New Libewreoieroier

 nswer is agorism.

It is possible, practical, and even profitable to entrepreneur large collections of humanity away from statist society to the agora. This is, in the deepest sense, true revolutionary activity and will be covered in the next chapter. To understand this macro answer, however, we must first outline the micro answer.[25]

The function of the pseudo-science of Establishment economics, even more than making predictions for the ruling class (as did the Imperial Roman augurs), is to mystify and confuse the ruled class as to where their wealth is going and how it is taken. An explanation of how people can keep their wealth and property safe from the State, then, is Counter-Establishment economics, or Counter-Economics[26] for short. The actual practice of human actions that evade, avoid, and defy the State is counter-economic activity, but—in the same sloppy way that “economics” refers both to the science and what it studies—“counter-economics” will undoubtedly be used. Since this writing is Counter-Economic theory itself, what will be referred to as Counter-Economics is the practice

This is a description of our present society. We are “home.”

we now perceive something else: large numbers of people who are acting in an agorist manner with little understanding of any theory but who are induced by material gain to evade, avoid, or defy the State. Surely they have potential?

In the Soviet Union, a bastion of arch-statism and a nearly totally collapsed “official” economy, a giant black market provides the Russians, Armenian, Ukrainian and others with everything from food to television repair to official papers and favors from the ruling class.

According to the American Internal Revenue Service, at least twenty million people belong in the “underground economy” of tax evaders using cash or barter exchange to avoid detections of transactions. Millions keep money in gold or in foreign accounts to avoid the hidden taxation of inflation. Millions of “illegal aliens” are employed, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Millions more deal or consume marijuana, cocaine, and other proscribed drugs, including laetrile, tryptophan, anti-AIDS drugs, and other forbidden medical material.

And there are all the practitioners of “victimless crimes.” Besides drug use, there is prostitution, pornography, bootlegging, false identification papers, gambling, and proscribed sexual conduct between consenting adults. Regardless of “reform movements” to gain political acceptance of these acts, the populace has chosen to act now—and by so doing are creating a counter-economy.

It doesn’t stop here, though. Since the 55 mph speed limit was enacted federally in the U.S., most Americans have become counter-economic drivers. The trucking industry has developed CB communications to evade State enforcement of regulations. For independents who can make four runs at 75 mph rather than three runs at 55 mph, counter-economic driving is a question of survival.

Nearly everyone engages in some sort of misrepresentation or misdirection on their tax forms, off-the-books payments for services, unreported trade with relatives, and illegal sexual positions with their mates.

To some extent, then, everybody is a counter-economist! And this is predictable from libertarian theory. Nearly every aspect of human action has statist legislation prohibiting, regulating, or controlling it. These laws are so numerous that a “Libertarian” Party that prevented any new legislation and briskly repealed ten or twenty laws a session would not have significantly repealed the State (let alone the mechanism itself!) for millennia![30]

Obviously, the State is unable to obtain enforcement of its edicts. Yet the State continues. And if everyone is somewhat counter-economic, why hasn’t the Counter-Economy overwhelmed the economy?

Outside of North America we can add the effect of imperialism. The Soviet Union has received support from the more-developed countries in the 1930s and large quantities of instruments of violence during World War II. Even today, “trade”—heavily subsidized by non-repayable loans—props up the Soviet and new Chinese regimes. This capital (or anti-capital, being destructive of value) from both blocs, along with military aid, maintains regimes over the rest of the globe. But that does not explain the North American case.

What exists everywhere on Earth that allows the State to continue is the sanction of the victim.[31] Every victim of statism has internalized the State to some degree. The IRS’s annual proclamation that the income tax depends on “voluntary compliance” is ironically true. Should the taxpayer completely cut off the blood supply, the vampire State would helplessly perish, its unpaid police and army deserting almost immediately, defanging the Monster. If everyone abandoned “legal tender” for gold and goods in contracts and other exchanges, it is doubtful that even taxation could sustain the modern State.[32]

This is where the State’s control of education and the information media, either directly or through ruling-class ownership, becomes crucial. In earlier days, the established priesthood served the function to sanctify the king and the aristocracy, to mystify the relations of oppression, and to induce guilt in evaders and resisters. The disestablishment of religion has put this burden on the new intellectual class (what the Russians called the intelligentsia). Some intellectuals, holding truth as their highest value (as did earlier dissenting theologians and clerics), do work at clarifying rather than mystifying, but they are dismissed or reviled and kept away from State and foundation-controlled income. Thus is the phenomenon of dissidence and revisionism created; and thus is the attitude of anti-intellectualism generated among the populace, who suspect or incompletely understand the function of the Court Intellectual.

Note well how anarchist intellectuals are attacked and repressed under every State; and those arguing for an overthrow of the present ruling class—even if only to replace it with another—are suppressed. Those who propose changes that eliminate some beneficiaries of the State and add others are often lauded by the benefiting elements of the Higher Circles and attacked by the potential losers.

A common characteristic of most hardened black marketeers is their guilt. They wish to “make their bundle” and return to the “straight society.” Bootleggers and hookers all long someday for reacceptance in society—even when they form a supportive “subsociety” of outcasts. Yet there have been exceptions to this phenomenon of longing for acceptance: the religious dissenting communities of the 1700s, the political utopian communities of the 1800s, and most recently the counter-culture of the hippies and the New Left. What they had was a conviction that their subsociety was superior to the rest of society. The fearful reaction they generated in the rest of society was the fear that they were correct.

All of these examples of self-sustaining subsocieties failed for one overriding reason: ignorance of economics. No social binding, no matter how beautiful, can overcome the basic glue of society—the division of labor. The anti-market commune defies the only enforceable law—the law of nature. The basic organizational structure of society (above the family) is not the commune (or tribe or extended tribe or State) but the agora. No matter how many wish communism to work and devote themselves to it, it will fail. They can hold back agorism indefinitely by great effort, but when they let go, the “flow” or “Invisible Hand” or “tides of history” or “profit incentive” or “doing what comes naturally” or “spontaneity” will carry society inexorably closer to the pure agora.

Why is there such resistance to eventual happiness? Psychologists have been dealing with that since they began their embryonic science. We can at least give two broad answers when it comes to socioeconomic questions: internalization of anti-principles (those that seem to be principles but are actually contrary to natural law) and the opposition of vested interests.

Now we can see clearly what is needed to create a libertarian society. On the one hand we need the education of the libertarian activists and the consciousness-raising of counter-economists to libertarian understanding and mutual supportiveness. “We are right, we are better, we are surviving in a moral, consistent way, and we are building a better society—of benefit to ourselves and others,” our counter-economic “encounter groups” might affirm.

Note well that libertarian activists who are not themselves full practicing counter-economists are unlikely to be convincing. “Libertarian” political candidates undercut everything they say (of value) by what they are doing; some candidates have even held jobs in tax bureaus and defense departments!

On the other hand, we must defend ourselves against the vested interests or at the very least lower their oppression as much as possible. If we eschew reformist activity as counter-productive, how will we achieve that result?

One way is to bring more and more people into the counter-economy and lower the plunder available to the State. But evasion isn’t enough; how do we protect ourselves and even counterattack?

Slowly but steadily we will move to the free society, turning more counter-economists on to libertarianism and more libertarians on to counter-economics, finally integrating theory and practice. The counter-economy will grow and spread to the next step we saw in our trip backward, with an ever-larger agorist subsociety imbedded in the statist society. Some agorists may even condense into discernible districts and ghettos and predominate on islands or in space colonies. At this point, the question of protection and defense will become important.

Using our agorist model (Chapter II), we see how the protection industry must evolve. Firstly, why do people engage in counter-economics with no protection? The payoff for the risk they take is greater than their expected loss. This statement is true, of course, for all economic activity, but for counter-economics it requires special emphasis:

The fundamental principle of counter-economics is to trade risk for profit.[33]

The higher the expected profit, the greater the risk taken. Note that if risk is lowered, a lot more would be attempted and accomplished—surely an indicator that a free society is wealthier than an unfree one.

Risk may be lowered by increasing care, taking precautions, tightening security (locks, stashes safe houses), and by trusting fewer persons of higher trustworthiness. The last indicates a high preference for dealing with fellow agorist and a strong economic incentive that binds an agorist subsociety and privides an incentive to recruit or support recruitment into that subsociety.

Counter-economic entrepreneurs have an incentive to provide better security devices, places of concealment, instructions to aid evasion and to screen potential customers and suppliers for other counter-economic entrepreneurs. And thus is the counter-economic protection industry born.

As it grows, it may begin insuring against “bursts,” lowering counter-economic risks further and accelerating counter-economic growth. Then it may provide lookouts and guarded areas of safekeeping with alarm systems and high-tech concealment mechanisms. Guards may be provided against real criminals (other than the State). Already many residential, business, and even minority districts employ private patrols, having given up on the State’s alleged protection of property.