I was a guest tonight on a liberty podcast. Details to follow.
Read previous comics involving Poopen, his crime-fighting alter ego, Shroom Monkey, or his nemisis, The Prankster.
UPDATE 2009/06/14: Prankster and his minions have been added as available avatars for you to download in the Free Stuph! section of this website.
Why, the majority of anarchists, of course.
Great one, Dale!
don’t dazzle minion with facts!
A+
A++
OK, this is getting worse. Dale, you’re confusing minarchism with liberal democracy. The purpose of minarchism is to phase out state violence in the most practical way possible, so as to avoid a socialist backlash, like the one that happened after post-Soviet Russia tried to move toward a market economy without giving the plebs a decent chance to adapt. Why can’t you just use your comic powers to attack socialists and leave minarchists alone?
Who said he wasn’t attacking socialists?
Alex, you are misrepresenting minarchy as if it’s a strategy rather than an end goal. Agorism is a strategy for phasing out the state in favor of free markets and it’s one strategy that I subscribe to. Minarchy aims to “fix” something that is in fact the very source of our problems. Their delusion about the nature of the problem is the reason for their repeated failures to shrink the state. It’s not a necessary evil. It’s an evil that we must oppose if we are even to make progress toward shrinking it. Yes, we can phase it out and we should be building up alternatives but the first and most important step is to recognize that it’s the nature of government that’s the problem; not the size.
If I address minarchists frequently, it’s partly because I feel there is hope for them. Their hearts are in the right place. They are reachable and can become allies if they will only see the obvious paradox in their thinking and take that crucial first step. As long as they subscribe to their misguided notions, they are a cog in the machine and the moment they evolve past that they can become a wrench. But from a practical standpoint of achieving liberty, the difference between a socialist and a minarchist is a creek compared to the ocean of difference between a minarchist and an anarchist.
Another reason is because their bass-ackwards philosophy is simply ripe for parody and it’s fucking funny.
From email:
“Why do you hate Minarchy so much? To me it seems kind of like a Vegan hating a Vegetarian”
I don’t hate them. Like I said above, I probably pick on them because there’s actually hope for them to become allies. As long as they’re trying to “fix” the state, they’re actually contributing to the problem and increasing the power and intrusiveness of the state. It’s a fallacy of understanding that’s at the crux of the problem of why we’ve not been able to reduce the control of the state over our lives. I do, however, experience a tremendous amount of frustration because they’re SOOOOO close and yet don’t get it. And since I’m dealing in the business of poking fun in a medium that thrives on being over the top, I choose to express that frustration in a completely tactless manner because it’s funnier that way.
Excellent strip!
Alex, if a “minarchist”, as you seem to represent, simply believes in inside the system activism to gradually reduce, and eventually eliminate the state’s initiation of force, I agree with them.
If they support agressive violence, just prefer it be used in a more limited way, their moral code is fundamentally wrong. I believe this strip addresses the second sort. Actually, I really wouldn’t even call the first sort “minarchist” at all, only gradualist.
Minarchism is a short-term actionable political strategy that is useful to Anarcho-Capitalists as well. Whether it’s one’s “end goal” or not is an abstract philosophical question, but not yet a practical one – no one is asking you to sign any “I accept the gov as a necessary evil for all time” contract! As we shrink the state ever further, people will have ever-more empirical economic evidence to decide how far it should be shrunk. Some places in the future may choose to have a government (with “right to free exit”, obviously), others may not. For AnCaps to ignore the need to proceed gradually and cautiously is hubris!
Alex,
I have no problem with “minarchism”, as you describe it, and I don’t think that’s what the strip was addressing. As I say, what you describe sounds like gradualism to me — it’s a strategy, not a political belief system. “Minarchy”, “Monarchy”, etc, are descriptions of different “archys”, from Greek αρχή, rule. So, I would think that a minarchist would believe there is an appropriate role for a small, coersive government — a minimal archy. I think that’s the way most people understand the term.
By the way, would “right to free exit” require me to leave a geographic area, and the land I obtained legitimately by free exchange?
As Paul said, you’re completely redefining minarchy. It’s as if you want to win an argument even if it means completely changing the premises. You’re also straw-manning by suggesting that an anarchist philosophy rejects a gradualist approach. I have said over and over again that opposing statism is HOW you shrink the state. You start by openly and publicly withdrawing moral support for statism and follow from there withdrawing other forms of support, such as financial, to the extent that you have the courage to do so. I believe the withdrawal of that moral support is the first and most crucial step before any progress can be made, gradually or otherwise. Their legitimacy and indoctrination are the most powerful weapons that statists have to maintain their power structures. That’s the multi-generational brainwashing we have to dismantle if we want any hope at all. You can’t win this game playing by their rules, which they change as we go along and in which they are both the opposing team and the referee!
Minarchists are empowering the state. They are on the wrong side and don’t realize it, but they are reachable.
Dude I love your comic & your politics. You should stop by my comic sometime I do a daily humor comic that features lots of political toons & more then a few drug references.
[url]http://www.morningsquirtz.com/[/url]