FAQ
About Page Questions
(Step One)
“Are inalienable rights based on a belief in God?”
No, for more on this please read The Ethics of Liberty.
“How do you know there are inalienable/natural rights?”
Natural rights are based on the principle of self ownership (also known as personal sovereignty). A person needs some sort of principle in order to live rationally. Rationality is the ability to use reason. Reason is based on some sort of belief about what is right and wrong. To determine if an action is right or wrong, you have to judge whether or not it breaks one of your principles. For example: Sally saw Bill steal cookies from Joe. Sally decided that this was wrong because she believes that theft isn’t alright. In this case, her principle was “theft isn’t alright.”
“Okay, then why should we agree with the principle of self ownership (AKA personal sovereignty)?”
To say that you don’t own yourself is to say that someone else has a higher claim on your life than you. That’s an authoritarian ideology. The natural consequence of denying natural rights is to surrender to the first authority that affirms its own law. If you stand for nothing, then you’ll fall for anything. If any individual is unable to decide what their rights are, then they will surrender to those who tell them what their rights are (the government for example). Do you own yourself or are you just a piece of government property?
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(Steps Two and Three)
“I still don’t believe taxation/government is coercive.
Can you explain this more thoroughly?”
You’re saying, “It’s alright to use violence to acquire funds for government programs.”
For more on why taxation is theft, read the first four and a half pages of this and the following:
A Handout for Statists, Politics Hurt, Freedom: My Anti-Gov, Tax Slavery Sucks, Who Owns You?, Stop Statism.
“What if the taxes are used for good things?”
Using the stolen money for “good” things does not justify the original theft of that money. The ends do not justify the means.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -C.S. Lewis
“Isn’t initiating coercion sometimes a necessary evil?”
From an ethical point of view, coercion cannot even be regarded as a lesser evil or a necessary evil: since it cannot produce conscientious behavior, it can never bring about the fulfillment of any ethical value. You’re not going to create a system based on justice by doing unjust things. The ends don’t justify the means. Think about it, this is a blatant example of Orwellian double-speak: “We take your money away for your own good!”
“What about limited government?”
That’s just a rewording of the question before this.
“There can be no such thing as ‘limited government,’ because there is no way to control an entity that in principle enjoys a monopoly of power…”
-Joseph Sobran, The Myth of Limited Government
“Isn’t taxation just rent that you have to pay because of your social contract?”
Alright, for one moment let’s think of it as rent, a non-negotiable rent, backed by the so-called social contract, a complete fiction which no one ever accepted because it was never lawfully offered, and one which may at any moment be unilaterally altered by the Landlord, who may reduce the quality of the services, add more services for which the tenant hasn’t asked (yet for which they still have to pay), may raise the rent, may reclaim the property, may evict the tenants on a moments notice, etc. That’s not the sort of rental agreement that a free people would tolerate.
“Isn’t government necessary for cooperation?”
No. This issue is addressed on page five of this.
“Isn’t government necessary for a defense or justice system?”
No. Read Chaos Theory, it was written to explain these topics. Excerpt from Chaos Theory:
“This book is dedicated to those who believe government is a necessary evil: You’re half right.”
These issues are also addressed starting on the middle of page six of this.
“Without government, wouldn’t gangs/warlords take over?”
This issue is addressed here and page 12 of this.
“Without government, wouldn’t the rich take over?”
This issue is addressed on page 13 of this.
No government means: no corporate welfare, no corporate bailouts, no corporate lobbying, and no bribery of government officials.
“The $150 billion for corporate subsidies and tax benefits eclipses the annual budget deficit of $130 billion. It’s more than the $145 billion paid out annually for the core programs of the social welfare state: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance (excluding Social Security and medical care).” -The Boston Globe
“When buying and selling are controlled by Washington, the first things to be bought and sold are polititians.”
-P. O’Rourke
“Without government regulation, wouldn’t the environment be trashed?”
No. Anarchism is much better for the environment. Read this: Earth Liberation
If you would like to learn more about what you can do to save the environment, then I’d recommend reading Ishmael and Beyond Civilization.
“Is there a specific type of anarchism that this site endorses? For example: Anarcho-Syndicalism, Market-Anarchism, Green-Anarchism, etc.”
We want to unify the anarchist movement. The similarities between those groups are much more important than their differences and the bitter rivalries between them are harming the freedom movement as a whole. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting amongst themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery.”
Each variety of anarchism has important ideas to bring to the table and you should read up on each of them if you want a deeper understanding of this extremely significant philosophy. One good place to start is the Wikipedia page on anarchism.
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(Steps Four and Five)
“Of the resources you mentioned in step five, which one is your favorite?”
Food Not Bombs. Their website is great for finding information about starting your own FNB group or helping out an existing one. They’ve educated thousands about the injustices of government and they’ve been so successful in distributing food that they have saved lives in countries across the world. I’m actually planning on making a Food Not Bombs website (I own the URL foodnotbombs.tv) but until then just check out these two videos (one, two).
“What is the Ishmael Social Network about?”
Ishmael is an award winning book about why it has been so hard to stop environmental destruction.
Beyond Civilization is a book, by the same author, about what you can do to help.
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(Steps Six and Seven)
“My kids depend on me, so it would be too risky to complete steps six and seven.
What should I do?”
Just work on steps four and five until you are 100% comfortable with continuing.
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If you have any questions that weren’t mentioned here then feel free to send them to this email.
