50 Things You Can Do Now

I follow a libertarian/anarchist at The Last Bastille, whose views go considerably further into the realm of hope than I do.  This week, however, he reposted a list from Anarplex, which I will repost below, because it is wholesome and well worth republishing.

1. Become a part-time entrepreneur, garage-market-dealer, urban farmer, welder, whatever. Just be productive under your own command. It doesn’t matter what it is; just be directly productive, and directly deal with suppliers and clients. You’ll find it awesomely liberating and it will be highly useful for the free underground market.
2. Switch off the TV. Read books!
3. Socialize with people that share your ethics and that are productive and respectful. Eat together, discuss, challenge each other, help each other, have a good time.
4. Get a safe or safe deposit box. Start moving all the cash you can get in there, convert at least 30% of your cash to silver and/or gold coins.
5. Invest in trust. Do minor deals for people on a trust basis. Taking others at their word, and let yourself be challenged by yours.
6. Start looking for matches. When you talk with people, memorize what they do, and if an opportunity comes up, connect them with someone else for a minor finders fee (a burger, a few beers, whatever).
7. Join your local LIMA house (We’ll explain this in a future post.)
8. Travel, but don’t go sight-seeing – spend your time getting to know the people there. Think about business opportunities with them.
9. Start using aliases and pseudonyms. Get comfortable using them in real-life situations.
10. Learn to use cryptography.
11. Learn ethics and law (not the government law!).
12. Study logic, especially the fallacies.
13. Put more cash aside. Use your part-time job as the source of saved cash.
14. Start to invest cash with people you know, in off the books projects. Start making micro-loans to people or buy shares in their operations.
15. Learn basic double-entry book-keeping. Don’t waste effort on the account-numbers they teach you – under the concept and use it.
16. Learn to write in code. We all have to use recording, bookkeeping, contact books, transaction notes etc. These should be hard to decipher for someone taking a quick glimpse, and even hard for someone taking time to analyze them. Use tricks like date-shifting, shorthand, making up your own terms, etc. Or, if you want to spend a little more effort, learn to use memorized ciphers, such as memorizing some longer text, then apply it as a simple shifting-key to what you write, with the page number or marker as a keypart.
17. Tell other producers, entrepreneurs, traders etc that you appreciate what they do.
18. Buy primarily from others like you, stay away from the on-the-books market as much as you can.
19. When in conflict, ask someone to mediate. Solve conflicts yourself wherever you can. Use a mutually respected and trusted third party when necessary. Stay away from state ‘justice’ whenever you can.
20. Start respecting secrets. Secrets are good most of the time; transparency is bad most of the time. Detox yourself from the ‘everything should be in the open’ propaganda.
21. Slowly make your part-time, off-the-books business, your main line of income. Things like underground dental hygiene are very cool.
22. Learn that ‘off-the-books’ means that you really have to excel in what you do. You have to provide quality.
23. Don’t invest in single deals; invest in relationships with the market.
24. Get over it; Voting doesn’t help at all.
25. Work with friends to create buying associations and selling associations. This will give you and others lots of money to save and lots of money to hide.
26. Harbor a fugitive (Good ones, obviously).
27. Help someone cross a border without documents.
28. Offer small merchants silver or gold rather than fiat currency.
29. Sell your products in silver or gold.
30. Accept and use digital gold, such as Pecunix or C-gold.
31. Start a community currency in your town.
32. Use digital cash, such as eCache.
33. Use Loom, Truebanc.
34. Get serious about protecting your Internet traffic.
35. Get comfortable working your will in the world.
36. Learn how to work your will beneficially. This is not about being ‘right,’ it is about causing benefit.
37. Fix your mistakes (you will make them). Learn not to repeat them.
38. Learn how to communicate effectively. Again, this is not about proving that you are right – this is about getting true ideas into other minds effectively.
39. Stop obeying the State in some new way. Tell your friends about your success doing so.
40. Get comfortable with the term ‘Economic Civil Disobedience.’
41. Spread the idea that the State is not magic – it is nothing more than a collection of your neighbors – no more ethical and noble than the lamer next door.
42. Learn how to find the false assumptions in arguments. Most public lies sound okay if you don’t find their unspoken assumptions. If they pass too quickly, find their written version and search for the lie it contains.
43. Learn how to disagree with kindness.
44. Accept the fact that most people are confused are just barely hanging on to their last shreds of self-esteem. Understand that State intellectuals like this condition, as it makes people easier to keep in line – a little shame goes a long way.
45. Don’t waste your energy on the political crisis de jour. Busy your mind with more substantial things. Daily political dramas are a time-sink, and the statists like it. Stop following their script.
46. Use jurisdictional arbitrage to deprive the State of your money. Work with friends if the setup costs are too large for you.
47. Learn to defend yourself, your family, your neighbors and your town. No State means no military. Until you take this upon yourself, your plans will always have a gaping hole in their middle. There is no free lunch here either. Get weapons and be mentally prepared to use them. Decide in advance how and when you would use them – do not leave it to the emotion of the moment – that will make a shipwreck of the whole venture. Learn how to use them safely.
48. Do something nice for your neighbor. The people who live near you are a far more important part of your environment than any other.
49. Help people who suffer undeservedly. No State means you are responsible for charity. Sure, it will be much easier when the State isn’t stealing all your extra money (or chasing you in hope of theft), but do what you can now and get used to the process.
50. Watch over your friends. Notice when they are having a bad day, show some kindness and concern. If they are overloaded, carry some of their burden. We all have bad times, and your bad day may come too. Help one another. Restore one another.

The Dangers of Collectivism

I read a very wide variety of articles from across the political and economic spectrum, and I read Doug Casey's stuff with a grain of salt.  However, this article from him is spot on.  It is an incomplete but poignant review of near-history results of collectivist (both socialist and fascist; both authoritarian in nature) outcomes in countries.

There is a very clear pattern that the author identifies that I am going to repost here.

In each of the above countries, the pattern has been roughly the same.

• A formerly prosperous country experiences a period in which the standard of living for the majority of citizens drops significantly.
  
• The voters react by electing a new leader who promises a chicken in every pot (in essence, collectivism, although it is not always called that at the time of the election).
  
• The new leader begins to rob the producers of wealth to provide largesse for those with less. This has a direct positive benefit for those with less, resulting in an increase in voters supporting collectivist promises over a period of years.
  
• Over time, the free market experiences a permanent loss of wealth, resulting in diminished largesse for those who are now dependent upon it.
  
• The government imposes increasing capital controls and other regulations, which deteriorate the free market more severely, causing inflation, shortages of goods, loss of jobs, and eventually starvation and systemic collapse.
  
• The voters choose a new leader who promises fiscal responsibility.
  
• With a return to a freer market, prosperity slowly reappears.

I have zero doubt that the U.S. will follow this path exactly if we do not recognize the dangers of the false siren call of socialism and reject it soundly.  The timeframe for a full socialist collapse in the U.S., assuming we run full speed ahead into socialism is maybe ten to twenty years.  The U.S. has a lot of wealth for parasites to consume.

 The link to the original article is here: http://www.internationalman.com/articles/a-chicken-in-every-pot
Or you can read it below, for people who don't like auto-play videos...

A more progressive and libertarian society

After watching yet another authoritarian be elected to the presidency of the United States of America, I have been turning my thinking towards how we can build a better society.

First, I should say that I define 'progressive' in a much different fashion than most liberal thinkers and non-thinkers.  Specifically, I am using the 1b definition according of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "making use of or interested in new ideas, findings, or opportunities."

I have a very unique view of how I think that U.S. society should be run.  My view is very heavily influenced, but not dominated, by the libertarian ideals laid out by Murray Rothbard in "A New Liberty," which conveniently you can download and read for free if you want to understand my sociopolitical base.

First and foremost, I believe firmly in the non-aggression axiom except in the upholding of individual property rights.  When a person violates another person's right to life or property then violence must be used to restrain the aggressor.  The government must exist to exert the sum total of individual violent force that any man is entitled to defend his life and property.  The problem is that the government crosses this line and often exceeds the instances that individuals can use violence to protect life and property and thus becomes tyrannical by definition.

For example, if you were to go into your neighbors home and hold them up at gunpoint and demand they give you 30% of their income, it would be appropriately considered assault and robbery.  However, when the Internal Revenue Service raids your neighbor's home with a SWAT team and holds your neighbor at gunpoint to demand remittance of 30% of their income in taxes, it is suddenly perfectly acceptable to most people.   How is it that we consider the same action criminal if an individual does it and 'business as usual' when a government does it?  That is a serious problem in our society today.  A government that exceeds the limits of individual force is a tyrannical government.

So, the first step in freeing society from the grip of tyranny is to limit government to its role of exerting the sum of individual forces.

"But how will we collect taxes?" you say, and you are correct to ask the question.  Taxation will be voluntary and earmarked by the taxpayer.  This accomplishes three things, first it frees the taxpayer from the tyranny of government robbery.  Next, it gives the taxpayer a sense of ownership and invests them in their programs.  Lastly, it removes the budgeting debates from Congress and allows the budgeting process to be automatically handled by the taxpayers.  Congress would only be responsible for creating and publishing programs that are available to be donated to.  From there, the taxpayers would earmark their taxes to the programs which they believe in and want to see funded would be funded, and those which taxpayers believe are frivolous and wasteful would simply not be funded.  This system would make all of the government beholden to the taxpayers and also force them to deliver on the services that they are supposed to, because no one will earmark money for programs that don't benefit them in some way.

"How would justice be maintained?" you might ask next.  The judicial branch would be run by private individuals who operate on a fee system, much like the rest of the private sector.  The BAR Association would be reduced to a legal standards organization, but their power to 'certify' lawyers and judges would be permanently revoked.  As such, anyone would be allowed to serve as a judge, assuming anyone will agree to allow them to adjudicate their disputes.  Judges would be chosen by both parties in a dispute, and both parties would pay the judge to adjudicate the dispute.  In criminal cases, trials by jury would continue as they do now, except that juries would be voluntary and funded by a taxpayer judicial pot.

"How would we build roads?"  All public projects could be funded at the state level by having a public works pot of money that is contracted out to private companies to build roads, bridges, etc. much like it is now.  People who are unhappy with the state of the infrastructure would donate to this pot of money in their respective state.

"How would we defend ourselves?"  The military would be separated along state lines and paradigms.  The military would consist of one national research, development, and materiel command whose sole job it is to provide advanced equipment for all of the state fighting branches, a national space/intelligence command who would manage the information and intelligence for all states, and the national transport command who would facilitate global transportation of state fighting forces all of whom would be run by an elected civilian director on four year terms with a two-term limit.  There would be no "Air Force", "Navy", "Army," etc. each state would possess a self-contained fighting force across air, sea, and land.  When a war was declared by the Congress, they would appoint a supreme commander from one of the state commands whose state would respond first to the external threat.  From there, states would rotate in and out of the combat zone once every three months to allow soldiers to recuperate and be ready to roll again.  All of the national branches would be funded by one pot of money and all of the state fighting forces would be funded by each respective state.

The Congress would serve the same number of years as they do now, but would be limited to two terms for Senators and four terms for Congressmen.  This would ensure that fresh ideas are enforced in the Congress and keep stagnant group think out of Washington.  All Congressional health insurance and retirement programs would be dissolved and they would be forced to utilize the private market, as all of their constituents must.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) would all be rolled into one department with a seven-member elected board each serving four year terms with two-term limits.  This new Finance Department would be responsible for ensuring that the money supply is maintained and that all deposits in U.S. banks are insured and would be authorized to print and disperse money to reimburse all clients of U.S. banks.  This way, when a bank fails, the Finance Department would print U.S. dollars up to the deposit balances of all customers of the failed bank and make those funds available to the customer to deposit in a new bank.  That way, when banks fail, the bank will simply go bankrupt and the money will be dispersed by the Finance Department to a bank of the depositors choice.  In this way, the depositors will be protected by the money-printing power of the Finance Department.  The fractional reserve system that modern banks use would be backed up by the full faith and credit of the U.S. and printing money up to the depositors amount would fill out the slack in the fractional system without creating inflation since they are simply backing up money that is already in the system.  The banks would create the money in the form of loans to individuals and businesses and the Finance Department would be the guarantor of all funds in the entire U.S. banking system regardless of which bank it is contained in.  That way, banks in the U.S. become expendable middle men who are incentivized to manage their bank well.

All other government functions would be divided up into departments to which people would be free to earmark their taxes for.  Each department would have an elected director on four years terms with a two-term limit and thus be wholly responsible to the taxpayers for making good on whatever service the department exists to provide.

This would be a far superior way to run our government and society, and thus will probably never happen because too many people's feathered beds would be turned upside down.  But the point of this post is to get people thinking about how a libertarian society could run.