Monarchy means one ruler. Oligarchy means several rulers. Anarchy means no rulers.
Anarchy does not mean no rules.
The term anarchy has had its meaning perverted in a fashion similar to how the term liberal has been perverted.
As Doug Casey says: words control thought. Or at least words provide the mechanism of organizing thought. As such, the perversion of valuable terms by people who seek to control other people is a continual method used by the dark side.
To be a free adult human implies that no one else is telling you how to live your life. No one else is ruling over you. In other words, it means to live in anarchy.
Indeed, a true anarchist is nothing like most self-declared anarchists wearing black, throwing bottles at people, looting stores and blowing stuff up. Those people are immoral wastes of food.
The true anarchist abides not by rulers and the rules they force on us. No, a true anarchist abides by laws that nature created and we mortal men have discovered, also known as Natural Law.
Do what you agree to do.
Do not initiate force or fraud.
If we all abide by these two simple rules, we can all peacefully coexist.
Unfortunately, many people want to control other people instead of just living and letting live. They have learned that “democracy” alongside government’s legalized monopoly on the initiation of force is a fantastic way of coercing their will on the rest of us without being considered criminals. They justify doing so because they consider the rest of us ignorant rubes who need to be protected from “carbon,” or from drugs, or from poor investment decisions, or from not having health insurance, or from not having retirement income, or from doing anything they think we should not do.
They are intrusive busybodies and do-gooders.
There are also people in the world who don’t care about any of that and also don’t care about peaceful coexistence. That’s not their priority. Control and power are their priorities. These people who care nothing for Natural Law are attracted to positions of power in the government.
Thus, the governments that busybodies and do-gooders want to use to stick their noses in everyone else’s business—to accomplish what they believe are good goals—end up controlled by people who couldn’t care less about those goals.
Government is foundationally immoral, because the legalized initiation of force against the innocent is what defines it. For the same reason that I want to have no immoral people anywhere in my circle, I want to live with as little government as possible. Yet I have precisely zero control over the size of government.
So, what I do is to live my own life in anarchy for the largest percentage of each day that I can. How can I increase the amount of my day that I am unruled by others? Can I increase that percentage of time from 70% to 80% of each day?
Living in anarchy means that every rule binding me is one I voluntarily agreed to or one that nature imposed.
I enjoyed my career as a pediatrician. But, as a physician, too much of my day was spent complying with destructive, stupid, moronic government rules. Obamacare was the last straw. So I left the active practice of medicine, and my percentage of each day that I lived in anarchy increased substantially. And I was happier. But my most valuable skill set was sacrificed because of the incessant desire of those who constantly want to expand government.
Had they let me conduct my profession without their unconstitutional rules forced down all our throats, I could still be deploying my most valuable skill. I have no illusions. People have sacrificed much more than I have to fight against government tyranny.
I wake up when I choose to wake up. I eat what I want to eat. I exercise when I want to exercise. I write what I want to write. I help people I want to help. I do the work that I agree to do. I choose the entertainment that I want. I associate with the people with whom I choose to associate. That’s all me, living unruled, in anarchy, for much of the day.
But then I also spend time abiding by the rules of rulers. I do lots of tax work. I fill out seemingly unending PFIC forms. I earn money that is paid to governments for property tax, income tax, Social Security tax, Medicare tax, Obamacare tax, disability tax, unemployment tax. I have to get our vineyard’s wine labels approved by bureaucrats in Washington. I have to abide by 100-year-old Prohibition-era laws regarding alcohol. I have to go to the DMV to title my car. I struggle to get my mother’s needed medical care, the barriers to which are the direct result of Obamacare. In Virginia, voters just approved a constitutional amendment that I expect will be used to compel me—a pediatrician who spent a career keeping babies alive—to pay for other people’s abortions.
That’s a lot of rules I follow, created by rulers, that have nothing to do with Natural Law.
A substantial chunk of the fruits of my labor is taken from me against my will. I call that “partial slavery.” I know the difference. It’s not like full enslavement. Full enslavement is now illegal. Partial enslavement is all that the modern plantation owners can get away with.
If I consider the percentage of my work hours burned just to pay the protection racket known as the IRS and its state and local cousins, and then the time I waste abiding by all the other rules I have to follow, I might be, at best, only living 70% anarchically.
To increase that percentage, having wealth helps. And preserving the wealth we have is important too. Wealth is at risk from those who want to use government to forcibly take it and deploy it toward their preferences. And from central bank destruction of the currency. And from politicians who spend other people’s money.
At Crisis Investing, we try to increase our wealth in the face of the people who want to extract it from us or prevent the wealth from existing in the first place. We want you to have enough wealth to diversify across jurisdictions, rather than concentrating it in one currency or one asset. We want you to be able to have assets that protect you from inflation, and cash to take advantage of the busts that follow booms. Unlike the busybodies, we won’t force these things on you via government. We will just encourage you to consider them.
We try to help our subscribers live as much of each day as possible in anarchy.
John Hunt, MD
Editor, Doug Casey’s Crisis Investing
"They are intrusive busybodies and do-gooders."
I would prefer to call them, "Never-do-wells." But I completely agree with your points. The abuse of the term, "anarchy," has had a deleterious effect upon society. Most of them want to maintain that control, and they figure that calling those they disagree with by foul names will help them achieve success with that mission.
this has to be the most sensible article that I have read in a very long time