To me it looks like the best way to move forward besides educating people.
You can see the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Hu7TJ4lSg
It gets especially interesting after min. 36.
The above video embedded for easy use:
I see nothing inherently wrong with it, but I don't think it's very realistic. Even when taxes have been out of control black markets have generally failed to appear.
I do think that it's a very cool idea, and it's refreshingly "political", bringing some of the strategic genius of the radical left to "our side".
There's only one thing I like about the concept of agorism. That perhaps one of the most realistic strategies for getting rid of the state is the establishment of parallel replacement systems. Replacement markets, replacement currency, replacement legal and judicial systems.
Establish them parallel too existing structures. If these become big enough they can delegitimize the authority's preferred structures. It's a pretty big 'if' tho.
One thing I think would be realistic is a parallel system of medical care once Obamacare fails and a complete government takeover results, which then makes private payments illegal. Then a black market will result. And the easiest way to make that happen on a mainstream basis will be black market service enabled by anonymized digital money payments, and perhaps involving private dispute-resolution and perhaps even digital contracts.
The negative to agorism is that if it ever began to really be big, the gov would seriously crack down on it and send people to prison for tax evasion and the like. So it's a risky strategy that one participates in at their own risk. Personally, I don't think the reward vs risk is so great as to both much with it.
Would this book teach me how to evade taxes?
Enter the blackmarket?
And the like?
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
This is the sort of thing that, IMO, we should only talk about over encrypted and nonpublic channels.
Let me know if you guys have some public keys somewhere :U.
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"Even when leftists talk about discrimination and sexism, they're damn well talking about the results of the economic system" ~Neodoxy
Agorism is to Libertarianism as Communism is to Socialism. At least, that's my take on it. The thing is, if it ever became really big, Agorists could easily be crushed by the government.
Hey, Lysander Spooner even advocated gurrilla war to abolish slavery.
SkepticalMetal: Agorism is to Libertarianism as Communism is to Socialism. At least, that's my take on it. The thing is, if it ever became really big, Agorists could easily be crushed by the government. Hey, Lysander Spooner even advocated gurrilla war to abolish slavery.
Sure, you have the option to step into any aggressive situation and defend yourselves or another. So I'd say it's certainly ethical behavior to try to avoid aggressive-coercion of any kind. However let's not pretend there won't be consequences for bucking the system. The system is designed to catch you, and to use minor convictions to mess up your ability to oppose it long-term, to mess with your personal life, your finances, your job, and your relationships. Even a minor prosecution will have that effect to some degree.
So it's a question of do you accept the consequences should they come down on you. You should accept them up-front if you choose the agorist path. Just assume you'll be prosecuted eventually and decide on a response strategy. Accept the fines and jail time, or choose another path.
I'd rather pursue a tangent path, one of foot-voting outside US jurisdiction and onto a seastead, where they at least cannot claim jurisdiction over me and my actions, where agorist networks could function without the imminent threat of prosecution.
So, I think the agorist counter-economics path is an opportunistic one, one that's not extensible on large scale, for should it ever be big enough to garner attention it would be easily crushed, and one that has the effect of soothing the feelings of those who feel frustrated in place without options to escape the system other than by subverting it in minor ways. It gives a libertarian a tittle to perform even the smallest transaction outside government notice.
But if you want to do major business, you essentially have to become a privacy extremist and incredibly knowledgeable on how to keep your identity secret online and a hundred various other things and ways.
I met some of these privacy extremists at Libertopia, guys who believe that pivacy is not something you enjoy but something you must take actively. They have committed themselves to never again showing their face in public for life, so they walked around with sunglasses and face-masks on and registered with fake names. And they gave talks on computer security and avoiding detection for sales that the gov would like to track, etc.
However they were European and I presume they flew in on actual passports.
I've already decided I'm not pursuing an underground strategy; I'm going public and I'll play within the rules while here, until I move out. I probably won't even renounce citizenship when living on a seastead full time. It'll be the first generation to grow up on a seastead that are natives to that environment that will reap the major benefits, after it's established and matured.
If you seriously want to go into these sorts of counter-economics and black-market deals, then you shouldn't even be on this forum talking about any of this really :P