax returns were filed. It’s impossible to know exactly how many people are ignoring the income tax system; some people may file more than one, while some people file jointly. But we do know that 132 million is a very small number!

The 2004 tax year was followed by a bit of alarm. The Tax Foundation issued a warning that “the number of people living outside of the tax system is growing.” Why is this dangerous to the Federal Government? For the same reason that it was deadly to the Soviet State to have a continuous economic shift from the White (State-managed) Market into the Black Market. The more people traded for blue jeans, tractor repairs, food and clothing, and etc, on the Black Market, the more the Soviet State lost control over the people. Eventually the oppressive State lost all legitimacy and power, and it was peacefully eliminated.

In other words, this is not dangerous to the Private Class; only to the Political Class. And expect more of this. Already 2008 and 2009 saw more and more people vowing to deliberately report less earnings in an effort to move themselves into lower tax brackets, or to not file taxes at all. I saw people waving signs referencing Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, announcing “I Am John Galt!” for the first time in my life in late 2008, and I saw even more in 2009 — both in the news, and with my own eyes. Reports have been in the economic news of more of the U.S. economy moving to the Black Market this year, as well.

A recent column on the growing Black Market economy in the U.S., Richard Rahn of The Cato Institute writes:

The evidence is unambiguous; governments cannot increase tax compliance and decrease the size of the underground economy by ever increasing and more onerous regulations. It is no accident that those governments that allow their citizens a high degree of personal and financial liberty, including financial privacy, and spend taxpayer dollars wisely, honestly and competently, have much smaller underground sectors than corrupt and oppressive governments. Washington, take note.

For the record, I do not believe that the ruling class in Versailles D.C. will take note. That’s an entire class of people who always believe that the correct answer directly involves the Federal State. Thus we have the need for a New Great Experiment.

It is time to allow for the next political evolution, and entirely replace the State with the Market. In fact the revolution has already begun. This is evidenced by the peaceful lack of participation in the elections, in the tax system, and in the White Market. It’s interesting to note that most of the participants wouldn’t call themselves revolutionaries; rather, they are individuals simply trying to make their way through life, support a family, operate a business, pay employees.

The Reason for the Revolutionary Season

When considering our New Great Experiment, we should ask this question: Why did our Founding Fathers think that a Federal Government was necessary in the first place? Keep in mind that this was in the days before telegraph. A major obstacle in maintaining widespread liberty was largely one of communication and logistics. The Founding Fathers knew that practical livelihood would include delivery of messages, communication between businesses over great distances, and the ability to rally local militias in the event of a major security threat. Thus, they created a system that included the U.S. Postal Service, the Commerce Clause in the Constitution, election of Representatives to meet our behalf. And, for security, they allowed for the central government to call upon a military when necessary. But we have no such needs today.

Do we need the U.S. Postal Service; or can we do just fine with FED EX, UPS, and e-mail? Do we need representatives to meet on our behalf; or can we do well with mass transit, and mass communication? Do we need Dept of Homeland Security and CIA and FBI and the whole slew of other agencies that we barely even know about; or can we do fine with local policing, and fire dept, and the host of private security, insurance, and defense firms available? We have something valuable and powerful that our Founding Fathers didn’t have 200 years ago: the Market.

I believe that those in our government know they have become increasingly irrelevant. The Federal State has outlived its usefulness. They know this, and that is why the politicians strain their vocal cords trying to give us a plethora of reasons why we should need them: Bird flu! Swine flu! Great depression! Islam! Homosexuality! This threat! That threat! But it falls on deaf ears. Half of us don’t even bother looking up. The other half wonder why they even bothered.

Already this century has marked the beginning of a New Great Experiment! An experiment where we walk entirely away from the Federal State. An experiment where lovers of true liberty can turn to a source of direct democracy, and allow the Markets to meet our needs. Because the Market is already in place, we can join those already participating in shunning the State. This century will be a century that is home to the Next Great Experiment: a completely Agorist society.

Sources:

“Fact on Policy: Tax Statistics for 2004 Tax Year.” Hoover Institution. 21 Dec 2009 .

De Claire, Voltairine. “Anarchism and American Traditions.” The International Anarchist Publishing Committee of America, Chicago: Free Society Group, 1932.22 Dec 2009 .

Kuhn, David Paul. “The Year of the Political Jackass.” RealClear Politics, 16 Dec 2009. .

Hodge, Scott A. “Number of People Outside the Tax System Continues to Grow.” The Tax Foundation, 9 June 2005. 21 Dec 2009 .

Rahn, Richard W. “New Underground Economy.” Washington Times, 9 Dec 2009. 21 Dec 2009 .

“Turnout in Federal Elections: 1960 – 2008.” Info Please. 21 Dec 2009 .

Lysander Spooner is most well known for his proto-Rothbardian analysis of the Constitution. While this literature is heavily cited throughout the Libertarian community (and I find it to be of the same intellectual caliber as the modern students of the Austrian School), I am not sure I consider it his crowning achievement; I remember Spooner for his ownage of the nationalized post-office (more on that later). He practiced both intellectual subversion of the state and economic subversion of the state. While intellectual subversion is very important – I highly value the literature – talk is cheap. Economic subversion actually has an effect upon our circumstances, where idle words do not. I believe that economic action is the always the most practical, often the only, way to solve any social problem.

Many methods of changing our circumstances have been employed. The Marxist approach is through indiscriminate and continuous violence. This extreme example provides a good first example of what not to do. Many historical examples show us that very little that is positive ever results from violent action. Violence is non-creative; it is pure destruction. There are only two functions which violence can perform: first, to transfer wealth between parties (this is done by government, and is prohibited to the followers of Natural Law), and second, to destroy that which is in someway destructive (this is allowed to the followers of Natural Law, as it is not “initiation of force”). Violence does not create. Societies developed along the lines of Cuba’s “eternal revolution” are like individuals stricken with anorexia, living off the fading opulence of former years. They are eaten from the inside without the stimulus of new growth. Any trace of violence within a society is like an intestinal worm, consuming the sustenance of the host. The history of violent revolution shows us that the initiation of force always leaves societies poorer, less organized, and less internally trusting and externally trusted. Those who speak in support of violence do it with the erroneous assumption that theft and compulsion can create prosperity. Prosperity my ASS!

Political entrepreneurism is a term I heard listening to lectures on mises org. It involves individuals, politicians, or lobbyists attempting to use government to realize an agenda, and it is essentially institutionalized violence. Political entrepreurism does not create anything; it accomplishes only the transfer of wealth (theft) or the suppression of competition for the well connected (an impediment to production and a drain on everyone’s quality of life). The destructiveness of it may not be overt, but political machinery is never creative.

And again, speaking and writing and appealing to the general public does not create anything either. While literature is powerful, it does not account for much until it is manifested in physical reality. The intellectual world exists purely for facilitating productive efforts in the physical world. All thought should have some functional goal in mind. I like Ayn Rand’s illustration of the faux intellectual class in her novels; it effectively illustrates this point.

Finally, the economic method of problem solving repeatedly proves itself to be creative in all circumstances. Lysander Spooner used an economic model of protest when he created his own postal service. This company was so successful that it forced the federal service to introduce the three-cent stamp. The government cannot stand hubris, so they eventually used the strong arm of the law to shut him down (robbing him of his accumulated savings). This was not before he made a point, though. He made the point that constructive action will always bring down, indirectly, those elements in our society that are not constructive.

We need only to be the best we can be, and the political entrepreneurs and the destructive wielders of violence will wither in our light. It was not any military action of the United States that brought down the Soviet Union; it was merely attrition and the steady march of freeman in doing what they do best, conduct voluntary exchange. Right now, I see companies like Ebay, Prosper, and E-Gold walking this walk. Just as monarchy and communism withered in the like of the United States, so will the United States wither at the economic subversion of a more free market enabled by technology. When it does, we will not have a power vacuum as exists in the middle-east, but we will have a flowering intellectual and economic community waiting to pick up the pieces. Have faith in voluntary exchange, and never stoop to the level of the government bureaucrats in using any other weapon against an opponent

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

1. Trade that is free, unregulated, untaxed, and unmonitored is the natural right of all human beings
2. In a voluntary trade, both parties receive more than they give up, otherwise neither would trade.
3. Nobody gets taken advantage of through mutually voluntary trade.
4. Taxation forces people to pay for things that aren’t worth the cost
5. Government regulation forces people to abstain from trades they would otherwise voluntarily make.
6. Markets collect, organize, and distribute information more rapidly, accurately, fairly, and efficiently than any central authority could ever do, even with superior resources.
7. Prices are information.
8. Force distorts market information.
9. Governments’ only means of action is force.
10. Governments operate blindly because they only see information distorted by force. The more information they gather, the less clear their vision becomes.
11. Aggression is a reaction to unpleasant or unwanted information. Its motto is “kill the messenger”.
12. A market is smarter than any of it’s participants. A government is stupider than most of its participants.
13. Governments require markets for their survival; markets thrive in the absence of government.
14. The more efficient a government is, the more dangerous it is.
15. Markets improve the material well-being of all people. Governments improve the material well-being of some people at the expense of other people.
16. Markets are more powerful than governments.
17. Human survival and well-being require free markets.
18. Human survival and well-being require the absence of government.
19. The best humanitarian aid that can be brought to impoverished people is to allow them access to the Agora, usually by removing their governments.
20. Productivity is the application of intelligence to labor for creating something of value to someone.
21. Labor is equivalent to value in the same way crude oil is equivalent to a vacation.
22. The non-productive have always and will always try to live off the value created by the productive.
23. The productive will by right decide how much, if any, to allow it.
24. Charity is offered and received face-to-face, or it is no longer charity.
25. Wealth is the natural and honorable reward from trading value for value.
26. Wealth is a store of productivity, not a store of value.
27. 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.
28. Those who get rich outside the Agora could never give back all they have taken.
29. Wealth has a short shelf-life, it dissipates when not used productively.
30. Money laundering is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
31. Price gouging is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
32. Unfair competition is either not one, or not the other, or not in the Agora.
33. Market price is an observation of history.
34. Market price is related to value in the same way news photographs are related to current events.
35. “Intrinsic value” is a lie told by parasites to try to steal from producers.
36. Fiat currency is theft by fraud.
37. Gold and silver are usually the bases for real money because they have properties that best serve that purpose.
38. Paper is the basis for fiat currency because it has properties that best serve that purpose.
39. Communication strengthens markets and undermines governments.
40. Markets are the way communities stay organized when they are too large for face-to-face interaction.
41. All resources are human. The term “human resources” is demeaning to the nature of both humans and resources.
42. Resources are what raw materials become by the application of human intelligence and purpose.
43. Resources are produced. Raw materials in the ground are not resources until they are brought to market.
44. Competition is not the purpose of a market, it is one of its methods.
45. Natural selection in the Agora is more Lamarckian than Darwinian.
46. Natural selection in the Agora does not destroy resources, it reallocates them.
47. Natural selection in the Agora does not kill people, it frees them to be more productive.
48. “Dog eat dog” is a feature of governments, not of markets.
49. Monopolies can only be created and sustained by governments.
50. Freedom to fail is every bit as important as freedom to succeed.
51. The Agora guarantees neither, and resists the perpetuation of both.
52. Markets don’t have goals, values, or ambitions. Markets are a tool for human beings to pursue those things.
53. “Market Failure” is an oxymoron. People sometimes fail to use markets properly.
54. Innovation is an inherently Agorist activity, even when it happens outside the Agora.
55. A primary goal of government is to restrain innovation.
56. The owners of private property tend not to destroy it. Commons are routinely destroyed or exhaustively consumed.
57. Agorist exploitation of the environment increases resources, and protects the environment. Government “protection” of the environment reduces resources, and harms the environment.
58. 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.
59. “Public property” is an oxymoron, and privatization of profits is not privatization.
60. Property is authority. It’s not a market without private property and private authority.
61. Where there is private property authority, there is an agora..
62. Private property let open to the public is not a commons.
63. Shortages do not exist in the free market, government obfuscation of price information is the only way to acheive a general shortage.
64. Being unable to buy something at the price you want to pay is not a shortage.
65. Markets are, in part, a process of voluntary rationing.
66. Corporations are evil only to the extent they rely on government power. Corporations with a monopoly are branches of government.
67. Markets rely on trust. Markets rely on suspicion.
68. Individuals in the Agora expect suspicion and earn trust. Governments demand trust, and earn suspicion.
69. A government truly of the people, by the people, and for the people would have no powers whatsoever.
70. 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.
71. Governments thrive on opposition, antagonism, provocation, confrontation, and defiance. What they cannot tolerate is to be ignored.
72. The central idea behind the Agora, and one of the things it does best, is to ignore governments.
73. The effectiveness of the Agora’s self-regulation is proportional to the extent to which external regulation is absent.
74. The Agora cannot be managed, controlled, regulated, or destroyed. It can only be interfered with.
75. Voting is nothing more than an expression of the voter’s preferred way to interfere with the Agora.
76. The Agora is a network, and like all networks, it routes around damage.
77. Government is damage.
78. Public education is an oxymoron.
79. One of government education’s primary functions is to instill fear of the Agora.
80. The Agora is all around you. It’s nothing to be afraid of.
81. The Agora is peaceful. Violence and war are results of failure to embrace the Agora.
82. Guns are often required to deal with people who operate outside the Agora, because guns are the primary way people outside the Agora operate.
83. The Agora does not require permission.
84. Anyone with the power and inclination to grant the Agora permission is a threat to all honest men.
85. Anyone offering the Agora permission will be ignored.
86. The Agora ignores creed and color.
87. When it comes to markets, black is beautiful.
88. Wherever there are human beings, there is an agora. It may be hiding, but it is there.
89. The Agora is a select community – the strict qualification for membership is to want it. Most people don’t.
90. The Agora does not recognize borders or artificial boundaries. It is everywhere, and it is no where.
91. The Agora welcomes you, but does not need you.
92. You need the Agora. Even if you oppose it, you benefit from it.
93. An Agorist movement is an oxymoron. Agorism is the natural state of humanity.
94. Practicing agorism is the only way to achieve agorism. Isolated networks will eventually find each other.
95. 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.

The Institute for Justice has a great video on the absurdity of Virginia’s licensing requirements for those teaching “marketable skills.” This has created onerous barriers for yoga instructors, including a $2,500 fee and a whole lot of paperwork.

This might not be quite as harmful as some other forms of professional licensure, but it’s right up there in terms of pointlessness. What do these regulations achieve, other than protecting incumbent businesses from competition?

Samuel Edward Konkin’s great insight was that smashing the state is not a prerequisite to achieving freedom, but is a consequence of it. The usual political formulation is this:

Choose freedom -> Get a lot of people together -> smash the state -> have free markets -> build wealth

Konkin saw that it could instead go like this:

Choose freedom -> have free markets -> get a lot of people together -> build wealth -> smash the state

He saw that the key difficulty is the stages “have free markets” and “build wealth.” The problem with waiting to do that until the state is smashed is that it leaves us no means to actually smash the state. Parties and activists have tried numerous methods to do so: asking the state to smash itself via protesting and voting, violent demonstrations, sabotage, withdrawing from commerce altogether to deprive the state of resources, and hiding one’s resources from the state’s grasp.

A lot of agorist discussion I see focuses on the economics of the state in counter-economics, and looks at the “counter” as merely depriving the state of our resources. While this is an important concept, it fails to get at the heart of what Konkin’s insight really reveals. It still places free markets and wealth building as something to come only after the state is smashed.

What this analysis fails to understand is that without resources, any attempt to smash the state is futile, and that small token progress is merely a speed bump that can easily be adjusted to. Achieving these speed-bump victories expends resources and leaves no way to replenish them aside from going back to work for the state’s institutions, feeding their accumulation of resources, and saving a meager pittance to be squandered on the next effort.

It is widely assumed that free markets and wealth building cannot be done under the states omniscient eye and overarching resources. It is that assumption that Konkin challenged. Its true that the purity of free markets cannot be achieved while the state still exerts its influence. But that does not mean that free markets are unavailable to us entirely, only that they carry risk. Even a little bit of free market activity builds resources. Building resources provides the means to expand those nascent markets. And it provides the means to further act against the state, to deprive it of resources, to bring more and more people into the circle of free markets.

“Counter” economics does not just mean anti- the state’s economics, it also means other than the state’s economics. And while we are building resources to smash the state, we are also building the social and market structures that will prevail once the state is gone.

If we wait to build those structures only after the state is gone, we risk opening the door to opportunists ready and willing to impose their own social and market structures, from the top down. By having those structures already in place, having been tested and honed to be resilient against the most powerful enemy we know, we leave no chaotic and dangerous transition period in which our newly found freedom can be usurped by late-comers.

In fact, with those structures in place, and having grown to the point where they trump the state’s reach and power, there might not even be a need to smash the state. Prior to WWII, the French built their ultimate defensive wall, the Maginot Line, against an anticipated invasion from the Nazi regime. They thought it impenetrable, or at least strong enough that smashing it would come at so high a cost as to make it a Pyrrhic victory.

They were right. But they made an assumption that was fatal to their defenses, and ultimately fatal to tens of thousands of their people. They assumed that the Ardennes forest was equally impenetrable, and left it mostly open as a “natural” defensive obstacle. The German generals, however, knew better. With their modern equipment and knowledge, the forest might as well have been a paved superhighway. The Germans never attacked the Maginot Line, except later, from the rear, as a mopping up operation. They knew that they would have been slaughtered in a frontal assault on it, but also that such an assault was entirely unnecessary.

I suggest we go through the forest.

The police in Florida are busy this week. They’re conducting their quarterly crackdown on unlicensed trade workers. Sherriff’s departments have been running sting operations, with undercover officers and volunteers posing as customers luring contractors into a house with jackbooted thugs poised to arrest.

This pleases the bigots – since most of the unlicensed workers are also Illegal Immigrants – and tightens the grip of the state-approved cartels. Everybody wins! Well, everybody except the general public forced to pay inflated prices and the poor folks trying to make an honest living by providing services without jumping through the regulatory hoops required for a government permission slip.

The fine people at the Broward Sheriff’s Office are so pleased with their work (they arrested 15 unlicensed contractors on Tuesday and Wednesday!) that they’ve shared with the media a video of one such sting in a house rigged with hidden cameras (hat tip to Voodoo Chile in the Agora! group of Free Agents Social):

Not only are these thugs arresting peaceful and productive people down on their luck, they also feel the need to point guns at and handcuff someone showing no indication of aggression, or even resistance. Stories like this are depressingly common, but seeing the sting and hearing the opinions of both sides is quite moving. The cops are so righteously indifferent to the plight of those whose lives they are destroying and the victims are so unguardedly honest. “Nobody wants to hire me because there’s no work now,” says the arrested man, “I need to work, and I don’t know what to do.”

I’m sure future historians will be fascinated by this sort of footage. Imagine if we had similar access to the views of cruelly righteous SS agents and downtrodden Jews during the holocaust.

The divide and conquer strategy has been a staple of government control for centuries. The British and Belgian Empires used this technique very effectively by pitting ethnic groups against one another in India and Rwanda respectively, as well as in many other colonial territories. Creating distrust and conflict takes the heat off the colonial masters and makes ruling the savages much easier.

Of course, fostering distrust in the populace in order to create placid subjects needn’t take place at the level of ethnic or religious groups. Breaking down communities by creating incentives for friends and neighbors to betray one another is a much more effective tool in developed nations with less salient cultural cleavages a ruler can exploit. Creating distrust in society increases the public’s demand for government and reduces our ability to create (market and non-market) voluntary institutions to compete with government. If we think our neighbors are out to get us, we’re less likely to want to deal with them on a voluntary basis and more likely to demand they be controlled by government. Destroying community is good for government.

The Chicago city government seems to have realized this. It is considering a “Tax Whistleblower Program” which would pay people to rat on “tax cheats.” Grassers will most likely be paid a percentage of back taxes collected. The city officials are claiming that it’s “just another way of bringing people into compliance.” No doubt it will be an effective one too, since community can be a fragile thing.

The logic of reciprocal altruism means that a relatively small number of cheaters can undermine cooperation by creating distrust. People generally don’t like screwing each other over. They like being screwed over and not responding in kind even less: nobody wants to be a sucker. If we notice a few people taking the opportunity to enrich themselves by grassing, we may be more likely to grass ourselves. In the worst case, everyone ends up grassing even though everyone would prefer everybody to keep their mouths shut. Thus is a community unravelled and freedom eroded.

Here’s some appropriate music from a now defunct New Zealand band to strengthen your anger at this prospect. This song, if memory serves correctly, was a response to a government campaign encouraging people to rat on people cheating NZ’s no fault accident compensation scheme.

Years ago I began to pay attention to phrases that confused me; even if they were only a little confusing. I quickly learned that I had accepted a lot of slogans without analysis. This is a problem, because once we allow confusing things to get past our “acceptance filter,” they tend to remain and to generally muck-up our thinking.

This brings me to today’s subject: Exactly what is Liberty Activism? I certainly like the combination of “liberty” and “active,” but I sense possibilities for confusion in the term, so I’d like to sort it out in public, as it were.

Definitions and Types

Liberty is certainly a clear enough word. People do abuse it from time to time, but most of us understand it similarly. Activism, however, means different things to different people. Wiktionary describes the word thusly:

The practice of using action to achieve a result, such as political demonstration or a strike in support of or in opposition to an issue.

I like the first part of this: Using action to achieve a result. But I don’t like the next part terribly well. To my way of thinking, political action is a more or less dead end. I’m not really opposed to demonstrations, but I certainly don’t think of them as a magic technique for creating goodness on earth.

It is clear, however, that many people do think of activism in terms of making noise, convincing other people to make noise, and getting the state to accede to their wishes. That convinces me that some comparison and examination of definitions is a good idea. So, because it seems nicer to me (maybe because I like happy endings), I’ll start examining my least favored versions of liberty activism and work up to my favorites.

Political Activism

Political activism begins by accepting the state as a given. Even if the activist doesn’t hold the state to be an ideal thing, he or she accepts it as the power. The political activist then goes about finding ways to manipulate state officials. The goal is to gain some specific result.

At the low end, political activism is a sort of terrorism. The activists isolate a target and start to destroy their public image. Lots of businesses and politicians have caved-in to these tactics. If you ever want to examine that end of the spectrum, check out a guy named Saul Alinsky.

A variant on the Alinsky methods (really a precursor) were old socialist techniques for taking over groups and controlling meetings. They usually involved four or more people spreading themselves around a room and acting in a coordinated way to manipulate the larger group. This must still go on, though I can’t point to modern examples. It was a big deal before radio and TV gave us mass culture.

Party membership and running for office is also political activism. Take over an important position and you can directly change the way the state operates, or so the thought goes. In reality this is seldom true. In the United States, for example, there are 535 members of Congress, but the people who actually conduct the state’s business number in the tens of millions. You’d probably be surprised how often members of Congress feel powerless to get things done.

Another form of political activism includes the aforementioned protest marches. These are attempts to impress political leaders with numbers. The goal is for the politicians to see huge numbers of people upset about an issue, to fear losing their votes, and to do what the marchers demand.

I’ll close this section with a brief explanation as to why I’m not in love with theses types of activism:

The state is, by definition, an organization that maintains a monopoly on coercion, and liberty is about escaping coercion. The clash between the two concepts could hardly be more direct. I understand the arguments of people who think a state is necessary, but even so, using coercion to escape from coercion seems like a less than brilliant strategy.

Ideological Activism

Ideological activism is trying to get people to accept better ideas. It’s hard to argue against this type of activism, unless the ideas themselves are faulty. There is, however, one big pitfall with the application of this technique, and that is group identity.

Being a member of a well-defined group is not a useful thing. Once you see yourself as part of a group – any group – you subvert your own thinking. There’s no problem with using a group name to make a quick identification (like, “I’m kind of an Agorist”), but once people think of themselves as a group member, they give special status to thoughts that are associated with the group. That’s the beginning of trouble. Ideological activism is not about group power, it’s about getting better ideas into individual minds.

So, spreading good ideas is an excellent thing to do, and something we should all be doing.  My only real caveat on ideological activism is that we are not mere ghosts in the world; we are also flesh and blood. Words without action are never as potent or as transformative as words with action. This brings us to our final type of activism.

Building Freedom

Building freedom involves working, investing, conducting commerce and forming relationships in ways that specifically support human liberty. In some places and times this has meant operating “black” markets; during times of war it often includes smuggling would-be victims across borders. It may mean operating an informal bank for oppressed people, or creating a new method of dispute resolution.

Systems do not build liberty; they reproduce after their own kind – spinning-off new systems that force individuals into prescribed channels.

Self-directed individuals create the processes of free living.

Some of us have struggled to build communication methods that cannot be repressed; others have tried to create means of exchange that are not vulnerable to coercion. Still others have formed private trading networks. A surprising number of us are creating new communities.

All of these things require people to move beyond talk and into action. That is a scary thing to do, which is why the first two types of activism are usually preferred. There is no real risk in sending letters to politicians, and usually not much risk in carrying a sign down the street. (Though that risk is increasing.) Acting without approval, however, is something else. Smuggling people away from armies could get you shot!

Building freedom involves risk, but if real liberty is to exist, risk is required. Liberty is hard, not easy. If we want it, we’ll have to do the hard things. No free lunch.

Pick something that matters and get busy.

© Copyright 2009 by Paul A. Rosenberg

My hoard of Liberty Dollars at its Height

Back in 1997 my brother and I worked together at a bagel shop. Every payday, we would gleefully go back to the local bank to cash out checks. We would gloat over our seemingly massive amounts of “Power Units.” We had been told all our lives that our money was backed by GOLD. Wasn’t the gold stored in Fort Knox what was providing the power to our “power units”?

For me this myth lasted until the year 2002. I was heavily involved with the Libertarian Party of Minnesota during this period. The party had rented a storefront on Hennepin Avenue, in the Kingsfield Neighborhood of Minneapolis. It was a hip neighborhood, right near where I worked (at yet another bagel shop). Shortly after helping the Libertarian Party to open their storefront offices, I noticed something. It was a foil sticker on the window which said, “Liberty Dollar Accepted.”

“What the hell is the Liberty Dollar?!” I asked.

Bob Smith was chair of the LPMN at the time. He was quick to explain that The Liberty Dollar was a privately issued currency. That simple explanation of fact piqued my interest in money. I embarked on an odyssey that revealed much about my self, the nature of money, and how government by a coercive state is at odds with all striving to become free.

At that time, my understanding of the monetary system, like most of the populace, was cursory at best. I was vaguely aware of that entity known as the Federal Reserve (FED). I did not yet know that the FED paid pennies for each an every dollar bill they purchase (no matter what the denomination) from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. I was not yet aware that the FED lends those dollar bills into circulation, which must be paid back with interest. I didn’t know about fractional reserve banking practices engaged in by your local savings bank.

The Liberty Dollar really opened my eyes to the quagmire that the United States was in, by it’s engagement in one of the biggest boondoggles ever conceived by human minds. I started to exchange my Federal Reserve Accounting Units Denominated (backed by nothing but the threat of nuclear aggression). I then began to circulate the American Liberty Dollar to local merchants. I asked my employer to pay me partially in this new private currency (he politely declined).

I also began contributing American Liberty Dollars to all my charitable causes, including tithing and fast offerings paid to the church that I am a member of. When I started paying in American Liberty Dollars, I was explicit in my instructions that my tithes and offerings were not to be deposited into any commercial bank, as it would not be credited for deposit (owing to it’s existence in competition with the Federal Reserve System). My bishop nor any of his counselors seemed to have a problem with this, as I never had any conversations with any leaders of the church regarding my tithing.

After paying my tithing and fast offerings with the American Liberty Dollar for an entire year, I was called in for tithing settlement. Tithing settlement is an opportunity to meet with the bishop of the ward, and discuss your tithes and fast offerings. In addition to talking about provident use of resources, all members receive a record of tithes and offerings received by the church, which is used by many as a tax shelter, since such giving to the church is tax deductible.

My first tithing settlement after paying for an entire year in a voluntary currency went incredibly smooth, or so it seemed. About a month after my tithing settlement, I was called in to see the bishop.

The bishop (who likes to be called Ben), is a really nice guy, and I could tell immediately that our appointment was regarding my use of the American Liberty Dollar. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but our conversation went something like this:

Ben: “We have to talk.”

FURB: “Oh, what about?”

Ben: This! [Pulls out a gigantic amount of silver and gold medallions, and a bundle of multicolored warehouse receipts in a clear plastic security envelop from the bank]

FURB: Did you deposit that into a bank?!

Ben: That is our standard operating procedure. Usually, the Church Headquarters withdraws all funds deposited electronically.

FURB: I stated explicitly that if these medallions were deposited into a bank, the deposit would not be credited.

Ben: But we did it anyway. And since the church is such a good customer of the bank, they held on to this for us, and gave it back to us after the first of the year, as they could not credit our account.

FURB: Well, what do you want me to do with it?

Ben: We want you to send it to Church Headquarters.

FURB: Me? Oh, no. That’s your job.

I was also asked why I was using an alternative currency. When I told the Bishop that my reasons were to be able to keep my temple covenants (must have honest dealings with my fellow man), he bristled and started an inquest into my anti-government stance. One of his questions was, something akin to “Well, why do you use government roads then?” To which I responded, “Is there any alternative to government roads which will get me to where I need to go?” He could not refute what I was saying, and I was curtly excused from his office.

I did what I was asked, and sent the gold and silver medallions as well as the warehouse receipts to the Office of Donations In-Kind at the headquarters for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About a month later, I received an envelope containing receipt for the gold and silver medallions. However, they also included the warehouse receipts saying that they would not accept those, as payment of tithes and offerings. At that point I considered my tithing paid in full.

Was it my fault that the church refused to accept my tithes and offerings? They would take all manner of tithing, from commodities such as fruits and vegetables, to foreign government currencies. They would not accept the warehouse receipts issued by the American Liberty Dollar.

I converted many hundreds of the warehouse receipts into medallions to spend for my own purposes. And continued to pay my tithing with bullion coins. Each and every time I have moved since then, interesting conversations with the new bishops and their counselors have resulted. Each conversation increases the knowledge of the various leaders in voluntary exchange and honest money as opposed to fraudulent currency issued by the edict of a coercive government.

Fast forward to 14 November 2007. Things are really heating up for fans of Ron Paul, whose campaign is beginning to take shape as an amorphous blob of super-activists. Now, this may seem like a contradiction, from a self-described anarchist, but I figure that I only came to my way of thinking by trial and failure through political action.

It was on this day that the American Liberty Dollar folks failed in their obligation to me. It is my opinion that their support of Ron Paul (by minting copper, silver, gold, and even platinum Ron Paul medallions) brought upon them the wrath of the the United States Government. It was on that day that “a dozen FBI and Secret Service agents raided the Liberty Dollar office in Evansville, Indiana.”

Federal Agents also raided the supposedly secure warehouse where about $1 Million American Liberty Dollars were being stored. Those are the medallions which backed the warehouse receipts that I still hold, while the federal government continues to stall on a class action lawsuit, of which I am a claimant. They stole my property, and refuse to remit to me that, which is my property! I had recently started attending a community college and was attempting to liquidate my gold at the time of the raid to pay my college tuition.

Fast forward to 05 June 2009. This is the final insult to injury. This is the day that the organizational leadership of the American Liberty Dollar was arrested for daring to compete with the Federal Reserve, showing that the Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Denominated (F.R.A.U.D.) is an inferior medium of exchange that doesn’t hold it’s value. This was the day after I had the idea of initiating arbitration proceedings against the American Liberty Dollar organization for failure to redeem the warehouse receipts I have.

The Federal Government of the United States were the ones who initially stole my gold and silver from the people entrusted in safeguarding my property until I demanded the actual commodity. The Federal Government of the United States have denied me due process after seizing my property. I have never been compensated for this seizure. Also, they seem intent on depriving me of holding the American Liberty Dollar organization accountable for their lax security in retaining my property as they promised. I am left without any recourse at all to regain my lawful property.

Well, I have a message for all of those so called “public servants” out there. You, the agents of the federal government, are the corporeal entities that comprise that mythical familial relation known as Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam, you are a drunken lout! You are the lowlife uncle that begs for a loan then goes to the track and gambles it all away. When asking for a loan no longer gets you what you require, you threaten your family members, who have willingly entrusted you with their lives. Many of your family members love you and enable your debauchery. Many only comply because they fear the wrath of the blackout drinker.

Uncle Sam, you have thrown your own relatives into cages when you caught on that your brothers and sisters were evading your thieving fingers, blunted fists, and prying eyes. Many that have stood up to you have been beaten, caged, and killed when refusing to comply with your demands. Thanks a lot Uncle Sam, for all the painful memories. I am scarred for life.

Consider yourself disowned.

This was originally published at libertyconspiracy.com on 10 October 2009

Stories of street vendors being forced out of business by uniformed thugs are becoming depressingly familiar. The past few days have been an especially bad time for the poor attempting to make an honest but extralegal living.

In the Zambian capital Lusaka, riot police have been called in to force vendors off the street, confiscate their merchandise, and demolish their stalls. City officials cite the nuisance of vendors blocking the streets and the harm to shop owners as reasons for the eviction, insisting that the hawkers have nothing to complain about, since they’ve been built a nice special-purpose reservation market.

The destruction was even more transparent in Ghana when vendors turned up for a day of business in Kumasi, only to find government officials setting their stalls on fire. Past “decongestion exercises” had been unsuccessful in ridding the streets of hawkers, and the city has set up a special tribunal to quickly prosecute vendors refusing to “voluntarily” move along.

As I’ve said before, street vending and other forms of informal work are an important outlet for the entrepreneurial spirit of the poor. People, left to interact voluntarily, will claw their way out of the gutter by providing valuable services to others. As is often the case, the state is acting as the enemy of the poor.