| The Ten Core Concepts of Freedom Technology by Frederick Mann | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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CORE CONCEPT #1: Freedom Technology includes the practical knowledge, methods, and skills to live free in an unfree world; the street-smart know-how to run rings around tyrants; the knowledge and ability to protect your life, body, earnings, and assets against assault from tyrants and other marauders; the methods for increasing personal power and decreasing the power of tyrants; ultimately it also includes the means to identify the most fundamental roots of the power of tyrants and to collapse that power; and more... The first thing to realize is that your most important freedom resource is your own mind -- not only how you think (your mastery of a range of thinking skills) -- but also the contents of your mind. There may be assumptions and beliefs in your mind that have negative effects on your level of freedom. So the second thing to realize is that no matter how advanced your thinking skills and knowledge are, there's always room for improvement. Furthermore, this improvement requires conscious and deliberate intention and effort on your part.. CORE CONCEPT #2: You can turn your knowledge of freedom into huge personal advantages in most areas of life, including financial advantages. Freedom can be sold for profit with all parties gaining value. Epictetus said: "Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible." The most powerful principle for turning your knowledge of freedom into huge personal advantages is to focus on what you control in order to bring you both short-term and long-term benefits. CORE CONCEPT #3: For most people, "The Economic Means to Freedom" is the best freedom strategy. Also for most people, the biggest potential improvement in their financial situation comes from the reduction or elimination of taxes. This obviously involves risk. The average risk that an American will be killed in a vehicle accident during any particular year is about one in 6,000. Most Americans get into their cars practically every day and drive, subjecting themselves to that risk of about one in 6,000 of being killed in a car accident during that year. To drive makes sense, because the risk of getting killed is relatively small. And if you drive only while sober, and with attention and care in a well-maintained vehicle, your risk is probably considerably lower -- let me "guesstimate" it to be one in 60,000. (To verify the one in 6,000 number, go to the "US Dept. of Transportation" statistics table. The highway fatality rate for 1996 was nearly 42,000. Divide this into a population of 250,000,000 and you get about one in 6,000.) Now if you consult the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) system, and you go to TRACIRS (and you register for free), you'll find the following statistics:
The TRAC people claim that the IRS typically overstates these numbers grossly, e.g., if reports from the court systems indicate that 300 people were sent to prison, the IRS would claim 720. Nevertheless, for the purpose of calculating risk, let's accept the above numbers. I don't know the number of individuals every year who try to "beat the IRS." I've heard numbers as high as 30,000,000 who don't file. But let's assume it's ten million. Let's take a conviction rate of 2,000 and an incarceration rate of 1,000. So, if you try to "beat the IRS," your risk of conviction in a particular year is 2,000 in 10,000,000 or one in 5,000. And your risk of going to jail is one in 10,000. Now let's suppose that just like you can reduce your risk while driving, you can reduce your risk of being convicted and jailed by the IRS through using some of the more sophisticated methods available. Suppose you can reduce the risk by a factor of ten. This would mean that your risk of being convicted drops to one in 50,000 and your risk of being jailed to one in 100,000. Particularly when compared to driving, these seem like pretty good odds to me. Attempting to "beat the IRS" is much safer than driving a car... particularly because the IRS seldom kills its victims! This is also why the IRS has to terrorize some people every year and have the media sensationalize the plight of the victims. Most people who unwillingly pay taxes, do so out of emotional and irrational fear, rather than because of a rational assessment of the relative reward/risk ratio involved. Off course, the IRS can ruin you financially by seizing your assets. So it's prudent to organize your affairs so they can't easily find anything to seize. Fortunately they tend to go after the "easy pickings." CORE CONCEPT #4: The combination of the widest range of freedom strategies and tactics tends to maximize the potential for freedom expansion. (The fact that we emphasize certain strategies over others indicates the areas we like to specialize in and where we think we can be most effective. This is not a criticism of other strategies.) CORE CONCEPT #5: One of the most important things all freedom activists can work on is to further develop their competence, personal power, and influence. CORE CONCEPT #6: Sometimes the information potentially most useful to you is that information which is most different from your current information. You can forever improve your knowledge, without limits. CORE CONCEPT #7: You as an individual can discover that you are free and sovereign by nature. Fundamentally this is because you and only you control the energy that animates your body. Operating out of the realization that you are free and sovereign by nature, coupled with a positive attitude, you have the potential to enjoy more freedom than most think is possible. CORE CONCEPT #8: The "crowning glory" of Freedom Technology will occur when we put in place certain mechanisms and alternative institutions, such that even people who know little or nothing about freedom will "migrate" in large numbers to our institutions because it's recognizably in their self-interest, resulting in the large-scale withdrawal of the support on which the survival of coercive political systems depends. CORE CONCEPT #9: The power of tyrants is much more tenuous than most believe. (I'm using "tenuous" in the sense, "having little substance or strength; flimsy; weak; easily dislodged.") (a) If you think in terms of some "gargantuan, all-powerful, near-omniscient monster" you call "government" or "state," in the face of which individuals are essentially helpless, then it may seem absurd to claim that the power of tyrants is tenuous. (b) If you believe that some of the noises and scribbles that emanate from the mouths and keyboards of tyrants... if you believe that these noises and scribbles constitute "the law" (so-called), which needs to be "reformed" or "repealed" before you can be free, then, indeed, it may seem absurd to claim that the power of tyrants is tenuous. (c) If you think that any poor individual is helpless in the face of the tyrants' guns, then, indeed, it may seem absurd to claim that the power of tyrants is tenuous. (d) If you believe you have no practical choice other than being in a profession, business, or job that's inextricably trapped within the tyrants' political/economic system, then, indeed, it may seem absurd to claim that the power of tyrants is tenuous. But what if all these beliefs are false? However that may be, there are many people who somehow, to a greater or lesser degree, escape from the tyrants' tentacles. Often these people know little or nothing about any freedom philosophy. They simply find resourceful ways to "beat the system." During the past three decades I've lived in several cities around the world. Everywhere I've lived I've found people "outside the system" and people willing to pay me for my services (mostly computer programming and systems design), without subjecting me to "the system." Particularly with the expansion of the Internet, and all the money-making opportunities it presents, it's becoming easier and easier to earn money without operating within any tyrant "jurisdiction" that matters. Ten factors are very important: (a) Different freedom activists have different personalities, knowledge, skills, resources, and situations. You as freedom activist can choose the most appropriate range of freedom strategies for you. And you have a degree of control over, and can change your personality, skills, resources, and situation in order to become more flexible and widen the range of freedom strategies practically available to you. (b) You seldom have to "beat the system." Almost invariably, you only have to deal with individual bureaucrats, who tend to behave largely in predictable ways. Most of the time, it's not too difficult to persuade them to leave you alone and go after easier targets. (c) Bureaucrats are not always the brightest nor the most competent. They are often lazy. They also have limited resources. Mostly they go after the "easy pickings" -- like lions going after the weakest prey. (d) In general, bureaucrats need information about you before they do anything to harm you. If they are not provided with any information about you, it's extremely unlikely that they will attempt to harm you or interfere with your life. (e) You don't have to think "all or nothing." You can "compartmentalize" your life. In one compartment you work as a university professor, a chemical engineer in a large multinational corporation, etc. In another compartment you do something "on the side." The Internet makes this relatively easy to do. (f) The power of tyrants depends largely on their "return on violence." They "invest" in violence (or its threat) for which they receive a "return." Generally, the return they desire includes fear, obedience, providing information, and paying taxes. In their excellent book The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State, James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg make a strong case that, as technology advances, the tyrants' return on violence decreases. (From the tyrants' point of view, they have to "invest" more and more terror and violence to achieve the same "return" of fear, obedience, providing information, and paying taxes. But this also "wakes up" more people and pushes them in our freedom direction.) (g) There are all kinds of "holes" in tyrant systems. Some tyrants -- particularly those in "tax havens" -- deliberately create "holes" (e.g., corporations that don't have to report anything nor pay any taxes) to attract business to their "jurisdictions." (h) Meanwhile the quantity and the quality of freedom support services are increasing. You can get a sense of this from the materials and links on this website. (i) In general, it's more profitable to operate "outside the system." So we "outsiders" enjoy competitive advantages over those who haven't yet extricated themselves from tyrant systems. (j) Some tyrant institutions, particularly in the currency and banking area, are becoming visibly more tenuous. This expands the opportunities for alternatives "outside the system." The upshoot of these ten factors is that, for determined freedom activists, it's relatively easy to organize their lives and affairs such that the power tyrants have over them as individuals is extremely tenuous. (This is in contrast to the general population who sheepishly go along with "the system." In respect to them, tyrant power remains very potent.) CORE CONCEPT #10: Critical mass brings discontinuous or "catastrophic" change. (In this context, "catastrophic" can be good or bad.) From http://acnet.pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/catastrophy_theory.html: "In mathematics, catastrophe theory seeks to describe the structure of phenomena in which sharply discontinuous results follow from continuous processes. The theory was first developed by French mathematician Rene Thom in a paper published in 1968, but it has its roots in such fields as topology and dynamical system theory. While its subjects would include actual catastrophes such as a girder suddenly buckling, it is intended to apply to an abrupt change in any process." From http://burgundy.uwaterloo.ca/biol446/catastro.htm: "Catastrophe theory is concerned with phenomena that show rapid change. Rene Thom, a French mathematician, proposed and developed these theories to explain some of the observed behaviors of such systems. He said there were elementary catastrophes represented by mathematical equations that described generalizations of systems that move rapidly from one state to another." When water is gradually heated (a continuous change), the temperature gradually increases (another continuous change). When the temperature reaches boiling point, and "heating" continues to be applied at the same rate (continuous change), the water boils or turns to steam (discontinuous or catastrophic change). When the temperature reaches boiling point ("critical mass"), a discontinuous or catastrophic change occurs. The water becomes steam and evaporates. The closer the temperature to boiling point, the more tenuous the liquid state of the water becomes. Question: What actions might take tyrants to their "boiling point" and evaporate their power?
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