Agorist business ideas
Agorism, if you're new to the term, is revolutionary market anarchism. It begins with the premise that the state is a criminal entity because it commits aggression (theft and prohibition of peaceful production and exchange), and it (agorism) is described as seeking the development of the underground economy (gray and black markets) to the point that it is able to provide law and security on a voluntary, market basis and eventually suppress the criminal state right along with other criminal elements. In order for the underground economy (or counter-economy) to develop enough to lead to market demand for contractual law and security, it must first develop in other areas. Since the counter-economy is removed from state taxation and regulation, it also serves to starve the state of the very resources it uses to suppress market activity. The more extensive the counter-economy becomes, the weaker the state becomes. Those who pursue agorism or run consciously counter-economic businesses are agorists.
So, what we need to help further the emergence of a free, stateless society based on voluntary production and exchange is a hell of a lot more agorists. We need agorist mechanics, manufacturers, landscapers, farmers, electricians, doctors, dentists, grocers, carpenters, mail carriers, teachers, bankers...the list is as endless as the list in the government-sanctioned economy. There's a short list of categories at the agorism wiki.
I know some of you out there are currently involved in agorist businesses, and many others are interested in starting one. I'd love for you to share what your business is or other agorist business ideas you might have so that we can have a nice little repository of ideas for would-be agorists to think about and choose from. Also, please share any tips you have for...let's say, avoiding imperial entanglements. It can be tricky to run a brick and mortar shop without the local government eventually finding out about it and launching an attack. Hell, it can be tricky even if you're mobile. You want to promote your business but without alerting the dominant criminal organization. So any thoughts in that area would be invaluable.
Comment away!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
July 3rd, 2011 - 23:34
I’ll get things started by sharing something that slipped my mind: The Agorist Cookbook: http://agoristcookbook.com/
July 3rd, 2011 - 23:38
So here’s an idea I had: a mobile merchandise store hawking all sorts of libertarian/anarchist/voluntarist products, like shirts, flags, bumper stickers, mugs, etc. It could be an agorist business that simultaneously promotes liberty/statelessness.
July 3rd, 2011 - 23:45
Another idea, which I’m very interested in, is a gray market fitness center the main focus of which would be a series of obstacles requiring climbing, jumping, etc., providing a fun, functional workout. The trick, of course, is how I would build and operate such a fixed-location facility without attracting the state’s attention. No idea as of yet.
July 4th, 2011 - 00:19
On the fitness side, one could do parkour or movnat classes which can involve just going to the park and exercising together. Something like that could double to share info about activity your involved in to spread one own business(es). Like I’m personally gonna start perfecting my mead making and all its variant forms to start selling.
July 4th, 2011 - 11:10
what about a business where one(or a group) went around to people’s homes and help them set up home food production systems? not just a “garden”, but something that could account for a majority if not the entirety of a family’s food needs from chicken to fish to vegetables–these operations could be set up even in urban areas with very limited space.
seems like it would be relatively easy to stay off of the state’s radar screens with such a business, and depending on how effective one’s advertising is, the demand could be quite high.
July 4th, 2011 - 13:38
Darren, Crossfit provides a top-quality workout with little equipment overhead.
July 4th, 2011 - 15:15
I also love the idea of a business that helps folks get some food self-sufficiency or that kind of thing. It would be a consultancy and could charge like a designer does by charging for time and marking up materials that the client buys from you. Helping folks get into bitcoin for themselves and/or their businesses might have some value.
I know a few folks that made good money hawking Ron Paul swag in 07 and 08, so there is certainly potential with that stuff.
It looks like we could learn alot from what roofers do, too:
Is Free-Market Anarchism Unworkable? Not in America’s Roofing Industry
by Mark R. Crovelli
http://lewrockwell.com/crovelli/crovelli63.1.html
July 5th, 2011 - 00:40
So, apparently there’s a law in Canada that mandates that every member of the healthcare profession is a government employee. One of the laws that goes with this, is that disseminating information about a doctor (including the quality of his service) is prohibited.
I have thought about creating a website explicitly for the purpose of rating doctors in Canada in every way imaginable, providing names, locations, and any kind of info the users are willing to submit. This is just a thought, not something I actually want to implement, but just throwing it out there to see if anyone else wanted to pick up the idea.
July 13th, 2011 - 00:24
Sean, great thoughts, and best of luck with your mead!
derby, that’s a good suggestion…Crossfit could make a nice supplement to the sort of thing I have in mind.
Josh, that’s a killer idea about helping people set up home food production!
Chip, good suggestions, and that was a great article by Crovelli–I read it shortly before writing this post. Great minds thinking alike and such…
cvramen, that’s an unbelievably terrible law (or set of laws, rather). Excellent idea to provide gray market information services in defiance of them! Of course, you’d have to set it up to be anonymous and untraceable (like Silk Road), which might make earning income from it a bit more difficult, but probably still worthwhile.
February 2nd, 2012 - 11:07
Darren
I know we haven’t really talked in years but your ideas are very interesting to me. Thanks for taking my comments. It’s like a totally agree with 1/2 or everything and totally disagree with the other 1/2. So my question comes from a relative place of ignorance; but I was wondering what would be the difference between the state now and the market under agorism. Would market forces not just become the new state? If there is competition, would the most successful market not make it so painful to go against it that it would effectively act like a coercive state especially is private firms are to provide security? Do we really want “Blackwater” forces in place of the Durham police department? Again, don’t get me wrong, I disdain the violent force of nations as I am working on being a Christian pacifist but I just see this argument as substituting one force for another. I do not trust markets without a government. I think you need them both.
February 4th, 2012 - 00:54
Jared, it’s definitely been a while! Hope you’re doing well. Thanks for checking out my blog and posing that question. It’s really the key question in determining whether someone decides to support the state or a stateless society on consequentialist grounds (as opposed to moral grounds, which is my chief basis for opposing the state). The short answer is that if a private security firm attempted to monopolize security and dispute resolution, it would be acting as a state and would be opposed by people like myself. We’d be back to having a state, but at least that state would be starting from scratch and would only have control over a tiny area relative to what the U.S. government currently controls. In a free market society, even a firm that appears to be have a monopoly is still subject to competition, because there’s no legal mechanism preventing competition (as there is in many cases today under the rules of the state). The longer answer involves the difficulties a would-be state would have in achieving a monopoly over a territory. See what Stefan Molyneux has to say about it on page 50 of his free book, Practical Anarchy: http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_5_PDF_Practical_Anarchy_Audiobook.pdf