Technical solutions significantly increase the efficiency of activity, but they cannot replace the will to act. For a social order to be called ancap, legal relations between people must be quite decentralized, and economic relations quite market-based. And the best way to bring this closer is, in essence, quite banal: as many people as possible must build exactly such relations for themselves.
For every specific person, the atmosphere of the state around them is simply the external effects of the activities of a wide circle of people who carry the state mindset. And as we remember from the chapter about ancap and the imperfect world, the consequences of complex negative externalities are overcome within ancap through spontaneous orders. Everyone, when faced with state pressure, reacts to it in some way. They endure it, evade it, or try to destroy the source of the pressure. To build ancap, one simply needs to endure it less.
Agorism is a strategy for building a network of economic and legal horizontal ties between people right now. Not attempting to transform state orders, but acting in defiance of existing regulations. Not registering one’s relations and agreements with state bodies. Not obtaining licenses. Not paying taxes. Not turning to the police or state courts. Instead, using one’s own decentralized tools: for recording contracts, for transferring value, for resolving disputes, and so on. The wider such practices spread, the less space will remain for the state, and the more it will resemble ancap.
Another advantage of agorism as a strategy is that it puts an end to theoretical disputes about whether certain non-state practices are possible, whether they are workable, and exactly how they should be implemented.
It is clear that the state will try to resist people acting without its knowledge. But the state is merely a mental parasite in the minds of specific people. It is, in essence, the habit of placing the interests of an imaginary collective subject above one’s own and above the interests of counterparties. Such a habit can be overcome with both the stick and the carrot. A government official can be corrupted, and then it will be more profitable for him to ignore what is happening in reality and send beautiful reports upward. Let him be involved in counter-economic activity, derive his primary income from it, and perceive his official salary as a meager pittance.
How does all this differ from the mafia? By only one, but very important detail: a firm moral basis. Agorists are guided by libertarian principles, which means that their activity, even if illegal, is not directed against people: the principle of self-ownership forces them to consider the interests of other subjects, and the non-aggression principle prevents them from being the first to apply violence to defend their interests. In practice, this means: no racketeering, no enslavement of people, and other tricks characteristic of the mafia. Only the shadow market, private arbitration, the institution of reputation, and a similar set of practices.
Of course, agorism as a strategy also has disadvantages.
First, the more corrupt the officials are, the more they are interested in ensuring that people are forced to turn to them. Consequently, idiotic regulations multiply, which people then have to bypass. That is, if applied carelessly, agorism only worsens the situation for those who are forced to comply with state laws.
Second, agorism is capable of providing a noticeable economic gain for those who practice it only in a large, inefficient state. But if, for example, taxes in a state are low, regulations are unobtrusive, and punishments for corruption are severe and inevitable, then for many it turns out to be much easier and calmer to obey regulations and pay taxes. Thus, the more compact the state, the fewer prerequisites there are for agorism. This is the same negative feedback mechanism that prevents minarchist reforms from being brought to their logical conclusion.