autonomous alternatives to the statist quo | a collection of Anarchist blogs
This is the global Anarchoblogs. It collects articles from many smaller community hubs within the Anarchoblogs network. For stories from particular places, groups, or other communities within our movement, check out some of these sites.
society
As certain people of the medical persuasion continue to focus on our “obesity epidemic” as one of the worst horrors the human world has ever faced, the diet industry is making billions of dollars a year and funding the very studies that these “scientists” quote. We are more than willing to criticise Western culture, but [...]
Kevin Carson on the average Joe’s daily hell he heaven’izes to endure it tomorrow.
2 Aug 2010 | C4SS
This morning Joe was awakened by his alarm clock. Thanks to patents, which remove incentives to interoperability and modular design, the clock was designed to be thrown away rather than repaired. Thanks to “intellectual property” law, as well, the company was able to outsource actual production and then charge Joe a 1000% brand-name markup while paying the people who made it pennies. The clock was powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy—a regulated monopoly operating on the same cost-plus markup accounting system as most other public utilities, including the military contractors who gave us the $600 toilet seat.
Joe then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility; Joe’s water bill reflects a rate structure which provides below-cost water for large-scale industrial use and agribusiness. Joe watched the news on the kind of legacy broadcast media described by Edward Herman, which thanks to the FCC licensing monopolies is controlled by a handful of corporate gatekeepers.
He watched it while eating his breakfast of General Mills cereal, which thanks to government subsidies was produced at some giant mill in Minneapolis, despite the fact that cereal grains are most economically milled on a small scale near the point of consumption. Joe has no idea what’s in his bacon, because the F.D.A. (at Monsanto’s behest) prohibits labeling food as G.M.O.-free. Most of what he eats is loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, and what little “fresh” produce he eats is shipped from a giant plantation thousands of miles away, thanks to U.S.D.A. subsidies.
Joe took pills which were declared safe under an inspection regime originally created at the behest of the drug cartel itself, the inflated costs of which serve as a useful entry barrier and thereby benefit incumbent producers. He paid a 2000% markup on the pills thanks to government-granted patent monopolies. Joe’s medical plan stopped paying for prescription drugs because his weak union has been making more concessions at every contract renewal. The Wagner Act criminalized most of the really effective techniques, so unions like Joe’s are forced to fight by the bosses’ rules.
Joe drives to work on a government-subsidized highway system, built under the supervision of former auto exec Charlie “What’s Good for GM” Wilson. Joe’s commute takes almost an hour. Thanks to subsidized freeways and subsidized utilities to outlying developments, it’s artificially cheap to build monoculture bedroom communities far removed from where people work and shop. And thanks to zoning laws and other regulations against mixed use development, it’s extremely costly to live near your employer or be able to walk to a neighborhood grocer.
Joe begins his workday. He’s doing the work of a downsized person in addition to his own, the work environment is becoming increasingly hostile and authoritarian, and the micromanagement increasingly demeaning. He finds his face sore from the fake smile he constantly displays to reassure the bosses he’s got his mind right. He got no COLA raise last time around, and his insurance copay and deductible are higher. (It all gets back to the union thing above). The bosses sometimes drop hints about closing the plant down and moving to China, which is a whole lot more profitable thanks to World Bank subsidies to the road and utility infrastructure the offshore factories need, and thanks to W.T.O. enforcement of “intellectual property” law that corporate headquarters use to maintain control of outsourced production overseas.
Joe pays his bills with legal tender created by banks, under the state-granted power to loan the medium of exchange into existence out of thin air and then charge interest on it.
After work Joe finds his kids back home from the public schools, where they’re being processed into human resources who will cheerfully take direction from some authority figure behind a desk for the rest of their lives—just like Joe does. While they were there, the kids were taught about the wonders of Our Free Enterprise System (suitably adjusted, of course, by government action to protect us from corporate power run amok).
When Joe goes to sleep, if he’s a conservative, he will thank the beneficent Free Market for all the good things he enjoys. If he’s a liberal, he’ll give thanks for the interventionist state as a bulwark against unbridled corporate tyranny. And he’ll get a night’s rest, preparing for another day of serving the unholy corporate-state alliance that rules his life from cradle to grave.
Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society, contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective. Mr. Carson has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.
Julian Assange posted a complete answer to the question he’s frequently asked: Do we need WikiLeaks and why? He holds back no punches and points the finger at conspirators who create the need for reasonable skepticism and authoritarians who create the need for light-bearers.
Cory Doctorow, co-founding editor at Boing Boing and author spoke with Reason editor Nick Gillespie on the prejudice against children, the impact of offering his books for free and the obsolescence of creative monopoly (5:26):
Mr. Doctorow’s 2008 bestselling novel Little Brother can be downloaded here.
The heroic Michael Bauwens, editor at the P2P Foundation blog, posted the introduction to that work—where Mr. Doctorow discusses technology as a “force for liberation”—here.
Mark Frauenfelder—editor-in-chief at Make magazine, co-founder at Boing Boing and author himself—discussed the significance of unschooling and the do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) discovery process on development and education with Ted Balaker at Reason (8:36):
We can’t change the folks doing business as the US government. We can’t stop the wars or the torture. We can’t end the Federal Reserve. We can’t legalize marijuana. Holding unregulated cops accountable for their abuses is outside our purview. Freeing non-violent prisoners is beyond our reach. There are a lot of wrongs we simply are unable to right. But what we can do - right now - is live in strict alignment with our principles. Living in alignment with the principles of liberty not only revivifies the voluntary society but it also personally sustains us - our hopes, dreams and relationships - through these troubled times.
Unlike conquerors and politicians, we don’t force people to change or trick them into it. All we can do is live right, prosper, self-actualize, reach out to others and set a good example. But that is a lot, and certainly more effective over the long term than using fraud and aggression. We can right the wrongs in our own lives. We can ban aggression from our thoughts and our deeds. We are the kernel of the voluntary society. We can make it happen, but only if we find the commitment and discipline to do so.
With that in mind, my wife Nora and I have decided on a life transition. We’ve conserved water and cut our electricity use. Cable TV service is long gone. Processed foods are nearly absent from our diet. We’re buying land out in the middle of nowhere. We’re studying up on solar panels, organic gardening, tiny house building and other resilient technologies needed to sustain our lives close to nature.
Why are we taking this drastic step? Since we met eight years ago it’s been our dream to someday live on a farm. We both grew up close to the earth. She raised chickens with her mom. I gardened with my grandparents. Are we romanticizing the pastoral life? Maybe. But it’s also become an economic and ethical necessity.
The cost of life in the statist ecosystem is going up. And the value of our Federal Reserve Notes is declining. Our rent is exorbitant because housing prices recently bubbled to new highs. The $100 that fed a family of 6 for a week in 1984 just doesn’t go as far for our family of 3 in 2010. The houses around here are built to waste heat. They’re too big and too poorly insulated. The backyards are tiny - where are we to garden? In short, the suburban space around here is built for dependence on fragile corporate food supply chains and state utility monopolies. We have no flexibility and little room to improve our lives. We can’t take a break from the treadmill of modern life without risking serious economic difficulties.
Ethically, our monthly budget has a hidden line item that supports the government and its cronies. As long as we live here, we must pay property tax to a township whose cops park in front of the fire hydrant down the street so they can catch folks breaking the ridiculously low speed limit of 25 miles per hour. We pay sales tax to the folks doing business as the Pennsylvania commonwealth. Since so much of the produce we buy comes from far away, we have no idea what other taxes we may be paying. Our ability to withdraw support from government aggression is limited. We have no choice but to support wars and other immoral aggression.
On our land, we’ll build our own tiny home and heat it with renewable wood. We’ll collect energy to power our electrical devices with solar panels and wind turbines. We’ll get our water from the rain and/or a well. Instead of shopping at Costco for our food, we hope to produce most of it ourselves and barter directly with other producers for the rest - thus cutting off our subsidy of large corporations, and by extension governments. We won’t be able to escape all taxes, of course, but we’ll do our best.
The point is not to go primitive or “green”, though there’s nothing wrong with that, but instead to reduce our support for the government gangs and limit our exposure to their perverse unintended consequences. We want to reduce our monthly cost of living budget and decouple ourselves from inflated government money. We’re taking charge of our health by producing what we eat. Too much mass-market food comes with contaminants. We hope to improve our quality of life, and not sacrifice anything other than that hidden line item in our budget.
We’ll also associate more closely with like-minded folks and thus grow even further the voluntary society. We’ll trade outside the confines of the statist ecosystem. We’ll build a free space for the next generation. We’ll build the new society in the shell of the old. With more free time and hopefully an extended life expectancy, we will do our part to build space for free choice.
If you can’t live in alignment with your principles, what’s the point? If the environment where you create your life includes a hidden cost that pays for the destruction of all that you hold dear, why do you continue in that lifestyle? Liberty starts with each of us. If we can’t make the voluntary society happen in our own lives, what hope is there of making it happen on a large scale? Change requires that good people set good examples. If nothing else, your efforts will keep the promise of liberty alive until conditions become more favorable. It’s our best option. No one will make this happen but ourselves. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Photo credit: sarniebill1. Photo license.
“I Want Out”, Helloween, 1988
From our lives’ beginning on We are pushed in little forms No one asks us how we like to be In school they teach you what to think But everyone says different things But they’re all convinced that They’re the ones to see So they keep talking and they never stop And [...]
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.
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.
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.
This month's edition of Cato Unbound tackles one of the most interesting questions historians have: Where did modernity come from? Stephen Davies leads off with a revision and synthesis of several classical liberal theories about the issue; his essay has attracted a friendly critique from Jack Goldstone, one of the...(Linked Friday 2009-11-13.)
This might just be the most kick ass song ever recorded. It's a show tune, but the show ain't been written for it yet. Hopefully, a team of writers somewhere is working on that.(Linked Friday 2009-11-13.)
In “Daddy Issues,” Dennis Perrin wonders why we offer our presidents not merely obedience but also filial piety: What is it that makes Americans feel a family connection to the presidency? Yes, we are indoctrinated from birth about our unique goodness, our special qualities; and yes, the president is viewed...(Linked Friday 2009-11-13.)
Just under a week ago I announced here that I’ve dropped my preferences and declared myself an anarchist without adjectives. I then proposed a series of questions which one might entertain to determine whether one really ought or ought not consider oneself a libertarian/anarchist (the two terms being interchangeable in their best senses).
The response was staggering. 134 comments on a single blog post here is a record likely to stand for quite a while. The post also spawned an enormous (182 comments) reddit thread on /r/anarchism and a smaller (34 comments) one on /r/libertarian, plus an essay (with footnotes!) by Alex Peak and a point-by-point reply by b psycho of the Psychopolitik 2.0 blog.
I responded to b psycho on his post, but Alex’s site doesn’t allow commenting so I’ll follow up here on two things he wrote there.
First, Alex asks: “But what does it mean to say that private property might be ‘impossible’ in a free society?” Here, my wording was poor. A better formulation would have been to ask about one’s preferences regarding the proposition that private property wouldn’t exist in a free society. I missed the mark with my language, but stimulated the discussion I wanted to create anyway.
I haven't read it either.
Alex then objects to my statement (in a comment) that property is a social construct, bringing in an argument regarding someone going and living off the land by themselves. I suggest that the isolated individual’s notions of property are irrelevant until he or she comes into contact with other human beings. It is only in interactions with other people that claims to property become worthy of consideration, and it is thereby a social process which determines what particular claims will be respected and which will not. Questions regarding Robinson’s property claims absent interactions with others simply vanish from relevance.
I’d now like to ask my dear readers a similar set of questions, again with the necessary caveats: the formulations of the questions also reflect my preferences, may be poorly worded, and are asked given the context that we can’t know what a free society looks like. Additionally, when I refer to “free societies”, I do not mean static, crystalline things never subject to change. Take the term, rather, as meaning “the early stages of a flexible, free society, subject to any number of changes going forward” if that makes you more comfortable.
Comrade Murray ripped Bob good for this one.
I assert, of course without proof, that if you answer “yes” to any of these questions, you’re not really an anarchist. Or a libertarian.
Join the lively discussion by posting your objections, critiques, arguments, disputes and complaints below!
Love it? Hate it? Share it!
