Anarchists of Steemit: What convinced you that government must be abolished? How did you find anarchy / voluntaryism?
Stop me if you've heard this one:
"What's the difference between a libertarian and an anarchist?"
"About six months."
I was told that joke not long after I got to New Hampshire in 2015. I'd moved to take part in the Free State Project, "an agreement among 20,000 pro-liberty activists to move to New Hampshire, where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property."
And while I'd identified as a libertarian for about 15 years, I'll be damned if I didn't make the switch to full-on anarchist / voluntaryist right around six months after getting to NH!
Why the change? Certainly, there were a lot of discussions and reading that got me thinking about the atrocities of government and the havoc it's wreaked over the centuries, but two videos in particular stuck out for me and have had a big impact on my thinking:
1) "The Story of Your Enslavement" by Stefan Molyneux
While Molyneux has veered off on some unfortunate anti-Muslim and misogynistic tirades lately, his video—The Story of Your Enslavement—struck a nerve with me and let me see how politicians view us all as livestock as they reap their rewards from our gains.
"This is the story of your enslavement; how it came to be, and how you can finally be free…
Like all animals, human beings want to dominate and exploit the resources around them. At first, we mostly hunted and fished and ate off the land – but then something magical and terrible happened to our minds. We became, alone among the animals, afraid of death, and of future loss. And this was the start of a great tragedy, and an even greater possibility. You see, when we became afraid of death, of injury, and imprisonment, we became controllable—and so valuable—in a way that no other resource could ever be. The greatest resource for any human being to control is not natural resources, or tools, or animals or land—but other human beings.
You can frighten an animal, because animals are afraid of pain in the moment, but you cannot frighten an animal with a loss of liberty, or with torture or imprisonment in the future, because animals have very little sense of tomorrow. You cannot threaten a cow with torture, or a sheep with death. You cannot swing a sword at a tree and scream at it to produce more fruit, or hold a burning torch to a field and demand more wheat. You cannot get more eggs by threatening a hen – but you can get a man to give you his eggs by threatening him.
This human farming has been the most profitable – and destructive – occupation throughout history, and it is now reaching its destructive climax. Human society cannot be rationally understood until it is seen for what it is: a series of farms where human farmers own human livestock."
2) "Statism: the Most Dangerous Religion" featuring Larken Rose
This is a great compilation of some of Larken Rose's radio clips edited together to show the fallacy of government rule, and the dangerous situation humanity is in by continuing to trust authority.
"One of the biggest giveaways that the belief in government is a complete blind faith religious belief, is the way people respond... One very easy line of questioning is: 'Can you give somebody else a right that you don't have?', and everybody says: 'Well no, of course not.'
'Well how about you and your buddy? Can the two of you give someone else a right that neither of you have?' ... 'Well, no.' And it only takes a couple more questions to get to: 'Well, how did Congress get rights that you don't have?' They get emotional and they get angry, or they get defensive, or they run away. They didn't come to this belief through reasoning and evidence, and logic. They came there by having a blind faith belief smashed into their heads starting before they could even talk.
It's just something they were taught to believe; that there's this thing called 'authority' and that it's allowed to do things human beings aren't, and that people have an obligation to obey it."
I pretty much grew up steeped in constitutional liberalism, so the idea that government is terrible is one that I've never not known. The transition wasn't one of belief, but one of information. Before I wanted no government but believed that was impossible, so you had to preempt it with the smallest government possible. Now I still want no government, but am more optimistic about making that happen. In our lifetime, even.
In a few words, why I came to anarchy: Bitcoin and decentralized tech
I wrote a long post on my old blog about this a couple years ago. I've since refined my thinking a bit on Steemit here and here. I hope those links are helpful. The story of your enslavement is one of my favorites. I also really enjoy Larken Rose's content.
Keep up the great work @randyclemens
Upvoted
I love this!
UPDATE: Just a few days after posting this, @larkenrose has now joined Steemit! Check out his brilliant intro post—"All I Am Asking"—and give him a follow!
Hi! This post has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 11.2 and reading ease of 61%. This puts the writing level on par with Michael Crichton and Mitt Romney.