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Showing posts from October, 2019

Weathering With You: An Agorist Perspective

If someone asked you what your favorite emotion was, how do you think you’d answer? For many people, I suspect they would answer “Happiness”, “Joy'', or some variant of exclusively positive emotion. Someone may think more meticulously and answer with “Contentment”, which while a positive emotion has a lot of nuance attached to it. However my answer to that question is what I feel others would consider more orthodox: Bittersweet. Pleasure accompanied by suffering, not exactly most people’s first pick but from my perspective pain is necessary in order to enjoy the pleasure that life gives you. Perhaps I'm over-romanticizing but there’s something to desire from looking back fondly at times where you were hurting and seeing yourself in a better place in the present. Perhaps you finally have moved on from “The one who got away” and can look back on those times with fondness. Perhaps you are sharing stories of a friend or family member at their funeral and though they may never w

Stop Pushing the Envelope: Consequences of US Foreign Policy (Past & Present)

So Iranian oil tankers get bombed by the Saudis. Funny how that happens to slide into your Friday morning news cycle there. Almost like it was intentional or something. Now Trump is sending 3000 troops to help the Saudis fight off Iranian threats. What threat if they were the ones who got hit?! Maybe he’s making up for removing troops from Northern Syria and leaving the Kurds high and dry? Supposedly he pulled 2000, so now maybe he’s thinking “I’ll raise you 3000!” It’s just like his economy! Cut taxes on the corporations so they can buy back their stock and artificially raise the value of their shares! Only the mal-investment in this case isn’t your devalued capital, or losing your house in the stock market, or your job in the next great recession (which if we’re being honest it just the pussy-version of saying depression), but rather the lives of 3000 Americans. If that’s what you consider “high-risk, high reward”, well that’s the Art of the Deal for ya, I guess? The

The Agorist Calculation Problem

I don't think it was a coincidence that Konkin was so inclusive in describing who is acting in his counter-economic idea world - It is quite a crowd, after all [1]  - and on top of that, the actions themselves are more often than not something you didn't have to participate in all the time. You can slide in and out of the gray and white markets as the need to do so arise. Life-style Agorism is very hard to keep 100% pure the stronger and more involved the State is around your person and those you are trading with on the outside of your personal sphere of control. Every action that gives those thieves in government a slightly less lucrative payday is valuable, no matter how small. Or, to use Konkin's own word: "'Libertarian' has nothing to do with what one  says  but what one  does "  [2] My hypothesis is that Konkin understood all this and that is the reason the manual for Agorists is so open-hearted: He (consciously or subconsciously) wa

Empire of Islands: Geopolitics of The Philippines

Sunset on the island of Coron Empire refers to a grouping of territories under one common authority. Although nowadays it’s more applicable than ever, the term has peculiarly disappeared from the political lexicon. The term connotes romantic images of Rome and Britain at their heights. As the Irish say, the sun never set on the British empire but that’s only because God couldn’t trust the English in the dark. So it goes with all empires... For all intents and purposes, the Philippines is such an empire - albeit, an empire of islands. Like Rome & Britain, the Filipino state struggles to maintain control of its periphery. From the relief map, we can see the state’s territory extends over three island groups. Luzon in the north, which is mainly Christian and hosts the capital, Manila. The southern island chain, Mindinao is largely Muslim & the two groups spend most of their time vying for control of the central island chain, the Visayas.  Tensions