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How to Opt-Out of the Technocratic State
How to Opt-Out of the Technocratic State By Derrick Broze Inspired by the work of Samuel E. Konkin III As humanity enters the second decade of the 21st century, we find ourselves at the precipice of a Technocratic Age where Artificial Intelligence (AI), Smart Technology, and the Internet of Things are becoming a part of everyday life. This technology provides benefits but comes at a cost--corporations, governments, law enforcement, and hackers are all capable of peering into our lives at any moment. Corporations and governments are even learning to use technology in a way that allows them to be the "social engineers" of society. The concept of social credit is also becoming increasingly popular, and the likelihood that citizens will face negative consequences for choosing to speak about controversial topics or criticizing authorities is only going to increase. In his new book, author Derrick Broze examines the current push towards smart grid technology and explores the concept of Technocracy. Is this obscure political theory from the 20th century the guiding force behind the move towards a digital dystopia? What are the implications for a world that is always plugged in and on "the grid"? How can one maintain privacy and liberty in a society that is based on mass surveillance, technological control, and the loss of individuality? Broze believes the answers to our problems can be found in the work of political philosopher Samuel E. Konkin, and what he termed, Counter-Economics. Konkin outlined a specific strategy and mentality that encouraged "opting out" of the State's economic system, as well as any other system that does not align with one's values. By understanding the importance of Konkin's ideas it may be possible to adapt them to our digital world and forge a path towards liberty, privacy, and equality. Do you want to understand the philosophy which guides our digital world? Are you looking for practical solutions to maintain privacy and liberty? It is time to learn how to opt-out of the Technocratic State.
196 pages, Paperback
Published January 21, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 30, 2020
Good read with some extremely pertinent insights & perspectives on the most important problem facing us at the moment. The economics section isn’t as dry as you’d fear & the tone is bright, breezy & clear throughout. The authors tone is friendly, compelling & relatable.
Only drawback really is it’s incomplete nature, but given that limitation (the author of one of the texts died before completing) it’s presented coherently & the missing chapter notes at the end give you a good impression where it was going.
Only drawback really is it’s incomplete nature, but given that limitation (the author of one of the texts died before completing) it’s presented coherently & the missing chapter notes at the end give you a good impression where it was going.
February 26, 2025
It’s a short book but it actually could’ve been made shorter. The book talks a lot about history and news articles instead of sticking to what people can do practically. It also seems to advocate for anarchy and immorality, which I dislike. The book is by Derrick Broze, but most of the book is actually another book by someone else (Sam Konkin III, who Broze venerates like a god) who died and never finished it.
Technocracy is also known as Technetronic. It means “a world in which the scientific and technological elite centrally plan the lives of all humanity,” “a technologically advanced authoritarian-collectivism where individual liberties are subordinate to the apparent needs of the collective” (10). The book quoting Brzeinski’s book: “Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific knowhow” (10). “Persisting social crisis, the emergence of a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain public confidence would be the steppingstones in the piecemeal transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society” (11). “Increasingly, intellectual elites tend to think in terms of global problems: the need to overcome backwardness, to eliminate poverty, prevent overpopulation, to develop effective peace-keeping machinery. The concern with ideology is yielding to preoccupation with ecology, pollution, overpopulation and the control of disease, drugs, and weather. There is a widespread consensus that functional planning is desirable and that it is the only way to cope with various ecological threats. The fiction of sovereignty is clearly no longer compatible with reality. The time has come for a common effort to shape a new framework for international politics. There is already widespread agreement on developing international peace-keeping forces. Emerging global consciousness is forcing the abandonment of preoccupations with national supremacy and accentuating global interdependence” (11).
The author says the solution to resist technocracy is agorism or counter-economics, which seems to be just free market anarchy. Its enemy is statism, which is viewing the government as the way to bring about change and solutions (17, 170). The goal of agorism is “a stateless society where free people are not bound by the force and coercion of the parasitic state and corporate class” (22).
The way to turn society agorist is for each individual to choose on their own to be self-sufficient and stop relying on the government or stop being transparent with the government. Steps you can take, in no particular order:
Connect with your neighbors/community: freedomcells.org, nextdoor.com, getcell411.com; and start/join multiple cells; make sure every group member knows CPR, gun usage, and other important skills.
Stop using banks (credit unions or foreign banks are better)
Don’t use a credit or debit card
Stop driving (to avoid getting a state ID)
Stop paying income tax (by being self-employed or keeping your income below the poverty line)
Don’t get any city/state licenses
Accept only cash, crypto, bartering, or silver/gold for payment
Educate others to become agorist
Avoid legal residences by living in a trailer or on neglected land, in caves, or in makeshift structures
Move to an area that reflects your values
Don’t disclose personal/financial info to others
Create a fake identity (or several) so the state is only tracking that identity and not your real one
Stop carrying cell phones everywhere
Stop using GPS
Delete social media accounts and apps that track you
Use PGP encryption; VPN isn’t good enough
Avoid facial recognition cameras by aiming lasers at them, wearing shiny/reflective/camo clothing with eyes/mouth designs
Tear down the technology
Either become or connect with hackers and state employees so you can combat the state technology and have an ally on the inside
The rest of the book is Konkin’s words.
The first chapters are about dodging taxes. The IRS supposedly admits that income tax is based on voluntary compliance (76). Use cash or barter so your transactions are untraceable (77). Or manipulate the books (78). “If you skim, skim the same amount each year. If you let one year go by without taking anything off and then take 20% the next, you’re going to get caught” (78). Konkin says it doesn’t matter if more people don’t pay income tax; the government will just collect less money, and that doesn’t hurt your tax paying neighbors (81). Yeah, but the government has services it pays for, which costs money, and if they don’t collect enough to cover those services, they will raise the rate of taxation to cover the deficit, so your tax paying neighbors will have to pay more.
Ch. 4 glorifies the illegal drug trade to show how the black market prospers. So this is the kind of society he wants? Where everyone is doing drugs? Take a look at Portland and San Francisco and Skid Row to see how that turned out. The vlue of the city depreciates because customers don’t want to live or shop where there are dirty half-clothed druggy bums hanging about. The businesses lose money, so they move out of town. The city becomes a ghetto. But I guess the author doesn’t care because all that matters is the drug sellers are making money?
“Some may find it encouraging that there’s a paradise where the masses know how to scorn an economic law-abider” (107). It’s no paradise if people are mean to someone who is just trying to do the right thing.
In communist countries, capitalism still exists, it’s just in the form of the black market (91). In communist Russia, wealthy underground Soviet businessmen had fun spending recklessly and risking huge losses at gambling games (116). This kind of disgusting waste of money is the whole reason why people advocate for communism and/or increasing taxes on the rich. Yeah, people should get to do what they want with their hard earned money, but these Soviet businessmen were black marketers, so they were ripping off their customers who were most likely poor. That’s what makes it disgusting. They ripped off people who were barely getting by, and then they wasted their profits on unnecessary gambling. They didn’t need the extra money they were charging their customers, otherwise they wouldn’t be wasting it gambling. Nothing but greed, pure and simple.
“The relationship between State and money is corruption and fraud. If money is the root of evil, the root of evil money is government” (150). No, the root of evil is greed, which exists with or without money, and no matter who holds it. The lure of corruption will still exist even without government. Government becomes corrupt because of greed, and agorists want to stop paying taxes because of greed.
The book argues that the more government control, the more black market activity there will be. And stuff on the black market always costs more because it’s illegal, in low supply, and risky to be selling it in the first place, and the big profits makes it more attractive to people to become black market sellers (93). So it does no good to try to stamp out capitalism when it’s going to exist whether it’s legal or not. It’s the same thing with guns and drugs. Making them illegal doesn’t make them go away; it just makes them more expensive and somewhat harder to obtain. “If Colombia had legalized production . . . It could have collected nearly $146 millions in taxes last year instead of spending a comparable amount on enforcement” (131). “So much land is in Indian hemp that the valley, one of the richest farm areas in the world, can no longer produce all the fruits and vegetables Lebanon needs” (132). The illegal nature of drugs makes them more profitable than food, so farmers choose to use their land for growing drugs instead of food. This could lead to famine, possibly human extinction.
Because of the above, I decided that the best thing to do when it comes to drugs which are a social ill/hazard, is to make it legal to buy and sell them (this keeps prices low and therefore it’s less attractive to become a seller), but make it illegal to use them (this deters usage). Kind of like how in the US, it’s legal to buy and sell guns, but it’s illegal to shoot someone.
“The death penalty imposed by the Iranian revolutionary regime on drug dealers has dampened their enthusiasm for the trade” (134). Just goes to show you that the death penalty is a great deterrent. And when it fails to deter, it eliminates the problem people by killing them. Win/win.
The authors advocate for trading with gold, but that is impractical. Imagine trying to pay for $100 worth of groceries with a gold bar worth thousands. Grocery clerk wont even accept the gold because its value is unknown and can’t be entered into the computer. And you’d be wasting your gold if you were spending so much on so little even if they did accept it.
One of Konkin’s last written chapters is praising a certain counter-economic gold bank in southern CA, but he never names what it is actually called so that readers could put their dollars there and have it converted to gold or whatever. In the footnotes, it says that it was called “Anthony L. Hargis & Co., A Free Market Business Trust” but the IRS seized their assets in 2004 (165).
IMO, the solution is for the government to bring paper currency back to the gold standard. This would help keep the value of paper currency stable and not inflated, while also allowing people to use a convenient currency.
In my opinion:
Like communism, “agorism” is dependent on people’s good will. And since most people are inherently selfish (which is evident by the agorists not wanting to pay taxes and communists wanting to rob the rich and get free stuff for little to no effort), the system wont work. Imagine a land with no government. You go to make a trade with someone, but they either rip you off, scam you, or steal from you. (Anyone willing to rip off the government to save money can just as easily rip off an individual for the same purpose.) What will you do? Cant call the cops; they wont exist. Pay for private detectives, bodyguards, and executioners? Then how is that saving you money vs. paying taxes for cops? Bring a gun and friends to the trade for protection? Nothing stops the other guy from doing the same thing and shooting you first. In a world with no laws, the strong, violent, unscrupulous people rise to the top and become the new leaders. Then they will take all your stuff by force just as kings did. And with their hoards of stolen wealth they will be able to persuade others to join their unofficial army to intimidate more people to fork over their stuff. This might have been how kings became kings in the first place. The book itself says “In the beginning, the State was a gang of bandits, terrorizing the countryside” (166). Broze’s goal is “to create a conscious agora of free humans who desire to be free of force, coercion, and violence” (193). Well, sorry, getting rid of government doesn’t accomplish that goal. It just changes who the forceful, coercing, violent people are.
IMO, the solution is not anarchy but to remove the corruption from a democratic government. Lower taxes, but dont remove them entirely. Many things taxes pay for are actually wanted by the majority of people. (To make it fair, have everyone vote on what they want to be taxed for!) I’m guessing that even the agorist will call the cops when someone robs his house, and the fire department when his house is burning down. What would it be like to not have tax-paid roads? Have to hire a company to pave a road or build a bridge, and then pay a toll to that company every time we drive over it? I’d rather pay the tax so traffic doesn’t slow down. Plus, once the road/bridge is finished, what motive would a private company have to continue maintaining it? They wouldn’t get any additional money for doing so.
Interesting:
There is “a strong link between war and inflation” (150).
“Price controls, often used to combat inflation . . . Turn almost the entire market into a black market overnight” (151).
“No one can actually obey all laws since many contradict each other” (154). I’d be interested to know what laws do this, but the author doesn’t elaborate or give examples.
John David Garcia found that groups of eight (four men, four women) are best for maximizing the creativity of a group (48).
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden proved that the U.S. NSA can crack VPNs (43).
A password of 50 characters can be cracked by a computer in 3.9 hours, a password of 100 characters would take 74 years, and a password of 150 characters would take a million years (176).
Elon Musk “appears to be walking a path similar to his grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, who was a research director for the Technocracy Incorporated of Canada and national chairman of the Social Credit Party” (12). This was written before Elon bought Twitter and restored its free speech. Some people may still distrust Elon because of his grandfather, but I would remind them that just because you’re a relative of someone doesn’t mean you agree with them. Are you a carbon copy of your grandparents?
In communist Vietnam, “a laborer is entitled to 13 kg of rice a month—just under 1 lb a day—and the scale goes downward to the office clerk, who is allotted less than .25 lb a day” (91). Communist countries always have rationing, and what the government gives is always a small amount. Official salaries in Vietnam are apparently $100 a month (92). People don’t have electricity or phones, at least at the time Konkin wrote this (2018?) (92).
Other anarchy books mentioned by this one:
The art of not being governed by james scott
A century of anarchy by james scott
Society against the state by pierre clastres
Alongside night by j. Neil schulman (fiction)
Technocracy is also known as Technetronic. It means “a world in which the scientific and technological elite centrally plan the lives of all humanity,” “a technologically advanced authoritarian-collectivism where individual liberties are subordinate to the apparent needs of the collective” (10). The book quoting Brzeinski’s book: “Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific knowhow” (10). “Persisting social crisis, the emergence of a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain public confidence would be the steppingstones in the piecemeal transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society” (11). “Increasingly, intellectual elites tend to think in terms of global problems: the need to overcome backwardness, to eliminate poverty, prevent overpopulation, to develop effective peace-keeping machinery. The concern with ideology is yielding to preoccupation with ecology, pollution, overpopulation and the control of disease, drugs, and weather. There is a widespread consensus that functional planning is desirable and that it is the only way to cope with various ecological threats. The fiction of sovereignty is clearly no longer compatible with reality. The time has come for a common effort to shape a new framework for international politics. There is already widespread agreement on developing international peace-keeping forces. Emerging global consciousness is forcing the abandonment of preoccupations with national supremacy and accentuating global interdependence” (11).
The author says the solution to resist technocracy is agorism or counter-economics, which seems to be just free market anarchy. Its enemy is statism, which is viewing the government as the way to bring about change and solutions (17, 170). The goal of agorism is “a stateless society where free people are not bound by the force and coercion of the parasitic state and corporate class” (22).
The way to turn society agorist is for each individual to choose on their own to be self-sufficient and stop relying on the government or stop being transparent with the government. Steps you can take, in no particular order:
Connect with your neighbors/community: freedomcells.org, nextdoor.com, getcell411.com; and start/join multiple cells; make sure every group member knows CPR, gun usage, and other important skills.
Stop using banks (credit unions or foreign banks are better)
Don’t use a credit or debit card
Stop driving (to avoid getting a state ID)
Stop paying income tax (by being self-employed or keeping your income below the poverty line)
Don’t get any city/state licenses
Accept only cash, crypto, bartering, or silver/gold for payment
Educate others to become agorist
Avoid legal residences by living in a trailer or on neglected land, in caves, or in makeshift structures
Move to an area that reflects your values
Don’t disclose personal/financial info to others
Create a fake identity (or several) so the state is only tracking that identity and not your real one
Stop carrying cell phones everywhere
Stop using GPS
Delete social media accounts and apps that track you
Use PGP encryption; VPN isn’t good enough
Avoid facial recognition cameras by aiming lasers at them, wearing shiny/reflective/camo clothing with eyes/mouth designs
Tear down the technology
Either become or connect with hackers and state employees so you can combat the state technology and have an ally on the inside
The rest of the book is Konkin’s words.
The first chapters are about dodging taxes. The IRS supposedly admits that income tax is based on voluntary compliance (76). Use cash or barter so your transactions are untraceable (77). Or manipulate the books (78). “If you skim, skim the same amount each year. If you let one year go by without taking anything off and then take 20% the next, you’re going to get caught” (78). Konkin says it doesn’t matter if more people don’t pay income tax; the government will just collect less money, and that doesn’t hurt your tax paying neighbors (81). Yeah, but the government has services it pays for, which costs money, and if they don’t collect enough to cover those services, they will raise the rate of taxation to cover the deficit, so your tax paying neighbors will have to pay more.
Ch. 4 glorifies the illegal drug trade to show how the black market prospers. So this is the kind of society he wants? Where everyone is doing drugs? Take a look at Portland and San Francisco and Skid Row to see how that turned out. The vlue of the city depreciates because customers don’t want to live or shop where there are dirty half-clothed druggy bums hanging about. The businesses lose money, so they move out of town. The city becomes a ghetto. But I guess the author doesn’t care because all that matters is the drug sellers are making money?
“Some may find it encouraging that there’s a paradise where the masses know how to scorn an economic law-abider” (107). It’s no paradise if people are mean to someone who is just trying to do the right thing.
In communist countries, capitalism still exists, it’s just in the form of the black market (91). In communist Russia, wealthy underground Soviet businessmen had fun spending recklessly and risking huge losses at gambling games (116). This kind of disgusting waste of money is the whole reason why people advocate for communism and/or increasing taxes on the rich. Yeah, people should get to do what they want with their hard earned money, but these Soviet businessmen were black marketers, so they were ripping off their customers who were most likely poor. That’s what makes it disgusting. They ripped off people who were barely getting by, and then they wasted their profits on unnecessary gambling. They didn’t need the extra money they were charging their customers, otherwise they wouldn’t be wasting it gambling. Nothing but greed, pure and simple.
“The relationship between State and money is corruption and fraud. If money is the root of evil, the root of evil money is government” (150). No, the root of evil is greed, which exists with or without money, and no matter who holds it. The lure of corruption will still exist even without government. Government becomes corrupt because of greed, and agorists want to stop paying taxes because of greed.
The book argues that the more government control, the more black market activity there will be. And stuff on the black market always costs more because it’s illegal, in low supply, and risky to be selling it in the first place, and the big profits makes it more attractive to people to become black market sellers (93). So it does no good to try to stamp out capitalism when it’s going to exist whether it’s legal or not. It’s the same thing with guns and drugs. Making them illegal doesn’t make them go away; it just makes them more expensive and somewhat harder to obtain. “If Colombia had legalized production . . . It could have collected nearly $146 millions in taxes last year instead of spending a comparable amount on enforcement” (131). “So much land is in Indian hemp that the valley, one of the richest farm areas in the world, can no longer produce all the fruits and vegetables Lebanon needs” (132). The illegal nature of drugs makes them more profitable than food, so farmers choose to use their land for growing drugs instead of food. This could lead to famine, possibly human extinction.
Because of the above, I decided that the best thing to do when it comes to drugs which are a social ill/hazard, is to make it legal to buy and sell them (this keeps prices low and therefore it’s less attractive to become a seller), but make it illegal to use them (this deters usage). Kind of like how in the US, it’s legal to buy and sell guns, but it’s illegal to shoot someone.
“The death penalty imposed by the Iranian revolutionary regime on drug dealers has dampened their enthusiasm for the trade” (134). Just goes to show you that the death penalty is a great deterrent. And when it fails to deter, it eliminates the problem people by killing them. Win/win.
The authors advocate for trading with gold, but that is impractical. Imagine trying to pay for $100 worth of groceries with a gold bar worth thousands. Grocery clerk wont even accept the gold because its value is unknown and can’t be entered into the computer. And you’d be wasting your gold if you were spending so much on so little even if they did accept it.
One of Konkin’s last written chapters is praising a certain counter-economic gold bank in southern CA, but he never names what it is actually called so that readers could put their dollars there and have it converted to gold or whatever. In the footnotes, it says that it was called “Anthony L. Hargis & Co., A Free Market Business Trust” but the IRS seized their assets in 2004 (165).
IMO, the solution is for the government to bring paper currency back to the gold standard. This would help keep the value of paper currency stable and not inflated, while also allowing people to use a convenient currency.
In my opinion:
Like communism, “agorism” is dependent on people’s good will. And since most people are inherently selfish (which is evident by the agorists not wanting to pay taxes and communists wanting to rob the rich and get free stuff for little to no effort), the system wont work. Imagine a land with no government. You go to make a trade with someone, but they either rip you off, scam you, or steal from you. (Anyone willing to rip off the government to save money can just as easily rip off an individual for the same purpose.) What will you do? Cant call the cops; they wont exist. Pay for private detectives, bodyguards, and executioners? Then how is that saving you money vs. paying taxes for cops? Bring a gun and friends to the trade for protection? Nothing stops the other guy from doing the same thing and shooting you first. In a world with no laws, the strong, violent, unscrupulous people rise to the top and become the new leaders. Then they will take all your stuff by force just as kings did. And with their hoards of stolen wealth they will be able to persuade others to join their unofficial army to intimidate more people to fork over their stuff. This might have been how kings became kings in the first place. The book itself says “In the beginning, the State was a gang of bandits, terrorizing the countryside” (166). Broze’s goal is “to create a conscious agora of free humans who desire to be free of force, coercion, and violence” (193). Well, sorry, getting rid of government doesn’t accomplish that goal. It just changes who the forceful, coercing, violent people are.
IMO, the solution is not anarchy but to remove the corruption from a democratic government. Lower taxes, but dont remove them entirely. Many things taxes pay for are actually wanted by the majority of people. (To make it fair, have everyone vote on what they want to be taxed for!) I’m guessing that even the agorist will call the cops when someone robs his house, and the fire department when his house is burning down. What would it be like to not have tax-paid roads? Have to hire a company to pave a road or build a bridge, and then pay a toll to that company every time we drive over it? I’d rather pay the tax so traffic doesn’t slow down. Plus, once the road/bridge is finished, what motive would a private company have to continue maintaining it? They wouldn’t get any additional money for doing so.
Interesting:
There is “a strong link between war and inflation” (150).
“Price controls, often used to combat inflation . . . Turn almost the entire market into a black market overnight” (151).
“No one can actually obey all laws since many contradict each other” (154). I’d be interested to know what laws do this, but the author doesn’t elaborate or give examples.
John David Garcia found that groups of eight (four men, four women) are best for maximizing the creativity of a group (48).
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden proved that the U.S. NSA can crack VPNs (43).
A password of 50 characters can be cracked by a computer in 3.9 hours, a password of 100 characters would take 74 years, and a password of 150 characters would take a million years (176).
Elon Musk “appears to be walking a path similar to his grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, who was a research director for the Technocracy Incorporated of Canada and national chairman of the Social Credit Party” (12). This was written before Elon bought Twitter and restored its free speech. Some people may still distrust Elon because of his grandfather, but I would remind them that just because you’re a relative of someone doesn’t mean you agree with them. Are you a carbon copy of your grandparents?
In communist Vietnam, “a laborer is entitled to 13 kg of rice a month—just under 1 lb a day—and the scale goes downward to the office clerk, who is allotted less than .25 lb a day” (91). Communist countries always have rationing, and what the government gives is always a small amount. Official salaries in Vietnam are apparently $100 a month (92). People don’t have electricity or phones, at least at the time Konkin wrote this (2018?) (92).
Other anarchy books mentioned by this one:
The art of not being governed by james scott
A century of anarchy by james scott
Society against the state by pierre clastres
Alongside night by j. Neil schulman (fiction)
March 21, 2022
There's some interesting material in the part by Derrick Broze, but with less of both substance and theory than I would prefer. It could have been even shorter with much the same value.
The best value in it is the inclusion of the unfinished text of SEK3's Counter-Economics: From the Back Alleys to the Stars, which includes material of both historical and practical interest. Unfortunately, SEK3 never got around to writing probably half of his book, and it seems that the latter half would have been the more interestingly practical parts. What actually got written was material that is kind of equivalent to the real value of Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (not to be confused with SEK3's New Libertarian Manifesto with a confusingly similar name): practical examples of the real-world utility of various notions of libertarian ideals, where Murray Rothbard's value is mostly about the way the Rothbardian libertarian approach could, would, or did work in the real world once the depredations of the state were eliminated (Murray's philosophical efforts actually not being very well-formed), and SEK3's value in the parts of Counter-Economics he actually wrote is mostly about the way the SEK3 agoristic libertarian approach could or would work as it already has been working to a significant degree in the world where we live now.
That paragraph ended up longer than I expected. Maybe I'll edit later.
The best value in it is the inclusion of the unfinished text of SEK3's Counter-Economics: From the Back Alleys to the Stars, which includes material of both historical and practical interest. Unfortunately, SEK3 never got around to writing probably half of his book, and it seems that the latter half would have been the more interestingly practical parts. What actually got written was material that is kind of equivalent to the real value of Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (not to be confused with SEK3's New Libertarian Manifesto with a confusingly similar name): practical examples of the real-world utility of various notions of libertarian ideals, where Murray Rothbard's value is mostly about the way the Rothbardian libertarian approach could, would, or did work in the real world once the depredations of the state were eliminated (Murray's philosophical efforts actually not being very well-formed), and SEK3's value in the parts of Counter-Economics he actually wrote is mostly about the way the SEK3 agoristic libertarian approach could or would work as it already has been working to a significant degree in the world where we live now.
That paragraph ended up longer than I expected. Maybe I'll edit later.
December 19, 2021
Not a bad book but mostly based on things I already knew.
There are the definite foundations of something worthwhile here, and the majority of the worthwhile sections are in the first 60 or so pages, which Derrick Broze has written.
The rest is a bit of a mess with, the unfinished work by Samuel Konkin taking up the majority of the book. This was all over the place and he seemed to have a fascination for Anarchism and Libertarianism, while at the same time espousing globalist thought tendencies when using women and 'minorities' as examples of the downtrodden.
Take away from the book: Don't help the state, buy land, start a family, look after your family/friends and like-minded people, stay away from big cities and starve the technocracy of oxygen.
There are the definite foundations of something worthwhile here, and the majority of the worthwhile sections are in the first 60 or so pages, which Derrick Broze has written.
The rest is a bit of a mess with, the unfinished work by Samuel Konkin taking up the majority of the book. This was all over the place and he seemed to have a fascination for Anarchism and Libertarianism, while at the same time espousing globalist thought tendencies when using women and 'minorities' as examples of the downtrodden.
Take away from the book: Don't help the state, buy land, start a family, look after your family/friends and like-minded people, stay away from big cities and starve the technocracy of oxygen.
March 27, 2020
Privacy and freedom are being clamped down on from every direction. Whether it's the state tracking your movements, or an advertising company listening in on your personal conversations, the elite technocrats are working hand in hand. Most major cities in the United States and Europe have already become all-seeing panopticons of CCTV cameras, China's social credit score has been rolled out nationwide, and India's Aadhaar biometric ID system is currently in place. It's going to be increasingly difficult to opt-out of the system as citizen rankings become more accepted and prevalent. Only actively working on alternatives to this system will stem the tide. Widespread knowledge of agorism and expanding on any forms of Counter-Economics.
January 6, 2023
Disappointing.
Lots of fluff and cringy platitudes and empty promises about future content.
The only thing of value was the case studies of real world black market operations. But these are hopelessly out of date.
It frankly makes Agorism look like a cult with followers fawning over the unfinished 40 year old scriptures of their prophet instead of someone picking up the torch and moving forward.
Lots of fluff and cringy platitudes and empty promises about future content.
The only thing of value was the case studies of real world black market operations. But these are hopelessly out of date.
It frankly makes Agorism look like a cult with followers fawning over the unfinished 40 year old scriptures of their prophet instead of someone picking up the torch and moving forward.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews