A Japanese take on some Aristotelian logic?
BACK in MY day
....wait, wait...no....that didn’t come out right...
Back when I first joined Steemit.com,
The place was flooded with anarcho-capitalists, voluntaryists, and the like. I came in on the heels of a large wave of anarchists flocking to the platform after the explosion of “the Berwick Post”—an introduceyourself-tagged three-paragraph masterpiece that raked in a tidy $15,000 dollars or so—and had my mind blown.
To be fair to myself here, I had signed up prior to the payout fever that struck the Ancap community then, and had made a few posts, but they hadn’t done really well.
Hey, I was just starting, right?
With the encouragement of a few special users who were kind enough to help set me on the right track (here’s looking at you @sterlinluxan), I redoubled my efforts, and set out to do things right. Dig in, and write from the heart, paying extra attention to aesthetics and layout as well.
When I did this, I found success. I can still remember the first 25 dollar post. I was ecstatic. My wife had no fucking idea why her idiot husband was jumping around the house yelling about “My Steeemit post!”
That was then, this is now.
Steemit is still beautifully packed with anarchists. The Voluntaryist community here is fantastic, and second to none, really, in my humble estimation.
One of the things, if not the thing, that has made this platform as strong as it is, is a solid understanding of sound economic principle in the core development team. Actually, this understanding is the basis for the very creation of the platform itself. Don’t believe me? Just read the Steem white paper, and some of Dan Larimer’s ( @dan ) old posts here on the platform.
Steemit was built for the individual. Essentially, it is a platform that was created by a voluntarist, for voluntarists. Now, that may rub some that don’t identify with the label the wrong way, but I hope you’ll let me chase this point a little further to clarify.
If the platform was started as, say, a social media platform by Catholics and for Catholics, or something along those lines, I wouldn’t even be here. Many of us wouldn’t, most likely. All “voluntarist” or “voluntaryist” or “ancap” means is that one views stealing and violence (not self-defense) as illegitimate. That’s it. The end. I wonder if some of you were unaware that you are already anarchists. We could get into the ins and outs, on that basis—stealing is wrong—of why war, taxation, and all sorts of other state activities are immoral and illegitimate, and I’d love to, but that would take us beyond the scope of this little write-up here.
What is sound economic principle?
BASICALLY, AND I AM NOT JOKING, IT IS THIS:
IF YOU MOVE A FROM POSITION A, IT WILL NO LONGER BE IN POSTION A, BUT WILL BE SOMEWHERE ELSE, OTHER THAN IN POSITION A.
In other words:
YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR CAKE, AND EAT IT TOO.
Things that state “governments” do that Steemit should not do!
Endlessly print new money in order to pay for new intiatives (even “good” ones, or those with noble intentions) thus devaluing the currency.
Attempt to curtail the self-executive autonomy of each user over his or her money/funds. The state taxes you, makes you jump through a million hoops just to get YOUR MONEY, and stands in the middle of every. single. financial. transaction. you. make.
Punish the rich. Lots of people have this weird and actually very greedy idea that just because someone has a lot of something, they owe it to everyone else. They don’t. The moment users here at Steemit.com begin to treat those with a lot of SP as the enemy just because they have a lot of SP/money/power, then it’s game over.
The paradox.
It’s almost viewed as a paradox to a lot of people, but actually it’s the most common sense thing there is. Often times, we voluntarists and ancaps are labeled as selfish, greedy, and destructive. In my life I’ve found things to be the exact opposite. I am self-interested.
Every single one of us is. Even “selfless” and beautiful acts like giving to charity or even, say, taking a literal bullet for someone else to save their life, would be self-interested acts. Refined self-interest, to be sure, but we would be doing these things because we want to help the person we are giving to. We want that other person to go on living. It’s absolutely beautiful. It is selfless, and it is also self-interested. We’re going to get lost in semantics, soon, though, so I’ll drop it.
Those most ready and willing to help me have always been those prepared to help, and those with a sound understanding of economics. My parents raised me to “give to those who ask,” according to a bastardized American Christian tradition. Shit, I gave so much of my money and things away, I often had to borrow from others when I ran out. My parents were stuck in this pattern. It’s actually more selfish, because this endless “selflessness” ends up making you a financial mess and dependent on the hard work and savings of others! You end up taking instead of giving! Now which then, is truly the “selfish” path?
In a real life example: It’s not that we ancaps don’t want everybody to have “free” healthcare, it’s that we want the market to provide it, without violent state regulation, so that everyone can afford it. Me stealing someone’s money at gunpoint to make them pay for my doctor’s visit is wrong.
THE ENEMY IS THE STATE WHICH HAS LEVERAGED VIOLENCE TO CREATE THESE ILLEGITIMATE MONOPOLIES IN THE FIRST PLACE!
This is why medicine is so disgustingly unaffordable.
We know that money doesn’t just come from nowhere. If everything is “free,” you can be goddamn sure some poor bastard is paying, somewhere. But I digress.
Here on Steemit, I want to see individual users
changing things, and making things easier and more fair for all users, insofar as fair doesn’t mean whining that someone has “more than me” so they “owe me.”
Remember money doesn’t come from nothing. It comes from value. It is related to time. There are a limited number of individual actors with limited time valuing limited content. To try to make our currency magical, and give everything away to everyone “magically,” means that the currency will no longer be scarce, and thus no longer valuable. To deny that the time and labor of individual market actors is unlimited is to deny reality.
I’m no economics expert, but I think this is important to keep in mind when we hear high and lofty proposals about how to make everything fair and improve the platform. I’m all for improvements! But remember, you can’t have your Steem and spend it, too.
*
If you are interested in learning more about Voluntaryism and sound economics, please check out www.mises.org and read any of their myriad resources/articles on the topic. Also, please enjoy my very simple and direct talk on the topic in the video directly below.
Thanks for reading/watching!
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)