I’m a child of the
1960s and 1970s. I grew up in the era of the war in Vietnam, hippies, LSD, and
“do your own thing.”
My friends and I
never understood how the “land of the free” could round up eighteen-year-old
boys and force them to fight in a war that was 8,000 miles away.
More than 50,000
US soldiers died in that war, including a few of my friends – and untold
millions of Vietnamese people.
My circle of
friends thought there had to be a better way. And there is. It’s a
decentralized world without nation-states, without government coercion, without
war, and without the enforced extraction of wealth via taxation.
A world like this
isn’t just a pipe dream, either. Throughout history, societies have
successfully existed this way. One of the best-documented examples was in
central Turkey, at a site now occupied by the modern city of Catalhoyuk.
My friend and colleague Paul
Rosenberg summed it up when he wrote about Catalhoyuk several years ago:
[Catalhoyuk was] the first large human settlement after the ice age and also
the most concentrated. [It] had no government and no
priesthood. And it thrived for 1,400 years. Two thousand families lived in this
compact city between 7,400 BC and 6,000 BC, with no master and no overseer.
There was no courthouse, no tax collector, no central administration of any
kind …Death by Government: G...R.
J. RummelBest Price: $27.00Buy New $41.13(as
of 02:00 EDT - Details)
The first real human city was
an anarchy [a state with no central authority] … it thrived for 1400
years; longer than Rome, Greece, or any of the Sumerian or Egyptian Dynasties.
We know these
statements are factual based on overwhelming archeological evidence. Catalhoyuk
had no large central square that could have been devoted to political
gatherings or religious expression. Skeletons of inhabitants display no
telltale bone damage that could only be incurred by blunt-force trauma or
blades. Every dwelling had its own food storage bins.
Men and women
appear to have been equal. Chemical analysis of the remains of both sexes shows
that they ate similar diets and spent the same amount of time in their homes.
It’s easy to
conclude that Catalhoyuk could never be replicated today. Here’s what critics
fear would happen if society moved in the direction of a decentralized world
order without nation-states in charge. As Rosenberg puts it:
·
The powerful will tell us what to do and we’ll have no choice;
their weapons and ours will be grossly unequal. They’ll take our money whether
we like it or not.
·
The big men will go to war against each other in an effort to rule
the whole world if possible. They’ll kill millions of us in the process.
·
The powerful will grab our children and force them to fight for
them… and they’ll come home dead or in pieces, if they come home at all.
·
Millions will be starved as the powerful take away our food for
their own use. There will be no way out.
·
Minorities will be rounded up, put into concentration camps, and
even exterminated. They’ll have no way to escape.
·
The friends of the powerful will control our money. They’ll make
us beg them for loans and bill us for their mistakes. They’ll turn us into
permanent debt slaves.
Read this list
again. Does it sound familiar? It should, because it describes the world we
live in today.
A world of
nation-states doesn’t protect us from these conditions. It facilitates them.
Indeed, an exhaustive study by
Professor R.J. Rummel, author of Death by Government, concluded that in the 20th
century alone, governments killed some 262 million people. Rummel coined the
term “democide” to describe these killings:
The murder of any person or
people by their government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
According to
Rummel, the largest democides of the 20th century were:
·
By the Chinese Communist Party (77 million dead)
·
By the Russian Communist Party (62 million dead)
·
By the German Nazi party (21 million dead)
Rummel’s research
concludes that six times as many people died from the actions of governments in
the 20th century than died in battle.
Is there a way
forward from this incredibly sad state of affairs? I believe there is. A
“decentralized world order,” as Rosenberg describes it, won’t happen all at
once. Nor will it lead to the immediate end of the nation-state. But I think
we’ve already passed the zenith of the nation-state, with the “global village”
of the Internet paving the way.
It’s now possible
to communicate instantaneously online with anyone, wherever they live (North
Korea and a handful of other totalitarian countries excluded).
Talking about the
global village sounds cliché, but it’s already here. I have friends in more
than fifteen countries. In many cases, I have a great deal more in common with
these individuals than with, say, the typical supporter of Hillary Clinton or
Donald Trump. And I have a great deal more to fear from my own countrymen than,
say, people in North Korea or Iran.
Decentralized
systems are emerging everywhere. For instance, the business world long ago
realized that a centralized justice system wasn’t agile enough to adjudicate
commercial disputes. That’s how binding arbitration became the preferred
mechanism for international commerce.
Thanks to
crypto-currencies like bitcoin, the nation-state is losing control over the
money its citizens use, and it’s losing the ability to extract forced
contributions via taxation. With crypto-currencies, you can now make secure
electronic transactions with anyone, anywhere in the world. Much to their
chagrin, governments have no effective way to control this, short of shutting
down the internet.
It’s become
patently obvious that the nation-state can’t fulfill the promises made to its
citizens. In the US, for instance, the Congressional Budget Office estimates
that the social security system will become insolvent in 2029. That’s only 12
years away. The unfunded liabilities reported by state and local pension plans
come to nearly $1 trillion. But according to accounting experts, the real
shortfall comes to around $3 trillion.
How do we start to
build our own decentralized systems? Each of us will do this in our own way.
Whether you’re a constitutionalist, a libertarian, a Tea Partier, or an
anarchist, organize yourself with like-minded people. Then by the fruits of
your actions, prove your way is better than what we have now.
The common factor in our efforts is
to withdraw consent from those overseeing us. If
enough people withdraw consent from a business and stop buying its products,
the business fails. It will work – and is working – the same way with the
nation-state.
One way to
withdraw consent from the nation-state is to stop using its fiat currency.
Instead, use gold, silver, or bitcoin, etc. – stores of wealth that both
benefit you and weaken the authority of the nation-state over your wealth.
Investing assets outside your own country is another way to withdraw consent.
Those assets are now much more difficult for your government to seize against
your will.
Withdrawing consent from oppressive
governments is hardly a new idea. Indeed, one organization, the Albert
Einstein Institution, has been working along these lines for
decades. It has even prepared a list of 198 methods of
non-violent protest and persuasion.
There is a better
way forward. The people of Catalhoyuk proved it at the dawn of civilization.
Now it’s our turn to apply their example to our own time.
Reprinted with permission
from Nestmann.com.
Mark
Nestmann [send
him mail] is a journalist with more than 20 years of investigative
experience and is a charter member of The Sovereign
SocietyCouncil of Experts . He has authored over a dozen books and
many additional reports on wealth preservation, privacy and offshore investing.
Mark serves as president of his own international consulting firm, The Nestmann Group,
Ltd.. The Nestmann Group provides international wealth preservation
services for high-net worth individuals. Mark is an Associate Member of the
American Bar Association (member of subcommittee on Foreign Activities of U.S.
Taxpayers, Committee on Taxation) and member of the Society of Professional
Journalists. In 2005, he was awarded a Masters of Laws (LL.M) degree in
international tax law at the Vienna (Austria) University of Economics and
Business Administration.
Copyright
© 2017 Mark
Nestmann