“Allow – This one is used a lot, usually in a phrase like “they shouldn’t be allowed to do that.” People do this all the time when they witness behavior they do not find aesthetically pleasing or in reference to something that essentially does not harm anyone. What they mean to say is that they personally do not like something or someone, and that permission is required to do something or to be someone. Since people do not need permission to do things with their own lives and their own property, what they are really saying is they want someone to threaten or use violence against others to put a stop to what they do not like.”
—Anarchei6, 8, 12, 16
6: Ever been on a protest march?
Sorry to say that I haven’t, but not from lack of trying. Where I live people don’t really hold protests that often, and when they do it’s usually something I wouldn’t want to be involved with anyway. That and the right to free expression isn’t even protected by law in Australia so if the government wanted to shut down a protest (more than likely one I would support) they could do it easily.
8: Favourite political book?
That’s a tough one. As a political book, Complete Liberty by Wes Bertrand is a good one. If inclusive of more philosophical works, I would say The Market For Liberty by Morris and Linda Tannehill is better. Both are excellent introductions to libertarian politics and anarchist philosophy, however they are by no means perfect. I found several points of disagreement in both books, mostly to do with intellectual property and the means of achieving a free society, but for the most part they are highly recommended. If I were going for a more historical perspective on politics and philosophy, Against Authority by Hogeye Bill would be my favourite.
12: What’s your view on human nature?
I would say that the nature of humans is to be sovereign individuals, in other words, self-owners. As such, humans are morally neutral beings, they are neither good nor evil unless they partake in violence. This is because the initiation of violence is itself an attempt to nullify human nature. Once someone commits a violent act, their nature changes from morally neutral to either morally bad if an aggressive act or morally good if a defensive act. Thus, acts of aggression such as murder, rape, theft, wars of aggression, and acts of terrorism are violations of human nature. When viewed through this lens it becomes clear that throughout history it has been the acts of state and religion that have defined human nature as somehow evil or wrong because of their perceived institutional legitimacy. I reject their legitimacy and as such I see human nature for what it really is, neither good nor evil.
16: What should society look like in the future?
Beyond a basic respect for individual sovereignty, I have no prescriptions for what society should look like. To say otherwise would be to dabble in blueprintism. I will say that I know what I would prefer society to look like, which would be pluralistic with differing economic ideals been attempted in a stateless arena. My favoured economic ideal would be free market capitalism, of which many have outlined what they think would emerge in such a condition. I’d recommend The Market For Liberty by the Tannehills and Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux for details.
Voluntarism: A monologue.
- So, sure nobody has ever heard of voluntarism before. It’s new. New things happen everyday. New is better than old. We are doing new things here. So, voluntarism is good. Here’s a coffee. Let me finish, ok?
- The reason you don’t like utopian movements is because you don’t understand what we do about government. Government is about making the system strong and individuals weak.
- You’re not as important as you think you are, but you’re the only thing that matters.
- So, there’s this system, right? The system produces things. We want to be free to produce those things on our own and without the system, but not all the things, just the useful things. You might want to use things I don’t find useful, but that’s your problem. Produce those things for yourself. We don’t need those things. Those are your things. And that’s fine. Just remember to do it without the system, ok.
- Hold on. My mom is yelling at me from upstairs.
- What’s wrong with me living in the basement. Some people live with their parents and some people don’t. So, it doesn’t really matter in the big perspective of things, does it?
- So, we oppose some things and we value others. Maybe you oppose things we value and maybe we value things you oppose. That’s ok.
- Anyway, we are for a lot more things than we are against, so nihilism is right out. We are not nihilists. QED.
- You have to remember that things take time. We don’t need history books or documentations are other things like that before we try to change things, see. We do it because we want to.
- MOM! Leave me alone for a second!
- Look, no matter what you want to say about things, we don’t blame you for creating the system. We find it funny that you think we can’t do anything about it. No. I don’t know the things we’re doing about the system, but at least we’re talking about things and thinking about stuff, and I can tell you that we don’t think the system speaks for us and does anything good for anybody. You might disagree. That’s your business.
- Now this is important. Violence is bad. Private property is good. We believe in peaceful revolutions. Billions and billions of them. Like Sagan. See, we know you don’t think this has ever happened before and so there’s no way to know this is possible, but that doesn’t matter. This is what we like and what we want to do and that’s what voluntarism is all about. Those things.
- Remember, we are not defined by our label. We are not a monolith and we are not a collective. We are whatever we want to be and you can to.
4, 14, 17
4: If there was an election tomorrow, who would you vote for?
I wouldn’t go outside the house to vote at all if it weren’t for the fact that in Australia voting is compulsory. Instead of giving the government more of my money and risking the fine, I go to the voting place and do a spoilt vote as a form of protest. I have my reasons for opposing the vote, but mainly it’s because democracy is slavery.
14: On capitalism and the free market?
I view capitalism and the free market as one form of arranging economic activity, one I prefer above other forms such as socialism, communism, or fascism. I understand that the word ‘capitalism’ has a negative reputation, which is why I stress the difference between what I advocate and what currently exists. What I advocate is a free, peaceful, and voluntary ideal, while what exists at present is not free, not very peaceful, and barely voluntary at all. Corporatism, state capitalism, crony capitalism . . . call it what you will, they are not free market capitalism. Some say that people should just give up using the word ‘capitalism’ but I think it can still be salvaged. After all, the word ‘anarchy’ has a negative reputation and people still cling to it rather than using alternatives. Words hold their meaning as long as people are willing to attribute that meaning to them.
17: A politician/leader/other political vector you admire.
I don’t admire politicians, nor would I equate a ruler, even a temporary one, with a leader. There have certainly been figures throughout history that I have admired for their courage to speak out against the evils of the state, such as Lysander Spooner, Gustave de Molinari, and Murray Rothbard, as well as present-day thinkers such as Bryan Caplan, Stefan Molyneux, and Roderick T Long. There are certainly others, these are just the ones I can think of at the moment.
anarchei replied to your photo: This will be the last time I self-promote,…
No, I don’t mind at all! I see that you changed the hyphens to em-dashes. Personal I preferred the sans serif font, as the serif font reminded me too much of a newspaper article (with the columns) and I abhor news format. But I sincerely appreciate the effort nonetheless and will update my original post to include your link. What other changes did you make (so that if its something substantial, I can take it into account, as well)?I hope you don’t mind, but I went ahead and remade this poster as I noticed a few mistakes in the text. I also reformatted it and chose a more print-friendly font. You can get it here: dl.dropboxusercontent.c…
Mutualism seems to favour the Labour Theory of Value rather than the Subjective Theory of Value. I favour the latter. What are your thoughts?
http://www.mutualist.org/id56.html
They’re not diametrically opposed, as you seem to think they are. Carson is arguing that implicit in subjective valuations of goods is a valuation based on labor, because as Carson writes:
“A producer will continue to bring his goods to market only if he receives a price necessary, in his subjective evaluation, to compensate him for the disutility involved in producing them. And he will be unable to charge a price greater than this necessary amount, for a very long time, if market entry is free and supply is elastic, because competitors will enter the field until price equals the disutility of producing the final increment of the commodity.”
I.E., that because everyone looks at how they can spend their time from an opportunity-costs approach and bases their subjective valuations of how they can best use their time based on that, it naturally follows that, in a certain sense, all products derive their value from the labor inputs.
Read the whole link though it gives a better explanation
anarchei said: I remember posting this two years ago (anarchei.me/post/57…). I wonder if Tumblr will ever get around to implementing a way to check for double posts…
I probably posted this at some point too.
Though I’ve also double, triple, quadrupled posted, and then some The Story of your Enslavement.
pon-raul replied to your photoset: Fun little paper I got at Dunkin Donuts with my…
My local pizza place had a sign about them not selling sodas too ugh fuck this city man
Agreed….
anarchei replied to your photoset: Fun little paper I got at Dunkin Donuts with my…
I don’t understand the hostility toward artificial sweeteners. Studies have repeatedly shown there to be no adverse health effects connected to normal consumption of artificially sweetened food and drinks.
It was more a reference to the Aspartame Conspiracy/Alex Jonesy stuff…I could care less, there have been studies though that aspartame creates a craving for higher calorie foods and thus doesn’t really control weight gain…nothing conclusive though.
I just don’t think the artificial sweeteners taste as good in coffee specifically Ice Coffee which is what I drink…I actually like Raw Sugar the best for taste…specifically melted with a little hot coffee and then mixed in with the iced coffee
22 - Your favorite news source? I'm interested because I rarely see snippets of news articles on your blog and I'm curious as to where you may look.
My favourite news source is Tumblr. I follow a wide variety of blogs that provide news articles and opinion pieces. Most of these are tech blogs however, such as The Verge and Ars Technica. I would like to follow more general news blogs but I’m not sure which ones are worth my time.
If the “share” were “fair” then they wouldn’t be handing over so much. Of course, the entire notion of a “fair share” is invalid because it assumes that the government has a degree of ownership (slavery) over the people it taxes.
Exactly.
The ends never justify the means. Quite the opposite in fact: The means justify the ends. So with taxation, just because the ends are beneficial does not justify the coercive act of theft used to procure the funding. Immoral means negate moral ends.
