Is Participating in the State Economy Immoral?

There were two recent threads that generated some surprising comments, regarding the morality of participating in the State slave economy.

In the present, a complete boycott of the State economy is infeasible. Almost all economic activity directly or indirectly supports the State. As an agorist, you should focus on the three main evils of the State. These are income taxes, the Federal Reserve, and government regulation of almost all industries.

For example, suppose I were to start an agorist clothing business. It's acceptable for me to buy my raw materials from a State-licensed store if that's the cheapest price. Over time, as the agorist counter-economy grows, agorist vendors will emerge that will be competitive with the State slave economy. Free from the encumbrance of State regulations, taxes, and overheads, a smart agorist vendor should always be able to undercut the State slave economy on price and provide better quality.

Right now, the agorist counter-economy is non-existent. I'm on the lookout for opportunities to begin practical agorism. As I start working as an agorist, I will buy/sell some goods in the agorist economy, and participate in the State slave economy for the rest of my needs. This bootstrapping process allows agorists to pick and choose their opportunities. The most inefficient State industries will have working agorists first. I'm going to focus on low-risk, high-reward industries initially. Other industries, such as agorist health care, have higher risk but also higher reward.

One of my agorist business ideas is offering a treatment of mental illness without drugs. It's actually a simple business to run, since I merely advise my customers to stop taking their drugs and help them manage their withdrawal symptoms; a simple reassurance that the withdrawal effects are temporary should be sufficient. I'd warn the patients to call me instead of 911 if/when they have a panic attack. I'd probably need assistants to manage such a business, because I really should offer my customers 24x7 support, compared with a traditional therapist who you only see for 30 minutes every week or every other week, or a psychiatrist who you see only once a month for a few minutes for a prescription refill. Technically, telling a "mental illness" patient to stop taking their drugs is a crime, because I don't have a State psychiatry license.

I mentioned that I watch NFL football games. One commenter complained "Watching football games is immoral, because the NFL is a branch of the State! If you watch an NFL football game, you're supporting the State."

This attitude is silly. If I wanted to completely boycott the State, I could not do anything at all. I could not purchase electricity. I could not purchase Internet access. I could not buy a computer. I could not purchase food. I could not purchase clothes. I could not see any TV or movies. I could not play computer games. Until there are viable free market alternatives, a total boycott of the State is infeasible.

For now, I focus my anti-State activities where I get the most reward for effort spent. Right now, promoting agorism is the most effective use of my time. I'm looking to make the transition from theoretical agorism to practical agorism. The more successful I am at raising awareness of agorism, the more likely I am to find trustworthy agorist trading partners.

Further, my interactions with NFL TV broadcasts are completely voluntary. Unlike my interactions with the Federal Reserve and income tax, I voluntarily choose to watch NFL games. In a true free market, I would have more choices, but the NFL is good enough entertainment for now.

Even if you didn't like my two posts about football, that doesn't invalidate all my other points. You're free to not watch football if you choose, and ignore those two posts. Both articles contained an interesting aspect of pro-State brainwashing, which is the fact that pro-State brainwashing affects a coach's strategy. A coach's decision is evaluated by outcomes and not a priori odds. When making decisions, pro-State brainwashing causes people to consider the worst-case rather than average-case. If you do worst-case-only-analysis, agorism is infeasible because of the risk of a State raid. If you do a proper average case analysis, I believe agorism is profitable if you're clever about minimizing your risk and maximizing your reward.

I also wrote that I was planning to put a Google AdSense widget in my blog and RSS feed. This was met with hostility by one/several Anonymous commenters. I have no idea if all Anonymous comments are published by the same person or different people. For this reason, people who use a consistent fake name are better than Anonymous. I recognize the made-up name, and can recognize repeat commenters. For example, you have a reasonably good idea about who "FSK" is, even though it's a made-up name. (In Blogger, I believe there are no uniqueness restrictions on usernames. I believe someone else could make up a username "FSK" and impersonate me, but you'd notice when you clicked on the link to look at the profile.)

If I put up a Google AdSense widget on my blog, I'm supporting the State. That income is automatically reported to the State and I must pay income tax on that profit. Further, Google receives the bulk of the actual AdSense revenue paid by advertisers, and Google is a branch of the State like all large corporations.

If I want to avoid working for the State, I'd also have to refuse any wage slave job. I could not accept any on-the-books work if my goal is to completely avoid supporting the State. The counter-economy is not yet sophisticated enough for me to do this.

I noticed this post by Mike Gogulski, where he refused a job for the State. The fallacy in his reasoning is that *ANY* on-the-books work supports the State via taxes. Suppose I have two choices. I can do $10k of work directly for the State, or $10k of work in a wage slave job. Suppose my income taxation rate is 50%. In the $10k wage slave job, I contribute $5k directly to the State. Similarly, if I accept the $10k job working directly for the State, I pay $5k directly back to the State in taxes. (In some countries, income on State jobs is tax-exempt. I'm ignoring that possibility here.) If I don't accept the $10k State job, someone else will take it, still getting paid $10k but perhaps doing marginally worse work. However, by refusing the direct State job, I am forced to accept a marginally lower salary. Overall, the net damage to the State by my refusal to work directly for the State is negligible.

"I refuse to work directly for the State" is an attitude that only works when vastly more than 50% of the population has been convinced "The State is evil!" By that time, the State has already lost anyway. Once a vast majority of people have been convinced "The State is evil!", then it's already all over for the State. In the meantime, if you refuse to work directly for the State, then someone almost as qualified will gladly take your place.

In *ANY* corporate wage slave job, you're supporting the State. If you let the State steal from you via the income tax and the inflation tax, you're part of the problem and not part of the solution. The agorist economy is not yet sophsiticated enough to pay me a decent full-time salary. For now, I work in the slave economy while promoting agorism in my spare time.

Is it immoral for me to put a Google AdSense widget on my blog, earning maybe $10-$20 per month, if that means the State also earns another $50 per month? Given the context of a completly corrupt State economy, that is not immoral.

Also, even if I solicit donations, PayPay and checks are also automatically reported to the State. You would have to mail me physical metal or Federal Reserve Notes to avoid the reporting requirement. If people started mailing me silver coins or Federal Reserve Notes, that would probably draw the attention of the bad guys. An agorist free market banking system is needed, based similarly to the hawala system.

It is silly to refuse to put a Google AdSense widget on my blog because the bad guys get the vast majority of the profits. It is silly to refuse a corporate wage slave job because the bad guys get the vast majority of the wealth generated by my work. It's going to take another few years to get an agorist counter-economy started. In the meantime, I need to work as a wage slave to support myself. If I make $10-$20 via Google AdSense, then I can reinvest the profits in web hosting, move to my own domain, and start offering other services besides blogging. For example, I want to write my own PHP forum/AgoristBay engine, and for that I need to move to hosting my own site.

Suppose I pursue my "promote agorism via standup comedy" idea. Suppose I am successful, and get invited as a guest on the David Letterman show. Should I refuse, because my guest appearance would support the State via taxes? No. I should accept, because it's an opportunity to promote agorism. An AdSense widget on my blog is the same thing, but on a smaller scale. If I earn some profit via AdSense, I can then reinvest that in making a better site via moving to my own domain. Eventually, like Steve Pavlina, I might get enough non-AdSense revenue for it to make sense for me to remove AdSense from my site. It isn't immoral for me to promote agorism and show a profit at the same time. In the present, the only way for me to do this is via State-sanctioned businesses. The agorist free market economy is still nonexistent. It isn't immoral for me to work in the slave economy until a real free market gets more sophisticated.

In the present, the State has a monopoly of nearly all economic activity. All on-the-books activity directly supports the State via taxes. Once the agorist counter-economy is advanced enough, I can buy and sell goods and services in the agorist free market. In the meantime, it isn't immoral to participate in the State slave economy.