[This article was first published at UtahLiberty.org]

If you have ever expressed disappointment or frustration with the electoral process, you have probably had this condemnation thrown at you at some point: “Well, if you don’t vote, then you have no right to complain!”

Those who have said this to me have probably taken my dumbfounded silence as a sign of my awed respect for the light they brought into my life. The truth is that I am dumbfounded by what an absurdly and patently idiotic statement it is, and there isn’t much I would be able to tell a person who believes it.

“He doesn’t vote?” they think, floored by such blasphemy. “I know! I’ll use this tired old thought-terminating cliché I heard from some authority figure or public relations campaign. Oh, look at that. He’s so impressed with my wisdom, he doesn’t know what to say.”

It is easy to see how daft this notion is if you rephrase it in order to more accurately reflect reality: “If you don’t participate in the corrupt, illegitimate and criminal system of state corporatism, then you don’t have a right to complain about it.” Or, to make it even clearer: “If you refuse to answer your assailant when he asks if you’d rather be beaten with a club or a whip, then you have no right to complain about being assaulted.”

My new response to this drivel is to turn the condemnation right back around on my accuser: If you do vote, you consent to this laughably abhorrent system and have no right to complain! I refuse to go along with the state mysticism of “consent of the governed” and “government of the people, by the people and for the people” as the charming but irrational sentiments of a juvenile mind, much like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny; but you, you who go along with it and permit yourself to be herded into the voting booth to cast your vote for the lesser of two atrocious evils – you made your bed, now sleep in it. To those who understand and see the corruption of the U.S. political machine but nevertheless vote for the lesser of two evils, I now respond: How has voting for evil been working out for you?

We’ve all heard that if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. We know the wealthy will never permit us to vote their wealth away. And deep down inside, I think we all know our vote doesn’t actually matter. So what is the purpose of voting? Why does the state push it on us so? To create the illusion of self-government, of course!

Teller of the famous illusionist duo Penn & Teller once broke character to reveal some secrets about the art of illusion, one of which was this: “If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely.” Or, as noted anarchist Noam Chomsky put it:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

The last couple hundred years of electoral history in the U.S. has taught us one thing: Voting has yielded nothing but more of the same, defended nothing but the status quo, and championed no one but the already privileged.

But consider the alternative! A disturbing, almost bone-chilling realization ought to grip the rational mind that contemplates this fantasy: What if your vote did matter? What if you could employ the full brutal force of the state to impose your will on your fellow beings? What if, through this electoral process, you could be king for a day?

It is far better that our votes mean nothing and accomplish nothing. We can leave tyranny to the tyrants and pursue other venues. But once we see that we cannot beat the behemoth of the corrupt state at its own game, what then? Well, we simply follow David’s example in his fight against Goliath. We follow the example of every underdog who has every bested a bully: We refuse to play by their rules, to live on their terms. We take the battle to our turf and employ strategies we concoct.

If they don’t like that, let them try to vote us out.

Recently, an acquaintance called hyperbole on me in a drug legalization discussion. I asked, “You think that forcefully locking someone in a cage to be raped repeatedly for many years is the appropriate response to someone who buys and sells dead plants?”

Your regular run-of-the-mill obedient citizen wouldn’t phrase the question as I did. They would say something like, “Should drug dealers get prison time?” My phrasing is what garnered the accusation of hyperbole. But whose phrasing is more reflective of reality?

The phrase “drug dealer” is severely rife with negative connotation. When you hear the phrase, you probably picture a man in his 20s of minority ethnicity wearing a hoody in an alley. You don’t picture a pharmacist, a doctor writing a prescription, a parent giving medicine to their child, a Tibetan monk distributing healing herbs to the needy, or a teenager selling some weed to a friend. So using the phrase “someone who buys and sells dead plants” is a far more descriptive and objective phrase to use than “drug dealer” when referring to a cannabis trader.

But “locking someone in a cage to be raped repeatedly for many years” is the phrase that really got me in trouble. What a misleading way to put it! Why conjure such negative images? Why not just use the term “prison time” in the interest of objectivity?

I’ll tell you why: Because the U.S. prison system is “a moral catastrophe” and “presents the most urgent humanitarian imperative of our time”. Since the 1970s, the U.S. prison population has quadrupled; and while official statistics show nationwide crime rates falling over this period, actual crimes are rampant and growing in frequency and depravity among the millions and millions of Americans in prisons and jails and on probation: “Uncounted in the official tallies are the hundreds of thousands of crimes that take place in the country’s prison system, a vast and growing residential network whose forsaken tenants increasingly bear the brunt of America’s propensity for anger and violence.”

Among the grossest of these crimes is sexual assault. Prison rape accounts for the majority of all rapes committed in the U.S., and the majority of the assaults are committed or coerced by prison staff. For those who couldn’t care less about all the dangerous men getting raped, remember that it is not just men trapped in this system:

“Victims in juvenile facilities, or facilities for women, have an even tougher time: usually it’s the guards, rather than the inmates, who coerce them into sex. The guards tell their victims that no one will believe them, and that complaining will only make things worse. This is sound advice: even on the rare occasions when juvenile complaints are taken seriously and allegations are substantiated, only half of confirmed abusers are referred for prosecution, only a quarter are arrested, and only 3 percent end up getting charged with a crime.”

I hope this information disgusts every feeling human to the core, and stands as a slap in the face to anyone who calls my description of prison “hyperbolic”. The next time you are considering whether or not something should be “illegal”, ask yourself instead whether you think someone who does a certain thing deserves to be violently and repeatedly raped. And don’t think that short prison sentences help anything: Between 13% to 19% of inmates are sexually assaulted within 24 hours of being admitted.

The tides are slowly turning. Only 36% of Americans are still opposed to marijuana legalization. I hope they quickly find their humanity after honest consideration and reflection so we can begin searching for ways to actually reduce actual crimes in our country.

The idea of joining the Libertarian Party tempted me years ago when I first discovered libertarian philosophy, as I’m sure it has tempted many before and since. The Party website stared me in the face, and with a few clicks and keystrokes I could be a card-carrying member of an organized body of liberty-minded people.

Eventually, the same rational thought processes and self-examination that led me to libertarianism revealed to me the true motives behind my desire to join: a base psychological need for attention and belonging. I’m proud to report that I left the website unaffiliated, as I had always been before and have been ever since.

I later learned just how close I came to never knowing the peace and prosperity that comes with an understanding and practice of anarchism. The temptation had not been one of simply belonging, but of obtaining power – political power, in this case. I knew that, if I ever ran for public office, I would most likely need the financial backing of a political party, and running under a Democrat or Republican ticket would have been down right hypocritical.

This thinking occurred, of course, when the last vestiges of statism still clouded my vision as the remaining threads and rags of a blindfold that had been clawed at for years. I still considered the Constitution to be sacred, limited government to be the goal, and the social contract to be the only way life and property could be protected.

“There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man’s needs and desires can be satisfied,” I later learned from noted social critic Albert Jay Nock. “One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means … The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.”

For many years, anarcho-capitalists (under the direction of Mr. Libertarian himself, Murray Rothbard) have attempted to work within the political means to bring down the State. From the inception of the Libertarian Party up until its remaining anarchists were disinvited by means of the “Denver Accord”, to the attention-getting attempts at the Presidency by libertarian poster child Ron Paul, anarcho-capitalists have put their trust in the very political machine they reject. These attempts have been fruitless, of course. The American political machine is stronger than it has ever been, arguably more powerful than any State in man’s history; and the Libertarian Party has become such an impotent hiss and by-word that it no longer garners even comedic targeting.

While “Partyarchs” were busy sacrificing principle on the alter of political intrigue, the “new libertarian left” was born. Some called themselves voluntaryists and rejected every political means to obtaining libertarian ends. Voluntaryists are noted for abstention from voting, some even claiming it to be immoral. They are also known for peaceful non-cooperation. Nowhere has this strategy been better explored and implemented, however, than in the school of thought within this movement that calls itself “agorism”.

Rothbard’s Libertarian Manifesto published in 1973 offered little in the realm of strategy; indeed, the subject took up only a few pages in an epilogue and centered mostly on educating key groups in society about the philosophy of liberty. Seven years after (and most likely in response to) Rothbard’s work, Samuel E. Konkin III published his New Libertarian Manifesto in which he laid out the groundwork of agorism, his philosophical extension and fulfillment of libertarian moral philosophy.

In this work, Konkin described what he called “counter-economics”, or “all (non-coercive) human action committed in defiance of the State.” Agorism is “the consistent integration of libertarian theory with counter-economic practice.” Counter-economics includes black market activities – illegal activities that are not violent or invasive and therefore “victimless” – and grey market activities – activities that are not illegal but conducted in a manner prohibited by the State.

Many are shocked when they first learn of counter-economics. Engaging in illegal activities isn’t how they envisioned their political activism or the way they live their lives; but the fact is that nearly everyone has engaged in or regularly engages in such activities. If you’ve ever had a lemonade stand or a yard sale or sold something online without complying with all applicable regulatory and tax code mandates, you’re a counter-economist. If you’ve ever used an expired prescription or someone else’s prescription or smoked weed, you’re a counter-economist. If you’ve ever been so much as a penny off on your income tax return, even without knowing it, you’re a counter-economist.

My earliest lessons in counter-economics were taught to me by my dad, although I didn’t know it until years later. He taught me about buying and selling automobiles to and from trusted acquaintances. In such transactions, the seller could provide the buyer with a bill of sale stating a greatly reduced sale price in order to reduce or eliminate the buyer’s sales tax.

As a salesman, my dad went on more road trips than I can remember and frequently brought me along for company. I remember that he had a radar detector to avoid speeding tickets. He also had a CB radio with which he would converse with trucking convoys to avoid speed traps and the like. He taught me the lingo and helped me to understand how to earn the trust of the other CB operators and develop a trustworthy handle.

Such activities as these and many others offer a consistent and realistic strategy for undermining and ultimately replacing the State. As agorists engage in under-the-radar commerce with other agorists and liberty-minded merchants, organizations such as barter networks, cooperatives, mutual aid associations, local exchange trading systems, arbitration firms, and security networks can slowly and surely provide viable alternatives to services ostensibly provided by the State. Prosperity will follow.

One of the sublimely emancipating realizations one has in living the agorist life is one that seems to have escaped Konkin and other early agorist thinkers, and that is that a free society is not some far-off goal toward which we are working. It is not an unattainable utopia, or even an attainable arrangement many centuries down the road. No, “free society” is a tautology. Every society is free, as is every market. I will explain, because this notion, I believe, is key to consistency in libertarian philosophy, as well as for each individual to obtain the full measure of peace and prosperity that agorist living can provide.

A society is simply a group of two or more individuals, and a market is simply a place or system wherein two or more individuals engage in mutual exchange. If libertarian moral philosophy is valid, if the principle of non-aggression is indeed a universal ethical principle by which human interaction ought to be guided, then it is true at all times and in all places, in all societies and markets.

For example, the geographical area known as North America contains many free societies and free markets in which several well organized criminal syndicates known as States operate unchallenged. They are currently too powerful to be repelled by any private security firm or syndicate, and they have used mass propaganda to obtain the sanction of most of their victims.

I don’t think any libertarian is so naïve as to assume that no crime exists in free markets. Libertarians advocate freedom to pursue voluntary solutions to crime. If a free market is a market in which zero crime or aggression occurs, then there will never be a free market, and we strive for it in vain. If we respond to criticisms of free markets by claiming that “we don’t live in a free market”, then we are admitting that the non-aggression principle actually does not apply in our society, and therefore the State’s actions are perfectly legitimate.

To know that you are free now, that you always have been, and that you always will be, is one of the most peaceful and liberating ideas I have ever uncovered. You are free. Any aggression committed against you by the State or by any other person or organization is illegitimate now, and you have the right to defend yourself. The question isn’t what you will do to achieve a free society. The question is what you will do, each and every day, to respond to the significant criminal threat extant in this free society of yours right now. I submit that agorism is the only philosophically consistent answer to that question.

In a turn of events that has surprised all but those who learn from history, San Francisco’s ban on Happy Meals is resulting in the opposite of the intended effect: an increase in “unhealthy” food sales.

The legislation prohibits the inclusion of a toy with any meal that does not meet the nutrition standards set by legislators. In response to this, McDonald’s began simply selling the toy separately for an extra ten cents. Previously, parents had been able to buy a toy separately for a couple of dollars, but now they must purchase a meal in order to receive the toy.

It still baffles me that policy makers, media and the general public are surprised when the State attempts to force someone’s concept of good living fails. This is known as unintended consequences. It is almost inevitable that every State attempt to either prevent voluntary associations or force involuntary associations results in what is known as “perverse incentive”; that is, it has the opposite of the intended effect.

Take marijuana prohibition, for example. In the known history of mankind, there has never been a death caused by marijuana. It is, as far as we know, physically impossible to overdose on it. With prohibition came an economic movement to produce and distribute synthetic cannabinoid products. Rather than regulate these new products for safety, more prohibition came, driving innovators to develop new and different derivatives as rapidly as possible to keep ahead of the legislation. Some of these products have been very dangerous and led to deaths. Instead of seeing this as a reason to regulate, the State has continued its prohibition drive, and the cycle of death and destruction goes on.

Also consider polygamy. Prior to its outlaw in the mid-19th century, the practice of polygamy amongst the Mormon religious movement was a veritable model of voluntaryist living. There was no sexual manipulation of children. Consent of all parties involved was strictly required. Divorces were readily granted to those who requested them.

This contrasts sharply with what has been associated with the practice since prohibition. Although the LDS Church ceased practicing, some smaller sects continued, taking their activities underground for fear of legal action. This underground activity, outside the light of law and the accountability of regulation, has yielded the unsavory and repugnant abuses associated with the practice in our modern age.

History has shown, time and again, that the freedom enjoyed by societies based on mutual consent has been instrumental in the greatest prosperity and technological innovations the world has known, while State prohibition, bans and criminalization have ended in grave atrocities, suffering and poverty. Respecting each individual’s autonomy is not only right, it benefits us all.

[This article was originally published at Everything-Voluntary.com]

Here are links to some recent arti­cles I’ve writ­ten for Utah Lib­erty Alliance:

Women Should Stay Out of Politics

The lack of representation of women in government ought to be a source of pride, one of the highest compliments that can be paid to the gender. Instead of encouraging more women to be engaged in the political process, coalitions ought to encourage men — encourage all — to abandon the political process in exchange for the peaceful and voluntary cooperation and association indicative of a civilized people, a way of living women ought to be proud to have mastered. Continue reading >>

Some guy from Orem you’ve never met to decide what games you can and cannot play

Sandstrom refers to Utah’s “traditional values,” values that Utahns should rightly be proud of; however, forcing morality upon unwilling souls is not one of those values, nor is it even a value. It is a crime. Continue reading >>

“Just as with other facets of the human experience, when it comes to religion, coercive interactions necessarily must be made at the expense of at least one innocent party, inevitably leading to an unjust and anti-social whole; while cooperative, voluntary interactions necessarily result in all parties involved being better off, inevitably leading to a just and mutually beneficial whole.”

Read the rest at Everything-Voluntary.com >>