I haven’t written in a while, so I’m just going to start. It’s fun trying to just get words on a page at times, even if it’s literally just writing about writing itself. I don’t know why, but I find the process soothing. It's a creative instinct that I don’t let out enough. That’s actually the funnest part about singing in my opinion, not necessarily to sing it perfectly, but to sing it in your own way, it is fun and pleasant. I’m not sure what I want to create in my life.
I think that’s one of the biggest struggles with working a job that can be uninspiring - it reflects in me that I’m relatively uninspired. I think I also loathe putting in effort - I’m a damned lazy creature. That’s got to be correlated with my love of video games. And that’s okay, but it also needs to be balanced with pursuing more fulfilling activities. I would prefer it be more balanced. When playing the games I play, I try to play in a creative manner. I feel like I test my morals through these strategy games. I understand that the games' constraints are more limited than life itself, but at the same time, there are rules to which society holds us accountable.
I think it’s hard to think about what all my anarchic studies have produced for me - in essence, rejecting the acceptance of authority as a rule. I challenge it now because I see how it is used to assert domination. That’s my trouble with property. Not that there aren't things which people justly have authority over, but that some things they don’t and, historically, “justice” was proved in that plane by combat. That has never been reversed. Our modern societies have never shaken themselves from this asserted authority.
We mask it today through victory in finance. War is expensive, unless you’re getting paid by a government to create the means of its production, then it is profitable. Worse yet, our public funds finance the enforcement of intellectual property over these means. The State then pays royalties to the developer that it already paid to develop it by allowing it a monopoly on the production methods themselves. This racket is the backbone of our Military Industrial Complex. We have sustained it since the 2nd World War, waging war across the globe ever since. As soon as WWII was over, we were in Korea. And as Korea ended we were in Vietnam. All the while, waging a Cold War with Russia that kept our families in permanent fear of Nuclear Annihilation.
Once the U.S.S.R. fell, we glimpsed at what peace could feel like, but even that was an illusion as we continued to protect our Interests abroad, which is a euphemism for installing governments that would respect the private property claims of American citizens in foreign territories. Unfortunately, what that means is that our government has enforced the collection of economic rents that have only been enforced by puppets of the men who own the globe “behind the curtain.” There may be conspiracies that occur in shadowy rooms, but I think more than that, open self-interest justified by force has simply been the bedrock of U.S. foreign policy since the Great War.
And what lies at the heart of all of this war? Disputes over dominion. Disputes over who gets to collect the rent, who gets to claim taxes on that rent, and who gets to use that rent to collect interest on its use. The greatest switcharoo ever pulled was used to finance all of this domination. Our permanent protagonist, the United States, lent everyone gold in the form of U.S. Federal Reserve Notes with the Breton Woods agreement. Then, by Executive Order, Nixon then said that Federal Reserve Notes were no longer redeemable for gold, instead they were solely redeemable for all debts Public (taxes) and Private.
This legal alchemy allowed the U.S. Federal Reserve banks to essentially print gold with their lending, and once the World saw through this game and began to call America’s bluff, we simply reneged on the agreement. But this is simply par for the course for the State built on reneging on agreements with the Natives of its Lands. But seeing this clearly actually gives me hope.
I see through the fallacious ownership of Land the same way the Abolitionists saw through the fallacious ownership of man by man. I think it will be harder than ending Slavery to end the ownership of Land. There’s too much wealth to be gained by its monopoly, by which I mean state-enforced cartelization. The greatest trick the Landlord ever pulled was to convince his tenants of his Absentee Property Right to claim rent on the Land that the Landlord no longer occupies. If the Earth is truly ours to share, the Landlord deserves only the rent on the improvements, the results of his labors, not the Land itself.
If the Landlord wishes to own the Land outright, to have Title to its occupation at his discretion, he cannot be said to have any Natural Right to it. That is just the same sophistry as Divine Right by another name. If he wishes to have this authority, I can only see him justly possessing it by indemnifying the community which cedes it to him. I also think that laborers will begin to see that by choosing their own money, rather than accepting that which is dictated to them by fiat - the gross institution known as Legal Tender - they will see that the Usurers who cartelized the money supply truly have no power over them. The power to create money is as simple as showing your consistency in paying back IOUs with useful services or any mutually agreed upon tender.
Once you can see these issues with clarity, you can see that our States have adopted customs of Absentee Ownership over what is justly the commons. Benjamin Tucker presented this in a simple message to digest with his Four Monopolies. You see that the institution of the State is one of violence, with Masters of Men whose rule is rationalized through the exertion of their economic dominion. This dominion is illusory in Right, but real in fact through the machinations of the State. It is claimed in the name of freedom, but it is enforced with cloaked violence. However, we continue to support it because we have yet to lose our societal lust for unlimited individual power and we worship those who strive to wield it. To free ourselves of our rulers, we do not need to replace them with new rulers. We need to see that we must stop seeking the Right to rule - this rule is given economic power through individual dominion over what is justly our commons. Unless we reject it and we cease to pursue it ourselves, we will forever be indentured to those who lure us into their service with promises that one day we too could control the stick behind the carrot.
We need only the guts to take responsibility for ourselves to limit our claims to dominion. As we limit ourselves, we will grow stronger together, interdependent and resilient against the encroachment of our just claims to the commons by those who do not believe justice demands a limit to their dominion.
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