Know Liberty

Unownable Reputations

2010-07-12T18:31:00.000-04:00

Reputations by their very nature are ideas in other people's heads about you, and cannot be legitimately owned or controlled via violence.

Does this imply there are no repercussions to someone that falsely hurts your reputation? No, it simply means that the battle should be waged with words, not bullets.

Tyranny by the Ignorant

2010-06-29T22:26:00.000-04:00

The problem of tyranny does not stem directly from the minds of the power hungry, but the ignorance of those that allow it to exist and propagate. It is a mistake to believe that tyranny can be overthrown without reshaping the ideas of the populous that ferments the tyrants.

So the solution is not to fight the tyrant face on but use tactics that teach others about the inherent evil in the system.

Propagate peace, not anger.

Make Friends Not War

2010-06-29T01:23:00.000-04:00

The idea of government and society being at war is simplistic and incorrect. Government is a pattern of society, not a separate entity from society. It should be viewed as a belief, not as a structure to be fought.

Government will disappear as the relationships that exist are replaced with voluntary alternatives, and the way to do this through direct one-on-one interaction in the name of liberty. Build relationships that foster civility and reasonableness.

Double Bladed Knowledge

2010-06-19T22:30:00.000-04:00

After a certain point, most things simply can't be forgotten. This is the knife that cuts both ways. Ignorance can be bliss. With knowledge comes sadness, as well as power.

Would you want to know of all the suffering that goes on, even if you couldn't do anything about it? What would be the point?

Sometimes it's better to give up a little knowledge in order to gain more happiness.

Stupid Roads

2010-06-18T22:53:00.000-04:00

Roads need only be a monopoly if you can't think outside the box. What is a road really? It can be thought of as property used for travel. There is nothing about it that says it has to be above ground, or even on the ground.

Roads run by a monopoly government are unsafe and inefficient. They are bumpy, feature no car-to-ground interface, and have thugs with lights on the tops of their cars that will run you off the road if you do not follow their diktats.

Think of all the time wasted sitting in front of a steering wheel. How difficult would the construction of smart roads be, ones that communicated with cars to tell them the position of the lanes and other cars, and then automate the driving?

Absence versus Failure

2010-06-17T23:30:00.000-04:00

Is the absence of something the same as failing at it?

One really can't claim that government can be efficient at a task. There simply are not the incentives for productivity and resourcefulness like there are for individuals in the free market. The real question is whether not doing something is worse than restricting it for others and then failing to properly do it anyway.

For instance, government is a monopoly on force, supposedly necessary because without a centralized military people wouldn't self-organize to provide for the demands of security. Never-mind that freedom offers the best way to innovate ourselves out of a problem, it is too important to have a failing entity than one that might not appear.

Statism Virus

2010-06-16T23:29:00.000-04:00

The mind of an individual can be harnessed by government through mandatory schooling to conform to the will of people in power and to reject out-of-hand the idea of a stateless society.

The task at hand is not removing power structures themselves, but illuminating the hazard caused by the power structures. Help people understand the slavery they live under and how more liberty is the solution, and the power structure dissolves.

A structure requires support from something. In this case, it is support from the vast masses. Overcoming this inertia is terribly difficult, but small steps get the ball rolling in the right direction.

Stolen Money

2010-06-15T22:02:00.000-04:00

It has been said that accepting something not rightfully yours is theft. The problem with this simple is determining when something is rightfully yours.

If someone loses something for 10 years and you find it, is it rightfully yours? What if they die?

Ownership is a trickier subject than is usually realized. The best solution is to allow a free market in the market of property rights. Allow people to organically decide what is legitimate for them, and it will filter out and become a standard in law.

Do One Step

2010-06-13T22:40:00.000-04:00

Get things done, one small step at a time. If the hurdle is motivation, you should cleanly organize a plan of action and implement it, starting now.

Achieving great things is rarely made of one large step. It is many, many small steps done on a regular basis.

How does this apply to the advancement of liberty? Ask yourself what you personally can do to raise awareness. A small step a day keeps the government away.

Setting Up Freedom

2010-06-12T23:50:00.027-04:00

The time to set up a free society is now. Unfortunately there is very little space left in the world for this to happen, so it seems we are stuck choosing certain attributes of an area, such as population size and relative size of the government, in determining where to go.

There is a place that this is being attempted in now. New Hampshire was chosen by the Free State Project as the place for freedom activists to be.

Moving your life is never easy. It costs time, money, and sometimes relationships, but the rewards could far outweigh the penalties. Creating a free society requires a certain concentration of like-minded people, of this there is no doubt.

Complaining For Freedom

2010-06-12T23:44:00.000-04:00

Complaining about others working toward freedom in unorthodox ways is nothing new. People started new countries to get away from past governments, and this will likely happen again.

However complaining accomplishes very little in the way of real change. Actually doing something to improve the situation is much appreciated.

For instance, some hate on the idea of civil disobedience. They seem to be fine when it is black people sitting in a restaurant, but women going topless, or individuals smoking cannabis at a protest is deemed outrageous. Why the discrepancy?

Eventually we will look back on all this tyranny and laugh at the incredible silliness of these ideas.

Pro-Liberty Government

2010-06-11T23:13:00.000-04:00

The idea of a government being pro-liberty is strikingly absurd in the current environment. Perhaps the definition of government could be redefined, from a monopoly on force, to a provider of security.

A "state" would be a monopoly on force, and "government" would be more general and mean any organization that governed the violators of rights.

This way, instead of anti-government, it would be anti-monopoly. Monopolies are already fairly despised, but some people still see them as necessary in the provision of certain goods.

Free to Good Home

2010-06-10T23:16:00.000-04:00

The value of giving a gift is not merely the price you could get from selling it. There is also value gained by the giver and recipient in the form of good will.

Gifting, while not normally seen as a capitalistic act, is definitely part of the voluntary market. Whenever two people exchange things of value, even a physical for a non-physical thing, it is part of the free market.

Don't reduce liberty to its basic features, let it shine for all it is and can be.

Free Market Scamming

2010-06-09T23:43:00.000-04:00

The voluntary interactions between humans comprise the free market. Some voluntary actions still can have negative outcomes, such as in the case of scams. Depending on the amount of freedom a society values, these outcomes can then be dealt with violently or nonviolently.

A scam is a confidence trick: "an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence."

Fraud is a serious issue. It is theft by deception, but does not necessarily require the same response as physical aggression. If violent people cannot be reasoned with, then violence may be the answer. When fraudulent people cannot be made to stop their fraud, and return the money, then either violence or a strong reputation system may be the solution.

Fear of imprisonment may be a deterrent to crime, but physical incarceration is a blunt tool hitting a unique situation. Having systems in place to track the goodness of an individual in society is the future of civilization, and even workable now.

Regulation Decreases Competition

2010-06-08T22:29:00.000-04:00

Pass a law requiring stricter standards and the natural inclination toward innovation is hampered.

Competition occurs due to the number of suppliers in the market. Regulation increases the cost of business and destroys marginally profitable companies, reducing the number of market suppliers.

These stricter standards are only beneficial for certain subsets of society, never for the whole population. If they were, the people would have put their money where their mouth is and paid for higher quality goods and services.

We have corrupt politicians acting in the interest of lobbyists and ultimately their own visions of power. As long as individuals stay in the mindset of government being a necessity this is an unfixable problem.

Regulating Efficiency

2010-06-07T22:05:00.000-04:00

Whenever people bring up the issue of specific industries such as utilities needing special government treatment it makes me weary.

For instance, some suggest that market efficiency can be increased by adding regulation. Then when markets suffer, they clamor for more regulation to "solve" the problem. Perhaps the reason for the markets not performing well is the regulation in the first place?

I think the idea of utilities being so different from everything else is only true because the government defines them to be different and then forces people to act in that (mistaken) framework.

Regulation increases efficiency only when it comes about in a free market of justice.

The Movement of Statism

2010-06-06T23:06:00.000-04:00

Statism, being generally a belief in the necessity of government, may not appear to exactly resemble a social movement. It does not have grassroots organization, but I still think it can aptly be described as a movement.

"A social movement is a type of group action that seeks to achieve or resist societal change."

This has to do with liberty because people are educated to believe government is necessary, and some end up promoting idiotic ideas. As long as a majority of people in a given geographical place use these mistaken ideas to advance their unjust causes, we suffer.

Supply and Demand

2010-06-05T23:03:00.000-04:00

"The problem is that when there is a disparity between the value of a product to the buyer and the cost of production to a seller, if there is natural competition (cereal, gasoline, etc. are relatively close to natural competition), the actual price will tend towards the cost for the sellers, since companies will keep undercutting each other until the price drops to the lowest they can accept without losing money on each sale. OTOH, if there is a natural monopoly (or something close to it), the actual price will tend towards the value for the buyers, since the lack of competition allows the price to rise as high as the buyer will tolerate."
-- w1ntermute

Prices are ultimately determined by what buyers are willing to pay, never at what sellers are willing to sell at. The only way for this not to be true is if sellers are paying people to take away product, and then they are actually buyers of a removal service.

Demand must precede supply. Having a bunch of product that no one wants to buy means the product is not worth anything. The supply only comes into the picture after people are demanding something.

Ending Aggression

2010-06-04T21:40:00.000-04:00

What's the point of judging right and wrong? Does it make you happy to feel you are superior to others?

The issue should not simply be about the aggression in the system. Aggression is not evil in-and-of-itself, it is made evil because of the impact it has on real people. The distinction is subtle but valid: the cart can't pull the horse.

Put the fear from actual individuals in the picture and it becomes much bleaker. This aggression must stop, man.

Denying Possibility

2010-06-03T21:31:00.000-04:00

Some out there deny the possibility of humanity soon escaping from tyranny. They just don't think it can happen.

I don't see the profitability in that line of thinking, not because it offers nothing of value, but because it does not seem to me to be beneficial to plunge a movement, no matter how small, into further obscurity.

How can one be motivated to act if action is stifled by lack of hope?

Both Have and Eat the Cake

2010-06-02T20:53:00.001-04:00

The secret to both having and eating your cake is arbitrage. Trade your current cake for a greater size cake that someone will give you in the future. You'll still get to eat it, just not right yet.

Make your wealth produce earnings for others, and you can both have and eat your cake. Figure out how to use your accumulated capital in the pursuit of other people's happiness.

The more you can put off your own pleasure in favor of some one else's, the more you will be desired, and therefore you will earn more.

Never Give Up

2010-06-01T21:03:00.000-04:00

Until you draw your last breath, always understand that you have not lost the war. You can still forge ahead and make your life a success.

No matter what happens as long as you can communicate you can continue to make the world a better place. Serve yourself by serving others. Be good to others and build genuine relationships, and enjoy life.

Don't think that you have the answers, or that you don't need to learn anything else. Life is dynamic, and you need to be too.

Folly of Fanaticism

2010-05-31T14:04:00.000-04:00

There is a sense of fanaticism that many experience when confronted with the facts of government's immorality and unnecessary existence. It is defended like a religion, except this particular belief involves mass enslavement of other individuals.

No system or absence of a system deserves such rigid adherence. Practice the principle of absolute doubt: free your mind from fanatical beliefs. Tell the truth, what do you have to lose?

You may lose your fear, you may lose your hope, but I don't believe you will suffer for very long before something new takes its place. Your mind needs space then form to arrive at function.

Give a man a place to express creativity, and he will fill it. Take it away and he will be crushed until it is replaced with a bigger space, then he will be delighted. Such is the way it is with statism and voluntaryism.

Tool Toward Peace

2010-05-30T23:09:00.000-04:00

Peace and civility are exist right there alongside liberty. This is not a mistake, for when a new liberty is established, the people rush to provide for one-another.

So what can be done to expand the purview that the heart so longs for? I imagine the tool itself lies within your own being. It is the power of desire. The more desire you have for something to occur, the faster and more readily it does.

A sense of urgency is necessary for the establishment of freedom, yet that is not the only thing that we have to strive for. Actual work in the name of liberty is required, but common decency while doing that work leads to a more accepting populous.

Dreams

2010-05-29T17:57:00.000-04:00

Dreams tell us life is worth living. Without hope from dreams we don't have the persistence to finish what we start, the balls to finish what we find scary and hard.

So why not live like you'll accomplish your dreams? Don't have an attitude of "I'll give it my best shot for 3 years, and if it doesn't work out, I guess it wasn't meant to be!", have an attitude of being buried doing what you enjoy, where you enjoy doing it.

Subjugating your long-term fulfillment for your short-term euphoria is a recipe for disaster, but don't think it will be too hard.

Determine your goals, and the plans required to reach them. Starting now is important.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-- Lao-tzu