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

[mediahasyou]

The time has come when the market crashes. The government will severely lack funding which will cripple their enforcement abilities. It's time to move beyond government. Become a better person.

 

[RevolutionSD]

The time has come when the market crashes. The government will severely lack funding which will cripple their enforcement abilities. It's time to move beyond government. Become a better person.

Exactly!

And to enhance your sig quote:

"And the government that governs least is no government at all."
-Revolution SD

The idea that we need a government to "run" the country or our lives in any way is childish and we are way overdo to move past this idea.

 

[gilliganscorner]

The time has come when the market crashes. The government will severely lack funding which will cripple their enforcement abilities. It's time to move beyond government. Become a better person.

Agreed, in theory. You know it. I know it. Many on this board knows it. The subversion of individual liberties and encroachment on our freedoms by the Statists did not happen overnight. Likewise, to turn around and move away from Statism will not happen overnight.

Agorism does not depend on us spending our time and energies trying to convince John Q. Public that we are "right". You cannot bring a horse to knowledge and make it think. 12-13 years in State indoctrination camps we call "public education", a subverted media, and a $600 Billion dollar a year advertising industry trying to pry the want for products we don't need into our skulls has all but ensured critical thinking skills have been lobotomized. You can try if you want, though. Your choice.

Agorism starts whenever you want it to. Choose your friends wisely.

 

[mediahasyou]

Exactly!

And to enhance your sig quote:

"And the government that governs least is no government at all."
-Revolution SD

The idea that we need a government to "run" the country or our lives in any way is childish and we are way overdo to move past this idea.

Well, that is what Mr. Jefferson is implying.

 

[gilliganscorner]

Bump because of this thread.

 

[Feenix566]

12-13 years in State indoctrination camps we call "public education" ... has all but ensured critical thinking skills have been lobotomized.

...which is why we need School Choice. It's not as sexy nor as exciting to talk about as societal collapse, but school choice is the only path out of statism.

 

[gilliganscorner]

...which is why we need School Choice. It's not as sexy nor as exciting to talk about as societal collapse, but school choice is the only path out of statism.

Education is key, I agree. However, I am not waiting to try and convince everyone. Plan A is the agorist network. Plan B is educating the masses. I will always try to educate, but I won't wait for the eyes to open.

It is too hard. After public education, there is a 600 billion dollar a year advertising industry that hires gaggles of psychiatrists and psychologists that do nothing but try to pry the want for products you don't need into your skull. If you want to learn more about that, google "Century of Self". There is a 4 part movie you can download and see what I mean.

 

[mediahasyou]

Agorism in now more ready than ever in this economy. A state lacking funds and efficiency is a weak state that cannot bring Agorism down.

These newcomers should look at this thread: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showpost.php?p=1894527&postcount=17

 

[gilliganscorner]

bump `cuz of memories. Seems more timely than ever now.

 

[gilliganscorner]

Raising a cheer for the "Going Galt" movement ripping around the blogosphere and some mainstream press.

However, it focuses on physically extracting oneself from the country. Agorism lets you hide in plain sight.

 

[JVParkour]

Sounds very interesting.... I might list myself as resident grasscutter and garage cleaner... LOL

 

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

I have advocated a virtual market cloning ebay/craigslist. I haven't elaborated a whole lot on it because nothing has gained any momentum yet. One way to go about it is to create an open source client application that utilizes a peer to peer database model for the market data. For instance:
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:VhenB9_zeGgJ:www.nesc.ac.uk/talks/ahm2008/975.ppt+peer+to+peer+databases&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

 

[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.

So I started toying around with this idea again after the new cigarette tax was instated. I've setup two test BBSes that share a message board and exchange files over file echoes. All traffic between hosts is encrypted including inter-bbs traffic.

My idea here is to setup a message board for people to exchange goods and services as they please as well as a library (Bibliotheque Apocolyptica) for exchanging ebooks. Both the library and the message boards can be spanned out across multiple BBSes so if one site is taken down, the rest will remain up and communicating with one another.

I believe there is also functionality to setup a back channel IRC server so that users on different BBSes can communicate with one another. If there was ever a SHTF scenario and internet communications was shut down, users could communicate via packet radio or landlines.

Is anyone even interested in this idea? If not, I won't waste my time. I'd like to get 5 to 10 people interested in setting up their own BBS and getting people they know IRL to participate.

 

[Conza88]

http://www.mises.org/story/3412

Agorism - just, got, pwned.

 

[FunkBuddha]

http://www.mises.org/story/3412

Agorism - just, got, pwned.

Gotta love Murray... Agorism, to me, is nothing more than a way to be subversive and build business relationships in the communities that I chose to participate in.

I only scanned the essay but this argument doesn't hold up.

And there is another vital point here too. Konkin's entire theory speaks only to the interests and concerns of the marginal classes who are self-employed. The great bulk of the people are full-time wage workers; they are people with steady jobs. Konkinism has nothing whatsoever to say to these people. To adopt Konkin's strategy, then, would on this ground alone, serve up a dead end for the libertarian movement. We cannot win if there is no possibility of speaking to the concerns of the great bulk of wage earners in this and other countries.

It is the same thing with tax rebellion, which presumably serves as part of the agoric strategy. For once again, it is far easier for someone who doesn't earn a wage to escape the reporting of his income. It is almost impossible for wage earners, whose taxes are of course deducted off the top by the infamous withholding tax. Once again, it is impossible to convert wage workers to the idea of nonpayment of taxes because they literally have no choice. Konkin's airy dismissal of taxation as being in some sense voluntary again ignores the plight of the wage earner.

This argument makes the assumption that wage-earners who build cars for instance, can only build cars. They can't be shade-tree mechanics on the side or have a large garden or have any other skillset valuable to Agorist society.

Overall, from what I've read Murray makes great points as always. I'll read the rest of it tonight when I get home.

 

[Conza88]

Yeah, reading the whole article is probably advisable..

 

[FunkBuddha]

I mostly agree with Rothbard in sections II, III, and IV. I disagree with his assertion that political action is the only effective means of achieving libertarian/anarchist goals. The Swadeshi movement ,for instance was very effective in India.

For example, I'm not trying to be subversive because I want to keep more of my money or because I have some delusion that it will destroy the state. My motivation is primarily moral and if I can facilitate a way for others who feel the same way to trade amongst each other without supporting the violent actions of the state then I will be successful in achieving my own personal goal.

If I can set up a model whereby others can easily join the network and facilitate trades within their community then they can be successful in achieving the same goals as well.

So, while I agree with Rothbard that as a method of changing the world into a libertarian utopia, the agorist approach is a bit naive, his belief that it can be accomplished politically is naive as well. I don't know what it will take, but it will likely be a combination of movements that finally roll the state.

That said, maybe the thread title should be "Swadeshi: Beat the State, show a profit, all in a non-violent way." Konkin seems to have lifted the main premise from Ghandi anyways.

 

[RevolutionSD]

I mostly agree with Rothbard in sections II, III, and IV. I disagree with his assertion that political action is the only effective means of achieving libertarian/anarchist goals. The Swadeshi movement ,for instance was very effective in India.

For example, I'm not trying to be subversive because I want to keep more of my money or because I have some delusion that it will destroy the state. My motivation is primarily moral and if I can facilitate a way for others who feel the same way to trade amongst each other without supporting the violent actions of the state then I will be successful in achieving my own personal goal.

If I can set up a model whereby others can easily join the network and facilitate trades within their community then they can be successful in achieving the same goals as well.

So, while I agree with Rothbard that as a method of changing the world into a libertarian utopia, the agorist approach is a bit naive, his belief that it can be accomplished politically is naive as well. I don't know what it will take, but it will likely be a combination of movements that finally roll the state.

That said, maybe the thread title should be "Swadeshi: Beat the State, show a profit, all in a non-violent way." Konkin seems to have lifted the main premise from Ghandi anyways.

Great post.

Sounds good to me. I'm interested. Perhaps we can also exchange in gold grams ala www.goldmoney.com.

 

[FunkBuddha]

Great post.

Sounds good to me. I'm interested. Perhaps we can also exchange in gold grams ala www.goldmoney.com.

Did you see the posts I made about the BBSes? I'm curious what other people think of the idea.

 

[gilliganscorner]

http://www.mises.org/story/3412

Agorism - just, got, pwned.

Did you read Konkin's reply to Rothbard?

I agree with both sides of the article, and the end goals are the same. There is no reason that we cannot work on Plan A (asking the State to help with the implementation of limiting the State?) AND work on Plan B (educating, developing, and building your Agorist networks). Isn't diversification key to any investing strategy?

Don't get me wrong. I consider Rothbard a giant; he has influenced my thinking immensely. However, I am not sure he was aware or cynical enough to be aware that all conventional avenues to political reform are already pwned by the Establishment. We all saw what happened to Ron Paul; how the incumbents marginalized, ridiculed, and suppressed his campaign.