My Closing Thoughts in the Agorism–Personal Freedom–Relationships Discussion

Well, Joey has offered his final thoughts in our conversation, at least for now. I for one feel some sense of relief, because the thing had started to sprawl across several blogs as well as subjects, and it was getting too large for me to keep track of it all! A few pointers to some of the participants (links are to their latest contributions to the discussion, as of this writing): FSK’s Guide to Reality; David Gross at The Picket Line; and Kent McManigal. While I have much to say on each of the topics we’ve tossed around, I have neither the time nor the inclination to try to do them all justice in this sitting. Instead, I will mention that a primary raison d’être for my part of this blog is to explore these issues; and I encourage any interested invididuals to explore the archives here and elsewhere for previous ramblings on the subjects. All I’ll offer today are some general observations in response to what I perceive to be Joey’s central themes.

Most of my comments loosely center on this statement from Joey in one of his recent posts, although I will refer to other specific things he’s written if the context seems to require it:

Resisting is heroic, but never accomplishes what we hope it would for people. You can make example [sic] of how, for example, the state ignores their rules and get yourself prosecuted (like my old friend Larken Rose did with the 861 tax thing) but that will just make people even more afraid to do anything.

Rather than resisting something that can't be beaten head on, why not just free yourself and demonstrate how that works for you. Ultimately people don't care about the abstract or things they have not [sic] power over. What people really care about is the things [sic] that are close to them and that they can do something about. From my experience at Freedomain Radio I know that a lot of freedom loving people have concerns about the family.

Most of us grew up in really crappy families full of corrupt people. I think this environment is a breeding ground for the state and religion. Above [I] talked about ignoring the state, but I think many libertarians ignore the personal and devote all their efforts to this fruitless task of fighting a behemoth monster that is too powerful to take down by their efforts. It is a tragedy and a waste of time.

Joey seems to be focused on personal relationships. I understand that focus; I was unhappy and unfulfilled in many aspects until I discovered The Family—the term my very dear friend Kirsten coined for referring to pro-freedom individuals. However, it wasn’t until I got my own mental house in order that I was able drink deeply of the many wonderful friendships that had opened up to me. In short, one must first, and at the very least, come to an acceptance of oneself as one has been and is, before one can enter into a fulfilling relationship of any sort. To the degree one cannot or will not, one is being deceptive or fraudulent with both oneself and others.

All that should not be taken to mean that I agree with Joey that one should avoid all statists. There are some who will never be reached—the truly evil and the ideologically opposite—and they are worth avoiding. But that leaves many who are potentially open to the freedom philosophy; and I am not willing to abandon them. I have found wonderful friends in the most unexpected places—including someone who works at a state’s DMV. Had I rejected this individual on that basis alone, I would have closed the door on what has become a valued friendship. Seeing individuals as black and white on the statism issue sets up a path for purity battles none of us can survive, it seems to me.

Some of us do need to heal from previous relationships that, odds are, involved statists. Few of us in The Family seem to have been fortunate enough to be reared by pro-freedom parents, after all. I think sometimes the freedom issues and other issues become mistakenly conflated, though—or perhaps a better way of framing the issue is that parents of generations past did not have the context that we in The Family do. Most parents don’t even have ideology in mind when raising their children, so to combine issues of abuse and parenting style is to possibly unjustly double-damn them. To look back in anger or hurt is to continue feeding those feelings, rather than finding a solution; and it can keep one in a limiting, victim mindset. Last, some of us have dealt with these challenges successfully, and have moved on. To suggest, as Joey seems to, that all of us should focus on this area to the exclusion of other pro-freedom activities misses several marks. One, it may not be applicable to some individuals; two, freedom is a highly individualistic thing, and each person must find his own way to the liberty he wants; and three, many, many activities help spread pro-freedom memes.

Continuing the focus on relationships just a bit longer, just because one has created a network of good relationships among pro-freedom colleagues does not mean all will be good in perpetuity. Friendships, even love relationships, wax and wane. Being in synch philosophically with another does not change that reality. I think that Susan Ivanova, in an episode of Babylon 5, hit the bull’s eye when she said, “All love is unrequited”. So again, looking to this one area to solve all problems is shortsighted. Besides, the most important relationship of all is the one you have with yourself: you can’t escape it and it of necessity colors all your relationships with others.

Joey also seems to view larger issues relating to personal freedom in a much more exclusionary way than I do. For example, he seems to focus on the economic elements of agorism. But what of the personal relationships created, and one would hope, nurtured and sustained over a course of voluntaryistic exchange with others? As someone who is successfully building a business on the agoristic model, I aver that the economic and the personal can and do meld quite nicely. Moreover, it is deeply rewarding—not to mention inspiring—that choosing a path that is consistent with one’s principles works so well on so many levels.

I do agree with Joey on a few things; one is that we in The Family tend to bludgeon others with our ideas, via rants and arguments and heavy, dense books. Most of the time, those approaches don’t work—what a surprise! Joey rightly identifies an honest, open dialogue in which the statist leads the dance as a much more effective way of opening his eyes. But, inexplicably, he rejects another model that shines an even more powerful light: living one’s life in accordance with one’s values as much as possible.

Thus far, Joey seems to view that approach as necessarily “battling” the state. I don’t. I have to spend too much time dealing with the state as is, just driving on the roads and suchlike; I sure as hell do not structure my entire life in opposition to it. To amplify what I mean, I do not think about the state and its attempted egress into every aspect of private life with every conscious moment of my life; my decisions do not always include an explicit consideration of how various courses might be seen as implicit or explicit acceptance or endorsement of the state’s existence. It isn’t worth that much of my precious life! My attitude is quite like Howard Roark’s: in response to Ellsworth Toohey’s question, “Why don’t you tell me you think of me, Mr. Roark?”, he replies, “But I don’t think of you.” I do not frame my life around the state: I frame it around my happiness, and my voluntarily assumed responsibilities and obligations to others.

Before proceeding to my last point, I want to focus on Joey’s statement quoted above, in a condensed form:

Resisting is heroic, but never accomplishes what we hope it would for people. .... I think many libertarians ... devote all their efforts to this fruitless task of fighting a behemoth monster that is too powerful to take down by their efforts. It is a tragedy and a waste of time.

It is not a single, “behemoth monster”, although I understand well how it can feel so. Reframe the metaphor with “the state” as a myriad-headed hydra, many of them fussing among themselves, and one will have a much more accurate working model. If tax resistance and black market—which are the only existing, really free markets—activities are so fruitless, why do state agents at all levels work so hard at bottling them up? Why do you think they can’t stand the thought of unfettered, unlicensed, untaxed, unapproved commerce in any sector? It’s about two things: money and control. Underlying both is power. You really think a state gives a shit whether its cosmetologists, florists, etc. do quality work? Hell, no—they just want their cut, via licensing fees and annual inspection fees and property taxes and sales taxes; and anyone who dares try to step out of any of those payment lines is a dangerous example. You don’t need a license to do a good job, or to be a responsible businessperson in a community; but the petty bureaucrats’ livelihood depends upon maintaining the illusion that you do. Similarly, trying to force all transactions to be in the coin of the realm helps hide the not-so-secret that the fiat FRN is slowly suffocating. Why else bother with trying to tax barter and similar exchanges; why else would they target the Liberty Dollar? Every person who slips under the many nooses of state regulation and out of the fiat money charade is dangerous: each of those individuals signals that there’s a better, more honorable way to conduct business; so it’s no wonder that so many of them get tarred as unscrupulous frauds. See this YouTube video by James Burke, addressed here previously and in a wider context.

I suspect that ultimately, the source of my disagreements with Joey stem from a fundamentally differing world view: mine is positive, and his seems mostly negative. As I have found that there’s very often little to be gained by trying to convince a person otherwise who’s arguing for his limitations, I’ll conclude by rewriting his first sentence in the quotation repeated above.

Resisting is heroic, because it always exceeds what we might hope it would accomplish for people ... maybe not in one’s lifetime, nor in ways one might ever see or learn ... but it does.