No Treason

2009 was an eventful year for me.  I have been planning, for some time, to write this post to recap some of what happened, and what the outlook for 2010 looks like, with me and with NoTreason.com

Coming into 2009, I was blogging semi-regularly at NoTreason, participating at the Mises Community forums and generally trying to educate myself as much as possible on libertarian and market anarchist theory, while working on my own projects of entrepreneurship.

Since that time, I’ve had to trim back some of the time I had been using for debate and education as a matter of necessity and sanity.  Necessity that I should maximize my productive capacity during this lull in the economic storm, and sanity, to get away from petty and self-indulgent arguments which can be soul sapping.

Topics that moved me in 2009 were intellectual monopoly, capitalism, praxeology, self-awareness, performative contradiction, subjective ethics, logical fallacies, long tail marketing, capital goods, epistemology, paying it forward, low time preferences, and consent.

People I would like to thank for teaching, tolerating, and encouraging me are

• Jeffrey Tucker
• Nir Graham
• Mike Gogulski
• Grayson Lilburne
• Adam Knott

Voluntarists who asked the “right questions“, questions which prompted me to go deeper into my understanding and challenge my own dogma,

• NitroAdict
• SpideyNW
• AJ
• JackCuyler
• Zefreak

I also want to thank Stephan Kinsella for inviting me to his group and Brutus and Paul Edwards for showing my ideas respect when I was there.  Stephan was a big influence on me this year, not just for his verbose and difficult to read articles on IP and property NOK, but for being the first (and only?) member of the LRC crowd to publicly embrace Mario Rizzo’s call for more class and tolerance within the ranks of Austrian Economics and Libertarianism/libertarianism at large.  It takes a lot of courage to be accountable.

And David Friedman, who I feel gets very little respect from Austrians, and seems to get judged more for things his father stood for than what he has written about, has also been an excellent influence.  The Machinery of Freedom is anarcho-capitalism for grownups.

And Marc Stevens, whose legal arguments are fantastic for illustrating what a farce the state really is.  I think he has really expanded on Lysander Spooner’s work, adding strong arguments against constitutionalist mythology, which is a by-product of Rothbardian populism through the Ron Paul vector.

What happens with NoTreason.com going forward?  I’m not really happy with many of my past posts.  Some are important, like pointing out the hypocrisy of left-libertarians when they attacked Keith Preston, but the hypocrisy is so thick, one could run hundreds of blog posts correcting silly errors like bossism, racism, feminism wage slavery, free(d) markets etc.  Some posts are not so important, like my Alex Jones/Webster Tarpley post which never got a follow up because I simply stopped caring about Tarpley’s bad ideas about economics.  There are lots of cranks, some are high profile cranks, but they are still bit players in the market of ideas. If there is something I have learned this year, it is that the way to legitimize someone with bad ideas is to engage them and give arguments without merit undeserved attention.

Going forward, if and when I post, I want to reflect the spirit of voluntarism, and that means writing more about my journey through markets, trying to use markets, entrepreneurship.   More about ideas which I think are good, and less critical reviews of ideas I don’t agree with.

Sorry Conza, that means my critique of Rothbard’s radical libertarian political plan isn’t going to see light of day.  It’s just not rewarding to critique ideas I don’t care about and as a voluntarist, I reject the political means, even if it makes the possiblity of transitioning from slavery to liberty longer or less likely.  The ends do not justify the means and without principles, my work for honesty and principles will be for naught.

I think my readership is relatively tiny now, I haven’t done much to develop this site.  If anyone has an idea of how such a great domain name can be better utilized; combined with, separate from, or without blogging, I am all ears.  Use the contact form or post in the comments.

Thank you for reading.  My 2009 was an amazing journey which I intend to continue with greater patience and energy in 2010.  I hope you have an excellent, safe, peaceful and prosperous 2010.

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