Menno's Grand Plan Finally Unveiled

[Friday]

As far as the background for my way of thinking, it more or less started with various writings of Dr. Frank R. Wallace, especially The Neo-Tech Discovery (later revised and renamed The Zonpower Discovery), as well as my all-time personal favorite, Sic Itur Ad Astra by Andrew J. Galambos.  Unfortunately, all of these are now out of print and extremely difficult to obtain.

These form the general foundation of my thinking; yet it took literally over a decade of incubation for all of their powerful identifications to start to 'jell' to a point where I could clearly internalize the accurate paradigm of what the Authoritarian Model of Government really is, and what it really represents, and why it makes perfect sense to categorically withdraw from this highly obsolete, literally criminal model of "governing".

Another author I would highly recommend is Carl Watner, founder of the concept of voluntaryism.

Thank you, I'll check these out.  When do you intend to unveil your master plan? 

[srqrebel]

When do you intend to unveil your master plan? 

LOL... it's still being formulated

...or should I say, being fine tuned.  Here is a rough outline of my approach:

The basic, long-term goal is to replace the individual-enslaving Authoritarian Model of Government (AMOG) with the individual-empowering Free Market Model.

It is basically a three-pronged strategy:

1) Withdrawing all support, financial and moral, from the AMOG, to the best of my ability.  This fulfills my personal obligation.

2) Building the replacement to the AMOG: The Free Market structure of voluntary services.  The idea is to outcompete the AMOG, to create the conditions that compel it to retreat into oblivion.  Focus energy and resources in a forward direction: Creating the new>> rather than <<destroying the old; outcompeting>> rather than <<fighting.  This requires careful forethought, taking steps to camouflage and otherwise protect these enterprises from attack by the AMOG.

3) Spread the accurate paradigm, that of the genuine, 100% voluntary, contract-based Free Market system, to our target market, using all available media at my (our) disposal.  This target market includes entrepreneurial creators, freethinkers, movers and shakers, and the generally disaffected who thirst for a real solution to the world's problems.  Bring the creators and entrepreneurs on board to help build the structure of the Free Market that will outcompete the obsolete AMOG.  Bring the disaffected on board to redirect their personal support from the AMOG to the Free Market Model.

I seek to relay these ideas through dramatic assertion of individual sovereignty, i.e. civil disobedience combined with a well-articulated explanation (message).  This message is most effective against a backdrop of accelerating tyranny.  These two facts, along with the need to cut off all support, aid, and comfort (sense of legitimacy) from the parasitic AMOG, forms a solid case for 100% withdrawal from the AMOG, including all political participation and appeals, as much as possible.

I am down to working out the nuts and bolts applications of this approach.  Stay tuned!

[Caleb]

Some random thoughts:

#1 is hard to do because the current model of government is quite content for most of us to be wage slaves, beholden to an employer. This makes it difficult, because most people are afraid of getting arrested for even minor infractions because they will lose their job if they don't show up for a couple days to work. I think that looking at ways to make it easier to do #1 is productive, to help people towards financial independence, or at least interdependence among those of us who are trying to do it. by financial independence, I don't mean wealthy, just that there is some way to make work more flexible. Dave's anarchy house project idea is a good step in that direction, because it makes a short stint of unemployment more palatable. but I think more could be done.

I don't have much to say on #2

#3, I think we should not overlook the influence of the arts in communicating our message. I like what Dale is doing. I like what John Connell is doing. Music and the arts have a way of reaching people at an entirely different level than dry, boring books do. I like the street theater sort of things.

I also think that it is helpful to tap into already existing networks. It helps to be entertaining. It helps to think positive about how people might respond to what you say, even if they seem like a lost cause.

I am starting to order anarchist t-shirts, and I am going to wear them around, because t-shirts are effective conversation starters. I can't tell you how many times I have been able to have a conversation because of my t-shirts.

It helps to stand out in a crowd. I am thinking of radically changing what I wear. I like the Free Hugs! campaign. Anything to stick out in the crowd so that people remember you and what you say. I think the overalls are a nice thing to wear, because that pretty much removes any intimidation factor and conveys this very comfortable, non-threatening vibe that I think is helpful to convey when you are preaching anarchy. It also helps to be known for being more than just a guy who doesn't like government.

[Russell Kanning]

You could do the free hugs and sing songs  .... in the ron paul rally in DC

[srqrebel]

Very good insights, Caleb... and +1 for pointing out the value of reaching people through the arts.  I, too, see the arts as a largely overlooked, underutilized but very powerful communication tool.  For instance, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, in spite of all of it's non sequiturs and politically charged, shoddy "reporting" and obvious bs, still managed to instantly transform me from a tacit supporter of GWB to an overt opponent.  (Obviously, I've come a long way further since then!)

The reason I do not personally focus much on the arts, is because I have virtually no artistic ability of my own that I am aware of, unless you consider writing an art.

---

Indeed, looking for ways to make it easier to do #1 is not only productive, it is an absolutely critical, though relatively minor, component of the strategy. 

First, you create a rough outline, identifying the most direct and effective routes to achieving the goal of a free civilization.  This I have done, as illustrated in my previous post.  Then you start honing these approaches all the way down to the nuts and bolts applications, creating solutions to each obstacle you encounter along the way.  That is what I am in the process of doing now, and one of those obstacles is the AMOG's near stranglehold on employment, through their act of compelling virtually all employers to be their tax collectors, else ultimately look down the barrel of a gun.

It is instructive to note that, for those who have made the paradigm shift, and fully grasp the true nature of our social environment -- the 100% parasitic, individual-enslaving AMOG vs. the 100% productive, individual-empowering Free Market Civilization -- it is a small matter indeed to stand firm in the face of the gun.  But while the threat of their gun is virtually a laughing matter to me, and anyone else who has made this paradigm shift, one area where they have real power over me, and others like me, is wherever they maintain control over the provision of genuine services.

Let me illustrate:

If I were self-employed, the only tool they have at their disposal to try and extract their taxes from me is the gun.  It is to my benefit, not theirs, if they choose to use this tool -- for I am fully prepared to reverse it right back at them in a well-orchestrated jujitsu move, by broadcasting far and wide the repulsive spectacle of the AMOG's evil core to those who blindly and unwittingly support it.

However, I am not currently in a position to be self-employed; that is one of the obstacles I must create a solution to (and I will).  In the meantime, in order to maintain my effectiveness, I have to have an income source.  In fact, I cannot very well create the solution of self-employment without at least a nominal amount of startup capital.  So it follows that I have a very real need for the service of employment.  I have presently no real opportunity for obtaining a decent income, which is necessary for my effectiveness, through under-the-table employment.  So, I am temporarily backed into a corner and must turn to conventional employment for a decent income.

That is where the AMOG has some fleeting power over me: By compelling my conventional employer to withhold taxes from my earnings, as a condition of being provided the very real and needed service of employment, I am temporarily powerless to keep 100% of my earnings out of the hands of the AMOG.  I do take steps to reduce to a bare minimum the amount of plunder they take from my earnings, however, because that is in my power to do.

Same goes for roads: The AMOG's driver licensing and vehicle registrations "services" are not services at all; or at least they are not services that I have any use for.  Thus, their only tool to get me to pay for those non-services is the gun.  Again, their guns have no power over me: I am prepared to reverse the impact tenfold to them when, and if, they attack me.

The roads themselves are a different story, however: If I want to be effective, I have to be mobile -- and efficiently so.  I need the very real service of being provided roads to travel on.  Since the AMOG presently maintains control over the provision of virtually all road service, they have me backed into a corner: I am compelled to turn to a service that is provided by the very institution that I detest with every fiber of my being.  This, too, is ultimately a temporary condition, for as the AMOG is itself compelled to retreat, roads will either become privatized or made obsolete by new transportation technology provided by the private sector.

This, by the way, provides an important glimpse into what makes the Free Market Model able to both outcompete the AMOG, and once in place, be virtually indestructible: Nothing under the Free Market structure is ever imposed at the point of a gun.  Enforcement, strictly a method of the obsolete and criminal AMOG, is replaced by crime prevention technologies.  The worst that can happen to a perceived criminal in the coming Free Market Civilization is that he will be very effectively denied valuable services by conventional service providers.  His threats of force will be just as laughable as the recent episode of a would-be bank robber who tried to rob a bank through the drive-thru, and kept trying to frighten the teller into compliance by brandishing his gun even after he was decisively informed that the window is constructed of bulletproof glass.  Members of the ostracized criminal class will be left with only two options for survival: Turn on each other, which leads to the rapid decimation of their numbers, or lay down their weapons and produce values to be traded peaceably amongst themselves in their own little black market (which, by the way, they will be perfectly left alone to do so). 

Value denial is a vastly more powerful form of regulation than the impotent gun and fists employed by the AMOG, and since the AMOG relies on the gun rather than value production, they are at a severe and permanent disadvantage.

While others are fiddling with the controls of the very mechanism of enslavement to try to achieve freedom, I am designing the mechanism that will back the AMOG into a corner until their final act is to be literally laughed out of existence.*

*I first read the phrase, "laughed out of existence", in reference to our current guns-and-fists model of government, back in the eighties.  It was a favorite phrase of the Neo-Tech author, Dr. Frank R. Wallace.  It took me twenty years to come to the realization that that phrase was meant quite literally, and is very well within our reach -- in fact, inevitable, if the AMOG does not succeed in wiping out existing civilization first with its toys of mass destruction.

[Caleb]

The reason I do not personally focus much on the arts, is because I have virtually no artistic ability of my own that I am aware of, unless you consider writing an art.

Writing is absolutely an art! Look at people like Mark Twain ... or Emily Dickinson ... Edgar Allen Poe. Hell, I challenge anyone to read the Tell-tale Heart and not walk away with a chill down their spine. Art is what reaches people at an emotional level. Photography is also an overlooked art. Menno, I bet that you have tons of art within you. Like anything, it requires some technical skill. I used to say that myself, "I wish I could do art", but it requires a little effort to learn the technical aspect, but once you take that effort, you let your creativity take over. Words are a good place to begin, of course, because the only technical skill you need is one most people already have: the ability to read and write.

Indeed, looking for ways to make it easier to do #1 is not only productive, it is an absolutely critical, though relatively minor, component of the strategy. 

Critical, though minor.  Can I use that one? 

First, you create a rough outline, identifying the most direct and effective routes to achieving the goal of a free civilization.  This I have done, as illustrated in my previous post.  Then you start honing these approaches all the way down to the nuts and bolts applications, creating solutions to each obstacle you encounter along the way.  That is what I am in the process of doing now, and one of those obstacles is the AMOG's near stranglehold on employment, through their act of compelling virtually all employers to be their tax collectors, else ultimately look down the barrel of a gun.

I don't have the solution, but maybe a variation of Russell's "V for Voluntary Services" would be a good way of working? If you had enough people participating, you could devote one guy whose job was to hussle up work, and the rest of the guys were the crew who did it.

Same goes for roads: The AMOG's driver licensing and vehicle registrations "services" are not services at all; or at least they are not services that I have any use for.  Thus, their only tool to get me to pay for those non-services is the gun.  Again, their guns have no power over me: I am prepared to reverse the impact tenfold to them when, and if, they attack me.

The reason that I didn't comment on that aspect earlier, is because I don't see any way to replace roads and such at this time. Several other components other people are working on, so I don't know that you have to central plan that. The question is: What can I do right now to work towards an AMOG-free society? But you also have to realize that there are other people who are also trying to do that, so you don't have to solve every problem.

There's another thing I think you might think about, to go along with your idea of ostracism as a societal tool for discouraging anti-social or criminal behavior:  This is far more powerful than you think. Everyone requires some level of social approval. The reason most people are able to commit crimes is because they belong to a societal group that on some level approves of the behavior. The easiest example would be a gang, although I think we do ourselves a disservice to limit our thinking of how this works to only gangs, because even a small group of a couple kids can smash mailboxes because it's "cool" in their tiny little group to do it. I think mentoring kids, like maybe a Big Brother type program, is a highly beneficial thing to do, because it uses positive social pressure as a reward instead of a punishment, working while kids are still young to reinforce the idea that helping other people, not hurting them, is "cool".

[srqrebel]

Critical, though minor.  Can I use that one? 

I see why it sounds like an oxymoron, but it is not.  For example, lug nuts are a minor component of an automobile, but extremely critical to its functioning.  The engine, on the other hand, is a major component -- and critical as well.  The bug shield is neither major nor critical.

Make sense?  And of course you can use it

...maybe a variation of Russell's "V for Voluntary Services" would be a good way of working? If you had enough people participating, you could devote one guy whose job was to hussle up work, and the rest of the guys were the crew who did it.

I had never heard of "V for Voluntary Services", but it sounds like an interesting approach worth looking into.

Although I am also looking for solutions that can be duplicated by individuals who do not have the advantage of an instant network, like we have.

...Several other components other people are working on, so I don't know that you have to central plan that. The question is: What can I do right now to work towards an AMOG-free society? But you also have to realize that there are other people who are also trying to do that, so you don't have to solve every problem.

Exactly!  Gee, I didn't mean to imply that I will do all or most of the work.  Others will no doubt work circles around me in terms of both fine-tuning the design (creating solutions to the obstacles), and implementing various components.

All I am trying to do, is as much as is within my limited power to design and implement the structure of the Free Market Civilization, while virally spreading this concept so others can get on board and do the same until we reach critical mass.

No part of this structure is, or can be centrally planned.  A key feature of the Free Market Civilization is accelerated decentralization -- for that empowers the individual.

My guess is that at some point in the distant future of human civilization, human beings will operate as 100% self-sufficient entities, as the ultimate result of the direction that the Free Market will inexorably take us.  The AMOG, on the other hand, specializes in keeping us trapped in a mode of dependence on a centralized system.

There's another thing I think you might think about, to go along with your idea of ostracism as a societal tool for discouraging anti-social or criminal behavior:  This is far more powerful than you think. Everyone requires some level of social approval. The reason most people are able to commit crimes is because they belong to a societal group that on some level approves of the behavior.

Absolutely!  There are many different aspects that enhance this strategy and Free Market Civilization itself.  I do not have the time or space, or even the presence of mind to list them all in one fell swoop.  This is one of them.

Think of what happens when a young person is faced with the choice of either trying to extract values criminally, vs. honorable productive value exchange, once the Free Market is fully established and well under way: By now, the remnant of criminals who have survived their initial self-inflicted decimation, will have no doubt established a black market system of value production and peaceable trade amongst themselves, even to the point of managing to carve out a comfortable existence for themselves.

So the young person going out on his own would inevitably be aware that if he attempts to advance himself through crime, there is a very strong likelihood that he will get caught in the ostracism matrix and decisively banished from interacting with the general marketplace.  Yet he knows that he could still maintain a fairly comfortable existence in the black market.

One thing that would serve as an additional powerful deterrent to this potentially rash and thoughtless youth, is the specter of being just as decisively ostracized from those who love him and exchange emotional values with him.  This will occur at the subconscious level, with little or no conscious logic involved.

For example, consider the extreme (and completely irrational) aversion that the average twenty-something person today has to the idea of dating someone with, say, an age difference of more than three or four years.  This has absolutely no basis in logic, or threat of force (there is no law prohibiting age differences between adults): It is perpetuated by the very real threat of social alienation and derision by their peers.  Even if a young person could be genuinely attracted to a person six years older or younger than themselves, the specter of being virtually ostracized by their peers prevents most of them from even recognizing such an attraction within themselves.

You bet social norms are very powerful, and play a very important part in keeping the coming Free Market Civilization functioning smoothly once established.

[picaro]

For example, consider the extreme (and completely irrational) aversion that the average twenty-something person today has to the idea of dating someone with, say, an age difference of more than three or four years.  This has absolutely no basis in logic, or threat of force (there is no law prohibiting age differences between adults): It is perpetuated by the very real threat of social alienation and derision by their peers.  Even if a young person could be genuinely attracted to a person six years older or younger than themselves, the specter of being virtually ostracized by their peers prevents most of them from even recognizing such an attraction within themselves.

Is this really completely irrational?   If you date with the ultimate goal of forming a life-long pair-bond... there are clear disadvantages to forming such a bond with a person with a significantly shorter lifespan.

You bet social norms are very powerful, and play a very important part in keeping the coming Free Market Civilization functioning smoothly once established.

Then let's change the normative behavior.   We may scoff at suburban pointlessness and its oppressive mediocrity.  However, relating to others on a mundane level helps them recognize your humanity.   It is important for others to see themselves reflected in you when you demonstrate.  A good working example is Harry Hay who founded the Mattachine Society and the Radical Fairies.   Despite their radical politics, they would disguise themselves as normal people and descend en masse on small towns.

For those who have rejected violence, militance cannot win the day by itself.  The militant core is important for making issues topical.       People at demonstrations may be quickly dismissed as freaks.  Casual political conversation with a peer is not so easily dismissed.  Strong ties to neighbors, church groups, and charities help show yourself as stable/invested/sane.   

The challenge is to find peers outside libertarian circles.    Then, not become subsumed by the mainstream.

Oh, and You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship is good reading.

[John Edward Mercier]

Women would marry much younger men, if a life-long pair bonding was the only goal... simply because they live longer in general. The socio-economic underpinnings of 'nesting' comes into play offseting this rational.

[Russell Kanning]

I agree with you Picaro dude

[Russell Kanning]

...maybe a variation of Russell's "V for Voluntary Services" would be a good way of working? If you had enough people participating, you could devote one guy whose job was to hussle up work, and the rest of the guys were the crew who did it.

I had never heard of "V for Voluntary Services", but it sounds like an interesting approach worth looking into.

I doubt you would like it. Your stuff is different.

[Caleb]

I agree with you Picaro dude

  Yet you mocked me when I said that I needed to hang out with people who weren't part of the clique. 

M'kay?

[Caleb]

...maybe a variation of Russell's "V for Voluntary Services" would be a good way of working? If you had enough people participating, you could devote one guy whose job was to hussle up work, and the rest of the guys were the crew who did it.

I had never heard of "V for Voluntary Services", but it sounds like an interesting approach worth looking into.

I doubt you would like it. Your stuff is different.

What's not to like?

http://www.v4voluntary.org/

[Russell Kanning]

I agree with you Picaro dude

  Yet you mocked me when I said that I needed to hang out with people who weren't part of the clique. 

M'kay?

So I guess you should move to NH and hang out with Picaro.
I just find it amusing that you think you will find more comrads elsewhere. They are moving here.

[Russell Kanning]

What's not to like?

http://www.v4voluntary.org/

menno likes contracts