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

[gilliganscorner]

Anyone else have thoughts?

 

[gilliganscorner]

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.

NayJevin, get in touch with Social Engineer. If you have services you can offer, register on the site as a business.

This like a meetup group, but instead we are trading goods and services instead of politics.

I was reminded of Dr. Cleon Skousen today in this thread, and in this speech he noted:

But the Lord isn't going to allow this government to be destroyed. Although administrations may destroy themselves, systems may destroy themselves, this country's going to survive. J. Reuben Clark knew how it would survive: build track two. Don't get in front of that train on track one, it will just run over you. You quietly build track two.

Sometimes people say, "Dr. Skousen, you spent your whole life studying these things that have gone wrong, with the attack on the Constitution and everything. Why are you so optimistic?"

I say to them, "I read the book, and in the end, we win."

This is track two.

In the past, we would arm ourselves and defend this country against its own government. Back then, we could arm ourselves roughly on equal footing with the government, or at least be one hell of a surprising force.

Can't do that today. They have armed themselves to the teeth with weapons we don't understand, let alone afford. The media is co-opted, and the court systems corrupt. Besides, I hate violence anyway.

Agorism is the only mechanism to build track two successfully today. And it will work, if we want it to!

 

[idiom]

x.x


Don't you people have anything like this?

BarterCard

Bartercard is unlike any other credit or debit card because you fund our card with your own goods and services... NOT CASH. Bartercard currently helps over 6,500 smart businesses in New Zealand to increase sales, customer base, cash-flow and profit. Bartercard enables member businesses, saving valuable cash, without having to engage in a direct swap of goods.

 

[gilliganscorner]

x.x


Don't you people have anything like this?

BarterCard

Never seen it. Took a look.

Problem. It is a centralized point where all participants information is stored. Thus it is subject to seizure by the State. Owners arrested, participants waterboarded. Just like the DoJ did with e-gold. Essentially regulation implements the "Know Your Customer" paradigm, which in reality translates to, "You are responsible for what your Customers do."

The site I referred to, www.freemarketforliberty.com , people can use to locally develop their network of trading partners. They can keep track of them with pen and paper when they are trading off the books.

How long before the folks at BarterCard report what their Customers do, so that their trades can be evaluated in the <insert fiat currency here> so local taxation agencies can determine their unearned cut? Remember the crackdown on eBay powerSellers, where eBay was forced to turn over records for people who dealt in business over $1000 Federal Reserve Points per month?

 

[FunkBuddha]

Do you remember back in the day when we had BBSs? We used to have message board networks like FidoNet and FishNet where people could send mail around the world pre-internet.

The problem with networks like Tor and I2P is that they are incredibly slow. The bandwidth you get from these networks isn't feasible for graphic intensive web pages, but it would be just fine for text based traffic.

The cool thing about the anonymizing networks is that you can have anonymous servers setup on them as well. Anyone could run a simple BBS package that could connect up to our message board network. This solves the decentralization problem by having the message board replicated across many servers.

We would have to develop some sort of way to distribute a profile database between servers over the messaging system for the ranking system.

Sorry for the bad english... Just thinking out loud here.

 

[idiom]

BarterCard has been around for 18 years so far...

Whatever you do, if you have the cardreader inside a phone book in a hidden panel, that dials into a a secret server somewhere, this is by far the most reliable and proven system.

But I know how you guys are all about square wheels and such. If your government ever got ot the point of shutting something like this down then it would be 2nd amendment time. Mind you, you should have literally all stuck to your guns when they came for your gold.

 

[gilliganscorner]

BarterCard has been around for 18 years so far...

Whatever you do, if you have the cardreader inside a phone book in a hidden panel, that dials into a a secret server somewhere, this is by far the most reliable and proven system.

But I know how you guys are all about square wheels and such. If your government ever got ot the point of shutting something like this down then it would be 2nd amendment time. Mind you, you should have literally all stuck to your guns when they came for your gold.

Could you elaborate what you mean here? I have no clue as to what you are talking about.

 

[mudhoney]

I'm new to these things, but I'm certainly VERY interested in participating in an alternative market to the government run system we have now. My question is: What is the legal situation surrounding this idea? Is using things like Silver or anything else other than U.S. Dollars for significant transactions in some way illegal?

 

[idiom]

Could you elaborate what you mean here? I have no clue as to what you are talking about.

Executive Order 6102 is an Executive Order signed on April 5, 1933 by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt "Forbiding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates." It required all persons to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve.

Wikipedia

Oops.

 

[tremendoustie]

This is great! Is it legal? I mean, if I sell you 10 cans of soup for 1oz silver and neither of us pays taxes, is that currently legal? Because if it is, that's a hell of a loophole.

This would be an ideal tool for fighting for liberty, I'd just be surprised if they haven't already taken it away from us.

I'm not opposed to civil disobedience under certain circumstances, but I'd like to know when I'm participating in it.

 

[idiom]

Its legal outside the United States... out in the free world.

 

[tremendoustie]

Its legal outside the United States... out in the free world.

Quite seriously? Other countries permit this activity, but the US does not?

If you have them, I'd be very interested in seeing the associated laws, and knowing which countries still have this kind of freedom.

 

[idiom]

Well BarterCard is the largest system around. Its not designed to swap currencies, but to avoid them altogether.

It currently operates in Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, Cyprus, Thailand, Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Sri Lanka and India.

Wiki on the Tax Issues.

Inside the United States the barter econmy and currencies are backed by cocaine. It is better than Gold because you can eat it, after a fashion.

 

[tremendoustie]

Well BarterCard is the largest system around. Its not designed to swap currencies, but to avoid them altogether.

It currently operates in Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, Cyprus, Thailand, Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Sri Lanka and India.

Wiki on the Tax Issues.

Inside the United States the barter econmy and currencies are backed by cocaine. It is better than Gold because you can eat it, after a fashion.

Looking it up, it appears that the US requires that you report the monetary value of your barter as taxable income.

Still, I think it's worth it to set up the network. I can sell you goods for silver, then pay the IRS off in FRNs. It'd be cool to set up a hard currency coffee shop or something. And of course in a real SHTF situation, it could be useful.

 

[gilliganscorner]

Wikipedia

Oops.

Ah. I understand now.

Bernanke admitted that the Fed "let" the Great Depression happen. I personally think it was engineered ON PURPOSE in order to drive the American people to their knees. When you are tired and hungry and have hope removed from you, you are more likely to give up liberty and independence for security. Sound familiar?

Gold was taken from the American people because they were boycotting Federal Reserve Points to trade in sound money outside the taxation/inflation system - agorism. Statism will not permit that. Oh sure, the dollar was still backed by gold, but Americans were not allowed to own gold. So they couldn't redeem it. Foreigners could though.

A few generations passed and people forgot about the virtues of gold as money and as a standard, as per design. No economics school taught the virtues of the gold standard as only professors that espoused Keynesian economics were allowed into the system - as per design. The ideas of Austrian economics were suppressed - as per design.

Americans were only allowed to own gold in 1975, after Nixon closed the gold window and NOBODY could redeem the dollar in gold anymore. However, the Gold clause is still in effect. That is, any contract settled in gold as payment will be nullified if it goes to court.

All this fuss for a soft, shiny, yellow metal, no?

 

[gilliganscorner]

Looking it up, it appears that the US requires that you report the monetary value of your barter as taxable income.

QFT.
In Canada: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tp/it490/it490-e.txt
In the US: http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html
In Australia: http://law.ato.gov.au/atolaw/view.htm?docid=ITR/IT2668/NAT/ATO/00001

I could go on, but no Statist government will allow you to trade off the books in barter. You are not permitted to exit the "red market" a.k.a the taxation/inflation system we are enslaved to. As Greenspan said:

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

If you find the odd country that doesn't specifically have a ruling, it won't be long before their is one....and it won't be in your favor.

Still, I think it's worth it to set up the network. I can sell you goods for silver, then pay the IRS off in FRNs. It'd be cool to set up a hard currency coffee shop or something. And of course in a real SHTF situation, it could be useful.

A hard currency coffee shop would be a VERY LARGE target for the State for a raid. It is centralized. Customers could be monitored. The owner raided. The media would either report what it was told to report ("That coffee shop sells poisoned milk to schoolchildren!" or "In other news, Hank's Coffee shop was shutdown today because Federal Agents found <insert fabricated morally offensive evidence here>!") or they would not report it at all.

Are you saying that you would report transactions in silver as the value of FRNs, then pay your extortion to the IRS? I wouldn't do that. In the SHTF scenario, you would be the first on their radar.

It is worth it to setup the network with trusted trading partners. You save all the extortion fees, make connections, and more.

 

[gilliganscorner]

Its legal outside the United States... out in the free world.

From http://au.bartercard.com/?page=tax

TAXATION AND BARTERCARD

Members should treat a Trade Dollar as they would a cash dollar from a tax perspective. Barter transactions are assessable and deductible for income tax purposes to the same extent as other cash or credit transactions. Therefore, the advantages and disadvantages are similar to ordinary cash revenue or expenses.
Register with Bartercard

Trading may result in tax liability when selling and attract tax credit when purchasing. It may also involve the Fringe Benefits, Sales Tax and Capital Gains Legislation. The Australian Taxation Office has expressed its views in Taxation Ruling IT 2668 on the taxation consequences of Trade transactions.

"When an entity that is a member of a Trade Exchange makes a taxable supply to another member, there is a liability for tax, including goods and services tax (GST)."

For tax purposes, the Australian Taxation Office considers one Trade Dollar (T$1) equal to one Australian dollar ($1). For the purposes of the tax laws, payments such as GST, income tax and the superannuation guarantee levy must be remitted to the Australian Taxation Office in Australian currency.

Trading is not designed to be used as a means of tax evasion or avoidance. Bartercard members should treat sales and deductible purchases as they would treat a cash transaction. Opening a Trade account is similar to opening another bank or credit card account.

As the third party record keeper, Bartercard Pty Ltd has a legal obligation to provide information, upon request, concerning members' trading activity to any government department.

Further information about the Australian Taxation Office’s stand on barter can be found here

Big fail...

Hmm. A centralized database where the State Terrorist Agency a.k.a the Taxation department can seize records on demand.

Agorism is NOT that.

 

[gilliganscorner]

Bump to consider the OP...

 

[FunkBuddha]

Bump to consider the OP...

I'm still here... I'm playing around with my BBS idea. I've stumbled upon a cool BBS package that allows SSH for end to end encryption.

I'm looking into what it would take to create a messaging network that could tie BBSs together in such a way that if one was taken down the network would continue to operate. Sort of like FidoNet back in the day.

The problem with forums like RPF is that if this site gets taken down we'll all be scattered to the wind. With the BBS network you could just log on to a different one and get right back in to the network.

The BBS package is called SynchoNet if you're interested in playing with it.

 

[me3]

if you're interested in Agorism, two blogs to read are

http://fskrealityguide.blogspot.com

http://nothirdsolution.com