Libertarian Anarchy

An educational strategy for achieving anarchy I’ve thought up is community conversions: teaching anarchism to specific intellectual or cultural communities, like atheists, gun nuts, 9/11 Truthers, anti-war groups, personal development gurus, spiritual teachers, cannabis activists, etc. The best communities would be ones with a distinct leader, who could directly influence their followers. Web-savvy communities would be preferred, as virtually all of the anarchist community and literature is online.

Essentially, this strategy is just one result of applying the 80/20 principle to conversions. Who would be the most profitable converts? Who could promote anarchism most efficiently? Who would have the strongest influence on the masses, or on the elites?

In terms of actually converting a community, I would follow a two-step approach. First, make the standard case that government is immoral, unnecessary, and doesn’t work. Second, show how anarchism is congruent with that community. Make specific, practical links between anarchist philosophy and the community, and show why they should support anarchism. For example, anti-war groups should oppose the State because it is the institutionalization of war.

One person I want to convert is Steve Pavlina. His topic is personal development, and he has 2.4 million readers per month (*drool*). Now that’s a good convert! In fact, in one article on atheism, he wrote: “You’d think I’d be quite a prize for any serious religion. With 2.4 million monthly readers, that’s a lot of people I could potentially enslave convert, not to mention how much I could fill the Church coffers by soliciting indulgences donations on their behalf.” And since anarchism is just common sense, persuading people is easy: just make the case that anarchism is the most moral and practical society, and that government is an unnecessary evil. Steve is a great convert because he has high credibility, many readers, and a subject that is compatible with anarchism.

Elsewhere, Steve writes:

“My more specific mission is to influence the influencers.

Single-handedly raising the level of consciousness of the whole planet is too much for me to handle, at least at my current stage of development. Triage is essential. I have to say no to a lot of worthy causes, and sometimes it’s heartbreaking to do so, but if I try to help everyone on earth directly, my specific mission will fail, and I cannot allow that to happen.

Influencing the influencers is my particular leverage point. I specifically aim to catch people in their 20s and 30s, a large percentage of whom are Internet-savvy, and help them realize that there’s more to life than getting a job and making money. These people are the future leaders of tomorrow, and if just a small percentage of them learn to listen to their hearts and not just their heads, it will make a world of difference.”

“Like many others my age, I have little faith in our current business and political leaders. I don’t vote in any elections because there’s no point. The people and issues that make it onto our ballots are spawned from a very low level of consciousness. Our leaders care more about power and perception than they do about truth and service. That’s cowardice, not leadership, and it needs to change. But the only way I see change happening is if enough people raise their own consciousness to the point where they refuse to be manipulated by fear and falsehood. We need leaders who are conscious and compassionate, who care more about serving the greater good than they do about enriching their egos. But we also need people who are willing to accept having an honorable leader in power, and that requires that people learn to manage their fear so it can no longer be used as a means of manipulating them.”

Like Osho, Steve thinks that positive change can only come about through a mental evolution, a raising of consciousness. When I was ecognorant I believed the same thing. But now that I understand economics, I see that a huge problem is the structure of society itself – that is, society by government. Statism runs so contrary to human nature. For example, tax-funded monopolies have perverse incentives, bureaucracies are inefficient, externalization of costs through taxation and inflation encourages war, etc. On the other hand, organizing society on the market principle, i.e. voluntary cooperation, is consistent with human nature, and hence leads to much better consequences. For example, competition leads to efficient businesses and low prices, private property solves the tragedy of the commons problem, free trade leads to worldwide prosperity, etc. In short, there are many changes we can make, producing massive benefits, without even attempting to change human nature. Accepting people how they are for now, as greedy, unconscious, or egotistical, we can still drastically improve society by focusing on institutional changes in how society is organized. Specifically, this means abolishing useless government functions and having the useful ones provided on the market.

In fact, anarchism and personal development are very congruent subjects. Anarchism creates fertile soil for personal development to flourish, if only because it is the end of war, poverty, and injustice. Personal development is all about taking responsibility for your own life. This means exercising personal control over your life, not being a servant to the government. Personal development is also individualistic, because it focuses first on improving your own life, and making yourself happy. Furthermore, personal development creates people who can accomplish goals and get things done. This is a boon for anarchism, because these motivated go-getters run the world; converting them means influencing the influencers. These are the people who will devise strategies and take action on them; these are the people who will bring about an anarchist society.

And just think, if I converted Steve and he in turn converted a million people, we would have a free society in no time.

Who is your ideal convert?