Author Archive

Financial Sustainability or Irrational Exuberance in Liberty Projects?

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012   Submitted by Davi Barker

I’ve been thinking about this since Ofer Nave spoke in the Agorist Panel at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum this year. He drew a distinction between sustainable and unsustainable counter economic activity, but predicted a series of tipping points when more unsustainable activities become sustainable as the counter economy grows. He also made an economic point that in the current market it makes more sense to spend dollars than silver currency. Greshem’s Law suggests that when legal tender laws exist, if a merchant accepts silver and paper it’s in the customer’s best interest to spend paper and horde silver. But, agorists still spend silver against their economic self-interest out of what Ofer called “irrational exuberance,” or passion for liberty. I have a similar concept that I call the “entertainment premium” on activism.

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The Lucifer Effect: Ron Paul and the Stanford Prison Experiment

Saturday, April 14th, 2012   Submitted by Davi Barker

The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo is an in depth study of mankind’s capacity for evil, beginning with the complete treatise on the Stanford Prison Experiment, taking us through numerous similar studies on obedience and the corrupting influence of authority, and ending with the atrocities committed by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib. But as I was reading, I kept thinking of Ron Paul and the ongoing controversy between the libertarians and anarchists as to whether supporting his campaign is the right thing to do. I think this book has settled the issue for me, as I’ll explain as we go on. Although I started with the paperback, I really can’t sing the praises of the audiobook enough. A significant portion is actual transcripts from the experiment, and the narrator, Kevin Foley is a skilled voice actor that turns the book into a radio play with different voices for each character.

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Anarchy And Islam

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012   Submitted by Davi Barker

I’ve met muslims of every school of anarchist thought from anarcho-socialists to national-anarchists. Prominent among them are Hakim Bay’s “ontological anarchism” and Yakoub Islam’s “post-colonial anarcho-pacifism” but this is my story.

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Unions And Corporations: The Handshake And The Gun

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011   Submitted by Davi Barker

Many people who come to the philosophy of liberty from the right hold on to their conservative talking points on corporations and unions. I came here from the radical left. So it was obvious to me that organized labor played a legitimate role in a free market and that corporations were a creation of the state. But I hadn’t committed a lot of time to forging my opinion.

Both unions and corporations are rooted in freedom of association, but it seemed to me that corporations limit legitimate liability, and unions violate freedom of disassociation. They seem fundamentally similar because they both mitigate economic liability with state force. But I wanted to check my own ex-liberal bias. So, I interviewed one person from each side, a radical unionist and a tea-party patriot, to talk me through the gaps in my understanding.

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What The Occupy Movement Could Learn From Somalia

Friday, December 2nd, 2011   Submitted by Davi Barker

It’s time to acknowledge that the Occupy movement began as an anarchist movement. Adbusters, the magazine that started the ball rolling, describes itself as “anti-consumerist,” but it’s arguably anarchist, or at least heavily influenced by anarchists.

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The Law According To The Somalis

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011   Submitted by Davi Barker

Many voluntaryists have looked longingly toward Somalia for evidence of our ideas in practice. But it’s a little tough when that real-world example also happens to be the quintessential image of extreme poverty and feuding warlords for most people.

Nonetheless, sometimes an article appears that rightly points out that comparing Somalia to developed nations is a little intellectually dishonest. In fact, Somalia has improved by virtually every measure of standard of living without a state, or when compared to its neighbors that still have a state.
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