My Aversion to Voting

I've got a framework for attenuating the divisiveness of politics.  There's me, and there's everyone else.  My actions and their actions have effects, both on me and on them.

The effect of my political action on myself is an abdication of my own conscience.  I can put less effort into my decisions because they will only be put into effect if enough others agree.  By the same metric, my own efforts are relatively meaningless.  That's a bad thing.

My political actions also have an effect on others.  I'm basically saying. when I choose one of the options of a particular item on the ballot, EVERYONE else must be forced to abide by that decision (if I happen to be on the winning side).  It would be much better if some people were immune to the decision, in case it's a stupid decision for them.

Third, everyone is doing this to me too, which means I'm going to be subject to punishment for doing some of the things my conscience tells me are the right thing to do.  I'm expected to obey the law instead of my conscience, whenever they are in conflict.  The fact that they do it to me and I do it to them doesn't justify it.  I am willing to be the bigger person and tolerate the imposition because I think I'm setting a good example: Stop coercing people.

Lastly, everyone else is also experiencing these three things because of everyone else.  One of the largest and ugliest, but also quite subtle effects (despite its depth and intensity) is that too many people abdicate their responsibility to develop and obey their own conscience.  That's a problem even if it's just one person doing it.  The widespread encouragement to engage in this voting behavior is, to me, a great tragedy.  I encourage people to be more aware of these issues and consider explaining them to others so that someday, we might rely on others to obey not the law, but their own consciences.

How to Convert Divisiveness into Cooperation

Your government, my government, and any governments we share, are "governments" because they force their "customers" (subjects, citizens) to pay them money, under the claim that they will maintain "law and order."  The reason they force us to pay is that there is widespread belief that they wouldn't get enough money to maintain "law and order" if they didn't force people to pay, and not enough recognition that every other service collects money to keep itself going only from people who are willing to pay for the service they offer.  Every service that can't keep itself afloat with the money that willing customers pay to it must either become part of the government, or dissolve.

Government does its best to replace your conscience with the idea that government itself, through legislators, will distinguish good from evil, and instruct you on how to behave.  It does its best to equate obedience to it with "good behavior."  This is naturally divisive because the people with the strongest consciences will refuse to be obedient to bad law, and thus be on the "wrong side" of the law.  Those who want to control everything will hide this by magnifying other divisions that can appear in society, such as between the owners of productive stuff, and those they hire to run it, or between different races, or between the rich and the poor, between the sexes, between Republicans and Democrats, or whatever they can find to divide us, except for one, the division between the authorities and everyone else.  Government will never acknowledge (and apparently has a pretty effective method of stopping mainstream media outlets from acknowledging) the division between coercive authority and the generally peaceful masses over which authorities "lord it."

So I write.  I like Telegram because it is nearly completely devoid of targeted ads.  I'm in several Telegram groups in which I find tremendous value.  Below, please find the links and descriptions to some of them. Telegram was created using money from Pavel Durov who seems just to be a great guy who has a lot of money.  I bet there's an angle for him to make money off the existence of Telegram, but that makes me happy.  I like people who create such awesomeness to get rich. There is speculation that Telegram could be forced (or agree) to share the keys with which messages are encrypted with states.  I don't think all the code is open source.  It could be a honeypot for people who want to communicate in secret.  I'm not worried about it, though.

https://t.me/voluntaryism_group - This is the group for anyone who wants to learn about or discuss voluntaryism or the strategies we use to promote it.  Voluntaryism, in my mind, is the antidote to the problem of government, or, as Michael Huemer calls, it, The Problem of Political Authority.

https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAFH6MmIQWW60Hf5mYw - This is the Caledonia Tribe broadcast channel, and we have a website too, at http://caledoniatribe.com/ but it doesn't yet contain much more than you can find in the channel.  It's my tribe.  Well, one of my tribes.  I contain multitudes, just like you.

https://t.me/BitcoinFastingGroup - Put "fasting" in the search box to find out what I've written about it.  I love this group because it's full of smart people and we encourage each other to give our bodies the kinds of stress for which we evolved (not eating for a while every now and then).  Both Bitcoin and fasting attract smart people, apparently.

https://t.me/nvc_pe_eq - A group in which you can learn about Non-Violent Communications.  Marshall Rosenberg wrote the original book on this "technology," which is a different way of thinking about interacting with other people. Purging violence from our lives starts with each one of us, and language itself is a great place to start.

https://t.me/anarchapulco - This is Jeff Berwick's Anarchapulco Telegram group.  Voluntaryism, freedom, and respect for the individual conscience are the foundations of a healthy society. Such health removes the need for a ruler, and thus keeps closed the door to corruption about which Lord Acton wrote when he mentioned that power corrupts.  To be without a ruler and still survive means that you control yourself.  You use your own conscience as your guide.  If you call this anarchy, you are technically correct, but, thanks to massive brainwashing, you will confuse a lot of people.  However, in most of the groups I like, "anarchy" is used accurately, appreciated, sought, and honored.

https://t.me/dyiweh - This is Ernest Hancock's Declare Your Independence Telegram group.  You can catch his radio show using any of the links on the website: https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/declare-your-independence-with-ernest-hancock.  I just participate in the Telegram Group because I crave interaction.

https://t.me/EssentialBusinesses - This is a channel I created (I'm the only one who can post) so that I have my own little broadcast system.  It was a kind of gut reaction to the BS authorities started spouting when they were cued by Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, and other psychos.

If you find value in any of these groups, please mention that "The voluntaryist webmaster guy" told you about it in the group.  Peace and freedom spread one person at a time.

Index to The Monopoly on Violence

The following is an index to The Monopoly On Violence
0:00 - Introduction to The State
1:25 - James C. Scott "The State" is only about 800 years old, at the most.
3:40 - Scott: "It takes a state to beat a state."
4:50 - "Social Evolution" presents "Rules without Rulers" by Tomasz Kaye
7:50 - Stephan Kinsella on the development of the modern state.
8:15 - Andrew Napolitano on the recognition by the state that it gets its power from the people, and America was set up that way.
8:52 - Jeff Diest explains that States themselves deal with each other anarchically, also pointing out that (to him) it's chaotic.
9:38 - Thaddeus Russell on Education being used as a tool by the state to ... make people into machines.
12:28 - Jeff Diest and Donnie Gilbert on taxes.
14:20 - Sandy Klein on central banking, borrowing, and the foundation of ever growing debt.
15:48 - Joseph Salerno on how war requires inflation.
16:40 - Jeff Diest: $1Trillion on "defense."
17:13 - Peter Klein on "War is the health of the state"
18:20 - Daniel McAdams on intervention creating chaos which requires more intervention
19:35 - Scott Horton on America using radical terrorists for its imperial ends.
21:55 - Donald Rumsfeld's "The El Salvador Option" - America is on both sides of the war.

Democide

23:20 - Democide, Mark Thornton with statistics about governments (Russia, China, Cambodia) killing their own people.
24:44 - Michael Huemer with arguments for the existence of political authority.
27:45 - Huemer explains situations where "hypothetical" (assumed) consent works and when it doesn't work.
29:10 - Jeff Diest on the lack of request by government for consent.
31:12 - Huemer answers the claim that democracy provides political authority.
32:55 - Dave Smith on having Walmart run the schools.
33:38 - Thaddeus Russel on what is kept out of history books. Arguments Against the State
34:12 - Arguments against the state, starting with David Friedman (few benefit, everyone suffers)
35:25 - Andrew Napolitano on regulatory overreach.
35:55 - Patrick Newman on businesses feeling the need to lobby.
36:43 - Dave Smith's story about police psychologically abusing a 14 year old, with a brief comment by Peter Quinones.

International Law

38:00 - International Law starting with Ryan McMaken and then Stephan Kinsella on Hobbes.
39:30 - A history of anarchy, both the word, and what it actually means.
47:30 - Footage of Murray Rothbard on anarchy and freedom.
48:30 - Walter Block on the Non-Aggression Principle, property, and free association.
50:00 - David Friedman on the problems with the idea that "rights" can solve all the problems.
51:30 - Ryan McMaken on people getting together using contracts.
52:25 - Tom Woods on people agreeing on what is justifiable.
52:55 - Larken Rose on his view that it comes down to a numbers game.

Agorism

53:33 - Agorism, starting with Sal Mayweather.
54:20 - Nick Irwin on how agorism can grow into a solution.
54:40 - David Ballantine on markets, black, white, and gray.
55:10 - Nick Irwin on Karl Hess.
55:42 - Karl Hess giving a lecture on the impossibility of revolution in how society works.
56:10 - Sal Mayweather introduces crypto-anarchy.
57:00 - Jeff Diest points out that anarchy is everywhere all the time.

Anarchy

57:30 - Several views on what anarchy would look like.
59:00 - Max Borders describes Panarchy.
1:01:28 - Politics, starting with Tom Woods.
1:03:07 - Ron Paul on secession.
1:03:45 - Tom Woods on secession.
1:04:50 - Bob Murphy on the foolishness of traying to get us all under ONE system.
1:05:15 - Animation by Tomasz Kaye on voting.
1:05:55 - Walter Block
1:06:20 - Dave Smith
1:07:35 - Max Borders
1:07:50 - Part two, Market anarchy, starting with Peter Klein
1:09:55 - Mark Thornton
1:10:25 - Bob Murphy
1:10:39 - Ryan McMaken
1:11:10 - Walter Block on trying different rules.
1:11:50 - Lew Rockwell on private fire departments etc.

Education

1:12:10 - Education, starting with Peter Klein
1:13:05 - Mark Thornton
1:15:30 - Justice, starting with Jeff Diest.
1:16:37 - Bob Murphy
1:17:25 - Lew Rockwell on prisons

Defense

1:17:43 - Bob Murphy on the free market providin defense more effectively.

Part 3, Living Anarhcy

Technology

1:20:44 - Technology, starting with Sal Mayweather
1:21:47 - Culture, starting with Thaddeus Russell
1:22:33 - Jack Lloyd on anarchy in comic books.
1:23:13 - Kevin Shaw on anarchy in multimedia.
1:23:50 - George Ought to Help by Tomasz Kaye.
1:24:47 - Eric July and Backwordz
1:27:00 - History of Dave Smith, with clips.
1:28:24 - Anarchy in the media, starting with Peter Quinones.
1:28:53 - The Pholosopher, on firearms
1:29:27 - Jack Lloyd on anarchy memes
1:29:47 - Nick Irwin
1:30:23 - People already living outside the state.
1:30:38 - James C. Scott on The Art of Not Being Governed.
1:32:28 - Abolishment of political parties and police in Cheran, Mexico
1:34:10 - Mutual Aid, starting with Max Borders
1:35:15 - Fraternal Societies explanation (narrated by Stephanie Murphy, according to Kyle Noe).
1:35:34 - Bits of Tomasz Kaye's "How Government Solved the Healthcare Crisis."
1:37:10 - Voluntaryism in Action
1:37:20 - Food Not Bombs
1:37:40 - Maj Toure on Black Guns Matter
1:38:45 - "As the State expands, it's easy to forget that everything the state does coercively was once done voluntarily for ourselves and each other.
1:39:05 - Thaddeus Russell
1:39:45 - Ron Paul
1:39:58 - Bob Murphy
1:40:14 - Dave Smith
1:40:48 - Eric July

HP Photosmart C4750 misprinting in Windows 10 with Adobe and MS Word.

Because this information should be available to Microsoft, Adobe, and HP, I"m putting it here.  I created a document in Microsoft Word.  Printing it from Microsoft Word mostly works fine.

I printed it to a PDF using doPDF and the resulting file looks great. In Adobe Reader, I printed it to my HP Photosmart C4750 and one of the options was "Save ink/toner." There is a help link that leads to Adobe's site, so I assume that Adobe is responsible for the problem, described below.

I printed the resulting PDF and everything was printed twice, the second copy being about 1/3 of a millimeter below the first copy, and little bit lighter. I figured my ink cartridges might be misaligned, so I printed the alignment page, scanned it, the printer reported that they were aligned, and then I tried again.  The problem persisted.  I saw that the "Save ink/toner" option was on, so I turned it off, and then the PDF came out almost perfectly. There is a textbox (created by MS Word) on the PDF and that box, and only that box, and all the text in it, still shows the problem. However, the problem shows up on that textbox even when I print directly from MS Word, so it is likely the case that some particular instructions between the HP printer and the software delivering printing commands to it is causing this problem, and that the Adobe printer uses them to "save ink/toner" while MS Word uses it for textboxes.

Thanks for the Click!

If you believe

• that the initiation of force is wrong;
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– then you meet the basic definition of being a voluntaryist.

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