Solutions to bringing about a stateless society part one of many: agorism

Hi folks,
so, in the replies section of my last short essay titled:

'Justice in a stateless society, peaceful parenting and the morality of coercive imprisonment for punishment: a short essay. (Dispute resolution, restitution and peaceful parenting)'

(found here: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@freerangehuman/justice-in-a-stateless-society-peaceful-parenting-and-the-morality-of-coercive-imprisonment-for-punishment-a-short-essay-dispute)

One commenter pointed out that i hadn't given any practical solutions that we all can undertake in our lives to bring about a stateless society.

So i thought this was an ideal topic for my newest article, however on beginning to write the article i noticed that at a minimum if this content were all in all in one steemit post this would take up at least 13+pages in Microsoft word and after polling some friends it seems that breaking this up in to sections would be the best way to go

I believe that we are all nodes in a human network and rather than our actions having no consequence on the world i think that everything we say, every action we take and everything we give care (time+attention) to does have widespread and profound effects on the world.

To that ends i hope to offer some ways in which we can all contribute to the cause of a stateless society.

Solution one

Agorism/counter economics.

What is agorism?

The term agorism is derived from the Greek word 'agora' meaning market place and is an idea put forward by libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin 3RD in 'The New Libertarian manifesto' and 'Agorist Primer' which looks at the state's income as being taxation (also debt but there is no way for most people to affect this income stream) and instead of using violent revolution or voting to bring about a stateless society agorists seek to engage in 'counter economics' whereby they create alternative streams of human activity outside of the state's regulation, influence or taxation

How is agorism undertaken and what specifically can we do?

These alternative streams include what Konkin termed black or grey markets as opposed to the criminal and rights violating 'markets' of the state, the classification of these markets can be seen in this table

The table above shows markets as categorised by whether they initiate force on other people and how the state attempts to control them (note, i would categorise state education as being in the domination market rather than the pink market), agorists seek to use black, free and grey markets to achieve their ends, this can include activities such as:

*trading or investing in taxation free crypto currencies such as bitcoin, dash, ethereum, dogecoin, EOS and the many thousands of such currencies that have sprung up and revolutionised the way we use and see currency in the past few years, i think it's important to note that even when using fiat currency in free, grey and black market interactions our medium of exchange is under the influence of the interest rates and valuations set by the federal reserve or our respective fiat currency creators.

*Buying locally produced goods in places such as farmers markets, local artisans and local retailers who in one way or another avoid paying tax.

*Any transactions that don't involve taxation (somewhere between black and white markets ie grey market transaction) such as providing online services, selling un taxed goods online and exchanging items

*Buying, producing and selling illegal items that are not based on coercion (black market), this can include:

 -some drugs (such as cannabis, psychedelics or other substances)
 -prohibited items like raw milk
 -weapons
 -prostitution 
 -pirated media or items (as long as the buyer knows what they are getting)
 -bootleg alcohol and tobacco

*Undertaking illegal non commercial activity as a way to swamp the state with so much policing that these laws become impossible to enforce such as smoking cannabis in public, breaking speed limits where safe, loitering, safely carrying illegal weapons, voicing illegal opinions etc

How will this end the state?

It was Samuel Edward Konkin III's (affectionately known as SEK3) theory that by starving the state of taxation the state's size and power would begin to reduce and at the same time as this occurs alternative systems are being built outside of the current statist systems, meaning that as the state reduces in size voluntary means of interaction are slowly replacing it, this would ensure that there is no 'vacuum' left by the lack of a state leading to a smooth transition and minimal disruption in people's lives, however Konkin does admit some disruption and struggle could be afoot.

Taken from the 'New Libertarian Manifesto' (text is truncated for ease of reading) below Konkin lays out how he envisions the progression from a statist society with no agorism to a free and stateless society

'*Phase 0: Zero-Density Agorist Society

No agorism exists

*Phase 1: Low-Density Agorist Society

The first counter-economic libertarians appear in this phase and the first serious splits in the Libertarian movement occur. Since few libertarians are very consistent yet, deviating solutions emerge.

"Get-Liberty-quick" schemes from anarchozionism (running away to a Promised Land of Liberty) to political opportunism will seduce the impatient and sway the incompletely informed. All will fail if for no other reason than Liberty grows individual by individual. Mass conversion is impossible. There is one exception - radicalization by statist attack against a collective.

Even so, it requires entrepreneurs of Liberty to have sufficiently informed the persecuted collective so that they lase coherently libertarian-ward rather than scatter randomly or worse, flow into out-of-power statism. These Crises of Statism are spontaneous and predictable - but cannot be caused by moral, consistent libertarians.

The general strategy applies; get libertarians into counter-economics and get the most active of the agorists to get counter-economists into libertarianism.

*Phase 2: Mid-Density, Small Condensation Agorist Society

At this point the statists take notice of agorism. While before libertarians could be manipulated by one ruling faction to the detriment of another (sort of anti-market "competition," played with ballots and bullets rather than innovation and pricing), they will start to be perceived as a a threat.

Pogroms (mass arrests) may even occur, although that is unlikely. Remember, most agorists are embedded in the rest of society and associating with them are partially-converted libertarians and counter-economists. In order to reach this phase, the entire society has been contaminated by agorism to a degree. Thus it is now possible for the first "ghettos" or districts of agorists to appear and count on the sympathy of the rest of society to restrain the State from a mass attack.

These communities, whether above or underground, can now sustain the New Libertarian Alliance, NLA acts as spokesman for the agora with the statist society, using every chance to publicize the superiority of agorist living to statist inhabiting and perhaps argue for tolerance of those with "different ways."

In this phase, the agorist society is vulnerable to statist regression of the populace. Thus the agorists, whether visible or not, have a high incentive to at least maintain the present level of libertarian consciousness among the rest of the populace.

*Phase 3: High-Density, Large Condensation, Agorist Society

In this phase, the State moves into a series of terminal crises, somewhat analogous to the well-known Marxist scenario, but with different causes - in this case, real ones. Fortunately, the potential for damage has been drastically decreased by the sapping of the State's resources and corrosion of its authority by the growth of the Counter-Economy.

in fact, as the resources of the economy approach equality between the State and Agora, the State is pushed into crisis. Wars and rampant inflation with depressions and crack-ups become perpetual as the State attempts to redeem its authority. It may be possible to reverse its decline by corrupting the agora with deductive anti-principles, so the NLA's first task is clear: to maintain vigilance and purity of thought. In this phase, the NLA may no longer hold either label or much of its old form.

The most motivated New Libertarians will move into the research and development supply for the budding agorist protection and arbitration agencies and lastly as directors of the protection company syndicates.

*Phase 4: Agorist Society with Statist Impurities

The collapse of the State leaves only mopping up operations. Since the insurance and protection companies see no State to defend against, the syndicate of allied protectors collapses into competition and the NLA - its support gone - dissolves. Statists apprehended pay restoration and if they live long enough to discharge their debts, are re-integrated as productive entrepreneurs (Their "training" comes automatically as they work off their debt.)'

For more details on the philosophy of agorism please see The New Libertarian Manifesto here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081104060157/http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm1.html

Are there any criticisms of agorism?

One criticism that has been levelled at agorist philosophy by economist Murray Rothbard is that as a libertarian left philosophy it is mostly focused on marginal groups and classes of people who are self employed and can 'take on' the risk of engaging in prohibited activity, however this isn't something that the average person whether rich or poor can do, as our society is right now most people are waged workers in mainstream jobs and as such most forms of agorism would entail quite a bit of risk to their career and family.

This criticism however may have lost it's potency in recent years with the emergence of crypto currencies which are accepted or at least unpoliced by the state where not specifically prohibited.

Another criticism i can think of is one of my own, some parts of agorism while depriving the state of taxation may be disruptive to liberty in other ways.

One such way i can think of is that trade in addictive drugs could increase the supplies of something that can contribute to susceptible people losing control of their lives, i think external anarchy requires internal self rule and self awareness otherwise people can attempt to claim the right to rule you externally to curb the excesses of your ego (EG the state), so by taking part in the addictive drugs market during a time of statism it could be argued that increased supply and lower price of addictive drugs could increase demand for statist healthcare, drug programs, welfare and government spending on addiction treatments.

However i would concede that seeing as this activity is completely NAP compliant this criticism could fall in to the category of 'aesthetic' criticism and i am aware that the current statist system we have now actually creates it's own super inflated drugs market through prohibition, active drug importation and that the people who become addicts would likely stay in the same numbers as they are now.

I also concede that there is no reason why agorism needs to involve a drug trade.

Are there examples in the real world?

(some sourced from: (https://www.reddit.com/r/Agorism/comments/13stp4/real_world_examples_of_agorism/):

*https://littlebiggy.org

(this leads to a commercial website selling items that may be illegal in some locations such as cannabis, if you do not wish to view such items please don't click here, i include it as an example of how an agorist community could be set up based around reputation, community standing, customer reviews and voluntary dispute resolution)

*dark web trading like 'silk road' 'alpha bay'

*swarm agora:
https://steemit.com/swarm-agora/@enlightenedchef/swarm-agora-welcome-introduction-and-vision-2017710t114050753z

*steemit.com

*Use airbnb.com and courchsurfing.org when traveling (no Hotel Room Occupancy Tax or Sales Tax)

*Homebrew - no alcohol tax

*Garden - helps me save $ on food - no sales taxes

*Dumpster diving for food - no sales tax

*Buy things used on craigslist as often as possible - no sales tax

*Bitcoins - used for new purchases, mostly clothing - no sales tax

*Bicycling almost everywhere - no gas, excise, or other taxes

*Tutoring

*Freelance

*Self education using independent resources

*Helping others

Resources for further information on agorism:

The new libertarian manifesto by Samuel Edward Konkin 3RD
http://www.anarchism.net/newlibertarianmanifesto.htm

An agorist primer SEK3
https://archive.org/stream/SEK3_AnAgoristPrimer/An_Agorist_Primer_by_SEK3_djvu.txt

Alongside night J. Neil Schulman
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584451203/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1584451203&linkCode=as2&tag=thebraspasho-20

Tom Woods Talks Agorism, Economics, and U.S. History on FOX News Station

The Last, Whole Introduction to Agorism
by Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3)
http://agorism.info/docs/LastWholeIntroductiontoAgorism.pdf

Agorist class theory By Wally Conger
http://agorism.info/docs/AgoristClassTheory.pdf

http://agorism.info/

Comming soon: parts 2 and beyond including seasteading, homesteading and more good stuff.

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Thank you for reading.

Peace, love and voluntarism from: