Anarchy is not the same thing as chaos contrary to what you are indoctrinated with in schools these days. I do believe a number of people are very aware of this on steemit. Not everyone is though, so I thought it might be interesting to some to learn about some DIFFERENT people that were not the status quo.
Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner definitely qualifies at being very different. If people learn about him in history it usually presented as a nut that had a business that competed with the U.S. Postal Service.
There was a lot more to the man than that. He had some very deep ideas, and you could tell he was a man that was very much into philosophy and thought.
Lysander was a strong advocate for the term "Natural Law" which some fellow steemit bloggers have shared some links to videos that discuss Natural Law extensively: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 of a massively long seminar on the topic. I plan to watch these myself but haven't had the time to do so yet. My wife and I will watch those together. Thank you to @ultramari0 for bringing them to my attention.
I've been active in Libertarian, Anarchist, and Anarcho-Capitalist debates and discussions for a number of years, but I vividly recall the first time I encountered Lysander Spooner. I had never heard of him.
It was when someone posted a flow chart that was almost a family tree of anarchism, libertarians, austrian economics, and other things.
I did have a bookmark to it until I failed to back those bookmarks up between a machine image, and I have not been able to find it again.
It had a lot of people I had never heard of, so it became a READING LIST on people to go and research.
I personally found Lysander Spooner to be a VERY INTERESTING person.
Here are a few quotes for things Lysander said or wrote:
"Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property."
"Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally - perhaps more than equally, because more boldly - rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power."
"Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'"
"A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government."
The next one in particular resonates with me during the current political climate.
Now Lysander Spooner did author a book/essay called "No Treason The Constitution of No Authority" which is very interesting, especially when you consider how long ago it was written. You can read this book for free online as it is in the public domain and there are plenty of people that have made audio books of it. It has some thought processes that were spoken long ago and yet I never heard a word of it in school. If you hear anything about the man in school it is about his business designed to compete with the U.S. Postal Service that the government forced him to close.
I will provide you a link to some of these if you want to listen to them or read them:
Mises.org - has text and audio
And of course there are videos and video bloggers on youtube that have talked about him:
I noticed there are numerous fellow anarchists on steemit. I wanted to share some information so people that are not anarchists or may not be familiar with it will be able to debate with the rest of us based upon historical information. Debate, and discussion are good.
EDIT: Some bullet points for highlights in some of the material above:
- Experienced contract law at an early age with a contract with his father
- Studied law under prominent Lawyers and went on to be a lawyer without a college degree and in fact fought to have that requirement tossed out, and won.
- U.S. Postal services was charging exorbitant prices for delivering letters (see the first video) and he created a competing business. Congress eventually put him out of business mainly by having deeper pockets than he could afford to defend himself against. They did dramatically lower their prices for letters after they put him out of business. First the U.S. Postal Service lowered it's prices by 41% and then a few years later to 20% of what their prices were before Lysander's business challenged them. So that 80% extra was graft and kick backs which did go away for the most part due to Lysander's efforts.
- He was a staunch abolitionist and against Slavery. He approached it from a very different way from other abolitionists. Others would come at slavery indicating the Constitution supports slavery and they therefore were against the Constitution. Lysander approached the Constitution as a contract and showed there was no where in the Constitution that justified slavery. He also focused a lot on Natural Law in these arguments. The Unconstitutionality of Slavery is a published document he wrote.
- Lysander also explains how to read the Constitution using Natural Law and what is explicitly written as opposed to what someone thinks is IMPLIED.
- Eventually he started viewing the Constitution as a contract, and legally a contract is only binding to signatories on the contract. That is where No Treason the written document came from. If you have a chance read at least section 6 of No Treason or listen to the audio books I linked to I highly recommend it. For the time it was written, and even today you won't likely find anything quite like it.
Thank you for this post, I am one that would like to participate in such discussions but do not have the knowledge of such. So this post help me get started thank you.
Nice Title , Great Post!
Thanks feel free to let me know if you think I should add anything.
If you ask me I think that this is a very well written post , you may get feedback from others .
Your Mises book link appears to be broken. I found the audio book here:
https://mises.org/library/no-treason-constitution-no-authority-0
Thanks. I'll go check the link. Maybe I copy and pasted wrong when I found the page earlier today.
EDIT: I corrected it. Looks like pasted the Lew Rockwell link twice before. I linked to a different page than the one you listed though.
@dwinblood So i listened to the audio book for the first time of Lysander Spooner an i loved it i can't believe i went this long without fully knowing this great man. I heard his name mentioned a couple times but did't pay much attention. I never viewed it as a contract but he makes a good case for it.
Nice Title , Great Post!anarchism
Thank you. :) Sometimes the dominoes just fall right.
Steemit dude... this place is AWESOME. This is the second post today I've ran across that is basically the mirror of a blog post I wrote 8 years ago. Finding people who think like me is something new for me... and it makes me UBER excited... lol. Thank you for sharing!
I get the feeling that in the early batch us that are currently on steemit there are a lot of us that share these views.
Thank you for the endorsement dwinblood :) Just like you watched one of my videos about natural law i will be watching your video about Lysander Spooner. i will be looking forward to a further discussion on his material . Anarchy in Latin means "without rulers"
Thanks for sharing that image with my readers.
Big fan of spooner
Me too obviously. ;) He is one of my favorites of the old Anarchists.
My journey pretty much started with Bastiat (I read The Law a number of years ago during a graduation ceremony...), and I've pretty much missed Spooner and probably far too many others...there are so many books I need to read.
I haven't read Bastiat. We learn from each other.
Write something about Temporary Autonomous Zones!
Haha, I'll have to research it to write about it. I've heard the term but not really dug into it myself. You have me curious now though.
EDIT: I do know of some places that essentially did this for awhile. They eventually got swallowed up, but I'll be researching this some more. WW2 ate one of the ones that might fit this.
EDIT 2: Actually, I think I'm wrong. I need to dig into this more. If it is like Burning Man as an example I do have some material on that I purchased and have not watched/read yet. Might be a good time. Thanks for the suggestion.
Oh, ok, maybe I will write some then. ;)
If you are curious, take a look at: http://hermetic.com/bey/
Yeah write something and stick an @dwinblood in there at the bottom or something so I don't miss it in the flood. I'd love to read what you write.