Nothing stokes the fires for liberty more than disobedience. The State has no legitimate claim to our lives, and it is our responsibility to express this fact by non-compliance with their decrees. Certainly, some State decrees ought to be obeyed, insofar as they protect private property and private contract; but such instances are merely coincidental.
I am interested in your ideas about how this can be done effectively, and what the limits of such activities should be. I am also interested in any published literature on the subject.
Here’s a few Ideas that I had. Please add to them:
I for one, have always considered tax evasions en masse as an effective means to bring about a Libertarian/Capitalistic Revolution.
I for one consider Guatemala (My home) to be quite ripe for those kinds of things. 50% of the population evade their taxes, and the State, HAH! It’s a weak State with a very faulty State of Wellfare.
I do kinda have my aspirations of initiating my little Revolution here, just a matter of convincing the masses to do it (Something not easy to do, given that the Guatemalan State, weak as it is, can still instill a good deal of terror). If there is one thing that can be easy to convince, is to convince them to keep their money, and that it is foolish to keep giving money to a failing institution, and thankfully, I have discovered some Guatemalans are fast to agree with me, but are still to afraid to act.
Thank you! Tax evasion and black market activities are probably the two most important things on that list. Unfortunately, they are also probably the most dangerous, particularly in a place like the United States, where the State is strong.
Can you think of any other (less dangerous) methods to oppose the state? Something that would be easy to convince other people to do?
That it is, and places like Europe, where States are even stronger, they are in a real mess.
This method
Just replace Bill Gates with an idiot Statesman or Stateswoman. Heehee.
Anything more explicit than a hilarious pie in the face, yeah, there is no easy way I can think of. =/
What usually convinces other people is appealing to their desire to save their cash, and of course, appealing to their predisposition to hate taxes. That for me, is usually the fastest route. But when I top it off with showing how the State sucks and fails on so many levels, they become even more convinced about it, but again, still fearfull to act. This is the fastest and simplest way to do it. The “Why pay for an institution that does not give good service” is quick and easy, and it saves me the trouble of explaining the entire Austrian Economics deal (especially for the layperson that has no interest in economics, a notion, that by my reckoning, most Austrian Economics "Missionaries’ are not sensitive about).
Hmm.. I’m not sure about the “Ignore morality” part. I’ll ignore false claims about morality — which essentially means ignoring what the State and its subsidiaries say. But morality as a whole? I’m not a Nietzscheian.
Sort of. Not really. He rejects the notions of good and evil, which are the terms that most people use in describing morality. Regardless, I don’t think it’s safe to oppose the State by disregarding good and evil. I think that the use of these terms is necessary to condemn it.
But then he provides his own morality of life, earth, and the Übermensch, even if he doesn’t refer to it as morality. Liberté is a Stirnerite. Of course, Stirner elucidates a system of morality too—a sort of whimsical ethical egoism.
Um, no. Either you don’t know what a ‘normative’ is or you’ve misunderstood Stirner. Egoism is an ontological fact, it’s there whether you like it or not. What you do with it - is up to you - or maybe it isn’t. In any case, what is, is.
And be careful about ending up looking like a fool; that does nobody any good. Focus on education. Besides; you’ll do more by being that annoying guy who talks about this kind of stuff to strangers and family than the kid who writes inappropriate things on dollar bills and sells tax free cigarettes out of the back of his van.
I never implied that ethical egoism was mutually exclusive with psychological egoism. In fact, I’ve written in the past about how the latter naturally leads to the former.
Ontological or existential egoism is different than psychological egoism. It does not say that people are inherently ‘selfish’, it says that value-subjectivism entails an existential connection between value and a specific individual who actually perceives value.
Morality is logically incompatible with this opinion, unless you want to distort the meaning of ‘morality’ to meaninglessness.
Stirner does not advocate anything. He rejects advocacy.
