Pennsylvania Anarchoblogs

Over at Skeptical Eye, SE wonders, “If you’re poor like me, how can you not shop at Walmart?” And the fact is you can’t, not if it makes financial sense to do so. And you shouldn’t trouble yourself over this fact. Government aggression created Walmart and sustains it. You didn’t create this situation and if you don’t endorse or help maintain it, you are blameless.

It’s Not Our Fault

Don’t sacrifice yourself on the altar of purity. As much as one would like, it is incredibly difficult and possibly self-defeating to eliminate all the benefits of other people’s aggression from your life. Aggression, by its very nature, leaves one with little to no choice. It’s not our fault and we must make the best with those few choices left to us.

Gold has a Kind of Government Subsidy

Take the price of gold, for example, which is reportedly kept artificially low through government central bank schemes whose purpose is to hide fiat currency inflation levels from the market. Does this roundabout government subsidy mean you should not buy gold? Of course not! You are not responsible for this situation and in fact are working to eliminate aggression in the world (or should be). Why should someone else’s aggression limit your options?

Let’s Harvest the Fruits of their Aggression

Keep in mind that, in order for us to achieve liberty, we liberty lovers must enhance our power while simultaneously draining that of the state. Taking advantage of situations created by government aggression, such as Walmart, the price of gold and anything else that doesn’t require you to aggress or endorse aggression is a good opportunity for us. Other candidates for action might be: acceptance of unemployment benefits, homesteading of government resources (such as parks) and collecting social security payments.

Drain their Coffers while Refusing to Refill them

What I propose is to burn their aggression candle at both ends. While we light one to stop aggression, let’s ignite the other one too by making their aggression less profitable and more unstable. Drain their coffers while refusing to refill them. As long as you don’t ask them to commit aggression for you or endorse their aggressive acts, you have done nothing wrong. In fact, you’re accelerating the demise of government aggression. Keep up the good work!

Photo credit: galaygobi. Photo license.

Yes, Virginia, there is a coherent market anarchist strategy for achieving liberty. Since we’re programmed to accept only state-run elections as a valid change vector, this can be hard to accept – but it’s true. If you dismiss it out of hand, you’re letting a great opportunity pass you by, so please give this your full attention. Perhaps you can even work these strategies for achieving liberty into your repertoire?

Agorism, Voluntaryism and Open Source Peaceful Evolution

The agorist strategy is simple: stop supporting the government and start working for your own benefit. Don’t fund the government. Ignore its licenses and regulations. Do business “off the books” in ways that are either outright illegal or simply unauthorized (i.e., practice counter-economics). As we starve the government, we simultaneously build up the power of our free market until we can support defense providers strong enough to suppress the state. To learn more, check out agorism.info and especially read the New Libertarian Manifesto.

To reform oneself and help others do the same is the voluntaryist strategy. Voluntaryists withdraw their support of and compliance with the state. Voluntaryists first and foremost improve themselves and live their lives without aggression. For voluntaryists, the fight for liberty starts at home. Voluntaryists also practice civil disobedience, direct action (the solving of problems privately instead of demanding government action), education and counter-economics. Here are 15 tactics used by voluntaryists to advance liberty.

Open Source Peaceful Evolution is a concept that marries voluntaryist and agorist insights with open source organizational tactics and fourth generation warfare thinking. I’ve stolen the concept of open source insurgency from John Robb and molded it to libertarian purposes with a vision for non-aggression and a call to action in the form of the Free Me Project, a takeoff on the Free State Project. Click here to learn the 11 simple principles of advancing the process of peaceful evolution towards greater liberty.

Tactics

While a strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, tactics are how you go about achieving that plan. For example, one strategy for liberty might be to break up the left-right coalition that underpins the state. One tactic used to achieve this goal might be to convince individual progressives and conservatives that the market is the best way to achieve their goals. Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action is a great compendium of non-violent tactics you will find useful.

Does it Look Random?

If market anarchist resistance tactics look random to you, they might be! But that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s stigmergic. Stigmergy, according to Wikipedia, “is a form of self-organization [that] produces complex, apparently intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even communication between the agents. Gee, that sounds like the free market!

Too Slow?

With a paradigm like agorism or open source peaceful evolution, any principled act of resistance, no matter how random or disorganized it may seem, throws a cog in the works. Our actions are cumulative and will eventually bring about liberty. Too slow? Join us now to accelerate the pace!

Photo credit: Muffet. Photo license.

my next video slice will be on early jamaican pop and nyabhingi, so i’ve been throwing together some playlists. here is a one-cd (or close) rocksteady selection. rocksteady was essentially a half-speed ska. and after a few years of lurching,…

Continue reading at eye of the storm …

i feel depressed and lonely and don't know what to do.  wait! i know: i'll blow up my crotch!! that'll fuck y'all up good.

i, like umar farouk abdulmutallab, have explosives hidden in my underwear,.

ok sorry about that video yesterday. replacement is coming. just learning the equipment. sorry to lose nice ratings, etc. but this is more acceptable, both the talk and its audio.

i am having a helluva time doing youtube videos. but i do have a couple hundred subscribers! anyway, i'm trying out a new like 40 buck polaroid video cam. it keeps freezing my imovie etc, so anyway i'm sorry about the annoying form of the titles, which believe it or not was the only thing i could make work.

christ. anyway, political aesthetics (2010, cornell university press) will feature four "case studies": national socialism, punk, black nationalist aesthetics, and american republican neo-classicism. i'm gonna do a sub-series on each. here is the first installment of the first installment: on garvey and rastafariansim, as well a little-bitty intro to "political aesthetics."

this bit should be good for my students in "politics and hip hop" next semester, among other things. playlists etc will get posted along with videos here.

never light the explosives in your lap. geez.