Agorism: Beat the State, show a profit, all in a non-violent way.

What can we do to help?
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well, i am pretty ignorant when it comes to this stuff, what are you looking for at this point? a list of services offered by members of the forum, a coalition of programmers to help with the p2p idea, a spreading of the idea that this has potential, what? this is the type of idea that i see could be truly revolutionary, and would do whatever to help it along. i guess i'm just voicing my support.
 
FunkBuddha said:
How do agorists vet other would-be agorists? Ho do you keep "the man" out?
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OK. Bear with me. I see Social Engineer's site as a "philosophical prototype". He has a great idea. It starts with getting a bunch of people together who are willing to trade using sound money - it will probably evolve into gold and silver - but the actors can use whatever they wish to close a trade.

Every time a trade is made we have a ranking system that rates "trustworthiness", just like the Better Business Bureau or eBay's ranking system. Every time a transaction is made the parties rate the transaction. Over time, you will build a reputation. It doesn't even need a website, you may be able to keep your network on pen and paper, but a site helps it go viral. Someone dealing with a new person can look up their ratings.

Only an idiot would welch in this system - what is the value of your trade or earnings in this system when you don't have to report it for taxation or confiscation via inflation?

Yes, if moles wanted to penetrate the system, they could, but they wouldn't get far, especially if it grew to a point where it became feasible to make www.freemarketforliberty.com a "torrent" site (amongst others that would spring up) like isohunt.com and piratesbay.com. We could run a P2P app on our iPhones, Blackberry's or our device of choice to locate other traders and their trustworthiness instead of sharing files. Do you see? Sorry, I am pretty fired up about this.

If the man wanted to infiltrate the network, he might get one or two of us, but the network would be solid - and go viral. Through the virtual network, we could establish real local relationships with liberty minded people. The site serves as introductions to each other like a snooty country club, except we're not snooty.:)

The possibilities are endless...I could go on, but I have to go for now. Please post your questions and I'll do my best to answer.
 
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nayjevin said:
What can we do to help?
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Wow. I'm flattered. You used a quote of mine in your signature? I meant to say:

I don't like labels. They are a form of censorship as they inhibit understanding of who you are. Kind of like how language sometimes inhibits ideas, but it is the best we have.

Cheers.

Back to my Guinness. It's Friday!
 
FunkBuddha said:
How do agorists vet other would-be agorists? Ho do you keep "the man" out?
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The idea behind my project is that if the 1.2 million people who voted for Ron Paul all list their business on my site, then we can all find each others businesses really easily, and then we can all support each other as much as possible.

The way that we will validate that business are legitimate liberty supporting candidates, is by developing a tool that allows listing owners to show how much they have donated towards liberty candidates.

My goal is to work with the CFL on that.

For now I just need people signing up their businesses, promoting this, and it will really help whenever I can find someone who is a really good programmer to do some improvements.

So the fact that businesses will be validated as legitimate liberty supporting organizations will be the "Agoric" part I guess, because if we really get a thriving liberty oriented market place going, then a portion of that circulating currency will consistently flow towards liberty campaigns.

When I add a tool that allows listing owners to show which precious metal based currencies that they support transactions with, then perhaps that could be considered "Agorism" as well, because we could theoretically resist the inflation of the banksters that way.

The next step towards "Agorism" would be when I add a barter site to the system, I know it's basic, but when TSHTF then that's probably exactly what we are going to need.

Beyond that, who knows, maybe we could make our own colonial script style currency some day?
 
You used a quote of mine in your signature?
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yes, and i took liberties with it.

also, signatures are limited to 500 words, and acptulsa's is too damn good to drop.

u want me to alter it? the way you've re-worded it was the way i took it in the first place... i figured thinking folk would as well. but yes, i have censored you in a fashion!
 
The way that we will validate that business are legitimate liberty supporting candidates, is by developing a tool that allows listing owners to show how much they have donated towards liberty candidates.
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also important would be how much of the business' proceeds are pumped back into the system. also, what type of feedback ratings they have received on 'liberty friendliness', for instance, does the restaurant have a smoking section? does that section infringe on the rights of non-smokers? etc. each user, after transaction, could be allowed the opportunity to rate the business in several ways -- friendliness, level of community involvement, degree that business itself promotes the general welfare (i.e. springwater bottling company vs. pesticides company) and each person looking for a business could adapt their own filters to decide which of these things are important to them.

For now I just need people signing up their businesses, promoting this, and it will really help whenever I can find someone who is a really good programmer to do some improvements.
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will do -- re: promoting, signing up. (i'm not a programmer)

anybody familiar with http://www.libertyforums.com ? i haven't been on there for a while, but at one point members were attempting something similar -- a gold micropayment system among members to skirt the fiat system. i think the subforum was called 'galt's gulch' in fact.

So the fact that businesses will be validated as legitimate liberty supporting organizations will be the "Agoric" part I guess, because if we really get a thriving liberty oriented market place going, then a portion of that circulating currency will consistently flow towards liberty campaigns.
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There would be difficulty determining which campaigns are legitimately 'liberty campaigns', but this is not an un-overcomable obstacle. i see an adaptable, per-user filter system - the results of my search for businesses would show up different than yours might, if i set my filters to 'don't show me environmentalists', give me 'anarchists' or whatever. not such a good example.

here's where i explained it a little better i think:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=151516&highlight=roxic27

leave it totally open for anyone to review -- and let each individual person customize their experience on that website through their own filters -- ie:

a person signs up for the website and begins browsing businesses -- lets say the person searches for a coin business - all the coin businesses that have reviews show up. the user looks through the reviews and businesses to make a decision based on those reviews.

if, after shopping, the user comes back and rates the review 1 star, then all those people who reviewed that business as 5 stars would be given less credence (or voting weight, multiplier) -- but only to the user who voted just 1 star, and only to calculate what 'suggested' businesses to list for the user when 'let consumerreview.com make suggestions based on my ratings' is turned on by the user... see where i'm going with this?

it doesn't have to be isolationist or anti-liberty -- in fact the best 'social networking' / 'web 2.0' sites naturally operate in a manner nearing anarchy - youtube, facebook, myspace. i would say model it like that, and use c-net as an example of a good reviews model.

it would take a long time to get enough reviews - but starting within this crowd i think they'd be good ones.

could even have a more complex voting system, for instance:

customer service 1-10
convenience 1-10
quality 1-10
degree to which the company's ideals align with your own 1-10

and in addition the user could use sliders to choose how important each one is, so that suggestions can be tailored - for instance, i don't care about convenience, i just want a principled company, so i want greater weight given to the opinions of those who agree with me on the degree to which various ompanies fit their ideals (wal-mart haters unite) but don't agree with how convenient it is than the other way around.

er stuff.
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I was just looking around the forums...man, it looks like everyone is tearing each other apart to kill RPFs...

Let's work on our free market and sound money...
 
gilliganscorner said:
Did I help answer your question?
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For the most part. I'm still trying to get my mind around the security of the whole system. I mean a myspace/ebay like website would be cool, but in that case, everything is located centrally and would be subject to confiscation.

Even in a peer to peer environment, you still have to have the tracker and the clients still have to be able to communicate with one another so they have to know each others addresses.

One way might be to create a Java client that used something like Tor or I2P to tunnel information over a secure channel to a central server. People could keep a profile on the central server. Any mail between two parties that was stored on the server would be untraceable unless it contained identifiable personal information but even this could be encrypted somehow. Eventually the two parties would have to exchange addresses though.

Maybe I'm thinking too much. I do have a tendency to over-complicate things.
 
nayjevin

There will be a function that will allow users to post general feedback on listings, and then listing owners will be able to respond to feedback posted as well.

Visitors should also be able to track all of the feedback that any user has posted, but I'm not gonna make any attempt to direct anyone to rate "liberty friendlyness".

"Liberty friendlyness" is gonna be rated by how much money that businesses have donated to "liberty campaigns", and what exactly constitutes a "liberty campaign" is either going to just be determined by the free-market, or perhaps will all be CFL approved.

I just know for sure that I would like to work directly with the CFL to figure that whole part out, and we're supposed to do some talking next week.

So beyond providing a general feedback exchange function, and the ability to see how much a listing has donated to liberty candidates, there isn't gonna be any "filter function".

Nor will there be any way to track what businesses are doing with their money, besides what they may choose to display through the "display how much you have donated to liberty candidates tool", anything beyond that is private information and no one else's business.

I might add a social network to the system though, in order to strengthen social bonds within the movement in general, but also so that we may share market info.

Thank you very much for your support.
 
FunkBuddha said:
For the most part. I'm still trying to get my mind around the security of the whole system. I mean a myspace/ebay like website would be cool, but in that case, everything is located centrally and would be subject to confiscation.

Even in a peer to peer environment, you still have to have the tracker and the clients still have to be able to communicate with one another so they have to know each others addresses.

One way might be to create a Java client that used something like Tor or I2P to tunnel information over a secure channel to a central server. People could keep a profile on the central server. Any mail between two parties that was stored on the server would be untraceable unless it contained identifiable personal information but even this could be encrypted somehow. Eventually the two parties would have to exchange addresses though.

Maybe I'm thinking too much. I do have a tendency to over-complicate things.
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Not at all. Yes there are people who tend to go into "analysis paralysis" but I will try to help clarify how I see it as well.
 
FunkBuddha said:
For the most part. I'm still trying to get my mind around the security of the whole system. I mean a myspace/ebay like website would be cool, but in that case, everything is located centrally and would be subject to confiscation.
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Correct. Any centralization of the network would be subject to the State violently shutting it down. Digital Gold Currency sites are useless. In fact, the State is looking to actively shut them down. I wrote up a blog entry on this, but from a Canadian perspective. IMHO, it is worth a read to understand the issues.. Don't get me wrong. Canada, along side the US, are already communist countries.

OK. Now that we understand.
Even in a peer to peer environment, you still have to have the tracker and the clients still have to be able to communicate with one another so they have to know each others addresses.
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Correct. Not sure if that is a big idea, especially if all traffic is encrypted by SSL. Hey, all you have to do is to look at the legal hoops that distribution companie are trying to deal with Napster (yeah, I know they are shut down....but hey, how'd that work out to stop filesharing? ), but the network continues AND they have to prove what you did behind the SSL screen.

One way might be to create a Java client that used something like Tor or I2P to tunnel information over a secure channel to a central server. People could keep a profile on the central server. Any mail between two parties that was stored on the server would be untraceable unless it contained identifiable personal information but even this could be encrypted somehow. Eventually the two parties would have to exchange addresses though.
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Right. This is why we might create GPG signatures (private keys) and kick public keys around to the people we trade with. Again, I do not have all the answers, but together we might figure it out.

However, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Social Engineer's site is a great eay to make local relations simply by pen and paper. It is developing our networks that is important. Think of his site as the Google to find liberty minded people who want agorism.

Maybe I'm thinking too much. I do have a tendency to over-complicate things.
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Nah. You're good. I wouldn't be so paranoid myself if they weren't REALLY out to git me. ;)
 
"Liberty friendlyness" is gonna be rated by how much money that businesses have donated to "liberty campaigns"
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I guess my problem with this is there will be people who have genuine desire to participate in the end of the fiat system but have no interest in politics -- in other words, they would have a high 'liberty quotient' but will never donate to a candidates campaign. some anarchists i know are like this.

also, there will be some whose businesses do not turn enough profit to donate much to campaigns - but the owner may do much for the liberty movement (like a web designer might build a website that brings 1000's into the sound money system, but the website only generates $4 a month revenue, nothing left over to donate). also, it seems like a sort of rich get richer thing -- $10 means alot more to some people than it would others, some are able to donate more than others.

seems like using ONLY campaign contributions is insufficient, that's why i tried to come up with some other ways to guage a company's 'liberty quotient', such as reviews by liberty customers. however, i see where you are going -- how much a person has actually donated is a hard-to-fudge way to guage liberty mindedness.
 
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