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- 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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- http://anarplexqtbch57j.onion/hosted/files/bridging_the_gap.txt
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