Agorism

[Maxliberty]

@david_z

@Maxliberty

I offer farmers selling produce on the side of the road as an example.

A great example of tax evasion, but not necessarily of counter-economics. Just because you’re transacting business without paying taxes on the income doesn’t qualify as counter-economics, IMO. So, to your question,

@Maxliberty

Does counter-economic activity without agorism undermine the state?

Minimally. The fact that the farmer is a de facto slave, and will continue to be one in the future, is only incrementally reduced by his roadside bazaar.

Is some combination of “counter-economics” and agorism probably the best route? I’d say it is. Avoid the state, altogether, where you can. And avoid it everywhere else, when possible. (I.e., I can’t buy a house like an agorist.)

@Maxliberty

Are there any quantifiable goals or thresholds in agorism?

One goal is, of course, increasing awareness. A year ago, I had no idea what agorism was. A year ago, nobody on Mises was talking about it.

The next goal, after increasing awareness, is to find people with whom you can interact and exchange value for value. NB, you’re not one of them.

These were your answers followed up by if everyone stopped paying taxes then the state would collapse. So which is it, not paying taxes accomplishes nothing or can it in fact collapse the state? Classic agorist contradiction.

The counter-economic farmer selling on the side of the road accomplishes nothing but the agorist engaged in the exact same activity is undermining the state.

I understand why no agorist can provide coherent answers to my questions. The reason is that to provide a logical answer undermines the whole foundation of the agorist ideology. Agorists are not any different than anyone else that for whatever motivation are doing things that undermine the state. That is the simple reality.

This is aloo why agorists can’t quantify any activity of agorists nor do they have any quantifiable goals or objectives and can not measure the effectivness of their own strategy. It’s not quantifiable because it’s indistinguishable from other activity that is already quantified.

The reason agorism should not be adopted as a strategy for undermining the government is that it doesn’t do anything that isn’t already being done without agorism and without any way to measure the effectiveness of the strategy in relation to the stated goal there is no possible way to determine if we are in fact accomplishing the stated goal.

We started this thread for agorists to answer challenges and there has been no answer to those challenges. Any objective reader of this thread wil come to the same conclusion that I have demonstrated and outlined above.

[MacFall]

@liberty student

But if for some reason, the US government fell, your foreign creditors would be landing troops on your shore to snatch up everything that isn’t bolted down.

I’d like to see them try it. I don’t think they would find whatever we have to snatch worth facing 60 million armed and pissed off Americans.

That’s if your enemies don’t nuke you first out of frustration and vengeance.

And that’s not likely, as those with the means don’t have the motivation. But even if it were true, that’s more of a point for me than for you. The crumbling of government-integrated infrastructure in the event of a major city being nuked makes decentralized, alternative markets all the more important.

[Maxliberty]

@Geoffrey Allan Plauche

@liberty student

@MacFall

Cannot be stressed enough. Even if dozens of secessionist communities as in the Liberty Colony are successful, it will not cause the paradigm shift which must occur for that freedom to be maintained. Only if people have a free-market alternative available to them when their precious state collapses, will there be any chance that the masses won’t just go and set up another one, probably worse than the one that had just failed them.

This in my opinion, is the biggest isue with Agorism. The presumption that the state will fail, and there will be a vacuum for Agorism to explode into.

I might be able to see it, if I believed “the state” was in isolation. But if for some reason, the US government fell, your foreign creditors would be landing troops on your shore to snatch up everything that isn’t bolted down. That’s if your enemies don’t nuke you first out of frustration and vengeance.

Well, the Liberty Colony can be invaded too. Or have international political and economic sanctions placed on it. So what?

In any event, do you foresee no resistance to such an invasion?

But in the event of invasion and resistance, wouldn’t it still be better the more libertarians (and agorists) there were

So if we recognize that certain strategies have weaknesses what is wrong with applying that same scrutiny to agorism?

[MacFall]

Max: please see my reply to Ozzy on the previous page.

[Maxliberty]

@MacFall

@ozzy43

I think this partly addresses some of the question I had - very interesting. Can you say more about these cuonter economic capital goods and consumer goods? Or a pointer to specifics would suffice.

I may have misspoken a bit there - it’s not that the goods themselves are fundamentally different, but the manner in which they are used. Taking for example the most commonly regarded counter-economic good (and for that mater the one which is most broadly shared between Agorist and non-Agorist counter-economists) - drugs. The average black-marketeer will grow and process them, ship them, and sell them for FRNs, which they then use to buy mainstream economic goods, some of which are re-investment into their business. Only the last contributes positively to the counter-economy.

An Agorist, on the other hand, would avoid the exchange of FRNs, selling as much as possible to trusted persons in exchange for alternative currencies or other goods. They would then use the profit within the Agora - buying counter-economically produced consumer goods, and re-investing like the non-Agorist. Those from whom they buy use their own profits to consume from within the Agora, and develop their own capital goods, and so on. Because (and to the extent that) they are using commodity money, it is not likely for that money to be reabsorbed into the mainstream economy. So as long as the Agorist refrains from “cashing in” for some FRNs by selling their products into the mainstream market (which is possible, but far less likely amongst Agorists than others), the Agora profits by absorbing capital at the expense of the state system. That is the positive function of it - there is also the neutral function of depriving the state of taxation on those goods.

This is the machinery of a counter-economic cell, which in acting strengthens and expands itself, while weakening the state’s power over the economic activities of those who participate. It is not hard for one to imagine that such a cell could provide all or nearly all of the staples of a person’s life, leaving only such things as transportation, communication and housing reglated and taxed. And there are certainly counter-economic possibilities for those things as well. As the Agora expands - as those cells begin to network with one another and the division of labor develops - such possibilities are more likely to become realities.

I am a part of such a cell. Though not nearly so developed as I have described, it is functioning and increasingly more self-aware (it was just a bunch of libertarians who enjoyed barter before I and others introduced the concept of Agorism to the participants). To honor your request for specifics, several farmers grow crops significantly in excess of what they report to the government, and trade for things like homebrewed alcoholic drinks (the manufacture and transportation of which involves myself), tobacco products (which in PA are very highly taxed and regulated - minimum prices, for example, guarantee a grey-market profit) and also services such as construction and car repair. The cell is not fully Agoric since much (though not a majority) of these grey-market goods are sold for FRNs, but until the influence of local Agorists, it was 100% non-Agorist. The trade of precious metals and other commodities as money have begun to emerge in the past year.

Here is a big part of the agorist arguement that I think is confused because it is so based on the US lifestyle. As I have stated before the types of activities that you describe as being the result of some agorist cell development in the US happen all the time in the developing world without any agorist ideology at all. Barter and people exchanging labor for stuff and selling things outside of the reach of the tax man is very common. I think in general if agorists had more experience with places outside of their suburb in the US then some of these things would be easier to recognize as not being the result of some agorist driven super ideology.

[ozzy43]

@liberty student

@MacFall

Cannot be stressed enough. Even if dozens of secessionist communities as in the Liberty Colony are successful, it will not cause the paradigm shift which must occur for that freedom to be maintained. Only if people have a free-market alternative available to them when their precious state collapses, will there be any chance that the masses won’t just go and set up another one, probably worse than the one that had just failed them.

This in my opinion, is the biggest isue with Agorism. The presumption that the state will fail, and there will be a vacuum for Agorism to explode into.

I might be able to see it, if I believed “the state” was in isolation. But if for some reason, the US government fell, your foreign creditors would be landing troops on your shore to snatch up everything that isn’t bolted down. That’s if your enemies don’t nuke you first out of frustration and vengeance.

But as several posts have pointed out, even if the State does not fall, leaving no vaccuum for agorism to explode into, that does not render the project futile. It’s not a digital thing, either working or not - it’s analog, and includes a continuum of functionality. Now, I’m trying to think about if there are discontinuities on that continuum, because I think those will be the obstacles to sustainability.

I also have to say (somewhat, but not competely whimsically), that, when it comes to committed ideologues, repression tends to maximize the # of followers. Just look at persecuted religions. So perhaps State oppression would be just the thing…

I also do not take seriously the notion of foreign creditors landing troops. When the State collapses, what will there be that will be worth the investment for a foreign creditor to try to come take? Rockefeller Center? The gold at Fort Knox? Well, OK, maybe China will want Hawaii, but as far as I am concerned, they can have it. With any luck, we can convince 'em to take California, too, as part of a package deal.

Of course, personally, I do not think that the State itself will collapse (although the financial industry probably will) until oil exports go the way of the dinosaurs, and the mechanisms which the State uses to enforce its will no longer exist. At that point, we are at a point where Jeffersonian agrarianism not only can establish itself, but would be one of the only possible options.

[gplauche]

@Maxliberty

So if we recognize that certain strategies have weaknesses what is wrong with applying that same scrutiny to agorism?

The better question is: why not apply the same scrutiny to all strategies equally? It’s not as if the Liberty Colony has no weaknesses. But I don’t see the one’s mentioned by liberty student as significant weaknesses of agorism. Indeed, they are not necessarily weaknesses of agorism at all but rather merely a possible byproduct of statism. If a state collapses, it is better to have more agorists in the area than less. Calling the possibility of invasion post-collapse a weakness of agorism implies that there is some viable alternative to bringing about liberty in these statist areas. The Liberty Colony doesn’t strike me as such an alternative. It’s an alternative for particular people to find liberty for a time elsewhere, sure, but it is not much of an alternative for producing liberty in the US or most other major countries.

[MacFall]

Max: Can you show where in any of those instances, those participating are acting to undermine their states’ currrencies, or to develop counter-economic alternatives to things which are available through the mainstream economy? I submit that most such instances occur when access to the mainstream economy is limited, or where there is some sort of a cultural barrier.

Additionally, you must recognize that a society with an advanced division of labor and existing capital base, integrated geographically (though not monetarily) with the mainstream economy, would be far more effective in creating alternative markets than islolated backwoods communities.

[gplauche]

@Maxliberty

Here is a big part of the agorist arguement that I think is confused because it is so based on the US lifestyle. As I have stated before the types of activities that you describe as being the result of some agorist cell development in the US happen all the time in the developing world without any agorist ideology at all. Barter and people exchanging labor for stuff and selling things outside of the reach of the tax man is very common. I think in general if agorists had more experience with places outside of their suburb in the US then some of these things would be easier to recognize as not being the result of some agorist driven super ideology.

I don’t see the problem.

[liberty_student]

@MacFall

I’d like to see them try it. I don’t think they would find whatever we have to snatch worth facing 60 million armed and pissed off Americans.

They will be mostly disarmed by then. The state is not going to collapse without gun confiscation and martial law first.

@MacFall

And that’s not likely, as those with the means don’t have the motivation. But even if it were true, that’s more of a point for me than for you. The crumbling of government-integrated infrastructure in the event of a major city being nuked makes decentralized, alternative markets all the more important.

As long as you aren’t standing in the blast radius.

[liberty_student]

@ozzy43

But as several posts have pointed out, even if the State does not fall, leaving no vaccuum for agorism to explode into, that does not render the project futile. It’s not a digital thing, either working or not - it’s analog, and includes a continuum of functionality. Now, I’m trying to think about if there are discontinuities on that continuum, because I think those will be the obstacles to sustainability.

If we’re going to “settle” let’s all support Bob Barr then. [8-)]

[gplauche]

@ozzy43

But I understand and respect your reasoning. Clearly, it’s specific to one’s personal situation and outlook. There is no question that obstacles confront expatriates, and the ones imposed by the State will continue to grow, IMO. Currency and emigration controls are to be expected, especially when they get around to implementing a draft.

Congress recently passed a new exit tax law applying to expatriats.

http://www.hodgsonruss.com/Home/News_Seminars/Alerts/USEnactsNewExitTaxOnExpatriates

I thought I remember reading about a tax on property for those renouncing citizenship too, but I might be wrong.

[ozzy43]

@liberty student

@MacFall

I’d like to see them try it. I don’t think they would find whatever we have to snatch worth facing 60 million armed and pissed off Americans.

They will be mostly disarmed by then. The state is not going to collapse without gun confiscation and martial law first.

I don’t know about that - it may well be gun confiscation efforts and attempts to implement martial law that bring the State down.

@liberty student

@MacFall

And that’s not likely, as those with the means don’t have the motivation. But even if it were true, that’s more of a point for me than for you. The crumbling of government-integrated infrastructure in the event of a major city being nuked makes decentralized, alternative markets all the more important.

As long as you aren’t standing in the blast radius.

I think nukes are a real possibility - not a large possibility, but remember:

risk = consequences * probability

So even a smallish probability can yield a large risk.

However, I don’t consider it likely that there will be a LOT of nukes (i.e. nuclear war with Soviets/Chinese), though this could not be ruled out entirely as the resource/oil wars intensify as global production continues to drop. Probably just onesy-twosy if at all. Can’t blame the rest of the world for holding a grudge - we have screwed over soooooo many people that comeuppance in the form of a nuke would not be surprising. I’d bet there are a million or so Iraqis who would jump at the chance.

Another reason expatriation is a reasonable option, IMO.

[gplauche]

@ozzy43

India has regions where governmental intrusion is virtually unknown, from what I understand. I have friends who intend to emigrate there. Might be the perfect spot.

But I understand and respect your reasoning. Clearly, it’s specific to one’s personal situation and outlook. There is no question that obstacles confront expatriates,

Plus, my wife will not want to live in the middle of nowhere. She dislikes middle-of-nowhere places in America as it is. Middle-of-nowhere in India will be worse. Also, I could be wrong but those places in India are less likely to be welcoming to a non-religious Indian woman married to a non-religious white man.

[MacFall]

@liberty student

@MacFall

I’d like to see them try it. I don’t think they would find whatever we have to snatch worth facing 60 million armed and pissed off Americans.

They will be mostly disarmed by then. The state is not going to collapse without gun confiscation and martial law first.

First, you make an unwarranted assumption that people would just roll over and die if that were to happen. Standard fallacy among statists, that only indigent cowards want liberty. I’d expect more from a libertarian.

Second, you seem to be missing that the whole point of Agorism is to create market-based competition to state “security”. If that were to happen with some development of the Agorist infrastructure, we’d at least give the state a run for its money. And since (as you suggest) it is going to happen anyway, you are once again arguing in favor of Agorism, as without it any resistance would be crushed without any chance of success.

As long as you aren’t standing in the blast radius.

The advantage of developing decentralized alternative markets is that it ensures that it can’t be taken out by an event like that. And I wonder why you think a foreign government would have any motivation whatsoever to nuke American citizens following the collapse of their government. You really seem to be grasping at straws to discredit Agorism. I wonder why? It’s not as if we’re any threat to you.

[liberty_student]

@MacFall

First, you make an unwarranted assumption that people would just roll over and die if that were to happen. Standard fallacy among statists, that only indigent cowards want liberty. I’d expect more from a libertarian.

Don’t call me a statist. Second, what are people doing today? Rolling over. They roll over when they feel threatened. That is how government’s control people. That is how the American government murders hundreds of thousands of people while it’s citizens bicker over Sanjaya or Bret Favre.

@MacFall

Second, you seem to be missing that the whole point of Agorism is to create market-based competition to state “security”. If that were to happen with some development of the Agorist infrastructure, we’d at least give the state a run for its money. And since (as you suggest) it is going to happen anyway, you are once again arguing in favor of Agorism, as without it any resistance would be crushed without any chance of success.

It is going to happen anyway? I’m arguing against the fallacy that the state will reach some sort of tipping point, and Agorism will be able to step in. Is it possible? Sure. But Agorists count this as absolutely likely, and that is the one variable they have to fix, in order to explain how Agorism reaches critical mass. It’s all predicated on the notion that the state doesn’t drug us, or exterminate us, or biometric scan us, or infect us or brainwash us (further).

It’s pie-in-the-sky thinking. Big old evil statism, run by long range planning statists with massive political, scientific and material resources, are just going to blindly carry on towards their own destruction, and when they are at the edge of the cliff, they will just jump off without trying to stop or save themselves.

Libertarians are losing the propaganda war. Have been for a long time.

@MacFall

The advantage of developing decentralized alternative markets is that it ensures that it can’t be taken out by an event like that. And I wonder why you think a foreign government would have any motivation whatsoever to nuke American citizens following the collapse of their government. You really seem to be grasping at straws to discredit Agorism. I wonder why? It’s not as if we’re any threat to you.

I’m not grasping at straws. I’m testing the ideology. If it can’t withstand internet forum criticism (this applies to you as well), it certainly isn’t going to topple the state. You ruined the last Agorism thread by personalizing it. Don’t repeat the same mistake twice.

Again, you’re assuming everyone is rational except the state, and that the US state in this instance exists in a vacuum, one where no UN or EU or RUS or CN forces will come in to prop up the existing government or replace it altogether.

If/when the moment comes, Agorism can’t “scale” to accommodate security and provision for the masses faster than another government (from whatever source one could imagine), then it will have failed.

[Maxliberty]

@MacFall

Max: Can you show where in any of those instances, those participating are acting to undermine their states’ currrencies, or to develop counter-economic alternatives to things which are available through the mainstream economy? I submit that most such instances occur when access to the mainstream economy is limited, or where there is some sort of a cultural barrier.

Additionally, you must recognize that a society with an advanced division of labor and existing capital base, integrated geographically (though not monetarily) with the mainstream economy, would be far more effective in creating alternative markets than islolated backwoods communities.

I will give you a US example. E-gold operated a gold currency not with the express purpose of undermining the state but because the founders are libertarian in their overall philosophy and believers in gold currency. There was lots of counter-economic activity involved in e-gold and the creation of an alternate currency specifically backed by gold clearly even without the intent of specifically doing so undermines the state currency.

So we have counter-economic activity, counter-institution and a counter currency. I think by anyone’s definition here that is the kind of activity that we would agree undermines the state. For those of you who don’t knwo the story these guys recently plead guilty to money laundering and operating an unregulated financial business.

My point is that agorist ideology wasn’t a requirement to undermine the state. This activity based on a making a profit and a desire to create a gold currency was sufficient to create activity to undermine the state. All counter-economic activity undermines the state. Once you understand that truth then you can quantify what activity is occurring and it’s effect on the state. From that point you can then extrapolate to what it is you need to realistically do to actually undermine the state. If you make any attempt at this type of calculation for undermining the state by trying to actively grow the underground economy you quickly realize that as a strategy to undermine the state this isn’t going to occur in your lifetime or your children’s lifetime.

[Maxliberty]

@Geoffrey Allan Plauche

@ozzy43

But I understand and respect your reasoning. Clearly, it’s specific to one’s personal situation and outlook. There is no question that obstacles confront expatriates, and the ones imposed by the State will continue to grow, IMO. Currency and emigration controls are to be expected, especially when they get around to implementing a draft.

Congress recently passed a new exit tax law applying to expatriats.

http://www.hodgsonruss.com/Home/News_Seminars/Alerts/USEnactsNewExitTaxOnExpatriates

I thought I remember reading about a tax on property for those renouncing citizenship too, but I might be wrong.

Yet another agorist worried about the tax man. Isn’t the whole point of agorism to live outside the state control? Comical how you continue to bring up what the state tells you to do. Since you probably plan on working for the state as a teacher I can understand your concern. Also, if living in isolated places in Amreica is too much for you do you really think your ready to take on the state?

[gplauche]

@Maxliberty

My point is that agorist ideology wasn’t a requirement to undermine the state.

So what? This is a really weak objection.

[Maxliberty]

@liberty student

@ozzy43

But as several posts have pointed out, even if the State does not fall, leaving no vaccuum for agorism to explode into, that does not render the project futile. It’s not a digital thing, either working or not - it’s analog, and includes a continuum of functionality. Now, I’m trying to think about if there are discontinuities on that continuum, because I think those will be the obstacles to sustainability.

If we’re going to “settle” let’s all support Bob Barr then.

Yes, if the goal is to undermine the state and the state never fails and gets replaced then you have failed. Agorists don’t want goal lines because they can not be reached with that strategy.