21A013 Extreme Defense by Jim Davies, 4/6/2021 

The way the coming zero government society will probably defend itself against outside invasions is often called the "porcupine" method: each member of it will be armed to the degree he chooses, and will react with whatever force is needed to repel attempts to steal his right to rule his own life. Faced with a quarter billion such resisters, the incentive to invade such a society will disappear. A further critical disincentive will be that since no government will exist which might surrender on everyone's behalf, the costs of occupation would never end. And thirdly, since nobody will work for any government, those costs will further escalate because the invader's own employees would have to be relocated to administer the conquered territory.

So the ten-thousand year old story of wars of conquest will end. The possible gains of waging war will be far offset by its greatly increased cost.

It may be argued that while the transition is taking place in one country (the USA, say) neighboring governments may intervene to shore up the failing one, out of fear that when that one has disappeared, their own will fall too. That's a very reasonable concern; the thirst for freedom will indeed spread fast. As one society ceases to work for its government, the idea will leap borders rapidly. Which process will happen first; the collapse of State B, or its invasion of State A?

It seems to me that B (the potential shoring-up invader) will always collapse first; because the growth of all freedom movements (ie, withdrawals of labor from governments) will increase exponentially. At the very moment when any State becomes alarmed by news from a neighbor, its own resources will be falling off a cliff; it will first need to sustain itself, before mounting a "rescue" war across a border. And then it will be too late.

Could there, though, be any exception? - there is in today's world one very unusual State: North Korea. Suppose that, a few years hence, people in South Korea get the message of TOLFA (translators invited!) so that the government of the ROK begins to totter, as its employees head for the exit. Might not the autocrats in the North grab the chance to swarm across the 38th Parallel and take over the whole peninsula?

The 40,000 US troops along that line, who today provide a trip-wire for WW3, will have long since returned home and found productive work, and the ROK government will be vanishing too. Would the autocrats in Pyongyang grab the chance? Possibly; for, uniquely, people in the DPRK may not have heard news of what is happening to foreign societies including their close neighbors; hence, the enslavers there may not have lost resources at that stage.

Even so, the invaders would be disappointed. The South prospers because its basis is that of capitalist free enterprise, and both owners and employees of businesses at that stage will decline to support the invading government in any way; and, as "porcupines" will get busy assassinating its occupying soldiers. The imposed government will have extreme difficulty governing; the fruits of victory will not fall into their laps. As occupying personnel mix with native Southerners, they will be invited to study in TOLFA-like freedom schools and gradually find ways to quit the service of the peninsular government; so, then, will their families and friends back home in the North. Hence, while the process there will be much delayed, even all Korea will become a government-free zone.

War never comes with guarantees, but this porcupine defense method has a great deal going for it. A form of it - guerilla warfare - was used in WW2 France and other occupied countries, in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan against the Soviet and US occupiers; and each time it caused (or at least materially helped persuade) the invader to go home. Even here in the US, the Revolutionary War began in that manner exclusively, and at the end of the War to Prevent Secession, a big reason why Lincoln ordered the South be treated leniently was his fear that much of its defeated army would retreat to the hills and harass the occupying Northerners for decades to come.

In my view the mere threat of it will deter aggressors, who will in any case have only a very few years to wage war before their support structure crumbles as everyone learns which way is up and quits his government job.