✧ praxis, with a bow on ✧
counter-economics, princess edition ⓐ
the ancap page is the theory. this is the part where somebody actually does it.
konkin's wager
samuel edward konkin III, new libertarian manifesto, 1980: you don't vote your way to a free society — you tradeyour way there. every voluntary exchange the state doesn't mediate is a brick in the new world, built quietly inside the shell of the old one. while the party libertarians were losing elections, konkin said: stop asking. build the counter-economy until the state is a rump nobody consults. it remains the only libertarian strategy with a to-do list.
the counter-economy is everyone
the babysitter paid in cash. the farmers-market eggs. your neighbour's sourdough, your cousin's haircuts, the garage sale, the favour repaid in firewood. states call the parts of life they can't see "the informal sector" — as if the formal sector were the normal one and not the heavily-supervised exception. humans have been trading without permission since before permission was invented. you're already an agorist. you just haven't read the pamphlet.
yesterday's black market is today's brunch
alcohol was contraband; now it's a tasting menu. homosexuality was a crime; now it's a mortgage and a golden retriever. cannabis went from prison sentences to dispensaries with loyalty cards. sex work is legal where i live and in a growing list of places that read the evidence. the categories are political weather — the trades underneath them are permanent. markets don't wait for the law to catch up; the law eventually catches up to markets. brunch always wins ♡
the part that should really upset somebody
here's my confession: everything on this site is legal where i operate. selling my time — legal. monero — legal. running my own payment server — legal. writing this page — extremely legal. no bank to pressure, no processor to threaten, no platform to deplatform, no intermediary with a compliance officer and a conscience shaped like a flowchart. i built the whole agorist stack out of things you can't prosecute. somewhere a very serious person is reading this website looking for the crime, and there isn't one, and that's the art ♡
the reading room ✧
- samuel edward konkin III, new libertarian manifesto (1980) — the founding document; short, cranky, unforgettable.
- samuel edward konkin III, an agorist primer (2008) — the friendly on-ramp version.
- j. neil schulman, alongside night (1979) — the agorist novel; the ideas wearing a story.
all findable with a search engine. read one, then go trade with somebody ♡