I have been thinking quite a bit about the state of freedom here in America. I believe that freedom is defined by the non-aggression principle, and I believe that our current government is consistent in committing grave violations of this principle. The violence that is being done to us, constantly, is too much to be ignored, and yet we do ignore it. It is killing our culture, it is destroying our hopes and dreams, and yet we do nothing. I think that it is high time for some sort of revolution. I’ll work on explaining why at a later time.
Don’t get me wrong though, I do not want a violent revolution. I do not want to harm or kill other humans, and so I prefer, strongly, a revolution that does not cause such a thing to occur. There must be a way to destabilize and remove power from the federal government that does not involve violence. Hmm.
I think I have an plan. I didn’t invent this plan; it is actually a philosophy known as “agorism”. This plan calls for individually “seceding from the Union”, but at this point, what is the Union but nanny-state totalitarianism? Anyway. It will need private defense forces, and off-shore online currencies (like in Cryptonomicon). We trade day-to-day goods on the black market. We do business using these online currencies. We defend our property rights using private defense forces. We smuggle goods over state lines and the borders of our country to avoid the trade restrictions and tariffs handed down by the State. To make this work, we will need to make using the black market be much more attractive, especially in terms of cost (i.e. it will be cheaper to “secede” than to stay with the federal government); I do not think this will be hard, considering the size of the nanny state.
Anyway, think about this while things get worse in the coming years. I think you’ll find that revolution of some kind is going to be necessary, and that the secession plan is preferable to outright violence. However, if it does come down to fighting, I will fight.
July 17, 2008 at 6:23 pm |
I’ve been meaning to write something about my own thoughts, regarding agorism, for some time now — but I haven’t gotten around to it. I guess that’s one of the downsides to writing professionally: I find a lot of my writing inspiration and effort gets preempted by the need to pay the bills, and my personal writing desires sometimes get put on hold, even forgotten.
In short, though, I think agorism is a little too narrow a view. It’s not violating the law that makes a difference: it’s undermining the system in place. There are some ways to do this that are illegal, and others that are not. My preference is to lean more toward legal ways to undermine the system, such as focusing more on barter than US Dollar currency trade. The key is to favor daily dealings that do not contribute to the strengthening of the system in place, but rather weaken it, regardless of legality.
Unfortunately, in order to be a more effective advocate for such an approach, one would need to focus on keeping things as legal as possible. While it’s a fallacious argument, people will still find themselves swayed by the argument that someone engaging in illegal activities is somehow not a credible advocate. As such, because my greatest potential contribution to a lot of stuff is in advocacy (being a writer and an implementer of information distribution systems), that means that I must suffer under the burden of keeping things pretty damned legal, personally.
C’est la vie.
Now that I’ve started writing a little about this subject, I may find myself compelled to write the longer treatment of the subject I’ve been meaning to write. I guess I should thank you for that inspiration.
July 18, 2008 at 12:31 am |
If you can figure out a more workable way, that is a good thing. The last resort, as I tried to explain, is open revolution, which I really do not want. If it is necessary, then yes, I will fight, but I want to avoid that if possible.