14A027 Work Backwards by Jim Davies, 7/21/2014    

Happily there is a good number of libertarian web sites out there, and each day I try to keep up with several of them, and they usually make excellent reading. For example, on the day I started writing this there was a spine-tingling shocker on LewRockwell.com called A Government of Wolves (a must-read) and on Strike the Root, a masterpiece by Paul Hein modestly called Small Things.

But pretty well all I see is a description, expressed one way or another, of how bad things are and how urgently government needs to disappear, along with ideas on how to survive ethically intact until it goes. Okay, enough already: I get it. Now tell me how to get the job done, please. But on that subject, I see virtually nothing.

Perhaps other writers haven't seen what to me is obvious: we have to work backwards - from where we want to get to, to where we are now. Then the route becomes clear.

We know (or ought to know) very well where we are now; sunk in an infested swamp of government laws and controls that has destroyed liberty and prosperity and is poised to destroy much more of what remains of each.

So, some good people do a bit of everything, not knowing which will work in reversing this dreadful trend. Just last month a well-known libertarian told me his plan is to "do what we are now doing: think tanks, academia, free state project, Ron Paul, Libertarian Party, sea steading..."

Each of those helps a little, at least to improve this governed society; but even as a set they are just not good enough. They are similar to Paul's Plan, reviewed in a recent ZGBlog. It's like firing a shotgun vaguely in the enemy's direction. Instead, what's needed is to define where we're going, then figure out exactly what has to be achieved in order to get there. My objective (yours, too?) is to end the existence of all government, permanently, within a single generation.

That's where we want to get to - a nonexistent government. What does that mean, given that "government" is in any case a fiction, a myth, having no objective reality? There are real people working for it, sometimes in costumes and often carrying weapons, so what we really mean by "zero government" is that there are zero people working for the mythical entity called "government." So what has to happen for government to vanish? The answer is surprisingly simple: all we need to do is to cause everyone not to work for government.

Already, government at every level often pays more than each job would be worth in a free competitive market, so to leave its employ may mean taking a cut. That's one of the obstacles we have to overcome. TinyURL.com/QuitGov is a short web site that makes a start, and whose URL is simple enough to memorize and pass to government workers.

That may dislodge some, and will certainly get a lot more thinking about the honesty and morality of working for a giant Mafia-like outfit; but I expect that normally, a more detailed understanding will be needed - hence, TOLFA. Graduates are finding and mentoring one of their friends a year through that course, as well as resigning any government job they hold. This systematic, in-depth re-education will reach everyone able to read, during the 2020s. It will and must reach not only those now in government jobs, but also those who might replace them when they quit - hence, everyone. Sounds a big job, until you count how short a time is needed to reach a quarter billion people when you double every year.

I've heard it objected that there are bound to be some who refuse to learn and accept such re-education, being wholly dedicated government junkies; especially those near the top of the heap. Probably that's true. It doesn't matter. When their staffs have all quit, when their grunts have walked off the job, there is no harm they will be able to cause.

To recap so far: the strategy for freedom is to fix where we wish to go (a society without government) then recognize that government consists only of those working for it, then implement a way of persuading them to quit (and of course, never to start.) Not hard!

That qualifier about not starting is important, because when someone quits his government job, the boss will try to recruit a replacement. That task must fail. Therefore, understanding about the abject immorality of working for it must extend to the whole of society, not just to the one in eight presently employed in the belly of the beast.

There's another reason to make the re-education universal: once government has evaporated, everyone must know how to live without it. Despite ourselves and in many ways, most of us depend on it in some way or other; the virtue of self-reliance has been eviscerated by eight generations of government schooling. So all need to grasp the fact that nobody owes anyone a living, and that benefits come only as a result of pleasing someone in some way - eg by doing a day's work for them.

Learning how to live free, therefore, is a vital component of the re-education curriculum. It will ensure that once government is slain, it will stay dead - and unleash all the immense benefits of a zero government society.