I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Jillette has previously identified as a libertarian, and stated in 2003 that he may consider himself an anarcho-capitalist. He was a fellow at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.
Huh. Thanks. I didn’t even know he was a libertarian, only knew him as an atheist skeptic guy (besides the illusionists part). And according to Wikipedia, seems he’s no longer a libertarian:
In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism […] adding “Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, ‘It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,’ and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate.”
Wow. He has completely changed. Good on him for seeing the errors of his ways. Also, I’m going to paste a bit before what you pasted to add context, because I think it’s worth adding.
In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic after a libertarian group asked him to speak at an anti-mask rally. “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change”
In 2020, Jillette distanced himself from aspects of libertarianism, particularly surrounding COVID-19. In an interview with Big Think, he stated, “[A] lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass.” He went on to elaborate, “[I]t seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism.”[53]
AnCaps are among the most extreme libertarians. Lots of more moderate libertarians think of them as kooks, similar to how leftists think of tankies.
I myself believe in altruism, mutual aid, but also smaller and more effective government. I view large governments and large corporations with skepticism: concentrations of unchecked power are prone to abuse.
I just think humans work better in smaller groups overall. That’s where empathy and personal relationships actually work. When everything turns into statistics we lose our humanity.
I’m of the mind that all of the forms of anarchism are utopian. They assume people will behave in certain ways which are contrary to reality. When people don’t behave in those expected ways the whole system breaks.
Game theory helps, as does training in computer security for similar reasons. Basically the idea is that you need to always assume people will try to break the system somehow if they think they can benefit from it.
There have been anarchist communities out there before. (Anarchist proper, not ancaps.) Most (though not all) of them have been destroyed by states who… well, not to put too fine a point on it but: states who hate freedom. I don’t necessarily know what people mean by “utopian”, i think anarchism is quite practical in a lot of cases but i think it also faces a number of significant obstacles.
I use the word utopian because it makes assumptions about people that aren’t true. Utopian systems can’t survive staunch and organized opposition.
This is a basic requirement for any system to survive. Look at the human body: the immune system is constantly fighting off threats. A person without an immune system (full blown AIDS) has a very difficult time surviving for very long.
I think that’s an ineffective and inaccurate way of looking at things. It’s not reflective of the reality of the situations where we’ve seen anarchist communities rise (and fall). The Ukrainian anarchists all got killed by the Soviet Union, but so did everyone else. They beat the hell out of the monarchists, capitalists, etc in the region and had a good chance at establishing a major anarchist force in the world but ultimately the Soviets betrayed and killed them all. Does the fact that the Soviets killed all the capitalists and monarchists, too, mean their philosophies are utopian? After all, they couldn’t fight off the Soviets in the same way the anarchists couldn’t. They were even less effective at doing so in a lot of ways.
Yeah, the governments of the world do tend to all murder any anarchists they can get their hands on but that’s not an argument in favor of big state governments. That’s not really an argument against anarchism, either. Really, it’s an argument against big state governments. It’s weird to me that it’s held up so much as if it “disproves” anarchism or whatever.
That said, if you want examples of anarchist groups that have managed to survive let’s talk about two:
The first is the Zapatistas. This is a small group in Mexico that has been at war with the United States government and Mexican government for decades now. If the US government wants you dead but can’t kill you, i’d say that’s a pretty good “immune response”. There are not a lot of people who can actively fight the US government and survive and there have been many, many, many other leftist movements in Central and South America that the US government has killed in the forty years since the Zapatistas got their start.
The second one is Rojava, aka more properly: the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). They’re a bit younger, only officially establishing their independence a little over a decade ago, but they’re in some ways in an even more hostile part of the world. They’re a larger organization than the Zapatistas, too. It’s unclear what the future holds for them, but then again that’s ultimately true for all states. We’ll have to wait and see.
That’s one of the reasons AnCaps believe in voluntary communities, that way those who didn’t advise but whatever the community’s rules are they can a) be punished based on the rules of the given community, or expelled.
I disagree. Voluntary communities are made up of volunteers. There is nothing coercive about it. Voluntary communities provide a way for like-minded people to live in harmony. If your beliefs do not match the beliefs of a voluntary community, you are free to to argue that your beliefs should be included, leave the community, or start a new one and include anyone who believes the same things you do.
Granted within current systems you can do the first, but you are completely unable to do either the second or third.
I live in the USA. But I did not volunteer to live in the USA. I certainly may be able to move to a different country, but I certainly won’t be able to find a country with the same beliefs as I have. (The States with our Constitution and Bill of Rights is likely the closest to my beliefs).
Obligatory Libertarian Police Department
spoiler
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
What a great read, thanks!
Why Penn Jillette though? Is he for some reason popular with libertarians?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Jillette#Politics
Huh. Thanks. I didn’t even know he was a libertarian, only knew him as an atheist skeptic guy (besides the illusionists part). And according to Wikipedia, seems he’s no longer a libertarian:
Wow. He has completely changed. Good on him for seeing the errors of his ways. Also, I’m going to paste a bit before what you pasted to add context, because I think it’s worth adding.
I just didn’t want to make it bulky, so tried to bring in the core statement. My thought was that for more details, the Wikipedia link is right there.
I understand the sentiment, but so many people never click on the link.
AnCaps are among the most extreme libertarians. Lots of more moderate libertarians think of them as kooks, similar to how leftists think of tankies.
I myself believe in altruism, mutual aid, but also smaller and more effective government. I view large governments and large corporations with skepticism: concentrations of unchecked power are prone to abuse.
I just think humans work better in smaller groups overall. That’s where empathy and personal relationships actually work. When everything turns into statistics we lose our humanity.
AnCap here. Unfortunately in our world there is no possible way to create an AnCap society, so you live within the bounds of what you have.
I’m of the mind that all of the forms of anarchism are utopian. They assume people will behave in certain ways which are contrary to reality. When people don’t behave in those expected ways the whole system breaks.
Game theory helps, as does training in computer security for similar reasons. Basically the idea is that you need to always assume people will try to break the system somehow if they think they can benefit from it.
There have been anarchist communities out there before. (Anarchist proper, not ancaps.) Most (though not all) of them have been destroyed by states who… well, not to put too fine a point on it but: states who hate freedom. I don’t necessarily know what people mean by “utopian”, i think anarchism is quite practical in a lot of cases but i think it also faces a number of significant obstacles.
I use the word utopian because it makes assumptions about people that aren’t true. Utopian systems can’t survive staunch and organized opposition.
This is a basic requirement for any system to survive. Look at the human body: the immune system is constantly fighting off threats. A person without an immune system (full blown AIDS) has a very difficult time surviving for very long.
I think that’s an ineffective and inaccurate way of looking at things. It’s not reflective of the reality of the situations where we’ve seen anarchist communities rise (and fall). The Ukrainian anarchists all got killed by the Soviet Union, but so did everyone else. They beat the hell out of the monarchists, capitalists, etc in the region and had a good chance at establishing a major anarchist force in the world but ultimately the Soviets betrayed and killed them all. Does the fact that the Soviets killed all the capitalists and monarchists, too, mean their philosophies are utopian? After all, they couldn’t fight off the Soviets in the same way the anarchists couldn’t. They were even less effective at doing so in a lot of ways.
Yeah, the governments of the world do tend to all murder any anarchists they can get their hands on but that’s not an argument in favor of big state governments. That’s not really an argument against anarchism, either. Really, it’s an argument against big state governments. It’s weird to me that it’s held up so much as if it “disproves” anarchism or whatever.
That said, if you want examples of anarchist groups that have managed to survive let’s talk about two:
The first is the Zapatistas. This is a small group in Mexico that has been at war with the United States government and Mexican government for decades now. If the US government wants you dead but can’t kill you, i’d say that’s a pretty good “immune response”. There are not a lot of people who can actively fight the US government and survive and there have been many, many, many other leftist movements in Central and South America that the US government has killed in the forty years since the Zapatistas got their start.
The second one is Rojava, aka more properly: the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). They’re a bit younger, only officially establishing their independence a little over a decade ago, but they’re in some ways in an even more hostile part of the world. They’re a larger organization than the Zapatistas, too. It’s unclear what the future holds for them, but then again that’s ultimately true for all states. We’ll have to wait and see.
That’s one of the reasons AnCaps believe in voluntary communities, that way those who didn’t advise but whatever the community’s rules are they can a) be punished based on the rules of the given community, or expelled.
Congrats, you reinvented the government.
I disagree. Voluntary communities are made up of volunteers. There is nothing coercive about it. Voluntary communities provide a way for like-minded people to live in harmony. If your beliefs do not match the beliefs of a voluntary community, you are free to to argue that your beliefs should be included, leave the community, or start a new one and include anyone who believes the same things you do.
Granted within current systems you can do the first, but you are completely unable to do either the second or third.
I live in the USA. But I did not volunteer to live in the USA. I certainly may be able to move to a different country, but I certainly won’t be able to find a country with the same beliefs as I have. (The States with our Constitution and Bill of Rights is likely the closest to my beliefs).