11A006 A Black View by Jim Davies, 12/6/2011     That's Black, not bleak. Simon Black is a businessman and writer I encountered recently, and I'm impressed. His take on current events is often bleak, but has a bright, thick silver lining; he sees opportunity and optimism where most of us wouldn't think to look. As he travels worldwide, he writes an almost-daily blog, published at sovereignman.com and this week I enjoyed his 2010 retrospective. Here's an extract: Think about it– in 2010 we saw: - The TSA ‘tip of the spear’ enforcing subordination to government authority - Canada’s government authorizing its agents to search homes without a warrant - Gold hitting all-time nominal highs due to unprecedented monetary inflation - Governments around the world raising taxes with immediate effect - Homeland Security began seizing domains without due process - The beginning of the end of the Eurozone - World governments engaging in mutually assured destruction currency wars - FBI raiding the homes of war protestors - Passage of the HIRE Act in the United States, a precursor to capital controls - Political heavyweights openly calling for the assassination of Julian Assange - Switzerland settling with the US government - Panama caving to pressure and signing a Tax Information Exchange Agreement - Homeland Security encouraging US citizens to spy on each other at Wal Mart - North Korea engaging in acts of war against the south As these events took place we may have noticed them, but memory fades and it's not until they are put together in such a list that we can perceive a pattern - a very unpleasant one. Its message is abundantly clear: government, the US one in particular, is waging all-out war on human freedom. All are important, though not all are negative; the Eurozone, said to be poised to collapse, was never a favorite of mine. Open borders, yes; supra government and a single fiat currency, no. Black's theme is not so much the one found here, to contrast current experience with what we shall enjoy after government has vanished - and to help along its early disappearance - but rather to discover ways to be more free, despite its surveillance and confiscations, right now. He rightly sees man as sovereign - and takes seriously the task of finding out how best to exercise that sovereignty at once, today, while we await the vanishing. Naturally, that means not being trapped in a single jurisdiction. His retrospective links to the December 30 issue, for example, which names three separate small-business opportunities in Panama. ¿Habla usted español? (I do not, so those are yours!) A traveling lifestyle won't suit everyone, but the Black strategy is to take opportunities worldwide for making money, not necessarily for residence; he uses one aspect of freedom from one country, others from another. He even finds governments which aim to attract creative people! It's well worth reading his Blog, as well as with this one. Our strategy here is to educate friends one at a time on the nature of government, and hence on the need to leave its employ; given simple friend-to-friend introduction, that will double every year the set of people unwilling to work for it and therefore end its miserable life in a surprisingly few years from now. Black's is to maximize our enjoyment of freedom wherever it can still be found, starting tomorrow. The two are very compatible. Your feedback, please! Have you browsed the bookstore yet? There are about forty titles that every serious student of liberty should have as the nucleus of his library.