Tranarchism

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:19:00 +0000

I'm going to tell a story. It's not a "true" story, maybe, but it is a real story.
1. Life, the universe and everything.
Basically, the universe is a shear thickening fluid.

It is also a non-uniform fluid, it's "lumpy" in other words. Some parts of this fluid seem "solid" to us because their coefficient of adversity, that is the amount of resistance they put up to force applied against them, is very high. All force creates a resistance. This creates a counter-resistance, ad infinitum.
As a different metaphor, imagine a bowl of very soft jello that's been banged on from many different directions at once, creating ripple patterns that interfere with each other.
Even though at any local position, the composition of the universe is constantly changing... overall, in the aggregate, nothing changes. That's right, nothing changes, when the universe is looked at as a single fluid. There will always be the same amount of matter-energy in the universe.
We are also part of this fluid, and everything we encounter around us is as well. Everything that has a beginning, has an ending. Just as our bodies will die one day, so will the universe, in that it will no longer be a dynamic system. Everything will be uniformly spread everywhere and there will be no more rippling and shifting of the fluid. It will just sit there. The fluid is settling out.
The good news has to do with time. Time is eternal. There is nothing before time, because the concept of "before" implies time. There is nothing after time either, for the same reason. Time is the rate of change of the composition of the fluid. When the fluid stops changing, there is no time. Part of all of us, humans and maybe other things in the universe too, maybe, is made of time in addition to the fluid. That part of you can never die. You can never experience anything outside of time. You can't "be dead". It's not possible. To exist as a person, implies being alive. Your body can die. But you can't actually die. I'm not quite sure how it works near the endpoint either.
2. How human life works.
Every action has a reaction. Everything you do creates resistance from the world. There is a lag between your initial undertaking and the resistance. Even lightning takes time, as Nietzsche said. Remember the fluid? The harder and faster you "push out" into the world, the harder and faster the resistance will come. By moving slowly and smoothly, you can push through this resistance. The Slow Blade Penetrates The Shield.
Or as wikipedia said "The dilatant fluid would disperse the force of a sudden blow over a wider area of the user's body, reducing the blunt force trauma; against slow attacks, such as a slow but forceful stab, the dilatant would not provide any additional protection."
People don't perceive imaginary time very well, maybe because we're partially made of time. That is, we have trouble imagining time correctly when we look back at the past or into the future. In 5 years, if you move one inch, only one inch, per day, you will have travelled half the length of a football field.
5 years seems very long when we imagine it into the future, but looking back through the past, it doesn't seem very long to us. Just one inch per day.
If you move 2 inches per day, you can go endzone to endzone in 5 years.
This is an analogy, I think you can see where I'm going with this.
Most people (myself included, I'm not being an elitist here) like to move very fast when they first undertake a project... they are very excited about what's going on, etc... then the resistance hits and they are slowed or stopped by it. This is usually when they give up, maybe they'll try sprinting into the hardened cornstarch a couple of times. One inch per day...
The downside to the slow, easy way to do things is that it's boring and frustrating. See, repetition breeds confidence. This is a phrase my friend Jesus told me once after a night of drugs and music. Not that Jesus, the hispanic raver Jesus. No matter how you interpret that last sentence, we're venturing into lulz territory. Anyway, the important thing to remember is that repetition breeds confidence.
If someone asked me to build a computer for them, I could undertake such a project with no hesitation, because I've done it so many times now. I know that even if something initially went awry, I have a strong model/map for how to get around that and fix it. I wouldn't think of it as anything scary or challenging at all. But it would be, if anything, boring. And when something did go wrong it would be frustrating. "Not this shit again"...
So the slow, easy way to do everything can be boring and frustrating. It might be more fun to run fast, create walls of resistance and overcome them, so in the end when you get where you're going, you can say "I did it, against all odds!" But really, it was always just you. You made your own odds.
In a way, I'm not doing you a favor by telling you this. I am taking some of the excitement and fun out of it. On the other hand, your brain will probably make you forget most of this, for that very reason, when you're in the middle of living your life.
But on the other hand, a lot of people are upset by life... mostly because it hasn't matched their expectations. They don't understand the implications of their own life strategy. As an example, I have a friend who basically lives life by a series of explosions. He bursts, then gets hit by an immense backpressure of resistance, and then gets really angry at everything. Then he bursts forward again, rinse and repeat. I mean, if he saw how he was creating this, and was just doing it for fun, cause he likes living that way, on the other hand... he'd at least have the option to accept and expect that pattern or try a different approach. There are all kinds of ways to play with the fluid.
Rollercoasters are fun because we expect them to do crazy shit. But if someone put you in one for the first time, and you had no idea of what a rollercoaster was, and they said before you left, "oh this is a nice train ride"... you'd flip out.
But that would definitely be the most exciting rollercoaster you'd ever ride. So sometimes knowing that it's just a rollercoaster can take a bit of the drama and intensity out of it.
3. Made in G-d's image.
What does that phrase really mean? That God has a body that looks like our bodies? A lot of people used to think that, but that's kind of ridiculous. The people who promoted that sort of interpretation either were scamming someone or really didn't think about what they were reading.
It is the part of us that is made of time that is an image of God. Or, to put it a different way, we are acting in a movie being made by God. God is the director and the audience. So are we. It's all part of the greatest piece of performance art ever.
In order to be able to be the director, audience and actor and still have a good time, there needs to be a separation of consciousness so the left hand doesn't realize what the right hand is doing, so to speak. If it were simply imagination, well, you'd know what all the characters are going to do... when you played with dolls or "action figures" as a kid, you knew what you were going to make all of them say.
When do you not know that? In a dream. We are all being dreamed by God at once. We are the dreamer, and the dream self, and we don't even know sometimes what we're going to do next. This makes it interesting. Again, I have done you no favor here. By reading this, if you hadn't already, you have now begun a path toward becoming a lucid dreamer.
Eventually your particular dream-self will find its endpoint in the story.
What happens to you when you get to the end of a dream?

On "Sociological Calvinism".

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:48:00 +0000

If people at large were really Evil at heart, the safest way for us to live would be anarchism (do you want to give Evil people power over you?). If, as I suspect, they are not, then the state is needless and irrelevant. Only if you believe in a small elect group of moral persons, and a larger group of evil persons, can you justify the state... and yet even still, you must devise a way that the elect can end up in charge. I dare you to.

"Can we put a price on basic standards of quality?"

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:22:00 +0000

Actually we have to. The alternative to quality allocation by price, which generally amounts to Regulation, ends up becoming allocation by status. Of course the people who propose these non-priced solutions tend to be people of high status. Coincidence?
Schools are one example. "Public" schools really are just one aspect of a multi-tiered system of regulated education. The only truly private school in the US is the home school. In some places that isn't even the case any more.
If the logic of Regulation is taken to its conclusion, the only beef allowable by law would be Filet Mignon or better, and since its price would be regulated, it would not be available to the peons at all. Only the well connected would get beef. And maybe people on welfare could get "government beef" which would probably be decent (I know the government cheese was) but only available on a first come first serve basis.
Does this remind you of a certain Union of Republics? Soviet Republics?
Well that's also no coincidence. They know the hard limit now, but they will try to get us as close to that asymptote without breaking the engine of "white market" labor power altogether. Fortunately, I doubt their ability to pull off this brinkmanship for long, no matter how many PhDs and other supposed "experts" they've got trying.

"But there's nothing wrong with her"

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:07:00 +0000

These lyrics explain what I find disturbing about most (but not all) "right libertarians"

"And every single day, without much to say
These apparitions raise a toast to their kind

The people who are these things
Are not afraid with you
And caring must go with the wisdom
Of their selections

Never can touch their sign language
So is the cost of sound barriers "
- from one of the greatest songs I love: Guided By Voices - Christian Animation Torch Carriers

it's easy to dismiss the concerns of people when you don't realize the dangers they face...

Yet I am a libertarian/anarchist and I do not want a super-mafia as my guardian, because it is, and must necessarily be, my oppressor as well.

Give unto Caesar... not a damn thing.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:02:00 +0000

"Since the core ambition of the state is to displace God while enriching its Faustian associates through redistribution, none of this can be a surprise."
- Lew Rockwell

This is one of the best, most concise ways of putting it that I can imagine.

Abandon your earthly god. Find spirituality in the small places. Do not seek power, even for what seems good. It will not remain good long once touched by power.

It comes down to this.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:09:00 +0000

As many of you are aware, there's been a schism in the left-libertarian world, over "cultural leftism" etc, more specifically targeting queer folk as if we're the most egregious of the lot.
Personally, I don't want to ditch anyone who has good ideas, but when it comes to things like this, it's important to have some realistic idea of what goes on. Usually my standard of judgement about these things comes from a thought experiment:
If I or some other trans-woman were getting beat up, with the specific aim of permanently mutilating and/or killing me (as most beatings of trans-women are, they go for the face right away, probably for deep-seated sexual reasons, almost all of the time), how would this person react?
Would they applaud/cheer my attackers?
Would they do nothing and watch?
Or would they jump in and defend me?
If they heard about it later, would they be reviled at this open display of aggressive violence?
Or would they laugh?
Would they say something like "they had it coming"?

I try to envision this in my head, because THIS is my standard. This is what MTF trans people and femmy males of all kinds have to worry about every time they are around other people. I am an anarchist, I don't want the state to be my guardian. But if it's going to be, I'd rather have it protect me while it's protecting everyone else. The fact that the people that ruined my life or ended it were not wearing a badge (though they often are) is irrelevant after the fact.
It doesn't give me my face or my life back.

All your economic base are belong to us.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:14:00 +0000

The logic of the War on Drugs is the logic of all government wars. It is to make what is "illegal" vastly more profitable for the benefit of a small oligarchy who can get away with it. This oligarchy are who is running the government behind the scenes.

The drug lords fund the "drug warriors". Draw your own conclusions about the war on terror, or the drive toward more financial regulation, farm subsidies, the tightening of border controls, etc.

You have no chance to survive, make your time.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:15:00 +0000

"Unless you’re a self-hating closet dweller, there’s no such thing as a case against sexual equality that doesn’t consist of some mix of bible-thumping & childish “EEW!” factor*."

- B-psycho (psychopolitik 2.0 in my blogroll)

Well fucking struck.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:55:00 +0000

(1:26:41 AM) annamnesis: I don't want to slowly pull liberty back, like pulling teeth
(1:26:49 AM) annamnesis: I want to see it while I am alive.
(1:26:58 AM) name withheld: haha, yeah
(1:27:27 AM) annamnesis: I want to knock out the damn teeth
(1:27:33 AM) annamnesis: till there's no more bite
(1:27:47 AM) annamnesis: we already have won the drug war, more or less
(1:27:56 AM) annamnesis: we're going to win the copyright war
(1:28:01 AM) annamnesis: which is a big one
(1:28:28 AM) name withheld: Pirate Party
(1:28:32 AM) annamnesis: hell yes
(1:28:43 AM) annamnesis: we have a seat on the goddamn EU parliament
(1:29:05 AM) annamnesis: the big war coming up is the sex war
(1:29:10 AM) annamnesis: and that one is a tough one
(1:29:25 AM) annamnesis: because a lot of our natural allies are squicked out by many of us
(1:30:01 AM) annamnesis: but it's the same principle
(1:30:38 AM) annamnesis: I generally don't like crack heads and junkies (while they are on the shit)
(1:30:54 AM) annamnesis: but I don't think they should be in jail for it.
(1:31:55 AM) name withheld: right
(1:33:10 AM) annamnesis: but religion doesn't attempt to control drugs as much as they try to control sex
(1:33:42 AM) annamnesis: there is no westboro baptist church picketing drug rehab places going "god hates junkies"

Patri Friedman, you are an agorist!

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:01:00 +0000

In a blog post, Patri Friedman, a fairly well known libertarian (and the only well known 3rd gen lib) says:

Despite my broad agreement with much of the underlying philosophy, I find this chain of events ludicrous – and I am not using the word lightly. Let us consider one of the largest black markets in the world, the market for illegal drugs, which has been thriving for decades. Has this resulted in market demand for protection agencies to replace the government? Um, no. It has resulted in exactly the opposite – a strengthening of the monopoly provider of security and law. It has given us the militarization of policy, legalized theft via civil asset forfeiture, and a well-funded DEA.
...
I agree that the direct effect of the black market for recreational drugs is to increase freedom – it provides something the government is trying to ban, thus ameliorating the effect of that ban. As an occasional user of illegal drugs, I think that’s fabulous. But to see black markets as the route to indirectly weakening and eventually toppling governments just doesn’t match up to the evidence. Coercive geographic monopolies on violence work, folks, much though we may hate it.

Ahh so much material for dismantling here.
First: "Has this resulted in market demand for protection agencies to replace the government? Um, no."
Well first off I'd say, your own approach to this game has clouded your ability to see what is relevant. You may actually have a point here, but assuming you did, that's not what the black market in drugs is attempting to solve. It's attempting to provide people with drugs, at which it succeeds admirably. That is one avenue of government interference that is thwarted.
Then again, you might be wrong about that also. As Jim Davidson said:

The answer is yes, it has. And most drug dealers provide their own protection, often in concert with other dealers in their area. These private protection agencies are referred to as “gangs” and their leaders as “drug lords.” They employ violence to enforce contracts, control territory, and defend the sovereignty of their members.

Secondly, we don't live in a free market, which is the whole thing we're objecting to in the first place with all this libertarianism! Can we adequately measure the demand for private protection services? All we can measure is what is supplied, which is filtered by what the government allows to be supplied.
All you're really saying here is that the government is somewhat effective at suppressing/containing private protection agencies for now. (which has some interesting implications for what their priorities really are)
Secondly, the natural market for illegal drugs is almost certainly not as massive as the government propaganda wants us to believe in the first place. To look at this as the one marker of what agorism stands for is like saying the free market in drugs would be the shining example of the free market, overall.
Certainly the people want drugs! But we want a lot of other things much more. Look at the Copyright War as a more classic example of agorism in action, doing it's job, providing alternatives.
And in the long run, the war for freedom is won in the minds of the people. What has brought more people to question the legitimacy of the government than the fact that they won't give us what we want... and that when we say "fuck the law", we can get it?
How many budding young anarchists or at least potential anarchists have been sparked (excuse the pun) by becoming stoners and/or "pirates"? The answer, is, a whole shit load.
Now also there's this part:
"But to see black markets as the route to indirectly weakening and eventually toppling governments just doesn’t match up to the evidence."
Again, there is this sort of mental filtering, this lack of relevant response.
We aren't "indirectly weakening" the government... we're not trying to slink into liberty. We're playing "Operation" with the body politic.
"Oops, there goes control of drugs!"
"Oops, there goes intellectual property"
We don't care if the government raises it's hackles in response. Let them come! This will only make more of us. You're thinking of a war of attrition. We're thinking of 4th generation warfare. The bloated, wasteful MEGASTATE cannot survive very long. A state that is 80% free, but still authoritarian? That would be a fearsome opponent and far more dangerous to us, in our opinion. Nonetheless, all other things being equal, agorism is the most functional strategy in almost all cases, except possibly near the end game, when the state is almost about to fall, when other approaches might become effective.
Here's some more from the same post by Patri:
"I believe in a different indirect path: global competition between governments. Let’s hit states where they are weak – at providing good services to their customers, not where they are strong – at holding onto territory with violence. We can do this by competing for citizens and capital, not for territory. Whether this is done through seasteading, free zones, or some other method entirely, I think it is a far more plausible route to indirectly improving political institutions."
Well, we can't improve political institutions. This actually again points at what I mean by "meta-agorism". What makes a government a "government" and not a mafia?
Perception.
Agorists want to kill the state, piece by piece, not improve it gradually.
Meta-agorism wants people to understand that there's no such thing, there never was, and you're being imprisoned by a mafia.
In that sense, what you are doing is extremely valuable, because you're giving people somewhere to escape to.
And as an "illegal" provider of defense service you are also an agorist!

The Post-Democratic State

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:16:00 +0000

Hoppeans concerned about "democracy" really don't have anything to worry about, as far as the United States is concerned. There is truly almost no power the people at large have to influence the government. Once the government can lie to the population on matters of "national security" on the grounds that if the people knew the truth, they would withdraw their support, all pretense of "democracy" is transparently thin indeed. And it's not this pretense that keeps people from revolting. Frankly, most people probably don't care.
It's fear of police brutality, and fear of economic privation. The triumph (so far) of American Corporatism has made most people economically dependent on the State, either directly or indirectly through the banks and large corporations. To rebel would be to become rapidly impoverished, let alone in danger of imprisonment or death, whereas to go along with things, for most Americans right now, means a life of comfort and peace.
During the days of the American Revolution, the economy was at least somewhat disentangled from the State. The "patriots" were still able to eat regularly, save maybe the common soldiers of the Continental Army, which is a whole other story. Nowadays that isn't so much the case. This is yet another reason why only some form of agorism or meta-agorism can work as a liberation strategy. Unless we have a counter-economy running in parallel to the official economy, any attempt at rebellion would fizzle out pretty rapidly. Once we do have one, the resistance, such as it might be, will largely take the form of self-defense against an ever-more-desperate police state hunting down "black marketeers".

perhaps not so unintended at all...

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:02:00 +0000

"Almost everyone believes that the state should be in the business of setting national goals in every area of life, of guiding its subjects' paths, of reordering their lives and the world. Most people argue only about particular choices and the degree of control involved. Almost no one will challenge the principle itself."
- Arthur Silber

And this, this right here, is the only ideology that actually matters, when it comes to the State. The rest is just gas and bullshit to fool the rubes. The "republicans" handle one side of the con, and the "democrats" handle a different side of it. In the long run, they're both working together to extend their collective power over us. Any real disagreements are like two farmers disagreeing over livestock management techniques.

"These are only some of the very bitter fruits of foreign intervention: uncontrollable consequences are always set loose and, all too often, those consequences are directly opposed to what the original stated purpose had been. And yet, like the insane man, we repeat this behavior over and over again, insisting that this time the result will be different, and it will finally work -- and we'll get exactly the result we want, and no others at all."
- Arthur Silber (from a different essay)

Ahh but to this I would say, if you keep throwing the baby out with the bath-water, maybe it was the baby you wanted to get rid of in the first place.

After 100+ years of practice, those playing this game must have at least some vague idea of the praxeology of intervention. Certainly, if you or I have figured some of it out in the short span of our years of analysis.
At the very least they must understand that the more chaos and capital destruction, outside of their "walled city" of private order, the better it is for them. If you're a water oligpolist, a world-wide drought is just what the doctor ordered. Extend the pattern... and voila!

The game really has to work that way, because that is functionally how it works, either that or they're just all insane. Either explanation makes at least some sort of sense.

"It seems like you might need a little 'stimulus' there, buddy"

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:48:00 +0000

Listen, when I say that the government is a "super-mafia" this is exactly what I'm talking about:
Bankers Told by Paulson to Accept U.S. Aid or Be ‘Vulnerable’

The planet is fine... the people are fucked!

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:26:00 +0000

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 22:54:00 +0000

As someone who will be directly affected by the "Conscience Protection Rule", I was tempted to write something about it, from an individualist anarchist perspective. But I see that Roderick Long has beaten me to it, writing what is basically the sane take on this so I don't have to:

The Conscience of the King

The core quote:
"So I can’t get excited about either the critique or the defense of this law. Indeed, it’s a great example of how the Rawlsian/Dworkinian [Ronald, not Andrea or poor Gerald] dream of a state apparatus that is neutral among its citizens’ competing conceptions of the good is ultimately incoherent."
Exactly so.

If I want 3 breasts and a tail, that's my goddamn business.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:39:00 +0000

W. Gillis makes another essential (excuse the pun) post, while on sabbatical even.

The quote with the nitty gritty:
"Conversely the negation of gender does not mean the complete extinction of mini-skirts and aftershave. The destruction of identity has never meant the abolishment of it; what we oppose is rigidity in relations -- not the medium itself."
The medium is indestructible. You have to manifest via some sort of tropes.
The closest you could come to eliminating personal gender expression is to make all manifestation utterly uniform. I don't doubt that this is what some people would love to enact, to take a repression that designates 2 standard forms into one that makes 1 standard form for everyone, as if this makes people more free. (And that just leads to an argument about what the standard form should be. In many cultures, historically, everyone wore skirts.)
What I and many (but not all) transfolk would like to see is the opposite. Let six billion flowers bloom, so to speak.

Secondly, the phrase "unnecessary mutilation" applied to any elective body-modification horrifies me, as an anarchist. I'll fucking decide what's necessary and what's not, thanks.
We're all cyborgs already. We wear clothes over our natural fur or lack thereof, and shoes so we can walk on different kinds of terrain. Some of us even wear glass lenses over our eyes to help us see better!
And I heard some people even inject ink into their skin so they can wear art work on their bodies!!
Will the horrors never end?

There's a third thing, which is annoying to have to go over, but it's so embedded that I really should. If you want to abolish a forced gender identification relating to biological sex, that has to cut both ways (please excuse the pun again). That is to say, if you want to define "man" as simply "anyone who was born with a penis", then that's the definition. You can't sneak all kinds of other definitions of "man" and bundle them in with that. In fact, we transfolk are living proof of that. And perhaps that's a good portion of what makes certain elements within feminism a bit unnerved by us, to say the least.

He says it so I don't have to:

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:57:00 +0000

"To understand where to go from here, we have to understand that Americans are in no way attached to Obama the individual, Americans are attached to the way Obama makes them feel."
"Anarchism IS the individualist dream. You, you personally, can singlehandedly start the motherfucking revolution. You're going to have to."

Go click that and read the rest.

Liberty's Children

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:04:00 +0000

As much as it's funny, this one is also somehow chilling:

It is your... destiny

J.P. Morgan sitting in his office, in 1914, saying "Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it"... and we, liberty's children, so many years later, will not be truly complete until we have confronted Darth Merka.

I look forward to the day when, dying, he says to us... "you were right... you were right about me"
...and the beacon of light that was ignited in 1776 continues forward.

Like in PKD's orthogonal time, we have slipped out of that track, the revolution died as soon as it began, almost. It is not 2008 in Merka, it is 1789, always, until we put an end to this.

this comic isn't the first to notice the comparison...

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 01:04:00 +0000

It's a trap!

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:39:00 +0000

I believe that the idea that "the failure of the high finance corporations will harm the working class more than it does the ruling class" is a lie, a trick, a trap and a ruse. It is a carefully crafted myth designed to make you protect those corporations out of fear.

In general, the ruling class always wants to make people think that their own livelihood depends on them. But this is not true.
It never was, it never will be. The rulers are parasites. The wealth is produced by the working class, alone.*

We don't need a bailout, we don't want one, and it won't help us one bit to have one, nor will it harm us one bit not to have one.

If the "recession" or whatever they're calling it these days does harm the working class, it will be because of deliberate action on the part of the ruling class to see to it that the working class absorbs blows meant for themselves (ala the "Bailout"). It will be a form of hostage taking. "You have to support us or we'll squeeze the shit out of you, but you know, we're only doing it because we don't want to sell off our marginal assets. I mean, you can't expect ME to suffer can you?"

Yes. Yes I do. And I intend to do whatever I can (which basically amounts to memetic transmission) to see to it that no one else suffers on your behalf, Mr. Monopoly.

* Clarification: By working class, I mean all of you suckers out there with jobs, not just the vulgar Marxist idea of the 'proletariat'. People who get paid to think and/or create for a living are also workers.

This says so much.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:44:00 +0000

Quiet, but not quietist

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 08:30:00 +0000

I've had only limited access to the internet until just recently, but I would like to pop up in order to say that I'm happy to see what's going on around the RNC. Not the evil actions of the cops of course, that is to be expected, but the heroic actions of the anarchists and other folks resisting them.
On that note, I'd like to point out that transgendered people being arrested in Minneapolis/St Paul are being placed in cells of the wrong gender (i.e. that which is socially corresponding to their birth sex). For MTF transgendered folk, this is tantamount to accessory to rape.
I'd also like to congratulate those of the A.L.L. who managed to make it out there and participate in the resistance (William Gillis, you r0x0r!). Don't let the violence you've encountered make you into a person who thinks that massive force is the solution. This happened to a lot of hippies back in the day, and it is the main point of the strategy employed by the cops.
They want to secretly recruit you by brutalizing you. Remember that physical force without moral force is worthless. (I suspect that anarchists are less prone to this corrupting influence of violence, since they know full well the difference between aggression and self-defence, and they've made all the arguments against aggression before.)
Remember, we will be selling contraband to the children of the RNC delegates, now or in the near future. :)

Communism is not the future, but the past.

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:19:00 +0000

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. (try not paying "property tax")

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (check)

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. (partial)

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. (not yet, but "civil forfeiture" is getting there)

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. (check)

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (check, if you consider, as any anarchist must, any regulated cartel to be a part of the state)

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (check)

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (this is what they mean by "national service")

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. (check)

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. (check)

So basically, once the next president institutes their "national service plan" and with a bit more of police running amok stealing shit, we'll be very very close to fulfilling all the planks of the communist manifesto here in the USSA. They'll never raise the inheritance tax because the kind of communism we have here is more Animal Farm-ish in which "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". In other words, a group of elite proletarians (We could call them the "High Bureaucracy" or simply The Managerial Class) have split off into a new oppressive class(while merging with remnants of the old elite), something Ol' Onkel Karl didn't exactly foresee. (which he probably should have because that was a big part of the story of how the "Bourgeoisie" formed)

However this leads to a new revolutionary situation in which the "sub-proletariat" can break the back of State Property and State Power, establishing all property as fluid, personal, and possession based. Our major inroad of opportunity comes along plank 6, in that communication technology is rapidly escaping from the hands of the state, and along plank 5, through the degradation of state-based currencies due to the inevitable crisis that comes from central banking (read FSK on the Compound Interest Paradox). Planks 2 and 9 will collapse not long after.

Is Environmentalism a Scam?

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:00:00 +0000

What makes a scam work is that it contains elements of the truth mixed with hidden lies. Otherwise it would just be ridiculous. Almost no one would sign up for the "Self Immolation Society".

Environmentalists often point out real facts, but then make a lot of false assumptions in order to get from those facts to their conclusion, which seems to always be:
"We need massive government controls on all aspects of production and consumption".
This assumes that people left to their own devices wouldn't adapt to these facts on the ground on their own. This is no different from the economic argument for state socialisms of various forms, just with different apparent problems. Again, the "right wing" plays into the scam by claiming that the facts don't exist, or that these things aren't a problem, just like with the economic argument.

The anarchist argument is that these things may well be real, but that people would solve these problems if left to their own devices, just as they always do. We don't need the state to solve our problems, and in fact, the state is often the source of the problems, by disempowering people and leaving them no incentive or opportunity to fix things spontaneously and ad-hoc.

Economics can be seen as cultural ecology. If voluntary, spontaneous order works, it will work in all areas of life. (edited because of a very good point that Rad Geek brought up, and that I will address in my next post)

"It's not capitalism, but it's got bits of capitalism shot through it."

ineffabelle@gmail.com (Ineffabelle) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:43:00 +0000

He said it as well as I could have.

Quote of the month:
"Look: resistance to eating one's own children could be plotted along an elasticity curve, too."