The New Underground Railroad
I was chatting with my son tonight whilst reading Hucklebery Finn, when we came to the part where Huck and the slave Jim are trying to get to the Free States. My son mentioned that they could use the underground railroad.
It got me to thinking. The underground railroad "was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th century Black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause"--was a network of people helping slaves to escape, to get away from oppressive regimes.
Now, slavery means legal ownership of another person. Legal ownership means the legal right to control. Although the antebellum form of slavery has been abolished (in the US at least), the state still maintains legal ownership over us: it claims some ownership rights in our bodies when it claims the right to conscript us, regulate us, jail us for using drugs or evading taxes. So there is still slavery, of another form. It's partial slavery, perhaps, but it's slavery--bureaucratic, inescapable, cloying, repressive, democratic slavery. (For more on this see my What Libertarianism Is.)
So, given that there is a modern analogue to chattel slavery, namely state taxation, fines, jail, conscription, regulation--what would the modern analogue to the underground railroad be? Maybe we ought to use that as a modern metaphor: refer to institutions and ways of fighting taxation as a modern Underground Railroad, or try to design a more carefully orchestrated one designed to help people evade state taxes, etc. For example, imagine a data farm on a little island nation, or some kind of banking secrecy system, that we promulgate as The New Underground Railroad--heping you escape tax slavery. Something like that. Any legs? I'm all for it. Maybe we need... The Underground Railroad Party...
***
Also, see my comment on one of Tucker's Mises blog threads:
RWW: "I was planning to do just that (and post the PDF [of a hard to find book] somewhere unrelated to Mises.org)..."
Yes, post it on The Underground IP Railroad! A new network of IP abolitionists helping to free orphaned books chained by the shackles of copyright!
Update: from readers:
- You may want to take a look at Tim May's Cyphernomicon, which he wrote in 1994; an adaption appeared in Vernor Vinge's "True Names."
- The underground railroad ends in New Hampshire: that's where liberty is taking its last stand. If it (the freestateproject) doesn't work there, then all hope is lost.
- It's called expatriation, Stephan. That's about the only route out of this Leviathan legally.
- I brought an idea like this up when I attended [a libertarian seminar]. I said that there should be networks of nonviolent, civil disobedience that help conceal and defend tax evaders, etc before and after capture, respectively. I don't know if the libertarian movement is strong enough yet to have an effective network, but that's how the ball will role when the game really gets going.
- Thank you for this excellent post and your suggestion for a new, modern Libertarian analogue. Well done! I'd like to recommend a companion analogue / battle cry: in the words of Butler Shaffer's two year old grandchild, "let's break the cage." - Onward and upward!
Comments (22)
Brian
"Underground IP Railroad" aka torrents, eMule, etc
Published: August 19, 2009 9:55 AM
Magnus
This proposal fits well with my general life-strategy: to ignore the state. It doesn't exist. It's imaginary. (There are, of course, scads of armed lunatics running around threatening me and wearing odd uniforms calling themselves agents of this non-existent "state", but I have learned how to keep a low profile, and generally they leave me alone.)
BTW, there's nothing metaphorical about today's version of slavery. Not all slaves were forced into menial agricultural labor. Some were allowed to become literate, and were hired out to work as employees of third parties, sometimes in middle-class jobs, like bookkeeping and such. The slave-owner owned all of the slave's wages, of course, but as a matter of practicality, owners allowed the hired-out slave to keep some portion of his income, to feed and clothe himself, thus to enable the slave to keep working.
How that arrangement differs from what is today called "income taxation," no one has been able to explain to me.
States are simply over-sized tax farms, and we are the livestock.
Published: August 19, 2009 10:52 AM
Stephan Kinsella
Magnus, the contention that the state does not exist is ridiculous and is mere word play. Come on. No offense, Stefan Molyneux (see this lecture @ 79:55).
Published: August 19, 2009 11:48 AM
Stephan Kinsella
Magnus, the contention that the state does not exist is ridiculous and is mere word play. Come on. No offense, Stefan Molyneux (see this lecture @ 79:55). See also below:
Published: August 19, 2009 11:48 AM
Ken
If the state can kill you, it's real enough to be going on with. Magnus's second and third paragraphs are hard to argue with, though.
I think there are a number of small and relatively low-risk things that can be done while people reacquaint themselves with the habits of liberty. Some of these things have additional benefits.
I am not in the habit of tsking about consumerism -- I think people can decide for themselves what to do with the fruits of their labor -- but when one makes, repairs, or barters for something rather than buying new, one develops useful skills ("masters one's stuff," as Patrick Crawford put it) and pays neither income, sales, nor payroll tax.
I really like "let's break the cage" as a motto.
Published: August 19, 2009 1:38 PM
Magnus
Magnus, the contention that the state does not exist is ridiculous and is mere word play.
I guess I should explain what I mean. As I see it, whenever anyone talks about what the state should or should not do, or legitimately may or may not do, what they are talking about is the authority of the state. And, as I see it, the "authority of the state" is mere word play.
The "state" is not any physical thing or person, but the idea that certain designated people, at certain designated times, have some mystical special privilege called "authority" to do all sorts of things that no one else can do. It is mere label and interpretation of someone's violent action.
This authority, this supposed right, to commit acts of violence that others may not commit is not merely a bad idea, it is non-existent. The right to keep slaves, for example, may have been considered legal by certain governments, but there never was such a right. The putative slave-owners may have held people captive, and they may have convinced each other (and even some of their capitves!) that they had rights of ownership over other people, but we now see that there never was such a thing as a property right of ownership over another person. That claim to property was always false.
So, too, with the state in general. The state is a mere abstraction, a pure fiction. It is, in essence, a mode of relationship whereby one person (the governor) asserts the right to aggress against the other person (the governed). That right (which they call the "authority of the state") is pure fantasy. As Spooner said about the Constitution, the authority of the state is a mere idle wind.
People who call themselves agents of the state are real, of course. But the state they claim to represent is not. They can call themselves agents of Zeus, too, but it doesn't make Zeus real, either.
Published: August 19, 2009 2:28 PM
(8?»
Stephen, the contention that the state does exist is ridiculous and is mere word play.
Magnus has it exactly right. Belief in abstractions, no matter the number of believers, does not make them real.
To those who insist upon arguing this, I say "As the elected Emperor of the Universe*, I hereby command you to shut your hole!"
Obedience to the state you see, is based strictly upon beliefs of legitimacy of their monopoly of violence. If you believe they can hurt you and get away with it, you obey. Otherwise, you don't bother to shut your hole, as my state lacks legitimacy in your eyes.
There is no state now. There was no state yesterday. There will be no state tomorrow, either. There are only those who wield power over others.
*the election was unanimous, I won in a landslide 3-0
Published: August 19, 2009 4:11 PM
Stephan Kinsella
(8?» writes:
"Stephen, the contention that the state does exist is ridiculous and is mere word play.
"Magnus has it exactly right. Belief in abstractions, no matter the number of believers, does not make them real.
"... There is no state now. There was no state yesterday. There will be no state tomorrow, either. There are only those who wield power over others."
When I read things like this, I am reminded of Brian Doherty's great analysis of the income tax protestor nuts (see On Conspiracy Theories):
"The tax honesty movement’s vision of the world is fantastical in another way. It is not merely obsessed with continuity; it is magical in a traditional sense. It’s devoted to the belief that the secret forces of the universe can be bound by verbal formulas if delivered with the proper ritual."
You guys remind me of this.
Published: August 19, 2009 4:32 PM
bob
I've always wondered how effective it would be to set up a tax evasion insurance network. Doesn't the IRS only catch 1-3% of tax evaders annually? Imagine if the pool of evaders grew by 30x, knowing that if they were caught, they would be compensated by an insurance pool of funds!
The difficult part is decentralizing it, while keeping it free of fraud. It should be a matter of public record who is actually busted by the IRS. Now, as to knowing whether someone compensated that person, and is thus entitled to compensation by members of the network they are in touch with is another story.
Published: August 19, 2009 4:47 PM
Magnus
I don't know why you feel the need to be so hostile. I'm merely trying to explain what I mean and be careful with language, not gather support for a conspiracy theory.
The state depends, for most of its power, on convincing its victims that it is legitimate. Most of its power is not in bullets and tanks, but in symbols. The theatrics of its courts. The badges and uniforms of policemen. The pomp and circumstance of its official rituals, like "swearing in" ceremonies. (Talk about belief in magic! How is the Presidential swearing-in ceremony not a magic rite? Obama even re-did his, privately, in the Oval Office, just to be sure it was done "correctly.")
I don't know much about tax protesters or what the "tax honesty movement" is, but I would point out that expecting government agents and government courts to seriously consider arguments about the legitimacy of governmental authority to tax you is, well, stupid. A waste of time, at best.
A statist's raison d'etre is convincing you that they have the authority to tax you. Arguing a tax case would be like the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy of 1066 A.D. submitting a well-sourced legal brief to the Normans and expecting them to concede that the conquest was illegitimate. That's gonna fall on deaf ears.
Published: August 19, 2009 4:54 PM
Russ
I don't know about the legal validity of the income tax protestors' claims, but the idea that they are basing their protest on is not the idea of magical formulae, but the idea of *law*. If they could prove that the US Federal government knowingly violates its own laws by taxing us, that would be a very powerful argument against the legitimacy of the government. Ideas have power.
Published: August 19, 2009 5:11 PM
Sean
I see you're no politician Stephen. However, I love things that are politically incorrect. We're not slaves in the sense that we can freely move about as we please from country to country, owner to owner. We are slaves in the sense that there is no country where we can escape some form of state ownership over our lives (none that I know of). As for an underground railroad party: where might we locate this party? This view is still very much the minority. Then again, so is an economic education. I was watching this video of a compilation of Peter Schiff getting railed for his (what turned out to be dead on) analysis of the economy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw&feature=PlayList&p=40B2367E3A57D2A9&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12.
Even though he was right on, it is still these other mainstreamers that have the followings and their fixed spots alongside their like-minded brethren on the news networks. Just like the keynesian policies used by FDR which have come back to bite us in the arse are now being repeated by Obama.
Published: August 19, 2009 7:30 PM
Sean
Want to talk about slaves, these kids never had a chance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtGrp5MbzAI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmungowitzend.blogspot.com%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=16
I encourage watching the whole thing just to let it sink in
Published: August 19, 2009 7:33 PM
BioTube
Even Hitler knew that the only way to capture the intelligent was to do it young.
How long before the Reichstag burns?
Published: August 19, 2009 8:32 PM
Shay
I think Magnus' point is similar to: We are all free to do as we please, and this cannot ever change. The reason one find resistance when trying some things it that others are exercising their freedom to provide that resistance. This way of looking at things is useful for cutting away layers of abstraction that obfuscate what's really going on in some situations. It's a tool for better understanding things.
Published: August 19, 2009 9:52 PM
Gil
How can slavery be necessarily wrong when Walter Block shows certain forms of slavery are compatible with a free society?
Published: August 20, 2009 1:33 AM
Concerned Citizens
If you want to break the ties that bind you first have to stay informed. Everyone in the Libertarian movement calls for an end to taxation, and completely free markets, but the fact is that isn't how the world operates. We need governments to exist because they are supposed to benefit us, the problem isn't "government", it is THIS government. They are shills to special interests and corporations, they espouse "free trade" at all costs, and they happily collect checks as Americans lose jobs.
Check out www.EconomyinCrisis.org for daily content about the rapidly deteriorating state of our union.
Published: August 20, 2009 12:12 PM
Michael A. Cle
The state depends, for most of its power, on convincing its victims that it is legitimate.
True. But for the most part, it has succeeded, and can afford to use force on the remaining dissidents. Those of us who believe it to be illegitimate are quite a small minority.
Published: August 20, 2009 12:20 PM
Ann Onamous
So the question is, "Do we need some sort of informal organization dedicated to helping people break the law in ways which we believe are moral?"
Very provocative.
Published: August 20, 2009 3:36 PM
Mrhuh
Concerned Citizen, you are right that we need a better government, but the only true government that doesn't bow down before special interests is a direct, participatory democracy, which requires voting not on "representatives" but on actual laws, referendums, most notably through jury nullification (which helped nullify prohibition and runaway slave laws). Of course, this also requires decentralization to the city-state. A great book to read on this would by "Socialism and International Economic Order" which is available here at this website both to buy and in literature.
Published: August 20, 2009 5:09 PM
Vanmind
I grew up near the settlement that became the inspiration for "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and also near Chatham, Ontario, where John Brown came to plan his (violent) abolitionist plans.
No point to my post here, just saying...
Published: August 20, 2009 5:36 PM
Sean
"concerned Citizen, you are right that we need a better government, but the only true government that doesn't bow down before special interests is a direct, participatory democracy, which requires voting not on "representatives" but on actual laws, referendums, most notably through jury nullification"
Mrhuh
you still have the same "two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner" problem as in any democratic system. Minority is completely ignored. If we left majority to decide laws right now we would still see the trend towards social spending and redistribution. This would essentially subsidize the corruption of "representatives" with the ignorance of the mass and their good intentions. In Capitalism, the larger middle class will always be gaining at a slower rate than the minority upper class and though they're better off, they will still be able to point to the entrepreneurs and CEO's with envious eyes and redistribute money back down to themselves through "majority rules." I don't see this as a solution to much.
Published: August 20, 2009 9:22 PM