Going Galt virtually
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
It has become painfully obvious to me that we are no longer in control of our government. The government uses the monetary system as a means of control as the value of the money has no meaning when they print more of it as needed. I come to this obvious conclusion due to the fact that the government creates an order of magnitude more money than it collects in taxes. Why collect taxes at all, the government can just devalue the money we have to pay its bills. They collect taxes to keep us under control, running on the hamster wheel of life. With this money they create, they are using it to weaken us, the money to Ukraine, the money handed to countries that wish us ill.
Has anyone contemplated a modern-day version of “Going Galt” and what it would look like? I think something like this is necessary in response to a stolen election this November.
Objectives should include:
- Not participating through withholding your production from the government.
- Not participating by sequestering your wealth from the government
- Build an alternative economy, producing goods and services within.
- Securing our autonomy from the government.
It has become painfully obvious to me that we are no longer in control of our government. The government uses the monetary system as a means of control as the value of the money has no meaning when they print more of it as needed. I come to this obvious conclusion due to the fact that the government creates an order of magnitude more money than it collects in taxes. Why collect taxes at all, the government can just devalue the money we have to pay its bills. They collect taxes to keep us under control, running on the hamster wheel of life. With this money they create, they are using it to weaken us, the money to Ukraine, the money handed to countries that wish us ill.
Has anyone contemplated a modern-day version of “Going Galt” and what it would look like? I think something like this is necessary in response to a stolen election this November.
Objectives should include:
- Not participating through withholding your production from the government.
- Not participating by sequestering your wealth from the government
- Build an alternative economy, producing goods and services within.
- Securing our autonomy from the government.
If everyone cut their expenses by 10% to help cut government intake, it would mean they have less money with which to control us.
Another thing is to stop hiring companies to do work for us whenever possible. Deal with individuals through craigs list and offer up and pay with cash whenever practical.
Call it passive resistance in preparation for active resistance later when the government is less
powerful. No one can object to cutting expenses
By the way, taxes are armed robbery / extortion under the threat of death or imprisonment. Nobody can reasonably claim you have to pay them for their 'services' they 'provide' by force from which you cannot opt out, or opt to purchase from a competitor (because they outlawed competition, lol). What a bunch of fucking thugs.
Money printing is theft.
The only way to get rid of these parasites is to trick them into killing each other.
The expense of printing a one dollar bill is, oddly, EXACTLY THE SAME COST AS PRINTING A $5, OR A $10, OR A $20, OR A $... (you get the message)
Minting a GOLD or SILVER Coin has actual expense relative to the VALUE of the currency.
Capitalism is a form of serfdom where they allow some people up to the second tier for improving the lots of those below them.
But at no point will those people become 1st tier. Because that tier is the same as it always has been. You can hang out with them. But you are in a CASTE system.
It's quite genius...
I cried a little!
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
This is embodied in Ayn Rand’s quote above, with every other economic philosophy, you are subject to living your life for another. Sorry for loading the first paragraph but I truly think laissez-faire capitalism is he only solution that allow man to thrive, please enlighten me if I’m wrong.
P.S. we don’t have laissez-faire capitalism, we have socialism heading to something no one wants.
Capitalism is a bad term. It was coined by Karl Marx as I understand, and he meant it as an antisemitic insult. A better term would be 'free market'.
People who decry 'free market' are brainwashed by the state to think that free market is that which creates whatever problem they are complaining about. In reality, the problem was actually created by the state, but the state redirected the blame from itself by using psychological tricks and such.
Example 1: corporations buy up single family houses and driving up prices for private individuals. The problem here is not 'free market' but creation of money out of nothing (money printing) facilitated by the state, where corporations may have unfair advantage (vs private individuals). So, the state allows fraud to happen (money printing) and prevents other security services from existing that may possibly stop this fraud. You see, 'free market' didn't cause this problem.
Example 2: monopolies supposedly are 'free market' problem. However, these are not created by the free market but by unreasonable state-invented/enforced rules. The state grants monopolies on 'intellectual property'. Too big to fail? FINRA. Etc. Monopolies are state-created problems, or more accurately, something that is a result of violence or fraud.
Even if you don't have socialism and you have absolute 'free market', it is still not going to be 'free' if there is a state that imposes improper made up arbitrary rules on it.
The laws are construed to TAKE from the masses.
See the book. The Great Taking.
We are living it, right now.
Totally agree with the core of your arguments.
BTW, #1) after buying up the single family homes, they then PRESSURE the counties to decrease their property taxes, and increase them on non-entities. (The way I would prevent this is the exact opposite. I would make it like Florida. Where you DO NOT get a homestead reduction in taxes if you are a corporation. You pay more, real people pay less).
Watch them push to change that!
There is NO better system. Unfortunately you can control it by controlling money and taxes.
Income tax is slavery. And it's graduated which should be a problem for our constitution... But, hey... Whatevs.
We created Obese Poor People. You don't get more successful than that! (Health, Fit, Poor People not needing T2D drugs, but shhhh)
I disagree, a better system is no state, anarcho-capitalism / agorism / etc.
IMO, that argument is the "Real Communism has never been tried", applied to "anarcho-capitalism".
Where is it? I think the Amish are the closest living towards the ideal?
When you can never find something in the wild (working communism), there is usually a reason.
That reason is MOSTLY that people are flawed, and untrustworthy. And they only get worse when given power over others!
Again, just my opinion.
So, I will rephrase.
"I've never seen a better system" (than laissez-faire capitalism)
When society starts out, everyone is playing fair. Eventually, so much wealth is generated that it becomes easier to steal than to produce. So, actors spawn that switch to predation. Predation breeds predation, so eventually mostly everyone steals. The cycle returns back to the beginning when everything is stolen, spent and all the predatory actors fight it over the remaining scraps. Society disintegrates. The cycle repeats. At least that is one possible solution to this system of differential equations. Another solution is when some dampening occurs and society becomes stuck mid way, everyone being poor as dirt, barely surviving, half-stealing their way through life.
The question is, how do we create a force that opposes the occurrence of predation in the beginning? That is a question that I have not yet found an answer to.
The 'laissez-faire capitalism' ('free market' under control of the state) will also fall apart or stagnate when subject to predatory forces. It will probably do it quicker because the state is a predator.
"they only get worse when given power over others!"
Ya no shit, predation (power over others) is evil. How can you expect evil to beget good? Maybe you guys should listen to me when I propose getting rid of the state (centralized control?).
Definition:
Laissez-faire capitalism is a form of free-market capitalism that opposes government intervention in economic affairs123. It is based on the principles of private ownership, competition, free trade, self-reliance, and self-interest4. It also implies a separation of economics and state, similar to the separation of religion and state5. Laissez-faire capitalism is considered to foster innovation and productivity, as businesses are free to compete with one another.
Laissez-faire capitalism is not under the control of the state, hence the laissez-faire, which translates from French as literally ‘allow to do’.
We need some limited government to control litigation, constitutional rights, natural law, and protect personal property but that is about it. Without some form of government, we would descend into Mad Max beyond Thunderdome quickly. Ayn Rand had some very solid opinions on Libertarianism and by extension communism, socialism, and anarchy. We must have a way to protect personal property and liberty for a society to thrive.
“All kinds of people today call themselves ‘libertarians,’ especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That’s worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. Anarchists are the scum of the intellectual world of the Left, which has given them up. So the Right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the libertarian movement.” – Ayn Rand
I think she nails the argument here…
Allow me to attempt to destroy your statement with my limited ability to think logically.
I have arrived at a conclusion (based on logic) that the only correct way to have laws is to derive them by logic from basic universally accepted principles. The laws/rules that government (the state) create sometimes match the the logical laws but most of the time they are utter garbage. For example, if I imagine myself stealing, government punishment is not what is on my mind. What is on my mind is a guilty feeling about what the victim may think of me when they find out (maybe they will want to kill me). This is a demonstration of how laws are not a result of government decree. In fact, I am going to go so far as to claim that the only way to have laws is to derive them scientifically/academically/etc. Laws are not something optional or something that can be compromised on with voting/etc. They are constant, universal, and eternal. So, we don't need the state to have laws.
I have also arrived at the conclusion (based on logic) that monopolies cannot be maintained without violence. Therefore, monopolies are a violation the 'logical laws'. The state is a monopoly on providing security services ("control litigation", "protect personal property") within some geographical area. This monopoly is maintained by the state itself. If there was another organization that would compete with them, the state will destroy it by force. This is a violation of the logical laws from above.
So, we DON'T need limited government. What we need is security services. We don't need them to be a monopoly, and we don't need them to make up laws, that can be done by anybody that can do math. We need a security service that enforces laws that have been proven to exist. If a security service goes off the rails and starts enforcing laws that are not real, its customers would stop paying them and other security services would come in and put them down.
"Without some form of government, we would descend into Mad Max beyond Thunderdome quickly."
Unfortunately, this is statist propaganda.
1. It sounds exactly what a state would say to try to defend its ability to rape and pillage. It is like having a thief claim you need him to guard your house, when in reality all he is doing is providing himself with the opportunity to rob you.
2. Laws don't need a state to exist.
3. Monopoly of security service is not required to have security service provided to you.
Regarding the quote from Ayn Rand: She is wrong.
"anarchists are collectivists" -- nope, that is wrong. Those are different things entirely, apples and oranges. Also, these are not mutually exclusive things.
I can only assume that she defines anarchism in some different way then the widely accepted one.
From DuckDuckGo:
"anarchism /ăn′ər-kĭz″əm/
noun
1. The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.
2. Active resistance and terrorism against the state, as used by some anarchists.
3. Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority."
There is nothing there about collectivism. Please do explain to me where I am going wrong with my logic. Her argument (that you say she nails) makes zero sense to me. The only thing I can come up with is that you guys are failing to see that the state is not required to have laws and security.
I agree with her first comment. Lots of people pretend to be libertarians and maybe she was seeing the future of the libertarian 'movement.' She certainly saw the co-opting and castration of the Libertarian party by elements of the Deep State.
But that co-opting doesn't make the libertarian 'movement' wrong any more than the objectivist 'movement' after Rand's death.
I agree with your comment on a very limited 'government' being needed to provide an alternative to force in disagreements,
but every time that has been done it has devolved into corrupted central power. Like communism, maybe its time to stop
pretending that a little tinkering will fix 'government' and try a different path.
Could that path be a 'free market' alternative as partially described by David Friedman in The Machinery of Freedom ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mac...
Anarchism is dangerous to a free people; it isn’t survival of the fittest but survival of the most ruthless and strongest. In a true anything goes society, what would keep me from assassinating any competitors before they became strong enough to challenge me? Why not just cut to the chase and assume ownership of their property before they have the ability to even become stronger. Then I can tax them, repress them, enslave them and making them live their life for me. Sounds like we have another unelected government, a dictator but I thought it was Anarchism. Let me tell you, as soon as the government is gone, there will be nearly 50 of the population that switches to this mode. It will be chaos; it will be anarchy.
Repeating the same failed action is the definition of insanity.
Anarchism is the lack of government which leads to, well, anarchy.
By 'anarchy' you probably mean 'general raping and pillaging' (and not 'lack of coercive authority').
We don't want general raping and pillaging, do we? I guess we better let only one organization (the state) to rape and pillage us, instead of us raping and pillaging ourselves. Lol.
If 'anarchism' is 'a rejection of coercive authority' and 'anarchy' is 'general raping and pillaging', then your statement is not defensible. It also appears to get you to believe what the state wants, which is the goal of this propaganda.
"Anarchism is the lack of government which leads to, well, anarchy."
turns into:
"A rejection of coercive authority leads to general raping and pillaging."
But 'coercive authority' IS 'raping and pillaging', just not 'general'.
So again, what you are saying is that you are for 'raping and pillaging' but one that is done by one party (instead of everyone?).
As person of anarcho-capitalist persuasion, I would be against ALL 'raping and pillaging'. I wouldn't allow anybody to do it.
Also, "a rejection of coercive authority leads to general raping and pillaging" is not necessarily true. If there is no master, the slaves don't necessarily start killing each other. They might, or they might form a fair society in which nobody is a master and everyone has equal rights. Some of them might even provide security services for each other to make sure those rights are protected. Obviously, they wouldn't want to have a monopoly on those because that would just mean that the monopolist is a master.
Here are some suggestions:
- set up a home server with your email, calendar, file storage, etc, (nextcloud) or alternatively use something like protonmail / tutanota (encrypted email)
- use anonymized cryptocurrencies (monero / zcash) to make payments, or gold / silver if physical presence is possible and verification devices are on hand
- use decentralized search engine (presearch.com, yacy.net)
- help build community mesh networks in your area (guifi.net, freifunk)
- use open source software and contribute to its development, such as switching to using linux on your pc and installing stock android on your phone, use firefox or chromium instead of chrome
- use onion routing software (tor / brave)
- use decentralized services (openbazaar / bisq.network)
- use end-to-end encrypted, preferably anonymized or federated messaging software (signal.org, getsession.org, matrix.org)
- use decentralized social networks (mastodon / diaspora)
- don't use websites that are on cloudflare (block cloudflare browser extension)
I would be happy to help anyone with questions about pursuing the above.
- Graphene OS for Smart phones - https://grapheneos.org/
- xcp-ng as a open source virtualization platform - https://xcp-ng.org/
- Linux Mint to replace the desktop OS - https://www.linuxmint.com/
I'm working towards a private cloud process and a company to promote it. Interested more on Cloudflare, why?
https://freetubeapp.io/
It tracks subscriptions internally and allows accessing youtube via invidious instances on the web. That way they don't know what you are subscribing to and can't track your views because you are proxying through somebody's random server.
I moved out of a state whose name can't be said... I moved to an obviously, free state with likeminded people. Started two business...
This is what we are rebelling against, because it takes unusual will power to not seek the power over others.
We would have to have a way to communicate among ourselves, without participation from the government or uninvited people.
We would have to have another form of money that cannot be traced, or circumvented.
We would need a way to argue contracts to resolve disputes.
Google (and the fedgov) are watching and listening and recording.
my computer sure cost me...
I recommend using onion routing software and not revealing identifying information.
Tor net has its flaws as well, government has nodes, if you select an inbound government node, your toast. VPN are a joke but in your first post you spoke about non-centralized, or distributed architectures, this is a saving technology. I have been thinking about a process to utilize SignalR (or equivalent WinSockets client) and something like a multi-master replication to share posts on an open-source client. I don't have enough time to build it...
However, there are some defenses, such as messing with traffic profile so that it can't be matched:
1. by pumping extra random traffic through parts of the paths your actual traffic is taking
2. by using an anonymized intermediate system as a remote desktop (such as vm paid for with monero)
3. scheduling an anonymized intermediate system to do a delayed action (such as vm paid for with monero)
4. jumping from another unmonitored network onto the monitored network, such as using a yagi antenna and connecting to a coffee shop wifi from far away
Also, there is nothing stopping you from using proxychains to build your own onion route using anonymous vpn services, etc.
Throw the guilty in prison for life in solitary confinement with cornmeal gruel for 3 meals per day.
GET BACK ON THE GOLD STANDARD AND STAY THERE!!!
The Government -- it's one big hamster wheel... recognize it as such and get off of it to the extend that you are able. Being solitary makes this much easier and simpler.
I moved from a 3Bdr 2bath to a single wide (expenses are super low).
I put the difference into physical assets.
I do some contract work and hire contractors for mostly cash.
I do not consume much in the way of physical items.
I do invest in driving / road trips and running events (I purchase experiences) - however, I avoid the big ticket nonsense such as cruises, etc.
I hate UBI -- but now I think it can "work" as a means to kick the can down the road for another 10 years. I will be close to 70 by then... nice long full life. I will have something physical to leave behind for a few like-minded younger folks.
We are in for a long cold hard winter.
When things get too bad, I am thinking about disappearing on a snow covered ridge line just prior to sunset. I have thought about fighting this monster, the Government, the totalitarian state, the bureaucratic apparatus ... it's just that reality has a way of filling that vacuum with more parasites.
> - Build an alternative economy, producing goods and services within.
> - Securing our autonomy from the government.
Read https://quberoot.wordpress.com/ and get in touch with me if interested.
The first 2 are a tad difficult to accomplish.