Freedom's the Answer (What's the Question?)
James Corbett on anarchy with Larken Rose & Keith Knightly
I’m back from spelunking the dark cave of scriptures and ready for solutions! What better than the Corbett Report Solutions Watch. In Freedom is the Answer (What’s the Question?), James interviewed Keith Knight, Managing Editor of The Libertarian Institute and editor of The Voluntaryist Handbook, and Larken Rose, author of The Most Dangerous Superstition and creator of Jones Plantation film.
They addressed Corbett Report comments on anarchy and its feasibility as a governing system—and no, that’s not a contradiction in terms. My definition of anarchy, going back to its etymology, is rule by rules, not rule by rulers. Other terms I use for the same thing are small-scale sovereignty and community self-governance.
As a spoiler alert, I am 100% in agreement with them on the goal, having spent a decade writing my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, on the specific steps to develop an anarchist system of local economics. Within that context, because I always start by defining terms, here’s what I mean by freedom:
The exclusive right of a commonwealth under 200,000 people to control the issuance, taxation and exchange rate of a local currency/ credit system backed by the properties within its borders.
This doesn’t mean communism or communal ownership, it means the community replaces private bankers as the default owner when private ownership changes hands. Housing is the intergenerational transfer of wealth and should incur a debt—to the previous generation and to pass on the gift in a better form to the next generation.
Ninety-seven percent of dollars are issued through mortgages. We spend 30 years (or 60 with dual incomes) working for bankers in exchange for the labor of a keystroke. If you change government without changing economics, there’s no point. And if you change economics, there’s no need to change government. It will be irrelevant.
In my model, there’s no need for all communities to have the same policies. They don’t have the same problems so they shouldn’t be the same. They can experiment and experience the consequences of their decisions, as Larken says. However, it’s good to talk through the pros and cons.
So in this episode, I’ll be comparing the policy decisions I’d make for Terezania with Corbettville, Knightopia and Roseopolis.
The first question was how anarchy would help people in vulnerable situations—the elderly, children in difficult circumstances, the homeless. Keith quoted Anthony Scalia that state welfare creates “Donors without love and recipients without gratitude.” He also cited Niall Ferguson that the Chinese who were outside Communist China did better than those inside it.
For Knightopia, he would have complete trade freedom so competition would make things cheaper, helping people who have less. People who need help could use global systems like GoFundMe. The more private property, the more free exchange, the better off you are.
Larken pointed out that people naturally care, which is why they keep electing politicians to help the poor even though that’s not what they end up doing. All the state can add is immoral violence. Government coercion takes away virtue. People who want to help should give their own money. Be a grown-up and connect with other people who want to be grown-ups and figure out solutions.
James reiterated Larken’s point, that people think “I’m the only one who cares.” And you end up with a gov’t that gives $700 per person in Maui but slips an extra $4B to Ukraine. It’s the system that turns people into assholes, making them have to get as much as possible because they’re always left insecure.
The four cornerstones of my anarchist ideology is that 1) people are inherently good and 2) when they behave badly, systems are to blame 3) all systems can be changed and 4) all communities are equally capable of self-governance. So I agree with James that we do other people a disservice when we think we’re the only ones who care. Giving the benefit of the doubt that other people are as good as we are is even more important than giving money.
The essence of this question is ‘should we have need-based systems like communism, socialism, democracy?’ I’ve made the point elsewhere that need and greed are two sides of the same coin, each justifying the other. My system is based on reciprocity. As a parent, I find that whatever you reinforce, you’ll get more of.
I live in the white guilt capital of the world, Santa Cruz, with the exception of Oakland/Berkeley. If we were to get a big pot of money and ask gov’t what to do with it, they’d say, “Build housing for the homeless!” And then we’d get more homeless.
I call the local credits backed by mortgages carets. The one rule under my system of economic anarchy is that all carets issued must be distributed equally for all citizens within your commonwealth. How you define citizens is up to you but must include any children born to citizens so that everyone is a citizen of somewhere.
In Terezania, I structure these distributions as targeted dividends so they can only be spent in four areas: locally produced food, wellcare, education and home improvements. This requires everyone to do something useful to earn carets before they can be spent any way they want.
Let’s look at Keith’s trade freedom that he’d establish in Knightopia. I once did a lot of research on Firestone plantations in Liberia, where they use third-generation slaves, often children working in noxious conditions. I tried to get my city council to not drive our kids to school on buses with Firestone tires. But it’s impossible! The anti-corruption laws require them to take the lowest bid. Slave labor is always going to be cheapest.
On a practical level, it also means that money will be flowing out of your commonwealth, so it won’t continue to circulate and create more productive labor.
Larken talks about the other side, the freedom to sell your products or home to whomever you want. His example makes it seem like people want to keep out blacks or immigrants, but that’s not who’s buying up the homes. It’s hedge funds from Saudi Arabia, wealth funds from China, the WEF.
To discourage this in Terezania, I set a 2:1 exchange rate for the imperial currency of dollars to carets, and I price all housing in carets. So a hedge fund would have to pay twice as much as someone who lives or works there. And on the flip side, I put in a 50% tax on money extracted from Terezania. Any rents to institutional landlords would be cut in half.
That’s a primer on my system and I hope that one of these gentlemen invites me on their show so that we can—not debate—but dream together. Look at how we can build the communities we want that don’t need to be the same. We can compare what the consequences would be of policies like intellectual property rights. If we abolish them, others might not trade with us but we could be part of a network of open source ideas.
For more on this topic, here’s the other one I did responding to Larken Rose:
I talk about Julian Assange and RFK, the Porcupine Freedom Festival, Larken Rose and "If You Were King" and the authority problem. I look at money as a means of organizing labor and YOUR job as czar to design a self-organizing system of distributing the wealth to enable the best for families and communities—as they define it. I reinvent police and homeowner's insurance in my fiefdom.
And this one is on James and Keith responding to The Unnecessary War:
James Corbett and Keith Knight give 10 lessons from Churchill, Hitler & the Unnecessary War by Pat Buchanan. Ron Unz covers the same in American Pravda: Understanding WWII, and talks about prominent historians 'disappeared' from history for writing about it. The real history is shocking!
Hi Tereza ... where can I purchase your book?
Ah to dream!
In my dream, and which I taught for a while, money actually disappears.
Thank you.