History Through a Different Lens

Author's Note: The theory advanced here is painted in extremely broad strokes, since I wanted to tell the story in one easily-digestible blog post. I'll expand on particular issues in future blog posts.

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As part of the exploration of the transition that society is facing, it would be well worth our while to understand how we got into this sorry mess in the first place.

I often wondered how a society founded on innovation, self-reliance, and respect for the individual and individual choice above all else morphed into the society we see around us today. I found one plausible explanation in the pages of The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, by Kevin Carson.

When I first started reading The Homebrew Industrial Revolution (THIR), I was expecting a technical treatise. However, before the author got to that, he embarked on a tour of the evolution of society during the Industrial Revolution that is, to put it mildly, considerably at odds with the one we all learned in public school.

Licensed to Live: Occupations

Author's Note: Just below the masthead at the top of the page you'll see a new Contents link. The linked page lists all Tireless Agorist columns, arranged loosely as a table of contents or reading list by category. I hope you find it useful for exploring The Tireless Agorist.

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In 1787 one could get most any job or open most any business without seeking the government's permission to do so. Today, nearly one in three U.S. workers needs a license to pursue their chosen occupation, and starting a new (legal) business without the involvement of both a state-licensed attorney and a state-licensed accountant is a fool's errand. Two recent studies do much to explain the rapid growth of the underground, apolitical economy that we explored in The Apolitical Economic Superpower and the rest of the Phoenix Society series of columns.

Occupational Hazards

The Institute for Justice recently released Occupational Licensing in 50 States and D.C., a study examining the impact of licensing on 102 low and moderate-income occupations. In 1950, only one in 20 U.S. workers needed a license to pursue their chosen occupation. Today, the ratio approaches one in three.

Fellow Travelers and Purity Tests

Author's Note: I'm not a big fan of the whole "voting" thing, agreeing in large part with those ideological purists who consider voting a validation of the system. Nor am I seriously convinced that political action will ever reverse the current course of government. As an agorist, I think that replacing the functions of government one piece at a time in our own lives and focusing locally will have more long-term impact.

That said, I'm philosophically a pacifist, too, but in self-defense I'd certainly be willing to pull the trigger. Thus my pragmatic approach to politics, and voting. Read on and you'll understand why this explanation was necessary. I'm simply laying out a game plan for those who are convinced political action can still turn the tide. I consider them fellow travelers too, regardless of what label they self-declare, and I write for the whole "more freedom, less coercion" movement, not just those most closely aligned with my beliefs.

P.S. In this essay, I use the term libertarian in as "big-tent" a context as is possible... excluding Bob Barr, of course.

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This weekend, two-time New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson won the Presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, kicking off quite likely the most successful of Libertarian Presidential runs to date. The Ron Paul Revolution cleaned up in Nevada and Maine, claiming 22 of the 28 national delegate slots in Nevada and 21 of the 24 of the slots in Maine. While 20 of the Nevada delegates must vote for Romney on the first ballot at the convention, the Maine contingent is free to vote their conscience, since the Maine "primary" was nothing more than an unbound beauty contest staged for the press.

In a recent column, The Underground is Surfacing, we discussed The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, by Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie. The book's thesis is that "we are in fact living at the cusp of what can only be called the libertarian moment." Independents are now the largest voting block in the country, their 41% share outstripping both Democrats and Republicans, and they hold political positions very similar to those reported for Millennials (18-to-29-year-olds) surveyed in a recent Harvard study.

In general terms, only 20% of Millennials feel the nation is generally headed in the right direction, opposed to 43% who think it's off on the wrong track and 36% who aren't sure. Only 15% disagree with the statement "Politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing."

The Underground is Surfacing

So far in this series about the Phoenix Society, we've addressed the massive size and rapid growth of the underground, apolitical economy, the rising decentralization and individual empowerment in response to the ongoing failures of centralized, top-down control, detailed specifics of new technologies that hold the promise of decentralizing production, new tools for and attitudes toward collaboration, and the decentralization of production. But the story of the Phoenix Society is not only in the depth of the changes occuring at the edge of the future, but the breadth of support for these changes, even among those who have yet to realize their depth.

Stories that explore the widespread acceptance of this new decentralized paradigm are everywhere, and a number of those stories have been told here at The Tireless Agorist. In Detroit: America's Greece, we saw examples of residents reclaiming homes taken by banks and government agencies, community gardening projects, voluntary cleanup efforts, neighborhood watches, and new sorts of microbusinesses, all the result of individual initiatives, not government programs.

Accidental Agorists Rebuild A Road tells the story of a community of volunteers repairing a road vital to their well-being because the government couldn't or wouldn't get the job done and they weren't willing to set around and watch their livelihoods destroyed. Meanwhile, Tombstone, Arizona Clings to Life as the citizens still wait after more than a year for permission from the government to repair vital water systems that are in an area protected by the Wilderness Act.

Tombstone, Arizona Clings to Life

The Monument fire last June destroyed over 30,000 acres, some of it endangered species habitat, in Cochise County, Arizona. It also destroyed the primary source of water for Tombstone, Arizona, a town of 1,500 and, owing to its fame, host to more than 400,000 visitors each year. Within days of the fire being extinguished, the town already knew they had a big task on their hands. Flooding that followed the fire destroyed the catch basins as well as some of the pipeline.

As of right now Tombstone still has water thanks to some wells, but they said they're just not enough. Kern said, "Our wells can keep up but if we had a major fire or something in town that could drain our water supply really fast."

Because of that risk, workers said they're not going to let Mother Nature beat them, but fixing the mess won't be easy.

Wright said, "It's do-able. To think they did it in 1880 and did it all by hand, I guess we can find a way to put it back."

City works said they're confident they can get in here, get everything cleaned up, and build new water basins but they're going to have to wait because the flooding probably isn't done. They said if they do any work the next flood will likely wash it all away.

Now, almost a year later, the town is starved for water, forced to rely on two ground wells (one compromised by arsenic) to meet its needs, although it normally draws 50 to 80 percent of its water from springs in the Monument Fire burn area. The delay is not caused by Mother Nature, or by a technical problem.

The City of Tombstone is squaring off against the U.S. Forest Service over water rights in a fight to rescue “The Town Too Tough to Die.” Citing the Wilderness Act, the Forest Service is refusing to allow the city to repair its waterlines to mountain springs it has owned for nearly seventy years – and which date back to the 1880s. This refusal is threatening residents, private property and public safety with the risk of a total loss of fire protection and safe drinking water.

Drones Coming Home to Roost

Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird's-eye view that's too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.

Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to 24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500 people since border patrols began six years ago.

The Federal Aviation Administration is gearing up to advance the widespread use of remotely piloted aircraft. By the fall of 2015, Congress wants the agency to integrate remotely piloted aircraft, also referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles and commonly called drones, throughout U.S. airspace.

Jury Nullification Still Legal

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
In celebration of a recent decision that it's still legal to discuss jury nullification, I'll take this window of opportunity to dedicate a blog post to the topic. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood determined that it's perfectly legitimate to encourage jurors to vote their conscience, even when that conflicts with the letter of the law. More specifically, she found that distributing pamphlets about jury nullification is not jury tampering, even in front of a courthouse.

Jurors have the authority to judge the law and may vote to acquit a defendant who is guilty of doing something that should not be a crime.

The Homebrew Production Model

In earlier columns in this series, we've explored technologies that promise to challenge mass production and distribution of goods, much as decentralized arts have begun to challenge the major media outlets and local farming is becoming a nascent threat to factory farming; technology that will soon be as readily available to the local craftsman as farming implements are to the local farmer.

Both an ecological and economic case can be made for the wastefulness of the current production-push model of goods creation. Making cheap, disposable goods centrally and distributing them globally in a never-ending cycle uses considerably more resources and energy than crafting durable, repairable goods for a smaller geographic area. As with produce, the hidden costs of socialized infrastructure account for a considerable portion of the supposed economic advantages of mass production.

The counter-argument can be made that only centralized production lines can produce many goods, such as today's sophisticated electronic consumer goods. To continue down the path toward a more decentralized economy, new models of decentralized production will be necessary. Fortunately, some models have already shown themselves to be viable, and others offer great promise.

Detroit: America's Greece

As most everyone knows by now, Greece is broke. The government has borrowed all there is to borrow. They've made all the promises they can possibly make. And they're going to be able to deliver on neither obligation. Bondholders and citizens alike have discovered that the well of unending plenty is dry. But this didn't happen overnight, and even now there is much denial of the final outcome, although the signs have been on the horizon for years. The euro-based Greek economy is dead; what the establishment will do to recreate a replacement "official" economy is yet to be seen. Nor is Greece the only euro-state in trouble. Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain are in similar shape, with many others not far behind.

Meanwhile, the Greek people are seeking their own ways around the mess that their national leaders have created, to some degree with the cooperation of those leaders, as we discovered in Greece Surrenders to the Underground Economy.

Detroit, like Greece, has failed. The government of Detroit is collapsing, soon to be replaced, one way or another. Battles have erupted between the Detroit City Council and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to determine which group will take temporary control of the city (and eventually the ultimate blame for the collapse of Detroit's political machine).

Accidental Agorists Rebuild A Road

Here's the story of a community getting together to repair a road, bridge and all, because the government couldn't or wouldn't get the job done and they weren't willing to set around and watch their livelihoods destroyed. What this Tireless Agorist finds most interesting is that they don't even realize they're agorists, or that they're involved in a voluntaryist, entrepreneurial, counter-economic political demonstration of direct action, as surely as Mahatma Gandhi and his supporters on the Salt March. This is how the world will change.

Their livelihood was being threatened, and they were tired of waiting for government help, so business owners and residents on Hawaii's Kauai island pulled together and completed a $4 million repair job to a state park -- for free.

Polihale State Park has been closed since severe flooding destroyed an access road to the park and damaged facilities in December.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources had estimated that the damage would cost $4 million to fix, money the agency doesn't have, according to a news release from department Chairwoman Laura Thielen.

The state couldn't get it done for at least two years, so Ivan Slack, owner of one of many businesses reliant on the park, went looking for volunteers.

Malum in se, Malum Prohibitum

When it comes to the proper role of government, most people seem to agree on a few basic issues; murder, rape, fraud, theft and vandalism (acts of aggression against individuals and their property) are almost universally accepted as violations that government should prevent or punish. Conflicts tend to arise only after we step beyond that common theme.

Two legal terms illustrate that fundamental split: malum in se and malum prohibitum.

Open-Source Freedom

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Robert A. Heinlein
Northwestern Localist asked an interesting question in response to the column Homebrew Production is Coming.

How many years are we from designing and building our own farm equipment, transportation, etc. etc.? This kind of technology makes massive centralized government control less viable.

I happened to know the answer is zero, which sent me searching for something I vaguely remembered, and that led me to the today's column. While Northwestern Localist won't be printing up a tractor on a RepRap machine any time soon, his question goes far beyond that, to the concept of shared knowledge.

Greece Surrenders to the Underground Economy

The Guardian recently published Greece on the breadline: cashless society takes off, an all-too-brief look at what's happening in the streets of Greece in response to their government's international monetary woes. This paragraph is what triggered my reaction and the title of this post.

The Greek parliament recently passed a law encouraging "alternative forms of entrepreneurship and local development", including exchange networks such as Volos's, giving them official non-profit status for tax purposes.

As I read it, Greece has surrendered to the underground economy by writing off a significant chunk of future tax revenue, and it has to do primarily with "exchange networks such as Volo's." To understand, we have to go back to the top of the Guardian's story.

Pizza Federalism, Kickstarter and the Arts

Discussion of federalism is all the rage these days among conservatives. Such conversations are generally framed by the Tenth Amendment, interpreted as an issue of "States Rights," and then dismissed by the left as a throwback to the days of the Civil War.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I believe a more honest appraisal of the concept requires consideration of the Ninth Amendment as well, and others are becoming at least tangentially aware of that idea.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

When both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are included in the discussion, federalism expands to encompass "pushing government decisions down to the lowest democratic level possible," as Jonah Goldberg notes.

The Rise of the Phoenix Society

In the first column in this series, The Apolitical Economic Superpower, we discussed the rapid growth of the untaxed, unregulated economy. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it already provides an estimated 50% of the world's jobs. And in only eight short years, they estimate that two out of three workers world-wide will be employed in jobs outside the control of government, in the apolitical economy that this article from Foreign Policy refers to as System D.

By 2020, the OECD projects, two-thirds of the workers of the world will be employed in System D. There's no multinational, no Daddy Warbucks or Bill Gates, no government that can rival that level of job creation. Given its size, it makes no sense to talk of development, growth, sustainability, or globalization without reckoning with System D.

Beware the Ides of March

Caesar, beware the Ides of March... a day for all the world's autocrats, despots and grandees to ponder the consequences of their deeds.
Salman Rushdie, today, on Twitter

Salman Rushdie's tweet seems an appropriate call to this Tireless Agorist to recap those articles I've published that address autocrats, despots and grandees, and the consequences of their deeds. I'll even throw in a column or two that offers some hope for the future. I've categorized the articles for your convenience. The groupings are just rough approximations; some essays may fit in more than one category.

Agorism, Country Style, in Hardyville

"If we as individuals can't find freedom in our own lives, our own work, our own communities, we're never going to find it. And that's what Hardyvillians do."

Claire Wolfe, interview with Brian Wilson, 8/12/2011
Although I've written on a number of topics over the last month, I've always felt remiss for not explaining the name of my blog. While "Tireless" is explained by the masthead quote, I've never defined the term agorist, although most of my posts reflect the agorist philosophy in one way or another. ¹

So here it is, briefly stated.

Agorism is a libertarian philosophy that holds as its ultimate goal a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges and rejects the view that the solution to human aggression is to institute aggressive governments. It proposes that such a society can only be brought about by circumventing or ignoring the state.

Agorism embraces the libertarian philosophy of individual choice and responsibility and expands it to include a method for instituting that philosophy.

Claire Wolfe, libertarian author and columnist at Backwoods Home Magazine, wrote extensively of the rural community of Hardyville between October 2003 and September 2007. Hardyville, as a profoundly libertarian community with strong agorist tendencies, is a perfect example to illustrate the meanings of both libertarianism and agorism.