Bridging the Gap - From Etienne de la Boetie to Global Guerillas

In his famous essay, the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, french philosopher
and political thinker, Etienne de la Boetie, makes the one observation that
can explain every revolution, every political change and every advancement in
freedom. If the people stop supporting their tyrants, not even actively
bringing him down, but just removing their support for his actions, he will
fall under his own weight. After all, every tyrant and even every group of
tyrants is in the minority - by far. Even the bloated Big Governments of
today are just tiny percentages of the overall population. If the people
removed their support in the form of paying their money as taxes, no police
hug, politician or bureaucrat would get paid day after tomorrow. The state
lives hand to mouth all day, every day. The state doesn't save.

There is one problem of course - there is no such entity as The People(tm).
There are only individuals. And while The People might count millions and be,
overall, immune to the tyrants' attacks, the individual is only a single
erson and quite vulnerable to any punitive or retributive action of even a
small group of tyrant thugs. Think of the tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown.
Think of Ghandi, who was put in jail for years. Scaring the individual is the
only tactic the tyrant has. For if all individuals feel alone and scared,
they won't dare remove their support. They'll fear being the one who gets hit
by overly cruel and over the top punishment for stepping out of line.

So how does one advance the cause of freedom for himself and others?

Think superempowerment. Coined by John Robb of GlobalGuerillas.typepad.com,
the term superempowerment describes technology, infrastructure, knowdledge
and systems that enable the individual to have an impact far beyond his own
means. It could be described as the capitalization or arming of every
individual. A single man must work all day just to feed himself and stay
alive. But a man working in a highly capitalized factory and armed with
knowledge about production is able to earn hundreds of dollars in only eight
hours each day. Those dollars will buy him food, shelter, clothes, energy, a
car and much more. The productivity of the single person is greatly elevated
due to capital being invested in his work.

This seems like an obvious answer. Capitalize the individual. Superempower
every person on the planet to opt out of the system if they so desire. When a
voter dislikes the behaviour of a politician, removing his support for the
politician should be as easy as sending out an email or stopping a monthly
transfer on his bank account. 

John Robb describes single individuals creating millions of dollars of damage
per day by cutting oil pipelines or removing other vital bottlenecks in
resource flow. That's not what is needed for toppling the tyrants. To remove
their support of the government, what people need most is quite simple. The
ability to stop paying taxes, and the safety from government retribution for
doing so.

As almost all countries nowadays force employers to pay taxes from their
employees' wages, few people have the choice to not pay taxes. To make this a
possibility, there needs to exist a simple and obvious way to pay employees,
shop owners and other trade partners without using the traditional routes.
This could take the form of cash, encrypted online-payments or silver coins.

To make sure that nobody, while wagering the possibility to stop his support
for tyranny, has to fear the tyrant's retribution, there need to exist safety
mechanisms. This means the ability to hide payments from government control.
In principal, this is easy. One just has to keep ones cash under the mattress
instead of putting it on a government-inspected bank account with Bank of
America. While neither trade partner tell on each other, government has
little knowledge of their activities. That is, if they stick to untracked
methods of payment, not bank wires, official cheques and credit cards.
Government has historically been desperate enough to crack down on ordinary
citizens, searching their premises for "illegal" money, gold, jewelery and
other forms of possible barter or payment. But technically, this is
impossible to do with everyone, as long as the tracked methods of payment are
avoided. Government cannot possibly break into the houses of 300 million
people each and every day, looking if there's a bundle of cash under the
mattress this time. Only the superempowerment of government thugs, by way of
cooperating credit card companies and bank institutions can enable this. If
one stays clear of those, one should be able to hide every cash transaction.

While government may collapse if The People(tm) all started using
crypto-currencies today, it's not very likely that everyone will do so at the
same time. There will be people who are first do go off the radar, and those
people might get unneeded attention for just that - getting of the
governments financial radar. If Joe earns $200,000 a year in 2010, but $0 in
2011, yet still drives his Mercedes and moves into a new, luxurious home, the
tyrant will smell deceit. Thus, especially in the beginnings, one must find
ways to hide the move from tracked payments to free payments. There are many
ways to accomplish this. Slowly reduce your official working hours, but
continue working for free payment on the side. Take a year off to live off
your savings, while secretly working for free money. Move your company off
shore. Don't drive your new car around the IRS building while claiming you've
lost your job. Actually, lose your job. Big Government will be happy to hide
your ass for you.

But protecting individuals willing to opt out from government is only one side
of the coin. There also needs to be protection from those willing to exploit
the opting out and the concurring loss in government power on ones side. For
example, I can't go to the police and claim someone didn't pay me the 500
gold coins he promised without attracting a lot of unwanted attention. In
fact I'd probably go to jail for trading something worth 500 gold coins and
not giving government it's fair share. Private institutions that protect free
individuals, without forcing them to resort to government power to enforce
their contracts, need to step in. There are of course countless forms and
niches. Private arbitration of contract disputes. Private defense. Private
insurance against theft, accident or other loss. Third party guarantors that
make sure both parties consent to the trade before releasing the payment. As
these are free institutions, not backed by coercion or goverment power, they
can't rely on either to work. They need to function on a purely voluntary
basis. This can be accomplished by systems of trust, recommendation,
ostracizm and many other techniques.

For these to function properly, secret communication is key. Nobody can help
others defy the tyrant if the tyrant can read their emails. That means
encryption, private darknets and alternative intra- or internets.

Consider an example. A group of free entrepreneurs decide to form an insurance
pool against being robbed by tyrant thugs. In case any one of them is being
robbed by a government entity, they all split the loss. What is needed to
make this insurance against robbery work? For one, they need a form of paying
each other without drawing attention of the thugs. If each insurance payment
led to further robbery, the pool wouldn't work. The person suffering the
damage and receiving the payment also needs ways of using his compensation
without drawing attention. This most likely means ways of shopping for goods
and services without being tracked by the government. To make the whole
insurance system work, the participants need to communicate in secret. Even
sending encrypted email to one another is likely suspicious. Tyrants can draw
connections between them even without knowing what they actually wrote each
other. Any messages between them need to be sent over channels that disguise
both the sender and the receiver to outsiders.

All considered, most of the technical infrastructure is already developed.
There are encrypted currencies. There is encrypted email. There are multi-hop
VPN services, proxies and darknets. To superempower an individual willing to
opt out of supporting tyranny, these technologies must be available to the
layperson at the tip of his finger. He must first learn about their
existance, be able to use them without much hassle and trust them with his
money.

The technological part is developed enough. What's needed is entrepreneurs,
delivering those technologies in the hands of the people waiting for them.
For if the people each decide to withdraw their support of the tyrant, and
for $9.99/month are able to do so, the tyrant will indeed topple. 

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