Crypto-anarchism is a political ideology that advocates the use of cryptography and other technologies to protect individual privacy, freedom, and autonomy from state interference. Crypto-anarchists believe that by encrypting their communications and transactions, we can create a decentralized and voluntary society that is immune to censorship, surveillance, and taxation. The term crypto-anarchism was coined by Timothy C. May in his 1988 "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto", where he declared: "Crypto Anarchy is the cyberspatial realization of anarchism, transcending national boundaries and freeing individuals to make the economic arrangements they wish, consensually." May was one of the founders of the cypherpunk movement, a group of activists and hackers who promoted the use of cryptography and digital currencies to challenge the authority of governments and corporations. The cypherpunks were influenced by libertarian and anarchist thinkers such as Murray Rothbard, David
Growing like space isn’t an Issue
"Smoking is the leading cause of statistics" - Fletcher Knebel
Norway has the highest tax on tobacco products in Europe and a pack of cigarettes costs around $15 if you buy it over the counter. As you can imagine, as a side effect of this there is a high amount of smuggled cigarettes flowing into the country - Who could resist the deal of making double, sometimes triple, your money back on your investment, by crossing borders with some smokes?
In an official estimate, about 20% of all cigarettes sold in Norway circumvent the state taxation in some way.[1]
When you think about the price of a pack of cigarettes, the cost of growing it and the hours you put into farming it, it is probably one of the most profitable crops you can grow legally here in Norway. If you want to sell it to others though you go from a gray area straight to the black market in the eyes of the state if you try to avoid "Smoking Kills" labels on your design and go through untaxed channels for sale.
I and two work buddies spent the last summer testing this idea in practice by growing tobacco-plants on our balconies, splitting the workload of curing, shredding and rolling the lovely things into cigarettes. We ended up with a product worth about $1,000 per balcony (if we take store sale prices, so about 60 packs each) and it was a nice confidence booster.
We weren’t quite as productive as one of my idols: Audrey Silk, a tobacco-activist, both political and practical, from New York[2] with a whole apartment full of tobacco plants in the process of growing or leaves hanging around getting cured. It was still encouraging to see our yield and all the potential for small space gardening if you use the space properly.
This unknown hero had tented on the estate to keep a close eye on the crop. Very dedicated to his craft, indeed. Bonus points for getting away too! Shame the plants got destroyed. (or did they?) But, there is always another garden to grow.
One of my balcony-friends even decided to break out on her own next year and do her own thing, designing her own packaging and presentation. If given the opportunity to balcony-grow more Nicotiana Rustica, I’ll definitely do it if someone wants to surrender parts of their living space for some crops[3]. I have something else in mind though: Cigars! I posted the question on Twitter here, please feel free to answer in the comment section here if you’d be interested in a product like that!
Sharing Space is Caring Space
"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them" - A.A Milne
But, as fun and exciting gardening with permission are to experience, read about or watch - It is the one without it that is more interesting. Both where you grow things and what you grow.
In the department of hitting two birds with stone in regards to the where and what: Someone had planted thousands of Cannabis plants on Rupert Murdoch's estate, a story so damaging to his brand that he has made serious effort to scrub any mentioning on it off the internet. Luckily, someone took a snapshot of the original Fox-story and stored it on the Internet Wayback Machine. It's going to be there for as long as their servers are up.
If you try and Google the story, you will only find obscure forum-posts talking about the incident, so the internet cleanup crew Mr. Murdoch has on his payroll is pretty good. Dangerously good.
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| Open Source, Hidden Garden - On the topic of how to hide your plants from others |
The new trend in Swedish mainstream media is to try and figure out how to stop different gangs, mafias and independent thugs to run the drug trade and fill their pockets, terrorize locals and being unpleasant. Most of the analysis made about the structure of what is going on is fairly surface deep and comes from a place of guessing, rather than knowing. Some politicians have started promoting decriminalization and some promote a monopoly solution. Sweden is one of the few countries in the west that still has a monopoly of takeaway alcohol, all purchases have to go through the state-run stores, Systembolaget, so why not try that with recreational drugs too?
Swedes sure love their monopolies.
While that is going on in the background, the outdoors-loving cannabis growing Swedish community, tight nit and semi-anonymously (posting on sites like Flashback and Telegram), share seeds and tricks of the trade and engage in discussions on everything a prospect would like.
Some of the herb-growing practitioners use their own space to get the precious plants out of the ground, but many use public land or property someone else owns, yet never use. Of course, every one of them has one thing in common, they have to hide it from everyone: Potential snitches, police officers, other smokers and so on. But the growers that use someone else space run a much lower risk to get caught themselves, outsourcing most of the risk to someone else.
The community is happily documenting away, taking pictures of their green 'babies' and even with non-optimal growing conditions plants could yield a good 150-200g each. The price for that amount on the Oslo streets? $2,500. Per plant. Blows me and my friend's little tobacco project out of the water.
The community is happily documenting away, taking pictures of their green 'babies' and even with non-optimal growing conditions plants could yield a good 150-200g each. The price for that amount on the Oslo streets? $2,500. Per plant. Blows me and my friend's little tobacco project out of the water.
- Alex Utopium
If you are interested in more on this subject, I just released another Patreon-supporters only article called “Open Source, Hidden Garden” that goes a bit deeper in on the subject of hiding your crops from preying eyes and how the Open source-mentality of the gardening community is such a blessing that we need to cultivate.
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[2] One of my favorite pieces interviewing her and covering some of her homegrown tobacco-growing: “Homegrown Tobacco: Local, Rebellious and Tax free”. New York Times. (English Text).
[3] A great book on the topic of growing tobacco that I’m sure will interest everyone that are fans of odd and curious books: “Survival Gardens Guide to Growing Tobacco for Smoking, Barter, Medicine and $$$” - two best bucks I’ve spent on kindle in a while!
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