Quote from: Dread Pirate Roberts on March 20, 2012, 11:39 amAnd everything I could to deepen my understanding of economics and liberty, but it was all intellectual, there was no call to action except to tell the people around me what I had learned and hopefully get them to see the light. That was until I read Alongside night and the works of Samuel Edward Konkin III. At last the missing puzzle piece! All of the sudden it was so clear: every action you take outside the scope of government control strengthens the market and weakens the state. I saw how the state lives parasitically off the productive people of the world, and how quickly it would crumble if it didn't have it's tax revenues. No soldiers if you can't pay them. No drug war without billions of dollars being siphoned off the very people you are oppressing.Quote from: Bungee54 on September 17, 2012, 07:51 amThe Bungee54 Team is proud to be a part of this !Thank you for your words DPR. We feel like "A Lodging of Wayfaring Men" becoming reality !We shall defend this Place with all our might should a call to arms ever happen.With our utmost respect,The Bungee54 Team / Cell 8)A thread worth resuscitating! I think many of us here can identity with these sentiments. Those books mentioned are works of fiction, it is interesting that it should take these fiction elements in combination with the rigorous theory of Austrian economics to make it all work together, to make it all work in a practical way. A greater than sum of parts interaction between right and left brain hemispheres perhaps! Only then could the rubber truly meet the road. Capitalist philosophy is in fact extremely practical once you "get it", but it is often non trivial to understand why and how. It is a mere 236 years since our Revolution began, nothing!, but I'm not sure we all, myself included, fully appreciate the implications and power of this idea. It has a similar vastness to the theory of Evolution, if you require Deep Time to comprehend Evolution, then you need Deep Thought to comprehend Capitalism. It is almost Zen-like, apparently simple rules hide tremendous complexity. Have you read the Wealth of Nations and Adam Smith's description of what it takes to put a coarse woolen garment on the back of a shepherd, or the account of how production expands even in the simple process of a pin manufacture? That hit me like a gunshot to the head, I understood how Saul from Damascus felt, like a mental lighting bolt penetrating your mind and completely reordering everything. There is no better high than this, there really is not.Since coming to SR, it may sound cliched or peculiar, but I have felt a great sense of peace. It is just as you say, like a final jigsaw piece clicked into place, like the observation of the emergence of a larger pattern or grasping the solution to a perplexing riddle. It is inexplicable but satisfying.This is a war worth fighting. We have the opportunity to unleash the power of the market directly against the Enemy.On my part, I shall throw every resource at my disposal, every inkling of intellect and once of strength into this fight. These mediocre minded men with meager intellect and barren spirits cannot stand in our way. In the end, the Market, shall triumph. This new generation of young people of the early 21st century, they are the most important ones, because, it is their future that has been stolen by corrupt politicians, quasi-fascist-socialist designs. SR and the emerging Darknet Confederation is going to be one of those pivots where we slam our feet back against the bedrock of this society and shove back hard. Perhaps I will be considered a lunatic but I believe real world War could be coming. Yes, the real thing. My intuition says that we, not SR or the darknet markets, but the entirety of the West, is on an awful yawning precipice that could lead to catastrophic economic, followed by political and social disaster. Perhaps that doesn't sound very scientific, but I don't think I'm the only one with that vibe. There is never a way of predicting the future, so my intuition is as good a metric as any, and I have to say it has not let me down yet. Our anonymous comms networks, our financial system will stand us in good stead if such a time comes.