Now It’s Official… Because it Has a Website
I just uploaded the new Trade War website, and made adjustments to the darianworden.com fiction page. Comments, criticism, and questions are welcome. At some point I hope to integrate this blog better with the rest of darianworden.com (or at least make them look similar), and turn the “Latest Updates” page of tradewarbook.com into more of a blog format. This might exceed my personal web design capability.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:33 am
Interesting concept for a book. I wrote a little something about “bust insurance” and prison breaks a year ago that I think you might find relevant:
Aside from providing safety in numbers, agorist networks could form the initial basis of insurance pools for those involved in non-violent illegality, much like the fraternal lodge societies that provided healthcare at the turn of the century (see Roderick’s pamphlet on the subject. Not sure how to hyperlink here).
Since the chance of getting caught is relatively low, but the risks may be very high, such services would serve to allay fears and encourage broader participation in counter-economic activity. In the event of capture, support could take the form of full or partial payment for fines, legal fees, bribes to judges/juries for favorable verdicts, or at least buy things to make prison life more tolerable. There’s already an insurance company in Sweden offering to insure people against fines from the RIAA for filesharing, called Tankafritt.nu (http://www.tankafritt.nu/uk/). Companies of this sort would do well by insuring the activities in other countries, possibly using their own country’s foreign policy as a shield (imagine a U.S. company insuring counter-entrepreneurs in Iran, or a Chinese company in the U.S.)
As participation grows, insurance policies could include could go beyond simple harm reduction to include provisions for breaking individuals out of prison. History shows that the most successful escapes are not solitary ventures, but have help from inside and outside the prison. Insurance pools could finance bribes for guards, and place bounties for prison break teams that will organize safe houses, escape vehicles, forged documents: all the tools needed for a successful escape.
In the later stages, these could be done en masse: Your insurance company would simply offer a bounty to whomever facilitates your safe escape. Prison-break teams would seek to free entire incarcerated populations from state prisons, collecting numerous bounties at once. At that level, they might as well set all the prisoners lose just to tie up more police resources by creating more targets (most of them are there for victim less crimes anyway). Gotta love those positive externalities.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
That is an interesting idea.
It’s good to think of lodge practice and other mutual aid type organizations for such a purpose. They ought to be easier to put together than a more formal “firm” type organization, and possibly also better suited to serve the independent contractors that will probably make up much of the counter-economy. You should be able to hyperlink with the a href tag here. Roderick Long on lodge practice
A problem with having insurance firms based in nations hostile to yours is that it opens the door for charges of espionage if it becomes known.
Have you read of the Greek guy who twice escaped from prison by helicopter?
I actually came up with the idea for this book in 2006, which was after I had heard of agorism but before I was really into it. It’s framed as an action story that includes libertarian themes, not as an agorist wargame, but of course counter-economics plays a role. And there will be free-market military outfits and road organizations in the regions outside U.S. control.