Charles "Rad Geek" Johnson chats it up with MHD about Agorism

While in Las Vegas the http://motorhomediaries.com/ crew had the opportunity to sit down with Charles W. Johnson, aka Rad Geek. A self-described anarchist and agorist, he dropped some knowledge about the latter in this informative interview.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• las vegas
• agorism
• anarchy
• anarcho-capitalism
• non-aggression principle
• rad geek
• radgeek.com
• charles w. johnson
• motorhome diaries
• voluntaryism
• voluntaryist
• counter-economics
• black market
• morality

[sethfulton]

hey, the agorism tag for this video is mispelled.

[motorhomediaries]

thanks for letting us know -- it's been fixed now.

[baggytheo]

Would a "friend" to the artistic community go around threatening people with violence or theft or imprisonment if they copied pieces of information that one party (artists) intended to benefit by exclusively?

[baggytheo]

She can only think of those characters as her own property if they remain within the confines of her own mind. Information is infinitely reproducible, exceedingly more so here in the information age. Property is only that which must be utilized exclusively by one agent, and since duplicating a piece of information does not deprive that information's originator or bearer of their own holding of the information, it can not be viewed as an infringement on property rights.

[octothorn]

@semyaza666

So your friend is having trouble with bootlegged products featuring her characters? Sounds like the laws prohibiting it don't work so well.

What do you suggest?

[octothorn]

@withDefiance

Because the means for the market is to benefit both the buyer and the seller. The actions are voluntary, so rational individuals only participate when it is to their benefit.

On the other hand, the mechanism of the state is to apply force. Individuals are forced to interact with the state on threat of harm, so rational individuals interact with the state only to opt for the lesser harm.

Interaction with the state always involves minimisation of harm, not benefit.

[octothorn]

@withDefiance

What do you mean by "growth" in that context?

[octothorn]

@withDefiance

They make profit by providing a service and making people happy. You want to be happy, don't you?

So if you avoid the businesses that make you unhappy, and use the ones that do, then you are participating in the constructive process.

Don't you buy anything from a company that makes you happy?

[withDefiance]

@withDefiance

Next to that capitalism is based upon growth, endless growth, and there is an end to this planet. So its not sustainable at all. Not in the far future, and for me not now eighter, because there are a lot of beautiful places, people etc, that are being chased from the places where they lived for centuries just and exactly for this profit.

[withDefiance]

@octothorn Because those companies have no interest but making profit. And are not in the hands of the people but of the owners... and they can make plans that are not in the interest of those people.

[octothorn]

@withDefiance

Dominating? How?

[withDefiance]

@octothorn It is not that it has rules, it is dominating... and its dominating of the will of the people. That is what opression is. If its the market that makes it profitable to opress the other or to take from the other what is not theirs.

[octothorn]

@withDefiance

What rules? No fraud, no theft no force? Those are the rules. What's the problem?