STYLE LeftMargin 3,RightMargin 6,TopMargin 1,BottomMargin 1 John Zube, POB 52, Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia 11 March 98 PEACOTTJ.398 Joe Peacott, BAD, 860 Harrison Ave., Apt. 1004, Boston, MA 02 118 Dear Joe, enclosed just some updates, a March 98 circular and a supplementary listing in PP 1446. I believe your booklets are part of the 50+ paper masters that are almost finished but not yet listed. If not then they will find their way into one of my next batches. Alas, I cannot rely on my memory and am not game to browse through the master sets for this. After reading the Linda Locke ( Tannehill ) article in Liberty again, and the editorial comment, I am not so eager to reproduce this title, since LFBs has kept it in print and might object because of their copyrights position. I am not going to argue with them about it. All I could do, if I could get the author and publisher to condone it, would be to offer this title much more cheaply and, possibly, more permanently. Nor does it seem worthwhile to argue with someone satisfied with the remaining liberties. I wish her luck for her cheap lifestyle, which makes her happy and gives her all the individual liberties that she wants. But she still pays indirect taxes and thus supports the warfare state and is not allowed to opt out of the effects of the existence of territorial warfare states. I hardly believe that she gets eg. gas for her motors free of taxes. Grasping and living some remaining limited private liberties is still relatively easily in countries like the U.S. but not so in many to most others. She has certainly not grasped e.g. her micrographic options. So much information on alternative life style options could also be published so much more cheaply on alternative media. The property and profit guided market still offers you impressive bargains, not only in garage sales. The other day, at the local Woolworth store, I bought a large box of sugar plums for as little as $ 1. It would have cost me much more to grow them myself. The lifestyle reformers in Germany, from the twenties, to which my parents also belonged, were helplessly swept up in the Great Inflation, the Great depression, the Nazi Dictatorship and the 2nd. Great War this century and in its aftermath, in inflation and unemployment and bureaucracy, in its poverty, hunger and sickness. They did what they could do, in self-help measures, which was often rather insufficient and not a matter of free choice and lifestyle preference. I believe I had my first oranges and ice cream at 16. Currently unemployment in the U.S. is low. Once it reaches 30 million ( like during the Great Depression of the 30's ) or even more ( I read of 40% in Saigon at a time and 80% in Elizabethville, Congo, for a while ), through civil war, deflation, stagflation or inflation, she will find many competitors trying to live cheaply on the road and from occasional cash jobs. Child abuse, murder, slavery and prostitution are still widespread in some countries because kids and parents cannot easily get self-supporting jobs. Without sufficiently thinking about such situations, will we ever be able prevent them - and some of their consequences, like racism, immigration barriers, civil wars and international wars and bloody revolutions? The Soviet or state communist currency sytem, one of monetary despotism, is still in force in the U.S., even though under Alan Greenspan it is not as much abused as it could be. His insights in this respect seem to be largely limited to trying to manipulate the interest rate and keeping the inflation of his paper money low. Contacts with the objectivist movement, in early years, have not taught him sufficient about the monetary and financial freedom options. Moreover, people in his position can usually not be taught anything different from what they already "know" to be right. Nor would they even have, in spite of their power, the power to abolish that power system. Nor the personal interest and incentive to do so. The tensions caused by monetary despotism may still lead to a general holocaust via ABC mass murder devices. A female scientist, trained in the West, is supposed to have supplied Saddam Hussein with poison doses sufficient to murder 10 billion people. Hitler would have loved to take everybody with him into his death. He and his agents might not strike out with such mass murder devices at the U.S., Israel or neighbouring countries, but, rather, at distant allies of the U.S., like Australia. While such means and madmen in power continue to exist and are allowed to exist, no one is safe. Diplomacy and trade sanctions won't save us. Nor will conventional or nuclear strikes, for sure. Anyhow, who murder conscripts rather than execute those who send them on their death marches? If one is settled in one's house and does not see all that much value in meeting many other people, who are not as interested in liberty as one is oneself, or more advanced in their freedom ideas and practices, one can also greatly reduce one's living expenses, via cheap food and second-hand clothing, furniture and other consumer articles. One can even, from a small cash income, continue to subsidize, for many years, a libertarian publishing effort like my own on alternative media. During a recent IT exhibition in Sydney, I saw one alternative medium, CD-ROM blanks, offered for as little as $ 2.75 each, in batches as small as 10 packs. Pressing them with 650 MBs costs commercially as little as $ 1. That could be brought down further, if one acquires the recording equipment oneself, with A$ prices starting here now around $ 700. Anarchists believing in spontaneous organization and creativity should make use of their micrographic and CD-ROM and floppy disk options much more than they have done so far, to enlighten themselves and others sufficiently to reach FIOT or PIOT, probably FIOT for themselves through PIOT for all. LIBERTY, Townsend, is, as far as I know, a good libertarian publication - but I for one cannot afford to subscribe to it and to most others and they seem to have left their readers uninformed on their micrographic and other options and have not made their back issues cheaply and permanently available in alternative formats. These alternative media are just tools, affordable ones, and one could do so many additional things with them, in the cause of liberty for oneself and all others who desire it, to the extent that they desire it, which one cannot do affordable with the conventional media. O.K., the Internet may now offer ca. 100,000 additional pages every day - with longer and longer access times, since the lines are overloaded. But how many of them are anarchist or libertarian ones? Have millions of users offered there as yet as many as 500,000 pro freedom pages, i.e. the quantity that I have built up in a 20 year effort on LMP microfiche. ( Rough estimate only. ) If not, then they ought to reconsider their micrographic option or make better use of their online, floppy, CD-ROM or Zip disk, etc. etc. preferences. Even the greenies, while complaining about forests being cut down ( they forget about the forests planted for this ) to produce paper, use mainly paper for their propaganda - and their recycled paper often costs more in energy and transport costs than new paper. Even the computer fans have still got all too much of their information offered only in magazines and books. To the magazines are now usually CD-ROMs attached, which may mean that in large quantities they are still cheaper than cheap floppy disks! What greater opportunities and savings are anarchists and libertarians waiting for? Do they want governments to subsidize their propaganda efforts or religious nuts to sponsor them? Most anarchists and libertarians, judging by their use of media options, seem to be so tradition-bound that one could come to doubt that many of them would make soon use of individual secessionism and exterritorial autonomy for their own communities, if governments tomorrow offered it to them on a platter. ( Just to get rid of their nuisance value. ) Far less, seeing their present state of mind, would they be likely to make fullest use of their options, if provided them, for monetary freedom, productive coop, purchase of enterprise on terms and ideal militia actions. Getting them - and masses of unemployed and underemployed, up to a billion now in the world - to think seriously about cause and cure of unemployment, and to do something about it, in a monetary revolution, as a self-help step, is a difficult to impossible job. They seem more interested in beer and sports events, smoking and dope, culinary, entertainment and fashion options to muddle, and distract their thoughts, and remain victims in nation-wide and government mismanaged kindergardens for them. In yesterday's paper there was finally an admission that there are about 2 million people in Australia that want jobs. ( Population ca. 18 million. ) The official figure before was kept down to ca. 800,000 before. And governments have confessed again and again that they do not know how to greatly and fast reduced even the number 800,000 jobless. I couldn't even find 8 unemployed prepared to seriously tackle this problem, initially only via thought experiments. China's unemployed are by some estimated to come to 120 - 200 million. The unemployed and poor now e.g. in Indonesia, under a dictatorship, form also an explosive mixture which conventional economic "wisdom" and military power cannot safely dissolve or suppress. Australian citizens and taxpayers are so ignorant and prejudiced that they jumped for the chance to buy telecommunications shares in the government TELSTRA corporation, selling to the public ca. 1/3rd of its capital value, instead of the 18 million Australians demanding that each of them be GIVEN, in securities, his full share of this ca. 36 billion capital asset, i.e. ca. $ 2,000 each, in TELSTRA shares. Nor does it seem to bother them that in an all-over reprivatization they, not the bureaucrats and politicians, could, througth the expropriation of all local state and federal bureaucrats - or rather of the assets, mismanged by them, they could each pocket probably over 1 million A $ in capital assets. They rather made a profit on investing in a monopoly that continues to exploit them by overcharging them for access to its lines and exchanges. ( For years all trunk calls could be provided at local call rates, whose prices are also inflated, not only through the paper money inflation.) In our supposedly free market of ideas ( as, supposedly, represented by the mass media and educational institutions ) this freedom option was not even mentioned, far lest discussed. And local anarchists often want such assets to remain in government hands rather than end up in private ones! Carl Watner, years ago, compiled once an anarchist literature for sale list for LFBs. I met up with Andrea Millen Rich back in 1990 and she was then considering updating such a listing. But who is prepared to do the job for her? And who would not only include printed editions but audio-tapes, video tapes, microfiche, roll films, floppies and CD-ROMs as well and point out their sources, to the extent that LFB is not prepared to deal with such titles itself? Anarchists, like libertarians, have all tried to set up and maintain their own separate little distribution channels, with little successes and many failures so far. It is almost as if every little anarchist group tried to carry out its own door knock campaign - and just as inefficient. Isn't it about time that they established a common marketing system or process, based on common lists, literature lists, address lists, events, abstracts, review and index and bibliography lists? Does mutual aid mean so little to them in this sphere? Can't they apply their "solidarity" and "natural harmony" and "spontaneous collaboration ) notions here? They would have to lose none of their beloved independence thereby. On the contrary, their diverse associational and publishing efforts could only thereby hope to reach their full potential. Spontaneous anarchist initiative and organization, ad hoc? Don't make me laugh! Such faiths are not better than religious ones, that "let God be a good man" and pray that he will do his job well enough. It is passing the buck and self-responsible jobs on to others. Naturally, individual and separate self-responsibility is not enough here, as it is not for revolutionary actions. Some form of conscious and combined self-responsibility is required. In market-like or anarchistic collaboration, we would have all the manpower, knowledge, skills and resources required to enlighten ourselves fast and proceed to sensible and effective actions towards full liberty for ourselves. Cooperatively ( and freely ) combined consumption-, savings- and production powers are among the greatest and least utilized forces in the world. The same applies to our information collection and retrieval and mutual correction powers. How could we come to believe that without all anarchist and libertarian knowledge, skills and resources, combined in effective networks, with numerous independent nodes, we could turn events around, towards full liberty for all or as much liberty for any group as it wants and can stand? Have all our anarchist "actions" and action projects been suffiently intellectually examined for their effectiveness or lack of it, and sufficiently tested and compared, so that we do not repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Do we really know what works and what does not, of our often all too impulsive and thoughtless "actions"? Were there ever better opportunities to gather and spread all liberty knowledge and to make it more effective? Have most anarchists given up on the believe that the spread of sufficient anarchist knowledge could make them free? Are they satisfied with their limited knowledge now and what can be achieved with it? 3/98 circ., 1446. PIOT, John.