Anarchoblogs

Now that you’ve started practicing agorism – the idea that by trading outside the purview of the state we can bring about complete liberty – it’s time to consider how you’ll continue doing it. This is no small matter to be overlooked or pooh-poohed. It’s easy to start a new project, but not always so simple to keep it going.

It’s About Trade

To practice agorism is considerably less complicated than it might sound. It’s just about trading with your fellow man. Period. Don’t report the transaction to anyone. Don’t charge or pay taxes on the transaction. Just trade and profit. So, many of the same rules that apply to starting a small business, or most any endeavor, also apply to agorism.

7 Ways to Keep Doing Agorism

• Find something you enjoy, and have fun doing it. If you can’t stand making widgets, then that’s not going to be your agoristic endeavor.
• Keep it easy, simple and low-pressure at first. You may go through a dozen ideas before you hit on one that you enjoy and is profitable. Only invest as much as is absolutely necessary to get your project in front of other people. Don’t splurge or assume the project will be a winner. Be agile and ready to move on.

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs

• It absolutely must be profitable. This is business, not charity. If you’re not making money, why do it? If you’re taking a loss, you’re doing it wrong. Do what you need to do to make a profit. Ruthlessly cut your costs. Don’t be afraid to charge whatever it takes to make a profit.
• Find some friends to do it with. You don’t have to go in as partners, just find complementary activities you can each do individually. You trade your chicken’s eggs for your friend’s hot peppers. You trade your goat’s milk for another friend’s beef steak. The possibilities are endless and you each come out ahead.
• Start a regular meetup to discuss agorist theory and engage in trade. Keep it laid back. Sell your services and products to the people who attend.
• Investigate your competition in the state-run markets. What are their strengths and shortcomings? Consider how you can incorporate their innovations and improve on their faults.
• Make sure your product or service is competitive with the state economy. Don’t overprice it. Try to provide something better or something that’s missing in the state economy.

Just Keep Going

The most important thing is to just keep going. Your projects may fail. You may get frustrated but you can’t give up. Failure is the prerequisite for success. Keep at it. Keep learning and you will achieve success!

Photo credit: techburst. Photo license.

I‘m a guest this week on Movement Radio’s Anarchy Time show, tonight at 9PM EST. Anarchy Time is an entertaining and informative show hosted by James Cox, Mandie Cunningham and Tom Ender. You can listen online for free every Sunday evening from 9-11PM EST. Almost 140 people have RSVP’d on Facebook for the show, so clearly it’s no joke. I hope you’ll give it a listen and call in with really tough questions for me!

Click here to listen at 9PM EST tonight. (You can also listen to the podcast recording of the show at the same link. It was a good show!)

• Floor Fees and Thick Libertarianism. Gary Chartier, link:http://radgeek.com/ - Google Blog Search (2010-02-21). Readers of this blog, especially those who have long since concluded that partisan politics is useless or worse, can be pardoned if they've avoided reading about or participating in the ongoing dispute over the tentative decision to ... (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-24.)
• Anti-statism: What about the poor and disabled? Brad Spangler, BradSpangler.com (2010-02-24). A correspondent asks: Can you lead me to info on where Ron Paul stands on the disabled and the poor? No hurry. I’m at the embryonic end of my journey on learning about Anarchism and its branches. I don’t support electing Ron Paul or anybody else. There’s a similarity of... (Linked Thursday 2010-02-25.)
• Quoted: Wired Magazine on How to Raise Racist Kids. Thea Lim, Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture (2010-02-24). By Deputy Editor Thea Lim From How to Raise Racist Kids by Jonathan Liu: Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.” Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two. Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that <insert... (Linked Thursday 2010-02-25.)
• Looking Forward To Liberty. Darian Worden, Center for a Stateless Society (2010-02-18). When people focus too much on icons of the past – like a famous Tea Party – the lessons that history contains become obscured. People who believe they are against government power can be led into supporting more power if they don’t look for alternatives to rulers. George Santayana warned... (Linked Thursday 2010-02-25.)
• PeTA’s Worst Dressed for 2010: An Exercise In Shame. Womanist Musings (2010-02-25). Here we go again. PeTA moves on from their usual violent misogyny to demonstrate something about intersectionality -- by adding not only misogyny, but also some nasty racism into the mix. (Linked Thursday 2010-02-25.)
• How to Start Doing Agorism. George Donnelly, Anarchoblogs (2010-02-09). The million-dollar question - how do we start doing agorism? We’re convinced the right way out of this tyrannous morass is to starve the bastards out by trading outside of their purview. We’re giving up on voting in their sham elections. We’re tired of begging them for relief from their... (Linked Thursday 2010-02-25.)
• Don’t Call It a 'Defense' Budget. Commondreams.org Views (2010-02-25). "The new budget from the White House will push U.S. military spending well above $2 billion a day." Thank God we elected Obama to stop the wars and bring the troops home. (Linked Thursday 2010-02-25.)
• Why I'll Never Have Kids, Part MMMCCXVIII. Ravings of a Feral Genius (2010-02-25). In which a gang of Fertility Cult doctors use a court order to imprison a 26-year-old woman against her will and force her to undergo unwanted treatments to "preserve the life and health of [her] unborn child." (Linked Thursday 2010-02-25.)

Are you a libertarian anarchist swept up in Free State Project hype? Can’t get your head around “Free State” being an oxymoron but still want in on all that FSP fun? Don’t sweat it. The FSP isn’t just for minarchists anymore. It’s also ripe for anarchist co-option.

Fertile Ground

Many, if not most, FSP members are minarchists. They get liberty, at least partially. So, in the best case, they’re fertile ground for anarchist outreach and in the worst case they’re statists who will think twice before aggressing against us. Also, these folks have a good bit of spare time in their liberty activism programs. They only vote a couple times per year. Throw in a few big protests and their schedules are wide open for direct action, counter-economics and self-improvement.

Anarchist Projects Well Underway

Some anarchist projects are already well underway. There are rumors of an active agorist culture. Plans for an agoristic marketplace at the Porcupine Festival this summer can be seen on Facebook. Free Keene appears to be populated largely by voluntaryists, agorists, spoonerites and other anarchists. The Alternatives Expo is going on its fourth year of giving the Liberty Forum a run for its money, with non-political, practical and independence-minded presentations available alongside the big-ticket Liberty Forum headliners.

Wanted: Buyers and Sellers

So if you’re a voluntaryist, agorist, Spoonerite, Thoreauvian or any other kind of market anarchist or an-cap, come on up to New Hampshire! The new society is actively forming in the shell of the old. More buyers and sellers are needed. At least, check out the AltExpo and PorcFest!

Photo credit: Moosealope. Photo license.

A new South Carolina law has attracted nationwide attention since coming into effect this week. The Subversive Activities Registration Act requires organizations that “directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing, or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina, or any political division thereof” to register with the secretary of state and pay a $5 fee. The act also requires that any subversive organization must also register every member of the group. Failure to comply with any provision of the law is punishable up to a $25,000 fine and 10 years in prison.

Because the Alliance of the Libertarian Left’s first priority is to be in compliance with every letter of the law, Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson took it upon himself to contact South Carolina Secretary of State Mark Hammond about ALL’s activities.

Secretary of State Mark Hammond
P.O. Box 11350
Columbia, SC 29211

Dear Sir:

I am writing to you today as a member of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, a subversive organization advocating the duty, the necessity, and the propriety of overthrowing the governments of the United States and of the state of South Carolina by unlawful means — as we advocate the duty, the necessity, and the propriety of overthrowing all forms of government at every level throughout the world. As advocates of the doctrine of Anarchism and the strategy of counter-economics, we specifically reject legalized methods of changing government policy, such as government elections and legislative lobbying, and we advocate the deliberate use of illegal tactics such as civil disobedience, and nonviolent direct action in defiance of unjust laws, as our preferred means of bringing about the dissolution of all government into the economic organism.

Members of the ALL, both anonymous and open, operate in many states, including in South Carolina. We are actively engaged in attempts to influence political action in the state of South Carolina — specifically, by aiming to stop any political action at all from being inflicted upon the people of South Carolina. We reside and transact business within the territorial boundaries claimed by the state of South Carolina; we are in your neighborhoods and we are in your business districts. We may even be in your homes; have you checked under the beds and in the closets?

I believe that our doctrines and activities qualify us as an officially recognized subversive organization, as described in South Carolina Code Title 23 Chapter 29.

Please consider this our notice of subversive activities; I would be honored if you would add our organization to your registry of organizations working for the overthrow of government in South Carolina. All government is, after all, nothing more than an absurdity, a usurpation, and a crime, inflicted on the vast majority of peaceful people, without their consent, by the dictation of a select few men who have neither the wisdom, nor the virtue, nor the right to presume to rule over anyone other than themselves. It has always been the most deadly tool of oppressors and exploiters, as the past victims of South Carolina’s government, from the Stono rebels to Denmark Vesey to the 35 victims of the Orangeburg Massacre have known all to well. When belligerence and inhumanity prevail, the peaceful and the humane must find honor in being categorized as the enemies of the prevailing order. Please keep me updated as to the status of our registration. I look forward to hearing back from you as to our official recognition as enemies of your state and its government.

Sincerely,
Charles Johnson

PS. I am told that there is a processing fee in the amount of $5.00 for the registration of a subversive organization. Our organization is in fact so dastardly that we have refused to remit the fee.

All the great governments of the world – those now existing, as well as those that have passed away – have been of this character. They have been mere bands of robbers, who have associated for purposes of plunder, conquest, and the enslavement of their fellow men. And their laws, as they have called them, have been only such agreements as they have found it necessary to enter into, in order to maintain their organizations, and act together in plundering and enslaving others, and in securing to each his agreed share of the spoils. All these laws have had no more real obligation than have the agreements which brigands, bandits, and pirates find it necessary to enter into with each other, for the more successful accomplishment of their crimes, and the more peaceable division of their spoils. — Mr. Lysander Spooner, Natural Law, or the Science of Justice.

The million-dollar question - how do we start doing agorism? We’re convinced the right way out of this tyrannous morass is to starve the bastards out by trading outside of their purview. We’re giving up on voting in their sham elections. We’re tired of begging them for relief from their own tyranny. We’re locked out of their monopoly in-justice system. Now what? What is agorism and how do we get started doing it?

Create a Product

To approach the question as simply as possible, all you have to do is come up with a product - something people want, something you can produce better or cheaper than the state sector already does. Then sell it discreetly. The customer does not have to understand agorism; they don’t even have to be interested in liberty. Most importantly, you must not report the transaction to the state, you must not collect or pay taxes on it in any form and you must ignore state regulations if they interfere with the proper operation of your business. Absolutely do not even think about registering this effort with the state as some kind of corporation.

Not Strict Agorism

Now this isn’t really strict agorism. But it’s a good way to start thinking about it. It’s critical to start, even if your initial efforts are rough. As long as you initiate and sustain at some level your entrepreneurial ventures, they will bear fruit. And I’m not just talking about money. Your life will become more flexible. You’ll have more time for your friends, your family, your hobbies, your kids, you name it. You’ll stop worrying about paying your bills and have more time for yourself.

Don’t Have to Start a Business

If you’re not interested in starting your own business, you can still practice agorism! Just work for cash. Work under the table, don’t do any W-2 or 1099 jobs. The agorist entrepreneurs surely have many different kinds of jobs they need done. You can do them. Little commitment or risk but you still earn a tax-free wage.

Agorism Nationwide

There are agorists all over North America. Leverage that! Maybe you’ve got some great maple syrup. Trade that to folks in Georgia for some juicy organic peaches. You can make your own solar panels and hire agorists in other areas to market them for you. The possibilities are endless.

Disguise Yourself!

Worried about law enforcement interest? Disguise yourself! Create a barter network - there are tons of them so you’ll blend right in. Give it a vanilla name, nothing even remotely connected to liberty. Call it the Granite Barter Network. That doesn’t sound subversive at all!

Co-Opt the Statists

And that’s just how you want it because now that you’ve disguised agorism and created a paradigm anyone can plug into, you co-opt the minarchists and other statists into joining you. They spend so much time on counter-economics they forget all about voting and protesting. Since they’re spending more time with market anarchists, they radicalize. Soon it becomes easier to patronize the counter-economy than the official one. Certified agoristic products flood the shelves. Now we’re winning!

Agorism is Just Trade Without Government

Agorism may sound complicated, but it’s just extra-governmental trade. Anyone can do it. In fact, you’re probably already doing some of it. Anyone can be successful at it. You can earn extra income, become self-employed and advance liberty all at the same time. What could be better? Get started today raising organic vegetables, baking pies, manufacturing solar panels, importing hemp and stevia or doing a million other productive things.

Join the Conversation

For more information on agorism, explore agorism.info. It’s full of pamphlets, books and other resources on agorism and market anarchism. Subscribe to the Center for a Stateless Society’s website to keep up with the international agorist conversation.

Photo credit: blupics. Photo license.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. - R. Buckminster Fuller

Instead of fighting government, we should simply render it obsolete, argues Dave Ridley in one of his best videos yet. For example, Dave’s journalism works toward making mainstream media obsolete. The Porc-411 service has superseded AAA he says. And carrying a firearm [on which you're well-trained] helps fossilize the police.

Which One First?

Dave’s really on to something here. What (quasi-) government institutions should we consign to the dustbin in our own lives? And how? What are the most powerful ones? The most vulnerable ones? The most pernicious? The most unpopular? Here are some ideas. I’d like to hear yours as well.

1. Police: Getting basic firearm training, practicing regularly and carrying a pistol is a great start. What about neighborhood patrol? Detective for hire?
2. Food and Drug Regulation: Produce your own food and drugs (see, for example, permaculture) and/or trade with others outside of government control to get what you need. This effectively shortcuts government regulation. I produce free range chicken eggs and trade with you for unpasteurized organic cow milk.
3. Road and Bridge Building and Maintenance: Fill in potholes, film your work and take up a collection. A more advanced example would be to save one of those bridges that has been practically abandoned by the state for lack of funds.
4. Social Safety Net: Form a charity to feed, clothe and shelter homeless people. Organize the unemployed to compete with the enterprises that laid them off. Form mutual aid societies.
5. Dispute Resolution: Offer your arbitration services for hire. Offer insurance against things that commonly turn out badly for folks.
6. Currency: Offer an incentive for customers to pay you in gold and silver. Convert your USD holdings into silver and gold coins. Mint your own silver money and help others convert, too.
7. Education: Homeschool/Unschool. Try to avoid or reduce property taxes, or any other activities that support government schools. Self-study and/or hire private tutors instead of going to a state-subsidized college, trade school or graduate school.
8. Health Care: Offer private EMT services with your own 911-type alert system. If you’re a doctor, offer your services for gold and silver at reduced rates.
9. Package Delivery: Here’s an interesting proposal for competing with the USPS, UPS and Fedex. Boycott the government postal system as much as possible.
10. Water, Electricity and Natural Gas: Get your water from a well and filter it yourself. Produce your own electricity from solar, wind and water sources. Heat by burning wood.
11. Broadcast Spectrum: Use and produce online media. Air pirate radio and TV signals.

We Can be Our Own Masters

Working together, we can enhance our own independence, build wealth for ourselves, achieve more personal liberty and free time and otherwise be our own masters. All this while weakening the fascist police state. Where do we start?

As of 12:01AM January 1, 2010 (today) we are officially living in a state of liberty - the stateless society. We’ve achieved our goal! Yippee! Break out the champagne. Celebrate. You can finally live your life freely and without worrying about what materials or activities the reigning gang has penalized, taxed or prohibited. Live free! Do what you’ve always wanted to do! Start that business. Grow some hemp. Take your license plates off. Throw your 1040’s in the trash. Import stevia.

Before you Fall Asleep

But don’t go to sleep on your couch in front of your 52″ HDTV yet. We’ve received word that there is this big gang of con men gunning for us. They’ve tricked quite a few poor souls into obeying their edicts. They want to take over our industries and run our lives. So it’s time to go back to work. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance after all.

Plenty of Fun to be Had!

We only need 3 per cent of the population with us. And there’s a plenty of fun to be had blowing up all kinds of stuff: sacred cows, white markets, you name it. Proceed forward ever more boldly against these shysters. Play along with them when you’re left with no other choice but be conscious of our resistance to their schemes. They shall not succeed. Let’s get to work!

Photo credit: DieselDemon. Photo license.

Let’s draw a line and make a spectrum. On the Far Left is pure agorist; on the Far Right is pure statism (I’ll leave it to the theologians to discuss as to whether statism is so Evil that it cannot exist in purity). An entrepreneur accepts all risk and operates purely underground on the Far Left. A person rejects all risk and imposes his will (or, more likely, that of his superior in the hierarchy) on others on the Far Right.

Now let’s take our compass and protractor and discern the “middle.” With my ideological tools, I see it as a largely aboveground business, accepting incorporation but only as a camouflage, afraid to deal with the Counter-Economy but equally in fear of the consequences of following regulations which will weaken or destroy the business. A highly unstable position, to be sure, as it should be. Tilting to the Right decreases risk but leads to a weaker business and less profit and thus the incentive to go ever-further right, begging, bribing and cajoling more and more statist intervention to assist the market-alienated firm, until finally it becomes indistinguishable from a branch of the State.

Tilting to the Left increases risk, but also profit and fitting supply to demand. As the company becomes more Counter-Economic, it prospers accordingly and has more capital to re-invest (since it’s paying little or no taxes) but if “outed” by the State, it can suffer ever-greater penalties. Finally, it goes completely underground and is a major Enemy of the State and essentially a key part of the Agorist Revolutionary strategy.

What keeps most entrepreneurs hovering between semi-agorist and semi-bureaucratic are the countervailing vectors of Fear of Risk/Failure vs Fear of Violence and Coercion. A few break free in one direction, embracing the risk and enjoying the freedom for however long they can succeed, and a few go the other way, embracing the State and reveling in whatever power they are granted over others.

Accepting money or any favours whatsoever is always wrong. Seizing property in the State’s sphere is always right. And what about those who fear for their families, that they will not be able to support their spouse or have their children seized and taken away? Where does cowardice fit on the political spectrum?

– “Deep Agorist Theory”, Samuel Edward Konkin III, 22 November 1999, LeftLibertarian mailing list

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Tags: agorism, counter-economics, morality, SEK3, statism

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Yes, Virginia, there is a coherent market anarchist strategy for achieving liberty. Since we’re programmed to accept only state-run elections as a valid change vector, this can be hard to accept - but it’s true. If you dismiss it out of hand, you’re letting a great opportunity pass you by, so please give this your full attention. Perhaps you can even work these strategies for achieving liberty into your repertoire?

Agorism, Voluntaryism and Open Source Peaceful Evolution

The agorist strategy is simple: stop supporting the government and start working for your own benefit. Don’t fund the government. Ignore its licenses and regulations. Do business “off the books” in ways that are either outright illegal or simply unauthorized (i.e., practice counter-economics). As we starve the government, we simultaneously build up the power of our free market until we can support defense providers strong enough to suppress the state. To learn more, check out agorism.info and especially read the New Libertarian Manifesto.

To reform oneself and help others do the same is the voluntaryist strategy. Voluntaryists withdraw their support of and compliance with the state. Voluntaryists first and foremost improve themselves and live their lives without aggression. For voluntaryists, the fight for liberty starts at home. Voluntaryists also practice civil disobedience, direct action (the solving of problems privately instead of demanding government action), education and counter-economics. Here are 15 tactics used by voluntaryists to advance liberty.

Open Source Peaceful Evolution is a concept that marries voluntaryist and agorist insights with open source organizational tactics and fourth generation warfare thinking. I’ve stolen the concept of open source insurgency from John Robb and molded it to libertarian purposes with a vision for non-aggression and a call to action in the form of the Free Me Project, a takeoff on the Free State Project. Click here to learn the 11 simple principles of advancing the process of peaceful evolution towards greater liberty.

Tactics

While a strategy is a plan of a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, tactics are how you go about achieving that plan. For example, one strategy for liberty might be to break up the left-right coalition that underpins the state. One tactic used to achieve this goal might be to convince individual progressives and conservatives that the market is the best way to achieve their goals. Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action is a great compendium of non-violent tactics you will find useful.

Does it Look Random?

If market anarchist resistance tactics look random to you, they might be! But that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s stigmergic. Stigmergy, according to Wikipedia, “is a form of self-organization [that] produces complex, apparently intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even communication between the agents. Gee, that sounds like the free market!

Too Slow?

With a paradigm like agorism or open source peaceful evolution, any principled act of resistance, no matter how random or disorganized it may seem, throws a cog in the works. Our actions are cumulative and will eventually bring about liberty. Too slow? Join us now to accelerate the pace!

Photo credit: Muffet. Photo license.