A Stateless Society By 2020

[J’raxis 270145]

The legitimacy of the government is indeed an illusion. But the government itself is not an illusion, and still needs to be dealt with. Behaving as if the lion that is about to maul you simply doesn't have the authority to maul you isn't going to help you when it does so.

[Lasse]

The bolded option is the one I voted for, right? Right now 'great idea, but pie in the sky' is bolded for me, and that's not what I voted for. Is something going on with the polls? Bugs in the forum?

[FTL_Ian]

Am I really the only one here who is interested in such a lofty goal?

I'm with you, and I'm glad you're here in Keene.  The transition from the Information age to the age of Liberty is beginning here and now.

[srqrebel]

The bolded option is the one I voted for, right? Right now 'great idea, but pie in the sky' is bolded for me, and that's not what I voted for. Is something going on with the polls? Bugs in the forum?

Sorry about that... it should be fixed now.

[J’raxis 270145]

Am I really the only one here who is interested in such a lofty goal?

I'm with you, and I'm glad you're here in Keene.  The transition from the Information age to the age of Liberty is beginning here and now.

I like that.

The twentieth century will be remembered as the era in which the State tried to take control over every last square millimetre of land, either by explicitly drawing borders around it, or holding the land "in common" through wide-ranging treaty arrangements (e.g., Antarctica, the Moon, &c.).

And the twenty-first century will be remembered as the era when we took it back.

[PowerPenguin]

One would hope. Personally, I think the transition will be one in which the security state grows for the medium term, up until the point that it can no longer be funded, largely due to international fiat failure. Tax resistance, etc. are also very good, and are to be encouraged (I do it every day), but the effect is much greater for improving the individual's independence, than for 'bringing down the system' itself. Mathematically, the numbers are too high. The only thing we can really do on that front is wait for the financial-governmental-military complex to burn itself out, as the Soviet Union did 16 years ago.

Unlike during the 30s, or even the late 1980s, we have the organizational and communication abilities to build a support network. When people (perhaps a majority, or just a very loud minority) wants even more of the same (ie, even bigger government to save them from disaster), we'll have a viable alternative in place that people can turn to instead. What does this mean?

Essentially, alternative institutions, as others have mentioned, plus the black market. After all, when everything's illegal in some way, much of what's "bad" actually becomes good. This means honest and mutually beneficial trade in all areas of products and services, including drugs/med procedures, self-defense tools/services, alternative monetary/account keeping mechanisms, etc. If you have two equally trustworthy suppliers, and one is 'above board' and the other 'below', it makes sense to support the latter, as he is being productive, all while minimizing your/his contribution to the state apparatus. You therefore reward good behavior, while punishing the bad. In a curious way, millions of 'small' actions have a larger effect than a few 'large' ones. The whole is surely larger than the sum of its parts.

An associate of mine, Dave McGregor, wrote an interesting essay about this topic. He focuses more on the international/global scale, but the nutshell version of his thesis is that as globalization continues, state power will continue to be undermined. Over a period of perhaps several decades, the state will gradually phase out as a significant model for human organization. In his view, the most significant advances for freedom will not be dramatic and rapid, but rather subtle and long term, much as the transgressions on our freedoms in the last century were. I would post a link to the whole article, but it seems to have been moved to his 7-part "FreedomShift Newsletter" promo a while ago. It's free, so what the hell- you might learn something .

Personally, I agree with McGregor that transition will take place over several decades. Maybe this is an ageist statement, but I think that Liberty in Our Lifetime will be more applicable to people of my generation ('Gen Y') than for those who are already middle aged plus. If you look at history, socialism really took about 50 years to 'hit the big time' in American politics, and there's no reason to assume that the modern freedom movement would be any different. Yes, we have a much more coherent and comprehensive intellectual argument than pro freedom people did in past centuries, but our roadblocks to freedom are also much higher, making everything pan out, IMHO. Can we get freedom by 2050 or 2060? Sure, I'd put some money on that. By 2020? Hell no, but prove me wrong! I'd rather go bankrupt loosing this bet than face state sponsored bankruptcy later on!

[EthanAllen]

First of all there are definitional issues to work through.

1. anarchism doesn't mean just being against the state, it means being against all illegitimate authority that is inalterable...that includes most religion and much of what passes today as legitimate property relations.

2. the "state" is different than local governance as legitimate agency.

Secondly one has to change the terms of the debate between those who want to use the state to redistribute wealth as part of social justice that acknowledges the problem of illegitimate concentrations of wealth and the resulting power that flows from it.

Unless these issues are acknowledge and agreed upon how to sensibly move forward then the freedom movement in NH is at an impasse I am afraid.

[J’raxis 270145]

Unless these issues are acknowledge and agreed upon how to sensibly move forward then the freedom movement in NH is at an impasse I am afraid.

srqrebel:—

By "impasse," he means that he and the rest of the freedom movement don't agree. At least thirteen people have sensibly moved forward by putting EthanAllen on ignore.

[EthanAllen]

Unless these issues are acknowledge and agreed upon how to sensibly move forward then the freedom movement in NH is at an impasse I am afraid.

srqrebel:—

By "impasse," he means that he and the rest of the freedom movement don't agree. At least thirteen people have sensibly moved forward by putting EthanAllen on ignore.

I am a member of the alliance for left libertarianism that includes:

1. agorists
2. mutualists
3. geoists

The principal ideological difference between agorists and mutualist is property theory.

Mutualists advocate a usufruct approach to property law, agorists advocate Rothbardian property theory (a radically anti-state version of Lockean property theory -- call it Lockeanism 2.0) and non-Rothbardian an-caps tend to have no theory of justice in property beyond existing property titles (what they think of as legitimate property relations).

Mutualists and Agorists that get along well tend to look at the two property theories as two separate legal doctrines that could amicably compete in a stateless free market for arbitration services (i.e. "law" and "courts").  There are other differences though. Most are just cultural or terminological.

In academic terms, one could count the economic dispute over subjective value theory (agorists) versus the labor theory of value (mutualists). If we take Kevin Carson's work on the labor theory of value as
the best modern take on it and the "plumb-line" for modern mutualist political economy doctrine, this becomes an irrelevant difference in practical terms. Carson's understanding of the labor theory of value
that he promotes in his book is heavily subjectivized. LTV stops being a rationale for statist forcible redistribution of wealth as social justice advocates on the left call for and instead describes/predicts how free markets will tend to even out wealth concentrations naturally. A tendency or opinion subjectivists can also hold -- they just don't incorporate that into an economic theory of value.

[enloopious]

I swear he isn't using real words.

Anyhow, This type of idea will only work in numbers (obviously.) You have to start with your own house, family, and mind. Once you have freed your body, mind, and spirit you can move on to a larger area. Some people know this already.

You can not tell other people what to do, you can merely lead by example. Under that idea when it comes to a free society, it will spread if it works. That's all there really is to it. Structuring it properly requires a lot of thought and the anarchist founders of the country had a lot of good ideas.

But we must remember to define the difference between the local state and the federal state. The local state is the only place where you could have a positive affect until your movement reached a large enough audience, that is, where the people who love freedom outnumber the sheeple. We must always remember that we can not force people to do a thing, we can only show them a better way and hope they choose it.

The one saying that helps me figure out what to do is this: "While people crave positions of power there will never be peace." And I think we must always remember that the fight never ends so long as people desire power. The best we can hope for is personal freedom that doesn't violate another's property; A worthy goal.

[KBCraig]

I swear he isn't using real words.

You learn well, grasshoppa... your next stage of development is to learn to use the "ignore" button. 

[PowerPenguin]

Let's get back to the topic: What did YOU do today to advance liberty?

[Braddogg]

I went for a walk.

[EthanAllen]

I swear he isn't using real words.

If you can read 'em, they are real.

I borrow these letters and words freely from the social commons.

[Braddogg]

I swear he isn't using real words.

If you can read 'em, they are real.

I borrow these letters and words freely from the social commons.

  That's a good one!