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11A117
Farewell for Now
by Jim Davies, 4/30/2011
After publishing 234 since last July, this will be the final daily edition of the Zero Government Blog, though I expect to write one from time to time, when current events simply scream for comment from a rational perspective. So please, get the RSS feed now so that when one appears you'll be promptly reminded, so as not to have to visit daily just in case. I thought the occasion might be good for briefly reminding folk how a zero government society can be (and shortly will be) obtained. Many readers already know this and are taking part in the process, as graduates of The On Line Freedom Academy, but for others I'd like to make it plain since there is so very little to be read about it elsewhere. Happily there are very many places on the Net where one can grow better to appreciate the need for one - but no others that spell out how to get it. That is a surprising but colossal omission. Step 1 is to recognize that nothing less will do; a mere reduction in government is Utopian because it's inherently unstable (ie, put one in place if you can, but it will necessarily not last.) We know that, both from theory ("limited government" is an oxymoron) and practice: the US Constitution is history's best attempt but has been an abject failure. It would be lunacy to repeat the failed experiment. For additional proof of this need, re-read the other 233 articles in this Blog. Step 2 is to recognize that government will not volunteer to dissolve. To do so would be 100% contrary to its nature, which is to enjoy the exercise of power and to grab ever more of it. Therefore, we must cause it to disappear, by taking some external action. Step 3 is to identify government's single
weakness: it depends upon support from its victims. If
that support is removed, it will collapse powerless. Therefore,
all we have to do ( Step 4 is to list the kinds of support currently provided, and identify which of them are (a) essential to government and (b) capable of being removed. Not all kinds of support are indispensible; voting, for example, is an expression of support but many governments have gotten along without any. Taxpaying, too, is not as vital as may appear; governments have obtained revenue by merely printing money, and by so directing society (as in the USSR) that labor is taken and pocket-money is given in exchange; if a worker delivers 100 units of value, he might receive a gross salary of 40 but with no "tax deducted." A slave plantation was another example; there was no "pay" given at all in exchange for labor, just shelter, clothing and food sufficient to keep the slave working. So voting and tax strikes will not suffice; nor of course will merely waiting for government to self-destruct. Sometimes it seems likely to do that, but always in history it has risen from the ashes in some new form, usually worse yet. One kind of support, and one only, is vital to government: labor. Withdraw that, and it's finished. Government consists only of people willing to work for it. Step 5, then, is to design and implement a method for causing all government employees to withdraw their labor - to quit their jobs. By no means trivial, but if we're serious, there is no alternative; there is no other form of popular support that's essential for government to continue to exist. Do it, or fail. People walk off jobs for several reasons. One is that the pay is too low; they value their labor at a higher rate than the boss does, so they take it elsewhere. A second may be that they are morally repelled by what the job entails; they no longer wish to contribute to an objective they have come to see as evil. Since government will be able to control the nature and flow of money until its abolition is imminent, we are down to the second method: stimulating a moral revulsion at continuing to work for government. That can be done by educating the entire population about what government really is, what "freedom" actually means, how a zero government society would function in practice (an education in market economics) and why initiating force (which is all that government ever does) is repugnant to sound ethics. Again, not trivial - but by no means impossible. The hardest part is to visualize how to do it on that enormous scale, given that all the means of mass communication are under government control. There is only one known way, and it is very easy: one to one replication. When one has learned, he brings a friend to the same facility so that the friend can learn too, and then do the same, and so on ad infinitum - or at least, ad 250 million. If replication happens once a year - eminently do-able - the population of re-educated people (who will not be willing to work for what they recognize as a detestable institution) doubles annually. For all 250 million, the process takes only 28 years, and several of those have already passed. The content of the education can vary some - probably several schools will emerge, each striving to be better than others. But that method is indispensible. Any new school that appears must grow in that manner. That is certain; any alternative is doomed. Again: use it, or fail. It's your call.
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is to motivate 250 million literate Americans to stop supporting
government. 
