Or hidden and geographically dispersed.
The Internet brings the prospect of non-territorial secession closer and closer every year. Fully untraceable transactions in non-fiat digital money could deliver a tremendous and possibly fatal blow to the State apparatus all by itself.
I’ve done some pretty extensive research into digital currencies and this just isn’t realistic. According to the regression theorem, all money - even money substitutes - must derive from commodity money having real, market value. This means that a digital currency cannot be “purely virtual”, it must have a real locus in the real world. For example, consider operating a Tor-based, 100% anonymous digital gold currency (e.g. eCache). Sounds great, right? But how do you know that your digital tokens really are backed by gold while still maintaining absolute anonymity and secrecy of the location of the reserves? The answer is that this is not possible. Perhaps you could have a p2p-style system where fully anonymous micro-reserves act as the backing for the currency. But this suffers from the problem that it is always in the interests of individuals to defraud the system since a banking relationship is a trust relationship, meaning, the depositor has entrusted his money to the safekeeping of the banker… so that the banker can always benefit from defrauding the depositor so long as he can maintain 100% anonymity while doing it. There must be strict legal liability in order to ensure recourse in the event that the banker attempts to abscond with the reserves backing the digital tokens. Otherwise, the reserves are as good as gone and no one will sign up for such a system.
Banking always reduces to physical security because that’s what banking is… physically secured, audited storage of valuables. There is no way to escape the expense of physical security because of the auditing requirement… it has to be known where the valuables are stored in order for them to be audited.
Clayton -
Why gold? Not all things of value are tangible. Not all things of value have specific locations. The Internet may have (or may not have) changed the fundamental nature of what can be money, and below I put forward some speculation on that point.
If we have a system where the banker can maintain 100% anonymity in real life yet have the transaction be undertaken as a verifiable online entity (meaning, you don’t know who it is in real life, but you do know it’s really the one and only “eCache” [unique online identity] for instance), the banks would seem to have much to lose and little to gain by defrauding any one customer. To do so would be to destroy their reputation and all the potential future profits associated with it. They could start a new bank and try the trick again, but if this was an effective scam millions of people would be doing it. Only the online banks that had carefully built up their clientele would filter through to the general public’s awareness.
To see the complete picture I’m envisioning here, imagine a world where most people work online, many for (service) companies that - to avoid taxes and other State interference - have no public physical address, or maybe no physical address at all. Perhaps these firms don’t even have servers because everything is done on clouds or something like that. Completely online service businesses that connect employees, managers, other businesses, customers, and investors all completely online. No one knows who any of these people are in real life, yet they all benefit from the transactions. This may be limited to the pure service sector, but that sector is not a small one.
Imagine in this world a new Google emerges that is totally online and completely anonymous. No one knows who owns it, who its employees are, etc., other than by their online identities, which are untraceable to their real life identities. We’ll call it X-Google. Let’s say X-Google is the No 1 search engine, and that this is verifiable. Like present-day Google, it has an ad impressions program, where you can buy ad space so that your ad will appear next to people’s search results.
Now let’s say you do a job for X-Google, sell it a service, or maybe you are even one of their employees. How would they pay you? They can’t ship anything to your address without knowing where you live (maybe they could somehow actually, but let’s forget that for now). So instead they say, “Instead of money, we’ll give you a token for 100,000 ad impressions of a certain type.” You reply, “Sounds nice, but I have nothing to advertise.” So X-Google says, “The token is fully divisible - down to the one-ad unit - and you can gift the ad impressions to anyone you want. Just click this link to transfer ownership and we’ll take care of the rest.”
Now of course these 100,000 X-Google ad impressions would be directly useful to some (commercial website owners) and nearly useless to others. Sort of like real physical gold is. X-Google could also default and choose not to deliver these promised ads, and there’s the technical issue that not all searches and ads are equal (which seems easily dealt with through bundling or some kind of derivative scheme). However, a default would be a massive blow to their reputation as a bank, and probably wouldn’t help their search business much either. How everyone would know or verify that a default had occurred is another matter, but if we grant that the market would figure out how to deal with this, it would seem that X-Google has everything to lose and only a minute amount to gain by defaulting. And more so as it issues and redeems more of these tokens.
Other websites also start to issue ad impressions for their sites, and these are later aggregated into ad impression derivative packages that incorporate many websites. That way, even if one website does default, the owner of the token stands to lose only a tiny fraction of the value.
And if “issue the tokens and run” or overissuing (analogous to fractional reserve lending) were still a problem, the market would handle it. Perhaps payees would only accept tokens that were issued as a matter of public record to prevent this.
This is of course all highly speculative. I don’t have the computer science background to know the feasibility of this, and many may be thinking that if something like this were possible it would have already been published somewhere. But remember that very few people understand the significance of what something like this would entail, and of course many of the technical pieces aren’t in place yet.
Valuation is subjective, so nothing is objectively valuable… but all valuable property is physical. It may be intangible, such as the energy on an electric transmission line or radio spectrum, but only physical things can be property (you and I will almost certainly disagree on this point since you doubtless hold to the idea of IP, judging from your posts).
Your trust model just doesn’t make sense. In the security field, a “trusted agent” is someone who can violate your security. Bankers are trusted agents for depositors. The way that depositors keep the banker from violating their security is by knowing where the banker lives, so they can hunt him down and retaliate against him if he violates their trust. This is what gives the banker the incentive not to violate the trust of his depositors. The present value of the property in the vault always far exceeds the discounted future value of the income potential of the bank. This means that it’s always in the interest of the banker to make off with the goods. There’s no way around this.
Your X-Google example doesn’t change this at all. Verification is the act of establishing the identity of the trusted agent… “Yes, you are the trusted agent, you are the one who is permitted to be in a position to violate my security, no one but you is permitted to be in a position to violate my security.” Formal security is often counterintuitive from the way we normally think about security issues. A virtual entity with no physical location cannot be trusted in any sane security protocol because the virtual entity may violate your security at will without fear of recourse. Loss of market confidence or reputation is not recourse. Recourse consists of lawful retaliation… you violate my security, I hunt you down and put you in jail.
Clayton -
I’m totally anti-IP. Do we disagree that reputation is valuable? Think of the line-item goodwill on a balance sheet.
How about if several major websites in Taiwan or somewhere just did this right now? Issue ad impression tokens to anyone they owe money to.
Let them come!
Given your attitude, I doubt it (that you are open to being persuaded).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Wyoming
In regards to the OP,
http://seasteading.org/interact/events/conference09#videos
Much more advanced ideas about law and secession.
Real “Micro-secession”- Forget Groups, Go It Alone
As far as I can see, there is absolutely no need for anyone outside of oneself to secede from anything - true “micro-secession” involves the individual and only the individual.
So as far as that goes, Mr Hoppe and his followers and like-minded individuals [eg the Free State project ] are very much mistaken, in my opinion.
It is a complete waste of time waiting around until a bunch of supposedly like minded individuals in a city or state all agree to “secede” from whatever. It will never happen, or, at best, the chances of it happening are infintesmal.
Forget “free societies” - think “free individual no matter what” . Forget all groups - including “libertarians” and “Austrians” etc. etc..
If you really want to be free, you can be free fairly quickly and easily [ comparatively speaking], if you forget acting with/being part of any/all groups, and concentrate solely on freeing yourself.
A.A.A. = Always act alone.[:D]
Pure gobbledy-gook unless you plan to spend the rest of your life wearing hand crafted leather clothing and eating venison from the deer you killed with your flint-tipped spear over the fire you lit from drywood you found lying around on the forest floor. Good luck surviving the winter. The division of labor applies equally to security as it does to any other service. No one can specialize in everything and most people cannot or will not specialize in security.
Clayton -
Somehow , you have managed to completely misconstrue practically every word I wrote! [:D] , but that’s OK, we all see only what we want to see.
Complete with ad hominem [:S]
More beer - or more ad hominem?
P.S. If you are into self-reflection at all, you might find it useful to consider:
[1] why you believe that its necessary to “do a Ted Kazinski” [ or similar] for you to be freer than you are now, and ..
[2] how you reached the conclusion that that is what I was talking about.
Regards, onebornfree.
And you will be easily defeated the moment two cops show up at your door.
Yup. [;)]
Clayton -
I think this is a semantics matter. In the matter of a metaphysical type of liberation, I would agree.
But egoism is a tough sell on this forum, the metaphysical, even tougher.
As for the whole secession thing, the Lakotas are right out (ever heard of wounded knee?) .
I’m with Clayton. Gradual, micro secession seems like the only practical solution without garnering unwanted attention. Like globules of oil floating on heated water, the “free” communities would expand, and eventually coalesce into a group with the ability to stand up to the state. I’m also in favor of utilizing the legislative system in a sort of “anti-legislation” capacity, gradually eroding our feters through the repeals process, and resisting new legislation. Sort of the Ron Paul “Dr. No” school of thought.
With microsecession as the best approach to actual anarchism, how can this be brought into effect? How many people do you need to start such a project? In wich place? How and when to start? Is seastading a realistic option?
Don’t know, I wish I did!
I think less is more in this regard. At least one (you), maybe more as you figure out your best plan of action. I wouldn’t declare anything as secessionist, though. It draws attention, and scares people off. Try to build community in your neighborhood (block watch, community garden, private/non-profit community organization participation) whatever suits your situation. This way, you cooperate towards your end without anyone even knowing.
Your mind, then maybe some freinds’ minds. after that, the nearest physical spot. The insurrection can begin anywhere.
Well, think about your end. What is it? I’m not sure, but since we’re corresponding about it, I’ll assume it’s “end the state”. I don’t know your circumstances, so it’s hard for me to give advice, so you’ll have to ask yourself “what do I have to power to control in my life?” Maybe it’s your food supply. Maybe you want to run for office to abolish local ordinances. Maybe you can set up a community based block watch, to keep the police from driving around your streets. I dunno, but there are ways you can minimise, or modify government’s influence on your life.
Secession is always a political act, which means that the prerequisite to secession is the existence of an organization able to mobilize a large number of people to fight against the state. This is easier in places that are more remote from the state’s core bases of power, and where the people are more friendly to secession. The balance of people is on the secessionist side.
Once such an organization exists, it must successfully challenge the state’s attempt to enforce its sovereignty. This can be done either through open warfare (difficult, dangerous, unpopular), retribution against the state and its agents (strikes or occupations of government buildings) or corruption of the state’s agents.
If the state is thus forced to back down from its claim to sovereignty, then the secession part is complete. What must follow is an economic transformation. Obviously, most of the economic organizations of capitalism, the cities, counties, corporations and so on, are still 100% under the thumb of the state. The members of the seceding organization are free as individuals, but they must still engage in trade with people who haven’t yet been liberated. Most important of all, they must still live somewhere and pay to live there.
This means that new cities and companies must be incorporated by buying land and removing it from the state system. These can be at the margin of existing, state-controlled cities, and trade with them. Over time, the people who did not join the secessionist organization will migrate to them looking for better economic opportunities, and they will naturally want to join the secessionist society and withdraw from the state. Once a majority of these people occupy any given area, it can be incorporated privately and placed on the market.
I would say: “He who travels fastest travels alone” .
P.S. the Lakota tribe was a group, acting as a group [i.e not one individual acting alone] - and look where it got them- illustrating my original point in this thread perfectly.
But if that [ small group action] is the road you wish to persue [because it feels safer ?] - I wish you luck. Let me know how you do.
Regards, onebornfree.
Intriguing, how would you go about freeing yourself?
I see the Ying-Yang, and I know Taoists are fairly non-interventionist in their own lives. Is it something along those lines?
"Intriguing, how would you go about freeing yourself? "
For myself, I 've had to learn , relearn, and constantly attempt to apply/re-apply the lessons of what Bruce Lee has famously called “The Art of Fighting Without Fighting”, demonstrated here [from “Enter the Dragon” ] and then try to apply similar principles/philosophy [basically those of Aikido, Judo and similar] to my own life and situations.
regards, onebornfree.