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barter
… is really simple. And you don’t even have to be an agorist to do it!
Practical agorism, via Facebook
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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.)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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.
A 20 minute video brought to my attention by RottenRepublic containing shades of both Mutualism and Agorism.
From a Kevin Carson comment on his own blog, Mutualist.org: “So long as an industry is controlled by a handful of firms with the same organizational culture, using some form of oligopoly pricing, colluding to spoon out incremental improvements, and using push distribution methods for whatever crap they agree is the “new thing” this year, calculational [...]
My latest piece, on living off the grid: “Hundreds of thousands of people in this country live “off the grid.” If the power fails, food runs short or drought hits, their families won’t be hurt. Their houses have solar panels and electric generators; [...]