How One Agorist Cares

I openly believe that in order to truly bring about a voluntaryist, stateless, anarchist society, the state will have to grow more tyrannical first. Because of this, many people accuse me of caring about an idea more than individuals. Yet this is the exact reverse of my sympathies. Its because of the individuals that I care about the idea; indeed, to lose focus on the plight of the individuals in pursuit of an idea would be a great folly, but one I do not believe I'm committing.

Its an unfortunate thing that people, not all, but what tends to be the majority in my observations, accept evil up until the point their survival is endangered. Look at the history of people complying, not necessarily endorsing evil actions. Examine how people consider the evil actions of the American Empire. Contemplate that utilitarian economic arguments persuade people to anarchism more than natural rights ethical arguments. Even I was guilty. In time, I became radicalized and stand by ethical arguments more, but when attempting to provide information to another for them to change their mind, I do my best to remember the economic arguments.

This is why I believe the counter-economy, with an agorist vanguard, is the most likely way the state will be ended. People being forced into the counter-economy due to an increasingly tyrannical, interventionist state will be breaking the statist law to survive. It has happened historically and can, and I believe will, happen again. The problem has always been preventing the next state, hence the agorist vanguard educating people about anarchism.

However, as I mentioned at the beginning, the state has to get very tyrannical before it collapses. This is horrible for the individual suffering at the hands of the state. Yet it must not be forgotten why this is. The state has lost its veneer of legitimacy and is losing support. It must rely upon entirely brute force to survive. Without the loss of legitimacy, the state continues its tyranny, subtle, but violent to the core. More individuals are harmed in the long-run by a minarchist state, with their posterity inheriting the violent tyranny. More wealth is lost as time continues, building upon past loss wealth. Prosperity and ethics are subtly reduced. Just think of how much different the last 100 years could look like without statist actions. Or two hundred. The violence the state exerts in its last days of brute strength seems horrid, and it certainly is, but its also obvious. The violence the state exerts in its long reign over individuals and posterity is equally horrid, but its subtle and not seen for what it is. The tyranny of a dying state is immediate, but its soon to end (with the door then being open to statelessness or a new state which begins increasing tyranny).

However, not only is the tyranny immediate, but a caring agorist has numerous incentives to provide protection for people as the tyranny increases. As the agora grows, businesses will develop to hide people and actions from the state, publicize aggression by the state, and eventually, physically protect them from statist actions.

To put it in an analogy, society, composed of individuals, is diseased by a parasite, the state. It distorts one's limbs and makes one less efficient and, therefore, less prosperous. However, there is a cure. Unfortunately, its a painful cure. Doctors have learned that amputating your limbs in certain areas will allow the parasite to be stopped. You still have time before it consumes your entire body. It will be painful. But there's an anesthesia called agorism to lessen the pain of removing this life-threatening parasite.

Emergence as applied to the Black Market

Black Markets emerge when their is a disruption between the point in which supply and demand meet. This disruption is known as government. Emergence can be described as the appearance of new properties or species in the course of development or evolution. When we look at the black market through emergence. A Black Market emerges where disruption of supply and demand spawns a market which has exceeded the risk of getting caught. 

As we know governments grow as they grow so do Black Markets. As government economies collapse we see Black Markets flourishing replacing the shell which the government has created between supply and demand. Hence the phrase "creating a new society in the shell of the old." Governed ordered economies die and wither away in the shell that is left over a free society with supply and demand as it's structure will emerge. 

Normally as governments collapse the armed fraction will tend to set up their structure as the new "rule of law." As this process happens more and more in geographic designations. The Black Market which inhabits this area will trump the armed fraction, causing their "rule" to become null and void. The free exchange of this Black Market will come to be a non cohesive way for society to assemble.  

This is order out of chaos which is not chaos at all. It is the emergence of an enslaved humanity's fight against the ever growing tide of cohesion.  As societies around the world come to the point of actualization  that governance as a source of order is an illusion, which is what it has always been.  Free exchange will become the order among the chaos which is human interaction. Societies will regard the Black Market as the Free Market. Let's join the freemen that unwitting strive for this reality that time has not yet made an reality. Agora! Action!! Anarchy!!!

Rose Colored Economics

The Economies of all nation's is a mutated version of how resources are allocated to enslave it's slaves and those who make the emperor's robe. Thank you for dying to keep politicans safe. Thank you for dying so government created oligopolies can pillage another geographic designation. Thank you for being robbed so politicians can say they rebuilt America. Thank you for letting us print more "money," call it stimulus, cause inflation and putting your family on the dole after you lost your job. Thank you for being the cops who beat your fellow serfs down. It is alway easier to justify a slave beating a slave. Thank you for being robbed going over sea's and occupying others nation's giving "their" slaves, justification to crash a plane into a building serfs were robbed for and then dying for our "security."

The end to this cycle is to opt out, starve the state and their oligopolies. Build an economy in the shell of the old and let the monster starve. Anarchy, agorism, action, end the illusion that is the white market. Join the counter evolution and the coercion is over. Their "money" will be worthless before we run out of time. Remember time is on our side it always has been.

The Dancing Mice

In this day and age we are inundated with information, this can only be a good thing, the more informed individuals are the better decisions they will be able to make, or so the theory goes.  I think this theory leaves out two very important factors, those who are willfully ignorant and I think by and far the most important, distraction of dancing mice.  The first factor is a matter of individual choice, I will not place an absolute value judgment but I will opine that I believe it is poor way to go through one’s life; blissful ignorance is like complacent slavery.  Not to forget, the former leads to the latter.  I believe it is more important to think about the distraction of the dancing mice, the willfully ignorant do not detract from the numbers who are thinking and informed the distracted, however are.



Yay! Dancing MICE!!!

Traditionally people believe there is false information out there and that is all there is to be wary of, I personally disagree, I think there is also a lot of true information that individuals might as well ignore, especially if you are among the ranks of the well informed.  False information does not last in the light of the skeptic’s lanterns; lies often fall away and are forgotten by well informed individuals, specifically because they question everything.  What doesn’t fall away are things with a shred of truth, if there is a nugget of fact in a story however small or trivial it gives the notion of the whole story some sort of ontological validity.  I think the adaptation of the human to this reality is the discriminating mind, being able to discern the important from the trivial, the vital from the dancing mice.

Let me please highlight some examples of what I am speaking of:

Bradley Manning

I have friends who are working in support of this project deeply, Pvt. Manning was arrested is being held and if he is not dead he will be severely traumatized if he is ever allowed his freedom again.  I do not understand the infatuation with this young man, a great injustice has been done unto him but people are kidding themselves if they truly believe anything they are doing will improve his fate one iota.  I will never suggest that people abandon Pvt. Manning; surely if he did what he is accused of he is a man of heroic stature.  Though I will mention I do find it a bit peculiar that this man is still alive, that some terrible accident or terrorist car bombing did not befall him before he was “caught” is short of miraculous to say the least.

 Julian Assange

What he is doing through Wikileaks is an astounding effort, he is doing something the mass media has dropped the ball on for far too long, with that said, people are advertising every trivial piece of flair about this man.  He is not releasing anything any truly informed individual is ignorant of, we all know the reality of the occupation of the Middle East was based on a sham, we all know  the military is doing a smash up job of killing children.  Now we are supposed to be benefitted by knowing the exact details regarding the government being a piece of shit in regard to other national representatives whose homelands we are not currently dropping bombs in the children thereof?  Was this something we were uncertain of, are we being honest with ourselves?  Individually are we truly enlightened to know the internal business of banks, we long admit are in the pocket of the aforementioned corrupt government, that are not on the up and up?  Much like Manning, especially in the light that the DHS has taken down 70+ websites in the last (was it a week?) without any judicial approval, I am a little bit skeptical because Wikileaks still exists, that and Julian is still walking the Earth.

The TSA

Another event everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of is the TSA scanners and mass scale second base attempts, anyone who does not live under a rock knows the scanners are not reliably safe, there is a lot of dissenting opinion of their safety in the medical field, need I say more?  Any idiot should be able to reason that getting a pat down when you are not in custody (that means under arrest) is a violation of your privacy and personal property.  George Donnelly and his We Won’t Flycampaign is on the right track, but that is it, stop flying, boycott air travel all together, there is enough media buzz about this that one cannot honestly believe they will convince people who are about to go into a terminal to not get on that plane.  I feel for Meg, subjectively she went through a shitty situation when all she wanted was to go home, but she is not the only one who has gone through this type of thing, surely she will not be the last.  Much of the last decade I was getting felt up by TSA agents every time I was going to fly, maybe I should have cried, we could be that many years ahead on this one, or maybe we should just stop talking and start doing?

 SB-510

I have a personal bone to pick with this one, I mean FUCKING REALLY, who the hell is surprised?  This is a particular point I severely disagree with Dr. Rothbard, engaging the system is a complete waste of fucking time, call your senators and congress people, it does not make a lick of difference.  As we have seen in the 2010 cycle there was no overwhelming majority of government reducing candidates to choose from and did any of them make it into office, the answer is FUCK NO!  Now what, the government is on the verge of making rain water collection illegal as well as having loose enough language in the bill to eliminate small farm competition on the food market and potentially personally grown food?  Is anyone who is marginally informed about the government surprised, anyone who is not directly affected by this does not care, when they will feel the effects of higher food prices it will be too fucking late anyhow!

There are a plethora of other issues, baby Cheyenne, police brutality, the list is endless and I feel for all the people who suffer needlessly at the hands of the state they do not consent to, but at the same time I can’t help but imagine what strides could be taken if people would look at the situation and say, “Damn that’s Fucked Up!” and then move on to something more productive.

It is almost as if we are being set up to be lost to astonishment, no one who is in any shape or form truly informed has a doubt that tyrants kill, with sadistic glee, does it follow that when their panties are in a bunch, they are not killing people off because of it?  What people are doing may be honorable but we have to look beyond that, and see that natural cause and effect is being violated.  Maybe these people are allowed to live solely because it is advantageous to have the information distraction?  It seems to me that this is more a seamless web of existence to someone trying to control a large population with an information addiction.

I know Ayn Rand is not so popular with many people, but I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned from her first novel We the Living, a depiction of life in Soviet Russia in the years following the Bolshevik Revolution.

  One of the things she notes about communist life is that there is always some busy work to do, between clubs, organizations, party meetings that if you were not involved in, you were suspect to being a party traitor.  The insight she makes of this is very relevant to the topic, it seems to her through her character personification Kira, that all the “volunteer” activities are really just a distraction to keep people from thinking.  Maybe informed individuals too are given enough information rope to hang ourselves with, to keep us stagnant and there is obvious peer pressure to keep up to date with the latest state sponsored atrocities.

I know is it almost guaranteed that someone is going to say, “But Harry, they are providing the proof for the people who deny the truth, it is a valuable weapon for recruitment.” I have an answer for that, those who are willfully ignorant will remain as such and it is their will.  This is not a fight for “hearts and minds” this is a fight for survival, time is short and getting shorter every day, is it wiser to try to enlighten someone who wishes to reject it or to begin working toward your own future?  I also know someone will say, “It is not about my life but that of the children, I am sacrificing myself for them.” And I am calling bullshit on that as well.  If there was no expectation for even a marginal improvement in one’s own life, there would be no logical point to keep doing this, as there is no guarantee that someone will pick up the torch after you and continue the job when you are dead.  If the thought then goes to recruiting people, scroll your ass back to the top of this paragraph and read it again.

I do not mean to sound pessimistic, I do not mean to be rude, but at this point maybe we should not be wasting so much time being involved on spreading spread news, keeping up with the Jones’ on the amount of factoids we can cram into our heads.  Maybe we should be looking to hone skills that will bring ourselves or prepare ourselves for the next level of the game.  There is stagnation, it is the wall between theory and practice that many seem almost unwilling to scale and overcome, I am unsure if it is fear or that people do not believe the talk they are talking but one thing is certain, people are not doing very much.

Various efforts are showing things are not working, collecting in a specific area to effect the elections is obviously not, bringing messages to the masses is not, maybe doing things that do not work is not the way to go.  In the words of my good friend Jim Davidson in an unrelated topic, “Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.” at this point I can fairly ascertain much of what is being done is not working what so ever.  What is getting a lot of lip service is agorism, but again I do not see much of that being done, maybe that is an indication of the tree bearing much fruit, maybe not, either way it is walking the walk rather than talking the talk.  The Dancing Mice are all well and good I am sure the .0001% of the population enlightened by their presence is of some value but at this juncture we can either get busy living in their system or get cracking in a counter-economic system, the choice is yours.

 

Yep, teh katz r zmarter than u!

Agorist Education Available Here!

Shameless Book Plug

The High Road and The Low Road; Secrecy and Openness

Moving towards a free society people who can find it advantagous in openness will move in the light. Others know the state is ruthless and will stop at nothing to kill it's "enemies." As the counter evolution moves so will the Alliance. Those who wish to move in the light will be posted on the Internet. Those who choose to move in the cover of dark, shall remain nameless. Solidarity for the counter evolution, freenet for secrecy and Internet for openness, and Darknet for those who choose it. A 3 prong offensive for the evolution non violent, non cohersive. Join The Alliance and advance the agora. They fight with money, we fight with time. You do your work and I'll do mine. Their money will be worthless before we run out of time.

An Agorist Manifesto in 95 Theses - Kyle Bennett | Guest Contribution

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.

The State is a Maginot Line- Kyle Bennett | Guest Contribution

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.