no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

War Tax Resistance and Agorism

March 24th, 2008

Some people think that a good tactic is to withold some amount of their taxes due, in order to prevent the government from using that money to finance its empire-building. This is a symbolic gesture, at best, because it’s not going to prevent the government from monetizing more debt and stealing the value of your savings through inflation.

But more importantly, perhaps, every single “on the books” transaction in which one participates, is in fact a transaction that fills the coffers of the government. The gasoline, bubblegum, manicures, hotel stays, airfares, etc., that one purchases, money is remit to a corporation or an individual who eventually pays taxes to the government. There is truly not a single “on the books” transaction in which one may participate that is free from taxation at some level.

Fortunately, nobody likes paying taxes and many people are already accustomed to avoiding taxes whenever possible.

Did you gamble on the Super Bowl? Vegas took, by some estimates, $100M worth of wagers, yet the total estimated amount of wagers on the Big Game are probably $1B. Of course, gambling is often illegal, which fosters the black-market. In this instance, and using these figures, 90% of the Super Bowl betting was essentially agorist in nature: people voluntarily transacting without even thinking about reporting their gains for confiscatory taxation.

Do you buy things online, in order to avoid paying a local sales tax? Buy a snowboard or a bike or a nice winter coat online, and save yourself $20 or $30 (or more). But this is also illegal, if your state government has laws on the books calling for “use taxes.” Use taxes conveniently explode any argument the statist might use in favor of taxes based on needed “public goods,” and should be exposed for what they are: outright theft. There may be an argument for remitting a tax payment to the locale from whence you purchased your online goods, but there certainly isn’t one for the mere use of that good in another locale.

Have you paid the neighbor kid to mow your lawn, and neglect to 1099 him at the end of the year? That’s kind of like agorism, you just didn’t know it. Of course, to be truly agorist, you’d have to stop paying the kid with government FRNs.

In order to stop financing the war, one needs to extricate oneself from the government’s system entirely. This doesn’t necessarily make it impossible for the government to finance its wars (see monetization, above) but at least the resister can take solace in the fact that he’s no longer helping. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that at the present, the cost of removing oneself from taxation, in terms of personal welfare are excruciating. It would cost even more to eliminate reliance on the State or its co-conspirators. (E.g., one can’t blog without relying, to some extent, on the State.)

I just bought a house, and to do this requires that I begin paying property taxes. Unless I go primitive, there is no other option. I want to buy a car, or food. Same problem, because I’m not fucking dumpster-diving. Because of this, (and the pesky fact that there’s a gun to my head) I can’t feel guilty for paying taxes at one level, any more than I can feel guilty for paying them at another level. What I really want is not to pay taxes at any level.

There is also the problem of negative network externalities, as a result of competing with the government. Until there is a critical mass of reliable agorist traders, anyone who defaults on an agorist-style (off-the-books) contract, can simply blend back into the government system. If I agree to an “illegal” transaction, I can’t sue the other party in the event of default, because the legislation as written precludes contests involving contracts with illegal (as defined by the state) purposes. I suppose it would be possible to insure against this sort of risk by forming a mutual with other agorist traders.

What this unfortunately all comes down to, is that all efforts to resist paying a portion of one’s income taxes are essentially futile, because one is still paying all other forms of taxes (I estimate my burden is 80%), or sacrificing his personal livelihood to wage a symbolic war. In order to really strike at the root of the government evil, it’s imperative to extricate oneself from the entire economic system as we know it. This is peaceful and non-violent revolution by secession; if you can be free of the state in the economic sphere, you’re about 90% free from dealing with the state, at all.

So anarchists should lead the way for “off the books” transactions, making them more available. This is the essence of agorism and counter-economics. Find me a way to buy my house, agorist-style, and I’ll listen.

Leveraging Activism

March 17th, 2008

Tonight I was visited by an environmentalist pampleteer. He was promoting the Great Lakes, probably Michigan’s greatest natural resource: their beauty, their economics, their ecosystem, etc. I cut him short because I was preparing dinner at the time, and told him I wasn’t interested in signing anything, but it got me thinking about some of the other more “mainstream” brands of activism, and how they are or could be brothers-in-arms to anarchists…

The problem with most of these people is not what they want to accomplish, but rather, how they think it needs to be accomplished. They see that government sometimes passes laws in favor of (or in opposition to) certain groups. They see that governments, in some instances, takes land and gives it to greedy corporations, and think: we should convince the government to give some land to us! They believe, in short, that Government is the proper instrument through which to preserve the environment. Like many others, they stopped thinking about what government really is: violence.

I love “the environment.” Whether it’s snowboarding in Wyoming, mountain climbing in Maine, whitewater rafting in Washington, or mountain-biking locally in Michigan. I love the National Parks as much as the next guy, or more, but I’m vehemently opposed to how they’re created and/or maintained, and I believe that government shouldn’t be stealing land from anyone, to dole it out to anyone else.

There are no shortages of pencils, apples, rice, or automobiles. And although the “markets” for these commodities and wares are heavily distorted, they are markets nonetheless. There are no shortage of cows, of chickens, or of pigs. But there are often shortgages of deer (I judge by the relative demand and supply of hunting permits for sale). If there is a “shortage” of preserved land in this country (or any other, for that matter), it has more to do with government’s intrusion in the markets than it does with the market’s alleged “failure” to protect the environment.

In brief, government is the largest impediment to the preservation of nature. Surely there are many reasons I could give in support of this thesis, but several come to mind immediatetly and without much effort on my part:

Outright expropriation of title to land and/or resources such as mineral/oil rights, (e.g., Kelo, or any socialist regime). Sometimes the interference in title or land is more discrete, and is effected through statutorily usurping the common law property rights of some people in favor of others. A recent decision was the first conviction of California citizens under the Solar Shade Act of 1978, which is alleged to “[Protect] individuals who have invested a lot of money in solar power.” The law “protects” ex post, investments that wouldn’t be protected under the riparian rights doctrine of common law. This is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences, where a law designed to be environmentally friendly may actually contribute to the de-beautification of our cities.
Meddling in the financial markets through inflationary credit expansion, which coupled with the prior expropriation of land (below) raises the price of credit far in excess of what it would otherwise be, making available land costlier to acquire. Another fine example of government interference as the root cause of the problem for which people seek a government solution!
Prior expropriation of all open, (generally) unowned land. A government generally claims dominion over all land within the geographical bounds of its arbitrarily established and violently maintained borders. When the government takes title, it is expropriating an unowned resource. I say “expropriate” instead of “appropriate,” because when government takes title in this manner, it effectively destroys the libertarian principle of homesteading, whereby unowned land can be acquired by any individual willing to mix his labor with it, to transform it from a state of nature. This expropriation also severely distorts the market for land; since government land is generally not “on the market,” the land available for sale by private parties is made artificially scarce, and hence more expensive.

Governments continue to do all of these things. Yet the activists still believe that government is the way to preserve the environment! Clearly, it is not.

Activists of this sort are strongly devoted to their cause, and it is this devotion that should be leveraged when dealing with them, especially if you aim to convert. I love all of nature’s grandeur and beauty. But I don’t love any of it enough to point a gun at someone in order to preserve it. Show them the gun in the room, and chances are, they’ll be appalled. If these activists can be convinced that government is evil, they won’t stop loving the environment, they’ll start looking for other means by which they can preserve it, and the market is the means.

Market Anarchist Carnival – Leap Year Edition

February 29th, 2008

Welcome to the 12th edition of the Market Anarchist Carinval. This is a special edition, because it occurs on Leap Day. If we’re still publishing 4 years from now, someone else can have this unique honor. Until then, I’m in a class by myself.

There were a lot of submissions, most of which were shitty, and by shitty I really mean “spam.” I suppose that this is the nature of the beast. Sometimes I like to point out these people, other times, I send them an e-mail telling them that I’ll gladly post their article, as long as they can explain what it has to do with anarchy or agorism. I’ve gotten no responses thus far.

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Eric Sundwall missed the deadline, but I feel generous, so I’ll include Neil’s Saga, a prosaic ode to a future without nation-states.

Of course the financial meltdown of the 21st Century was the first and last lesson of Market Anarchy. The chaotic, craziness and violence was a result of the other structures collapsing, not the inherent nature of man in a power void.

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Shaun Connell’s presents Socialized Healthcare at his blog, The Rebirth of Freedom. Shaun’s submission was also past the deadline, and although it is not particularly agorist or anarchist in theme, it is certainly a stab at the State’s myths of socialized healthcare, and thus merits consideration.

A system of medicine that rations care and dictates coverage will not solve the problems of costly medical care. After examining how universal healthcare fares in other parts of the world, surely, with American invention and the will to see things “done right”, we can make socialized medicine work, right?

To answer this question, we will first look to the efficiency of the US government in general…Oh. That’s right. There really isn’t much, is there?

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I’m not exactly sure what this experiment at The Picket Line has to do with anarchy or agorism, but if you’re interested in finding out whether the local markets have better produce prices than the big chain stores, it might be worth a read. You should probably conduct your own experiments. I know that certain non-produce items I buy are more expensive at the local stores than at the chain stores, but I value time and convenience more than the 19 cents I save on a can of mandarin oranges.

Conventional wisdom says that the big chain stores can provide better prices and/or better selection and/or better quality. All things (e.g., opportunity costs) considered, this may be only partly true, or it may not really be true at all.

Maybe he should buy an earthship, it’s a giant greenhouse incubator building, he could grow his own food and reduce his utility bills to near-zero.

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Logan Flatt’s analysis accurately describes the Fed’s actions during the boom years of the current cycle, but I don’t know how it’s market-oriented. It’s certainly not anarchy-oriented. A case should have been made for a free-market interest rate, and solvent banking. Technically, I think this article is “spam,” but because it touches on current economic/political issues, I’ll post it because it’s not entirely devoid of value.

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Wenchypoo describes in detail what’s wrong with the fair tax, and also ways to reap some of it’s alleged benefits without any of its consequences. Not really anarchy-oriented, but Wenchy’s writing is excellent, and thus merits a plug.

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RadGeek wants to know why people continue to accept this sort of law and order:

If I got up in an old lady’s face face, implicitly called her crazy, threatened to have her committed, and then responded to the insults that my unhinged behavior so clearly merited by pulling her out of her car, cuffing her behind her back, and locking her in a cage, you’d consider me an asshole, at least. If I did all that based on a complete mistake, in which I barged onto somebody else’s property, ignorantly ordered around people in their parking lot, and then, when corrected about the owner’s policy for use of the parking lot, insisted that I was entitled to tell them how they should run their own damn parking lot and to yell at or arrest anybody who didn’t pay attention to my ideas about how it should be used, you would consider me not only an asshole, but a dangerous lunatic and a menace to public safety.

Remember the story about the old lady in Florida who arrested for taking too long at the McDonald’s drive-thru? Sound familiar, now? To make matters worse, “Friday afternoon, Merola spent $160 to retrieve her impounded Town Car.”

Nobody in his right mind would pay voluntarily for this sort of justice, and any organization engaging in this sort of behavior (in a freed market) would quickly find itself in financial distress.

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The next two are very inter-related. I’m a fan of the Geek, although I don’t read the People’s Daily anywhere near as frequently as I ought.

Here, the Geek presents a long, but thought-provoking post on the anarchy-minarchy debate.

If minarchists believe in limited government, then they believe in the right to make anarchistic arrangements not viable by prohibiting at least some individual people from seceding or otherwise withdraw their allegiance from the minimal state in favor of competing defense associations, or in favor of individual self-defense.

Then, in, Take the A-Train, the Geek goes after the myth of the “less government train,” where supposedly anarchists and minarchists and smaller-government libertarians can all ride along together, each getting off at their respective stop on the path to freedom.

So the appropriate image for anarchist-minarchist compromise really isn’t a train ride where minarchists hop off at the next-to-last station, and let the anarchists ride on towards the anarchy station. Statist politics don’t work like that. Rather, what will happen on this ride is that once the train pulls into the minarchy station, the minarchists will get off the train — and then they will try to block the tracks and threaten to open fire on the rest of us if we try to take the train any further towards the end of the line. That’s what being a minarchist means: government always comes out of the barrel of a gun, and that’s true whether the government is unlimited or limited, maximal or minimal. If you try to move, in any concrete way, from minarchy towards anarchy, those minarchists you spent so many years working with are still going to try to shoot you.

He’s right: If the minarchists let the train keep a-rollin’, then they’re not minarchists. If they’re minarchists, then they’re the ones holding the guns.

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Francois Tremblay, author of “Eight ways you can personally help to smash the state,” recommends “Putting the ‘market’ back in market anarchy,” in which he makes a compelling argument for freed markets

There are only two basic alternatives: a market (voluntary trade of resources, exchange of values) and a State (organized coercion). This is something that collectivist Anarchists fail to understand: that Anarchy by definition is all about markets, and that a market is necessarily Anarchist in nature. When they talk about barter as if it was a replacement for markets, they fail to realize that bartering is just a somewhat less efficient form of market

If [interaction] is voluntary, then it is a market process. If it is force, then it is a statist process, and has no place in an Anarchy

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Government is not your daddy, gives us an exposition of the political nature of the welfare state. and some of the twisted logic behind their supporters in “Feeding the needy or bolstering the Bureaucracy. I’m particularly fond of this point: proponents of transfer programs support them because:

2. They want to feel like humanitarians but, if it were left up to their own discretion, they’re not sure they would be as generous as the government is with their money. It isn’t that they have such great faith in the government, but that they’d rather hand over the responsibility to someone else than to accept that responsibility themselves

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Alex Ramos says we shouldn’t be willing to trade stability for freedom in The Argument from stability at his blog, The Freedom to Say 2+2=4.

The argument from stability is based on the premise that a stable system is better than an unstable one, without referring at all to the characteristics of the systems in question. Totalitarianism is very stable – leaders often rule for life, and conditions, while bad, can remain static for long periods of time. Anarchy, on the other hand, might be unstable, but it is also most conducive to freedom.

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Normally I would contribute a new, original post of my own, but I’ve been on vacation for a week, and I closed on my first house yesterday afternoon (in escrow, as the seller’s wire didn’t post…) Needless to say, I’ve been busy enough that I can’t even provide links to other articles I’ve found interesting during the past few weeks, in fact, my Google Reader is filled with something like 600 blog posts, news articles, etc., that I haven’t read, being away from the interwebs.

Regular blogging should resume shortly.