Individuals Are Changing the World

And they aren't waiting for permission from the men and women calling themselves "government", either.

It's exciting how all individuals have the power to make a positive difference in the world. It's exciting how the internet has created infinite opportunities (like Steemit!) to do so. Anyone can be a content creator. Anyone can be an entertainer. Anyone can be a retailer. Anyone can be an innovator. Anyone can be an entrepreneur. As technology improves and becomes more affordable, economies of scale lose their comparative advantage over individuals and smaller providers of goods and services. This allows increasingly greater quantities of people to lift themselves well out of poverty and into the middle and even upper classes while improving the quality of life for everyone around them in the process.

For example, thanks to market competition driving down the cost of prepaid phones, people in third world countries are able to use Bitcoin (another market innovation) to participate in international commerce.

That's why I absolutely loathe it when anyone tries to convince others that individuals are powerless to make a difference in the world - especially when political action is presented as having a monopoly on social change. It doesn't matter whether you call yourself a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian or an anarchist - trying to convince individuals that they are powerless to affect change without political action is both a lie and an attempt to coerce people into submitting to the false authority of some aspiring ruler. It's also horizontal enforcement of statism. When combined with an outright sales pitch for political action, it's also a tacit assertion that cooperation can only happen through an agency of force and coercion (which is logically self-detonating).

Satoshi Nakamoto is (debatably) just an individual. Steve Jobs was just an individual. Nikola Tesla was just an individual. Sam Walton was just an individual. Ludwig von Mises was just an individual. Henry Ford was just an individual. Frederick Douglass was just an individual. Rosa Parks was just an individual. Harriet Tubman was just an individual. The people who grow and sell food are just individuals. The people who produce and sell clothes and building materials are just individuals. The people who invent and engineer time saving devices are just individuals. The people who innovate and improve technology are just individuals. The people who spread information and facilitate philosophy-shifting discussions here on Steemit are just individuals.

And the people who make up "the state" are also just individuals. The only thing separating this latter group of individuals from other individuals is the superstitious delusion that they have the moral authority to initiate physical aggression against others for no other reason than that they call themselves “government”. The individuals in the grips of this delusion are the ones creating the barriers to entry in almost every industry. This delusion therefore disempowers the individual and should be dispensed with as quickly as possible.

The power of this delusion can't be lessened by acting in a manner consistent with the expectations of those in its grips. Any attempt to do so would confirm the biases of the delusional, thereby strengthening the delusion, which is the opposite of the intended effect.

The power of this delusion can only be lessened by inundating the delusional with information that contradicts the delusion, thereby exposing them to the reality of their own psychosis.

And that's what we have the internet for.

I'm Jared Howe! I'm a Voluntaryist hip hop artist and professional technical editor/writer with a passion for Austrian economics and universal ethics. You can catch my podcast every Friday on the the Seeds of Liberty Podcast Network.