Categories
Libertarian Opinion

When will We Have our Liberty?

3208810_8c36fd26cc_o

When will we have our liberty? When will we have our state or local or personal sovereignty? When will we transition from this fascist police state to liberty? This is the question that kept me up at night. Has it bothered you? Well, I finally figured it out. We always had it and we always will!

Get the Right People Elected?

First I thought I had to get the right people elected to office and maybe even run myself. But that approach would take decades to roll back the state. In fact, some people have already been working on that for decades and have almost nothing to show for it. Then I thought I just had to lobby legislators and participate in single-issue coalitions and campaigns to roll back the bad laws one issue at a time. But that’s not very successful or time-efficient either. Look at the bank bailout. It passed even with 95% negative constituency feedback.

We Already Have It and Can Never Lose It

I already have my sovereignty. And no one can take it from me. That’s what I finally realized. Sure, the government can inconvenience you. They can fine and imprison you. But just because a gang comes after me for doing what is right, doesn’t mean that I’m not free to do what is right. It just means I will have to defend myself. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty so that should come as no surprise.

Bonus: We’re Already in the Stateless Society

As a thought experiment, consider that we’re already in the stateless society. We’re simply besieged by this gang of little dictators called “The Government”. They can violate your right to live your life as you see fit (as long as you don’t initiate force against anyone else). But they can not take your sovereignty away. Only you can cede it by obeying them, by giving in to their pressure tactics. Now what are we going to do about this gang that wants to rule us?

Video Version

You can see a tolerable video of me reading this article here.

Photo credit: dylanindustries. Photo license.

By George Donnelly

I'm building a tribe of radical libertarians to voluntarize the world by 2064. Join me.

28 replies on “When will We Have our Liberty?”

“Now what are we going to do about this gang that wants to rule us?”

We are going to band together and inspire each other and have so much fun that all the bureaucrats will start wondering what they’re missing… together we can inspire them to join us in liberty!

Or you could just join the Heaven’s Gate crew following Hale-Bopp to a better universe. It is no more looney or self-delusional.

George wrote;
“I’m sensing bitterness. What exactly is looney and/or delusional?”

I’m sure you are an intelligent guy and are seeking a way to go. I’m not bitter, I’m just telling it like I see it. I think all self proclaimed “anarchists” are delusional and can’t be talked/debated out of their delusion. Based on my admittedly limited observation, I predict that you probably will become dissatisfied with anarchism in a few years.

I hope you will return to effective acctivism some time in the future.

so when I stop paying my taxes and the gang comes come to incarcerate me, what do I do then? Will the money I didn’t pay in taxes be enough to fund some sort of militia powerful enough to ward off the government?

I’ll let you know when I have a good answer for the first. :) As for the second, agorism is a strategy for that. See http://agorism.info . The New Libertarian Manifesto (free PDF available there) is a rough intro to the concept of agorism, which is an market anarchist strategy.

I read the brochure a few days ago. I’ll try for the big one in between working. I’m not aware of any brute squads for hire in my area; which doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any. local gangs could be a good source of this, though I don’t really want to move to the ghetto…

No, gangs no. I’d like to eventually form a defense service provider. Like those home alarm companies but with detectives, rent-a-cops on steroids and ties with arbitration firms.

I also hope to form relationships with neighbors for mutual defense, once the need arises. To that end I’m planning to train on firearms.

@George Donnelly & Matt:

The simplest way to get the jackbooted thugs to back off now, is to participate in “Liberty Pools”. These are a re-named implementation of Jim Bell’s “Assassination Politics” from the mid 90s. (Bell has been hounded by government hugs ever since he started tracking IRS agents in the same way as the IRS tracks US livestock).

Like all perfect policy, it shocks the senses when first encountered. It is reminiscent of the ‘Parish Spike’ solution to the road toll: to get people to drive more safely, instead of an airbag, you install a steel spike that rams itself through the driver’s chest in the event of any frontal impact… drivers would CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOUR.

The actual number of deaths from the spike would be low (much lower than the road toll currently) and the dead would almost always be the person at fault… the number of faultless dead would drop considerably.

Anyway – back to ‘Liberty Pools’ – a solution to tyranny which likewise limits the innocent dead.

Briefly: people who are interested in the demise of some or other enabler-or-tyranny (call him ‘A’), place double-encrypted pseudonymous bets on the date on which ‘A’ dies (or is seriously injured). He whose guess is the closest to the actual date, wins the pot. In the event of collateral damage, there is a penalty function.

Imagine you were one of the black-clad paramilitary thugs that have a penchant for using obscene levels of violence while trying to enforce stupid rules. If you knew that all it would take to get you offed is for 100 or so people to place $100 bets, maybe you would seek non-parasitic gainful employment that fit your skills (burger-flipper, perhaps).

(Actually, $10k is a high price for an assassination of an unguarded person – $3k is more like the right number).

If mid-level ‘Little Eichmanns’ woke up every morning knowing that their name could appear in a ‘Liberty Pool’… maybe they would be less inclined to grant that warrant/kick that door in/pull the trigger/hassle the black kid.

Imagine you’re Lon Horiuchi – the only one of the government’s paid assassins who fired shots at both Ruby Ridge and Waco. If that sick gutless murderer had known that his actions would wind up pissing enough people off that his pool hit $100k (not that it has yet – just sayin’)… well, maybe he would have fired a warning shot instead of killing an unarmed woman.

As always, the market will provide the mechanism: Liberty Pools are a mechanism that enables the focus of diffuse dissatisfaction with tyranny’s enablers, with execution (ahem) provided by people as their supply price is reached.

And you can’t doubt that it provides real incentives for tax-eaters to stop doing their jobs – or at least, to stop them doing that part of their jobs that pisses people off.

As an aside – the low cost of having someone offed (as I say, $3k for a schlub) is prima facie evidence that al Qaeda doesn’t exist.

If it DID exist, at least one of the leading neocon ‘intelligentsia’ would have been offed by now: most of them go around without SS details. Or are you trying to tell me that al Qaeda (as we understand it… comprised of some unspecified number of ‘sleeper cells’) is perfectly happy to have these folks traipsing around?

Mid-level HAMAS and Hizbullah guys – guys who are just functionaries – go through their days knowing that they could be toast at any time. Plenty of them have been offed, usually along with half a dozen children and other bystanders.

Are we to be led to believe that al Qaeda is less ‘hard core’ than Shin Bet?

OK – that bit was off topic.

I can’t point you to the pools, but both OrgA and OrgB pools exist.

They are largely concentrated in places where they will be most efficacious (witness the apparent rapid deterioriation of internal security in Moldova recently), but they will come to an intertubes near you, in time.

The aim, of course, is to get the entire machine of tyranny to operate at lower and lower levels of efficiency. GLOBALLY.

If every person in the supply chain of tyranny had their performance degraded as a result of harbouring doubts about their personal survival, then government’s ability to oppress would evaporate in weeks.

Cheerio,

GT

George said;
“Still wondering what exactly is delusional about a stateless society …?”
only
It is impossible just like a pure vacuum is impossible. Not from a debating point position but from the laws of the universe and from thousands of years of practical examples. “Anarchist” societies have been attempted and have happened briefly due to circumstance but they are always replaced by more ordered and structured societies. If logic is not enough, it is human nature to seek order and structure, especially among women. You are not going to find many mature women with children who will go along with anarchy. I don’t suppose you are contemplating an all male childless society. Anarchy is a young man’s dream when he can not cope with reality. dreaming is one thing, but believing in that impossible dream is the very definition of delusion.

Again, I don’t expect to change your mind through debate. An intelligent person suffering from delusion can invent many scenarios where anarchy works, has worked and is working. Just like Prot from Kpax.

Anarchy is not a vacuum. It is the devolution of power to individuals. And it is possible to have order and structure under an anarchy, it just won’t be forced on people.

Governments have historically never gone backwards in size. So if you think anarchy is historically unproven, then so is your activism to roll back government – and that makes it delusional according to your own definition. Now what?

If logic is not enough …

I’m still waiting for the logic. All you’ve pointed to is human nature and history. Those are not logic.

Why do you think women would not like anarchy? Why is anarchy “a young man’s dream when he can not cope with reality”? Assertions don’t count for much unless backed up by a reasoned argument.

There’s a noticeable trend of veiled insults in your comments. I thought you were better than that.

“If logic is not enough, it is human nature to seek order and structure, especially among women.”

What makes you think women seek order and structure more than men?

“You are not going to find many mature women with children who will go along with anarchy.”

I am a 42-year old woman with kids and a good job, and I’d be happy to give a voluntary society a try.

I’m a 24-year-old woman with a fantastic job (but no kids) setting out to do exactly this – empower the individual over the government, free our markets and change legislation to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. So yes, I’m willing to give it a try.

Do I think an all-private society work? I think it’s the only thing that could ever really ‘work’ but I’m wondering more and more these days if the rest of the country will ever feel the same way. I never thought I’d see the day where America would truly dabble in socialism and mandatory unpaid labor but that day is upon us. We’re going in the opposite direction of a voluntary society… when will it turn around?

Thankfully all we need is for them to leave the rest of us alone. They can have their government. Just let us go our way. We respect their right to form, hold and act on their values. Will they afford us that same respect?

Thanks for commenting. :)

“We respect their right to form, hold and act on their values. Will they afford us that same respect? …
I think if we frame the question aptly we can get a good number of yes’s.”

I agree with you, George. Thanks for inspiring us to consider how we can make our vision possible.

@George Donnelly –

re: the ‘agent provocateur’ problem – it is a real problem, along with ‘honey pot’ operations. There is a requirement for mutual mistrust on open channels, in order to avoid entrapment (and the resultant no-knock armed raid by the aforementioned armed goons).

Still, there have to be people who are prepared to stick their heads above the parapet of encrypted pseudonymity, in order to attempt to propagate ideas to as wide an audience as possible: furthermore, ‘feelers’ such as the Declaration of Separation are put out in order to try and find other members of ‘The Remnant’ (to use Nock/Rothbard/North language for a second).

There will, without doubt, be O’Briens out there posing as Emmanuel Goldstein. In fact someone with an apparently ‘anti-State’ backstory (like me) is actually MORE suspect that a common-or-garden moonbat.

Me: military background, then degree in Economics (anarchism formed at this point, as I was taught by a former colleague of Hayek). Seven years at a very libertarian economic modelling think tank. Well, I say ‘libertarian’ but we did quite a bit of government work and taught people how to do what we did, including people from JWAC (Langley). I then went into the financial sector (before finishing my PhD), and headed a team of securities analysts. In 2002 I decided the entire edifice was screwed, and went native.

Since then I’ve been thrown out of France twice as a result of my vocal disagreement with stupid passport rules… the second time coincided with an accusation of anti-semitism and holocaust denial when I wrote a piece declaring that anti-denial laws were a despicable denial of liberty of expression.

I also got in trouble because I refer to ‘immigration detention centres’ – wherever they are located – as “concentration camps” (I spent two weeks in the camp at Lyon each time I was ‘repatriated’ from France, after the French authorities ‘lost’ my passport).

It all does sound a bit “O’Brien”-esque; too tidy. But that’s the story.

At the end of the day, people have to have the courage of their convictions. Jefferson, Paine and others remained ‘below the radar’ for a time, but eventually there was a requirement to ‘decloak’ and declare their purpose openly. I think that time is at hand, for the simple reason that the crony-capitalist state in the west is in the same position now, as East Germany, Romania and the Soviet Union were in the months leading up to their dissolution.

Economists – decently trained ones (like Mises and Hayek) rather than bastard-Keynesian statists – predicted that Socialism as practiced in the USSR and its satellites would eventually fail due to its internal inconsistency. The inefficiency of central planning, coupled with corruption in the Party and the resource drain of the military-industrial complex, would be its downfall.

Sound familiar?

Anyhow – Bell’s ideas were a genie that was never going back into its bottle. As more and more state organisms find it difficult to keep funding their internal oppressive machinery, expect Liberty Pools to make more and more of an appearance. They are a perfect 4GW mechanism – hell, if digital cash was a bit more secure the principals of Liberty Pools would be taking out AdSense ads.

One thing that people will dislike a lot, is that politicians will almost certainly curtail spending on ‘good’ protective services (fire and ambulance) before they will start cutting ‘offensive’ budgets (SWAT, domestic surveillance/intel gathering, and general thuggery).

Politicians will do that because the armed thugs of the state are the only thing that is between the disgruntled populace and the political parasites who STILL, after 150 years of corrupt mismanagement, retain a sense of entitlement to half your paypacket. They still think you are their livestock, and will keep their wranglers paid until the last opportunity.

The end-game is in progress, all over the planet. That’s why the State is getting increasingly violent and intrusive in its treatment of dissent.

And finally: if concerned about the inevitable attempts of government goons to infiltrate any process, simply prepare yourself against the O’Briens: it’s easy enough.

For example… I don’t do anything remotely ‘interesting’, except on a TrueCrypt VED running off a bootable USB key. I only ever connect that key to the internet using TOR (after hard-spoofing the machine’s MAC address, just in case), and it’s only from there that I send any mail (and always gnuPG rather than PGP).

The odds of a secure communication being traced back to a level enabling my ‘meat-space’ (which is writing this) to be matched to any pseudonymous encrypted communication: it’s not exactly zero, but it’s as near to zero as makes no odds. Think of the US national debt, square it, and invert it. (i.e., 10E-26).

Cheerio

GT

One thing I ought to clarify: when I wrote that I went into the securities-analysis biz “before finishing my PhD” I did not want to imply that I went on to complete my PhD at some time subsequent to then. It remains unfinished. I meant simply that I left University without having finished the degree.

Cheers

GT

@GT, while your Liberty Pool solution is interesting I’m not sure how I feel about calling for the murder of another person, let alone saying I will pay for it. I think endorsing assassination is a bad idea and will only lead to escalating violence and further human misery.

Matt, it’s definitely not the first idea I would get behind, but I wouldn’t reject it out of hand either.

At some point – it’s not here yet – the options for discussion, debate and other non-violent means of defense will run out. Then the decision will be between capitulating and violent self-defense. Which is why I think we need both honey and guns.

@GT They’re already cutting “main street” services in favor of military (or quasi-military, like the police) ones. See for example in the US the crumbling bridge infrastructure.

We’re on the same wavelength.

It’s just that a prominent liberty activist at a liberty convention that I attended last month told the audience we should stop paying income tax and openly declare it – that he already does.

And a few days ago I read that this was a known tactic of agent provocatuers. It really got my paranoia into high gear.

Thanks for commenting. :)

@Matt – I agree to a point, but we are past the point where simple ‘withdrawal of consent’ will do the job.

It’s not like India, where Ghandi was being non-violent in the face of foreign soldiers who had already had a gutful of life in India. Britain had already pretty much given up – the real barbarity reached its climax with the Sepoy rebellion in 1857, 12 years before Ghandi was born. (I’m not saying that all British tyranny ended – after all, the Amristar massacre of 1919 was a key focal point in the independence movement).

Still…

The thugs we face are home grown (the Brits always complained that they had trouble getting the indigenes to be horrible to their compatriots), and more to the point the industry that controls them is among the largest in the country.

As a market anarchist, I am absolutely opposed to the initiation of violence. But there is also the right to defend against aggression (with the minimum possible force required to get the aggressor to stop). Hence, targeting and specificity. The sine qua non of the state is the threat of violence (do as we say, or we will deprive you of your personal liberty, and kill you if you resist), so any violence towards the state is ipso facto a reaction to aggression.

Also…

The best part of the Liberty Pools idea is that for mid-level functionaries the betting does not need to be centred on death, necessarily.

For each level of flunkie, a less-than-lethal force combination would exist that would serve as an adequate deterrent to others. Problem is, this adds risk for those who ‘do the deed’, since ‘action at a distance’ is virtually impossible if all you want to do is break bones.

Still, it would work in principle.

If Lon Horiuchi had lost the use of his right eye (or even if he had had his trigger hand mashed) as a result of an apparently-random beating in the street, there’s the possibility that whoever took his place would have held his fire at Ruby Ridge. If he had been crucified with ‘Quit Now’ carved into his chest, the ‘chilling effect’ would have been that much greater (there would be initial howls and declarations of ‘Ooo-ah’ solidarity, but these guys are cowards, not soldiers).

That said, I am ‘into’ harm minimisation. Far better to have a program of targeted assassinations than the massive ‘diffuse’ conflict of civil war, in which large numbers of innocents are inevitably slaughtered.

It also should be borne in mind that an awfully large number of ‘enablers’ would down tools very rapidly. Think abut people like that shitbag cop who ‘niggerised’ that NFL player recently. Folks like him don’t get sent to SERE school… their operational efficiency degrades VERY quickly if they think they have to hold their breath every time they turn the key in their car’s ignition.

The thing that would reduce the required toll is that people are moderately ‘forward looking’. A very few actual deaths would be sufficient to present a genuine ‘credible threat’ to anybody who had in mind the idea of remaining a jackbooted thug.

Without the machinery of repression, the State can’t function: the overthrow of every state on the planet could happen with a death toll FAR below the 170-million or so that died due to State pissing contests in the 20th century. And the number of innocent dead would be minimal (unlike the War on Drugs, for example). Think of each actual death or maiming (plus appropriate ‘information campaigns’ to colleagues) as being a ‘warning shot’.

To see how fear of death affects performance of the State’s thugs, look south of the border. The paramilitary police in Mexico don’t wear balaclavas to prevent frost-bite: they wear ’em because they know that if their identity is discovered, they’re toast.

This tendency of drug-interdiction police to die (usually horribly) is making recruiting VERY difficult. Recall that the US military had the same problem when the gravely wounded started appearing in the media. People respond to incentives, be they good or bad.

Nowadays, Mexican drug-interdiction police are forced – by their commanders – to wear balaclavas on operations: it’s not to protect their identity from discovery by criminals, but so that the media can’t identify them as dead cops if they turn up dead. The cartels have money to burn, have infiltrated the police, and know who the cops are. The only reason the cartels don’t take the whole show down in one hit, is that they would not make as much money if the street got flooded with drugs (prices would fall, and the demand elasticity for their product is such that volume would not expand sufficiently to offset falling prices).

Another good example is ‘anti-Mafia’ judges in Palermo: every now and then a new crusader comes along (after there has been a hiatus of ten years or so: often it’s the son or brother of a former judge). A coat-tail effect encourages other ‘True Believers’ to try and make a name for themselves.

Then someone will turn into a smoking crater, and everyone pulls their head in for another decade.

Liberty Pools are like strong encryption and verifiable pseudonymity: once it got out of the bottle, the State lost the ability to track and control it. They can send any number of thugs to hassle those who make public pronouncements about it… but the community is already transnational, and even in developed countries the state’s thugs risk more than they realise.

Guys on ‘our’ side are really quite inventive, and some of the more highly-trained ones are willing to ‘go the extra mile’: there are even folks who have deliberately sought imprisonment in order to make good solid contact with the sorts of folks who are required to do the ‘operational’ aspects of the pool system.

One big problem with that approach – and the reason I have always argued against it – is that organised criminals (including major gangs like M13) have no interest whatsoever in dismantling the state, since prohibition (be it of drugs, prostitution or gambling) is their primary ‘revenue multiplier’. They have a symbiotic relationship with the State, and they know it.

Folks really need to do some research on the number of internal security folks who got offed in Moldova – a place in which I developed an interest when I met a young Moldovan guy in the French concentration camp in October 2008.

After funnelling funds to Voronin for a decade to get him into power (whereupon he changed sides), the Yanks had been trying to destabilise Voronin for years, without success.

In the last four months, 15 people got maimed or killed at various levels of the internal security hierarchy, with an accompanying campaign to ‘raise awareness’ among their colleagues.

Result: almost zero interference by the security forces in the demonstrations that led to the overthrow of the government. In the past, attempts to generate a demonstration would have led to a ‘crackdown’… midnight raids of the type to which black neighbourhoods in the US have become accustomed.

The Moldova thing has been touted as ‘proof of concept’ in the post-match basking, but personally my preferred data point will be Zimbabwe in July/August of this year.

Long post, I know. Sorry.

Cheerio again

GT

Oh – while I think of it.

not exactly a case in point (and perpetrated by the state goon s themselves…)

The shooting death of the Asst. Commissioner Colin Winchester of the Australian Federal Police (way way back in 1989) was apparently conducted by a ‘lone nut’ called David Eastman. (Nobody has furnished a plausible reason why a public servant would want to perform a ‘gangland-style’ execution or how he came to know where Winchester lived or his movements on the night).

Oddly enough – and here’s where ‘Cui bono’ applies: Winchester’s death had a side-effect of nipping a corruption inquiry in the bud (ha ha, since it centred on corruption involving growing and distributing marijuana).

The ‘chilling effect’ operated exactly as intended… on one or two people who had been prepared to come forward as ‘whistleblowers’.

I hear you friend.
I have been contemplating this paradigm shift for the past few month, and as a singularist and an entrepreneur of the Digital world I have researched extensively on what needs to be implemented.
We are thrill to announce that a complete solution has been found.
:)

Yet.
As long as we are still trapped in this political-capitalist-fascist regime this kind of disruptive technology might hinder it self, if released to evolve globally, untested.
I have been contemplating the thought of asking the global activists community to help and raise funds for this project…
so I must humbly ask, Do you think this is possible?
without disclosing too many details, can the global community raise 20 to 50 K$ in a few weeks?

My creation and professional history has always been a struggle between creating Spiritual/cultural and technological singularities to the need to make a fastly sustainable system in the current monetary system.
As we’re watching news from Iran, I can’t help but thinking that had these resources been avialbe to develop this project ot it’s fullest potential these demonstrations and election would never have escalted to this unfortunate situation.

I would hate to raise capital in the old fashioned method of running after angels, especially if you run after them with a system that will break all social and political barriers that they use as an incentive to invest.

I hope I haven’t been too vague, under this circumstances, and I would be appreciative of your advice.

The Revolution is soon to come.
Namaste.
:)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *