Get Out Now

 Getting out is important. If only free people can make a free world, then those people in
government, military, religion or corporations cannot make a free world because
they are under contract to abide by company policy, which in every case is slavery.

Getting out. Nobodycan do it for you. But, inspiring to note, nobody can stop you from doing it.

Fifty Ways to Leave Leviathan

2 October 2013 by Max Borders and Jeffrey A. Tucker

Online at: http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/fifty-ways-to-leave-leviathan

State management of society is not only contrary tohuman liberty; it is also unworkable. It cannot achieve what it seeks to
achieve, which is often all-round control of some sector of economic and social
life. The attempt provokes a social backlash. People find loopholes and
workarounds or just invent new ways to make progress possible. This is because
people will not be caged. They struggle to be free and sometimes they succeed.

Over the last century-plus, the Leviathan State hasgained the upper hand, sometimes through big periods of upheaval but mostly
through a million daily nicks and cuts. What if this process is being reversed
in our time? What if the apparatus of control is being undermined with a
million acts of entrepreneurship that evade the State’s attempt to plan and
command? There is a fundamental asymmetry between the structure of government
and the structure of a networked people.

In our times, innovation has provided people with moretools. And often they use these tools to get around the barriers that
politicians and bureaucrats have erected. Some of us take note of them every
day. And while we may revel in their cleverness, we don’t take time to look at
the big picture. Here is where this phenomenon of small ways to break out from
and break down the system—which pop culture often labels “breaking bad”—gets
really interesting.

Consider the post office. It has not been privatized.It’s just fallen gradually into disuse thanks to the advent of email, texting,
and thousands of other ways of communicating. It may stick around for another
decade or so, but as a kind of zombie. Surely its days are numbered.

This is the archetype. Government was supposed toprovide but didn't. Now markets are picking up the pieces and making new
products and services that facilitate better living, which reduces the role and
significance of public policy. Every time the State shuts a door or closes a
loophole, people find and exploit two more doors, two more loopholes.

If this model of disruption and defiance is part of alarger trend, it provides a very revealing look at a strategy that
liberty-minded people ought to intellectually codify, encourage, and practice.
We’ve mentioned it before here when we’ve talked about “hackingLeviathan” and Kirznerian “alertness”to undiscovered methods and approaches.

Compared with politics or the slow road of masseducation, the work of hacking Leviathan through innovation is a promising road
forward. Something’s happening. It’s like the Singularity for civil
disobedience. Pandora’s box. Perhaps a series of innovation tidal waves. A
whole lot of people are participating in a great unfolding. And if you’re
drawing up grand social engineering plans, throw them out. The world is about
to get a lot more dynamic.

Here are just 50 ways people are working around Stateobstacles:

1. Airbnb: Thisservice allows people to rent out their homes for a couple of days. It offers
competitive prices compared to hotels and gets around the whole of the
regulatory apparatus, zoning control, union monopolies, and other barriers to
entry. Of course, in some states, hotelcartels aren’t happy.

2. Uber: Taxishave their licenses, which drive up fares. It’s a cozy and well-protected
cartel. Uber lets you get around this system, finding great rides in clean cars
for better fares—all while checking (gasp! unlicensed) chauffeurs with
reputation ratings.

3. Bitcoin:Government ruined money long ago. The market has made an end-to-end crypto
currency. It could mean death for the euro, the dollar, and other fiat
currencies. The implications are awesomeand inspiring.

4. Privatepower generation: Big companies like Google are tired of dealing withregulated utilities. They fear outages and need more reliable power. They’re
generating their own power. There are only a few, but then again there used to
be only a few rich guys using cellphones. That’s where innovation happens.
Then, the price goes down and the quality goes up. Moore’s Law kicks in.
Someday this trend could challenge the grid.

5. Conciergehealthcare: Doctors are opting out of Obamacare and the third-party payersystem. Pay them up front and pay them out of pocket. Get the care you need and
go buy a catastrophic plan if you can (instead of taking whatever’s on the
Obamacare exchanges).

6. Bitmessage:Want to evade the surveillance state? Bitmessage is the latest in crypto
communications, poised to replace email. A few more tweaks on the user
interface, and we are good to go.

7. Email: The process of destroying the USPS as amonopolistic provider of mail is pretty much a done deal. It took 20 years, but
now email is the new first-class mail. Meanwhile, the government’s service
loses billions each year. Such a moribund provider could go for decades as a
tax-subsidized monopoly. But the market moves on.

8. Silk Road:This anonymous website lets you use crypto currency to buy illicit substances.
You might find this alarming but consider: the site brings a beautiful peace to
an unstoppable market that government has otherwise caused to become violent
and deadly. (Shutdown on Oct. 2. Remember Napster. The hydra lives.)

9. YouTubecopyright rules: They were once simple, but as remixing, parody, and coversevolve, the exceptions to strict copyrighting are growing. Now a Miley Cyrus
video released at sunup is covered 1,000 times before sundown. In effect, the
initially imagined scenario of copyright—government confers monopoly status on
every piece of art—is dying before our eyes.

10. 3-D printing:Not only will people circumvent unconstitutional gun restrictions (like Cody
Wilson has), but people will be able easily to get around patents and
regulations by printing their own high-flow showerheads. When everyone is a
maker, no one is regulated.

11. P2P lending: Prosperand Lending Club let people bypassbig incumbent banks and crowdfund as borrowers and lenders. Where there is
communication, there are deals being made.

12. Health coverage cooperatives: It doesn’t have tobe just Christian organizations thatset up health coverage coops. These groups cover catastrophic healthcare costs
for members, bypassing—for now—Big Insurance and the government regulatory
apparatus. (See also this group.)

13. The raw milkmovement: The government has tried for decades to suppress thisunpasteurized brew, but fans won’t be stopped. Buyers’ clubs are everywhere.
The more the feds crack down, the more the demand for the product grows.

14. Private arbitration: If you have a dispute withsomeone, the last place you want to end up is in the thicket of the
government’s court system. People are opting for private arbitration. Private
arbitration may be nothing new, but the extent of reliance on it is. There are
a zillion bricks-and-mortar arbiters. Online, www.judge.meis now defunct, but Net-Arb is stillworking. Stay tuned.

15. Escrow: How do you guarantee that you will getwhat you pay for online? Escrow.com is gladto hold the payment and verify the transaction before rewarding both sides with
the results. It is security for property that lives in the cloud—and no
government courts (or even laws) are involved.

16. Space tourism/exploration: XCor, SpaceX, and lots of other groups aregetting into the private space race. They’re doing NASA—only better, faster,
and cheaper.

17. YouTube stars: People like Lindsey Stirling, RebeccaBlack, and a thousand others are bypassing the old centralized system ofgetting an agent and begging a monopolistic record label to take control of
your life. Lindsey has made sharp YouTube videos that have launched her into
stardom, complete with lucrative tour dates. Such decentralization is happening
in movies, music, and more.

18. TOR/DeepWeb: This browser for the crypto web bounces your originating IP address all
over the planet. That way you can surf anonymously, i.e., away from the eyes of
the NSA panopticon. (What is a cypherpunk?)

19. Universal publishing: At one point, a few peoplemaintained the primary conduits of information. Blogging and Web publishing
make it easier to express yourself. Censorship has become nearly impossible.
The newspapers are finally staking out their territories online. But they are
losing control of the primary conduits of information. Tumblralone has 50 million unique publishers. (Liberty.me will offer a new,distributed platform soon.)

20. Death of prescriptions: You can order yourinexpensive drugs from many countries now—safely,cheaply and securely (and with no prescription). No need to give your
overpriced Obamacare doctor or Big Pharma a cut.

21. Medical marijuana/decriminalization: States arerelaxing their prohibitions on marijuana. It’s becoming increasingly clear that
the drug war is lost and that some drugs, like cannabis, have real therapeutic
value. Regardless, prohibition is a fool’s errand and punitive measures are
increasingly viewed as cruel and unnecessary. Even as the crackdowns continue,
these are the first signs of the Drug War’s obsolescence and popular dissent.

22. Expatriation:Sometimes if you don’t like it somewhere, you just have to leave. It’s easier
and easier to find better climes, whether for weather, taxation, or culture.
Expatriation from the United States is reaching record levels in 2013. While
this number is still only in the thousands, the option to leave is there and
more people are availing themselves of it than ever.

23. Startupcities: People in developing countries are starting to understand that richcountries are rich for a reason. So poor countries are starting to import good
institutions, or are “rezoning” for prosperity (all while the rich countries
are going in the wrong direction). Outside of China’s special economic zones
(SEZs), Honduran startup cities are a new experiment worth watching.

24. Seasteading: Blueseedis one of the earliest examples of entrepreneurial ventures that will take
people to the sea in search of opportunity and superior rule sets. The Seasteading Institute has alsosuccessfully worked with a Dutch firm to design the first seasteading modules.
The harder the tax and regulatory State pushes, the more viable the sea becomes
as a place to live and do business.

25. Radicalization of media arts: Goodbye networktelevision from the Cold War era and hello subscription-based content. The
shows that are running (“Breaking Bad,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Mad Men,”
“Boardwalk Empire”) sport themes of defiance, disruption, and the persistence
of freedom in the face of regimentation. Not only is the ala carte model disruptive, the content is subversive.

26. Private schooling/homeschooling: If you don’t like the governmentschools, take your kids out. Millions of families are doing it. Some are even
forming virtual coops and getting content from online sources.

27. Online education: Are you after a real educationor a signaling mechanism? MOOCs and other onlinesources (like Khan Academy) arereducing the costs of education—away from the inflated guild of higher ed and
publicly funded indoctrination camps.

28. Alternative nicotine delivery: From a revival of roll-your-owncigarettes to snus (smokeless tobacco) to e-cigarettes, people areresponding to health concerns and ever-higher cigarette taxes—just not the way
anti-tobacco zealots think they should. Cue increasingly shrill backlash.

29. Farmers market cooperatives/urbanhomesteading: Farmers market coops have people trading goods in kind.People barter and contribute their labor outside the auspices of government
skimmers. Plus, people in big cities are growing their own food—USDA free.
(Here’s a tip!)

30. Private neighborhood security: Check out new appslike Peacekeeper. It’s just one exampleof the ways local communities can reduce the cost of security and emergency
services—and keep it local. (Here’sanother in Detroit.)

31. Barter markets: If you are in business, you knowthe score. If you can trade services or goods directly, it’s best to forego the
paper trail. You donate programming time, I’ll give you web space. You promote
my product, I’ll promote yours. If money doesn’t change hands, you can avoid
all kinds of problems with the government. Barter has become a natural response
to the tax collector.

32. Email/social media swarming: With social media, itis possible to ignite popular outrage against the machinations of legislators.
The outcry against SOPA/PIPA is a good example. The floods of protest against
invading Syria had an effect on the pullback from that near disaster, too.
Political activism will never be the same. It’s desktop democracy. Aaron Swartz livesforever.

33. Camera phones: One powerful weapon against theState is probably in your pocket right now. Consider Copblock and the Peaceful Streets project. They keep copsaccountable through tech-enabled “eternal vigilance.” The more people who stand
up in the face of intimidation (or simply film from their windows with a zoom
lens), the better.

34. Private venture capital markets. There’s a problemwith Fed-set interest rates. No one really wins. Since the policy of
zero-percent interest rates began, a gigantic non-bank lending and borrowing
sector has picked up where the banks left off. And its rates are set by the
market.

35. P2P file sharing: The survival and persistence offile sharing through “torrents” shows that civil disobedience in the face of
intellectual monopolies is alive and well, despite a 20-year war on the
practice. The more the monopolists fight, the more file sharers win.

36. Speed: At a certain point, no one bothered driving55 any more (not just Sammy Hagar). People sped en masseuntil Congress decided to let the states set speed limits—higher. It’s a
paradigmatic case: People disobeyed until the law was changed. When people
lead, the laws will follow.

37. Crowdfunding:If you need startup money, you can pass around the virtual begging bowl. But it
can’t be just any old thing. You have to convince the crowd to let go of their
resources. But that might be a much lower barrier to get over than snagging the
attention of venture capitalists or prying a loan out of your bailed-out bank.

38. Socialentrepreneurship: The welfare State tends to make people dependentsupplicants. Foreign aid does, too. But entrepreneurs with causes are creating
better ways of helping the poor, from microfinance to the return of mutual aid
societies like the Christian healthcare coops cited above. The social
entrepreneurship sector is enjoying a tech-enabled renaissance despite the
State. (See also youngsocial entrepreneurs, and athanos? Social entrepreneur support program.)

39. Medical tourism/opt-out: For a while now, peoplehave been taking their medical problems to other countries that offer
comparable care more cheaply and without all the red tape. In fact, people used
to come from Canada to get care they couldn’t get in the land of “free”
healthcare. Medical inflation is so bad in the United States now that a lot
more people are leaving to get treatments abroad, or optingout of the third-party payer healthcare cartel. Meanwhile, some people areleaving to get treatments the FDAhasn’tapproved.

40. Self-managing organizations: Firms like Valve and Morning Star show that you don’t need formalhierarchies—“bosses”—for an organization to run well. These firms mightteach us that the world doesn’t need bosses, either.

41. Tax sheltering: Value creators are tired of havingtheir rewards raided by the people with the guns and the jails. Apple, for
example, uses a multinational tax-sheltering scheme so complicated that mere
mortals can’t possibly follow it. The result: extra capital to make the iPhone
ever cooler. Politicians whine but consumers cheer. (Just when you thought Swissprivacy laws were finished, there’s no doubt that clever people will findnew ways to hide their capital from the State.)

42. Supperclubs: Underground foodies are paying visits to chefs and great cooksoutside the auspices of the public health nannies. Every home is a restaurant,
every kitchen an income earner. Similar supper clubs sprouted up in Chicago
when aldermen in that city banned foie gras (a ban that waseventually overturned thanks to popularoutcry, civil disobedience and counter-special interests).

43. Offshoring and inshoring: Sometimes corporatetaxes, union controls, and regulatory control are all just too much. U.S.
corporations take their production elsewhere (currently the United States has
the highest corporate tax rate in the world, when state taxes are taken into
account), even as foreign corporations venue-shop for the best production
facilities in the United States (away from high taxes and cartelized unions).

44. Food trucks: Bricks-and-mortar restaurants loveregulations because they can keep a boot on the necks of competitors. That’s
why cities that tolerate food truck culture are giving these restaurants a run
for their money. If you can stand to eat your tacos on a park bench, it might
be worth hitting a food trailer—the ultimate in microentrepreneurship. They are
often at the forefront of experimentation and variety.

45. Social networks and Skype: Millions of people fromall over the world are interacting as if they were next-door neighbors. Subtly
this blurs the lines created by nation-states and creates a far more
cosmopolitan world—one that exposes the arbitrariness of jurisdictions that you
may or may not happen to have been born in.

46. Driverless cars: The technology is here. Itcertainly changes the calculation for distracted or intoxicated drivers, and it
fixes the problems with public roads the State won’t fix. Driverless cards will
give us safe, automated travel and deny the State funds it gleans from hassling
people for both major and minor offenses that result from bad infrastructure,
human error, and poor judgment. It’ll just take one or two areas of the world
to deploy them successfully to unleash the change.

47. Crowdsourcing privateequity: Kickstarter and other online fundraisers were required by law torestrict their services to donations and not sell stock. But what about
premiums for donations? How big can they be? The limits are being tested. In a
few years, you will be able to buy startup equity with Bitcoin and the whole
world will benefit. In any case,the loophole has been already been created.

48. Private conservation: You can be anenvironmentalist without agitating to have pristine lands given to the State
for taxpayer management. Groups like the Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited
do great things when they don’t turn land over to the State. And private
individuals are optingto conserve land rather than sell it.

49. Immersive environments: We’re in the process ofcreating the Matrix around us. From Second Life to immersive games, we may soon
see linkages between the virtual world and the crypto economy that result in
interesting new forms of order.

50. Twitter revolutions:Having troubles with a tinpot dictator or religious zealots? Organize, demonstrate
and overthrow with Twitter #overthrow. (But be careful you don’t end up
installing a regime that’s worse than the one you helped overthrow.)

Now that you see the machinery in operation, step backfor a moment. Imagine that the world spinning through time has been like an
onion. Over the years human beings have wrapped layers of progress around our
blue orb. First it was the Stone Age, then the Agricultural Age, then the
Industrial Age, then the Commercial Age. Now we live in the Connected Age.

In this most recent era, a lot of interesting stuff isstarting to happen—the most interesting of which is the increasing obsolescence
of the State. It doesn’t know anything we don’t know, and the only thing it can
do that we can’t is force everyone, at gunpoint, to fund its whims. Our
knowledge is crowdsourced, and we never stop learning from each other. We are
integrated as in one global, self-ordering city. A few people are starting to
see that the circumstances of birth and culture are contingent and the lines
are blurring. National boundaries are less tied to the people within them.

The cost of connecting with other like-minded peopleis going down. Each of us in our private spheres of activity can get on with
the business of interacting without the need for terra firma or permission.
It’s as if we’re creating communities in the sky and commerce in the ether.
It’s nobody’s business because millions of us simply make it so. It’s the
ultimate form of democracy.

There may be a technological arms race with“authorities” in the short term, but unless said authorities are willing to get
really totalitarian, really fast, the pace of interconnection and creation will
simply overwhelm them—even as they try to regulate it all away (with the best
of intentions, of course).

This is the way bad laws and bad regimes die.Enforcement becomes impossible. Exceptions are made. Authorities get exhausted.
People feel emboldened. It happened this way with anti-usury law in the Middle
Ages. Eventually they became unviable in the face of modernization.

And in the days of Prohibition, the law meant everyother neighbor was participating in the black market. Repeal came not because
Al Capone and his competition were playing shoot-‘em-up. Repeal came because
Americans learned the hard way that you cannot legislate morality—not easily,
anyway. And the bootleggers didn’t have Snapchat, Bitcoin, and Tor.

Now, imagine not just alcohol, but 10,000 simultaneousproducts, services, and communities operating concurrently. And in each of
these 10,000 products and services, imagine markets of millions.

It seems there are a few possibilities for the Stategiven its largess and power:

· Grow rapidly along with theseindustries—metastasizing throughout this economy, creating millions of virtual
gestapo-like agents that would have to cross national borders to track people
down and keep them in line;

· Make examples of a few people in each of the10,000 industries with punishments severe enough that it would frighten the
rest and keep everyone else in line, causing many of those grayish industries
to go out of business; or

· Skim a little bit off all of it, but tolerateit.

In any of these scenarios we can imagine cooperatinginternational agencies, maybe coalescing into something that would be a big,
rather rabid INTERPOL with the eyes of the NSA and the aspirations of the UN.
It’s not inconceivable that this creature would come into existence. In fact,
it seems rather likely. After all, these new communities and markets would be
international.

But how long will the State be able to keep up withthe dizzying pace of innovation, as this civil disobedience hydra sprouts two
heads in the place of any one severed? Unless the State gets really repressive
really fast (and we’re all prepared to let them), its functionaries will not be
able to control the swarms and the gales of creative destruction those swarms
bring with them. Fifty ways will become 50,000. This is our present. This is
our future.

Max Borders is the editor of TheFreeman and director of content for FEE. He is also founder of Voice & Exit and the author of Superwealth:Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor. www.fee.org/authors/detail/max-borders

Jeffrey Tucker is a distinguished fellow at FEE, CEOof the startup www.liberty.me and publisherat LaissezFaire Books, www.fee.org/authors/detail/jeffrey-a-tucker

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